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GameSpot: Uncharted 3 Is Still The Most Important Entry 10 Years Later

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


What makes Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception the most important game in the series? DeVante Chisolm takes a look at how Uncharted 3 lived up to its predecessor, what it did for the franchise and how it holds up in a post-Uncharted 4 world.

November 1st, 2021, marks the 10th anniversary of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and even though Uncharted 2 and 4 are widely held up as the best in the series, Uncharted 3 is the most important for Nate’s development. If each game boils down to searching for treasure, then Uncharted 3 was the first to include the subtext of Nate searching for himself.

In this videos, DeVante celebrates the anniversary of Nathan Drake’s third adventure and revisits Uncharted 3 to see what makes it so special.

Uncharted 3 originally released on PS3 in 2011, but is now available on PS4/PS5 via The Nathan Drake Collection. The game will also come to PC in early 2022 via the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.

TIME STAMPS:
00:00 - INTRO
01:13 - Among Success
02:46 - Drake’s Development
07:27 - A Video’s End
09:29 - OUTRO
 

ZehDon

Member
November 1st, 2021, marks the 10th anniversary of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and even though Uncharted 2 and 4 are widely held up as the best in the series, Uncharted 3 is the most important for Nate’s development.
Lol, what? Who is holding up Uncharted 4 above Uncharted 2 as the best in the series? Uncharted 2 is - almost universally - considered the best of the series by a not-small-and-rather-large margin. U4 split the audience - 70/30 in favour of positive reception - and attempted to trade the "fun" for "emotions". Uncharted 2 is the Uncharted.

I liked Uncharted 3 a lot - it's definitely better than 1 and 4 - but it shit the bed in the last quarter. I didn't mind it's attempt to do more with the characters, but it's really not that "important". The character plot points were little more than a distraction from what made Uncharted 2 so great - a pure rollercoaster adventure of a lifetime that had you glued to your PlayStation - and it left Uncharted 3 feeling like a lesser sequel that didn't quite hit the same highs. It's got great moments, still, and is a worthwhile entry.
 
I don't think U4 is on the same tier as 2.
gollum GIF
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I disagree, uc3 had a fair few issues, the drug induced level was not fun, tge game dragged on a bit, visually I think it looked worse then UC2 and they changed the aiming and gunplay so it felt worse, i think they did change this though or gave an option to change it.

UC4 is the best uncharted, no silly supernatural crap, best graphics, gameplay and story.
 

Kupfer

Member
Uncharted 2 is not as good as I rembered. I tried to replay it recently and I quit entering Shambala. The funny natives are a massive turnoff.
I'm afraid that I'll feel the same way about Uncharted 3 and that my 10 years younger self from back then simply had a different perception.
On the other hand, Uncharted 3 had more interesting setpieces, so maybe i'll just try it again.
 
I like all of Uncharted 1-4, but if I want to rewind back to 2007, I play the original Uncharted.
 
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Hydroxy

Member
Uncharted 2 for me as well. 3 was just more of the same while 2 was a huge improvement over 1,I really disliked 1 but loved 2. I liked 3 as well but not as much as 2. I haven't played 4 so waiting for PC version
 

Toots

Gold Member
There was one moment i loved in U3 i guess more than anything in U2 or any uncharted for that matter, it was when you arrived in Iram. Seeing the lost city from up top, with all the time in the world to take it in, unlike in U2 where you're under fire and rushed the moment you step foot in Shambala, was the best moment of uncharted for me. U2 is better as a whole, but the sense of wonder i got from this moment was peak uncharted for me.

They kind of went that way in U4 with like a third of the game taking place in the Libertalia, and i found it great when i played it, and it makes for great vistas, but there's something missing about it, it's not as powerful as discovering Iram in U3.

edit : "But the sense of wonder..." not "Nut the sense of wonder..." I liked the game but not that much :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
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I don't think U4 is on the same tier as 2.
gollum GIF
Yes way too walky talky not enough shooty bang bang!

