Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

johnny_ultimate

Games wanting to be movies is both a good and a bad thing. When it's at the cost of interactivity - as it often is in Uncharted - it's a negative. When it is to increase the dramatic scope - as it often is in Uncharted - it's more admirable. But developers need to be aware of how they can utilise the fact that the audience is playing can lead to huge emotional payoffs. Argo falling off the cliff? Aeries? The end of HL2: EP2? More effective because you have lost control where once you had it. I'm not putting the Uncharted 3 bit up there with them, but in conjuring up an emotional and atmospheric reaction for the player it was a very effective move. I'd rather a developer briefly creates a crippling sense of lonliness and inadequacy than the shallow 'thrill' of a hundred headshots. And if it homages Laurence of Arabia in the process, more power to Naughty Dog

funky penguin

I thought Uncharted 2 nicely mixed the game/movie aspects.

I can still remember playing it by myself for an hour before an after exam party night. Then, suddenly looking around me to see about 7 friends just sitting down watching it, (just after the truck jumping scene before the temple). My initial reaction was to pause it and ask it they wanted to watch the television, but all shouted 'NO!', almost in unison and insisted I kept playing! I ended up completing it with 15 people watching, wanting to see the ending.

Couldn't see that happening with Uncharted 3, which is a pity.

noodler

Yeah so in summary (for me anyway)

1) Bad guys had feck all character

2) The story was another Raiders of the Lost Ark rehash

3) The game's idea of gamplay is surrounding you with soliders (kill X number of soldiers to proceed - ballroom on the ship for example, a door just opens once you have killed enough as more baddies come in)

4) No risks taken (nobody died)

5) Probably not enough puzzles

krudler

noodler wrote: »

Yeah so in summary (for me anyway)

1) Bad guys had feck all character

2) The story was another Raiders of the Lost Ark rehash

3) The game's idea of gamplay is surrounding you with soliders (kill X number of soldiers to proceed - ballroom on the ship for example, a door just opens once you have killed enough as more baddies come in)

4) No risks taken (nobody died)

5) Probably not enough puzzles

I was looking forward to Marlowe as the villain, I though yay, some progress, a villain thats female, in her 60's and isnt some typical game massive jugged standard female game baddie, go ND for breaking stereotypes. but they didnt really give her much of a motive. her sidekick/henchman looked too much like Flynn from UC2 as well. I did like Cutter though. and yeah I would have prefered if

Sully died, I thought it was brave to kill him when you think they did, it might have even put the Drake character on an interesting arc for the next game, not working for the right people and just out for himself for a change, but they chickened out

mystic86

this is hilarious

a little spoilerish, not really though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKrm112QhrE

mystic86

http://nightmaremode.net/2012/02/being-like-a-teenager-in-uncharted-2-exploring-adulthood-in-uncharted-3-16572/

interesting read.

mystic86

http://www.psu.com/a016021/Hilarious-video--What-its-like-being-a-bad-guy-in-Uncharted


hahaha

PerrinV2

Just got this during the week,thought it was great.
Prefered it to UC2 but I think that was down to before I got UC2 it was built up to be one of the greatest games ever so it was never gonna be able to live up to expectations whereas with UC3 I had heard it wasn't meant to be as good as UC2 so in the end I enjoyed it alot more.

edgecutter

I enjoyed the game too, but the ending left me flat. Not a great villian nor any risks with the ending.

C14N

I finished it recently. It was decent but kind of forgettable imo. I felt really pedantically frustrated so much of the time though. The plot seemed to be far too restricted to cut-scenes where all the rules suddenly changed.

Why does Drake have no problem killing 600+ guys (on my playthrough) throughout the game but hesitates about killing their boss?

How the hell does a fairly average guy (as in not a superhuman or "the best soldier ever" type character) take on a small army by himself?

How does Nate shoot up an entire village of mercenaries moments after spending 3 days in the desert on death's door due to dehydration, sunstroke and malnourishment? There just seemed to be so many times when there was a 99.9% chance of death that he escaped from unharmed. I'm not saying to make the game perfectly realistic or anything but this one just struck me as absurd. Most games will give some kind of reasoning for the lead character to be able to do what they do (you're a god/the chosen hero/superhuman/highly trained government weapon/son of a demon/whatever) but Drake seems to be a normal guy who has a knack for finding treasure.

cloud493

Well he realizes doesn't he? When he's nearly being overwhelmed, before he gets saved by the tribe.

C14N

cloud493 wrote: »

Well he realizes doesn't he? When he's nearly being overwhelmed, before he gets saved by the tribe.

Not really though. He only gets saved after a pretty lengthy shootout sequence. In the desert we saw him slowly become weaker and weaker. Controlling him was laborious but I still thought it made a good point because three straight days of intense Syrian sun and no food or water is serious damage. He could barely walk by the time he got to the town. When he finds it though it all just disappears and he's back to climbing up walls and rolling around in seconds which seemed to jar horribly with the previous scenes of Drake's physical and mental deterioration in the desert.

cloud493

Well he's not quite as he was. He's pretty tired. And he acknowledges that hunting for him in a dessert is pretty stupid, and he can't last long.

Magill

C14N wrote: »

Why does Drake have no problem killing 600+ guys (on my playthrough) throughout the game but hesitates about killing their boss?

haha, classic action hero stuff.... kills countless soldiers/grunts who are just doing their job without blinking, but gives the real bad guy a second chance. Really annoying.

johnny_ultimate

Drake as moralistic hero who isn't adverse to mini-genocides isn't a new problem though. Was even more pronounced in the second game. The level in the museum near the start, if I recall correctly, actually went out of its way to comment on how Drake was opposed to murder, and gave you non-lethal weaponry and techniques as a result (he does throw a guy off a really, really high cliff, but he swims away so it's all good!). But then all that mortal combat for the rest of the game. It's the biggest single flaw with Nathan Drake as a character, and damages the narrative consistency of the series.

