This post contains minor spoilers for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. I haven’t beaten the game yet myself, so it isn’t going to be too in depth about much except a single early chapter in the game. Specifically, the fourth chapter – “A Normal Life”. This is a chapter that is all story and little gameplay, so this really will be spoiler-heavy but only in broad strokes. There’s your warning.
I rushed through Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception before playing Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. I didn’t even finish the third game. I made it halfway through and then stopped just as my digital copy of Uncharted 4 unlocked and I was ready to experience a next-generation version of games that I really were not that familiar with. I mention all of this because once I hit the fourth chapter of the final game in the series, I was getting teary-eyed and smiling ear-to-ear.
I will quickly take this time to mention that I have seen an article already tackle a very minute portion of what I wanted to do here, and will direct you to Kotaku’s post on the matter. The reason I still feel it warrants discussion is because this is a scene that does more than just let people play Crash Bandicoot or has really good voice acting and mo-cap. This is a scene where these things come together to establish a relationship that doesn’t require you to play previous games. In fact, having played the previous games, this chapter puts the relationship between two very familiar characters in the series into a much stronger light with ease. It also helped solidify another relationship that players were unfamiliar with until this game.
Uncharted 4 works because it doesn’t depend on players having played the other games in the series. Like a good movie, it stands alone. Nathan Drake explores the attic of his house and players can take a look at the treasures he has collected over the years that are not necessarily worth much money, but are sentimental to him. The reason you don’t have to play the previous games is because Drake comments on the sentimental value, without feeling like it is something players need to go back to discover.
A comment on the journal of Francis Drake by Nathan Drake is simply about how it once stopped a bullet for him. There is no need to play Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and see that bullet being stopped because that’s not the point of the comment. It is purely there to say “Hey, these things are from a past life – one which I no longer feel the need to go back to”. That’s a powerful statement in and of itself. But knowing that Nathan Drake misses his past life is only one part of the puzzle.
Elena is his wife now, too. Even if she wasn’t, the relationship between the two is so well-established in the next scene of this chapter that you would only wonder why she isn’t his wife. It’s not that they have been on a million adventures together that makes it so palpable – it is that the two talk like they’ve been been on a million adventures together.
Getting married soon myself, there is a way that me and my significant other talk that I do not feel could be accurately replicated in any artificial construct like a movie or game. Writing dialogue isn’t difficult. It’s writing chemistry that gets tricky. Uncharted has always made set pieces create chemistry by simply bringing characters together in a physical space. Its other trick is usually witty dialogue.
In Uncharted 4, witty dialogue still totally exists. But what it has in chapter four is normality. There’s a mundane conversation that happens as Drake brings Elena her supper and they talk about their day. Elena listens and responds, while Drake zones out during Elena’s turn to talk. He still wants to go on an adventure. Elena knows it, and while Drake is in denial, we as players can tell as well.
It isn’t until the two start playing Crash Bandicoot together that I became teary-eyed for a relationship that I had virtually no stakes in. There is a banter between Elena and Drake that solidifies their entire chemistry. It’s a banter that takes place while playing a video game. Have you ever tried to show someone else a video game when they’ve barely played video games before? It’s not fun for the other person, and it is clear that Elena is embarrassed for Drake, but also getting infuriated with his constant criticisms that are outlandish requests for the type of game Crash Bandicoot was and the era it came out in.
This is a ridiculously real moment that most developers would only have put in just for the sake of nostalgia. But it’s more than that in Uncharted 4‘s case. This isn’t just throwing in Wolfenstein 3D because you’re making a new Wolfenstein game. This is Naughty Dog reflecting on their roots while celebrating their achievements as developers. This is us as players watching progress from developers who have been in most players’ lives for a very long time. Furthermore, Uncharted 4 burns bright because it lets two of Uncharted‘s most prominent characters bond further over a piece of media. It highlights so many things more than just what Naughty Dog has done in the past. It accentuates the importance of media to a relationship.
I want to really stress that this is a scene that works because of its performances from Nolan North and Emily Rose. The two have worked together for a while now, and the mo-cap setup that Naughty Dog has had in place for years is only proving its worth now more than ever. This is a scene that has a movie-level quality to it, yet comes together because of its interactivity as well. Playing Crash Bandicoot while essentially watching a scene play out and hearing characters banter is what makes the case for games as a powerful medium. You feel like you are placed within that scene simply because you have control of a major setpiece in it.
But nostalgia rules heavy in the fourth chapter, creating a sense of tension between Drake’s seemingly “normal life” and the life he previously had. This all comes to a head when Sam Drake reappears in his life. Played by Troy Baker, Sam is Nathan’s brother who he presumed to be dead. I want to cap off this examination of chapter four by talking about the next scene, which indulges the most in players having played the previous games of the series.
Nathan has a lot of questions for Sam, and so do we. But we’ll get to that point soon when Sam explains how he is in front of his brother once again. What matters to Sam right now is to hear about Nathan and what he has been up to. Once again, I’m not a huge Uncharted guy, as I only recently raced through the franchise. I know a lot of people who played a while ago and could barely remember the events of some games. Everyone remembers the blue guys in Uncharted 2 and the train sequence, then everyone talks about the desert stuff and Young Drake in Uncharted 3, but Drake’s Fortune seems far less memorable. However, the option is soon given to the player to decide which game’s story they want to tell Sam.
This moment sticks out because it is crucial for the player to have played through the events of the game they selected. By doing so, when Nathan starts the story and subsequently ends it the following day, you are reminded of the whirlwind adventure you went on back in whatever year you played the game. In my case, it was just a couple days before that I played through the events that lead to the discovery of Shambhala in Uncharted 2. Drake’s excitement in telling the story and Sam’s excitement in just hearing it catapults that choice into something grander. You’re not just picking a game’s story to tell; you’re picking a moment in Drake’s life to share with your brother.
Uncharted 4 brings characters to life in chapter four, taking them from simply new additions or returns of old characters, and making them some of the strongest characters in video games today. The relationships are founded in nostalgia, but they are only founded in so much as any relationship has history to it. Uncharted 4 does not require you to have played the previous games in order to understand these characters. It simply requires you to be willing to walk into another person’s life. Much in the way every movie asks the same thing of viewers, and we gladly shell out money just to be a fly-on-the-wall for just a couple hours.