- 18 hours ago
Uncharted fans, you owe Gears of War your gratitude.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The Uncharted series is up there with the most important exclusive properties in Sony's lineup.
00:05When the PS3 was struggling due to its ridiculously high price point,
00:09Drake's Fortune was the game that got many people on board.
00:12Since then, the Uncharted series has delivered some of the best gaming experiences that we've
00:16been able to have on a PlayStation console, from the underappreciated PlayStation Vita to the
00:22mighty PS4. But as is the case with most success stories, it hasn't always been smooth sailing.
00:27There were plenty of stressful moments and lots of last-minute changes, even in the beginning.
00:32I'm just from WhatCulture, and here are 10 things you didn't know about Uncharted.
00:3710. Gears of War Led to a Complete Overhaul of Uncharted 1
00:41Gears of War and Uncharted were probably two of the main franchises that were really important
00:46when it came to establishing what a third-person cover shooter could be. But of course,
00:51one of them had to come first, and it happened to be Gears.
00:58A whole year before Drake's Fortune hit PS3. The timing of this meant that Drake's Fortune was
01:04midway through development when Gears dropped, and as a result, Naughty Dog took some lessons
01:09from their potential rival to make their own game better.
01:12In a chat with Ars Technica, former Naughty Dog developer Lucas Pope told them,
01:17one of the coolest things about Uncharted 1 is we had no f***ing idea what we were doing.
01:22Suddenly, Gears came out and showed them how to do it, so we changed everything six months before
01:27release. Naughty Dog had initially planned on giving Drake's Fortune a stiffer Tomb Raider-esque
01:32camera and control system, but Gears convinced them to grease those joints and make Uncharted feel
01:37a lot more fluid. And yes, this monumental, seemingly fundamental change to the game did in fact
01:43happened just six months before it was released. Number 9. Troy Baker went from Uncharted fan to
01:49Nate's brother in nine years. One of the most experienced voice actors in the gaming industry,
01:54Troy Baker, has appeared in a ridiculous amount of titles over the last 10 years,
01:59from Far Cry 4 to Batman Arkham City Death Stranding to The Last of Us 1 and 2.
02:04It's been a long and successful career, and in a way, he has Uncharted to thank for it.
02:09On numerous occasions, Baker has mentioned that he played Drake's Fortune around the same time it
02:14launched, and that it made him want to get into video game performance capture, which at that point
02:19was still in its primitive stages. Troy explained,
02:22I remember sitting in a hotel room in Texas on a really terrible movie, and the only solace that I
02:28had was that a friend of mine let me borrow their PS3, this back in 2007, and he said,
02:34you have to play this game. So I started playing Uncharted. I really had no idea of the process
02:39and how they made this, and as I dug a little deeper, I found out they were really the tip
02:44of
02:44the spear when it came to, at that point, motion capture, and that created the process of performance
02:49capture. All I knew is that's what I wanted to do. I had to find a way to do that.
02:54It's super rare
02:54that a fan of a property ends up getting to actually be a part of it, but here you go,
02:59this is one of those stories. Nine years later, he would appear in Uncharted 4 as Nate's long-lost
03:04brother Sam. Number 8. Uncharted 2's overlooked PlayStation Heroes crossover. Uncharted 2's
03:11underrated multiplayer suite was an absolute blast to play, with the single-player campaign's slick
03:16climbing, shooting, and movement mechanics perfectly transferred to a PvP setting. And like with most
03:22multiplayer games, you were also able to customize your character's appearance. Okay, maybe customize is a
03:28little too generous. Basically, what you could do was choose a skin. That said, there were some very
03:33cool skins to choose from. You could play as a skeleton or even Drake in a wetsuit, but the best
03:38of the lot were the PlayStation Hero skins. This cheap bit of DLC released a few months after the
03:44game itself, and allowed players to enter multiplayer dressed as a host of PlayStation icons, including
03:50Nathan Hale from Resistance, Sev from Killzone, Cole and Zeke from Infamous, or even a Chimeran or Helgar
03:56Soldier. Number 7. Drake's Fortune spearheaded trophies on PlayStation. Today, it's a must that
04:03every single PlayStation game supports trophies, but some of us remember back into the dark, dark days
04:08where this wasn't the case. Sony's version of Achievements first arrived in 2008, months after
04:15the launch of Drake's Fortune at the tail end of 2007. Thankfully, the decision was made to add trophies
04:21to the game retroactively, making it one of the very first titles to bless players with that
04:25oh-so-sweet acquisition sound effect. Other big names included in that first wave of trophy-enabled
04:31games were LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, and Warhawk. But the very first game to utilize the trophy
04:37system overhaul was Housemarc's excellent Super Stardust HD. With Housemarc finally being acquired by Sony
04:44after their massive hit with Returnal in 2021, it's safe to say they're a huge part of Sony history
04:50now. Number 6. Nate, Elena, and Chloe's actors appeared on TV together before Uncharted. They had
04:57their ups and their downs, but by the end of Uncharted 4, Nate and Elena had finally settled
05:02down to live a normal-ish life. No matter what happened throughout the series, the two characters
05:07just seemed like a good fit together. A spark that can be attributed partly to the chemistry between
05:12actors Nolan North and Emily Rose, who were good friends in real life. It's also a little-known
05:17fact that Uncharted is not the only project the two have worked together on. In the first half of
05:22the 2010s, Rose led a TV show called Haven, a supernatural drama set in a town that is plagued
05:29with occult happenings. In the third season, North guest starred as Will Brady, a man who accidentally
05:35sends everyone else into a coma. In addition, beloved Uncharted actor Claudia Black, who plays
05:41Chloe Fraser, also guest starred in this same season, appearing in another episode alongside
05:47Nolan North. Number 5. Nathan Drake was in an early version of Uncharted The Lost Legacy
05:532017's The Lost Legacy is an excellent spin-off starring Nadine Ross and Chloe Fraser searching
05:59for the Tusk of Ganesh. It's a worthy addition to the franchise in every way, but stands out as an
06:05Uncharted game without Nathan Drake. Barring a quick mention, he's absent from the game entirely,
06:10but at one point, Naughty Dog did consider giving their famous protagonist a supporting role.
