At last, we are come to Iram of the Pillars. This makes the third time we’ve found ourselves in an ancient city, and both times prior we were set upon by supernatural forces beyond what we thought possible.

So the question remains: What horrors await us here?

Of course, it’s just our luck that Marlowe and Talbot wait for now to unleash the evil fire spirits, and have them possess their troops to make them strong… right?

Surely it’s just a coincidence that our possessed foe, lobbing volleys of explosive flame from his hands, drops a grenade launcher when he dies. We’re playing an Uncharted game, after all. There’s always a supernatural explanation.

It couldn’t be that we’re just tripping balls like Cutter was… right?

Right!?

The end is in sight, and today we start the final push towards the City of Brass, in the hopes of stopping whatever the evil British lady has planned for it.

As much as I continue to criticize the combat in Uncharted 3, the convoy assault in this episode is probably the most fun I had with it for the entire game. It’s a well-constructed set piece that fits snuggly into this part of the story, like the similar sequence Naughty Dog used towards the end of the second game.

I’d remark on the supernatural aspect of the djinn that Salim mentions, but for now, I need to wait for other important details to come to light before I can share my thoughts. I would, however, be curious to hear what someone from this region of the world thinks about Salim, his tribe, and how they’re portrayed in the game. It looks tasteful to me, but I am a Caucasian American male with no knowledge of local customs, so my opinion is more or less worthless. Either way, it’s a shame he has such little screen time for the part he has to play for the finale of this story.

And props to Naughty Dog for dodging the trope of a white Western protagonist gunning down legions of Middle Eastern people just because they happen to be in the way of his objective. Instead, we get to work with the locals to thwart the British, and I can respect that a lot more. Obolish the monarchy.

We’re closer now than we’re ever been to Iram of the Pillars, and to rescuing Sully. It’ll just take one more push until we stow away on the plane to the Rub-Al Khali Desert.

Hopefully, there aren’t any more irritating combat sections between us and that plane.

I used the word “pretentious” to describe this scene where Drake wanders the desert on his own, and that word tends to be over- and misused in the sphere of gaming criticism, but I want to defend its use for what is going on in this scene.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about a 10-minute montage of a character experiencing a brutal trial to survive in harsh conditions without the support they realistically need to keep going. That’s fine on its own. Sure, it’s filler in much the same way but it serves a purpose of giving us a sense of what Drake is willing to do for Sully, now that his life is in danger.

What throws it into the category of pretentious in my mind is the use of TS Elliot’s poetry. While the events of the sequence do mirror the words of the poem, those words don’t tie into the overall themes of the game’s narrative. It feels like the writers are invoking the work to put on the airs of deep thought and philosophy without doing the work to back that up with themes and narrative work to support it.

It rubs me the wrong way, and I’m surprised that it took me up until now to examine why that was the case.

We’re somehow still in this shipyard, and still getting nothing important done. Thankfully, this will be the last time we ever see it.

I look at the real-time ocean waves simulation, completely with rocking ships, the same way I do the lovingly rendered horse testicles in Red Dead Redemption 2, wondering what the point of it is. Often I find that with AAA game development, there’s so much work put into these small details that offer such little return. Admittedly, it is an impressive technological feat for the PS3, and I’m glad those boundaries were pushed, but I don’t know if the game was made better for it. I can’t rightfully look at this level and say that it would be any more or less fun if the stage wasn’t wobbling slightly under my feet.

As I grow older, and play more video games, I start to recognize that more and more. These uses of high production value ultimately detract from the final product than they add, despite being impressive on their own merits. I doubt my word, or anyone’s word, would cause it to stop happening, but it’s worth pointing out all the same.

In the world of content creation, a common adage is to keep polishing a piece of work until it’s about 80% of what you think you can do at your best because the remaining 20% isn’t worth the time and effort it would take to achieve. If I could wave my magic wand, one of the first things I would do is win the lottery and retire to do hobbies Let’s Plays full time. The second thing I would do is make that adage extend to the games industry.

I think we’d all be better off for it.

For some reason, we’re still out on this shipyard, looking for Sully. Hopefully, it won’t be too long until something happens in the story.

Between this and the fights back in the ruins, I’ve been left wondering how much I actually like this third Uncharted game. Later on in this batch of episodes, I start to lament whether or not I enjoy the combat of this franchise until the people in my chat remind me that while playing through Uncharted 1 and 2, I was both in a noticeably better mood and had more fun with the game overall. This raises the question of what is it with Drake’s Deception specifically that causes me such revulsion whenever I’m given a gun and told to shoot the British, which should be one of my favorite hobbies.

I think a large part of my frustration does stem from the updated melee system. While it looks cooler and animates better than the previous melee system, it trades a lot of functionality for that added style. It’s not a bad decision to spend a few seconds to quickly take out a guy in front of us with a few punches, then immediately dip back into cover to heal from the gunshots we took in the other PS3 Uncharted games. However, because even one melee fight against even a single enemy takes so long to resolve in this game, it is a far less viable option for taking out foes.

