Last Action Hero
At least once every couple of years, in the quiet of summer evenings, I try to take some time off and play through the whole Uncharted series. It has now become something of a ritual, and as days go by, it’s slowly turning into the closest thing there is to hopping into a time machine. Diving into these games offers a unique perspective of their era, like revisiting a classic born in a time of industry transformation that continued to be reflected in its evolution. Today, a playthrough of the first Uncharted might leave a dry aftertaste, while the once-lauded unbridled action of Uncharted 2 begins to inspire some fatigue. In contrast, the years have been kinder to certain aspects of Uncharted 3, while Uncharted 4 fits into the sequence as the culmination of a maturing process that continues to this day. By the end of its credits, it seems crazy to think that it all began well over a decade ago with a mostly adequate third person shooter that felt relatively dated even at the time of its launch.
Back in 2007, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune arrived late to the party by most design standards. It lacked the kinetic energy of Gears of War and the cinematic flair of Mass Effect, yet it aimed to play in the same league as both. As a game, it’s a somewhat repetitive cover shooter that showed much promise but didn’t quite live up to its lofty aspirations. While undoubtedly fun, it just seemed to lag about two steps behind every aspect of its competition, except for one significant detail: its dialogue and acting felt remarkably powerful thanks to a clear sense of direction and a strong grasp of narrative tone.
Because of its genre, Uncharted is often likened to Indiana Jones. However, Nathan Drake’s escapades stop short of Spielberg’s artisan grace and tend to lean more toward the tongue-in-cheek, irreverent attitude of an 80s buddy movie. It doesn’t take much to imagine Nate arguing with Joe Pesci over a tuna sandwich, yet something wouldn’t sit right about the idea of him lecturing Egyptology students as an Ivy League professor. Far from the easy way out, turning their main character into a lovable scoundrel allowed Naughty Dog to connect with their audience. Each time Nate laughs at adversity after escaping some extravagant calamity, he is actually telegraphing players’ emotions and immersing them fully in his adventure. It’s the same kind of psychological response we get out of watching Danny Glover repeat that he’s getting “too old for this shit” in Lethal Weapon, or whenever Bruce Willis quips “yippee ki yay” to his latest foe in Die Hard. While lots of games reduce themselves to cheap melodrama by striving to look sophisticated, Uncharted always felt comfortable in its own skin as an unpretentious crowd pleaser, and that down-to-earth earnestness quickly placed it at the forefront of interactive answers to cinema.
It could not have happened any other way. Broadly speaking, the premise of Drake’s Fortune reads like a MacGyver Christmas special. A roguish hero sets out in search of El Dorado, taking a host of ethnic pirates, a foul-mouthed, ageing associate and one feisty blonde reporter in tow. Its plot is full of playful twists and turns, tricks that seek to keep the audience engaged without ever venturing too far beyond the average pulp fiction fare. By the end of the game, as the pesky Atoq Navarro betrays his boss Gabriel Roman, we have gone through so many antagonists that it’s hard to care about who is in charge anymore, and the final duel feels not all that different from dispatching the thirtieth Indonesian pirate that pops up from under a rock. This way, Drake’s Fortune marked the end of an infancy period characterized by mascot platformers like Jak and Daxter, though never fully stepping past the boundary of a creative pre-adolescence of sorts. At least, until it became the unlikely predecessor of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
The Greatest Show on Earth
Picturing Uncharted 2 means picturing an endless train ride through an ever-changing Asian landscape, or seeing a building collapse right under our feet in the midst of a shootout. It was the game that established Uncharted as a new PlayStation icon and the growing success of Naughty Dog as a recurring headline story. And in a way, it achieved all this by following roughly the same formula of Drake’s Fortune but with one significant enhancement: the addition of the interactive equivalent to cinematographic set-pieces.
In blockbuster movies, set-pieces are logistically complex sequences that function as narrative units and base a good deal of their appeal around their ability to inspire awe and thrills. They often stand out from the rest of the narrative, and their goal is to bring in a healthy dose of variety to the mix. Everyone remembers Robert Patrick barreling down the LA river at the wheel of a semi truck in Terminator 2, or Tom Cruise dropping from the ceiling of the CIA headquarters during his first Mission: Impossible. When it comes to videogames, an out-of-the-ordinary design element is often seen as transgressive, and this turns a depressingly large number of titles into murky memories where the only thing that happened over ten hours of gameplay was the same action repeated ad nauseam. Set-pieces work absolute wonders to counter this.