You see this in the body-count lol. Uncharted 4 is a 15 hour game with about 600 goons uncharted 1 to 3 are 10 hour games with 900 to 1000 dead goons at the end.

It's fine to have less combat but you need something interesting to replace it which uncharted doesn't have
 
Regardless of how enjoyable U3 was (together with all the Uncharted games)... no game is fucking "important"!!

What a crock of shit.

Games are toys. Even those with narratives that try to deal with more meaningful, mature themes and social commentary. They're still at their core just entertainment.

These stunningly self-indulgent VG media writers should be careful not to lose sight of that.

A gamer may personally find a game to be important to them in a sentimental sense, but that just means they really like the game. And that's fine, but they should say that and not try to dress it up in faux-intellectual sophistry by calling it "important". That's just utter creamy horse shit.
 
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Paasei

Member
I really liked part 3, but part 2 is still better. The graveyard for ships really hold up to being an amazing location, imo.
Uncharted 2 simply had it all. The train, the snow, the cities. Everything!
 

Rudius

Member
I've always liked better graphics and techniques in games, but I'm starting to think it's not worth it anymore. Just look at how many games they used to make and how many they make now. 3 Uncharteds and Last of Us on PS3, just one of each IP on PS4, and the PS5 will probably only get one game from Naughty Dog, maybe two, with the last one being a very late crossgen with PS6.
 
Regardless of how enjoyable U3 was (together with all the Uncharted games)... no game is fucking "important"!!

What a crock of shit.

Games are toys. Even those with narratives that try to deal with more meaningful, mature themes and social commentary. They're still at their core just entertainment.

These stunningly self-indulgent VG media writers should be careful not to lose sight of that.

A gamer may personally find a game to be important to them in a sentimental sense, but that just means they really like the game. And that's fine, but they should say that and not try to dress it up in faux-intellectual sophistry by calling it "important". That's just utter creamy horse shit.
I disagree. Games like Uncharted are not important in every day social commentary, but they are very important in terms of the videogame industry. Uncharted sets the literal train forward in terms of narrative story telling combined with awesome gameplay and player controlled set pieces. Nearly every bigger budget single player game that has come out since U2 has used this formula.Just look at Red Dead 2 for example, one of the biggest budgeted and critically acclaimed games of all time, takes the same formula as U2 and drops it in an open world.
 
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I disagree. Games like Uncharted are not important in every day social commentary, but they are very important in terms of the videogame industry. Uncharted sets the literal train forward in terms of narrative story telling combined with awesome gameplay and player controlled set pieces. Nearly every bigger budget single player game that has come out since U2 has used this formula.Just look at Red Dead 2 for example, one of the biggest budgeted and critically acclaimed games of all time, takes the same formula as U2 and drops it in an open world.

We're into a semantic argument here.

Those big genre-defining games are influential, yes. They're not important in absolute terms because no game is.

Importance, as a word singularly used, is never relative to the domain of the ascribed object of import. It's always intended to be absolute, otherwise, we devalue the word.

Relative importance is a phrasing more apt to this application in videogames, which is just too long to say and it's easier and probably more precise to use the term "influential" since that's what you're specifically discussing.
 
Seems like they just wrote this because it's the ten year anniversary. Everyone knows that Uncharted 2 is the game that put the series on the map. U3 is an afterthought
 

elliot5

Member
Lol, what? Who is holding up Uncharted 4 above Uncharted 2 as the best in the series? Uncharted 2 is - almost universally - considered the best of the series by a not-small-and-rather-large margin. U4 split the audience - 70/30 in favour of positive reception - and attempted to trade the "fun" for "emotions". Uncharted 2 is the Uncharted.

I liked Uncharted 3 a lot - it's definitely better than 1 and 4 - but it shit the bed in the last quarter. I didn't mind it's attempt to do more with the characters, but it's really not that "important". The character plot points were little more than a distraction from what made Uncharted 2 so great - a pure rollercoaster adventure of a lifetime that had you glued to your PlayStation - and it left Uncharted 3 feeling like a lesser sequel that didn't quite hit the same highs. It's got great moments, still, and is a worthwhile entry.
*raises hand*
 

Mabdia

Member
I don't think U4 is on the same tier as 2.
gollum GIF


Well... U4 is worse than Golden Abyss. If it can't hold against GA or even U1, can you imagine it being in the same league than U2?

That being said, U3 is a really good game. But Cloe looks really strange in this game.


I've always liked better graphics and techniques in games, but I'm starting to think it's not worth it anymore. Just look at how many games they used to make and how many they make now. 3 Uncharteds and Last of Us on PS3, just one of each IP on PS4, and the PS5 will probably only get one game from Naughty Dog, maybe two, with the last one being a very late crossgen with PS6.

This reality hits my head when I can have more fun playing FF VI than FF XIII and the "remake" of FFVIi.
 
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Kokoloko85

Member
Alot of U4 haters in here, to me it was easily more fun than U1/3 and Golden Abyass.
U4 —> U3. Better combat, better gunplay, better animations, I enjoyed the larger levels. Set Pieces and action scenes were just as good if not better. U4 story felt better than Uncharted 3’s Scooby Doo story

U3 is not the most important at all. Uncharted 2 is
 
Honestly? Uncharted 2 was better but Uncharted 3 had better setpieces. The plane sequence alone is probably where the original trilogy peaked tbh.
The problem is you can tell the game's story was written around the setpieces, the most notable cases?

When you're kidnapped, and you have to go through that ship graveyard...only to realize Sully wasn't there and a doll was in his place, lmao. Storywise we went there for honestly no reason. Just like there was no point in pretending Sully was there to begin with. The other one? That Talbot chase. It was not really in character for him to simply run away from you like his life depends on it. I remember feeling it made no sense. Later i watched a documentary where the producer said they prepared that chase without knowing who we would chase. They just wrote that person to be Talbot later, which is insane.

About the setpieces i'm talking about? As mentioned, the airplane, the ship part where you're in that storm, the ship graveyard, etc. The story was lackluster but damn the setpieces were a stepup from Uncharted 2 in every way.

About some comments here...i think Uncharted 4 is usually the game i see as being the best Uncharted right after Uncharted 2. It's usually about those 2.

That said...gotta give it to Uncharted 2. It was the game that changed Sony's 1st party output forever and their blueprint going forward.

Who doesn't remember watching this at E3 2009 and being blown away? This was it. This was the moment the PS3 started its redemption era (although lowkey it started with MGS4)



I also remember watching this i don't even know how many times back then:
 
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Hunnybun

Member
I think Uncharted 3 was the only one that I never played multiple times. I tried a couple of times but always got bored somewhere around the cruise ship.

It's the worst one IMO. So blatantly just plotted around the most spectacular set pieces they could dream up, you just never had a clear sense of the mission.

I love all the others, though. Even the first had a good story with a nice twist, a great sense of place, and one of the most memorable parts of the series when you're trapped in the bunker with the zombie things.
 
Uncharted 3!? I would say 2nd game fits that distribution better. In fact 3rd is the one started this whole unnecessary flashback sequence in ND games.
While I love uc3, i would have preferred it if the series kept its lack of self awareness light and fun adventure.

Uc4 has too much talking and discovery for its own good... Still great, but it gives credence to the "this is a walking simulator crowd"... TLoU 2 suffers from the same problem (to me this is its main problem) but it's still one of the best games released in the last gen.

UC2 is what solidified the recepy, UC3 bumped it a bit more, UC4 tries to be too adult... Took out a lot of action packed set pieces the series is known and loved for (there are still some, but they're less prominent). The new god of war has the same kind of problem compared to the old ones, it never goes all-out action with giant bosses, etc.
 

JoduanER2

Member
I disagree, uc3 had a fair few issues, the drug induced level was not fun, tge game dragged on a bit, visually I think it looked worse then UC2 and they changed the aiming and gunplay so it felt worse, i think they did change this though or gave an option to change it.

UC4 is the best uncharted, no silly supernatural crap, best graphics, gameplay and story.

For me U4 is the worst, the most boring.

U2>U3>U1>U4
 
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