I want to start this post off with a list of
games.
*pulls envelope out of pocket and unfolds a sheet
of paper*
Ahem.
So. This list of games includes,
in no particular order:
--Tales of
Zestiria
--Xenoblade
Chronicles X
--The
Witcher 3
--Bloodborne
--Metal Gear
Solid V
--Street
Fighter V
--Yakuza 4
--Valkyria
Chronicles
--Ni no Kuni
By no means is this a complete list, but I’m sure
you can already guess the meaning behind them.
Indeed, this is a backlog of games that I want to play -- and hopefully
write about at some point. Moreover,
it’s a list of games that are readily available to me; they were within a few
steps of me every time I sat down to play Uncharted
3: Drake’s Deception. But I refused
to play them until I cleared every last game in The Nathan Drake Collection.
And every time I sat down to play Drake’s Deception, I was reminded just
how dearly, how desperately I wanted
to bail and play something else.
So if that intro wasn’t clear enough, I’ll say it
plainly. I think Uncharted 3 is
terrible. I don’t think I had any
fun with it, and if not for completion’s sake -- writing about it, and getting
ready for Uncharted 4 -- then I
would’ve dropped it in an instant. But I
didn’t. I played through all three of
the console games, and honestly, I’m inclined to believe that the first one is
the best of the three. Bear in mind that
I think the first one is rough beyond rough, and a game I didn’t have a lot of
fun with. But had I known what was
looming around the corner, I’d have sung its praises from the rooftops back
then.
So does that make Drake’s Deception the worst of the three? Well, yes and no. I’ll gladly admit that (for what it’s worth)
the villain in this game is the best of the three. The visuals have seen another uptick in
quality. The environments are just as
good as they’ve always been, and probably better. There are a couple of wrinkles in the
gameplay that at least try to shake things up.
I wouldn’t say Naughty Dog was successful with them, but the effort is
appreciable.
But that’s pretty much where the praise ends --
largely because that’s where the effort ends. Drake’s
Deception is not only a blatant rip-off of earlier installments in the
franchise (and movies in general), but it also manages to be a worse rip-off of earlier
installments. Somehow, the gameplay and
story alike have gone downhill.
And I have to be honest: the game’s slipshod,
autopilot nature left me dead inside, even before I reached the halfway point.
So, once again, let’s go over the setup. The game opens with Drake and Sully strolling
through London, en route to make a big score by trading in the ring of Sir
Francis Drake. It’s a con orchestrated
by our “heroes”, but they’re conned in turn and forced to bail. Of course, the real thrust of the plot is
that they’re hot on the heels of treasure left hidden by Sir Francis -- the
treasure they’ve (supposedly) been hunting for the past twenty years.
As a result, Drake and Sully -- along with their
old pal Chloe, new comrade Cutter, and series mainstay Elena later on -- embark
on a globe-trotting quest to uncover the mysteries of Drake’s off-the-record
bounty, and the supposed “Atlantis of the Sands” where it’s hidden. The only problem is that they’ll have to
contend with an enemy from the past: the villainous (and British) Katherine
Marlowe, alongside her loyal gunman Talbot. Oh, and their army of hired goons, agents from
a cabal of ancient conspirators, and pirates out to pilfer their way to the
top.
I have…issues
with this story. But let’s talk
about the gameplay first.
As always, Drake’s
Deception makes use of the standard action-adventure suite. Gunplay, stealth, platforming, and
puzzle-solving, all interspersed with a heaping helping of setpieces. Presumably, it’s all to help further the
ultimate goal of the game and the franchise at large: create the feel of a big
Hollywood blockbuster. Or,
alternatively, make the game into an unforgettable, adrenaline-pumping
experience from start to finish.
How successful were they? Opinions may vary, and I’m genuinely
interested in hearing what people have to say about the franchise as a whole
(especially if they’re playing the game fresh in the present day). But if someone asked me, I’d say “not
very”. Like I said, I feel like the
gameplay has gotten worse -- or if not worse, then the fact that it’s stayed
the same since 2007 doesn’t make me want to say kind things about the
franchise.
I assumed (or maybe hoped) that The Nathan Drake Collection would
improve upon and refine the game so that it played better than ever. Did Bluepoint Games change anything besides
the graphics? I don’t know. But if they did improve the gameplay, then it either wasn’t enough, or there’s
just too much inherently wrong with the franchise to fix. Drake still doesn’t
control very well; he’s sluggish, slow to turn, and his jump doesn’t feel
particularly great. Supposedly there’s a
mechanic that lets you move to/around cover more easily, but I never got it to work right -- and
really, ducking into and out of cover seems like a dice roll more often than it
should.
