Last week, Naughty Dog and SCEA held a packed-to-the-rafters press event at the PlayStation.Blog lounge at GDC 2011. The anticipation from the invited press was palpable as they all filtered into the PlayStation.Blog lounge – afterwards, word on the street was that we delivered.

Evan Wells, Christophe Balestra, Richard Lemarchand and yours truly were there to give the demo and speak with the press – the embargo just lifted this morning, so be sure to visit any of the numerous publications who attended for their take on the event and the reveals.

We kicked off the press event with the first ever demo outside of Naughty Dog halls of UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception in stereoscopic 3D. We chose to present a portion of the burning chateau sequence we premiered in late December. Since most people would already be familiar with the way the sequence looked and played, we thought it would make all the more evident the stellar work the Naughty Dog team has put into making the 3D presentation part of the core Naughty Dog Engine.

In my opinion, with this small snippet of gameplay we’ve proven that we’re able to perfectly retain all of the spectacular visuals and effects that you’ve come to expect from an UNCHARTED game into the 3D presentation. Playing in 3D gives you some added benefits to gameplay as well, such as improved aiming around corners and an excellent read on depth for all traversal sequences, no matter how tricky. Unfortunately, until you get the see the UNCHARTED 3 running in 3D at an event or in your home this November, you’ll have to rely on impressions from our attending media for how good it looked and played.

The real meat of the press event was the unveiling of the central antagonist that will try to foil Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan at every opportunity – meet Katherine Marlowe.

Sounds like she’s definitely not one you want to get in the way of or, worse, double cross! To give you some background, Katherine Marlowe is the coldly calculating leader of a secret society whose roots date back over four hundred years to the court of Queen Elizabeth I. She has a long-standing rivalry with Nathan Drake over Sir Francis Drake’s ring – something they both contend is rightfully theirs and is also the key to an ancient mystery. As you can tell from the cut-scene above, Marlowe is a much more cerebral enemy than Drake has confronted in the past, using both psychological and physical tactics to get what she is after. Marlowe also has the assistance of her team of highly-trained agents in this secret society – they are far more elusive and dangerous than the hired guns Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan have faced before.

We’ve uploaded a set of stills from the cut-scene, a high-res render of Katherine Marlowe and concept art of the agents and thugs Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan will face in UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception.

We hope you’ve all enjoyed meeting Katherine Marlowe in our GDC 2011 reveal. Stay tuned as we still have a ton of information we want to reveal – with little to no spoilers! – over the next eight months.