"See, as the story goes, this place provided a safe haven for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of pirates, and they . . . they shared everything. Property, resources . . ."
--Sam Drake, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Introducing Nathan Drake's brother Sam, a character not even mentioned in the prior games, Uncharted 4 continues the much-needed improvement process made after the first game. A new historical conspiracy, more layers to the relationships between characters, and vastly superior graphics, not to mention a survival mode, make this by far the best out of the main installments. Naughty Dog even gets to include a very direct reference to one of its older games (Crash Bandicoot) in a way that highlights just how far the company has come. Indeed, even the Uncharted series itself has come a long way from a very weak beginning to this largely masterful conclusion to the story of Nathan Drake--for now, at least. Uncharted 4 is much closer to the likes of The Last of Us in its characterization than Drake's Fortune ever dared to be. The stark differences in quality across many aspects of the franchise are blatant from the first minutes onward.
Production Values
Uncharted never looked as good as it does here in its PS3 days or, hell, in the PS4 remaster of the original trilogy. Now you can see sweat on faces, freckles on skin, and more realistic eyes and facial expressions, as well as a broader range of strong colors. Thanks to these enhanced graphics, it is easy to see that Nathan, Elena, and Sully look distinctly older, which adds more weight to their character interactions. It does not hurt that the dialogue, though it still retains plenty of the franchise's signature sarcasm, gets much more personal than it ever did before. There is far more than comedic responses. The combination of the more lifelike visuals and the more earnest characterization is an enormous pillar for the single player story. As was always the case in the series, the voice acting is great, both for the returning characters and newcomers like Sam Drake and Nadine Ross.
Gameplay
Only fitting for what is the last of Nathan Drake's adventures of this kind, there are prolonged climbing sequences, puzzle segments, vehicle-based levels in which Nathan can get inside or outside the car at whim, and sections where Nathan has to escape a vehicle that is aggressively following him, and shootouts. Some of these elements have been utilized before in previous Uncharted games, but here they reach their zenith as far as the execution is concerned. That which was established before A Thief's End is honored or perfected. The adventure gameplay is also balanced better than ever before with the character drama, partly by offering the player chances to have optional conversations with characters like Elena or Sam at key moments. With them being optional, you do not have to participate in these dialogue exchanges, but they excel at showcasing quiet, vulnerable moments that are so very human. These characters are not rationalists by any means, as is typical in fiction, but they are at least not shortchanged here.
Even in the platforming, a core aspect of Uncharted from the start, new features include a grappling hook and piton, an object that can be inserted into some surfaces so that Nathan can have an additional handhold wherever he places it. The platforming mechanics that remained stagnant, but not necessarily in a bad way, in earlier games are given one last evolution as Nathan engages in his most personal hunt of the series. Had it never received these additions, the climbing and general environmental traversal would still be spectacular, particularly once Nathan makes it to a legendary pirate colony that has fallen into partial decay. A network of wooden and stone structures and the shining sun allow for a great contrast to the indoor puzzles leading up to this point. Furthermore, the story mode is not all that there is to play this time (yes, there was multiplayer in the preceding trilogy, but that was excluded from The Nathan Drake Collection).
