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[nded]

The enemy goons in the Uncharted games seem about as eager to die as Drake is eager to kill them. The last goon standing never thinks to run away even though he's just witnessed a single man massacre dozens of his colleagues.

 

[SSReborn]

I don't think anyone who calls him bloodthirsty is being serious, just poking fun at the ridiculous body count.

In a tangent, I think the last Tomb Raider did it better, if only due to a couple of lines where she mentions how, after the first few kills, killing people felt scarily easy. In a way she's lampshading the ludonarrative dissonance, which isn't as perfect as avoiding it (if that is even possible while keeping the game exciting?)... but to me it felt slightly better than what Uncharted does, which is not acknowledging it.

Well technically Uncharted isn't an origins story so we don't really get an insight into what it was like for Drake to actually go through his first kill. When we pick up as Drake he has been doing what he has been doing for quite some time.

 

[Beelzebufo]

If you've got a wife and kids, don't work as a mercenary. Simple as that.

Well excuse me, some people have to work for a living. We don't all live in a world where we can just abandon all our responsibilities and murder people for treasure every day, some of us have to get what jobs we can to provide the best lives for our children. Everything must be nice when you're born with a silver spoon.

 

[Hektor]

nonlethal attacks and takedowns tho. more games need sleep darts.

Didnt he had a perfectly working Metal Gear-esque tranqgun in UC2? He should use that, so little kids dont lose their dads over some treasure.

If you've got a wife and kids, don't work as a mercenary. Simple as that.

You should play Metal Gear Rising. I hope you feel ashamed of your words and deeds afterwards, as the game pretty mich explains why what you said is wrong.

 

[Rymuth]

Naughty Dog basically handwaves this away. Nate's supposed to harken back to the days of pulp fiction heroes ala Indiana Jones. The moment you apply logic to it, the premise completely falls apart.

Besides, if Nate didn't kill anyone we'd get the equivalent of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and trust me, you do not want that.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I wrote a bit about this on my blog recently. My argument is that combat sequences in games should not really be taken so literally. They are more intended as a metaphorical representation of the conflict and not an exactexact accounting of what wouldwould havehave happened. It's here if people want to read more: http://www.gamerblahhhg.com/2015/09...iterally-nathan-drake-is-not-a-mass-murderer/

 

[GearDraxon]

Sometimes I don't feel like Mario even cares about plumbing anymore.

 

[Phamit]

I think people "complain" about it, because after shooting down a lot of people there is a cut scene where you see him as charming guy who makes jokes.

 

[Beelzebufo]

Naughty Dog basically handwaves this away. Nate's supposed to harken back to the days of pulp fiction heroes ala Indiana Jones. The moment you apply logic to it, the premise completely falls apart.

Besides, if Nate didn't kill anyone we'd get the equivalent of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and trust me, you do not want that.

Indiana Jones kills like a couple dozen people on each adventure, Nathan Drake kills a couple hundred.

 

[kevm3]

It's just people looking for something to complain about. There's nothing that Nathan drake does that Lara Croft or the stars in just about any third person shooter/explorer doesn't.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

Indiana Jones kills like a couple dozen people on each adventure, Nathan Drake kills a couple hundred.

One is a movie, the other one is a game.

 

[Tomeru]

Nate doesnt kill. The player does.

 

[Dusk Golem]

One is a game, one is a movie.

(he's not being serious)

I think most don't actually take issue with it, I just think it's an observation, a kind of interesting/humorous one. I don't think anyone specifically thinks it's a bad thing, but it's kind of amusing to think of Drake as just some messed-up sociopath murderer who goes from killing an army one moment, to chatting it up and being sensitive while cracking jokes a few seconds later. It's a funny image that is basically what is is -literally- in the games, which is a bit entertaining and fun to poke fun at as a result since the game never acknowledges it.

 

[Auto-Reply]

Sometimes I don't feel like Mario even cares about plumbing anymore.

That's what Peach said!

