Uncharted: Golden Abyss — main post

Uncharted: Golden Abyss — main post Light premise spoilers. Golden Abyss is easy to leave out when people talk about Uncharted, especially if they're working through the collections. It was made for the Vita by Bend Studio. It isn't one of the games in The Nathan Drake Collection, and it isn't in Legacy of Thieves either. This one takes place before Drake's Fortune. Nathan gets pulled into an expedition with Jason Dante and Marisa Chase, with the mystery tied to Spanish explorers and the search for Quivira. Chase is trying to understand what happened to her grandfather, so there is something personal behind what she's looking for. Sully is part of the game too, but this isn't another chapter of Nathan and Elena's relationship. Elena isn't in it. The actual game still has the climbing, gunfights and treasure hunting you'd expect. What makes it different is how much it uses the Vita itself. You have photographs to line up, charcoal rubbings to make, objects to inspect and touch-screen actions mixed into the adventure. That also changes what completing it looks like. You're collecting pieces of mysteries, not just running through a level picking up a row of shiny treasures. There are separate sets of treasures and random bounty drops on top of those mysteries. So if you're going after everything, you need to keep those categories straight. Finishing the story and finishing the collection are two different things here. Some of the bounty cleanup can take longer because you aren't walking to one guaranteed pickup and getting it over with. It doesn't have a campaign skill tree. Nathan doesn't level into a different class, and there isn't a set of abilities you need to buy in a particular order. The guide for this one needs to focus on the actual controls, combat, puzzles and collections rather than pretending it has systems it doesn't have. I wanted to include it because I'm talking about the series, not just the games that happened to end up in the newer collections. It's its own adventure, with its own characters and a different way of handling the treasure hunting. If you're trying to keep track of everything Uncharted has done, Golden Abyss belongs in that conversation.