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WARNING: Minor spoilers for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
Want to chop a game down? Just call it “linear.” That’s a bad word these days, roughly translating to a limited — and limiting — experience where you walk down a corridor with no turns for eight hours straight. Technically, we’re talking something roughly as complex as a 2D side-scroller in an age where we can make our own digital fate in games like Fallout: New Vegas or The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.
Well, let me introduce you to a little something called Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
I meant to do that!
I’d be hard-pressed to name a more aggressively linear game unless I reached all the way back to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Uncharted 3, however, outdoes its predecessor in several ways. The entire game amounts to identifying the one and only starting point to reaching the next area and dispatching the people, creatures, and/or puzzles between you and it. You will not divert from the set path. It is, in fact, impossible to do so. Don’t even bother trying.
And that rigid linearity makes it a great experience.
Note that I say “experience.” Some might argue my description doesn’t necessarily equal a good game, and they’d certainly have a point. Games should be interactive, driven by the player’s choices and actions. That said, even the most open-world environments guide you in some way to the next mission driving the story forward. Ignore them if you want, but the signs still clearly read “Go this way.”
Uncharted 3 telegraphs its signs loud and clear and leads players by the hand from point A all the way to point Z. Once you decipher the visual language, you’ll never want for direction because each question — where to go, what to do — only has one possible answer. Outside of combat, I only ever recall making one decision in the entire game, and that wasn’t so much a matter of “Which door?” as “Which door first?”, since you eventually go through both. Cut-scenes kick in without warning once or twice in mid-gunfight to advance the narrative if you’re taking too long.
Aw, man…not another ruined city with exactly one entrance that'll be locked!
You’ll even find several extended sequences (including an entire story chapter) where you’re literally pushing the control stick in one direction and holding it there the entire time. You have no real control over what happens to Drake here; you merely drive him forward. Let go of the stick, and he stops, waiting for you to stop screwing around and un-pause the movie.
And that’s exactly why it works.
Developer Naughty Dog didn’t set out to make a loose choose-your-own-adventure. They wanted to create a specific experience with a specific storyline and then make you a central part of that epic adventure. Uncharted 3 hits the holy grail of gaming as an interactive movie.
Cut-scenes kick in because a flooding boat floods no matter what you’re doing. In those extended sequences, you push Drake onward because he’s pushing himself onward, sometimes past the point of endurance. You become a part of his desperation and determination, minus the actual dehydration and suffering. The camera frequently pulls back at these moments to show you the immensity of Drake’s situation, and these are visually arresting, emotionally effective moments. You see one small man surrounded by a hostile world, and you want to help him survive it.
Oh no! What am I supposed to do now?
Sure, it gets a little onerous at times. A few chases expect you to discern the exact path the designers want you to take on a split-second basis or else fail the mission, but that also heightens the tension. Drake can’t draw guns or even jump around at certain times because you’re not allowed to override his motivations, plans, or morality. Instead, you step into Drake’s head and figure out how he’d handle the situation.
Of course, none of this would work nearly as well if we didn’t like the guy. Great movies give us interesting people doing interesting things; Uncharted 3 never runs short of either, and since it’s a game, we’re the ones actually doing those interesting things. And like movies, to a certain extent, that does mean a tight narrative that stays on the rails at all times, charting an exact course to create a precise conclusion…and allowing no deviation.
Could you have it both ways? Freedom and a totally defined story? Possibly, but that’s not the goal here. When I play Fallout: New Vegas or Skyrim, I create my story through a cipher character with no personality of their own. When I play Uncharted, I want Drake’s story, not mine. I accept that Naughty Dog can tell it better than I might play it.
I’m not in control. I’m along for the ride. And what a ride it is.