The idea wasn’t exactly new. A couple of years before Drake’s Fortune, games had opened up to the possibility of a structure designed around showstopper scenes with Resident Evil 4, which became the forerunner of a new generation of cinematic actioners thanks to an inspired use of over-the-shoulder shot compositions and an effortless ease to reinvent itself every two minutes. Its influence changed shooters forever, but it wasn’t until Among Thieves that the filmic approach to game design showed its full potential.
Uncharted 2 begins in-media-res, with Nathan Drake clinging on to dear life from a train car that hangs precariously over a cliff. Compared to the prologue of his first adventure — aboard a stationary ship, exchanging fire with waves of enemies — the contrast couldn’t be more stark. Gone are the boring tutorials reminiscent of hundreds of earlier games, to instead introduce an electrifying sequence that combines real time input with scripted animation in an almost imperceptible way. Nowadays, this process has become commonplace whenever there is a need to bring the visual versatility of cutscenes to in-game action, but Uncharted 2 was one of the first titles to feature playable sequences that truly took advantage of cinematic language to enrich its gameplay loop. Because if anything defines Naughty Dog’s generational leap from Drake’s Fortune to Among Thieves, it has to be their fiercely conscious use of framing.
An Embarrassment of Riches
For a long time, taking control of the camera away from players was seen as taboo, which prevented far too many games with narrative ambitions from conveying emotions effectively. The prevalence of top-down, wide-angled shots responds to practical necessity, but user readability should not come at the expense of limiting cinematic choices. In Uncharted 2, the camera moves freely around Drake, establishes locations by opening up the stage or emphasizes risk through subtle tilts and dutch angles, and it does all this without ever hindering gameplay. At one particularly inspired moment, we are treated with a vertical pan that introduces the first of the snow monsters that protect the city of Shambhala, a shadow that reveals itself in the foreground as the player absent-mindedly watches his avatar climbing a distant wall. These sort of eye-direction tricks are prevalent in horror movies, yet are rarely used in games, where subordinating the main character to any other screen element is usually seen as counterproductive. At Naughty Dog, it was seen as an opportunity.
More than anything else, Uncharted 2 took a step towards a less constrained visual narrative, which would later facilitate such extraordinary sequences as the Madagascar motorcycle chase from Uncharted 4 or the Rub al-Khali desert montage in Uncharted 3. Indeed, the latter devoted a significant amount of screen time to an odyssey through the sands featuring an arresting display of close-ups, wide shots, inserts, high angles, ellipses, and allegorical iconography unheard of in videogames at the time. Plus all of it was completely interactive, exploring techniques as foreign to the medium as cuts and fades sprinkled in the middle of gameplay.
In following years, indie projects like Virginia or Firewatch dared to tread similar ground, but it was a studio-funded, multi-million AAA project that paved the way to get there. Uncharted 3 is sometimes looked at through a strangely condescending lens, when it features some of the boldest artistic choices found in Naughty Dog’s earlier work. The desert montage alone is an elegant follow-up to the chaotic action aboard a cargo plane just minutes earlier. Nate’s parachute descent, gently swaying over the horizon after a violent mid-air explosion, is a prelude to the meditative nature of the walk through the dunes to come. This way, the artists at Naughty Dog were able to break out of the monotony of constant shooting by showing a firm understanding of narrative pacing that many others would mimic in later years. But getting there was a gradual process.
Less than a decade ago, the idea of pitching a videogame in which you wander alone through an empty house or spend your days free-roaming the Wyoming wilderness seemed unthinkable. Yet well before that, Uncharted 2 set a whole level in a Tibetan village where your biggest interactive choices meant petting a yak or kicking a soccer ball. The goal was to imbue the scene with a sense of presence, without which the impact of an enemy attack on the same village moments later would have not felt the same. Shortly after, the game gets carried away by a noisy final act in continuous crescendo, but the seeds of change had already been sown. By the time Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception arrived, Naughty Dog knew how to capture the feeling of film almost perfectly, balancing the usual array of exciting sequences with narrative breathers that left some room for characters to express themselves over the din of shrapnel. By doing this, they were inching closer toward the philosophy that would later make stories like The Last of Us possible, although perhaps the pyrotechnic context of Uncharted made it all harder to understand.
