The Last of Us: Left Behind (Spoilers)

The Last of Us: Left Behind is a compelling and tragic companion to The Last of Us. It juxtaposes a glimpse at Ellie’s life as a (relatively) normal teenager with her future life as a hardened survivor adept at killing. The portion of Left Behind detailing what happens to Ellie shortly after Joel becomes incapacitated at the University of Eastern Colorado is just as tense and compelling as the core Last of Us experience, with some new twists thrown in such as having situations that mix human enemies with infected. It’s possible that this action-heavy side of Left Behind was added as an afterthought, in order to have some traditional action gameplay to break up the more relaxed and nonconventional Ellie and Riley sections, but it’s just as possible that having both was the plan all along because the two end up working really well together. The most interesting (and freshest) part of Left Behind, however, is  undoubtedly the side that details the last days of Ellie and her best friend, Riley’s relationship as they explore an abandoned shopping mall together. Here, we get a terrific and emotional piece of story-telling that not only gives more depth to Ellie’s character, but that is also just a commendable short story in its own right. Indeed, if The Last of Us proper did not exist and this part of Left Behind was completely standalone, it would be a fantastic and moving little vignette just on its own merits.

The mechanics of Left Behind are interesting because Ellie and Riley engage in nonviolent games together, like throwing bricks at cars and having a stealthy water gun fight, that are a playful mirror image of the brutal actions that Ellie performs in the future. Both sides of the game take place in a mall, so it’s very clear what the developers were going for and it’s very effective. Seeing Ellie as a (again, “relatively”) normal teenager hanging out with her best friend makes it all the more tragic how much of an efficient killer the world (and Joel) ends up making her. Most of the little scenes in Left Behind, like the two girls playing around with rubber Halloween masks and laughing about how people used to buy stuff like that, are charming in their own way, but two in particular stood out to me. The first is when Ellie and Riley ride the carousel. The whole process of walking over and getting on the carousel, Riley turning it on, Ellie riding it, and Riley joining in just before the machine stops being completely in-game and controlled by me made me reflect on how magical a video game experience can be. That may sound silly to you, but something about the perfectly-timed music, spinning the camera around to see Ellie’s excited facial expressions, and looking at the slowly spinning scenery as the carousel made its rotations perfectly put me in her shoes, strengthened my attachment to her as a character, and illustrated just how amazing something like this would be to a kid in a hellish world like The Last of Us’s. It struck a chord with me, and I teared up a little during the moment.

The second scene that stood out to me is the arcade one. At one point fairly early on in The Last of Us, Ellie and Joel happen upon a small record store with an arcade machine sitting in one corner of it. In an optional conversation, Ellie tells Joel that she played the game with her friend in the past and proceeds to describe it a bit. I was puzzled by this scene, because I questioned Ellie doing something as normal as playing a video game with a friend in the world that she was born into. Left Behind gives glorious context to that small throwaway conversation and it’s brilliant. Ellie and Riley come across that same arcade machine and seeing that it’s broken, Ellie expresses disappointment because she wanted to play the game. Riley casually tells her that “she can” and tells her to close her eyes. What follows is a surprisingly simple and brilliant sequence. The entire scene is just a close-up of Ellie’s face with her eyes closed. Riley starts describing the game and, Ellie’s hands on the arcade machine’s controls, she tries to imagine it. At first she is skeptical and so am I. But soon the borders of the screen begin to dim and I’m imagining Riley’s narrative of the game right along with Ellie. The imaginary game soon begins to bleed into reality as traditional fighting game health bars appear at the top of the screen and we begin to hear sound effects from the battle taking place in Ellie’s mind. As Riley describes each moment of the battle in detail, the player presses buttons according to prompts that appear on the screen. Whether you fail or succeed, the battle continues. Soon I’m wildly mashing buttons and by the end I’m totally into it. I want to win the imaginary fight just as much as Ellie. Similar to the carousel scene, this moment accomplishes so much with so little and simply and effectively puts me into Ellie’s shoes, making me feel like a kid playing a video game for the first time. It perfectly illustrates the importance of imagination and escapism, especially in a bleak world like Ellie and Riley’s. It also strengthens the bond between Ellie and Riley and demonstrates what a cool friend Riley is.

