As suspected — thanks to a hint by Naughty Dog Co-President Christophe Balestra earlier this morning — Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End kick-started the inaugural PlayStation Experience keynote, and boy does it look great. Instead of merely teasing the title or giving us another story trailer, Sony hit the ground running with a 15-minute long gameplay demo of Naughty Dog’s upcoming title.

In the demo, we find an older version of our favorite PlayStation poster boy roaming a mysterious island looking for someone who [SPOILER] ends up being his older brother (played by Troy Baker)! In addition to the regular parkour mechanics, our master climber also adapts to his surroundings via scaling walls with a knife. It seems Drake is taking a page out of Lara Croft’s book of island survival. He also channels his inner Indiana Jones in a death-defying rope swing across a treacherous gap.

As for the combat, it looks like some serious tweaks were made. Instead of a full on firefight, Drake was able to easily maneuver himself around the enemies for a stealthier take down. Out of everything, combat has always been one of the series’ weaker points so this change is definitely welcome.

The versatility between play styles was probably best demonstrated when the person playing it live on stage met an untimely demise and fell through the map. Though unfortunate, it showed off how you could approach the same situation in an entirely different way if what you were doing wasn’t working.

The best part of the video however, was the very end when Drake finally finds his brother. He has a brother? Yep! He has a brother. Hopefully this steers the franchise down interesting avenues in our protagonist’s past. It’s also nice to see Troy Baker and Nolan North working on another Naughty Dog franchise (previously The Last of Us).  Twitter was set ablaze when Troy tweeted, “‘Good to see you’re alive, little brother.’ Yes, that was me. Damn proud.”

—

Were you impressed with what Naughty Dog brought to the table? Let us know in the comments below.