It’s not that he goes adventuring, it’s that she comes second to it: when Nate is describing his life to Sam, he forgets to mention he and Elena are married until after he’s mentioned all the other stuff, and if you’re in a relationship you’d hope your partner would move you up front in the ‘significant events of my life’ stakes, even if other events include occasional zombies. While you’d think this would be the main reason Nate and Elena’s marriage has issues, it’s not. Without having to directly explain anything the writing and direction in this short sequence make it apparent that a) Nate has settled into some kind of domestic drudgery and b) he’s not coping well. By titling it ‘The Malaysian Job’ and starting mid-scuba dive, the player thinks: “Aha, Nathan Drake and I are going to steal indigenous Malaysian artefacts!” Nate hand waves away concern that he’s running low on oxygen there’s even a bit where the shipping container he’s retrieving groans, and you assume it’s going to fall on him because that’s what would happen in an Uncharted game… and then it doesn’t! Uncharted 4 actually plays with its own tropes! When it turns out Nate is working a normal job for a salvage company you realise he didn’t want a fresh oxygen tank because he needs to feel some kind of thrill, some kind of danger, even if he has to introduce it into his life artificially – he ought to be careful that’s what did for David Carradine. Chapter 3 is deliberately set up to make you think Nate Drake is all business as usual. I’m not making this up it’s established very early on. But Uncharted 4 gives our hero not only an older, craggier face, but a complex personality of his own, and it boils down to this: Some mild tension was introduced by Elena and Nate continually breaking up and getting back together, but we weren’t given reasons for this beyond Elena preferring her boyfriend/husband to not deliberately walk into situations he knows are likely to kill him, which isn’t an unreasonable request when you think about it. The only lasting relationships Nate had were with Sully and Elena, gruff father figure and love interest respectively, but these were never examined in any detail. Up until now Nate has been a charming, quick-witted adventurer in the same mold as Indiana Jones, but without the boss hat or undiluted sexual allure of early 80s Harrison Ford. But the most interesting bit of all is how directors Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, and the writing team lead by Druckmann and Josh Scherr – and, by extension, the game – treat Nathan Drake himself. Rather than being a middle-of-the-road jungle caper, Uncharted 4 is a surprisingly (for the series, at least) rich text that explores many things that I could spin into separate articles: the differences between treasure and wealth every one of the applications for ‘A Thief’s End’ thematic similarities between Uncharted 4 and beloved Sean Astin biopic The Goonies. There’s no denying that Uncharted 4 is a game created in a post-The Last of Us World.
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