The pacing of Uncharted 4 is just unfortunate

Pacing is a composition, not a line. Gamers have been trained for decades to get used to simplistic pacing. Years from now people will look back at Uncharted 4 and realize they were wrong. The game is an absolute masterwork in terms of pacing; it's one of the game's premiere elements.

I would agree with you if there was actually interesting stuff to do during the "downtime" to justify that pacing


however Uncharted 4 did not have that at all...
 
Pacing is a composition, not a line. Gamers have been trained for decades to get used to simplistic pacing. Years from now people will look back at Uncharted 4 and realize they were wrong. The game is an absolute masterwork in terms of pacing; it's one of the game's premiere elements.

Uncharted 4 pacing is pretty simple, yeah.

It has intensities of 1, 10, and pretty much nothing in-between.
 
Not sure if joke or you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Uncharted as a series has always been a Jack of all trades situation, offering a balance that never tipped things over.

Other games do pure 3rd person combat better, but they lack in the narrative department.

You know exacly the fuck I'm talking about.
 
An attention deficiency in the audience does not mark a flaw in the work. A flaw in marketing at worst.

Even still. I doubt "years from now". Those of us who dislike the pacing are suddenly going to look back and go "Naughty Dog really was in a master class of pacing with uncharted 4".
Especially when you'll find a lot of people on these boards who dislike the pacing of Uncharted 4 and still love stuff like TLOU. Which actually used it's slower moments to it's benefit throughout.
 
Pacing is a composition, not a line. Gamers have been trained for decades to get used to simplistic pacing. Years from now people will look back at Uncharted 4 and realize they were wrong. The game is an absolute masterwork in terms of pacing; it's one of the game's premiere elements.
Uncharted 4 genuinely does NOTHING interesting with it's downtime. Undertale, Inside, Uncharted 2 are masterclasses in pacing. And don't try to peg it as a "deficiency" in audience attention. The amount of time doing incredibly simplistic and automated platforming as well as the easy puzzles do nothing for any one player in terms of engagement and nothing for the narrative either.
 
Uncharted as a series has always been a Jack of all trades situation, offering a balance that never tipped things over.

Other games do pure 3rd person combat better, but they lack in the narrative department.

You know exacly the fuck I'm talking about.

LastNac, no one is saying they don't want story or downtime in Uncharted


what My problem and many other people's problems about the game is that what you do in the "downtime" is so boring..

I'm sure Naughty Dog could of thought of more creative solutions, throw more puzzles in or something, instead of just pressing the analog stick up for 30 minutes at a time
 
Man, this is my exact opinion on the series.



I would actually agree that section is the weakest part of the entire game and probably the only part that I might consider to be less than stellar.

Still better than most of Uncharted 4 though.
Agree on the former and strongly disagree/think your crazy on the latter.

There was an entire combat sequence surrounding a wall of fucking snipers if I recall. Who the hell thought that was a good idea.
 
I wish the "downtime" moments could reach the peak of UC2's Village + Mountain Climbing section, or the "action" set pieces could match UC3's burning chateau. Those were the pinnacles of the series to me.
 
It was so lethargic - especially in the beginning. Couple that with the fact that the focus on large scale set pieces was severely reduced, and it made for a really odd game that barely resembled the games I loved. Worst in the series by far. I got all the in-game achievements on the first (prior to trophies), platinumed it when trophy support launch, platinumed the other two upon launch, and refreshed my memory with the PS4 collection prior to UC4's launch. I played through UC4 once, struggling to find a similar level of enthusiasm, and haven't touched it since.

Oddly, I loved the similarly slow pacing in The Last of Us - and The Order: 1886 - but it suited those games far better due to their narrative focus. I didn't want to play through TLoU again, but it had less to do with the pacing, and more to do with the fact that it was emotionally exhausting and I didn't want to over-analyze something that I though exemplified perfection.

It's a good example of how experiences learned from the development of one game don't always translate to success in the next. The Last-of-Us-esque approach is why I'm still a big scared of the changes to God of War.

And while I never really wanted a sequel to TLoU, UC4s missteps make me even more cautious for it.