One thing I noticed about Drake’s Deception -- and presumably, the Uncharted games before it -- is that you can’t hammer Circle to
repeatedly dodge roll. Following a roll,
Drake will take a few steps before he can perform another roll. I guess it’s a measure to help prevent
players from abusing invincibility frames (assuming Uncharted even has those), but it’s more of a mobility tool than a
perfect defensive measure. Being a cover
shooter, you need to be able to take cover quickly -- and being forced to
saunter around when bullets are whizzing past your skull doesn’t make for a fun
experience. I mean, Gears of War also had a bit of a cooldown with its roll (IIRC), but
you could do it again with minimal recovery frames. Given the firefights there, it was a system
that worked.
And now I’m praising Gears of War. See what
you’ve made me do, Naughty Dog?
Movement is haphazard, but the gunplay is
basically the same as it’s ever been. Well, on a surface level; I thought that Among Thieves had an uptick in
difficulty so that you couldn’t rely solely on pistol headshots, but Drake’s Deception looped right back
around to (usually) being a breeze.
There’s no shortage of headshot opportunities this time around;
likewise, if you grab a shotgun then you can reliably clear an entire skirmish
with run-and-gun “tactics”. I know that
playing on higher difficulties is an option, but shouldn’t Normal by definition
feature a decent level of challenge? Or
better yet, shouldn’t there be a difficulty curve to hone and test a player’s
skills?
It seems like Drake’s
Deception confuses challenge for “cheapness” and “frustration”. Some of these firefights basically come down
to memorization, luck, and repeated failures -- almost like the devs thought
it’d be cool to redo the Navarro fight from Drake’s
Fortune over and over. More than any
other game so far, Drake’s Deception skews
toward unfair enemy placement and unaccommodating arenas; sometimes it’s less
about adapting to situations and more about knowing exactly what moves to
make. You know, unless you feel like
enduring an instant kill and being forced to start a sequence over again.
Wait.
Flashbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack…
…To nothing.
I don’t even know why I brought that up.
Stealth in the game is still not great. Once again,
you’re occasionally given opportunities to sneak through areas and dispatch
enemies quietly. You know the drill:
sneak from cover to cover, wait for baddies to sneak into your attack range,
and snap their necks one they expose their backsides. (Or you can slam them against walls and
junk.) You can whittle down their
numbers, but unless you’re an ultra-skilled ninja, you probably won’t be able
to get rid of everyone.
The levels aren’t conducive to it, both in terms
of layout and enemy placement; the odds are much higher for you to be spotted
by enemies you’ve got no chance of spotting beforehand. To be fair, I was under the impression that
using the default punching instead of a stealth kill would immediately alert
everyone, but that’s not the case. With that said, you can get caught
easily thanks to animations that lock Drake into a stealthy attack, and make
him that much easier to spot. So begins
another firefight, where it’s less about skill and more about testing your
endurance. And patience.
Melee combat is back, of course, but despite its
tweaks and greater emphasis it feels decidedly worse than before. I long for the days when you could succeed
just by hitting Square, Triangle, Square for a Brutal Combo; now it’s as
mechanical as it is annoying. The two
big wrinkles this time around are environmental attacks and grappling. In the former’s case, you can do more damage
to a foe by attacking them (with the Square button) near something interactive
or static in a level. You can bash guys
while they’re pressed against walls or tables, or you can grab stuff like fish
or bottles to wallop them. I say can, because -- with this being more
attuned to shooting -- you’re not given a lot of opportunities to start a big
brawl…well, in theory.
The major drawback comes from the new grappling
system. The Circle button is mapped to a
grab you can use to toss baddies around or away from you -- and if they lay
their hands on you, then you have to mash to break their hold. But the problem is that melee encounters are
even harder to break away from because there’s so much mapped to one
button. Grappling, dodge-rolling, and
getting into cover are all done with Circle, and the game doesn’t know which
one you want to do until you’re a corpse.
Moreover, melee combat is not fun in this game (or
Among Thieves, by proxy). Despite the shifting, “cinematic” camera
angles, the fighting is beyond rudimentary.
All the dynamic visuals and slo-mo in the world can’t mask the fact that
you beat everyone just by mashing Square until an enemy drops.
Although…something about that makes me feel
nostalgic…
Well, whatever.
I’m in the present.
The fastest way (if not the only way) to beat
baddies in a melee fight is to mash Square.
Occasionally you’ll have to hit Triangle to counter telegraphed moves,
and occasionally you’ll have to mash Circle to break grabs. It’s not a nuanced system, and there’s an
inherent flaw: barring sequences where you’re forced into hand-holding fights
against goons and big guys (because delusions of Hollywood grandeur), there’s
absolutely no reason why you should prefer melee combat to gunplay. This is why the Brutal Combo system helped in
the first game; it incentivized a punch-up because it could potentially give
you more ammo in a pinch, AND it offered up a quick way to resolve close-range
battles.