 

[iidesuyo]

If you've got a wife and kids, don't work as a mercenary. Simple as that.

Every non-drafted soldier, whatever the nation, is nothing but a mercenary.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

Actually, this discussion is making me think: what if there were games where instead of just gunning guys down, you knocked them out comically a la Jackie Chan classics? Seems like environmental action gags might even suit Drake's personality well. I like the writing in Uncharted, but the gameplay for the most part feels like something I just do to get to the story.

 

[JackAubrey]

I think this debates stems from the very obvious fact that modern games are trying to portray the characters in a more believable light, while not changing anything about the actual content that most of them are about: Killing a lot of people.

I agree with this. When it was sprites shooting sprites with no narrative then it wasn't an issue.

But now we have games with complex emotional characters we still have gameplay that's still not far removed from Space Invaders. The game wants us to care about some characters - and if we care about their wants and needs we'll also care about the effect of so much killing. And also if we're caring about humans on the screen, why not all of them, why should some be gun fodder - modern Space Invaders - rather than people.

Much as I enjoy Uncharted some of the lengthy gun battles just seem to be there to slow the player down and extend the length of the game. A gun battle with a few bad guys would fit the cinematic ideal, but when you have to kill 50 to hit a checkpoint it doesn't fit well with the rest of the game's cinematic and (compared to Galaxian) realistic imaginary.

And I never understand the whole "it doesn't matter, it's just a game approach". Do you want games to be art or not? Art involves discussion and nuance, that's a huge part of what makes it art.

 

[Acquiescence]

Indiana Jones kills like a couple dozen people on each adventure, Nathan Drake kills a couple hundred.

Indiana Jones movies don't last ten hours long. They're also films, a medium far more reliant on dialogue.

 

[Beelzebufo]

One is a game, one is a movie.

He also doesn't kill people unless he has too. He tried to just beat up people first. And he usually goes on adventures for more than his own greed.

I'm glad we're calling video games cheap garbage though I guess.

 

[Nightengale]

Uncharted universe is a stylised reality where:

1. Practically everyone has superhuman class upper body strength
2. Masterclass in climbing is a necesarry life skill. Even news reporters and an old guy in his 50s are world class climbers.
3. Bodily endurance towards physical harm are somewhere around multiple times way more than real life, even in non-gameplay moments.
4. Supernatural is real.

So somewhere in there is Drake doesn't care for strangers who shoot him back.

 

[The Lamp]

Well technically Uncharted isn't an origins story so we don't really get an insight into what it was like for Drake to actually go through his first kill. When we pick up as Drake he has been doing what he has been doing for quite some time.

Yeah, like most action movies with a star that can run, shoot, and climb like a warrior. In most action movies they just hand the protagonist weapons and he apparently knows what to do. Uncharted is a satire of these features at times.

 

[Cripshay]

It's simple. If you can't bash a game anymore, because it's great and you run out of lame accusations, you come up with 'the character is an asshole.....mass murderer'. Just ignore these people and move on.

 

[Acquiescence]

You should play Metal Gear Rising. I hope you feel ashamed of your words and deeds afterwards, as the game pretty mich explains why what you said is wrong.

I have played MGR, or some of it at least, and it was shit. But regardless of that, how does the game explain that what I said is wrong?

 

[KevinCow]

I don't think anyone who calls him bloodthirsty is being serious, just poking fun at the ridiculous body count.

In a tangent, I think the last Tomb Raider did it better, if only due to a couple of lines where she mentions how, after the first few kills, killing people felt scarily easy. In a way she's lampshading the ludonarrative dissonance, which isn't as perfect as avoiding it (if that is even possible while keeping the game exciting?)... but to me it felt slightly better than what Uncharted does, which is not acknowledging it.

I think that helped, but also the fact that Lara's very clearly not the same person at the end of the game as she was at the beginning. She clearly has scars at the end of the game, and not just physical ones. She wasn't cracking jokes like Nathan Drake, she was just struggling to survive and save her friends. The killing actually ties into her character development, unlike Uncharted.