As I said earlier in this thread, I'd love Naughty Dog to experiment and try and make an Uncharted game without combat. It might be beyond them, but shooting has always been the weak link in these games. Alternatively, comment upon this contradiction within the game itself.

Since many people seem to complain unless a game hits some magical running time (8-12 hours), I doubt we'll ever see Naughty Dog being really bold and inventive, as combat is depressingly the cheapest and easiest way to fluff up a game's length.

C14N

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

As I said earlier in this thread, I'd love Naughty Dog to experiment and try and make an Uncharted game without combat. It might be beyond them, but shooting has always been the weak link in these games. Alternatively, comment upon this contradiction within the game itself.

Since many people seem to complain unless a game hits some magical running time (8-12 hours), I doubt we'll ever see Naughty Dog being really bold and inventive, as combat is depressingly the cheapest and easiest way to fluff up a game's length.

On this issue I think it's important to bring up The Last of Us. In the first few seconds of seeing it at E3 I thought "Oh great, an Uncharted clone" but as the game went on it became clear that this is a very different and more original game.

From what I have read about it, combat has been massively reduced and ammo is scarce. A lot of the time it will be prudent to use stealth and by that I mean actual stealth, not staying in the rear 180° of you enemies and killing them all like that because they will hunt you down if guys go missing. It will only be possible to take down very small groups of enemies instead of dozens at a time due to ammo shortage and lack of regenerating health or a pause menu that lets you heal.

On top of that the ability to kill enemies seems far more consequential. I don't know exactly how they did it but killing a person looks like killing a person, not shooting a humanoid target like in Uncharted.

mystic86

New Uncharted game announced for PS4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SnJPTkrD7o

With the content of the clip and the fact that it's just 'Uncharted' without any number or further name descriptions in the title I would put a lot of money on this being a prequel to 'Uncharted: Drake's Fortune'....

biggebruv

mystic86 wrote: »

New Uncharted game announced for PS4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SnJPTkrD7o

With the content of the clip and the fact that it's just 'Uncharted' without any number or further name descriptions in the title I would put a lot of money on this being a prequel to 'Uncharted: Drake's Fortune'....

NNOOOOOOOOOO please dont say that im reallly not into prequels

plus uncharted golden abyss on the vita was a prequel I think

NotorietyH

I'd say they're just dropping numbers and going with subtitles. Like Killzone.

NotorietyH

Ooh, something really interesting, that actually has me more interested in it, that it seems like it is a prequel, but it's not Nathan Drake, it's Sir Francis Drake. Naughty Dog have only referred to 'Drake' never mentioning Nathan, and the island in the map relates to the Libertalia and Francis Drake. It was a pirate haven the island or something like that.

tok9

Ya I agree with NotorietyH... I also reckon it's a sign that it's a long way off.

NotorietyH

Ha I actually forgot that the first Uncharted had a subtitle, Drake's Fortune, so this one is probably just called Uncharted.

Robert ninja

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Drake as moralistic hero who isn't adverse to mini-genocides isn't a new problem though. Was even more pronounced in the second game. The level in the museum near the start, if I recall correctly, actually went out of its way to comment on how Drake was opposed to murder, and gave you non-lethal weaponry and techniques as a result (he does throw a guy off a really, really high cliff, but he swims away so it's all good!). But then all that mortal combat for the rest of the game. It's the biggest single flaw with Nathan Drake as a character, and damages the narrative consistency of the series.

As I said earlier in this thread, I'd love Naughty Dog to experiment and try and make an Uncharted game without combat. It might be beyond them, but shooting has always been the weak link in these games. Alternatively, comment upon this contradiction within the game itself.

Since many people seem to complain unless a game hits some magical running time (8-12 hours), I doubt we'll ever see Naughty Dog being really bold and inventive, as combat is depressingly the cheapest and easiest way to fluff up a game's length.

I find this really interesting and I notice this attitude from fans of the series and people who generally like Drake and the people he surrounds himself with. Maybe I'm completely wrong but not once did I think I was playing as a good guy in these games - I think Nathan Drake and most of the people he associates himself with to be bad or neutral... they're bad guys, they steal stuff that doesn't belong to them or simply feel entitled to it and they also kill a lot of people.

I think Drake's personality is meant to make him very likable as well as Sully's, but I honestly just see it as bat**** insane and creepy when he does a total turn around and shows mostly no mercy to anyone who passes him. He seems cavalier with the lives of his friends and his own just for the sake of adventure and his own ego and manages to conjure up a hundred different excuses as to why he just has to do it - emotionally manipulating his friends into going along with it.

Maybe I'm reading into it too much... but I don't think I can ever see Drake or his team as anything but murdering, thieving lunatics. You can point to that time when Drake tries to save Marlowe(from a fate he doomed her to), but you can see he just fell for the same emotionally manipulative tactics he subjects his friends to. I doubt he even did it out of empathy - it was likely for selfish reasons as usual probably more so to convince himself that he's a good person and sleep better at night... telling himself he's the good guy.

I could go on about how he's no better than all the 'villains' he comes into contact with but I've said enough and probably angered enough people :P


So I'll just wait here for people to tell me why I'm wrong.