After about half an hour of playing Uncharted: The Lost Legacy at a preview event last week, it occurred to me that it’s the first Uncharted game that doesn’t feel like it’s being propelled by a cast of characters who, through thick and thin, genuinely love each other. Instead, Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross feel like little more than colleagues, brought together in the pursuit of an item called The Tusk of Ganesh, but for entirely different reasons.
Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross feel like little more than colleagues
Finding the Tusk is Chloe’s first independent treasure hunt, and it's supposedly one that's deeply personal, with ties to her family who, despite her appearances in Uncharted 2 and 3, we know very little about. Nadine is her gun-for-hire, and the game is set soon after she has lost her private military company, Shoreline, from Uncharted 4. Nadine wants money and perhaps a little redemption, while Chloe seems to want a reflective journey that ends with a prize. It’s a tense time for the two of them, and the story seems have a much sharper focus on the individual characters than Uncharted’s usual look at particular historical figures or artefacts.
They are very different to other characters in the franchise, too, which makes The Lost Legacy feel particularly fresh. Chloe doesn’t have a semblance of Nathan Drake’s righteous hero complex, and, put in a stressful situation, her main priority is self-preservation. She’s much darker and more malicious, and that’s part of what makes her relationship with Nadine feel unpredictable, and what has me so interested. While most of the banter I encountered between the two seemed to be a unique brand of flirty, Nadine, a careful strategist, often seemed to get irate at Chloe’s more brash, impulsive decision making, and Chloe didn’t seem to care. Naughty Dog even told us that there were multiple revisions to the general, chatty dialogue between the two characters, to prevent them from being too "friendly".
Chloe doesn’t have a semblance of Nathan Drake’s righteous hero complex.
The third main character is probably the game’s antagonist, Asav. He’s an Indian Rebel Leader who’s also in the race for the Tusk of Ganesh and while I don’t know how compelling his motives are, it does seem like Chloe and Nadine are quite a force to be reckoned with. We do know that he has some kind of connection to or previous relationship with Nadine, but he’s mostly shrouded in a very mysterious allure, and I think he, combined with the two leading women, make a solid entry point for someone who has never even played an Uncharted game. It focuses on somewhat unexplored characters, with a few nods to previous games for familiar players, like a conversation Chloe and Nadine have about the “Drake brothers” and the chaos that tends of follow them.
As a long-time fan of the franchise, though, I’m both excited and curious to dive into a story that has so many possible points of conflict between our main characters, with an opening dynamic that feels more like The Last of Us than what I'm used to seeing in Uncharted. I look forward to seeing how Naughty Dog handles telling this seemingly difficult story, with three strong characters from hugely different backgrounds. If you’d like to hear more about the gorgeous Western Ghats of India, or how The Lost Legacy’s gameplay stands out, check out our gameplay preview.
Alanah Pearce is a producer at IGN, and she got official confirmation from Naughty Dog that Chloe Frazer is, indeed, a fellow Australian who just has a slightly British twang to her accent. You can find her on Twitter @Charalanahzard.
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