Uncharted 3 is the game that, on the surface, seems to have a lot going for it compared to the previous two, really struggles to put these pieces together as cohesively as I would expect. There was clearly more of a genuine attempt at crafting an engaging yet “real” narrative this time around. Being the only game in this series so far to actually start bothering to ask these inherent questions to create character drama and conflict from it. Like who exactly is Nathan Drake? Why is Sully always tagging around and why should I care? What exactly motivates Nathan Drake to keep going on these life threatening adventures that one way or another, always puts people in great danger, regardless of his headstrong swashbuckling demeanor? However, the actual approach done with this story potential is incredibly uneven, and often, very shoddily written.

Usually it gives us pretty small but stupid moments like Nathan Drake entrusting a valuable macguffn to the guy who literally tried to kill him five minutes ago which somehow always leads to the villain getting what they need to further their own evil plans in the race. Or keep teasing something truly bad is going to happen to Sully because this game is pretty much about Nathan and Sully’s relationship and how far one would truly go for the other. Which… never really gets a proper payoff besides one little scene at the end of the game? Or most importantly the game throwing in the curveball reveals near the midpoint that Nathan Drake might not be the guy we really assumed him to be. That this adventurous persona we’re so used to might actually be this big lie to hide his true history from us. This also never really goes anywhere and the game forgets about it almost entirely which is weird given how dramatic it is. There’s still some pretty fun bits preventing the story from feeling like a weightless journey. Everything to do with Nathan and Elena is great, and I argue should’ve been the real backbone to this game instead of the relationship between Nathan and Sully. The story, like I mentioned, feels more ambitious in trying to take its characters seriously for a more eventful journey. But the result of this muddled attempt came with poor pacing, clumsy writing, and a climax which is just a mashup of the first two games climax except I guess Naughty Dog learned and just stopped having a final boss altogether.

The gameplay isn’t dramatically improved too much from the previous game aside from melee finally not sucking and being almost viable sometimes. It’s really more of the same from all across including the platforming and cover-shooting. But I think, in retrospect, Uncharted 3 was the entry to underline my biggest gripes with these games and what they set out to achieve. And quite simply it’s just that these games lack depth, and I don’t mean just story. The melee is certainly the best of the three games, but even then that’s not saying much because it’s just hitting button prompts for a solid minute. The cover-shooting is mechanically the same across all three with the only addition Uncharted 3 brings to the table is being able to throw back grenades. The platforming is the same ol’, same ol’ climbing walls to ledges shtick without much real variation unless you count a big scripted walk-and-talk action sequence. I guess you could argue that the puzzles are handled much more creatively, but compared to other aspects of the gameplay, it’s very minuscule by comparison. What this all boils down to is that these games, with the case of Uncharted 3 especially, don’t really care about giving you much control over what you do. Rather you’re just a spectator who has to move on from scripted action sequence to the next scripted action sequence with very little room to go off rails for a bit. An example I’ve had playing the game which brings this up is the shipyard level. Which seemed like a more big and open environment to traverse through almost aimlessly, despite how linear your objective is. Imagine my surprise when I thought about circumventing a lot of the floating platforms and enemies by stealthily swimming around them only to find out the game doesn’t really want you to do that so much and you either get roped back into the same cover-shooting action or you just get caught in a massive wave with no way out but reloading a checkpoint. Granted, this is still a very graphically impressive action set piece to play part of, I still enjoy it even, but this begs the question earlier: what agency do you truly have over the game itself that is allowed by the developers?

From my experience, all I can gather is not too much. I don’t find this to be inherently a problem with a lot of games that do try to do this approach, I only ask that you compromise with the player and still deliver a worthwhile narrative. Uncharted 3 stumbles with the approach though, and I think its something Naughty Dog could learn from for both better and worse.

Random Note: Talbot might be one of the most confusing vidya game characters I've ever encountered so far because I have no idea what ANY of the developers were trying to do with him.