Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, big news for you first of all. I’m going to Menu Gordon Jones this week. Oh, ooh la la. Yeah, so when I’m on the podcast next time, I will recount every single course they served me. And I’ve gone for the nine course menu, not the seven course one. I didn’t even know there was a difference. Yeah, I think they added it this year, and it’s like another 20 quid. And there’s like another two glasses of wine that go with it. So it’s gonna put me on my ass. But… Wow, someone’s coming to a bit of money. Well, you know, what I’ve spent on it will basically be everyone’s gas bill next year. Like, so you know, enjoying it while I can. The option is gas or a very tiny quiche. Yeah, containing an extremely rare form of like salmon or something like that. So yes, that’s a thing I’m doing. But the other broader podcast related announcement, Matthew, is that we are confirmed going to do a Patreon for the podcast. So I don’t know, I’m actually surprised I knew this. Yeah, exactly. So we’ve been thinking about this for quite a long time and we think now is a good time to sort of go ahead with it. So I suppose Matthew, if I ask you what your thoughts are on doing it, because we’ve talked about this on and off for quite a while. So doing a Patreon, where are you at with it sort of mentally? I think the thing we both agree on is that we wanted to offer something extra to those that wanted. We didn’t want it to be too much, just sort of give us, give us, give us money for just listening to the podcast. I’m not like personally wild about Patreons, which are like mainly that. You listening is kind of enough. I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re being cut off from the good stuff at all. But at the same time, hopefully create something a bit extra, some extra good stuff that people can enjoy if they want to. We put quite a bit of effort into it. I think actually being able to make a little something from it would, obviously it would be good for us, but also just makes it sort of slightly more sustainable because quite a lot of work goes into it, unseen, I think. Yeah, it does. It’s sort of like, it’s one of those things where it can take up to about, I don’t know, if you include playing games as well, sometimes it’s been like a 10-hour-of-a-week thing on, like, just in spare time and stuff like that. And I really enjoy doing it, for sure. That’s definitely not changed, but it’s more the thing of, if we have this element to it, there’s basically no reason for it to move to the bottom of the pile of things, in the sense that if one of us suddenly becomes really busy, this thing can take priority because it’s paying us for the time that we’re putting into it. So, sustainable makes sense, yeah. Sam, if you’re getting nervous that I’m just gonna flake out, you can say, we don’t have to lock me in with money. No, no, no, not at all. Is that what this is? This is secretly, what do they call it? Golden handcuffs. Not at all, I’m happy to be completely transparent about it as well. The podcast currently costs $24 a month to maintain. It’s just through Buzzsprout, our provider. That’s perfectly fine. I’d like to pay contributors, so we’ll probably say we’ll get to a certain tier where we’ll be able to offer a flat fee to contributors and then me and Matthew will split the rest of it in half. That’s like being completely transparent. That’s how we’ll do it. So yes, it kind of like gives people a reason to come on, that sort of thing, but we’ll scale this up and down depending on the money we make. We’re not super expecting, we’re not one of those YouTubers who does it and gets like 10 grand on day one. It will not be that. What I want is it to be not so low that we just have to close the Patreon quietly and never mention it again. I don’t want the, because that’s the big thing with Patreon is you’re basically putting a price on your personal popularity, which is incredibly risky because you have to have guts to do that and thick skin. Yeah, and so I think like in my head, I’m expecting about like 100 quid to start with or something like that. Like I’m not, you know, we’ll see how it goes. That’ll keep me and Renny quite happy. Well, that’s the thing is I’m not expecting like gangbusters cash, like covering the cost would be nice. And then we can kind of like building it from there. Like to give people an idea of how we’re going to structure it as well, there won’t be any like super outrageous tiers where it’s like 200 quid and you get to spend a day with a JC’s kitchen with me and Matthew or something. Like we’re not doing that sort of thing. There’ll be two tiers. One will be like a tip jar style, one pound tier to just say, thank you for the podcast if you want to. We’ve literally had people send us money on PayPal before, just to the podcast email account. So I think a few people have asked me about, oh, how can we support the podcast? Say thank you, that sort of thing. There’ll be a tier for that basically. There won’t be any rewards attached to it, but we’ll be very grateful of course. And then there’ll be another tier, which is a five pound tier, where there’ll be an extra podcast a month. And then if we hit a stretch goal, we’ll do two extra podcasts a month. And the first podcast will be best boss battles in games. So that’s an idea of what you get if you’d like to support us, but no pressure. And we only want people to do it if they can afford it, not to feel pressured into doing so. We’ll still make, a podcast a week will still happen no matter what. And the main podcast is the main podcast. Like the other stuff is sort of extra fun, I think, but we’re not gonna like hide drafts or the best of the years behind paywalls ever. No, it’s gonna be like, I would say like listy content, but like kind of itemized from games type listy content will be our starting point. And then if we do a second podcast a month, we might do something a little bit different. So we’ll see how that goes. But yes, that’s the housekeeping taking care of Matthew. Sometime in March, people can look out for that. We’ll actually like make it go live the week that we put up our best games of 2012 episode because those episodes were always really big. So it’ll guarantee lots of attention, that sort of thing. But we’ll also put on Twitter and stuff when you can back it if you’d like to. But yeah, that’s that, Matthew. So to this episode, we’re making an episode about the Uncharted games. Talked about these plenty before in the podcast, but always happy to talk about them again. There is an Uncharted film out. It has made lots of money at the box office at the time I’m saying this. And it’s a personal favorite series of me and Matthew. And at the same time, Sony has recently re-released Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy on PS5 in a fancy new edition called the, what is the edition called, Matthew? I wanna say, oh god, I wanna say this. Good research. Thieves edition or something. Thieves, let’s call it that. Listen, I’ve gotta get ahead of something. Sam let me plan this episode. So if it’s chaotic, it’s entirely on me. Cause Sam is very diligent and I’m not. It was, it’s Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection. There we go. So that’s on PS5 and it’s also coming to PC as well, which is nice for PC players. You can also get it, if you’ve got the other two games, you can just spend like, is it like five quid, Matthew? Something