But Left Behind is also just a well-told teen romance. There’s no hamming it up and nothing feels forced or unnatural. This aspect of the game was unfortunately long spoiled for me, and I admit I was kind of waiting for it to happen, but the brief kiss shared between Ellie and Riley came at the perfect time and felt totally authentic. In that moment, when Ellie finally honestly told Riley “Don’t go” and Riley threw her firefly pendant to the ground, just for a second I desperately wanted the two to just stay together, keep having fun together and try to live the most normal life they can possibly have together in their broken world. I didn’t want Ellie to meet Joel and become his replacement daughter, or do all those horrible things later on down the road in the name of survival; I just wanted her and Riley to keep dancing in that department store. But, of course, this is The Last of Us, so that was never going to happen.

Thus the ending of Left Behind is truly tragic, in more ways than one. Even knowing that Ellie was immune, Left Behind’s short running time had effectively put me in the shoes of an Ellie before she knew that, and I had tears in my eyes seeing her anguish at being in such an unimaginably horrible situation with the friend she had just declared her love for. I saw the moment that Ellie describes to Joel in the final moments of The Last of Us play out in front of me, and the gut-wrenching tragedy of Ellie losing Riley and later so many others while she lived on came full circle. But thinking of those final moments of The Last of Us, and of the person Ellie became and where she found herself, the shattered tender moment shared with Riley in the mall becomes even more significant. In a moment of passion, Joel once berated Ellie for not knowing what loss is. Hardly.

The Last of Us (Spoilers)

The Last of Us is not fun. Sure, there are aspects that might be considered “fun”, but that word does not seem appropriate in any way to describe this experience. “Engaging” is a better word to use, I would say, but that is of course a general term that doesn’t cover every nuance. Getting chased by Infected in a cramped environment from all sides, firing the only four bullets I have with a shaking gun and missing every shot except one, only to get ambushed from behind by a Clicker that rips into my flesh and instantly ends my experience isn’t fun, it’s fucking stressful. Trying to protect my three companions with a sniper rifle as people trying to kill them close in from all sides in a huge open environment with tons of places to hide isn’t fun, it’s nerve-wracking. What happens to Henry and Sam certainly isn’t fun. The Last of Us is slow-paced, breathless moments of hiding and listening before moments of abrupt and frantic violence. Trying to sneak up on an Infected to strangle it from behind only to have it suddenly turn around and scream at me, alerting dozens of other things that want to kill me and having everything go to shit isn’t fun either. There are few things, or perhaps nothing, more heart-sinkingly awful-feeling I’ve experienced in a video game than having something go wrong in The Last of Us, especially when it involves a horde of Infected. During these moments, I would usually just panic, run around aimlessly in circles and fire shots aimlessly at the horde in front of me as more slashed at my back before a Clicker sneaks in and mauls me from some unknown angle. Every. Damn. Time. Except during the times when I actually did make it through in one go. When the more I failed, the more I tried to learn from my mistakes. You can’t sneak up on Runners, Nate, don’t even try. I learned this the hard way time and again, and then finally, one time, I managed to take out a whole roomful of Infected with two carefully placed bombs and a single Molotov. I felt proud. I felt strong. I also felt good when I successfully snuck by a horde of Bloaters, Clickers and Runners undetected later on. I’d survived. Perhaps these moments, what felt like rare moments when things didn’t go horribly and end in cursing and frustration and bitter failure, were the few times where I might call The Last of Us “fun”.

