Around this time last year, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I played through Uncharted: The Lost Legacy for the first time. Uncharted is a game developed by Naughty Dog which now officially has five installments. The first four featured our loveable thief, Nathan Drake as the protagonist, while The Lost Legacy was the first game in the series to deviate from Nathan in order to showcase feisty Chloe Frazer as our new, female lead.
The Lost Legacy’s announcement trailer got me so hyped to play the game not only because Chloe, introduced in Uncharted 2, was one of my favorite characters, but also because Chloe would be paired up with Nadine Ross, the co-antagonist turned sole strider from Uncharted 4. Nadine is strong willed, she takes no nonsense from anyone, and she’s smart and practical enough to know when she’s outclassed. By the end of Uncharted 4, I had wanted to learn more about her character, but I didn’t think I would get the chance. Until The Lost Legacy.
I played the game. I loved it, then searched the web for reviews and analysis of the game to gauge whether it was well received by the gaming community. In doing so, I came across this post by Alice Bell from VideoGamer titled “How Uncharted: The Lost Legacy broke a promise it made to me.”
After reading the post, a few of Alice’s points left me scratching my head. And now, a year later, it is finally time that I write a response.
Before you continue, please note that I will be discussing spoilers for both Uncharted 4, and The Lost Legacy. Yes these games are over a year old, but one cannot be too careful. This is the last warning to turn away now if you have not completed the game and plan to do so in the future.
Alice summarizes that she was excited to play The Lost Legacy because it featured two strong female protagonists. But her experience was tainted after Sam Drake, Nathan’s older brother introduced in Uncharted 4, turned their duo into a trio.
She states, “Video games have not, classically, had as many female protagonists as male ones (though there have been a number of excellent ones recently)…I do relate to male protagonists differently, because they seem a little more removed from me.”
While it may be objectively true that there are more male protagonists than female ones in video games, this fact never had a chance to bother me emotionally. Several of the games I grew up playing had female characters that I identified with and looked forward to seeing, even it it was only one, like Tiny Kong in Donkey Kong 64, or Bianca the rabbit in Spyro: Year of the Dragon. When I was an impressionable teenager, these two video game ladies even helped to push me into the college career of Computer Science.
Even so, I, unlike Alice, have no problems relating to the abundance of male video game heroes because a character’s personality has a much stronger effect on me than their gender does when it comes to whether or not I can relate to them. For example, both Nathan Drake and Lara Croft are treasure hunting explorers, no doubt inspired by Indiana Jones, but I connect far more with Nathan because he’s funny and witty, while I always found Lara to be quite stiff or wooden. On the other hand, I do relate to Chloe much more closely than Nathan, because she’s not a hero, like Nathan seems to think that he is, and it makes the violent nature of a treasure hunter’s lifestyle fit her character in a more believable manor.
I do, however, understand where Alice is coming from. As a female gamer, I get excited when a good game with a playable female protagonist is released. But the difference is, I am not the least bit swayed or disappointed when “yet another game with a male hero” comes out. Whatever the implications are of a higher ratio of male to female protagonists, I simply do not know how to be bothered by that.
Alice continues to elaborate on how magnetic the dynamic is between Chloe and Nadine during the first two thirds of the game. I couldn’t agree with her more. Naughty Dog has an almost unparalleled ability to establish chemistry between their characters and bring their relationships to life. You can see the trust and friendship grow between Chloe and Nadine in their small gestures such as sharing jokes, exchanging useless but entertaining facts, and even in the way they instinctively reach out to each other for balance when a gush of wind almost knocks them off their ledge as they were admiring a marvelous view. The beauty is in the details, and Naughty Dog drops a lot of them.
Alice goes on to say that she was initially fine with Sam Drake’s appearance in The Lost Legacy because she liked him in Uncharted 4. Personally, I was annoyed with the character of Sam in Uncharted 4 because it caused discrepancies in Nathan and Sully’s past revealed in Uncharted 3. It seemed like a lazy idea to invent a brother all of a sudden solely for the plot of another game. The Lost Legacy, however, is the game that made me really love Sam, but we’ll get to those reasons soon enough. I have no issues with Alice’s initial evaluation of Sam; I solely note that they differ from mine.
No, my main issues with Alice’s post starts here:
“I expected it [Sam’s involvement] to lead up to a set piece: Chloe and Nadine rescue Sam, Sam leaves to get help, and then by the time he returns at the end of the game Chloe and Nadine will have already beaten the shit out of Asav and saved the day. Jolly good.”
Wait. Seriously? This one sentence has so many issues in their own separate categories, it baffles me how Alice came to this conclusion.