like 10 quid maybe? I think it’s a tenner. I think you can bang in. But technically, if you didn’t own the other games, you only need one of them. So you buy like a cheap pre-owned copy of Uncharted 4, which there are many, for like a tenner or 15 quid. Bang that in, pay the 10 pounds, and then you get both the games cause they’re both in the collection. So actually there are some quite cheap routes to getting it on PS5. All right, so I only own a physical copy of Uncharted 4. If I own Lost Legacy digitally, which I do, does that mean I can download the Uncharted 4 edition on there? I think, no, you do need the disc, I think, cause it uses like the disc as a key. Right, right. If you’ve got the digital edition of EVA, you can’t upgrade that into it. I think that’s the deal. Well, that’s… It’s classic, simple Sony PlayStation 5 marketing. I think it’s… I think they’ve done these upgrades pretty nicely so far, actually, like Death Stranding being like a fiver, and then like the… It’s free, the Horizon frame rate bump. Yeah, that… Free, the Last of Us 2 bump, you know? I just want them all free, though. Cause they have that, that’s how it is on Xbox, you just put it in and it goes, oh, right, this is the one you want, obviously. But obviously Xbox doesn’t have these first party delights, which everyone wants. Did you see the stat about sales of Forbidden West? No. Cause with Forbidden West, if you’re buying the disc, there is literally no reason to buy the PS5 version, cause the PS4 comes with the free PS5 upgrade, but yet it’s still, the PS5 one still is like, accounts for like 60% of copies sold. Madness. Why don’t people do their research? It’s like, you know, potentially 20 quid cheaper if you bought on PS4. Well, that’s a good starting point, anyway. We’ll save that one for the what have we been playing episode in, whenever we’re doing the next one. Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve been playing the original Horizon 2, so we will have a big horizon chat. Yeah, that’s something we’ve not really talked about much in the podcast before, other than you complaining about it in relation to Breath of the Wild. But yeah, that’s good stuff. So the other thing is, Matthew, this PS5 version of Uncharted is more than a frame rate bump, isn’t it? It is like shinier. It is just, it looks tons nicer, I would say, than the PS4 one. Like a noticeable massive leap. I wouldn’t say I’m like Digital Foundry when it comes to my analysis on these things. But they have, you know, Naughty Dog are, they’re touting it as our first PS5 game. So they’re like, this is us on PS5, this is what we’re doing. I mean, to my eyes, it kind of looks how I remember the original looking. Maybe there’s some lighting, subtle lighting differences because it is a beautifully lit game. But I mean, even if it was just the frame rate boost, that is awesome for the visual density of these games and crazy animation and the motion of them. Actually, being able to see it smooth is like a huge boost. I felt this when they did the remastered collection for PlayStation 4, like playing two and three again. You know, it’s like not a completely new game, but you’re seeing, it’s such an impressive boost. It does carry some weight, I think. Oh yeah, for sure. I thought that was Bluepoint who did that, the Nathan Drake collection, and that was phenomenal. And I do think you get a similar kind of effect from this. Like I’ve only played the first bit of Uncharted 4 with the disc copy, as Matthew mentions. But yes, even just that kind of opening boat sequence, it’s like, I remember that seeming slightly juddery on PS4. And then like, to just see it just, you know, amped up in this way. This was always the game where I was like, I would just love all the PlayStation 4 like big exclusives. This is the one I’d love to see at a higher frame rate. And the fact they’ve done it, and it’s relatively simple to get hold of, you know, barring getting hold of a PS5, which is, you know, not that easy. So yeah, it’s fantastic. And I agree now, the entire series minus, what’s it, Golden Abyss, is now feature-proof, Matthew. So that’s good for everyone involved, but yeah. So yes, I think then like it’s extra shiny, a very reasonable price. And yeah, I’m really glad that they’ve done this. I have a lot of affection for these games. So in this first part, we’re gonna talk a bit about the film, which Matthew has seen, and a little bit more about this new collection. And then in part two, we’ve got a few more sort of reflections on the series, sort of deeper dive stuff. And then we’ve got like some lists at the end of our like best sort of levels and stories and things like that. A bit like the Pokemon Games episode, we’ve divided it up into two different sort of themed lists rather than a kind of straight ranking of the series. So Matthew, I suppose the question to ask here is, because for people who get a PS5, who didn’t have a PS4, aren’t that familiar with, obviously didn’t have a PS3, that seems even more implausible. They get this and they see the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves collection. Do you think this is the best entry point for an Uncharted fan to get started, a new Uncharted fan? It’s tricky, because Uncharted 4 feels like an end game. It’s a big nostalgic love letter to the other Uncharteds. And while it’s completely, perfectly self-contained, I do wonder if some of its strength is diminished, if you haven’t played the others, because it leans into it, but maybe more so at the start, it leans in, it’s a bit of a victory lap for the first couple of hours, and then it settles into its own adventure a bit more. And I would say, because of that blue point port of the other games, I’d say there’s still a case for jumping into those first. Yeah, I agree with you. I think you have to be super, super fussy to think that the original games aren’t worth playing at this point. Yeah. Yes, they have some of the time difficulty spikes and really annoying bits, but they are like, you know, the first one’s definitely weaker than two and three, but you do need that entire course to like appreciate what 4 tries to do in terms of storytelling and like, and even like Lost Legacy, which is, you know, kind of like a nice little sort of pallet cleanser to finish the whole thing off, sort of nice side story. You kind of need that whole arc really. I think starting with Uncharted 4 would be weird because I don’t know, to make a really crude example, it’d be like starting Star Wars, The Force Awakens. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, you kind of need to see what the rest of them are in order to get this. Imagine that, you get to the end of it and you’re like, who’s this wrinkly old fucker? What’s going on? And now he’s dead. Oh, again, you mean Luke Skywalker, right? I thought you meant Han Solo, but like. Oh yeah, well there’s loads of wrinkly old fuckers in it. I was thinking of The Emperor in part three. Oh yeah, that makes more sense, yeah. Oh God, imagine you started with The Rise of Skywalker as your first Star Wars film. How cursed would that be? You’d never watch another one, would you? You’d be like, I don’t get the fastest about. At a push, you could probably play Lost Legacy by itself because it’s kind of self-contained. It’s sort of got a bit of baggage from four and obviously from two, where Chloe’s from. But in general, it’s kind of standalone. You could play that. If you like that, that might be a good reason to go back and play it all from one, two, three. I think there’s also a… This isn’t to say that they get better with each game, but the leaps they make or the stuff they add, I think it would be odd to play four in Lost Legacy. Then when you go back to two and three, I think you would feel an absence of certain things, where if you play them in the right order, you will see the layering of stuff going on there. I think that’s definitely a factor too. There’s noticeable upgrades between the generations in terms of melee combat, shooting. I think Naughty Dog become way better at shooting between PS3 and PS4. So that’s definitely a factor there. Obviously, the lovely grapple hook, you would miss out on that. When Uncharted tries to be stealthy in the PS3 games, it doesn’t really work that well. Whereas the stealth in Uncharted 4, I would say is not perfect, but it’s built for that purpose. So that’s a big difference. Whereas in Uncharted, it’s like, how many necks can I snap before some dudes just start shooting at me? And 4 is like that too, except the spaces are bigger and the stealth is better. So yeah. The necks are 4K. Exactly. So Matthew, I have to ask about this film which stars Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg. I’ve never been served more ads on Twitter for one thing than this film. And every time I’ve seen the trailer, I’ve just been like, this is the most Mark Wahlberg and autopilot I’ve ever seen. And like, Tom Holland’s just doing Peter Parker again. And I didn’t get the sense that anyone involved, apart from maybe the cinematographers and stunt people, cared about the games really. And it just felt like, well, we’ll just make an action adventure film that’s got Tom Holland in it, and it’ll be based on this PlayStation franchise we own. That’s kind of been my cynical view from the outside looking in. How did you find the film as someone who went to watch it on purpose? I went to watch it on purpose. I’ve never heard, like, a reasonably busy cinema, say half full, no reaction to any of it. Not even, like, a titter at a single line. Like, the banter in this film is so played out. I think you’re right. It’s sort of Uncharted in shape. And there’s quite a few set pieces, like, lifted from the games. It’s almost like someone has described Uncharted to someone who wasn’t really listening, and then they’ve written a script based on that. You know, it’s… There’s, like, the plain sequence from Uncharted 3 is basically in there, like, wholesale, though arguably less better paced and shot than it is in the game, which is kind of depressing. There’s an auction scene, which is very likely auction scene in Uncharted 4, but in New York, with just the two of them, him and Sully, you know, there are sort of… Odds to some of the puzzles in it. Yeah, it’s odd. There’s quite a lot of it in there, but none of it feels like it did. And I think the big problem is A, Mark Wahlberg, like you say, is literally playing Mark Wahlberg. It looks like he’s just wearing what Mark Wahlberg wore that day. I mean, he doesn’t have a costume. It’s just Mark Wahlberg. You know, he doesn’t have the mustache, but he doesn’t have anything. He’s just… It doesn’t change his voice. He doesn’t put on any kind of accent or inflection. It’s just Mark Wahlberg talking about treasure, which is really weird. Yeah, Tom Holland, he’s not quite doing his Peter Parker stick. He’s just playing, like, a 20-something year old dude. Like, it’s not even Peter… You know, Peter Parker is a nerd. This isn’t anything. This is a guy who… He’s a bartender. I guess that’s his character. Like, that’s his whole character, is that he occasionally uses bartending skills to fight people, like in the games. You know, there’s so many situations in this game, in this film, where there’s a bar and he uses, like, spirits to fight people. It’s really odd. So everyone involved played the first, like, 30 minutes of Uncharted 3 and were like, OK, well, this is Nathan Drake then. This is what he does. He just goes into a pub and has a fight. There’s, like, this running joke that there’s this Scottish henchman that no one really understands, and he feels like a misinterpretation of the Cockney scene at the start of Uncharted 3. Right, OK. Because there is a bit of, like, culture clash stuff in that. And it feels like they’re like, oh, that’s a key ingredient. So we’ll have this Scottish guy here whenever he talks. Nathan Drake’s like, what the fuck, I don’t know what you’re talking about. So, yeah, I think the problem I have with it, and I don’t want to get too, like, it’s not enough like the games, because that’s a bit nerdy, but it’s really not enough like anything, I think, is the problem with this film. It’s a set in a recognisable modern day, and then they kind of go on an Uncharted-y adventure, but the Uncharted games are set in a very stylised cinematic universe. Like, they’re very pulpy through and through. Like, even their house is like a cinema house. It’s like an ideal kind of dreamy thing with like ancient maps on the wall. Spielberg-y house. It is, it is, and this doesn’t have that. This just feels like, here’s a load of cars, here’s a load of product placement, here’s just a load of stuff. It doesn’t feel sculpted at all. That’s really jarring, and I think the age change is like a big problem, and they would say that they can justify the character being different because he’s young. But actually, you know, in the games again, like we do see his backstory, and he’s this nerdy kind of boy who is interested in history. They’re kind of ruffians and a bit cheeky, but they, him and his brother, are history nerds for various reasons. And it is that kind of slight Indiana Jones-ish element to it where there’s like an academic edge to it. He takes it quite seriously and he is a bit older, so he’s amassed this knowledge. He’s quite sort of in love with the, you know, he’s a thief, but he’s also sort of in love with this world of history. And here it’s just some sort of slightly incredulous dude who’s just like, oh shit, what’s going on? You know, he’s not, you know, he has some of the knowledge, but they’ve lost any kind of like wonder to the character. He’s just sarcastic, snarky, like nobody who gets pulled into an adventure by accident and is there with Mark Wahlberg. Like that is literally the plot. It’s very, very odd. The one thing I will say for it is the very last set piece feels like something ridiculous that Uncharted would do in a game that hasn’t done. Interesting. It is in a trailer. There’s a sort of, I won’t spoil it completely, but there’s like a sort of an aerial fight with quite unusual dimensions to it. And I was like, you know what, I could actually, I could see myself playing that. I could see Naughty Dog doing that quite well. And maybe that’s the only point where you’re no longer comparing it to the games because it’s doing something like original. Here’s the mad thing. It doesn’t play the theme tune, like, ever. Alright. Apart from when there’s a Nolan North cameo. Right, that’s really cheesy. And it plays like a comedy version of it, as if to say like, wah, wah, wah, here he is. But he turns up and it literally plays this like, dumb, like, sort of, like, ukulele rendition of it. And he’s like, on the beach, and they sort of go, oh, we’ve just fallen out of a plane. He goes, I did that once. Oh, are you kidding me? Really? Argh! It feels like, that does feel like a spoiler. Apologies