When I bought my PlayStation 3, I could only find bundled options. Since I didn’t have much choice, I bought one which came with the game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.
At first, I thought “great, they increase the price of the console to give you a bad game that no one has heard of”. I was so wrong.
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Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
I gave this game a chance anyway. Well, I paid for it after all.
And then I found that it was actually one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a 2007 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the first game in the Uncharted series, and was released in November 2007 for PlayStation 3. Combining action-adventure and platforming elements with a third-person perspective, the game follows Nathan Drake, the supposed descendant of the explorer Sir Francis Drake, as he seeks the lost treasure of El Dorado, with the help of journalist Elena Fisher and mentor Victor Sullivan.
Following the diary to the indicated spot, Nate and Sully discover an alcove that once held a large statue, and realize that El Dorado is not a city but rather a golden idol. They find a Nazi U-boat, which contains a page from Drake’s diary showing the statue was taken to an island. However, mercenaries led by criminal Gabriel Roman, to whom Sully owes a massive debt, and his lieutenant Atoq Navarro intercept Nate and Sully. Sully is seemingly killed by a shot to the chest, but Nate manages to escape, encounters Elena, and flies with her to the island.
Uncharted: Among Thieves
The first game of the series was so well accepted that in 2009 Naughty Dog published a second one.
The second entry in the franchise, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, was the first in the series to experiment with several locales. The game is set in the snow-capped mountain landscapes of the Tibetan Plateau in southernmost China, a museum in Istanbul, the jungles of Borneo, and the urban landscapes of Nepal. Subsequent games followed this concept, with Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception featuring the streets of London and Colombia, as well as a château in France, a castle in Syria, a city in Yemen, and the sprawling deserts of the Rub’ al Khali.
Uncharted 2 uses Naughty Engine 2.0, a revamped and optimized version of the original engine that has allowed the game to have real-time moving environments, more realistic textures, and animations.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
Two years after the events of the previous game, treasure hunters Nathan Drake and Victor “Sully” Sullivan meet with Talbot in London, who is interested in purchasing Nate’s ring, inherited from Sir Francis Drake. The duo accuses Talbot of using counterfeit banknotes, and a fight ensues. They are subdued by Talbot’s cohort, Charlie Cutter, and Talbot’s employer, Katherine Marlowe, steals Drake’s ring. Cutter shoots Nate and Sully.
20 years earlier, the teenage Nate searches a museum in Cartagena, Colombia, for the ring. He sees Sully working with Marlowe to retrieve it. Nate is caught by Marlowe and her henchmen, but Sully rescues him and takes him on as his protégé.
Real physics and environment deformation are key in creating a realistic playing experience, according to Naughty Dog’s Community Strategist Arne Meyer. Game director, Justin Richmond, said that Uncharted 3 pushed the PlayStation 3’s graphical capabilities to its limits, but Uncharted 3 doesn’t manage the same graphical advance seen between the first two games because the PlayStation 3 simply can’t handle it: “We pushed it really hard. Uncharted 2 to 3 is still a jump, but it’s a narrower jump. And going forward, it depends on what we do”.
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection
The Nathan Drake Collection includes the first three mainline titles in the Uncharted series: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (2007), Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009), and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (2011).
Most critics believed that the game was a worthy remaster of the three games and praised Bluepoint for introducing the graphical updates. Sam Byford from The Verge described the collection as a “perfect primer” and an excellent entry point for players who have not played any Uncharted games in the past, and the “perfect way to get yourself up to speed before Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End drops next year”.
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Several years before the events of the first game, Nate and Sam hunt for the treasure of pirate Henry Avery, who plundered a fortune during the 1695 Gunsway heist. Alongside Rafe, the Drake brothers infiltrate a Panamanian jail to access the former cell of Avery’s first mate, where Nate discovers a hollow St. Dismas idol. When the prison warden who aided them demands a cut, Rafe impulsively kills him, triggering a frantic escape. Nate and Rafe successfully escape, but Sam is shot by guards, presumed dead.
Fifteen years later, following the events of the previous game, Nate has retired with his wife Elena but misses the excitement of his old life. He is visited by Sam, who survived the gunshots and has spent the intervening time incarcerated. He explains that he escaped with drug lord Hector Alcazar, who demands that Sam find Avery’s treasure or be killed. Nate agrees to help Sam, lying to Elena that he has accepted a salvaging job in Malaysia which he had actually refused. Aided by Sully, the Drakes steal a duplicate Dismas idol from an illegal auction in Italy, bringing them into conflict with South African mercenary boss Nadine Ross and her employer, Rafe, who is still searching for Avery’s treasure. A map inside the idol leads the Drakes to St. Dismas’ cathedral in the Scottish Highlands. There, they discover a hidden temple and a map highlighting King’s Bay in Madagascar.
The game was published in 2015 for PlayStation 4 consoles.
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
The team experimented with using Nathan Drake, protagonist of previous Uncharted games, as a secondary character, but found that it “felt superfluous”. Several other characters were also considered as protagonists, including Charlie Cutter, Nathan’s daughter Cassie, Nathan’s brother Sam Drake and friend Victor Sullivan; the team felt Sullivan’s age would hinder gameplay. They decided to follow Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, who first appeared in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009) and Uncharted 4, respectively. The team opted to focus on new relationships with established secondary characters in the Uncharted series, which instead focused on a “missing chunk of the story”.
In India, treasure hunter Chloe Frazer searches for the legendary tusk of Ganesh, the son of Hindu god Shiva, who lost the tusk while defending his father’s temple. Chloe’s own father was killed by bandits while searching for the tusk. Chloe slips past insurgents and meets up with mercenary Nadine Ross. They sneak into the office of the insurgents’ leader, Asav a former acquaintance of Nadine, who wants to use the tusk to rally India into a civil war. Chloe and Nadine steal a map pointing toward the tusk within the ancient Hoysala Empire and a disc that acts as a key.
Can we get another one, please?
No Uncharted games are expected, which is a shame. I believe anyone who has played the games would want a new title for the new generation of consoles.
What Naughty Dog achieved with the previous console generations is remarkable. I can’t even imagine what that could do with all the horsepower of the PlayStation 5.
For now, we can just hope they don’t leave the series forgotten.
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