FAKE RONJAN!!Uncharted 4: A Conflicting End
I am conflicted today.
I finished Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End late last night during a marathon five-hour session in which I simultaneously watched Game 7 of the NBA’s Western Conference Finals. I simply couldn’t put the game down - I had to find out how Nathan Drake’s saga ended. Yet, during most of the five-hour home stretch, I found myself … bored.
What? How could I be bored by the culmination of one of gaming’s greatest series? Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception was my game of the year in 2011, and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was one of my favorites two years earlier. Despite my ineptitude and distaste for shooting games, I was drawn in by the compelling characters, the twists in the storyline, the globetrotting adventures, and the epic action sequences. It was every great action movie rolled up in an interactive experience.
Uncharted 4 is more of the same, and that’s the problem.
Sure, there are a few new gimmicks here: rope swinging, rock climbing with a piton, hills to slide down, and more advanced stealth mechanics all make multiple appearances. However, none of these really landed for me. The Tomb Raider reboot pulled the first three off more effectively three years ago, and stealth gameplay is not something I’ve ever enjoyed. Net - what’s new here felt tacked on in order to pad out the gameplay.
I understand why they were looking to add variety, though, because the rest of the core gameplay is exceedingly familiar - shooting and traversing. I don’t normally get into detailed discussions of mechanics, because I’ve always felt that games should be defined by how you feel when you play them rather than the details of what you do, but I need to dive deeper to unpack why I was bored.
In most shooting-heavy games, it’s the combat that ultimately drives me to boredom. Imagine my surprise to learn that I actually enjoyed Uncharted 4’s gunplay! Some of this is undoubtedly because of the new Explorer difficulty level that helps people with my lack of skills by auto-aiming. In removing the stress from combat encounters, I was able to focus on the variety of scenarios and topography the game presented. Previous games in the series had an over-reliance on enclosed combat arenas, but Uncharted 4 brings traversal and altitude management to the forefront. It’s the best shooting the series has ever had.
It’s ultimately the traversal that drove me to boredom. The mechanics are fine, and the vistas are gorgeous. If I’d never played an Uncharted game before, I’d probably have been blown away. But I have played several Uncharted games before.
No set piece matches the train and airplane escapades from previous games, and there so many “oh crap, the bridge is falling apart” moments that I started rolling my eyes. The game does get a bit cheeky about it, with Nate commenting on how everything breaks when he’s involved. Maybe he was bored, too.
So if I was bored … why did I finish the game in a marathon session?
Uncharted 4 is more of the same, and that’s why I couldn’t stop playing it.
[This section will have SPOILERS for the entirety of the Uncharted series]
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The gang is back, and the best-in-class dialogue returns! I love it. It’s great seeing Nathan, Elena, and Sullivan after real years have passed, both for me and for them. All of our lives have changed since the last time we’ve been together. Additionally, no series has done banter like Uncharted, and Uncharted 4 lives up to its heritage. It’s just fun being with these characters when their personalities are bouncing off of each other. It’s stunning that no other series has come close to this level of dialogue.
The storyline certainly brings the usual twists and turns as well. The Uncharted series is full of memorable moments, and this game is no different. Some that I enjoyed:
- Seeing Nate on a scuba diving adventure … and finding out that that’s just his mundane day job
- A tender moment between Nate and Elena in their “normal life”, including a throwback game of Crash Bandicoot
- More back story with Nate’s brother Sam, even if it is clearly retconned into the canon
- Playing through Sam’s escape from prison, only to learn later that it never actually happened
- Breaking into and attending a fancy auction
- Multiple “modern Crash Bandicoot” sequences where Nathan is running towards the camera from a tank that is chasing him
- A kickass final boss sword fight against Rafe, one of the better Uncharted villains
- A kickass ass-kicking from Nadine, an even better Uncharted villain
- The entire epilogue: Nate and Elena have found balance, Sam and Sully have found each other, and Cassie has found out who her parents are
These moments are why I slogged through a tedious endgame. The final section of the game suffered from serious pacing issues that started once the crew reached Libertalia. As the narrative threads are finally coming together, they are pulled apart by long, repetitive traversal sections that ruin the story’s momentum. It felt padded, like the game had to hit a certain target playtime. Uncharted 4 would have been a better game if it were 25-30% shorter, particularly towards the end as players drive towards a spectacular finish.
Okay, fine, so I was bored during parts of the experience. What makes me more conflicted is that I’m not sure I needed Uncharted 4 in my life.
Perhaps it’s harsh, given a game that supplied me with so many memorable moments. But did this game really add anything to the overall story of Nathan Drake? From a big picture standpoint:
- In Uncharted 3, Nate trades his Sic Parvis Magna ring for his wedding ring. He’s found the real treasure - Elena - and gets out of the game.
- In Uncharted 4, Nate trades his adventures with Sully (and Sam) for adventures with his wife. He’s found the real treasure - Elena - and gets out of the game.
We’ve added to Nate’s family by introducing Sam, but he exists primarily so Nate can feel about Sam the way Elena feels about Nate when he’s off on another adventure. It’s a proxy narrative play that wasn’t necessary given the way the previous game ended, and while we get some decent sibling banter, Sam never serves as a true foil to Nate in any meaningful way.
Nate learns the same lesson in Uncharted 4 that he already learned in Uncharted 3: obsession with the chase will endanger the lives of everyone he cares about. By putting Nate back in that life - even by providing him the motivation of saving his brother - it cheapens everything Nate went through in Iram of the Pillars. He already lost Elena and got her back. He thought he lost Sully and got him back. He saw his adversaries destroyed by their obsession in three straight games. The fantastic epilogue in Uncharted 4 would have worked as an epilogue to Uncharted 3, perhaps with Chloe filling in for Sam.
Finally, Nate never really pays a bigger price for his actions, despite having killed thousands of people. In the end of Uncharted 4, Nate (through Sam and Elena) gets enough treasure to fund his dream life, everyone we care about thrives, and there’s a new heir to "Drake’s fortune". For all the stakes involved in each adventure, such a rosy ending felt unsatisfying.
All in all, I’m unsatisfied about more than the story. I’m conflicted about Uncharted 4 because it provided me some very memorable moments while simultaneously having me feel bored and question why it exists.
I’m glad that this is A Thief’s End.
-rj