Human Stories
The Last of Us also marked a turning point that saw the rise of writer and director Neil Druckmann to pop culture stardom, making his name almost synonymous with Naughty Dog from then on. His thoughtful narrative style—coupled with the sudden departure of series director Amy Hennig during development of Uncharted 4—painted an image of regime change that seemed to leave no room for something as frivolous as Nathan Drake’s heedless globetrotting in the days forward. But the transformation that resulted in Naughty Dog growing out of the pulp adventures starring gun-toting acrobats to become the new home of parent-child character studies wasn’t forged in the vacuum between Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us, nor it was likely the result of one single person’s sensibility.
In some ways, Hennig’s three Uncharted entries doubled as a testing ground for an ambitious developer team who first adapted cinema’s visual codes to videogames, and then explored the best way to populate their stories with believable characters. And if Among Thieves represented a breakthrough hit towards the former, Drake’s Deception aimed directly for the latter.
At its heart, the story of Uncharted lays out a trifecta of tensions between Nathan Drake, Elena Fisher and Victor Sullivan. But as the series grew in complexity, the personal drives fueling those tensions blurred and shifted. Elena goes from nearly posing a liability through her bold, devil-may-care attitude in Drake’s Fortune to emerging as the sole responsible adult in Among Thieves, while Nate is sometimes depicted as an immature dope and sometimes seen as a seasoned scholar entirely capable of solving the world’s greatest mysteries on his own. Even though they were still characters far more elaborate than those in your average studio game, the earliest Uncharted entries weren’t always successful at keeping an internal consistency capable of sustaining compelling drama over plot mechanics — an issue that began to be addressed as Naughty Dog delved deeper into the nature of the desires and motivations shaping the protagonists of their games.
In Drake’s Deception, Elena — already established as the voice of reason — warns of the dangers that Sullivan puts himself through as he attempts to relive his youthful days vicariously through Nate. And indeed, Sully falls prey to the perfidious Katherine Marlowe in the third act of the story, forcing Nate to reconsider his influence on his mentor as he tries to bring him back to safety. As a result, Uncharted 3 introduced a dramatic conflict that stems directly from the interpersonal bond between its main characters, relegating the quest for fortune and glory to a supporting role in a clear manner. It is perhaps the most sensible out of the three installments shipped under Amy Hennig and the first one to decisively treat Drake and his inner circle as something other than the glorified action figures that Naughty Dog had set out to avoid from start. At the time, it also felt like the inevitable farewell to the series, but market rule eventually dictated that good old Nathan should dust off his holster and bandolier one more time — and surprisingly, what followed was perhaps the most accomplished Uncharted yet and an even more fitting end to the franchise.
Fourth Time is the Charm
Five years after Drake’s Deception, a portion of the audience received the announcement of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End with a dose of skepticism. At best, it raised the question of what exactly a new Uncharted could do other than bring in more chases, explosions and dazzling camera movements. At worst, the notion of a third sequel — fourth counting Bend Studio’s Uncharted: Golden Abyss — felt reminiscent of the lousiest tendencies in Hollywood to keep its tired franchises on life support. What few realized is that despite the steady progression in the series, Naughty Dog still had plenty of opportunity to grow. Drake’s Fortune had established the core mechanics, Among Thieves incorporated cinematic gameplay, Drake’s Deception balanced the narrative pacing, while The Last of Us perfected characterization. It was now up to A Thief’s End to combine all those elements and bind them together into the Uncharted formula. And that’s exactly what it did.
To get to that point, the story introduces the character of Sam, a lost brother figure who bursts back into Nathan Drake’s life at a stage when he had already decided to leave behind his tumultuous past as a con artist and grave robber in favor of a less eventful suburban life with Elena. Much like Chloe Frazer in Uncharted 2, Sam’s role works as a dark reflection of Nate’s less flattering traits, now looking to throw him back into a dangerous dynamic that’s directly incompatible with the reality of marital routine.