But I still wouldn’t, because this is a brutal game that does not care about you. It will kick your teeth in and attempt to mess you up in any way it can. At least that’s how it was for me my first time experiencing it. It is a frustrating and unforgiving experience, and it’s all by design. I realized something about myself while playing The Last of Us, or rather it’s something I already knew about myself that this experience highlighted: I can’t stand when things are out of my control, and this game forced me to accept the reality that things will be out of my control sometimes, and sometimes I have to improvise and try my best to get out of what seems a hopeless situation. One of my favorite things that The Last of Us consistently does is thrust the player into dangerous situations that they must react to in the moment if they want to survive. Sometimes there may be a cutscene or some kind of brief warning scene beforehand, but then control is dropped, abruptly, into the hands of the player, at which point I needed to try not to freeze in panic, and look around for some way to get away from the tank and horde of angry Hunters suddenly bearing down on me, or move my ass away from behind that tiny bit of cover before the approaching dangerous men find and start shooting at me. Take too long to mourn your dead horse that just got shot through the neck and, yes, the pursuing men with guns will catch up to you and kill you. You need to run. You need to huddle in that nearby cabin, craft some supplies, and stay alive.

Combat was usually always messy for me in The Last of Us. Encounters with Infected were usually chaotic, jittery affairs where I could barely steady my aim enough to kill them. I’d often get away with a sliver of health left and it almost always felt like a miracle I’d survived. Many times, I’d only survive after several abrupt death screens, at which point the game cuts to black and a patronizing message to the effect of something like “Clickers can’t be melee’d, you will get eaten” or “Don’t run directly at enemies with guns, you will get shot…idiot” would greet me before asking me to press “X” to try again.  And if you get out of cover or run at an armed adversary with your trusty pipe with scissors taped to the end of it, you will get shot. When you get shot, your character stumbles backward and blood speckles the edges of the screen. And if you don’t get your ass back in cover fast, you will be killed. You can’t run around like a superman. You need to think, at least in large part, realistically. Sure, there are still plenty of “video gamey” elements here and I encountered a handful of glitches and hang-ups (at least in the original PS3 version) that took me out of the experience, but The Last of Us is more committed to a grounded realism than perhaps any other game I’ve played. It’s far from perfect, but its ambition is admirable. While Joel constantly bandaging up the same arm when he takes damage of any kind is a little silly, the act of having to hunker down and slowly patch oneself up instead of just magically auto-healing goes a long way in adding gravity to the experience and investing me in it more.

There’s a weight to The Last of Us. A sense of exasperation and heaviness that I don’t feel often in video games. Sure, there are other games that I’ve played with weight and seriousness…but The Last of Us still feels unique in its burdensome atmosphere. It was almost difficult to play, and yet I usually didn’t want to stop. The combat and the violence is brutal of course, but it’s more than that. It’s the way Joel walks, with his backpack strapped with guns and full of discarded notes about the tragic stories littering the world. The weight to his steps. It’s his noticeable sighs and heavy breathing. It’s the game’s use of the environment to show a far-off bridge that leads out of the hellish city-wide prison one is in; how I just want to get to that damn bridge, and I just keep hitting roadblock after roadblock. It’s seeing Ellie finally get a peer in Sam and watching the two of them joke and play darts, shortly before Sam becomes infected and is shot and killed by his own brother (who then kills himself). It’s seeing the completely broken man that Joel is, knowing that in a different world he would be a loving father and a good man still. The way that he desperately wants to protect Ellie so that he can protect himself, and the way that Ellie becomes almost as good at killing as he is.

I think the greatest strength of The Last of Us’s narrative is the attachment it fosters between Ellie and Joel, and it had to be, because that’s like, the whole game. Joel and Ellie’s relationship naturally grows, it’s fleshed out in emotional cutscenes that add depth to their characters and also by conversations and anecdotes that unfold as the two explore the crumbling U.S.. These moments made the action more meaningful, because I wanted to survive. Because I wanted Joel and Ellie to survive. The two of them feel like real people. Adventuring across the U.S. with them made me grow attached to them. The more the experience drew closer to its conclusion, the more nervous and anxious I got. I was afraid of how this was going to end. I was afraid of what was going to happen to Joel and Ellie. Most of the ways I imagined it would end were not positive. How could it be? How could this experience possibly have a “happy” ending?

