An impressive new Uncharted 4: A Thief's End trailer dropped today, but it wasn't Nathan Drake's handsome smile that caught the eye of a pair of Ubisoft developers.
Rather, it was the fact that a piece of artwork hanging up in Nathan Drake's home and featured prominently in the trailer looks awfully similar to concept art for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. In fact, it is the same piece of artwork, only with a pirate character that appeared in the original edited out.
Assassin's Creed franchise head of content Aymar Azaizia took to Twitter to point out the blatant (and unauthorized) use of the work of one of Ubisoft's artists:
Woooow Uncharted 4 using one of ACIV artwork in their trailer... I get the "thief" title now! https://t.co/rholpuvw9I lol at 1:36
— Azaïzia Aymar (@AymarMtl) February 24, 2016
Soon, another Ubisoft employee chimed in, this time Alex Hutchinson, who served as the director for Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 4. Prior to the release of Assassin's Creed Unity, Ubisoft (and Hutchinson) caught flak from gamers and even some developers for their comments on why creating female models and animations for Assassin's Creed Unity would be too much work. One of those developers was Naughty Dog's Jonathan Cooper. Today, Hutchinson took the opportunity today to take a shot back at Cooper, who said last year that, at best, creating new female animations for Assassin's Creed would be a day or two's work.
@GameAnim Doing your own concept art is twice the work? ;) pic.twitter.com/sO7ZAQ6sQ1 — Alex Hutchinson (@BangBangClick) February 24, 2016
It's unclear why Uncharted 4 is using artwork from Assassin's Creed. After all, Naughty Dog has a team of extremely talented artists, so why the need to steal? Perhaps somebody simply did a Google search for an exotic Caribbean locale and found the piece of concept art, not thinking about from where it originated. Or perhaps whomever used the art was aware of its origins and simply didn't care. So far, Naughty Dog hasn't issued a response on the matter, but it seems likely that whoever is responsible is going to be in some hot water.