for people who are planning to go and see the incredibly mediocre Uncharted. Is there anything like, do they steal any lines wholesale from the games? Like, is there a bit where Chloe goes to Drake, you’re gonna miss this arse, or does it like, just all seem, is it all a bit like, it’s got its own not particularly distinctive jokey tone and it doesn’t lift lines directly from the games? He says, oh crap, a lot. Right, okay, yeah. I mean, that is something he says. Again, it’s like someone of his character is famous for saying oh crap a lot when he falls off stuff. If I was the script writers of the Uncharted games and I went to see this at the cinema, I’d be like, I’d be over the moon at like how, I’d feel so talented compared to this. I’d be like, man, we really made those characters sing. Because in my head I thought, oh, this would actually be quite easy to lift wholesale into a film because the whole thing with Uncharted, famously it starts with them looking at movies and trying to like boil them down into this list of like mega tropes for action adventures that they want their game to be. And, you know, you think, well, if this thing is this condensed version of a film, it should be pretty easy to lift that wholesale and make a reasonable addition to that genre. Yeah, it’s funny, though, because I remember when the Uncharted games are coming out when I was working in the Imagine office, someone said to me, well, if the Uncharted games were a film, they’d just be like a two or three star action film. And I was there going, I don’t know. I mean, I think you’re overestimating, like, what Hollywood’s capable of making these days. Like, Hollywood to make a very personality driven, self aware, but not like really kind of like winking at the audience, kind of like approach to an action adventure film. What it actually looks like is this film or Fool’s Gold with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. Like, you don’t get. I quite like Fool’s Gold. Compared to this. Yeah, I mean, you know, but do you know what I mean? Like, it’s like Hollywood doesn’t feel like it has an angle when it makes this stuff anymore. Actually, I want to take that back. I was thinking of Sahara. I thought that was alright. How are you getting your McConaughey, like, mid-naughties, sort of, like, fun films mixed up? Fool’s Gold literally has a sequence in it that I think was lifted from Uncharted, where, sorry, Matthew McConaughey’s character is crashing an airplane and Kate Hudson sat next to him and she goes, where did you learn to fly? And he goes, PlayStation. And I just thought, oh, God, this is like, you know. Did a man who said that in a film once deserve a career in Aissance Matthew? That’s my question to you. But anyway, yes. So, the Uncharted film, what would you give it out of five Nathan Drakes, Matthew? I wouldn’t say it’s a one-star. Like, one-star films are quite few and far between, so it’s probably, like, a two. But I think that’s damning enough. In terms of Nolan North cameos, how does this compare to his Star Trek Into Darkness cameo, Matthew? How would you rank it? I don’t even remember that. Yeah, he’s on the ship, Peter Weller’s character. Like, you know how there’s that giant black version of the Enterprise chasing them through hyperspace? Good film, I quite like it, underrated. But anyway, in that crew, Nolan North is a member of that crew because JJ. Abrams is a big fan of the games and played them with his son or something. So, there you go, you just learned something. Well, I’m afraid I can’t compare those cameos, but this one was reasonably honking. It would have been much funnier if he was sitting on a beach lounger. It would have been much funnier if all four of the voice leads were on those beach loungers. And it’s like the whole cast all talking in their voices. Then I would have been like, you know, that’s so overkill, I can kind of respect it. This one, I felt, this one actually just made me feel a bit sad for like the others. Poor old Sully. Yes, good. Well, there you go. That’s now available in cinemas, so a nice little film review for you there. In a wider sense, Matthew, do you find it weird how there is suddenly this spate of like Hollywood interest in making films? So as we’re talking about this, a Bioshock film has just been optioned by Netflix. So I assume it will be like a sort of a two-star film that’s got a guy from like high school musical in it or something. But like… It’ll have Ryan Reynolds in it. Yeah, exactly. Ryan Reynolds and the Big Daddy played by The Rock. Which would kindly put me out of my misery. Why do you think there is a sudden interest in making games related movies? Because you’ve had like Mortal Kombat and Uncharted has done okay, but you haven’t seen like, you know, a Spider-Man in 2002 equivalent to that in sort of like games to movies. So why do you think that is happening now? Is it just that all IP has been eaten by other things, so now people are just like turning to what’s available? Is it just like they’re so risk-averse because of the success of, well not just the success, the total dominance of Marvel, and the lesson they’ve taken from that is it has to be something that exists, it has to be something known. That argument gets flimsier for me when obscure Marvel stuff starts doing well, because really like, you know, Shang-Chi doesn’t have any more recognition, you know, it’s no more recognisable than many mid-tier video games, I would say. I don’t know, it’s probably just like an aftershock of that. Yeah, I could see that. But like, it’s just kind of strange to see a few of these doing the rounds. Like, I know that, I don’t know, the kind of like, the more promising one is the Fallout TV show that stars Walton Goggins from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for Amazon. That could be okay, I think that’s trying to film later this year. The Last of Us, I guess, as well, actually has direct Naughty Dog involvement, the TV show from HBO, and it’s written by Craig Mazin, the Chernobyl sort of screenwriter and guy who makes a podcast I can never listen to for more than five minutes. But I wish him the best, you know, I wish him the best. I’m sure he doesn’t need it. That’s just because I refuse to learn basically on anyone else’s time, but enough of that. Matthew, shall we take a quick break there, come back and talk about some more retro-y Uncharted stuff, get a bit deeper into the series? Yeah, let’s do it. I think I’m a bit all over the place in this one. I don’t think it’s going. That’s because my plan’s shit, Sam. No, I don’t think so. I think I just swerved a bit between things there. My plan is, it’s very much the Nathan Drake of episode plans. It’s like, we’re sort of going in this direction, but I’ll wing it. I was like, what distinguishes section one from section two here? There is nothing, nothing. I’ll tell you what distinguishes it. It’s because I wrote section two. Can you please keep this in the podcast so people know that behind the scenes? Welcome back to the podcast. So, in Matthew’s carefully assembled Uncharted episode, we’ve come to a bunch of vaguely themed retro stuff about the Uncharted series. Oh, dear. No, it’s gonna be good. There’s some good stuff here to get into. So, Matthew, first up here, we’ve got a discussion about our first encounters with Uncharted. Should I go first here? Yeah, so I first played Uncharted when Sony brought a build to the office. This must have been in like