PaigeFTW: The Best Cold Open in ‘Uncharted 2’
With Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End on the cusp of release for PS4 next month, I thought it would be prudent to look back at the series’ arguable pinnacle: the opening sequence of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
Opening levels are always tricky. Players need to be introduced to the game’s mechanics and controls, but presenting the sequence as a straightforward tutorial can be dull and overplayed. On the other hand, getting dropped in media res can go horrifically wrong if poorly done.
Most games settle for a visually stunning opening cinematic and then dole out player control through a ho-hum platform-then-fight sequence. Simple.
But Naughty Dog has always had an uncanny sense for how to do it better.
Nate wakes up alone … with a bloody hole in his gut … on a train … that is (literally) falling off a cliff. When he manages to get back on solid ground, he discovers the hard way that this train wreck is massive and still in the process of occurring. This is the high-stakes context under which players learn to walk, leap, climb and navigate the landscape. Occasionally pipes break beneath Nate’s hands as he moves, scaring players into thinking that their every move is a close shave.
Interspersed with this slow drip of new information are flashback cutscenes that offer general context (but no specific details) as to how exactly Nate got here.
That juxtaposition between those far-removed scenes and the treacherous reality of Nate’s present heightens the tension to new levels: What will come next? How can the situation get worse? How the hell did we get here?
Even if the player has “control,” so little of what happens is actually in their hands — surely another reflection of Nate’s situation — and yet, we believe that every brush with death is somehow our fault.
Truly, it’s the deft use of gameplay to heighten storytelling, not merely their equal penchant for Hollywood bombast, that make Naughty Dog games so enjoyable.