I do not like the ending of The Last of Us, but it’s the right ending. It feels authentic. It all came down to a brutal choice for Joel: save Ellie or save the world. There’s nothing black and white about this situation. I appreciate that The Last of Us makes some attempts to humanize the non-infected people that the player kills throughout the game; the Hunters in Pittsburgh can be overheard sharing dried fruit with one another, talking about cooking bacon, and generally sharing camaraderie, for example. Marlene and the Fireflies are no different here, and one has to respect the sacrifices they’ve made and how they seem to be the only people in this world who haven’t given up on humanity. Marlene’s journals found near the game’s end serve to garner her in particular sympathy, and I really didn’t want to kill that surgeon putting his life on the line at the end (I shot him in the leg, but he still died). After experiencing just how completely awful this world is over the course of my journey, I had to question whether I would be willing to kill Ellie to save the human race myself, and wondered whether the game should have given the player a choice. I don’t think it should have, because Joel is a defined character, and it was true to his character to save Ellie’s life. Also, even if I had been given the choice, I know I would have done the same thing as Joel anyway.

As I said, the ending feels authentic, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, and I’m sure that’s purposeful. It’s unsatisfying for a few reasons. It’s clear that Ellie is discontent and uncertain, at least where we last leave her. It’s not by a whim that we spend the game’s final, brief controllable moments as Ellie, because the game’s developers wanted us to see this from her perspective. We’d seen it from Joel’s perspective: a father whose daughter had died in his arms before twenty years of surviving in a hellish world, slowly growing into a jaded, murderous shell. Joel didn’t know any other world except this one anymore by the time we catch up with him in Boston, and all he needed was a reason to survive. He found his best one yet in Ellie. Having to lose Ellie, having to go through the same thing he went through with Sarah is too terrible for anyone to bear, and so I completely sympathize with Joel. We then saw things from Ellie’s perspective during the “Winter” portion of the game, when she did everything she could to save the life of her companion, of the only person she had. But during the game’s final moments, we see things from a more mature Ellie’s perspective. Joel is someone who stuck by her, protected her and taught her the skills necessary to survive. Ellie’s grown quite a bit by the end though, and perhaps she now begins to realize that she is Joel’s misplaced daughter. Joel lies to her and it makes me hate him a bit. Joel is just kind of an awful person; he’s a killer who we see kill even when it isn’t entirely necessary and now he’s manipulative of the best thing to happen in his life in years. I do think Joel is redeemable, and he is relatable. I can understand why he’d lie to Ellie and do what he does at the end, but it’s still shitty. I want Ellie to know the truth. I want her to decide for herself. The other aspect of the ending that’s unsatisfying is that it simply doesn’t feel like a conclusion. It leaves me bitter not only because of the lie Joel is willing to base he and Ellie’s life on, but because I question just what kind of life the two can have in Jackson, in a world still ruined. As inviting as Tommy’s town seems to be compared to everything else I’d seen, I question how long it will hold up before something goes wrong. I also question whether the Fireflies will simply give up on looking for Ellie; I don’t think simply killing Marlene will stop them from looking for her and Joel. So I don’t like the ending, but I don’t think I’m supposed to. The ending is bitter. It’s cold. It doesn’t feel like a conclusion to anything. But it’s appropriate somehow. It’s accurate.

The Last of Us is a depressing game. It’s bleak and weighty and stressful. It made me long to play something like Mario Kart 8, something bright and colorful and cheerful. It’s not a perfect game and it’s not a demonstration of the peak of what video games can do or be and what makes them unique. It still relies a bit too much on the language of film for that, among other things. Perhaps its biggest flaw for me, besides the not too frequent but still frequent enough glitchy moments I encountered, might also be a strength actually. I think “dying” in a game like this is an interesting challenge for developers. It was especially frustrating to die in this game because it always broke my immersion, and I think in a game aiming for such an immersive, “realistic” experience, this is something of a flaw; it’s just a challenge when it comes to the nature of video games like The Last of Us. At the same time, these deaths are part of what made this game so memorable to me; I don’t think the game’s unforgiving difficulty is a negative (I played on Normal, by the way) and I think that such brutal circumstances serve the experience well. While the game’s punishing nature would still be effective if I had never failed once, the failures I suffered reinforced the harshness and cruelty of the experience and not only that, but I learned from them, so that by the game’s final third or so, I was more often surviving than dying, and suddenly I knew just how to handle a horde of Infected in a dark tunnel, and aim and fire my gun with a cool head and a steady hand, albeit with still some sweat on my brow afterwards. I’m not sure if others struggled with the game as much as I did, and I’m sure if I had made it through the whole thing without ever getting a “game over”, it would have been very rewarding, but perhaps my frequent failures enhanced the experience somehow as well. This is all just something to consider.

