![]() A Thief’s End is littered with moments that left me with a warm, genuine grin. He picks up a DSLR and the camera moves to quasi-first-person, like when he looks at his journals in past games, and you actually see his thumb tap the directional buttons to go through old vacation photos. The level of detail afforded to Drake’s new, unexciting life offers a believable level of intimacy. When Nate looks in the mirror, he fixes his hair with one hand. There are towels on the floor and a scale. The bathroom counter is covered in lotions and product and hair dryer still plugged in. Nate and Elena’s carpet feels like the carpet I’m currently threading between my toes. I have never seen carpets so plush in a video game. Back home, he files away the folder for the Malaysia job in an attic that’s stocked with interactable trinkets nodding back to his past adventures and there’s one particularly heartwarming scene where he rekindles old glory before heading back down to his grounded, suburban life. While the eventual stunning vistas spanning several continents impress - this is probably the best-looking game I’ve ever played - Naughty Dog channels the environmental storytelling of The Last of Us to paint a detailed picture of Nate’s domestic life that sells the fact that he’s put the adventuring life behind him. He skips beers with the boys and heads home to Elena. ![]() But even when Nate’s boss offers him a job in Malaysia promising a big payout, the lack of requisite permits is enough illegality to completely dissuade him. ![]() While donning scuba gear and hauling up crashed cargo containers might seem exciting to us desk jockeys, it’s a bit less so for someone who spent three adventures discovering lost cities and dropping 1,500 bodies along the way. ![]() Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley returned from The Last of Us to completely take over for series director and writer Amy Hennig, who was absent the duo on Uncharted 3 and is no longer at Naughty Dog.Ī Thief’s End opens with a showy, bombastic hint at the mayhem to come, but then pulls back to Nate’s new, normal life working as a diver pulling junk out of a smelly city river when he’s not hunched over a desk stamping forms. The ghost of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, remembered less fondly in retrospect than the first two games, hung over A Thief’s End, too. It’s a pretty big plot point on which to hinge a fourth, rider entry - the end of Nathan Drake’s story - onto a series that was summed up pretty effectively as a trilogy five years and a new PlayStation ago. And more than he knew, as Sam Drake, a ghost of Nate’s past, comes back into his life after 15 years of absence. The once orphaned and alone boy Drake who sought a father figure in Victor Sullivan and, after three adventures, settled into a life of domesticity with Elena Fisher, has more family than we knew. That is the plot device that sets Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End into motion. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |