Uncharted 4: A Thief's End - Thoughts

Uncharted has never been a particularly complex or inventive franchise—but it sure as heck has been pretty. Jumping from the PS3 to the PS4, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End flexes Naughty Dog's "new tech" prowess like a professional body builder at a local gym. I thought I would get tired of announcing "wow this is a gorgeous vista!" four entries into the series, but Nathan Drake's final adventure kept me coming back for one more round. While the flabbergast-inducing eye candy is the premier feature of A Thief's End, the game also—surprisingly—diverts its attention away from non-stop gunfights towards more moments that reflect on Nathan Drake's achievements, mistakes, and regrets.

Which sounds cool... except that the narrative fails to capitalize on it.

I felt so disappointed by Uncharted 4's story on the first go-around that I dedicated a whole entry to it. Long story short: I felt A Thief's End was narratively dissonant, building itself (cleverly) towards one ending before closing out on its exact inverse. For this second playthrough, knowing what to expect helped me to focus on smaller bits that I had missed while on my search for the bigger picture. Uncharted 4 has a lot more slower, minor moments where the characters aren't bringing their quippy A-game to the table. That's not to say that they've stopped obsessing with being funny—just that there are a lot more breaths between ideas, as if they're actually thinking through what they're going to say in their head.

Thematically I still think the game is bunk, but I appreciate its narrative more than I used to, especially because A Thief's End could've played it safe like Drake's Deception did. There's a maturity to the series that hasn't been expressed before, something that likely couldn't have been expressed until Naughty Dog went and made The Last of Us. Nathan Drake is older, more conscious of his reckless adventuring lifestyle, and there's a bit more poison to his lies. Not enough, mind you, to turn the series into a fascinating critique on its plucky, mercenary-murdering attitude, but you'll still watch the story unfold with awe, captivated by its firm cinematography and believable acting. It's an engaging tale—but it's also one that lacks any sort of punch.

This ties directly into the blog entry I've already written, but slowing the story down to put Nate's mundane life on display doesn't really amount to anything. Don't get me wrong—it's really cool to see and I appreciate it—but there's no trenchant discoveries unearthed here. The plot twists and shocking reveals serve only as naked tools for drama (like Sully's """betrayal""" in the first game), unable or unwilling to dive any deeper than that. And I get that Uncharted is a lot less serious than The Last of Us, so diving into trauma may be a step too far, but then... why take adventuring so seriously? Why strip away bits of whimsy that the series previously exhibited, just to put more of an emphasis on realism and consequences? The old games may have tried to be too funny at times, but A Thief's End drives itself in the opposite direction, becoming so sober and understated that sometimes you come off of conversations simply feeling nothing.

I'm definitely being a bit too hard on Uncharted 4, but it's largely because I wanted big things from it in a post-The Last of Us world. The only aspect that I wasn't let down by were the visuals: water is gorgeous, character models are immaculately designed, Madagascar is downright breathtaking, the creeping foliage in the latter half of the game is dazzling, etc. etc. It's a lot of fun to stumble around and hop across rocks while paying attention to Nate's animation sequences, and almost every chapter has a great piece of eye candy to look at, whether it's thin seaweed shifting in a trench or a massive clock tower clinking away. The puzzles are also pretty good too, sometimes demanding quite a bit from your spatial reasoning, though they're few and far between.

Combat on the other hand... is not my favorite. If I was to rank the action in the series, I'd probably say 2 > 4 > 3 > 1, but there's a wide gulf between 2 and 4, and a grenade-shaped asterisk between 4 and 3. Besides me not liking the weapons as much and cursing the damage-based recoil, A Thief's End also botches most of its sandbox fights. The open areas you're allowed to fight in are gorgeous, vertical, asymmetrical zones with a lot of nooks and crannies... which all make it hard to keep track of foes without getting detected. And when you inevitably get spotted, you'll run around and shoot manically for a couple of minutes, just to have a shotgun guy to hop down from some unseen ledge and fill your ass with lead. Uncharted 4's wild and nonlinear sandboxes made it impossible to think up a strategy after I had failed them a few times, something that the older games—even if they were more frustrating—would at least allow. Even if the combat in Uncharted 4 is secretly good and I'm stubbornly not understanding it, the gunplay being shelved for the sake of the story meant I hardly had a chance to warm up to what little was there.

Nathan Drake's swansong is a fitting one for the series. I may bemoan a lot of aspects about it here, but Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is a remarkably polished game that delivers entertainment, at the very least. The problem, of course, is that while polish may obscure the blemishes, it can't hide them forever. A Thief's End doesn't feel vestigial like Uncharted 3 does, but its proud ambition doesn't lead anywhere—well, anywhere truly praiseworthy. It's a good game that'll leave you exhausted. It's a beautiful title that frequently loiters about. It's a fitting end for a franchise that always played it safe.
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Title image obtained from: ResetEra.com