Uncharted 4: A Thief's End Review

This is a review of the single-player story of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Look forward to our coverage of the multiplayer offering later down the line, after we've had some time to really experience it.

Drake’s growing old. His hair is greying, he’s bought a house with his wife, and he’s filing paperwork at the office. After gunning down half the world’s mercenaries in the pursuit and unsuccesful recovery of ancient treasure, Nate is living the quiet life. When his boss asks if he wants to head out to Malaysia to recover some sunken cargo, he declines - without the right permits, it’s a no go.

At home, Nate’s cluttered attic is littered with remnants of his past adventures - shards of the Cintamani stone, a silver skull, his old journals. The faces of previous adversaries hang from the ceiling as targets and a Nerf gun rests in a holster on the dresser. As much as he wants to stay away from that life, he yearns for it. Eating dinner with Elena, he stares at a framed image of a mountainous coastline on the mantle and loses himself.

Uncharted 4 kicks into gear when Sam turns up. Nate’s long thought dead brother - a handy way to dodge how he’s never mentioned once in the other games - has been missing for 15 years, and shows up out of the blue. In order to pay off a debt to a cartel boss, the brothers’ Drake restart their hunt for the $400 million treasure hoard of pirate captain Henry Avery.

I’m just going to start with this - Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is the best looking game I’ve ever seen. It’s simply incredible. Character models, environments, everything is an absolute industry best. While The Order: 1886 was praised for its visuals but had sacrificed its gameplay to achieve them, Naughty Dog have held nothing back for their latest product.

While still packing the spectacular set pieces and predilection for shootouts that the series is famous for, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End tells a far more personal story. Touching on more mature themes such as regret, loss, and longing - and with the performance capture to support it - Naughty Dog brings this new game more in line with The Last of Us in regards to storytelling. With body and facial scans recorded by the voice actors themselves, the level of detail is incredible and being able to convey all the nuance of human communication gives Uncharted 4 some of the most believable characters I’ve ever seen.

Uncharted cutscenes have typically been very exposition heavy, used primarily to push you onwards to the next climbing wall or killbox. Here, the pace gently decelerates and takes the time to explore the characters’ thoughts and emotions, typically toward topics other than “Where is the treasure?” and “Can I shoot another man yet?”. While in places the script can still be a little corny, Uncharted 4 often says more by the looks in the eyes and the subtle movements of its cast during the many quiet moments where the characters simply sit and talk things through.

The Last of Us’ inspiration can also be felt in the gameplay, with areas opening out more frequently and not being as restrictive as previous entries in the Uncharted series. Rather than a series of corridors, many areas in Uncharted 4 encourage exploration, with more nooks and crannys to search for and often offering multiple paths to the next scene.

A slight expansion of the basic stealth system seen in previous games blends well with the larger expanses. Nate can enter patches of tall grass and leafage to hide from guards, and silently take them down with melee executions. A gauge begins to fill when in sight, turning from white to yellow when they become suspicious, and orange when they become hostile. While not a massive leap from before, this added element adds tension to encounters - if you’re spotted, reinforcements are called in and a massive firefight erupts.

There are also some chapters that are absolutely massive, recalling memories of the best levels from the Halo games; you’re given a gigantic map, a destination, and a jeep - and as much time as you like to just roam around. The immediate plot takes a back seat, and the characters alongside you just chat while you search for collectables and minor combat encounters. While the driving controls feel a little shoddy, being let loose in an Uncharted game is cracking - and Naughty Dog would do well to keep these kinds of levels as a feature of future games.

You’ll be clambering up rocky cliff faces and scrambling up drain pipes as usual, but one of my few nitpicks about the series has been fixed. In Uncharted 3 especially, the path you had to take was typically shown by yellow paint, which I always found rather odd - who has gone around painting all these window sills and, more importantly, why have they done it? The path is not so heavily highlighted now, but instead the way the camera is positioned, the way that light is used, and the deliberate shape of the environments are used to naturally guide the eye in the correct direction.

The combat and shooting has been reworked and feels totally different to before. Feeling less like the headshot honcho he was last time, assault rifles spray sporadically and precision with the pistol is much harder to maintain. When firing an automatic weapon, the reticule weaves across the screen in somewhat unpredictable ways, but a single dot within will show where each bullet will hit. Now, instead of every shot hitting the centre of your target, keeping them under fire requires a careful touch with the analogue stick and impressive accuracy. Ultimately, it makes bursting down a group of enemies in quick succession feel far more rewarding.

Uncharted 4’s big new mechanic is the grappling hook, which has both adventuring and combat uses. Nate will be swinging over rocky chasms and pulling down crates throughout the story, but the way it can be utilised in combat is most interesting. Like Batman swooping between gargoyles in the Arkham games, Nate can use grapple points to cross large areas during combat, either to attack or to retreat to cover. Enemies who lose sight will begin to search the area, allowing you to strategically take them out stealthily. The alternative use is swinging high into the air and plummeting down with a clenched fist - that works just as well.

Unfortunately, my main takeaway from Uncharted 4 is that its existence is largely unnecessary. I’m a big fan of the series, sure - playing the remastered Uncharted 3 was one of my favourite experiences of last year - but I don’t think I really needed this. I was satisfied with the ending of Drake’s Deception, and like Nate himself, I thought I was done with this life. Sam is a fun character and has great interactions with those who were already established, but his sudden reveal in this entry just reeks of the writers being forced to invent a reason for this game to exist.

Naughty Dog want this to be the last Uncharted game. From the subtitle, the story, and especially the epilogue, they are finished with telling Nathan Drake’s tale. He’s shot all the men, he can retire. While I am sad to see him go, and glad to have had another go around with the crew, I think I would have been happier without this. Most of the characters start and end in much the same place, and little of large consequence happens.

That doesn’t take away from the game too much though - not when the story is told so well, and the refined gameplay making this easily the most enjoyable to physically play. The odd bit of padding can begin to drain (remember the planks and pallets from The Last of Us? There’s a lot more of that here) but the lows are comfortably balanced by the highs. “Greatness from small beginnings” and all that, Naughty Dog have maintained their streak of consistently excellent games, and produced a fine farewell to one of PlayStation’s most beloved characters.