Like Raid Mode in the Resident Evil Revelations games, survival mode (seen above) has the player withstand waves of enemies in different locations alone or in co-op. Unlike the story, survival mode has its own progression systems where you level up, earning passive player buffs, pistol enhancements, and access to more weaponry and mysticals--single-use abilities that can inflict damage on enemies or slow them down. The varying difficulty levels are actually what lets you play as specific characters, but the gameplay itself is not affected by the cosmetic change. What can impact the mechanics is equipping certain unlockable items that generate more money for kills with a particular method or increase sprinting speed, for instance. These perks are most helpful against more commonplace enemies, but in every 10th wave, with every five waves taking place in its own set environment, a "Warlord" appears. These warlords are pirate djinns with their own enormous health bars as bosses, having the appearance of flaming skeletons in pirate clothing. In between these bosses that come every 10 waves, there are also periodic objectives like remaining within a very limited area as enemies encroach upon it or collecting 100 pieces of treasure within a time limit.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Young Nathan and his brother Sam lived in a Catholic school for part of their childhoods, becoming familiar with Catholic imagery of the crucifixion, which ends up being relevant to a major treasure hunt later in their lives. The two of them become inmates in a Panamanian prison in order to put themselves geographically closed to several clues about the wealth of the pirate Henry Avery, who is rumored to have established a pirate utopia centuries ago. Sam is shot as Nate escapes the prison, yet 15 years later, when Nathan has retired from his past "profession" and settled down with Elena, Sam shows up alive and says a criminal from Panama has given him months to find Avery's treasure before he will kill him.
Intellectual Content
Henry Avery's fixation on Dismas, the repentant thief crucified next to Jesus, is a major plot point. As if they neither understand what Roman crucifixion is supposed to have entailed and the sheer diversity and intensity of the torture involved, physical and psychological, Nate and Sam even talk about the crucified thieves alongside Jesus casually, referencing how Dismas says he deserves to be crucified and not Jesus. Feeling or saying or believing that one deserves something does not make it so, for that would depend instead upon whether their are objective moral obligations and what those obligations are. The repentant thief's words in Luke 23 would not make their treatment just or reveal moral obligations to readers of the Bible just because he said crucifixion was "deserved" in his case. No, the Bible addresses criminal justice very thoroughly in the Torah, and everything from the constant separation of flogging and execution (they are never paired) to to prohibition of degrading criminals (Deuteronomy 25:3) to the rejection of different punishments for locals and foreigners (Leviticus 24:22), even aside from the prohibition of displaying a corpse--not a living person whose torture is extended as long as possible--for longer than a single day (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), all make it very obvious that combining these things would be among the worst of possible unjust treatment of a person.
Of course, the literary evidence inside and outside of the Bible indicates that Roman crucifixion went far beyond just a few lashes followed by public capital punishment; Jesus himself was predicted to not actually resemble a normal human form after his abuse, and the agony Jesus suffered in any individual part of his crucifixion process is already condemned by Mosaic Law. Perhaps Avery's affinity for Dismas is purely a hoax to begin with, as Nathan later finds that the suposed pirate utopia was really being used to separate colonists from their wealth, which was then secreted away from the treasury, and eventually moved again to Avery's ship. The pseudo-anarchist city of Libertalia, as it is called, was ultimately an egoistic trap made to give the illusion of freedom to its ordinary inhabitants. What a surprise that non-rationalists would end up immersed in deception, betrayal of their companions, and avoidable violence! Even after locating the treasure of Libertalia, Nathan once again does not get to keep the majority of it, the riches snatched away from him yet another time, an ironically fitting fate given that only Avery was the one to take that very wealth away from others.
Conclusion
Uncharted as a franchise did not immediately strike gold, yet by the end of its main narrative, characters that were once sometimes pathetic in how simplistic they were give way to characterization that actually reflects deeper experiences. The whole time up until now, Uncharted mostly danced around why anyone would ever seek out a life of hardship to hunt treasures that might not even be found, and A Thief's End addresses this more personally than ever before. The bonds between Nathan and the various people in his life are elevated high as they wrestle with their own dilemmas and priorities. Uncharted 4 certainly has more than mere enhancements of the graphics to offer due to its writing and themes, even though the visuals are themselves given new heights. That survival mode provides more to explore after the main story just makes it an even stronger game. Hopefully The Lost Legacy, which I have yet to play, mirrors most of these changes for the better.
Content:
1. Violence: Blood can be drawn in the cutscenes or in the gameplay itself as characters use guns, swords, or their fists to attack each other.
2. Profanity: Words like "damn" and "shit" are sometimes used.
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