The Last of Us isn’t perfect, but it’s ambitious and it strives to take this medium to new heights. It’s not the zenith, but it’s a step and it demonstrates the potential of video games to deliver an emotional experience that can do more than simply entertain. It contains a narrative that is grounded and relatable and perhaps most importantly, it is an experience that is incredibly human. Is this the “Citizen Kane” of video games or whatever praise people were giving it in abundance at its original time of release in 2013? I don’t know. Truthfully, I don’t even know what that really means. If it means that The Last of Us is highly innovative and big step forward for the video game medium, I’m not so sure, but perhaps…it is these things in some ways at least. Ultimately, here’s what I think: The Last of Us is good. It’s not like I play every game that comes out, not even close, but I’m willing to guess it’s one of the “must-plays” of recent years, and for a “AAA” title, it does a fair job pushing the bar forward for the medium. I plan on picking up the remastered PS4 version when I eventually get the console and going through it again there (hopefully that version irons out the technical blunders and bugs). I do think this is an experience worth undertaking again for me. It’s worth my time and it’s worth yours.

Respecting Your Characters: The Uncharted Series

You know what I like about the Uncharted series? It respects its characters. No, I’m not talking about the waves and waves of pirates, mercenaries, and agents that our hero, Nathan Drake and friends slaughter by the hundreds over the course of the series. I’m also not talking about the villains of the series at all. I’m specifically referring to the “heroes” of the Uncharted series, Drake and his motley crew of buddies. Instead of killing them off in an attempt at drama or motivation for the player, instead of replacing them with a new face every game to keep things “fresh”, the Uncharted series instead focuses on building a core family of friends for Drake. Sure, in many regards these characters are driven by clichés and Drake himself is a character archetype that’s been seen dozens of times in dozens of pieces of media. Much of what happens in Uncharted is utterly ridiculous and nonsensical, and all of it is framed as if from behind the lens of a camera filming the latest summer blockbuster. But because of the way this series treats its characters, they felt like real people to me, and the more the series went on, they felt more and more like friends that I actually cared about. By the way, spoilers for the entire Uncharted series follow.

Let’s start by taking a look at the first game in the series, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Early in the game, Nathan Drake’s mentor and longtime friend Victor “Sully” Sullivan is shot by the bad guy and is presumably dead for a good chunk of the game. Drake then teams up with newswoman Elena Fisher to complete the quest that he and Sully started. If I hadn’t already known he was alive and well thanks to me being super late to playing this series, at this point Sully seemed to be destined for two things: either motivation for Drake and some drama/baggage for him to carry throughout the adventure OR pull a 006 and ending up having faked his death and been secretly working with the bad guys, maybe even secretly being the big bad and Drake’s ultimate main nemesis. The game even hints at this outcome when it finally reveals that Sully is still alive through some video footage Elena manages to capture, but when Drake and Elena finally catch up with the cigar-smoking thief, it turns out it was actually option C: Sir Francis Drake’s notebook, which Sully had conveniently placed in his breast pocket, had stopped the bullet and ever since Sully had just been leading the bag guys along, hoping Drake would come rescue him. After reuniting, Drake, Sully, and Elena team up to search for the treasure, forming the core Uncharted family that would persist throughout all three current main games, though I didn’t know that playing at the time. To be honest, I’d guessed Sully’s life had been spared thanks to the old “thing in the breast pocket stopping the bullet” trick, but nevertheless, I appreciated that Sully was neither destined to be the twist villain nor emotional motivation for Nate, but the faithful buddy he was introduced as. At the game’s conclusion, Nate beats the bad guy and he and Elena almost kiss only to be interrupted by a wise-cracking Sully, before all three sail off into the sunset together, with some treasure Sully managed to swipe from some pirates off-screen.

