5/5 ★ – glasselevators's review of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

(Review no longer reflects current feelings) I’ve always found the Brothers Drake chapter kind of boring. It’s a bit of a drop in mood and tone from the explosion-heavy section of the game that came before it, spent roaming an old house that feels haunted more so than Libertalia — though littered with boxes of memorabilia instead of bodies with pierced, phantom guts — and chatting up a storm with my good old buddy Sam, who I’ve just learned something deeply disappointing about at this point. But it’s cute! It ties itself perfectly into Uncharted 4’s cheerful threads of childlike wonder and passion carrying into adulthood, but it’s more intimate and toned down than what we’ve grown accustomed to. For one, the childlikeness is more fitting. Nate is younger, here, not quite experienced, softer, less the unit that’s made it out of hundreds of dogfights miraculously alive. It’s this rush that’s become part of Nate’s identity over the years: the feeling that you’ve made it out by the skin of your teeth. Ironically, it’s also what keeps him getting sucked in again and again, this time under the pretense of helping his brother escape a continuously absent villain by finding the biggest stash of pirate exploits there is. This game puts a lot of emphasis on family. Lineage, legacy. There’s Sam, sure, but then there’s also Sully, Elena, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, and even a mention of Rafe’s father. There’s the family that owns the big, ghost-lived house. Someone grew up here. Someone was sick here. Someone will likely die under this roof, alone, and slow, and quiet. The Brothers Drake ends, partially, with a conversation with an old woman who knew the Drakes’ mother. She represents a failure, miserable as that sounds. This is what happens to the people who follow their dreams and pay for it, who spend long stretches of time away from their kids and die slowly and unexpectedly from sickness, rendering them unable to keep exploring the world. Practically useless to themselves. Sam and Nate, in this era, represent the raw material: what comes before this. What comes before withering away, frenzied and bright-eyed and wearing hundreds-year-old armor on their young heads. And this is interesting because it presents treasure hunting or doing what you love as something that is unchangeably cyclic. It’s innate. When you’re older and you see kids doing what you used to be capable of, you get the urge to give a warning. Tell them to limit themselves. But you’re given a choice— you either let yourself be bitter, or you embrace being so, so excited for them. They’ll just have to learn from you, one way or another. You wonder if they’ll make it work. In the epilogue with Cassie, you do the same playing as her. But this house lives and breathes and sighs in the lazy afternoon, dug into the sand, while you search for your parents instead of knowing they’ve already gone. Cassie figures shit out. Nate and Elena giggle to themselves still seemingly in love as ever, and tell her the truth. They made it work. Cassie will, too. And the wheel keeps turning. Uncharted 4 is so joyful in a way that keeps me coming back to it. It can be about anything you’ve ever loved. That’s treasure enough. (“It’s not gonna be easy.” “Nothing worthwhile is.”)