In Drake’s
Deception, there’s no incentive. Why
would you ever venture out of cover and take fifteen or thirty seconds to beat
up one dude when you can safely kill them in less than a third of the time via
that magical thing we call a gun? I ask
this, because if you get into a fistfight, other enemies will still shoot at
you. You can’t roll your way out of
those fistfights, and you can’t really walk away, either; you’re locked in and
have to end it as quickly as possible.
(It doesn’t help that the wonky movement makes it just as likely to
accidentally enter fistfights instead of escaping them.)
The most reliable way I ended brawls prematurely
-- and even then, with a middling success rate -- was to mash X to try and jump
away from an opponent. It kind of works,
but it exposes another problem: Drake has to redraw his gun, slowly, and then aim at a foe, slowly.
How is it that a franchise that idolizes the Indiana Jones movies gets it so wrong so frequently?
So no, there isn’t a single element of the combat
that I find exciting. The exploration is
still basically the best part of the game and the franchise at large, but it’s
A) lost its allure across three separate games, and B) is in service of a
franchise that’s basically beneath it.
Platforming with Drake still feels messy and imprecise; the game seems
to arbitrarily decide what gaps Drake can clear and where he can land, and
which drops -- however minor -- turn him into the secret unlockable costume,
Street Pizza Drake. Puzzles still offer
a change of pace, but there’s no satisfaction to be had from challenges where
the answers are laid out to you from the start via Drake’s notebook. It doesn’t feel like I’m solving
anything. It just feels like the same
process over and over again.
Step 1: Ask “What should I do here?”
Step 2: Look at stuff.
Step 3: Say “Oh, I guess I should do that here.”
Step 4: Solve puzzle via climbing and/or busywork.
And really, what’s it all for? The environments in this game are cool, but I
don’t want to explore them with a shitlord like Drake and his merry band of
assholes. He doesn’t care about the
world around him, so even if the player wants to enjoy the sights and sounds of
a lavishly-rendered, multimillion-dollar world, they can’t because they have to
get railroaded into the next bit of “action”.
It’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist all
over again; the devs made a beautiful world ready for exploration and
interaction, but I can’t engage with it because Naughty Dog thinks I want to
play a terrible game with an even more terrible plot.
I feel like this whole game -- if not the whole
franchise -- exists to carry players toward the next big “fist-pumping”
sequence. And I pretty much have to put
that in quotations, because virtually every time Uncharted tries to induce thrills -- often by wresting control from
the player -- it completely falls flat.
Or it gets run into the ground via repetition. I should’ve done this from the outset, but
for Drake’s Deception I decided to
try and keep a running tally at how many times something would collapse/fall
from under/bend thanks to Drake. And you
know what? I actually lost count. It’s
more than thirty, I can tell you that much.
But that number is taken from a point well before the climax.
Setpieces are back once again, but the veneer has
practically faded away. I don’t have
anything against spectacle, but it has to be good, and it has to be
deserved. Earned. I’m not going to clap my hands like a
brain-dead seal just because there’s lots of noise and explosions on the
screen. I’m certainly not going to do it
if the setpieces aren’t good enough -- and they aren’t good enough, because some of them are copy-pasted from Among Thieves. You shoot at guys while hanging from a
precarious position, again. You jump
from one speeding truck in an enemy convoy to the next, again. You escape from a crumbling ancient city,
again. And as always, there are
sequences where you have to run at the camera to escape from danger -- whether
it’s killer spiders (repeated twice) or a verifiable tidal wave.
So, like…does anyone reading this remember Metal Gear Rising?
That game is good for a lot of reasons, most of
which are based on the fact that it does the opposite of the Uncharted games. True, MGR
also makes use of some scripted sequences and setpieces, but does them
better; for starters, the spectacle is original and stylish, and impossible to
reproduce in virtually any other universe.
More importantly, though? The
spectacle and setpieces are actively made into part of the gameplay in a
palpable way. To put it simply, the
setpieces aren’t just “move as you normally would, only with in-game triggers
making stuff happen around you” or “run away from the thing that’s only a
threat if you forget how to use a control stick”; the boss fights themselves
are what contain the most action, earned by both the characters’ efforts and
the player’s skill.
It’s the mission of every piece of fiction out
there to put up an illusion -- to pull audiences out of the real world and into
an imaginary one. That holds true for
games, because they suck their players into a rhythm that can’t be broken. But not all of them can excel at that. MGR does
because its spectacle is made into an active part of the experience; by and
large, you’re still playing, and living through epic action without agency
being wrested from you. Uncharted doesn’t because its spectacle
is passive. Cruise control gameplay
begets cruise control setpieces; the second you realize that the action can be
cleared just by holding the stick in a direction, you realize that it’s all a
bunch of smoke and mirrors.