While the animations are playing out and you’re ducking and throwing bad guys, everyone else is actively taking potshots at us. Most of the time, that means we’re a sitting duck likely to be killed either immediately after or often during the brawl. And if we happen to be fighting enemies with laser sights, then we’re in deeper trouble. The button that controls our grabs during melee happens to be the exact same button for dodge rolling and taking cover, which throws off the aim of the laser sights that will otherwise kill us in one hit. Numerous times I’ve tossed enemies around when my true aim was to roll or duck so I wouldn’t die to the guy with a laser aimed squarely at my skull and died as a direct result.

There are only so many times that can happen to us before it begins to take its toll on our fun.

It happens with every game, as inevitably as the tides, there will always be a segment of pure filler that accomplishes little with regards to advancing the plot.

This is that moment for Uncharted 3.

As we discuss in this episode, a lot of what we’ll see in this week’s block is the direct result of the design pipeline at Naughty Dog during this era of game development. They would frequently create entire segments and set pieces before having any idea of where they would fit in the story, and it would be up to the writing team to figure out how to tie them into the narrative. It was a holdover of design principles from the old Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter days when games didn’t need to justify why a mission or level was included in the final release.

Some of the studio’s best work, like the famous train level from Uncharted 2, came about as a direct result of this pipeline. The team wanted to try making a train level where the stage was a physics object moving along a track in real-time, and they threw a narrative justification unto it later. Despite the way it came about, the implementation was seamless, and most people probably couldn’t tell it was shoehorned into the plot.

Unfortunately for Uncharted 3, that’s not the case with either the chase scene with Talbot or the shipyard, which serves as one of the game’s big technical showcases. During the hour-long segment, the pacing comes to a grinding halt as nothing of import happens to keep the story moving forward. If this entire shipyard area was cut from the final release, I doubt anyone would have even noticed.

And as we’ll talk a bit more about next time, it doesn’t help that the section isn’t that much fun to play.

Let’s enjoy this moment where our favorite treasure-hunting trio are united once more because once it’s over it’s back to the worst aspects of Uncharted 3.

As we move into this next section, it’s important to remember that back when Uncharted 3 was in development, Naughty Dog still had the design ethos that the story existed primarily as a way of bridging gameplay segments and setpieces together. The tale itself, while important to the presentation, was largely an afterthought. Despite this, the first two Uncharted games managed to create two well-written storylines that came together in the end, even if both of them had some flaws along the way.

Here, in Uncharted 3, those flaws will become more pronounced and obvious, more than they have already. The Talbot chase scene we’ll open with next time is just the start.

We’re close now to finding the next clue we need from the ruins, and once we do we’ll have a new destination in mind. And with it, we’ll reunite with another old friend, one who has been with us since the first adventure.

That was really rough combat sequence to go through before making it to Yemen. I’ve played this game multiple times, and I don’t remember having this much of an issue with it before, nor do I remember the vast number of grenades flying at me the way we experienced just now. And all of this just to witness the evil Brits perform some highly convoluted stage magic to make themselves seem like unstoppable badasses.

At least we got to see Elena again, and I like the direction they took with her and Nate’s relationship for this game. It’s pretty normal for people who went through traumatic experiences together to quickly bond over that, but realize once the threat has passed and said experience is over, that there was shockingly little else to hold that relationship together. While that seems to be the case here, there’s a lot that’s left unsaid and implied between them that adds to their dynamic for its absence.

For all the faults of Uncharted 3’s writing, and there are many, this is one of the strongest aspects of it. There’s good character work going on in these scenes that deserves to be shouted out.

“As above, so below.”

These are the words that will guide our puzzle-solving through this next section of the game. And with the Brits hot on our tail, we had best get solving.

I was never fond of the hypnotic/illusionary abilities that Talbot and the other bad guys of this game seemed to possess. This was Uncharted 3’s way of trying to add in a “supernatural” element similar to what was done with the previous games, but it never quite landed the same way as either of the previous games.

And it doesn’t help that despite some impressive actors taking the roles of Marlow and Talbot, neither one of them has the charisma or stage presence to command a scene in the way the big bads from the first two games do. I don’t even particularly want to punch them in the face the way I do with the villain of 4. I just want them to go away so I can keep hanging out with Cutter, who is that actual breakout new character.

They just can’t hold my attention.

Since those evil Brits went out of their way to pursue us all the way to France, it’s only natural to assume they’ve done the same for Chloe and Cutter.

We need to catch up with them to make sure they’re alright.

It’s such a shame that Cutter’s character had to be cut from the later portions of the game for reasons outside of everyone’s control what we see from him in this segment bestows him with a ton of personality and characterization. He practically demands a great role in the story, but it simply wasn’t to be.

I enjoy watching him play the role of the smart one alongside Nate. Rarely does he ever have someone to play off of who can speak to history on the same level. And yet, watching Charlie deal with issues like his claustrophobia as he pushes forward gives him a roughness and texture that’s unique among the cast of heroes this franchise has to offer.

So let’s enjoy our time with him, between the poor shooting segments, while we still can.