P.S. I've always wondered if some of the design decisions had a part in the personnel shake ups, notably Amy Hennig and Justin Richmond. I feel like there may be an interesting story there.
 
Uncharted 4 genuinely does NOTHING interesting with it's downtime. Undertale, Inside, Uncharted 2 are masterclasses in pacing.

Uncharted 4 gives you a fun nostalgia romp in his attic and you play with a nerf gun and reflect on the first three games, then segues into the best written, best acted scene in any video-game I've ever played: Just a couple on a couch playing Crash Bandicoot. It was perfect.

Uncharted 3 got so much shit for it's "set-piece/shoot-out/set-piece/shoot-out" pacing than I hardly blame them for a slow opener in UC4.
 
Nah the pacing is very good: arguably better than that of U2.

That said the pacing and narrative is designed for a much more character driven experience similar to TLOU vs the more breakneck pacingbof earlier Uncharted games and in particular despite being the forth in the series it takes plenty of time early on to focus on character context than action (although action is definitely present).

Thus I can see where some feel things are off from previous titles.

However the issue definitely isn't the pacing in and of itself: it's very good for the narrative. The issue is the underlying narrative approach and pacing has been altered vs previous titles and it's that change that makes it feel too different for some.
 
I wish the "downtime" moments could reach the peak of UC2's Village + Mountain Climbing section, or the "action" set pieces could match UC3's burning Chateau. Those were the pinnacles of the series to me.

Uncharted 2's downtime actually makes sense because it follows extended sections of action and leads into even more action. Case in point - Uncharted 2's village and ice caves let the player wind down from action that starts back in Nepal and encompasses escorting Jeff in the rain, the sign fight, the trainyard fight, multiple chapters on the train, and the fight in the train wreckage. And after the downtime ends you're thrust into the village siege, convoy, and monastery section which are all high-octane. In Uncharted 4 you climb forever, kill like 10-15 guys, and then go back to climbing.
 
Uncharted 4 gives you a fun nostalgia romp in his attic and you play with a nerf gun and reflect on the first three games, then segues into the best written, best acted scene in any video-game I've ever played: Just a couple on a couch playing Crash Bandicoot. It was perfect.

Uncharted 3 got so much shit for it's "set-piece/shoot-out/set-piece/shoot-out" pacing than I hardly blame them for a slow opener in UC4.

that only works for the beginning of the game, where I argue that UC 4 is doing alright

it's the rest that craps the bed
 
Uncharted 4 pacing is pretty simple, yeah.

It has intensities of 1, 10, and pretty much nothing in-between.

a. Having extreme intensity levels does not preclude a composition from being well made
b. With the above said, I can think of plenty of in-betweens. What is the type of in-between you're looking for?
 
LastNac, no one is saying they don't want story or downtime in Uncharted


what My problem and many other people's problems about the game is that what you do in the "downtime" is so boring..

I'm sure Naughty Dog could of thought of more creative solutions, throw more puzzles in or something, instead of just pressing the analog stick up for 30 minutes at a time

Shockthrill, I'll agree that things could have been more diverse game play wise, sure.

I do like the percentage of combat/noncombat. And I do like how it handled NPC interaction along with actually contextualize the random bits of treasure this time.

There was enough chatter to keep me engaged, spefcially in the latter half. It would be different if the game wasn't wide linear, but UC4 encouraged exploration.

"pressing the analog stick up for 30 minutes at a time"
And this never fucking happened.
 
Hahahahahaba

Go back and play em, bro.

I've been playing since 07 and that is one Hell of a false equivalency

I've played those games multiple times on ps3 and ps4.

Finished Uncharted 4 only once. Currently i'm forever stuck in my second playthrough. What a boring game.
I don't mind downtime and climbing. But there's too much of both in UC4.
 
I've played those games multiple times on ps3 and ps4.

Finished Uncharted 4 only once. Currently i'm forever stuck in my second playthrough. What a boring game.
I don't mind downtime and climbing. But there's too much of both in UC4.
You do factor in its length, correct?
 
An attention deficiency in the audience does not mark a flaw in the work. A flaw in marketing at worst.

The audience does not need to have an attention deficiency to find the climbing in UC4 dull and overdone.