But it gets worse.
It gets way worse.
You could say this about the other Uncharted games, but it comes to a head
in Drake’s Deception. Naughty Dog was so hell-bent on pumping up
their third game with spectacle -- on following CliffyB’s mantra of “bigger,
better, and more badass” -- that I’m convinced absolutely NO thought went into
making sure the setpieces actual have contextual relevance. Or, to put it simply: they just threw shit in
and never stopped to ask “Wait, does this make sense?” The simplest answer is that it doesn’t.
I can pinpoint the exact moment when the game just
dies.
Granted, it was already bleeding out on the floor before that, but I’ll
get to that earlier section in a bit.
For now, I have to talk about a scene when Drake and Sully are in Syria
to find Chloe and Cutter. They find them
quickly, of course, but so do the bad guys.
Cue a scene where two of Marlowe’s men rush Drake while he’s exploring a
tower. They’re in a narrow hallway at
least ten stories up, and one of the dudes decides to use a grenade point-blank
to kill Drake.
The grenade explodes. The wall gets blown out, and all three men
are thrown into a fall. The two goons
bite it, presumably. But Drake? Drake, despite being INCHES away from the
grenade’s blast -- keeping in mind that this is the same franchise where
getting blown up at that range nearly killed Elena -- doesn’t take any damage from it.
Not only that, but he just so
happens to be flung out the hallway and onto a chain that just so happens to be hanging from the
side of the tower, and just so happens to
have a clear route back to the interior.
The fucker isn’t even winded by any of that.
I stared at the screen for minutes on end --
literally agape, with the pad dangling limply in my hand. I couldn’t believe that it had actually
happened. I couldn’t believe that
someone thought that sequence was a good idea, much less committed to virtual
film. Like…how do you even write or
storyboard a scene like that? “Drake gets
blown out of a tower thanks to a grenade detonating in his face, but he
survives without a scratch and grabs onto a chain hanging conveniently on the
outside wall of the tower.”
It’s like…Naughty Dog, do you just want to make
cartoons? Why don’t you just make
cartoons? You seemingly have no grasp of
verisimilitude or reality in general, so why don’t you stick to what you clearly excel at and stop pretending
otherwise? Is this just the company
mantra? Is this their M.O.? Is this their ninja way? It’s as if they have a plaque hanging up in
their headquarters that just says “Nothing has to make sense or connect in any
organic way! Logical and emotional
grounding is for bitches! You can just
do whatever you want as long as it leads to cool moments and is backed by
cinematic visuals! Now to sit back and
let the GOTY awards roll in by the truckload!”
This rant is making me think back to something.
I’ll think of it someday.
The more reasonable -- if cynical -- answer to my
woes is that Naughty Dog just didn’t give a shit. I know I try to be fair to devs and the men
and women behind them, and I try to respect the effort that goes into making
even the most basic product, but I’m seriously out of sympathy for this company
and this series. This is the third game
in a lauded, popular, financially successful, big-budget franchise, and yet
they couldn’t be bothered to make a plot that isn’t copy-pasted almost entirely
from Among Thieves…which in its own
right was copy-pasted from Drake’s
Fortune.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Drake finds himself getting into some shady
business while he’s on the lookout for treasure. Naturally, he stumbles -- conveniently --
upon a lead that’ll take him straight to a hidden bounty (bonus points for it
being Sir Francis Drake’s exploits, just like the first game…though that begs
the question of why we’re only just now hearing about a treasure Drake’s wanted
for decades). A batch of villains that
doubles as a private army also wants the bounty, and Drake out of the way…even
though multiple opportunities to kill him are ignored. Cue a globetrotting adventure where Drake
explores ancient ruins, solves puzzles, and finds more conveniently-placed clues
that lead him to the next stage of the game area to investigate.
Despite constant arguments with his companions
about whether or not he should do anything, Drake soldiers on…even if it means
leading the baddies closer to the bounty.
Speaking of which, Drake discovers that the bounty is actually some
dangerous weapon from the past that can be misused. Drake finds the lost city he’s been looking
for alongside the bounty -- and he destroys it, along with the lost city in
question. Drake and pals make it out
alive, and toss around jokes with a sunset backdrop -- with Elena in tow as his
reward for single-handedly acting as an archaeologist’s nightmare and
one-man embodiment of genocide saving the day. Speaking of, Elena continues to suck.