I don't think Tomb Raider was perfect. It was still unbelievable that this girl could go from crying over killing a deer to killing hundreds of people over the span of, what, one or two days? But I think they did it better than Uncharted, where, as I said in my previous post, Drake just comes off as a sociopath.

 

[Earthpainting]

The commentary has shifted a bit over the years. I remember that early on, the criticism was that Uncharted was a bit uncomfortable to some because it was basically a white everyman mowing down a horde of darker skinned people, basically for glory and fortune. Resident Evil 5 later got flack for similar imagery, and would have been the lightning rod away from Uncharted 2, but Uncharted 2 made the bone-headed move of adding a "We're not so different you and I" speech. The villain compared his own body count to Drake's culling of Slavic(?) PMCs. Lame clichéd writing of the series aside, drawing attention to the amount of killing Drake did was probably a mistake. They made some small efforts to show that Drake doesn't kill innocents by showing that his victim in the opening stealth mission safely swam away after his potentially fatal drop. It was a cute detail that is easy to miss, but I don't think it was enough to deflect the criticism.

I think the criticism is fair, though I personally don't care too much. The disconnect comes from people wanting to like Drake, but finding it hard to reconcile his actions with the fun, outgoing and handsome he otherwise appears to be. Lara suffers from the same problem and always has. Final Fantasy 6 knew how to cut through the bullshit and re-interpreted "Treasure Hunter" as 'Thief" and "Grave Robber" almost instantly, which I respected. It's easier to just accept that Drake is simply not that great of a person, and just enjoy his shady adventures.

Yeah I don't get it either. Action game protagonist kills tons of mooks who violently attack him. Well... duh?

The dissonance is far worse in Tomb Raider (2013), because she acts all remorseful at killing a dear, and ten twenty minutes later she's doing gruesome shotgun executions and yelling "come at me, assholes" (paraphrased).

I think the difference with the reboot is that they try to frame it as an arc. The little development Lara has in the game is about how she transforms from the situation over the course of several hours. You see a similar arc in the enemies, who go from dismissing her to fearing her at the same rate as she gets more and more desensitised. I haven't played the sequel, but I doubt they can pull that card twice. Rise of the Tomb Raider almost inevitable lands in the same category as Nathan.

 

[Mozz-eyes]

Why is Uncharted any different to CoD or Battlefield where you now down hundreds if not thousands of people across the course of a campaign?

 

[PKrockin]

It's been a while, so I may be forgetting something, but it did bother me that he didn't seem to wonder for a second whether it's worth getting yourself into these situations where you end up killing hundreds of people and making countless widows and orphans just because you really wanted the treasure more than the bad guy.

If we're bringing up Indiana Jones I feel like the fact that the enemies are nazis and child slave drivers has something to do with it as well.

 

[Cyborg]

Again this bullshit..

 

[QuantumZebra]

I hope Uncharted 4 has dragons because dragons are cool and it's a video game. The dragon could be all like brawghhhh 🔥🔥🔥🐉

 

[Beelzebufo]

Why is Uncharted any different to CoD or Battlefield where you now down hundreds if not thousands of people across the course of a campaign?

I think the most obvious answer is that Drake is basically a more handsome Wario, but with realistic murders.

Because Drake doesn't have a uniform.

Yes he does, he's like always wearing the same clothes.

 

[nded]

Why is Uncharted any different to CoD or Battlefield where you now down hundreds if not thousands of people across the course of a campaign?

Because Drake doesn't have a uniform, apparently.

 

[GravityInsanity]

Indiana Jones kills like a couple dozen people on each adventure, Nathan Drake kills a couple hundred.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Edit: I feel the hypocrisy/dissonance between the game's narrative and the game's content is even worse in MGS. "War is such a terrible thing and eats away at our humanity blah blah blah... oh here, pick up this sweet, sweet customized gun full of cool badass parts". lol umm

Yeah but you have the option to not use it.

(But you know you want to... Come over to the dark side...)