The crew

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at first opens with Drake being the only returning character, before we are introduced to newcomer Harry Flynn and then to Chloe Frazer, with Elena nowhere to be seen nor mentioned. I figured that Uncharted would follow the typical male-led adventure movie formula, with Chloe being the new female love interest and Elena just expected to be forgotten about, and us to not worry about what happened between her and Drake after the events of the first game. Sully gets some screen-time a bit later with a mission involving him and Nate that evokes the early moments of the first Uncharted, before he decides he’s “too old for this shit” and leaves the rest of the adventure up to Nate. I figured Sully would just be a character that shows up at the beginning of each Uncharted game during the “tutorial” sections, which would be fitting for his role of mentor, and probably be the only recurring character besides Nate, leaving the rest of the cast to be filled by new faces. The early moments of Uncharted 2 seemed to fall neatly in line with these expectations, but they were pleasantly altered when Nate gets momentarily separated from Chloe fairly early on and (in a fairly large coincidence) runs into Elena Fisher and her cameraman, leading to some humorous and awkward exchanges between the two (Elena evens makes a quip about being “last year’s model” when she introduces herself to Chloe soon after, and I appreciate the jab at the trope on the developers' part). Drake and Chloe then team up with Elena and the unfortunately doomed cameraman, Jeff, to continue jumping across buildings, hiding behind low walls, and shooting waves of faceless mercenaries, at least some of whom must have children or even a girlfriend. This is something else I like about Uncharted (no, not the obscene amounts of thoughtless killing): Drake isn’t always a one-man, unstoppable killing/adventuring machine; he’s often joined by a friend or three that all work together to work out the harrowing situation they find themselves in. Through these co-operative sections, I found myself caring more for my companions than if they had just showed up in cutscenes. The unfortunately doomed Jeff is shot and killed, but not before Drake tries valiantly to save his life, and Chloe, who seems to be constantly switching sides, rejoins the baddies, leaving Drake and Elena once again paired up for adventure. It felt nostalgic almost, once again having the Nate and Elena pair-up dynamic, like these two characters were destined to go on wacky adventures together. I love the chemistry between these two, and I was pleasantly pleased that the creators of Uncharted opted to not waste an established character and instead further build on her and Nate’s relationship in the sequel.

Nate and Elena eventually meet Tenzin, another new character and a native of Tibet. Tenzin, despite not speaking the same language as Nate, quickly becomes a reliable and likable ally. While he and Nate are exploring the Tibetan mountains, they encounter a strange yeti-like creature, which appears to kill Tenzin at first. Tenzin, however, is yet another character not willing to simply become a red shirt and, after regaining consciousness, saves Nate’s life from the monster. The two return to Tenzin’s village later on to find it under attack from Zoran Lazarevic’s goons, with a distraught Tenzin searching for his daughter, Pema. In a cheaper narrative, Tenzin would have probably found his daughter killed in the action and we would have seen a tragic scene play out in an attempt to make the experience more “dark” and “edgy”. Instead, Tenzin fights alongside Nate as they struggle to take back the village in an otherwise destructive sequence where many of the villagers are killed, but that luckily ends with Tenzin happily reuniting with this daughter, safe and sound. It’s nice to see a character like Tenzin, who plays a relatively small role in the larger plot, be treated with respect and be able to get a relatively happy ending. It’s also nice to see a non-English speaking, non-white character get treated in this manner in this series, as Uncharted certainly doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to representing non-whites (typically they’re the “bad guys” Nate is slaughtering in the hundreds, unfortunately).

