Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception — main post

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception — main post Story spoilers. Uncharted 3 puts a lot more of Nathan and Sully’s history in front of you. You get to see how they met, and that changes the way you look at the relationship they already had in the first two games. Sully isn't just the guy who shows up to help Nathan get out of whatever situation he's gotten himself into. He's been there since Nathan was a kid. That matters because a lot of this game is Nathan pushing forward when the people around him can see what it's costing him. He's chasing the history connected to Francis Drake, but there's more going on with him than just wanting to find another treasure. Marlowe knows how to get under his skin, and she uses it. Then you have Elena. By the third one, there's already a lot of history between them. They care about each other, but caring about somebody doesn't automatically make the relationship work when one of them keeps putting himself in these situations. I liked the direction they took with those two across the series. The third game is an important part of that, especially when you look at where they end up later. The game goes through London, France, Syria and Yemen before getting into the desert and the search for Iram of the Pillars. There's the burning château, the ship graveyard, the cruise ship and the cargo plane. It isn't short on big scenes. But the quieter stretch with Nathan alone in the desert gives you something different. He's exhausted, he's lost, and for a while there isn't some huge fight waiting around every corner. You actually have to sit with what he's put himself through. The combat still comes down to shooting, climbing, moving between cover and knowing when to get out of a bad position. The melee fights give you more to work with around the environment, and you can throw enemy grenades back if you get the timing right. It doesn't have a campaign skill tree where you spend points to build a different version of Nathan. The improvement is in how you handle the situations the game puts in front of you. It's also worth separating the versions. The original PS3 game had multiplayer. The version in The Nathan Drake Collection is the single-player campaign, with its own trophy list and additional difficulty and speedrun challenges. Those are different completion projects, and the PS3 online shutdown matters if you're trying to go back for trophies now. I've played the series, but it's been a while, so some of this is from memory and some of it I've gone back and checked. The relationships are a big part of why I wanted to talk about these games again. Nathan and Elena get a lot of attention, and they should. But you can't really talk about what the third game is doing without talking about Sully too.