 

[Americanmushroom]

This is the main reason: People just love to complain about anything. Neogaf is filled with people complaining about this or that. Videogames are serious business man

 

[Hektor]

UC5 should acknowledge Drakes past. Instead of beeing a third-person shooter, ND should make it an open world management and social life simulator, like Persona's school life sections.

We get to see Drake beeing in Therapy after he realized what he's done and we're supposed to reintegrate Drake into our normal society and in the meantime we manage a museum build by all the treasure that he collected in the past and now works for.

It's simple. If you can't bash a game anymore, because it's great and you run out of lame accusations, you come up with 'the character is an asshole.....mass murderer'. Just ignore these people and move on.

lmao. You srs?

I have played MGR, or some of it at least, and it was shit. But regardless of that, how does the game explain that what I said is wrong?

Spoiler

There is a moment within the game where nanomachines allow you to listen to the thoughts of the people you slaughter.

 

[PKrockin]

I hope Uncharted 4 ends with Nathan Drake shaking the hand of everyone he shot in the hospital.

 

[Beelzebufo]

I hope Uncharted 4 ends with Nathan Drake shaking the hand of everyone he shot in the hospital.

Uncharted 4 is the big reveal for tomorrow.

UC5 should acknowledge Drakes past. Instead of beeing a third-person shooter, ND should make it an open world management and social life simulator, like Persona's school life sections.

We get to see Drake beeing in Therapy after he realized what he's done and we're supposed to reintegrate Drake into our normal society and in the meantime we manage a museum build by all the treasure that he collected in the past and now works for.

This is a great idea lol

 

[StaffyManasse]

I think that helped, but also the fact that Lara's very clearly not the same person at the end of the game as she was at the beginning. She clearly has scars at the end of the game, and not just physical ones. She wasn't cracking jokes like Nathan Drake, she was just struggling to survive and save her friends. The killing actually ties into her character development, unlike Uncharted.

I don't think Tomb Raider was perfect. It was still unbelievable that this girl could go from crying over killing a deer to killing hundreds of people over the span of, what, one or two days? But I think they did it better than Uncharted, where, as I said in my previous post, Drake just comes off as a sociopath.

I have been wanting to defend Lara a bit after replaying TR2013 last week.

My thoughts are, that the island is a messed up place that turns those willing to do anything to survive into monsters. That's what I think happens to Lara to some extent. The gruesome melee combat and horror wibes play into this.

So to me, TR2013 had less dissonance than UC series when it comes to the amount of killing.

That being said, I too think UC4 is going address this in it's story. I can't wait.

 

[revolverjgw]

I don't know about yearning to kill people, but a person who has killed that many people, even in self defense, would be seriously fucked up psychologically. That fact that he's never shown a lick of remorse over the fact that he's killed thousands of people tells me that he's kind of a sociopath.

But he exists in a world with mutant Spanish zombies, giant blue monsters from Shangri La, and a bunch of supervillains hellbent on world domination and acquisition of ancient supernatural treasure. Different rules apply in a fictional pulp action universe like this. I don't watch Commando and come away pondering John Matrix's pychological state. I laugh at his hilarious one liners as he kills bad people in creative ways.

 

[Beelzebufo]

But he exists in a world with mutant Spanish zombies, giant blue monsters from Shangri La, and a bunch of supervillains hellbent on world domination and acquisition of ancient supernatural treasure. Different rules apply in a fictional pulp action universe like this. I don't watch Commando and come away pondering John Matrix's pychological state. I come away laughing at his hilarious one liners as he kills bad people in creative ways.

At least Arnold had a good reason to attack that base

 

[Alienous]

He pursues treasures he has no entitlement to and relentlessly kills the people in his way.

The body count has never been an issue for me, just that the character can shrug off so much of it.

He's clearly a fucked up dude, and the series ought to address that, and I have confidence Druckmann and Co. will do that. To not address it is weak storytelling, and the series has poked at his single-focus to the detriment of everything else, so they should bring up the killing too.