mid 2007. This was the same time they brought a build for Lair where I literally couldn’t control the dragon. The PR had to take it off my hands and show me how to do it because I literally just couldn’t do it. Which did you play first in the demo? I think I played Uncharted and I was terrible at it. I’ll tell you why, right? Because I had not played Gears of War at that point. I’d only ever played third person shooters where you were aiming and shooting at the same time all the time, rather than like you have to get in cover and press a button to aim and then shoot. And so I was just dying constantly. I couldn’t work out at all. And then I remember John Denton, who was in the room at the time, shouted at someone who was playing the game, went, it’s just like Gears, Tom, and then started shooting. And so that’s the interesting thing, right? Is that there’s like a year between Gears of War and Uncharted. But your sense of Gears of War hadn’t happened, that Uncharted would be a very different game, because they, like everyone else, saw that they’d solved what third person shooting is like. So I must admit, I played it, and I remember like the opening cut scene where Drake in the plane crashes, and he goes, oh, anti-aircraft fire, this is so not cool, that’s the start of Uncharted. And then like, it kind of goes from there. I remember thinking, oh, it’s kind of fun, looked really nice. Then it sort of like fell off my radar until deep into the year when a succession of PS3 exclusives had kind of like disappointed people, including Lair and Heavenly Sword. And this came along after those, and was sort of like the one shining beacon for the PS3 in quite a rough year. This was a year, of course, where Xbox had Halo 3, Mass Effect, a working version of the Orange Box, and, you know, like a crackdown, many other delights. So the PS3 was like firmly behind at this point. And Uncharted was like, well, here’s a cool thing that we have that no one else has on their platform. So being on a PlayStation magazine at the time, that seemed significant. So that’s my first encounter, Matthew. How about yours? In this period, I shared a flat with Leon, who was on official PlayStation magazine. And so I only sort of heard about it through him. You know, he was, you know, we’d occasionally talk about the fortunes of our various platforms in the flat, because that’s what two games journalists do when they live together. And I remember him saying like, oh, we’ve got the, you know, we’ve got this one thing, which is going to be really, really good. And he was completely like seeing its praises and blown away with it. It was from him that I heard about all the kind of, how impressive the wet clothes were. He kept talking about that. Like, his shirt gets really wet and sticks to him and his trousers look really sort of squishy and all this kind of stuff. And I remember thinking, oh yeah, that does sound pretty next gen. So for ages, this was just the game which had like amazing wet clothes, which, you know, I guess is impressive. I didn’t actually play in Uncharted until Uncharted 2, because I got Uncharted 2 with my PlayStation 3 for Christmas. It was a PlayStation 3 Slim, I think, at that point, or the revamped one that was like matte, not shiny. I think that was the last console I ever got for Christmas. So that was like mega exciting. I felt very embarrassed getting excited about such a thing into my 20s. I’d seen that E3 demo that everyone saw and was sort of blown away by it all. But I then kind of cut it out of my life. So when they had it in the office and were playing it for review or whatever, I just didn’t want to see it. You know, I wouldn’t go in the games cage if someone was playing it in there and just trying to avoid all the massive TVs on edge and everything. I was willing it to be good. I was sort of willing myself to like it and then it delivered and I was off to the races. But I did go back and play one. I only ever played it all the way through on the remastered thing because I did get it on PlayStation 3 but I remember falling out with it because it’s reasonably tough going to it after you’ve played two. Yeah, I think that’s probably fair, yeah. Much more of like a straight cover, like Arena Shooter, I think. That feels like a lot more obvious back there. And, you know, even like watching some videos for the last couple of days, just reminding myself of some old bits and bobs. Like I was amazed at how many of the clips were, you sort of go into a space with lots of waist-high cover and off it goes. You know, the formula of the game maybe hasn’t changed but the craft or the art that I think Naughty Dog have mastered is disguising, that it is just a cover-based arena shooter, like with cool bits in between. But that first game, it’s quite raw. You know, it’s sort of there, everything’s on show. The other thing to kind of remember about this time too is that like Uncharted did steal a bit of Tomb Raider Stunder. Like that did just happen because you have this game come out in 2007. You had Underworld in 2008 that kind of underperformed and then they basically rebooted it from there. And it didn’t underperform in me. Well, no, exactly. It’s actually like, I think it’s got quite a good reputation over time that game. But like, you know, when Uncharted, sorry, when Tomb Raider comes back in 2013, which is a long old way, it looks and feels a lot more like Uncharted. So it definitely kind of like, yeah, it takes the whole kind of like going into like lost temples, doing a bit, a mix of puzzles and combat, way more combat in Uncharted, of course. But Uncharted has some good puzzles even in the first one. And then like, then the kind of like the scales are shifted. So Tomb Raider can no longer really do things on its own terms anymore and has to follow Uncharted, which I feel kind of bad for it. Cause I think there’s definitely like, there should have been room for both approaches really. But yeah. Yeah. Wounds in Tomb Raider, a lot more wounds. Nathan Drake doesn’t get like rebars through his thighs and things. No, no. But like it’s true that like all the, even in the first one, a lot of the best bits in it are like the set PC bits. Like people remember the submarine, for example, or they remember like, I don’t know, running through like a kind of underground temple and then like bits of it collapsing as they go and stuff like that. And then two becomes like, how can we scale this up to be just so elaborate and so cinematic with no kind of shortcuts? Because if there’s one thing you notice playing the original Uncharted is that you really feel like you see the same combinations of environments again and again. It’s like jungle or stone and maybe some watery bits in between, but not loads of variety there. And I know that a lot of people consider that first one quite a tough hang these days. Like when my partner played the collection for the first time, she did not like the first Uncharted at all. I think she finished it but just resented finishing it. And it does end with a really bad boss fight as well, which they would do again, but the first one has a particularly awful boss fight. So a bit of context here, Matthew. I did listen to AIAS interview episode with the Ted Price of Insomniac did with Evan Wells, who runs Naughty Dog last year. I think it was last April. Really, really good. And like, the Uncharted series marks an interesting turning point at Naughty Dog because they stopped making the Jak and Daxter games as the PlayStation 3 comes along. And it also marks the departure of their founders, Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin. Yeah. So they move on. They decide to leave the company. It basically changes hands to Evan Wells, who was like a senior developer. And then like, then they’re kind of like wrestling with the PS3 hardware and making that first Uncharted is like a hellish experience, it sounds like. Just a real like proper, like, I think he kind of like, when you hear Evan Wells talk about it, he sounds like it’s the closest they’ve ever come to like total failure. And they just managed to salvage it. Yeah, yeah. Cause they’d made all these Jak games on the trot and they’re all, you know, they’re all very acclaimed and successful. I don’t know about Jak X combat racing personally, but you know, they certainly had an audience. And then, yeah, they just struggled out of the gate with this one. And it did, cause it did require, you know, a different skillset essentially. And so, yeah, I really recommend listening to that because, you know, there is this interesting thing where it’s like the torch gets passed on, but then the kind of crushing weight of it as Sony’s debuting this kind of like quite tricky to develop for hardware is kind of tough. And then from there, they kind of acclimatize and, you know, Uncharted 2 and 3, still really like quite tough development, both made in two years, which seems preposterously quick these days. But yeah, like that was kind of the origins of Uncharted. They just were like, it was just really like bored and like hellish fire essentially. They just, it was like real kind of like really, really tough for them to bring to life. So it’s interesting that that’s where it starts because it does mark a bit of a change in how like games changed generally around that time. We did go from having like platformer icons kind of like die out as a thing and these more like human looking protagonists kind of take over and they became like the more dominant in games probably as a result of GTA and stuff like that. But I don’t have any thoughts on that Matthew. Yeah, I was thinking, is Nathan Drake actually the last legit mascot that was like introduced and stuck? It depends how you define mascot because people would say that Aloy is a mascot, for example, you know? Yeah, I don’t really trust people who rate Aloy. How did this turn into you dissing Horizon? Like, how is that even possible? She’s the worst bit of it. Like, she’s just like a jumble of armour, massive hair and a few eye rolls. Like, there’s really not a lot going on there. Like, she actively puts me off the game. But anyway, I don’t want to turn this into an Aloy dunking session. Aloy aside, Nathan Drake is like instantly taken to heart, though. It feels like he’s sort of up there. And I think The Last of Us is just too grim for any of the characters to be considered mascots. Like, you don’t want a damaged girl to be the face of your console because that bums everyone out. Yeah, I think one of the fair criticisms I saw levelled at games around this time was that there were too many boring, bold protagonists. And you’d see those images that are like, oh, can you tell all these protagonists apart? And it’d be like the guy from Resistance, the guy from The Force Unleashed and all this stuff. And sometimes I would see Nathan Drake in there and I’d be like, nah, there is so much effort gone into bringing this guy to life. Yeah, he’s a bit schlubby. I mean, he’s in better shape than us, but yeah. More like that horrible, fat Drake cheat. I tell you what, they would never put that in a game now. It won’t be considered like body shaming or something. Well, yeah, for sure. That is so not modern day. Like, look, it’s funny because he’s grotesquely fat. It would either be… It’s very of its time. They could try and sell it as like representation of different body shapes. Oh, no way. It’s preposterous. It’s like, look at that guy go. Like, it’s clearly a joke. Okay, yeah. I mean, you know, that’s, but yeah, it was very distinctive. I mean, to just like give a bit of kind of context here for when things aren’t quite right. Like, I played Uncharted Golden Abyss for this episode, as mentioned. It’s the first time I’ve played it for as much as I’ve played it. Like I played three hours of it, probably a 10-hour game, which is like I’m all the way through. It’s like very repetitive, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah, it’s like it feels like it’s built on the bones of the original Uncharted. But I feel like mishandles Drake, even though it has all the constituent parts. It has like motion capture, it has like Nolan North voicing the character. But it feels like a facsimile and the dialogue is quite cringe. And it sort of shows, I think, that you are only ever a few steps from getting it wrong. And that’s why it makes you kind of appreciate the how the Naughty Dog ones were actually done. Is that how you felt playing that one too? It goes back to this thing. And I’ve definitely heard Amy Hennig say this in an interview about this sort of her sort of process of basically strip mining every bit of source material for like their core ingredients. So she just had this like massive tropes of like, this is in here are the building bricks of what we want. And from that you think, well, that’s that sounds like a very reductive process, like boiling down something till you get an end result. And it’s like, here’s the game comes out the other end. But actually, yes, things like the film and seeing another team handle it, it is off, definitely the tone. I think some of it’s about the characters he gets partnered up with are not quite right. And that kind of takes it all that sets it all off because so much of these games is about being with another character and banter. And that’s like a key part of their DNA. It’s really interesting. There’s a really great talk, I’ll probably mention it in a bit when we talk about something else, where one of the current writers there, Josh Sherr, talks about the partners are so key that when they take them away, it tends to be at a point where you’ve massively messed up in the game. In terms of narratively, it’s where the characters are at their lowest step. And it’s not like a punishment as such. But their natural state of being is with a person, which is quite, I think, quite true of what’s good about this character. Most of the stuff you remember fondly is him bouncing off other people. When he’s alone, you get basically the birth of the inner monologue, which now drives everyone up the wall. The, right, what are we doing? Oh, great. Oh, fuck, I’ve really fucked this up. Or whatever. Obviously better written than that. Yeah, not necessarily in Golden Abyss, but yeah. There’s definitely something in that. Like, the energy changes when you have this guy who’s a bit like Joe Pesci-ish, who you start off with, and then he’s kind of like, he betrays you, and then there’s this woman there, and I don’t know, you kind of wonder, like, I don’t know, it just sort of, they feel off-brand. They’re like, kind of like little versions of different, like, Uncharted archetypes and like action movie archetypes, I guess. But it was kind of the repetition that killed me a little bit, and the touchscreen puzzles as well. Oh, this game had real, like, launch day syndrome where they’re like, use every feature imaginable, even if it’s preposterous. So