10 Things You Didn't Know About Uncharted
Uncharted fans, you owe Gears of War your gratitude.
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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
00:22to the mighty PS4. But as is the case with most success stories, it hasn't always been smooth
00:28There were plenty of stressful moments and lots of last-minute changes, even in the beginning.
00:32I'm Jess 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
00:42Gears 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.
00:50But of course, one of them had to come first, and it happened to be Gears.
00:54The first game in the Microsoft-exclusive series launched in November of 2006,
00:59a whole year before Drake's Fortune hit PS3. The timing of this meant that Drake's Fortune
01:04was midway through development when Gears dropped, and as a result,
01:08Naughty Dog took some lessons from 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,
01:25so we changed everything six months before release.
01:27Naughty Dog had initially planned on giving Drake's Fortune a stiffer Tomb
01:31Raider-esque camera and control system, but Gears convinced them to grease those
01:35joints and make Uncharted feel a lot more fluid. And yes, this monumental,
01:40seemingly fundamental change to the game did in fact happen just six months before it was released.
01:459. Troy Baker went from Uncharted fan to Nate's brother in nine years
01:51One 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
02:14same time it launched, and that it made him want to get into video game performance capture,
02:18which at that point was still in its primitive stages.
02:21Troy 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 the spear when it came to, at that point, motion capture. And that created the process
02:48of performance capture. 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 that a fan of a property ends up getting to actually be a part of it,
02:58but here you go. This is one of those stories.
03:01Nine years later, he would appear in Uncharted 4 as Nate's long lost brother, Sam.
03:05Number eight, Uncharted 2's overlooked PlayStation Heroes crossover.
03:10Uncharted 2's underrated multiplayer suite was an absolute blast to play with the single player
03:15campaign, slick climbing, shooting, and movement mechanics perfectly transferred to a PVP setting.
03:21And like with most multiplayer games, you are also able to customize your character's appearance.
03:27Okay, maybe customize is a little too generous. Basically what you could do was choose a skin.
03:32That said, there were some very cool skins to choose from. You could play as a skeleton,
03:36or even Drake in a wetsuit. But the best of the lot were the PlayStation Heroes skins.
03:41This cheap bit of DLC released a few months after the game itself,
03:45and allowed players to enter multiplayer dressed as a host of PlayStation icons,
03:50including Nathan Hale from Resistance, Sev from Killzone, Cole and Zeke from Infamous,
03:55or even a Chimeran or Helgar soldier.
03:57Number seven, Drake's fortune spearheaded trophies on PlayStation.
04:02Today it's a must that every single PlayStation game supports trophies,
04:05but some of us remember back into the dark, dark days where this wasn't the case.
04:10Sony's version of Achievements first arrived in 2008,
04:14months after the launch of Drake's Fortune at the tail end of 2007.
04:18Thankfully, the decision was made to add trophies to the game retroactively,
04:22making it one of the very first titles to bless players with that oh-so-sweet acquisition sound
04:27effect. Other big names included in that first wave of trophy-enabled games were LittleBigPlanet,
04:33Resistance 2, and Warhawk. But the very first game to utilize the trophy system
04:38overhaul was Housemarque's excellent Super Stardust HD.
04:42With Housemarque finally being acquired by Sony after their massive hit with Returnal in 2021,
04:48it's safe to say they're a huge part of Sony history now.
04:51Number six, Nate, Elena and Chloe's actors appeared on TV together before Uncharted.
04:57They had their ups and their downs, but by the end of Uncharted 4,
05:00Nate and Elena had finally settled down to live a normal-ish life.
05:04No matter what happened throughout the series, the two characters just seemed like a good fit
05:08together, a spark that can be attributed partly to the chemistry between actors Nolan North
05:13and Emily Rose, who were good friends in real life.
05:16It's also a little-known fact that Uncharted is not the only project the two have worked together on.
05:21In the first half of the 2010s, Rose led a TV show called Haven,
05:26a supernatural drama set in a town that is plagued with occult happenings.
05:30In the third season, North guest-starred as Will Brady,
05:34a man who accidentally sends everyone else into a coma.