According to Druckmann, this conflict was informed by his own experience as a game developer, which could be extrapolated to anyone that reaches that day in life when they must reconcile the call of youthful passions with the responsibilities of adulthood. After the mandatory excursion to the heart of the umpteenth lost city, Nate learns the hard way that he can’t hide his nature from the person he wants to share his future with. Elena, in turn, realizes that there is no point in denying that nature. Each one adapts to the needs of the other and, in the end, they find a common ground in which the thrills of adventure remain present in their everyday lives— but in a responsible manner that sets aside any new brushes with death.
A nostalgic scene where Nate and Elena’s daughter discovers her parents’ colorful past invites players to look back and reflect on the long road that connects A Thief’s End to Drake’s Fortune. But that’s only one side of it. In truth, it’s a circular ending that represents both the characters’s journey and Naughty Dog’s own chronology, from its early days as a humble dispenser of marsupial antics to their modern profile as creators of prestige videogame dramas. The fact that a playful nod to Crash Bandicoot reads as a subtle reference to creative infancy during a sequence about marital life is brilliant on its own. The fact that such a device somehow exists in a game that also ends up with a Spanish galleon getting blown to smithereens may as well merit a standing ovation. Druckmann and his team could have sat back and reap the rewards of a late sequel to their beloved action-adventure series based solely around technical bravado. Instead, they understood Uncharted as the symbolic threshold that needed to be crossed in order to reach their current position and they paid it a fitting tribute.
The Silent Transition
In the year following the Drakes’ final outing, the prevailing sense of finality got further cemented by the departure of Bruce Straley, Druckmann’s mentor and right-hand man, following the release of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Starring Chloe Frazer and directed by Shaun Escayg and Kurt Margenau, the game was originally intended as a downloadable expansion that somehow got beefed all the way up to a stand-alone spin-off out of sheer ambition. The final result was missing some of the gameplay subversiveness from earlier Naughty Dog games and some of Uncharted 4's narrative conviction, but whatever it lacked in overall soundness was made up for by the stirring enthusiasm of two rookie directors determined to make the most out of their first chance to be at the helm.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that The Lost Legacy carries an air of exclusivity that almost suggests a transient role within Naughty Dog’s output. Like a companion short before an animated film, Escayg and Margenau’s game seemed like the perfect way to inject new blood into a weary vascular system, allowing the creative tissue of a studio to regenerate.
In her first leading part, Chloe apes classic rogues like Han Solo or Selina Kyle as a sometimes volatile, deceptively selfish character who once all is said and done chooses to nevertheless fight the good fight. Her arc takes her straight from a markedly gray past into a literal collision that changes her forever. When she sits at the wheel of a Jeep speeding towards certain death despite already having claimed her treasure, the echoes of an indiscriminate bombing that opened her story still reverberate in our ears. Having solved the material problem, the ethical one remains. Ultimately, armed with the confidence to engage in a struggle that goes beyond personal gain, the capricious thief from Uncharted 2 transforms herself into the righteous hero she had always set to be.
Perhaps in the future she will be the one to carry on the Uncharted flame so its legacy may indeed never be lost. Maybe a new generation of game designers will fill in the void left by Straley and Hennig. With or without them, Nathan Drake’s exploits will forever remain associated to a period of creative grace that redefined the standard of big budget videogames. Without Uncharted, their industry would have missed an essential step in its fervent quest to emulate blockbuster cinema. Worse yet, they might have continued to mimic its form without ever making out its function. As fate had it, a studio once known for their whimsical furry platformers jump-started a new trend that championed mature, dramatic entertainment across the whole medium. “Greatness from small beginnings,” as Nate would say. Not quite his own motto, but a self-fulfilling prophecy all the same. For even though Francis Drake may have claimed it first, it’s only fair to make an exception and allow Naughty Dog to boast it in honor of their last action hero.
• Translated from a special feature originally written for AnaitGames.com and later published as part of the Spanish edition of The Art of Uncharted.
• Header art by Randolph Watson.