Obviously, I consider the grenade sequence to be a
game-breaker in a lot of ways. One of
them carries over directly into the story: there are no real consequences for
Drake to face throughout the entirety of Drake’s
Deception. Oh, sure, he’ll get
kidnapped by pirates, but he’ll murder his way through all of them. He’ll get lost at sea, but he’ll wash up on just the shore he needs to be on to
advance the plot. He’ll wander through a
desert for several days, but once it’s time for the gunplay to happen, he’s
perfectly fine. And just like the last
game, he’ll be saved by a skilled local native when there’s even the slightest
chance he could fail. (Let’s not dwell
on the implications here.) He’s
indestructible, which means that the illusion of danger from the setpieces
completely vanishes. No danger and no
stakes = no quality.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the game’s
treatment of Sully. I’ve said before
that Sully’s probably the best character in the whole franchise -- or if not
that, then certainly my favorite of the bunch.
Things are at their best when he and Drake are clowning around; since I
knew going in that Drake’s Deception had
the highest Sully concentration, I assumed that it would mean the third game
would be the best. Unfortunately, it
just served as a reminder that there are no consequences, and thus no reason
for any excitement or concern for anything that happens.
Elena foreshadows pretty heavily that Drake’s
antics are putting the people he cares about most at risk, which would imply
that Sully ends up biting it thanks to Nate’s mistakes. It’s true that Sully ends up getting
kidnapped by Marlowe and crew, but he still makes it to Iram, the Atlantis of
the Sands, in one piece. One would think
Sully’s kidnapping would offer up a chance for Nate to reflect on his actions,
and realize the error of his ways. And
indeed, a little ways into Iram it looks as if Sully got shot to death by
Talbot…only for it to be revealed a bit later that it was all a hallucination
brought about by drinking tainted water.
(Which also leads to fighting imaginary psycho-soldiers, but this
franchise has shown consistently that no supernatural force prepared for the
advent of the gun.)
Sully doesn’t actually die, and he and Nate walk
away from Iram (a city Nate destroys, because fuck archaeology) with just a few
scrapes and dirt. Meanwhile, everyone
who came even tangentially close to crossing them is dead. Marlowe even sinks to the bottom of a
conveniently-placed pool of quicksand…although Drake, “hero” that he is, tried
to save her. Just in case you forgot
he’s totally a good guy despite all the murder and selfish motivations. Also, let’s take a moment to soak up the
irony; Drake imagines Sully’s death and goes on a slightly-angrier killing
spree than usual. Marlowe actually dies
and Talbot -- as the parallel protégé -- goes berserk…but not one second was
spent considering the implications. Not
even one.
I’d think (or hope) that Drake at least lost some
money thanks to his venture, as he did in Among
Theives. If he didn’t, then it would
mean that he doesn’t have the impetus needed to say “Gee, maybe my obsession
with travelling the world in search of treasure left buried for a reason is
pretty self-destructive. I should give
it a rest.” He’s safe and sound, his
enemies are defeated -- i.e. dead -- and Sully, Chloe, and Cutter are all
alive. (Granted Cutter broke his leg due
to a fall and had to be removed from the story -- coinciding with his actor
being forced to bail and work on The
Hobbit -- but he came stupidly close to biting it.)
What really gets to me is that Elena ends up
emphasizing the lack of consequences even further. Let’s set aside the fact that she’s bland at
best and annoying at worst (or often, depending on your point of view). Likewise, let’s ignore that for the third
time in a row, she’s forced to be an accomplice to murder and ostensibly break
all sorts of international laws just to help out a criminal she finds
dreamy. Once again, Drake and Elena had
a falling-out off-screen that led to them splitting up, only for them to
reconnect by story’s end (because delusions of Hollywood grandeur). This time, however, it apparently happened
after Drake proposed to her.
So basically, Drake left Elena with nothing but
the ring on her finger to go chase after some ancient bounty, putting himself
and his mentor in danger for the sake of something he can’t even be sure
exists. But despite that -- despite only
the vaguest traces of onscreen chemistry -- Elena still helps Drake out in his
mission, offers him support, and is right there at the end despite him putting
her in danger again. Seriously, Drake
makes a big speech near the end about how he doesn’t want to risk her life, but
this is after he had her risk her life to help him sneak onto Marlowe’s cargo
plane. She even offers him a lap to
sleep on after his little pirate adventure…even though he probably needed a
doctor, and desperately, but I guess Mr. Invincible can just sleep off his
drift across the ocean. And of course,
she’s right there to welcome him back with open arms…AFTER he finished his
little adventure.
Okay, soooooooooooo…I don’t like Drake, and I
can’t say I like Elena either. But even
if I was neutral toward the two of them, I feel like this is kind of a
messed-up relationship. Nate abandons
Elena for a selfish quest with no guarantee of success, a chance at financial
ruin, and potential -- if not regular -- dealings with the criminal underworld. He only calls her up to help further his selfish quest, and gets her involved
as well as pulled into firefights against scores of trained gunmen.
I'm sure it's fine. It's not as if Elena almost got blown up in the last game.