Tenzin and Drake

Chloe is another story. Throughout the game, she seems to be being set up as a duplicitous character who will end up betraying Drake. She’s the adventurous “bad girl” to Elena’s more reserved “good girl” (not that Elena can’t shoot a gun and jump around on stuff just as well as Chloe). Basically, Chloe to me seemed destined to end up being someone the player is meant to jeer at and probably die some horrible or unfortunate death near the end, leaving Drake and the more morally responsible Elena to pair up. While Elena and Nate do indeed end up together in the end, Chloe at least gets some respect. It’s clear as the game goes on that Chloe is someone who cares about Drake, but is also someone who wants to protect herself. She lets go of this self-interest near the end though and agrees to help Drake and Elena take down Lazarevic. In the game’s final moments, it is Elena, instead, who is on the brink of death (wounded by a grenade explosion; there’s some ludonarrative dissonance for ya) and Chloe, who before was willing to let the unfortunately doomed Jeff the cameraman bleed out in a gutter because he was slowing down the group, now risks her life to carry the wounded Elena while Drake fights off hordes of Lazarevic’s goons. Drake goes off on his own to do the hero thing and take down Lasarevic, now powered up on magic Shambhala juice, while Chloe attempts to get Elena out of the hidden valley. Later on, as Shambhala is crumbling all around them, the final playable moment of the game tasks the player with saving Chloe, falling to her death while being attacked by a big blue monster man. I think this was a smart final moment, and a good demonstration of how the game’s creators still respected Chloe as an important character, despite clearly setting up Elena as Nate’s prime love interest. In these final moments, Chloe is a human being worth saving the life of instead of a selfish, duplicitous archetype that “got what was coming to her”. Even though they’re both involved in a love triangle with the male lead, it’s still sadly rare to see two female leads like this in a story like Uncharted’s, and both treated like important characters. After saving Chloe, the two of them rejoin a battered Elena who seems to be done for.

Not only did this series not simply discard Elena as “last year’s model”, but established her as a character that I really didn’t want to die at this point. The game cuts to what appears to be a funeral scene with a mourning Drake, leaving Elena’s fate purposefully unknown. Chloe shows up, asking Drake if he “loves her” before advising Drake to tell her so and then respectfully bowing out as the camera pans over to an injured, but very much alive Elena being helped by Sully. Once again the game ends with the same three characters, with the final scene this time being shared solely by Elena and Nate, playfully bantering with each other, and seeming like they’re going to stay together this time. At this point, this series had cemented two characters I cared about going forward and I was pleased that neither Elena nor Chloe were haphazardly killed off, but instead treated as characters whose lives mattered just as much as Nate’s or Sully’s. In a series where life is otherwise not treated with any respect at all and the “bad guys” drop left and right without any noticeable guilt or emotional impact on Drake’s part, it was surprising and nice to see that at least the game’s developers were more interested in developing and building the game’s central cast instead of killing them off or trading them off.

The ending of Uncharted 2

I didn’t quite know what to expect from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, but I was hoping the series would stick with the route it had already established with its characters. The opening moments once again focus solely on Sully and Nate, and it seemed at first like Elena and Nate had once again split ways between games, which I was a bit annoyed by, but I tried to have faith that the game wouldn’t ignore their relationship. Soon enough, we are introduced to a new friend of Nate’s, Charlie Cutter, as well as the return of Chloe, to my pleasant surprise. Even though I praised the developers for treating her character with a degree of respect towards the end of the second game, I still figured that we’d seen the last of her. I was happy to see that Naughty Dog treated her as more than just a throwaway love interest for Nate and in part 3, we see that she, Nate, Sully, and Cutter are all part of a spiffy new thieving team on the trail of some wacky new adventure. The consistency of the characters in this series mixed with a few new ones really works to the benefit of these games in my eyes. This feeling of camaraderie is where the strength of the Uncharted series’ narratives lie (the plots themselves are fairly formulaic and do their fair share of aping from other sources, but I still find them entertaining enough). Despite being happy to see Chloe back, I was also a bit nervous that Elena had now been dropped, in favor of a no-romance plot with a cool gang of thieves, which would otherwise be totally fine, if the previous game had not established Elena as clearly a character who was going to stick around in Drake’s life.

