What makes a good Uncharted game? Witty dialogue, well laid out cutscenes, challenging puzzles, and lots, and lots of treasure. But what about the series endearing protagonist, treasuring hunting Nathan Drake? Could the series carry on without his presence?
In a startling interview, Uncharted 4’s Creative Director Neil Druckmann sat down with The Sun and gave a statement that fans can only describe as a wake-up call:
We’ve been with this character for so long. He’s at the height of his popularity, so it’s not a good business decision. But I feel like the best way to honour him is to go out on top, to finish his story. Whether that’s it for Uncharted? I don’t know. At the end of the day Sony owns Uncharted and they can do whatever they want.
It didn’t end there. Druckmann dorve his point home by adding:
But with the end of this story, it will be really hard to do a sequel with Nathan Drake.
Many are taking this bombshell statement with the utmost seriousness and literal connotation; that this might be a subtle foreshadowing of Nathan Drake’s death in Thief’s End. Others, meanwhile, are taking the statement in a more textual manner, that yes it would be nigh impossible to find a character as relatable, humorous, and semi-meta as Nate. A lot of us can idealize these roaming, adventurous characters, but Nathan Drake was one of the first to make us think to ourselves, “I know what you mean, buddy.” Nathan’s pointed commentary on the sometimes over-the-top peril he finds himself in had all of us chuckling during our playthroughs. Nolan North’s priceless voice acting brought the character to life, and intrigued many of us, made us happy to watch cut scenes–unlike other games where the voice acting leaves us cringing, and the character’s emotions seemed wooden or alienated players to the point these characters became unrelatable or uninteresting. Nathan Drake is a character many people are invested in. Would we play an Uncharted game without Nathan?
Whether Nathan meets his literal end in a game titled, Thief’s End, or whether it merely means an end to his narrative, it is more than safe to say that Druckmann is right: an Uncharted game without Nathan Drake would feel hollow.
Expect the fourth and (perhaps) final installment to this popular third person shooter series on April 26th of this year, exclusively for the Playstation 4.