You Should Play This: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and The Defending Land

You Should Play This: Uncharted 2: The Defending Land

You Should Play This is a running column by Brandon Hyde detailing the unnoticed intricacies in video games.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the second installment in the Uncharted series, starring Nolan North as the adventuring Nathan Drake. Each game revolves around Nathan travelling the globe, as he attempts to solve various puzzles and mysteries in hopes of finding treasure. The standout scene in Uncharted 2 is not the lavish shootouts, the harrowing escapes or the brutal fight scenes. During a lull in the action, the game slows down to show Nathan travelling through a Tibetan village with a guide, showing Nathan the ins and outs to the community. This scene builds a foundation that would later be used as a setting for a third act shootout between the protagonists of the game and the villains. However, these two scenes make for a statement on both Uncharted 2 and the games of that time period. Uncharted 2 subverts the common idea in video games of an action scene, by making the player the force that has to defend a foreign land from a military force.

Before this sequence happens, the game gives the player and Nathan a sequence, where action takes a backseat to the overall experience. Instead of having another raucous shootout, the scene takes Nathan through a Tibetan village, slowly displaying the homes and people, who make up the community. The moments that take up this sequence make for a welcome breather, but more importantly, the sequence acts as a way for the player to gain a familiarity with the environment. As Nathan passes by people going about their day, the camera takes its time to show families together, children playing, and adults contributing to the community. This deliberate sequence ensures the player understands what is at risk for this village; that everything being shown can be destroyed by the antagonists. The importance of this scene is showing the contrast between games at the time, with action video games relying on unnamed and unspecified locations for the player. Uncharted 2 wants the player to recognize the human element of this village, that this is not an assembly of polygons, but a living, breathing community of people.

The slower sequence of Nathan touring the village allows for the game to later on put this place directly in danger of the antagonist, but making the village a more emotional target for the player. This village is not a new location, but a place the player knows and understands. The people that once walked the path of the village are not terrorized by a military force, visibly shooting into their homes and pushing into their land. These details make for a sequence that is backed by emotion, that is not excitement, but obligation to the people that had showed Nathan such kindness. This sequence flips the idea of action games of that time, with the military force working against the rightful foreign people and their land. Games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had campaigns that consisted of the player character being funneled through vague foreign countries, barely giving time for the enemies to be identified. These games of the late 00s popularized this notion of a military force being the heroes of the game, with the foreign people pushing back being the villains of the world. Uncharted 2 reverses all of this mentality, on a deeper level by making the player care about the environment around them.

The environment itself is one of the most important aspects of this sequence. The oncoming military force takes its time through the village, destroying the community piece by piece. As the sequence progresses, the village is overtaken by a tank, operated by the antagonists, that the player has to confront. This evolution of the antagonist from foot soldiers to an armor-clad tank shows the peril of what could happen if the player loses this battle. The people of this town are in danger, but the entire village and its infrastructure are at risk of being destroyed. This aspect sends a message of preservation of these places, by wanting the player to consider the location before it would be decimated. Video games during this era would topple environments with wanton destruction, only allowing the player to see these foreign lands in disarray. This sequence gives the player an opportunity to look back on the rest of the game, with a deeper understanding of how this destruction affects the innocent bystanders.        

Uncharted 2’s Tibetan village sequence is a showcase for how games can use their environment more effectively for their story, characters, and gameplay. Action video games lead their player by the hand through set pieces, trying to funnel them into the next scene as fast as possible, but Uncharted 2 slows down to contemplate the humanity behind the action. These two scenes of slower paced narrative and then high-octane action create a statement on their own about the levels of action games. But combined with the video game trends of the time, these two sequences work on another level of commentary for the industry. Naughty Dog taking the time to consider the imagery of these sequences elevate Uncharted 2 to a level of deeper contemplation of how video games depict violence in foreign countries. For the player and for Nathan Drake, these two sequences inform the rest of the game, not only afterward, but for the entire series.