every tutorial that comes up says, you can press the X button, which is the jump button, or you can like tilt the console on its side and swipe across the screen to tell him to jump backwards. You’re like, why would I ever do that? Why would I opt to like twist my hands around, take my hands off the buttons? Very unnecessary. There’s charcoal rubbings. Oh, yeah, that just turning, turning fucking antiques around to find shit on them. That’s in there. It’s very much the what was it called? The DS launch game Project Rubb, the DS minigame compilation from Sega. This is the Project Rubb of Uncharted games. I’m surprised there isn’t a blow into the mic to like remove dust from a parchment. We’re in that kind of territory. Yeah, very much so. It’s like the very over designed PS Vita with its two touchscreens. It’s definitely imperfect, you can see why it hasn’t been salvaged for like a HD collection or anything. They obviously thought, well, it’s too tied to this console. If you took it off the PS Vita, it would make no sense as a game, which is true. If you get a PS Vita, it’s worth having just to like, if you can get it cheap, it’s worth having just to kind of like see what that console could do at full power because it was an impressive console for its time for sure. And like, it was like a sort of a more elaborate version of a more elaborate translation of a home console type game than the PSP was capable of when they were doing stuff like Resistance or Daxter, although as we said before, the God of War games on PSP were excellent. But yeah, it’s going to be, we’ll change our tune when we’re doing the Vita draft. I’ll imagine one of us wanted this for some category, this would be the best one. This will be like second or third pick and then we’ll be like, well, you know what I said five episodes ago, well, I no longer believe it miraculously. Oh shit, we didn’t even talk about the draft, Matthew. You kicked my ass in the Game Pass competitor draft. That’s basically the headline on that one, isn’t it? Yeah, I mean, it’s a deep curse, not cursed. It was a wonky draft. I think, you know, I promised to post myself to people and people kind of voted for me because they found that endearing. I am surprised there wasn’t more like outpouring of love for the PS2 library. Yeah, I thought if anything was going to win it, it would be that. Yeah, I was sort of like, I think you’re right, because before I posted like the what we picked, you are up like 75% to 25%. And then I clawed back like 8% of the vote by posting the image without the context of you being posted to different people around the world. And like, you can’t underestimate what a pull that was. Pretty extraordinary stuff, so absolutely appalling tactics. It was a fun one though. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. It was very flawed. The next couple of drafts will have a bit more logic to them, I would say. Stay tuned for those. But back to Uncharted then Matthew, one of the questions you’ve put in your little plan here is, are these good games beyond the incredible polish and cinematic highs? That’s an interesting subject, because I think people can be a little bit snooty about how Uncharted or Naughty Dog do things generally. So, what’s your take on this? Underneath it all, it’s a very basic platformer, it’s quite a basic puzzle game and it’s only merely good shooter. Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy I think are definitely a step up, but I think around that, even if that is true, even if the core of these games is a little bit kind of basic, the craftsmanship around that is so amazing that actually I don’t think it matters. I think the polish and cinematic highs are incredibly hard to do, either of those things. The art design and the world design in these games is some of my favourite. I think when it comes to environmental, location, art, it’s between IO in Hitman and Naughty Dog for me in terms of the best, that those two are the best. I just love the cinematic version of the world they live in and work in. It’s also why I prefer Uncharted to The Last of Us. It’s fun, it’s like a fun cinematic world that I like being in. And cinematically, I think, A, the wit of the actual pacing. If you were to watch these set pieces in a film, you’d admire some of them for their ingenuity, but also just the technical impossibility of some of them. You are like, how the hell are they doing this? It’s part of the fun of these games, a huge part of the appeal for me anyway, is being almost bamboozled by the tech of it and just their command of virtual space is sort of unbelievably cool. Yeah, I think what I find really interesting about your question is, are these good games beyond the incredible polish and cinematic highs? And that sort of suggests that cinematic highs aren’t game design, and they are, do you know what I mean? And I think that you’ve identified something there that people do make a distinction between between, you know, something like this and something like, let’s say, Sifu that just came out, that’s so mechanics driven, and like, you know, one will be, quote unquote, sort of like more hardcore or considered more legitimate than the other, but, you know, there is, like you say, an incredible amount of craft for making a great cinematic set piece. And so you have to consider that part of the package of what Uncharted does, like, is it a best in class shooter? No, it’s a perfectly good shooter, and particularly the fourth one. Is it a great platformer? No, I would say it’s average, it’s very, like, plays itself essentially, and like isn’t particularly hard to play. But those are also two small parts of the whole package of what it does. The lot of the games you might compare them to, one of those things might be the only thing those games do, whereas Uncharted, it’s like a whole mix of stuff, and the cinematic approach kind of underpins everything and requires such, like, a level of effort to bring to life and do well, that I don’t think it matters that they’re not necessarily best in class at their quote unquote traditional genres, do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think that’s fair. Yeah, I hope this question hasn’t exposed me as a bit of a philistine in terms of, like, you know, it’s cinematic, it’s, yeah, it is, it is design, if anything it’s sort of, I like it because it’s design that really draws attention to itself, where it does make you think, oh, how have they done this, or how have they set this up, how do they make this work, and where I see people bouncing off Uncharted the most is where they feel like they zig where the game wants them to zag, and then the whole limitations of the thing are exposed. This would be amazing if you do exactly what we tell you to do, this is going to look amazing, and if you step outside the lines, you know, if you do, you know, I’m pretty sure I’ve even read this in one of the Eurogamer reviews, they’ve referred to, like, you stop listening to the director kind of barking actions and the kind of, it sort of falls to shit. They obviously phrased it better than that, because, you know, Eurogamer’s a bit classier. But that’s kind of true, but I almost see it as their ambitions within, like, the linear space I think are so, they’re to me so exciting and so sort of peerless that I really really admire the sort of the high wire act. Yeah, I don’t think it matters all that much. Like, if you want a game that kind of responds