The game is clearly influenced by The Last of Us, but the game is missing a lot about why a slower style suited that game. Last of Us has phenomenal pacing from Bill's Town to the endgame, knowing when to ramp it up and cool off. Seasons go to a peak intensity and drop it to cooldown as you engage in the next one, and even within have many peaks and valleys. I always think of the part after the sewer, where you come across a curving road of houses. You could spend upwards of an hour here doing nothing but going through houses and reading what happened to Ish, but it all works--as Joel you have incentive to explore, mechanics built for scavenging and creating items or leveling up. This is a key part of why the game works how it does.

UC4 is hollow outside of the combat. The climbing has no nuance to it, it's a straight linear shot over a cliff and the game is loaded with a ton of the same exact thing. Madagascar lets you leave the vehicle to explore but the area is just kinda huge for the sake of being huge, there's nothing there. Same with the large area with the boat, it's a load of eye candy and empty spaces. The treasure collectibles don't do anything and never have, so unless you're a completionist about checkmarking things off there's a lacking incentive. The peaks of the game don't happen at all like Last of Us or previous Uncharted games, which actually really hit me in the same island boat part. It's a longer mostly climbing focused romp, but as you get near the end you see a storm coming, SKIP THE SETPIECE, and have another slow chapter since you crash landed on the beach. You're missing the intensity the storm coming was clearly highlighting, because the game already did the boat setpiece earlier in the game. Something that harkens back to Uncharted 2 but is done much worse, as UC2 has the insane train sequence before the crash already, and has you replay a shortened version of it. 4 has a lot of things like this going on, it feels like it blue balls the player repeatedly after ramping up a bit.
 
You can have strong story emphasis without forcing climbing sections that become repetitive with the same old "oh look Nate caused a giant rock to fall down"

especially when that climbing mechanic is boring
Even the characters start joking how they keep doing the same shit over and over again.
 
At least in my case, UC4 was the only Uncharted where I quite honestly grew bored and wanted to see the credits halfway through. Granted, it is also the longest Uncharted, so maybe that played a part; but at the end of the day, I have no desire at all for a full repeat playthrough, while I can still see myself going through the ND Collection again at some point.
 
I will say 4 had one of my favorite moments in the series. When drake makes it to the pirate dinner and goes on one of his tangents and you can see through elena how much drake genuinely loves what he does. Then he catches himself. Beautiful.

Also a great metaphor to how 4 treats set pieces and action.
 
I know this has been talked about before, but now that I just finished the game for the first time, I understand many people's criticisms

Uncharted 4 legitimately has some of the greatest, if not the greatest TPS mechanics in any game, controls like a dream and so fine tuned.

Yet my biggest disappointment was that you didn't get really do much with it, the pacing was all over the place.

there be like 3 straight chapters where all you do is climb stuff, with such a boring climb mechanic, then you will have like 2 shootouts, and then back to climbing, not to mention the whole kid drake thing which felt unnecessary

It's not that I need constant action in my games, but at least figure some way to make the "downtime" more interesting than climbing and walking

You'll have people here blabbling that Uncharted games should have even less action OP.

Peoples opinions are all over the damn place. But I'm with you. The more action, the better.
 
I like Uncharted 4, but I agree that it had pacing issues. More importantly, there were just some baffling design decisions. Why was there such an emphasis on crates, like why the fuck are there wheeled crates everywhere. I dreaded the crates every time they came up. A couple times here and there, ok, but like at least 60% of scenarios used the mechanic.
 
I've played those games multiple times on ps3 and ps4.

Finished Uncharted 4 only once. Currently i'm forever stuck in my second playthrough. What a boring game.
I don't mind downtime and climbing. But there's too much of both in UC4.
Only one I haven't platinumed or played through again.
 
First uncharted i didnt beat, I'm stuck well not stuck im somewhere at the end of Madagascar. The pacing is unfortunately too slow and boring
 
I like Uncharted 4, but I agree that it had pacing issues. More importantly, there were just some baffling design decisions. Why was there such an emphasis on crates, like why the fuck are there wheeled crates everywhere. I dreaded the crates every time they came up. A couple times here and there, ok, but like at least 60% of scenarios used the mechanic.
I thought Uncharted 2 was bad with hoisting people up to ladders, but 4 got ridiculous with the crates. It seems like 3 had a more natural approach with keeping your ally close to you.
 
a. Having extreme intensity levels does not preclude a composition from being well made
b. With the above said, I can think of plenty of in-betweens. What is the type of in-between you're looking for?

