Did Naughty Dog retcon Chloe Frazer? I only ask because in Uncharted 2 she looked more Spanish or Mediterranean, and in The Lost Legacy she obviously looks Indian. The Australian accent never made any sense regardless, but they explain that away as well as Chloe’s family was relocated to Australia when she was a child. Not that it really makes any difference, it’s just an observation. (Update: After writing this, I decided to boot up Uncharted 2, and I could in fact tell that Chloe looks pretty much the same. The main difference being that since she was a NPC in Nathan’s story, the camera never really fixed on her for very long, where-as The Lost Legacy moved much slower, and focused on her face for much longer periods of time. Long story short, she always looked the same but it was tougher to make out specific details in the older games, both because of lower poly models and lack of character close-ups. Yes, I am fully aware of the time and energy I’ve spent investigating such an inconsequential detail.)

In any case, Uncharted The Lost Legacy can barely be considered a backlog title, since I’ve only owned it since Black Friday, but honestly I don’t know how else to categorize it.

It’s longer than I expected, with Chloe and Nadine chasing after the tusk of Ganesh. Honestly, I kinda wish the whole “race to find the artifact before the bad guy” trope would get a rest. It was great when Indiana Jones was racing against the Nazis, and when Lara Croft did it about nine times. Then Nathan Drake beat the bad guys to the treasure four times in a row. Now Chloe and Nadine get their turn. It’s really been done a lot. It would be cool if we could get a different twist on the adventure story.

That said, The Lost Legacy is Uncharted through and through. We might be looking at Chloe’s ass instead of Nate’s this time around (darn), but all the ridiculous over-the-top action is still there, perhaps even more-so than in Nate’s adventures. Nate escaped his share of impossible situations, but Chloe one-ups her male counterpart in almost every way, to the point where it does illicit an eye roll or two.

Uncharted still never takes itself too seriously, but at times it almost becomes a parody of itself. It’s almost as if the developers asked themselves how they could possibly top what has come before, realized it would be a pretty huge stretch, then said fuck it and did it anyway.

That’s not to say any of the action is bad or unenjoyable. These games always required a little suspension of disbelief, and the environments the player gets to swing around in are still as gorgeous as ever. I don’t know what voodoo Naughty Dog is into but their game engine is downright amazing. I know it’s sucking every ounce of power out of that system because the entire time I was playing my PS4 sounded like it was about to fly right out of the house.

I enjoyed my time with The Lost Legacy, and to be honest I know very little of Indian history and folklore. It was interesting to follow the story of Shiva and Ganesh, even though I couldn’t tell you how much of it was true mythology and how much was embellished for the sake of the game. Even still, the writers continue to find interesting points in history to visit, and unique twists to put on the existing mythology. I think I’m one of the few people that was fascinated by the story of Captain Cook in Uncharted 4, but then again I have a childhood soft spot for anything pirate.

Some things to note:

  • While Claudia Black plays Chloe with her natural Aussie accent, the actress that plays Nadine is a white girl from Mississippi. Could’ve fooled me.
  • The friction between Nadine and Sam was understandable, but I don’t really get why Nadine was so pissed that Sam was once an adversary. Isn’t that part of being a mercenary?
  • The bad guy’s motivations really don’t make any sense. He’s searching for the tusk of Ganesh in order to trade it for a bomb? With all the money spent on manpower and fuel, trucks, tanks, etc. couldn’t he have just bought one?
  • The game is gorgeous. I took a lot of screenshots. They are on the PS4. My wife is watching television. I cannot get them off of the PS4 until my wife is done watching television. Therefore this story has no screenshots.