Then he abandons her again to go save his pal
Sully -- someone he ended up endangering because for some reason he thought
he’d trust plot-critical information solely to Sully, despite no precedent for it throughout three
separate games -- and only crawls back to her once his search for Sir Francis
Drake’s treasure is a bust. And she
takes him back. Despite all of that. Despite the fact that the mere THOUGHT of
abandoning someone you supposedly love, let alone the act of it, is the
greatest sin a man could make. I’d like
to think that I’m a patient and forgiving person, but if I were Elena, I
would’ve told Drake to fuck off and never look back -- not act as his enabler from
start to finish.
And it would be fine -- or at least a little
better -- if this, the third game in the franchise, actually gave us a
legitimate reason as to why Drake keeps endangering himself and his closest
friends on his treasure hunts. The game
even shines a spotlight on that, with several characters asking why he does
what he does. And yet, even with three
games down, there hasn’t been a single clear reason for Drake’s motivation. No explanation, no train of thought. The most I can get out of it is that our
“hero” just shrugs, smirks, and goes “Why not?”
Or, when pressed on the subject, his answer -- if not his mindset --
basically boils down to “Come
ooooooooooooooooooon. What are you,
scared?”
And not even that meager bit is consistent. Throughout this whole franchise, there’s been
a flip-flop of who says what; sometimes Drake will be the one who says “What
are you, scared?” And other times, it’ll
be another character -- like Elena -- who tells him to keep going for
unexplained reasons. It’s basically the
same conversation over and over (repeated about three times in Drake’s Deception), and despite seeming
like something substantial, nothing ever comes of it. It’s lip service. It’s filler.
It’s all a bunch of nonsense to convince the audience that the conflict,
internal and external, is bigger than it is.
Drake’s
Deception acts like it wants to characterize Drake, but it’s still woefully
inadequate -- partly because it’s the third game in a four-year span trying to
add depth to a character that’s basically had none. Even then, I don’t feel like I learned a
damn thing about the inner workings of this character despite spending what
might be a good twenty-five hours with the franchise. Like, I had high hopes for the game because
it has a flashback chapter featuring Kid Drake -- because I thought it’d peel
back the layers to show who he really is.
And it didn’t. It’s almost as if
a twenty-year disconnect from the meat of the game is ultimately
inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
It kind of makes you wonder…
…About nothing.
Let’s continue.
I guess the big takeaway from the flashbacks (and
the third game at large) is that Drake isn’t the descendant of the legendary
Sir Francis, but just someone pretending to have a famous bloodline so he can
feel better about himself. I’m not
entirely sure how hunting after ancestral bounties is supposed to compensate
for the fact that he was a poverty-stricken inductee into a boarding school/escapee
from a broken home -- especially since Sir Francis “buried” so many of his
secrets -- but whatever. Also, why he’d
choose to define himself as a treasure-hunting criminal for the past twenty
years is similarly suspect, but double-whatever. The important takeaway is that Kid Drake is
also a smart aleck thief with an improbable skill set, unclear motivations, and
a taste for murder in gameplay…but can’t pull the trigger when he’s in a
cutscene, because fuck gameplay and story integration.
And really, what does seeing Drake’s origin (such
as it is) add to the game or the understanding of the character? He starts off trying to steal a centuries-old
treasure from a museum, which would be riveting if he didn’t do that exact same
thing as an adult at the start of Among
Thieves. We see how he met Sully and
became his protégé, but their relationship and bond was basically understood
well before that point (though it’s worth noting that Sully says he’ll always
be there for Nate, despite bailing out early into Among Thieves). The most
substantial thing to come out of it is setting up Marlowe as the game’s
villain.
By default, she is the best of the three
villains. Being around Sully’s age, she
doesn’t exactly get a lot of opportunities to go head-to-head with Nate (though
that makes her a Rule 63 version of Gabriel Roman from Drake’s Fortune, especially since he also had a younger right hand man to fight as the last boss). But at the very least, she’s the only
character who opts to hurt Drake psychologically instead of physically, since
she knows his origins better than Roman or Lazarevic.
The groundwork is there for a strong villain and
rivalry, but nothing substantive really materializes from it. It certainly doesn’t help that she’s removed
from hours upon hours of the game, which means she only has enough time to be a
stock upper-class British villainess. And
she gets sucked into the sand because…uh…come to think of it, why did she
decide to head to Iram personally? Given
its desert location, wouldn’t she want to delegate from the safety and comfort
of an office?
Ah, why am I even asking such a valid question? Naughty Dog acted like it didn’t give a shit,
so why should I?