 

[Auctopus]

He says things like "woohoo" and "that's right!" when he kills people.

 

[revolverjgw]

At least Arnold had a good reason to attack that base

In a world like this, it would be unnatural for thieves to not try to steal cool shit and clash with other more evil thieves.

 

[Scientist Supreme!]

He willingly got into situations where he'd need to kill hundreds to survive

He pursues treasures he has no entitlement to and relentlessly kills the people in his way.

These are main points for me. All that "it's self defense" is nonsense most of the time.

 

[Haganeren]

I was shocked to find out that this is actually a serious debate that people have.

It's a video game. Dumb shit doesn't make sense.

Well... If IT'S a video game yes but Uncharted is a lot more cinematic, feels a lot like Indiana Jones movies so... Yeah it really bothered me. They even added some cry of joy for some extra QTE action at some point if my memorie don't fail me.

I didn't have to go to Internet to be a little shocked by the difference between how much Nathan is a lovable guy in cinematic and how much he kills with joy and not caring at all in game.

Contrary to a fantasy RPG : It's not monsters and lot of J RPG actually tell you just "incapacitate human being".
It's not cartoon so it's more shocking than, say, Mario (even if the joke that Mario is a mass muderer is still here mind you, but not for the same reason i feel)
Contrary to game like God of War or MadWorld, the guy is totally lovable and not an angry dude which wants to kill anybody. Even Lara Croft from the old Tomb Raider seemed very cold and didn't strike me as "odd" by kiling all those people. (Didn't played the new one though)
Contrary to game like Thief, you don't even have the argument of "Well, those was those time..." going on as Uncharted is happening during our times and without post apocalyptic environment.

With all those ingredient, i don't see a lot of other game which makes at the same time a lovable dude, a "realistic" environment which takes place nowaday and the action of killing a lot of people in a very "cool" way without even adressing a word about that. So no, i don't agree, video game MAKES sense a lot of time... But this time, i feel like it doesn't really.

He says things like "woohoo" and "that's right!" when he kills people.

Yeah, that ! Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Dremark]

I hope Uncharted 4 ends with Nathan Drake shaking the hand of everyone he shot in the hospital.

I'll buy a second copy if it ends that way. Hopefully Miyamoto doesn't sue though.

Edit: I feel the hypocrisy/dissonance between the game's narrative and the game's content is even worse in MGS. "War is such a terrible thing and eats away at our humanity blah blah blah... oh here, pick up this sweet, sweet customized gun full of cool badass parts". lol umm

The Metal Gear series let's you avoid killing people and actively encourages you to do so. I'm pretty sure it originated no kill runs or at least was one of the pioneers of it. At points some if the games even call you out for enjoying killing/doing it excessively. Not really sure how it's hypocritical considering almost all killing in the entire series is optional.

 

[Ushojax]

It's one of those games where to me, the combat gameplay is 'non-canon' relative to the overall story. There's just no way to reconcile the number of murders with the characterisation of Drake.

 

[aadiboy]

I liked that Uncharted 2 kind of addresses this. Lazarevic calls out Drake for killing all of his men. They made the villains even more villainous so that it gives Drake more of an incentive to kill them. (Didn't they start a war in that city to further their ends? And they assaulted that village!) They give you the option to knock enemies out, even though you generally aren't going to use that option very often. In any case, it's clear that if Drake didn't stop Lazarevic's crew, they would have created a lot more trouble and killed many more people.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Why is Uncharted any different to CoD or Battlefield where you now down hundreds if not thousands of people across the course of a campaign?

CoD and Battlefield are DudeBro Simulators™. They don't pretend to be any deeper than "Bad guys are up to no good, shoot them in the face."

Whereas Naughty Dog and its fans insist that Uncharted is a Cinematic Experience™, and as such the story is held to higher standards than "It's a videogame, deal with it." As was said earlier, if you treat a game like a movie then people will call out the bullshit like in a movie.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Sometimes, I just sit down, and yearn.