After finding some clues in London, the team heads out on a globetrotting journey to find the keys to yet another legendary lost city. Eventually they end up in Syrbia, where Cutter is drugged and forced to give over some important items to the bad guys. Later, in his delirious state, he tries to kill Nate, but luckily comes to his senses before Sully shoots him. Cutter later finds some redemption by using some clever thinking to outwit the villainous Talbot and his agents, allowing Nate and the others to escape. Unfortunately, Cutter ends up getting caught and finds himself cornered by central antagonist Katherine Marlowe, Talbot and their cronies as his buddies helplessly look on. I figured Cutter was done for at this point and he’d end being a martyr, but once again my expectations were betrayed when Cutter jumped down a high castle wall to avoid getting burned alive, breaking his leg but nonetheless surviving to adventure another day. Unfortunately he and Chloe disappear for the rest of the game from this point on and while this absence is justifiable within the narrative, I still wish they at least appeared in the ending for some closure. Still, I’m glad Cutter wasn’t just fodder for a cheap death due to his status as a new and not as well established character. I’m not saying that characters can’t die (both the unfortunately doomed Jeff and Karl Schafer are killed off in Uncharted 2 after all), just that I appreciate when the characters opposite the lead aren’t all treated like they’re expendable.

Sully, Cutter, Chloe and Nate in Uncharted 3

It’s after this point when Nate and Sully need someone to escort them around Yemen that Sully gets an idea to call someone Nate seems very reluctant to reach out to. Turns out that person, happily, is Elena Fisher, and once again our main trio find themselves scuttling through ancient tombs together. It’s revealed through subtext that Nate and Elena got married in-between the ending of Uncharted 2 and the beginning of Uncharted 3, but separated for some reason, though Elena still wears her wedding ring. When Sully gets kidnapped by the baddies, Elena and Nate set off on a mission to rescue him, sharing some touching moments in-between. I was a bit disappointed that Elena ends up getting left behind for the final chapters of the game and doesn’t show up again until the ending, but given what happens to Nate after he stows away on the cargo plane en route to the Rub’ al Khali desert, I can see why the developers wrote the story this way. Speaking of Sully, he plays a much bigger role in Uncharted 3, and instead of just being Nate’s partner at the beginning of the game this time, he’s along for the ride for most of the adventure and we even get to see how he and a young Nate met, as well as some scenes near the end that strengthen their bond. The game’s ending involves Sully giving Nate his wedding ring back (which he’d kept after Nate “lost it”), which Nate shows to Elena before the two embrace. I liked the idea of Nate replacing Francis Drake’s ring with his wedding ring, symbolizing the shift of priorities in his life…at least until the events of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The three of them walk off towards a plane-ride home, in a similar manner to the way the first Uncharted ended.

Nate and Elena share a tender moment in Uncharted 3

I’m not saying that the Uncharted series has the best characters or the best character development ever. All I’m saying is that it does a fair job of respecting the characters it does have and of focusing on building their bonds and relationships over the course of the three games, and also treats new characters like they are a part of the family as well. It doesn’t trade a new love interest for Nate every game, but instead focuses on a lasting relationship between him and Elena. It doesn’t kill off Nate’s friends or turn them into martyrs; they encounter dangerous situations, but somehow they pull through and this aspect only strengthens their friendship. I got the sense throughout this series that the lives of Nate’s friends were just as important to the games’ creators as Nate himself. It’s nice to see a series where, for the most part, characters aren’t wasted or killed off purely to make something more “edgy” or “shocking” or sacrificed in a lazy way to fulfill another character’s arc. In this regard, I’m pleased with the way that Uncharted handles its cast, and with the way that it builds a family around Nathan Drake, establishing a group of people that I grew to care about. There are plenty of criticisms that can be leveled at the Uncharted series, but besides being a fun combination of thrilling spectacle and exciting adventure, I think it does a fine job with treating its people with a degree of respect and care that I appreciate…the good guys anyway.