Here’s the proof that they were on autopilot from
start to finish. Early on, Drake and his
pals gain a lead on the Atlantis of the Sands, largely by combining his and
Marlowe’s MacGuffins and making use of related clues. As a result, he figures out where they need
to go -- or at least narrows it down to two locations: France and Syria. Drake and Sully opt for France, and proceed
to a long-lost chateau to find the plot more clues. After a while, they stumble upon a nasty
surprise: Marlowe’s men are on the scene, fully-equipped and ready to murder
their way to victory.
Question: how did they know where Drake and the
others went? Only the four “heroes” were
present for the assembly of both MacGuffins.
They had the clues, and all of the power; conversely, Marlowe had
none. So that means Marlowe lost. The trail ran
cold for her. There was no way she or
her goons could’ve figured out where Nate went -- so of course, Naughty Dog Teleportation™ spawns a small army
on-site. The only justification given is
a throwaway line where Drake says “They must have followed us.” I’m not sure how they pulled that off, given
that they could barely even find you when you snuck around their base. So the only explanation is that Drake and
crew are incompetent idiots…despite them being professionals in the art of
thievery, plunder, infiltration, and general misdemeanors.
I didn’t say it was a good explanation.
That’s basically the whole game’s M.O. Some of the stupidest and most contrived
things I’ve ever seen in a video game will happen because this event or that plot point
has to happen -- even if it means warping the narrative to make that
happen. The plane sequence is one of the
most famous moments of Drake’s Deception,
since it features our “hero” struggling to stay safe inside a wide-open and
busted-up plane. But while a trailer
will show you such an “epic” setpiece, it won’t show you the reason for it. Get this: after sneaking onto Marlowe’s cargo
plane, Drake decides it’d be a good idea to leave his safe zone and start
exploring, only to get spotted immediately.
But then, instead of the goon snagging his gun and
shooting him immediately, he decides it’d be cool to open the main hatch and throw
Drake out of it, because fuck good ideas.
But then, Drake decides it’d
be a good idea to unload all of the cargo -- which ends up doing more damage to
the plane and inducing some explosive decompression -- just so he could have it
slam into a guy he’d already basically killed.
So basically, the scene is started off by sheer
idiocy, and the only reason Drake survives is because he slams into a random
crate with a parachute and drifts safely to the desert below…while everyone
else on the plane presumably dies. But
hey, gotta get him into the desert scene featured on the box and promo art
somehow, right? You can take as many
shortcuts as you want as long as it leads to a cool setpiece! That’s the Naughty Dog way!
People have taken issue with the boat/pirate ship
segment of the game before, and I’m 100% in agreement. It’s got the “thrilling” “action” you’d
expect gameplay-wise, coupled with one of the most frustrating firefights in
the entire franchise to date (because it demands memorization, luck, and basic
clairvoyance). Likewise, playing in
arenas where water becomes a factor -- and makes you bob up and down so your
aim gets disrupted -- isn’t what I’d call pleasant. But while the gameplay is annoying enough,
it’s the circumstances surrounding it that make the sequence even more
annoying.
Like I said earlier, Drake entrusts Sully with
crucial information -- a proverbial map of the stars that’ll lead to Iram --
for reasons I have yet to understand.
Like, he just tells Sully to memorize everything in a couple of seconds
and doesn’t bother to write it down.
Why? Presumably, it’s so the plot
can happen; Drake gets nabbed by Marlowe, but since he doesn’t have the info
she needs, that puts Sully in direct danger.
Note that Nate telling Sully to keep that vital info comes just minutes after Elena pulled our “hero” to
say his antics are putting Sully at risk.
And he’s even more at risk because that crucial info paints a target on
the old man’s back.
What’s even
more irritating is the fact that the game pretends like the sea adventure
-- wherein Nate gets taken in by pirates -- acts as it it’s relevant to the
plot when it clearly isn’t. For whatever
reason, he’s convinced that the pirates have Sully locked up somewhere on their
ship, and is genuinely surprised to
find a dummy in his stead. But think
about it: why would the pirates ever have Sully? Marlowe dumped Nate off to get rid of him;
since Nate’s useless, she needs Sully
to fulfill her ambitions, so there’s no reason why she would ever hand him over
to the pirates. Why would the game even
entertain the thought of Sully being in the pirates’ care, especially since
they interrogate Nate about the treasure’s location?
Remarkably, things get even more irritating. Not only does Drake saunter deep into enemy
territory to find Sully -- and walk into a trap -- but he’s also directly
responsible for the big “sinking ship” sequence. He pulls a grenade off some dude (who
approached him despite being held at gunpoint, because fuck the concept of long
range), and it ends up getting thrown at the ship wall…which in turn blows up a
chunk of it, and makes the ship start to sink.
But it’s fine, because it’s something Drake can escape from easily. All he has to do is survive improbable
collisions, have stuff fall from under him, and run at the camera while
something chases him. As a side note: I
just love how the game FORCES you
into The Prometheus School of Running Away from
Things to escape a wave of water.