05:37In addition, beloved Uncharted actor Claudia Black, who plays Chloe Fraser,
05:42also guest-starred in this same season, appearing in another episode alongside Nolan North.
05:48Number five, Nathan Drake was in an early version of Uncharted The Lost Legacy.
05:532017's The Lost Legacy is an excellent spin-off,
05:56starring Nadine Ross and Chloe Fraser searching for the Tusk of Ganesh.
06:01It's a worthy addition to the franchise in every way,
06:04but stands out as an Uncharted game without Nathan Drake.
06:07Barring a quick mention, he's absent from the game entirely, but at one point,
06:12Naughty Dog did consider giving their famous protagonist a supporting role.
06:16On PlayStation Blog, writer Josh Scher explained that the team
06:19toyed with a few ways of incorporating Nate into the game,
06:23but ultimately they decided against it,
06:25feeling like Uncharted 4 was a perfect end for the character.
06:28In addition to Nate, other Uncharted characters almost rocked up in the game too,
06:32including Sully, Nate and Elena's daughter Cassie, and Charlie Cutter.
06:37Speaking of which...
06:38Number four, why Charlie Cutter disappears halfway through Uncharted 3.
06:43The British tough guy with a seemingly uncharacteristic fear of tight spaces,
06:48Charlie Cutter, was first introduced in Uncharted 3 as Nate's latest ally.
06:53The character had some of the funniest dialogue in the game,
06:55and he was a huge bright spark in Uncharted 3's early sequences,
06:59though it was massively disappointing when he was
07:01abruptly written out of the story at the midway point.
07:05While it would have been great to see him in the second half of the game,
07:07there is a pretty good reason why you don't get to.
07:10Turns out, Cutter's voice actor, Graham McTavish,
07:13snagged a role in Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies
07:16around the same time Uncharted 3 was in development,
07:19and as a result, his schedule became too crowded.
07:22There were plans to include him in more of the game,
07:24but unfortunately, he was written out with a broken leg instead.
07:28Number three, Uncharted 3's plane scene inspired Mission Impossible 5.
07:33Hollywood is in Uncharted's DNA, especially now there's an Uncharted movie,
07:37but Uncharted 3 actually went the other way and inspired a movie scene.
07:42The sequence in which Nate boards a huge cargo plane that crashes into the desert
07:46was something that director Christopher McQuarrie looked at
07:49when making the fifth installment of the Mission Impossible series.
07:52That film opens with a scene where Tom Cruise attempts to board a flying plane,
07:57with the similar scene in Uncharted 3 being one of the main inspirations behind the stunt.
08:02Number two, Uncharted 2 got Nolan North a role in Star Trek.
08:07Another connection between Uncharted and Hollywood,
08:10if 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
08:21who's shot down when Khan, Kirk, and Scotty storm the command room.
08:25It's a teeny tiny role, but it was cool to see him on screen nonetheless,
08:29and according to North, he landed the part because director J.J. Abrams
08:33was a big fan of Uncharted 2, specifically its opening train scene.
08:38In return, it seems like there's a little bit of an Uncharted easter egg
08:42in J.J. Abrams' Star Wars Rise of Skywalker,
08:45as that outfit Poe wears is a dead ringer for Nate's outfit in Uncharted 3.
08:50Number one, Nate doesn't ever take damage.
08:54Uncharted has been around since 2007, but it wasn't until 2018
08:58when we learned this incredibly interesting fact about the way the games work.
09:02You know that red HUD element that's displayed whenever Nate is being shot at by enemies?
09:07That's not meant to represent blood or damage.
09:10It's actually a sign that his luck is getting close to running out.
09:14This 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.
09:27Of course, Chloe's HUD lights up in the same way across The Lost Legacy,
09:31creating a group of dedicated treasure hunters
09:34just making it through their adventures by the skin of their teeth.
09:37That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in that comment section
09:40if you can think of any other curious tidbits about Uncharted you reckon most people don't know.
09:45As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture.
09:48Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
09:50If you like it, 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.