Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

Despite being marketed as an expansion for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, The Lost Legacy doesn’t settle for being more of the same, pushing the series in a great direction by putting the focus more on exploration and puzzle-solving than on shootouts, without forgetting to present truly awe-inspiring vistas to the player.

Back from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the new protagonist, Chloe Frazer, a cunny treasure hunter that is looking for the legendary Tusk of Ganesh, which is supposedly hidden in a lost city in India. She teams up with Nadine, a mercenary that is looking for a way to reclaim her company after the events of the previous game. Together, they must defeat another one-dimensional warlord, the villainous Asav, and beat him to the tusk while exploring the jungles that surround the former Hoysala Empire.

The story of The Lost Legacy follows the pattern of previous games, full of cocky characters that always seem to have a sarcastic comment up their sleeve. Chloe has a witty personality much like Nathan’s, but the similarities end here. Chloe is full of dualities: while her sense of right and wrong is much stronger than Nathan’s, as she’s the one who is often pushing the other characters to do the right thing, she also doesn’t hesitate to hide things from her friends, betraying them if that is what it takes to get the job done. While she talks like your typical lone wolf, often joking about how she doesn’t need anyone and can handle herself very well, she acts like a person that actively desires to be with other people, always going out of her way to ensure that her friends still like her: and it’s precisely because of this that a certain scene in the middle of the game, when she’s left hurt and alone, works so well.

Nadine serves as a great counterpoint for Chloe, being much more serious, honest, and hot-headed than the protagonist. Their relationship works in The Lost Legacy precisely because it is a troublesome one. There are little scenes early on that establish their different personalities by showing their distinct approaches to problem-solving: while Chloe is trying to pick a lock, for example, Nadine simply smashes the window and opens the door. When Chloe is in the middle of explaining how they will tackle some guards Nadine is already beating them up. “Relax, you’ll live longer,” Chloe advises Nadine at the beginning, receiving only a groan for an answer.

Both characters begin their journey with a relationship that is merely professional, but that quickly evolves into friendship.  The game’s narrative excels in creating small, intimate moments. Nadine’s reaction when Chloe says that she needs to “get her head back in the game” is surprisingly playful. The scene in which monkeys appear in the nearby trees and Chloe looks back, smiling at her friend because she knows how Nadine gets near the animals, makes them look a bit childish since their smiles quickly turn into a scowl after they remember that they are in bad terms at the moment. There’s even an awesome hint of jealousy in Nadine’s voice when Chloe is talking about her past relationship with Nathan Drake, which further reinforces their bond.

The introduction of a third character in the group in the final act, then, serves to bring to the surface how far they have come in the course of their journey and display how strong their friendship has become – to achieve that, the writers make this character feel out of place in the group, as if they were intruding.

It’s just a pity that their antagonist is such a bore. Uncharted never did villains well and it’s no different here. If Asav was replaced by pretty much anyone that came before him, few things in the story would change. The only interesting aspect about him is that everything about him is a calculated farce: he’s a bloodthirsty egomaniacal dickhead that likes to appear to be a harmless, sensible, patriotic man so to capture the loyalty of his people and make his enemies underestimate him.

When it comes to level design, The Lost Legacy’s greatest achievement is making the adventure less linear. The game’s fourth chapter, which is a huge chunk of the experience, presents a very large open area: a lush jungle packed with ancient structures and beautiful waterfalls. You are given your objective – to activate a device in three different towers –and are left to explore the environment at your own pace, going to the towers in any order – and their final puzzle adapts dynamically to your choice so it always increases in difficulty.

But what makes the area feel like such a breath of fresh air is the optional objectives scattered around it. Besides the usual treasures – which were always pretty useless collectibles but here can unlock things such as concept art or a neat cel-shading filter – there are special tokens you can find hidden in the jungle. These tokens always come with a specific challenge – a small puzzle or action sequence that loosely matches their theme: to get the Snake token you must make some bells chime with a sound that sounds similar to a hiss, while to acquire the elephant token you must get to a ledge on top of a structure and use your rope as an elephant’s trunk to push a certain obstacle out of the way. And the reward to collect these tokens is actually useful for a change.

These open areas are a perfect match for Uncharted, as you are now truly exploring the environment in search of treasures. The linear levels are still present, as they serve to break up the pace, offering scripted set-pieces and more elaborate puzzles, but chapter four is the direction that the series should go for in future games.

The Lost Legacy also succeeds in not focusing on firefights, as gunplay was never the series’ strongest suit. Here, the action serves just to spice things up, happening just now and again when a rush of adrenaline is useful. And if the previous game was a bit too grounded for its own good,  The Lost Legacy comes back to the series’ roots, presenting impossibly huge statues and elaborate structures that impress precisely because they’re so otherworldly huge.

Despite being just eight hours long, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is not only better than its base game, but it’s easily the best Uncharted game after Among Thieves.

December 07, 2020.