Try to turn when you have a clear opening? You die and have to start over. I just love it when games force you to play
in one exact, perfect way under penalty of death.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
I’ve got it.
This franchise is slowly killing me.
And by slowly, I mean I think I can see my flesh melting away.
So Drakes motivations basically boil down to what
might as well be a game of Truth or Dare.
What about the villains?
Honestly, I can’t believe that Drake’s
Deception pulled this: it’s revealed in the last hour, maybe hour and a
half, that Marlowe’s plan is to harvest the contaminant in Iram’s water to
create a fear drug that’ll more or less see use as the ultimate biological
weapon. Think of it as Scarecrow’s fear
gas, and you’re pretty much there.
Sounds terrifying right? I mean, if you ignore the fact that A)
Marlowe’s been behind Team Drake for most of the game, and arguably shouldn’t
know anything extensive about Iram’s secret, and B) she couldn’t even be 100%
sure there was anything to find in the desert, thereby blowing what might as
well be millions in expedition costs.
And as a corollary, if it turned out Sir Francis Drake just hid a big
treasure, how does that help out someone presumably rolling in dough already?
But here’s the main problem: Marlowe already has the ultimate biological weapon. Talbot has shot up Drake and crew with toxins
throughout the entire game, forcing them to hallucinate, go nuts, and even obey
the commands of the baddies. It sounds
like some magic bullshit to me, but this is a game that’s already featured
zombifying gas and regenerative tree sap, so it’s fine. But I don’t understand why Marlowe and Talbot
need to go to Iram if they’ve already used their magic drug to great effect in
the past.
And since the full extent of the drug (up to and
including its quantity) is never explained, there’s no telling why they need to
go on this risky venture…or why they aren’t always using it. Hell, I’m still not even sure why they need
to bother with getting a magic drug; they seem to have infinite manpower,
resources, weaponry, connections, and diplomatic immunity already, so haven’t
they already technically won? I
seriously hope the game isn’t implying that Marlowe spent twenty years of her
life searching for a golden goose when she already had ample opportunities to
control the planet from the comfort of a spiffy chair. Even if she didn’t, the whole venture strikes
me as entirely pointless.
And honestly?
I’m inclined to say that’s the game in a nutshell.
I don’t know if Naughty Dog planned for Uncharted to be a trilogy from the
outset, or if the success and AAA-dominated market forced them to rely on
safe-bet sequels. If Drake’s Deception wasn’t planned, then I
can see why; crowbarring in Marlowe, Nate’s “origin”, a secret use for Nate’s
ring, and another heretofore
unmentioned treasure of Sir Francis Drake seems like plenty of evidential
material. If Drake’s Deception WAS planned, then I weep for the devs and
everyone involved.
No lessons have been learned. No evolutions have been made. No progress has transpired. Things either stayed the same over the course
of four years, or got progressively worse -- because of baffling changes to an
already-flawed foundation, or an absolute refusal to work on inherent
problems. And I know that it takes
effort to make a game. I know it takes
passion. Creating anything takes time
and dedication, so I hate that I have to hate a creation Naughty Dog put so
much into. But part of making a good
creation is having the skill and wisdom -- the discipline -- to know what should be added, and what shouldn’t.
At no point in Drake’s
Deception -- and retroactively, throughout the three main Uncharted games -- did I get a sense of
that discipline. The franchise got off
to a rough start, as far as I’m concerned.
The second game offered a chance to improve, but squandered that potential
and staunchly refused to work on underlying problems for the sake of masking
them with “high-adrenaline” sequences -- which ultimately feel unearned without
a strong narrative core to ground them.
And with this, the third game -- a game that would help ensure that the
franchise would sell more than 21 million copies -- those problems were put
under the magnifying glass.
Playing Drake’s
Fortune left me disappointed.
Playing Among Thieves left me
furious. Playing Drake’s Deception left me dead inside. Killing Talbot in a rudimentary boss
fight/setpiece was a souring experience, but immediately lifted my
spirits. Once the trophy notifications
popped up, I had finally been freed. The
shackles dropped from my ankles, and I could move on to other games. Better games.
Games that respected my intelligence.
Games that delivered on their promises.
Games with mechanical complexity. Games with challenge and gratification. Games with artistry woven into every
frame. Games with pride and confidence
-- with the delight in being games, and being the very best they could be.
Maybe someday, Naughty Dog will make a modern game
that’s truly worthy of the pedigree. But
until that day comes, they really should just stick to making cartoons. They might as well; they are the guys behind Jak and Daxter.
Wait a minute…Jak
and Daxter?
THESE ARE
THE GUYS THAT MADE THE LAST OF US!
OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
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