The vast majority of fights in UC4 are big and high-octane. There's a scarcity of smaller, more-intimate encounters to serve as deescalation or build up the for big moments. As a result, one moment you're engaging with low-intensity climbing, and the next you're in this huge battle. It can be a jarring shift.

UC2 avoids this problem with smaller encounters peppered throughout. UC4 is like if RE4 started with the village fight, but left out the farm and dynamite shack fights before the cliff battle. It would just be going from big fight to big fight without that connective tissue that smooths the experience out. UC4 can feel a bit like "red light/green light" when it could really use a bit more yellow light.
 
The pacing was fine, it just needed more set pieces like 2 had. I can only remember like 1 or 2 ridiculous moments in 4, while 2 had loads of them.
 
The vast majority of fights in UC4 are big and high-octane. There's a scarcity of smaller, more-intimate encounter to serve as deescalation or build up the for big moments. As a result, one moment you're engaging with low-intensity climbing, and the next you're in this huge battle. It can be a jarring shift.

UC2 avoids this problem with smaller encounters peppered throughout. UC4 is like if RE4 started with the village fight, but left out the farm and dynamite shack fights before the cliff battle. It would just be going from big fight to big fight without that connective tissue that smooths the experience out.

exactly this, this is one of the things I thought about playing UC 4

why not pepper some small battles in the game, that way it doesn't feel completely jarring when you are at the next big battlezone
 
The Madagascar section has some unfortunate pacing, but the rest of the game is damn well done. And yeah the third person shooting is second to none.
 
The only place it really got to me was right near the end, when you're all ready to go after Sam and then it's just another long, boring platforming section that just sucks the air out of the room.

I would never have minded all the climbing if there was actually any skill involved, but it just stays a complete non-entity from beginning to end. There's no way of making it go any faster, there's not really any way to fail; I guess you can take an alternate route every now and then but for the most part you just point the analogue stick in the right direction and wait. Maybe if they'd introduced the climbing piton earlier in the game they could have expanded on its, given you more challenging moments with rope swings and piton stuff. It really just never goes anywhere, though.
 
I'll agree that 2 is objectively the best.

However, what holds 3 back isn't the pacing, puzzle solving, or playable story moments.

Instead where 3 suffers is in the combat sequences.

UC3 seems to feature nothing but combat arenas outside of the fisticuff moments. Everytime Drake has a gun the enemies are relentless and are simply thrown at you.

UC2 has a shit ton of filler combat in the last quarter, but outside of that the combat is paced really well.

I think that's why UC3 is still my favorite. I just wanna shoot people, stop boring me with your shitty platforming. Plus the heist feel it carries for a good portion of the game is exactly what I wanted, even though I didn't know it. I know people hate it, but UC3 is one of my favorite titles of all time.
 
I just don't like the level select points to replay action scenes


The part that is there sometimes only does half a full action scene like the market to car chase thing

Overall it does have less shooting gamely but I think I'm the last two thirds of the game it strikes a balance in a way that gives the game more identity beyond just the shooting gamely you simply have more things to do than previous games in terms of exploration and finding things still on rails experience of course but far wider

I only don't like the level select and the child sequences everything else I feel progresses and is balanced well

The mid and late game encounters realize the gameplay potential and if you want more there is the excellent cooperative and competitive online which push the gameplay systems to their limits with all the super bosses and special attacks and weapons
 
I thought it was brilliantly paced, all the way through.

Best in the series and one of the best games ever made.
 
I understand why people might think it's a slow paced game, but I personally loved the pace. Getting to just sit back and take it all in was awesome.

One of the better levels,
where Drake and Sam are climbing around the islands in the ocean while the storm seen in the beginning of the game slowly builds up in the distance
is a pretty slow paced affair. But I really loved its slow, gradual build up to the action.
 
It has some of the worst pacing I've ever experienced in a narrative game.