06:16On PlayStation Blog, writer Josh Schur explained that the team toyed with a few ways of incorporating
06:22Nate into the game, but ultimately they decided against it, feeling like Uncharted 4 was a perfect
06:27end for the character. In addition to Nate, other Uncharted characters almost rocked up in the game too,
06:33including Sully, Nate and Elena's daughter Cassie, and Charlie Cutter. Speaking of which…
06:38Number 4. Why Charlie Cutter Disappears Halfway Through Uncharted 3 The British tough guy with a
06:45seemingly uncharacteristic fear of tight spaces, Charlie Cutter, was first introduced in Uncharted
06:503 as Nate's latest ally. The character had some of the funniest dialogue in the game, and he was a
06:56huge
06:56bright spark in Uncharted 3's early sequences, though it was massively disappointing when he was
07:01abruptly written out of the story at the midway point. While it would have been great to see him in
07:06the
07:06second half of the game, there is a pretty good reason why you don't get to. Turns out Cutter's
07:11voice actor Graham McTavish snagged a role in Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies around the same time
07:17Uncharted 3 was in development, and as a result his schedule became too crowded. There were plans to
07:23include him in more of the game, but unfortunately he was written out with a broken leg instead.
07:28Number 3. Uncharted 3's Plane Scene Inspired Mission Impossible 5
07:33Hollywood is in Uncharted's DNA, especially now there's an Uncharted movie, but Uncharted 3 actually
07:39went the other way and inspired a movie scene. The sequence in which Nate boards a huge cargo
07:45plane that crashes into the desert was something that director Christopher McQuarrie looked at when
07:49making the fifth installment of the Mission Impossible series. That film opens with a scene where
07:54Tom Cruise attempts to board a flying plane, with the similar scene in Uncharted 3 being one of the main
08:00inspirations behind the stunt. Number 2. Uncharted 2 got Nolan North a role in Star Trek
08:06Another connection between Uncharted and Hollywood, if you watched 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness,
08:13you may have noticed a familiar face and voice towards the end of the film.
08:17Yes, Nolan North plays a crew member of the USS Vengeance who's shot down when Khan, Kirk and Scotty stormed
08:24the
08:24command room. It's a teeny tiny role, but it was cool to see him on screen nonetheless. And according to
08:30North,
08:30he landed the part because director J.J. Abrams was a big fan of Uncharted 2, specifically its opening
08:37train scene. In return, it seems like there's a little bit of an Uncharted easter egg in J.J. Abrams'
08:43Star Wars Rise of Skywalker, as that outfit Poe wears is a dead ringer for Nate's outfit in Uncharted 3.
08:50Number 1. Nate doesn't ever take damage Uncharted has been around since 2007, but it wasn't until
08:572018 when we learned this incredibly interesting fact about the way the games work. You know that
09:03red HUD element that's displayed whenever Nate is being shot at by enemies? That's not meant to
09:08represent blood or damage. It's actually a sign that his luck is getting close to running out.
09:13This was revealed by Jonathan Cooper, an animator who worked on Uncharted 4,
09:18revealing that basically Nate only dies when he takes enough near misses.
09:23So yeah, every bad guy in the Uncharted series has even worse aim than we thought.
09:28Of course, Chloe's HUD lights up in the same way across the Lost Legacy,
09:31creating a group of dedicated treasure hunters just making it through their adventures by the skin of
09:36their teeth. That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in that comment section if you
09:40can
09:40think of any other curious tidbits about Uncharted you reckon most people don't know.
09:45As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture. Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
09:50If you like it, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at JessMcDonald,
09:54but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.
09:57See you next week.
Comments