There is a cutscene near the start of Uncharted 2, a flashback revealing the inciting incident for its plot, which took me by surprise. It involves lead character Nathan Drake and the newly introduced (to us) Chloe Frazer. They discuss their history and future with an easy chemistry, and meanwhile she pushes him onto a bed, climbs on top, and puts his hands where she wants them. It’s an impressive scene on a technical level, because getting those kind of interactions between character models to look natural is not a common sight. Much more so, though, it’s striking for just being a decently acted PG blockbuster movie sex scene, in a video game.
Even just among the chart-topping games that I’ve been playing, there are plenty with more impressively realised narratives than Uncharted 2, and even the occasional romance. Gently quippy Nathan, Chloe, Sully, Elena and co. are all quite charming and effective but I’m not sure I’d take more interaction with them over, say, the cast of Final Fantasy XII. Among the subset of a subset of mainstream games with a more direct action movie style, though, Uncharted 2 stands out for committing to not just making its narrative the star attraction but approaching that through giving you characters to care about, and in making its acting and writing at least live up to that. The focus alone means it makes sense that its developers would be the people who would eventually help break games adaptations into prestige TV drama, if not with Uncharted.
As for the story they’re telling with all of this technical competence… remember how Tomb Raider took a bunch of tired and orientalist adventure tropes, primarily from Indiana Jones, and managed to instil some life into them through newly doing them as a 3D video game and through making the main character a woman? Naughty Dog’s vision was apparently to take Tomb Raider as a starting point and lose those distinguishing features. So we get character focus and some shifting alliances and crossing and double-crossing, handled breezily, but also lots of othered exotic locales, mystical ancient artefacts, and shooting of hundreds of people. At least the museum security guards in the first heist mission just get shot with tranquiliser darts?
There is likewise little to no novelty to any of the gameplay. The platform sections get a bit creative with some of the signs, trains and so on you climb on, but they ruthlessly cut out much notion of exploration or uncertainty in favour of funnelling the player through spectacular set-pieces. The in media res opening with a train carriage dangling off a cliff is a perfect illustration of this. There’s only one way up, but lots of chances for things to break and dangle precariously along the way.
The same goes for the other type of game bolted on to the platformer, a cover shooter. The emphasis on getting up close and fist-fighting gives it a bit more of a personal touch, but there is a lot of adequate and competent shooting to do along the way. The same philosophy applies across both types of gameplay, with their minimal interface and series of small, easily graspable challenges: keep it looking as action movie as possible at all times, and let narrative be the abundant reward for actions.
It’s not a new concept, but Naughty Dog apply it with a particularly keen eye. Their result stands in contrast to other apparent big mainstream breakthroughs in how games can tell stories, because the ratio of ambition to successful execution is reversed. A very limited idea, done about as well as it could be.
Top of the charts for week ending 17 October 2009:
