Uncharted 4: A Thief's End – Can It Be One of the Best Action Games of Recent Years?

When centuries ago Sony revealed that the Naughty Dog studio was working on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, the malcontents only saw it as a poor man's knockoff of Tomb Raider. Since then, however, much has changed. Today, it’s a series with an established position, and its fourth edition is one of the most anticipated productions of the upcoming months. The creators of the cycle are apparently aware of this fact, because they've been drumming up the hype by releasing new top-notch gameplay every once in a while. This is what they did in the recent case of showing off our protagonist traipsing through a jungle; now they’ve repated this tactic at E3. The developers came to Los Angeles armed with an extensive demo of their latest work, part of which was presented at the end of Sony’s conference. The rest of the thrilling sequence we saw yesterday behind closed doors of the quiet rooms of the Convention Center. This time, the frantic escape of Drake and Sully from an armored vehicle didn’t end on the bridge, but lasted for a solid several minutes.

This presentation for the chosen few was hosted by Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann, the two most important people behind the project. Although the featured episode was heavily scripted, it was hard to look away from what was happening on the screen. From beginning to end I was truly enraptured with the entire sequence – it’s precisely this kind of action that makes us drool in anticipation for Uncharted 4. What's really pleasing is that the transitions from the fragments leaving us more freedom to the strictly planned scenes seemed completely natural. With no pad in hand, it was sometimes difficult to sense where the game ended and a well-directed show began. Naughty Dog studio already surprised us in this way many years ago, but I feel that with the release of A Thief's End the bar will be set even higher.

You'd probably like to know what happens to Nathan after the scene of launching a rope on the bridge, which crowned the presentation at Sony’s conference. Basically, our adventurer finally lands "safely" on the ground, but the excitement doesn’t end there – he’s then being brutally dragged by a rushing tug. Drake slowly manages to climb onto the back of a lorry, where he can shoot at his opponents for a change. Later, our hero decides to change the vehicle to have a better chance of escaping the armored van that hasn't stopped the chase. This fragment goes on for a solid several minutes, but we won't reveal its conclusion, as it would mean seriously spoiling the plot.

The closed presentation of Uncharted 4 made it possible to get answers to some interesting points raised during the viewing of this extremely exciting video, related primarily to the construction of the city located in Madagascar. Druckmann and Straley admitted that the jeep sequences are not programmed so as to allow Drake to take this risky journey via one route only. Naughty Dog has prepared a much more extensive network of roads leading to the tower, so the players will be able to get there in a completely different way than the one seen in the video. The armored van will always be one step ahead of our adventurer, which means that we can't just leave it behind in the narrow streets of the town – the authors thus want to keep the players on their toes and efficiently pump adrenaline to their bloodstreams. At the same time we were assured that this fairly extensive episode was not prepared solely for the chase, which would seem natural at first glance – after all, Uncharted 4 is the first installment in the series that allows us to drive vehicles. Druckmann revealed that before we get to the part featuring this great escape, Nathan will get an opportunity to visit the town in Madagascar on foot – for instance, take a peek at the bazaar, which was almost completely demolished in the scene presented.

Skillfully balancing between the individual variants of gameplay is an aspect that Naughty Dog mastered to perfection; suffice it to mention the excellent The Last of Us, where the nature of the struggle changed in almost every chapter. The developers made sure that Uncharted 4 will make room for varied elements: simple logic puzzles, heavily scripted action sequences, as well as parts that provide us with a larger dose of freedom (as the previously revealed gameplay located in the jungle). But what is most important in all of this is the fact that at almost every point we will be able to admire the authors' enormous attention to detail, for which there's usually no time in the heat of battle. Examples? Here you go. During the car chase we could clearly see that our vehicle was getting dirtier when driving through the mud, and went back to its original color upon entering the water. The same applies to Nathan's clothing when he was dragged through the ground on a rope for a little while. Let’s go back to the first scene in which Drake shoots at enemies. The authors made an effort to allow the players to wreak considerable destruction of the environment, which occurs primarily by damaging covers. Have you noticed the bullet-riddled sacks of grain (or perhaps sand?) that lose their volume when their contents start spilling onto the ground? Such details add depth to the already amazing visuals of the game.

If the demos shown at conventions are to encourage us to buy the production when it hits the shelves, then the guys from Naughty Dog accomplished their goal. In my opinion, Uncharted 4 is the most put together title presented at this year's E3, and the key evidence that the PS4 owners will get an absolute killer in 2016. As for the people who consider buying a console, they have gained a solid argument in favor of one particular platform.