Nadine and Sam house a hatred of each other due to the events of the previous game. Now, the three of them are forced to put aside their differences in order to outsmart Asav and obtain the Tusk of Ganesh. The whole reason why Nadine is in this game in the first place is because Sam got captured, so Chloe left to get help and brought Nadine. Once Sam is rescued, why would he leave again to get help? Help for what? Nadine is the help. The three of them are in this together now, and the way that they all banter opens the door for excellent character development and exploration for all three of them.
And what a waste it would be of Sam’s character to merely get rescued, leave, and show up at the end for the party. He is the brother of the legendary Nathan Drake! If Naughty Dog gave him such a generic role, it would only confirm my opinion in Uncharted 4 that Sam never should have existed as the developers invented him for the creation of a dramatic story and now have no idea what to do with him.
Lastly, Chloe and Nadine did beat the pants off Asav and save the day. They had an epic battle on the train, jumping in between cars and mowing down bad guys in all its fiery glory! And where was Sam during this terrific ordeal? He helped to turn the railroad switch and was left behind to cover Chloe as she jumped back on to the crashing train, only to magically join up with the girls once all the danger was over. It was such an exciting and satisfying end to the game. My only critique would be that it was eerily – and likely purposefully – similar to Nathan’s iconic train battle during Uncharted 2, but that’s besides the point.
Alice does acknowledge that the girls save the day by stating that the game would have been much worse if Sam had been the hero. So I’m glad she (and I) got the exclusive girl’s fight we were hoping for. I find this next quote of hers to be quite interesting, however:
“The interesting thing is that, when I’ve asked people about it, everyone has agreed that Sam doesn’t add, but the women have said that he took something away. That they actively disliked him being in it. That Sam’s inclusion made the game less enjoyable for them. It’s a point of view that I think bears examining, not just because I share it.”
I don’t have this point of view. I believe Sam added an excellent dynamic to the game. He has surprisingly good character chemistry with both Chloe and Nadine. It was so entertaining to see Nadine express her hatred of Sam with every opportunity she got, but then you can see her start to view the bigger picture and warm up to him despite not wanting to. Nadine and Sam share subtle inside jokes that reference to Uncharted 4, which gives them a connection that even she and Chloe do not have. It makes me smile to see Nadine stifle a chuckle when Same makes a joke about Orca’s mullet, who was the lieutenant that betrayed Nadine for money in Uncharted 4. The reference goes way over Chloe’s head, and Nadine does not want to laugh with Sam, but Sam takes whatever cooperation he can get from Nadine. It’s a beautiful – and I would even say powerful – moment that lasts barely ten seconds, which would not be possible if it were not for Sam.
Nadine gets to the point where she saves Sam from drowning, when she easily could have justified leaving him to die, seeing as she and Chloe were about to drown themselves. She does this while she still hates him. By the end of the game, she’s familiar enough with Sam to playfully punch his arm when he jokes about losing the Tusk after all the trouble they went through to obtain it. His presence, much like Chloe’s, offers excellent character growth for Nadine.
Alice continues in her elaboration of her disappointment, “…When I played Uncharted: The Lost Legacy…it felt almost like a betrayal: I had been sold on, been promised, a women’s own adventure and Naughty Dog evidently may not even have realised they were making that promise.”
Alice feels she was promised a women’s own adventure? She needs all male characters to be excluded in order to have a fully enjoyable experience? This point might make a bit of sense if Uncharted had featured exclusively male characters in all four installments, but hello-o! Did you forget about Elena Fisher?! Elena is witty and quirky and she has been a core character of the Uncharted universe ever since Uncharted 1! Chloe was introduced in Uncharted 2 as a wonderfully complex anti-hero! And not only are both girls back for the adventure in Uncharted 3, the game even features a female villain! Granted, Katherine Marlowe could have been a stronger villain, but I like her for my own reasons.
With this logic, men should be disappointed with Uncharted 1 – 4 for the presence of characters like Elena, Chloe, Katherine and Nadine. You felt you were promised an all-female game but Naughty Dog in all its history has never even made an all-male game! Coco Bandicoot, Crash’s techy little sister has been sharing intel to beat bad guys since 1997! The Jak Trilogy of the 2000s featured awesome, kick-ass girls like Kiera, Ashelin, and (my personal favorite) Tess! And don’t get me started on how badass Ellie is in The Last of Us. Ellie is not even the only strong female character in that game.
I respect that Alice has a different opinion than me when it comes to Sam’s influence in The Lost Legacy, but I simply don’t understand how she arrived at these conclusions. The Lost Legacy may not be the objective best Uncharted game, but personally, it is my favorite, due in large part to the character growth of Chloe (my favorite character), the exploration of Nadine, and the surprise inclusion of Sam, to compliment the dynamic, and to give him a new sense purpose in the Uncharted universe.
That’s my two cents on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. What are your thoughts? Do you agree with Alice that Sam’s presence took away from the experience? Or do you agree with me that he helped to create more engaging interactions between the three? Leave me a comment below so that I can hear your opinions as well!
