Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Written by Chris Reiter  on September 12, 2007

First Impressions: Here there be monsters. Nah, I'm just kidding, it's a preview of Uncharted.

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Naughty Dog has looked to the classics of games and film, like Pitfall, Indiana Jones, and Tomb Raider for their next big thing. They looked at cinema's past at the likes of Indiana Jones and Die Hard to draw upon the ordinary man shoved through extraordinary circumstances. They searched for buried treasure and found danger, excitement, love and the inspiration for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.



400 years ago, a famous explorer named Sir Francis Drake lived. Then he died. 400 years later, with a clue dug up from Drake's grave a descendant of his (or so he claims) tries to convince people close to him, including a documentary starlet named Elena, of who he is and where the lost treasure of El Dorado is buried in the Amazon. This modern day explorer named Nathan Drake is not a super hero. He doesn't possess the ability to whirl around and break boxes, nor can he harness the powers of dark and light energy like a certain Naughty Dog icon once could. Nathan is a human, who together with Elena takes a plane ride into the vast unknown, coming under mechanical failures, and due to the jeopardizing situation are split up. Upon bailing, Nathan will meet up with the likes of modernized pirates and mercenaries. Gold is his dream, but quick wits, agility, and a set of guns will give Nathan the chance to overcome the obstacles that were already in his way before he can get to where he wants to be.

As can be grasped already, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is not the typical game Naughty Dog is known for. Their success in gaining recognition has stemmed from cartoon-like characters that have vaulted through platform-oriented express ways and to a lesser extent their racing subsidiaries. But for a PlayStation platform with so much power to back it up, it's not hard to see why Naughty Dog chooses to do something in a more realistic fashion than what they have done in the past. We're talking about a regular man here thrust into the wilds of junglelicious and templetastic environments. Mercenaries roam these parts; but Nathan's not totally defenseless here. He can scale his way through heights, he can shoot one-handed or two-handed weapons, he knows how to employ blindfire tactics behind cover, and he can even fight hand-to-hand with audacious authenticity. In this game, Naughty Dog wants you to think about the difference between wild throws, which might hit or miss, as opposed to smartly placed punches that will better serve Nathan as he is what he is modeled after: a real life man.

Speaking of realism, the depth doesn't stop there. Naughty Dog is opting to scarcely make the HUD resemble a display you would be used to in an ordinary action-adventure of the type, and make it seem more like as if you were actually enveloped in the progress of being Nathan Drake. That's why the only thing you'll find is the icon of the equipped gun in your possession and its ammo left. As for detecting Nathan's health, this will be all based on the deteriorating color of the screen and Nathan's rapidly rising heart rate. The faster it goes, and the more the color wanes, will dictate just how much trouble Nathan's in. Whether this system can hold up better than a similar system used in The Getaway is yet to be seen. But Naughty Dog has yet to fail gamers, especially when you know they've got puzzles to solve in store, like climbing a tower by first breaking away stones to reveal placeholders, and big thrills with chase scenes in mowing down pirates with bullets in the back of a moving vehicle. They've even got some SIXAXIS control in store for the game, using it to back away from walls, and to balance Nathan across narrow paths.

Just as enticing as the game sounds, it's certainly shaping up to be one of the most splendid sights on the system. Naughty Dog is pouring their all into this, with a main character that suspiciously resembles former company president, Jason Rubin. But more so, the game will act accordingly to how a human should act in a game. Nathan is being fitted with more than 3,000 individual animations alone. Every move he makes will flow into the next one, rather than stop and start into something else. When he lands a punch, he may already be ready to whip out his gun and bank a shot off. When he jumps from a distance onto the landing, he'll stumble. The environments will pay attention with extreme closeness to how a jungle should look and feel. With no load times whatsoever, they'll be even bigger and prettier than Jak and Daxter's largeness ever was. If there's one thing you can count on from Uncharted, it'll be a game that's going to visually astound your senses.