Uncharted 4 Looks Good... Right?

Photo courtesy gematsu.com

It’s really difficult to express how I feel about the Uncharted 4: A Thief's End demo that premiered at the Playstation Experience over the weekend. I’m a huge fan of the series, having played through every title multiple times – and that’s including the underrated Vita entry Golden Abyss. What I love about Uncharted, is that it’s the fulfillment of the fantasies so many children of the 80's had after watching Indiana Jones for the first time. 

To its credit, Nathan Drake has proven to be much more than just a low-rent Indiana Jones. Every Uncharted game has improved on the formula and provided fans with stunning moments that have come to define the series. Moments like hanging from a train off the side of a mountain, escaping from a sinking cruise ship, or fighting through a crumbling building have become the norm for the series – and are expected by fans. This is precisely why so many people were underwhelmed by the relatively mundane sequence that Sony chose to unveil the next sequel to the world.

Although I have to wonder – when did exploring beautiful jungles and teetering on the edge of death, fighting off a squad of gun-toting mercenaries become “mundane”? Maybe it was somewhere between the Atom bomb explosion in Call of Duty 4 and fighting through an airplane as it crashes to the Earth in Uncharted 3. Or maybe it was somewhere between Jurassic Park introducing the world to the possibilities of CG and the more-is-not-more CG abomination that is the Transformers movie franchise.

So how do you strike that balance – between The Last of Us with its decided lack of bombast and something like Call of Duty Ghosts with its overabundance of meaningless flair – while still giving next-gen Uncharted fans something that will delight and surprise them?

Photo courtesy wccftech.com

I like the improvements to the combat design – clearly taking cues from TLoU– so I was happy to see that. But I couldn’t help but wonder when the truly stunning “oh my god I can’t believe I’m watching this” moment was going to come. Again, this is the precedent that’s been set. For instance, the Uncharted 3 reveal was accompanied by the cruise ship sequence, possibly the most impressive sequence in the entire franchise. Conversely, the jungle fight in the Uncharted 4 demo was just another jungle fight – albeit with excellent level design, improved combat and gorgeous visuals.

Creative Directors Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann, coming off the soaring success of TLoU, have had to deal with large staff changes while also acclimating to new hardware. Uncharted 4 is the first time Naughty Dog has ever rolled a franchise over from one generation to the next, and you have to wonder if they really wanted to do it in the first place. After proving how successful they can be when trying their hand at new concepts and franchises, it’s hard not to see Uncharted 4 as a regression of sorts. And with a gameplay demo that almost shuns the bombast of the series, it’s hard to understand why the team is even making this in the first place.

But then again, it’s more Uncharted, and that really shouldn’t be a bad thing. And what we saw of the game looks promising, with an interesting story reveal and combat design that advances the gameplay in meaningful ways. After all, there’s a reason I was starting to become jaded with the formula by the end of Uncharted 3. That game was a rollercoaster ride from start to finish, shuttling the player along, allowing them very little control over even the most pivotal moments. The combat itself had become very staid, only gaining variety from the scripted set-piece moments, rather than the gameplay itself.So it is nice to see Naughty Dog trying to change up the formula.

So here’s my contradiction: I’m tired of the bombast of the series, but I can’t help but be disappointed with the lack of bombast in the premiere demo. If Naughty Dog insists on making another Uncharted game (and obviously, they’re committed to it at this point), then I expect it to have the key characteristics of the series. But then again, I suppose I don’t want all of the excitement spoiled for me beforehand either. So on the one hand, I’m glad that the studio chose not to spoil any of the big moments in the reveal, but on the other hand, it’s hard to get excited for a 6 when the last game was set to 11 the entire time.

And ultimately, I’m not sure Uncharted is what I want Naughty Dog spending its talent on. The studio has shown that it can handle new IP and stretch the boundaries of the medium with fresh ideas and sophisticated storytelling. So it’s a bummer to see a team with such talent entering a new generation with an old property. Uncharted was one of the franchises that pushed the boundaries of last-gen hardware and the industry itself followed suit. It would be a shame to deprive this generation of the same thing.