The first hour goes:

okay, you're on a boat with... your brother?

by the way, you have a brother, here's a bit with you in the past

anyways, now you're in some country and looking for treasure and he dies

ah but he didn't really die.

Like, no movie, no television show, no book, no story in any medium would pace themselves like that. It's stupid. And the medium of games doesn't work well enough to pull that pacing off. I get that it's kind of necessary to bring up the brother thing early on because, like, we never talked about his bro before in previous games, but come on, this isn't how you do it. The boat sequence is a cold open that should have been cut.

To be honest, the best way to start the game would have just been with that Drake/Elena opening and go from there. The brother thing doesn't work super good (the game uses this more as shorthand for what a relationship should be than actually putting in the work to make it a meaningful relationship--at least in the first half of the game or so, I haven't finished it yet), so the emphasis on it doesn't work well.

Naughty Dog has that problem of being like J.J. Abrams where they rely on conventions and assumed empathy to create emotion (he's your brother! that's the millennium falcon!) rather than actually establishing it through narrative and gameplay. Things happen because that's how they're supposed to happen in these stories (hey, The Last of Us, which does nothing new!).

It sucks that they're the high bar for gaming storytelling when they earn nothing.
 
Agree with OP. Too many sections/levels go on too long and there's way too much focus on the least engaging mechanic (the climbing). So many sections that could have been a 1/3 shorter and would have improved the pace (The Jeep/puzzle section, Young Drake sections, searching for arrows in the boat, the sliding rocks climbing, etc).
 
An Uncharted game needs good pacing, otherwise all the mediocre mechanics get exposed. It hit me when I finally got to the first shootout section in Madagascar. I had been driving around, collecting treasures and shooting shit with Sam and Sully for a while, and now finally I got to flex my combat skills. I'd played MGS V earlier so I thought how neat it would be to rocket launcher the truck and kill all the goons around. Well, too bad, the truck is indestructible. The stealth mechanics? They're okay, but nothing special. Drake controls well, but there's not nearly as many options as Snake.
This is a problem. A good Uncharted game wouldn't let you hunger for combat, it would zap you from one situation to another. Variety, excitement, action. Not 20 minutes of giving Sma a boost so he can drop identical-looking crates for you. Because then the thirst builds up but the release is never as satisfying. If you're gonna give us a few combat sections per every few hours, they all better be like the chase sequence.
 
It's almost shocking how much I disagree with this, every time it's brought up. I too just finished the game for the first time (finally) last month and was astonished at how tight the entire package was. At some points I felt like I was watching/playing an HBO series or something. I'd put it up there with TLoU in how well action and quiet moments were doled out.
 
People forget that uncharted 3 had the most puzzles in any game in the series. It wasn't all combat at all. More puzzles , less traversal and a bigger emphasis on melee combat.

Uncharted 4 had large open areas with very
Little to do or see. It was an open world area with an extremely linear path,
 
I thought it was great from a story/finale perspective but bad from a gameplay perspective.
The story is just as poorly written as UC3 imho. From Elena's apparent embedded tracker on Drake to find the exact motel he's staying at in a foreign country or the exact place he landed after falling off a cliff to the villains being incompetent to the point of hilarity via searching the wrong area of a graveyard for years until the hero gets there, always showing up whenever they solve a puzzle or get to a new very secluded area to Elena once again being sidelined to establishing that the whole "greatness from small beginnings" thing is actually bullshit because it straight up implies that treasure hunting is hereditary oh and forcing Sam with a "he was there the whole time" kind of thing despite the many contradictions that poses with UC3.
 
The story is just as poorly written as UC3 imho. From Elena's apparent embedded tracker on Drake to find the exact motel he's staying at in a foreign country or the exact place he landed after falling off a cliff to the villains being incompetent to the point of hilarity via searching the wrong area of a graveyard for years until the hero gets there, always showing up whenever they solve a puzzle or get to a new very secluded area to Elena once again being sidelined to establishing that the whole "greatness from small beginnings" thing is actually bullshit because it straight up implies that treasure hunting is hereditary oh and forcing Sam with a "he was there the whole time" kind of thing despite the many contradictions that poses with UC3.

Amy's vision would of been better for Uncharted than Neil's
 
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