when you want to do something else, then go play a game that does that, do you know what I mean, because, you know, there are plenty of games that are open world games that were moving outside the boundaries doesn’t give you a more satisfying experience. It’s not like we’re kind of like living in an age of, you know, an unbelievable amount of systemic games, even something like Hitman has mission stories, which require a linear set of actions to perform inside this immense sandbox, you can do a bunch of other stuff. But, you know, they’re still not afraid to be linear and cinematic when they think that the player might be excited by it. So yeah, I think that’s that’s like, you know, worth kind of like appreciating as an art form in itself. But that does lead us to an interesting question, Matthew, which is, where do we stand on the eternal debate of prescribed cinematic thrills versus more player agency? I have a thought of kind of like starting thought on this. I think there’s, like I say, a real art to doing cinematic thrills well. What I will say is, I do think there is a ceiling to it in terms of like, I suppose, like mechanical satisfaction you give the player. That part of the brain that it kind of like, it tickles, I guess, it can only go so far. Like even when I was playing, after I played Uncharted 3, and I found out they were playing, they were making an Uncharted 4, I thought, what else could they do with this? And the answer was, they do give you a little bit more player agency. You go into these like combat sandboxes, essentially, and they’re very light sandboxes, but they had a proper stealth system. And like you can do the whole thing in stealth, and if you get caught, it turns into a firefight. And you have this tool, the grappling hook, which allows you to navigate the world in a slightly different way. And that is them adding just a little bit of systemic something to kind of like to give you a slightly different flavor. Very, very simple. You can’t even hide bodies in like long grass or anything like that. But it’s just a little something. So where do you stand on this, Matthew? I did wonder in Uncharted 4 whether after making The Last of Us, there was like almost some slight embarrassment about the pure cinematic excess that they were doing in 1-3 and that’s why it changes. Like 4, you know, it’s still crazy in places, but it’s sort of largely a more muted game, I would say, in terms of those big mad set pieces. Like it doesn’t try and do one every level, which 3 arguably does. Like 3 is so hectic in its flow of incredible set pieces that I always forget half of them. And when I replay it, I’m like, oh god, I completely, how did I forget this? It’s just because it’s just peak, peak, peak, peak, peak, and your brain can’t hold on to that variety, I don’t think. It’s a bit like you with Mario, where your brain can’t deal with him. I can’t believe I’m still taking L’s for that one. That’s like, how are we still on point? I wonder if it’s like a thing coming from that studio shift. Out goes the original Uncharted team, or some key members of the Uncharted team, after 3, and then you get this slightly different era where they are thinking more about deepening the whole thing. Yeah, there’s like more room to breathe between the set pieces in 4, is what I’d say. And you get bits of that in 2 and 3, particularly 3, I think, experiments with this a bit more when you’re in the desert. But generally, this fourth one is very much like a reckoning with like, can you keep living this life forever? And what does it mean to live this life forever? And so you get more bits to breathe in between that. It has, like you say, the mini sandboxes slow the game right down. So there are whole bits where there were no like off the wall set pieces happening. But I think that it’s true that there probably was just a limit to how much you can do the thrill ride thing without it being repetitive. So finding other ways to present that makes sense. I would say that like, The Last of Us was only semi successful, it personally, I thought is that the first one was only semi successful in doing anything slightly sandboxy. There were still a lot of times where I thought, well, I’m better off just like trying to catch three of these things in like one bomb, rather than trying to like stealth it or whatever, rise in to kill stealth sections. I then thought The Last of Us 2 was better at this because it was a game built to like when you get caught, it’s like a scrappy fight to get out of it and that is the whole game. Whereas I thought it was better calibrated for that than the first one was. And yeah, so the Uncharted on PS4 kind of like take some lessons in terms of maybe like the depth of storytelling, but like, yeah, probably just some lessons in like having a slightly broader combat experience too. Is an interesting point that you’ve put in your plan, Matthew. Do we want to talk about Ludo narrative dissonance? This was a series, I first saw that stuff bubble up. Nice guy, Drake vs. Mass Murderer. Those are your words there. But it’s not revealing how fucking bad my plan is. Well, it’s tough because I’m reading this as if I wrote it, but I didn’t. And so that’s hurting my brain a little bit, first of all. It’s hurting your brand, that’s for sure. Okay, so why don’t you talk a bit about this? Every once in a while there’s like a concern or a major criticism that can be applied to many things and it becomes lodged on one thing. This ludonarrative dissonance, I don’t know where it was coined, but it always seemed to come up with Uncharted where it’s like the guy in the cutscenes, Funboy Drake, he kills so many people and people found those two things kind of difficult to balance. I was trying to think about why this seems to come up more here than say with like Indiana Jones and Indiana Jones has like a load of attached stuff that people have issue with and I get, you know, that’s a completely separate conversation. But this thing of like what, you know, why do we like Indiana Jones even though he does kill loads of people? You do wonder if it’s just as basic and as crude as he’s killing like Nazis who are like the classic historical villains. Here everything’s a bit generic. I think Uncharted’s got a bit of a general enemy problem and I’m not saying like if they magic up the right enemy, you’d be fine with all the killing, but I think the right enemy can help. I think there is a reason you feel it’s slightly more say here and in the Tomb Raider games is that it’s just sort of hired mercenaries. It’s just sort of, you know, every day sort of blokes and so maybe it feels a little more jarring because of that. Maybe that’s why it comes up. I sort of struggle to fully grasp why it comes up because it’s not something I particularly feel. You know, when I play these games, I’m not like, oh God, I’m just like, ha ha ha, this is awesome. I’m blowing people up with like, you know, explosive barrels and they’re going flying off cliffs and I just jumped off a mountain and punched a guy in the head and all that kind of stuff. And also the combat in Uncharted is so frustrating that I’m not sitting there thinking guilt, guilt, guilt. I’m sitting there going, God, I hope this is over soon. I’ve got bigger fish to fry than morals. Yeah, I think that’s fair about the enemy sort of situation. I feel like there’s a tiny bit of this being addressed in 4 with like, the Nadine character. She’s in charge of the mercenaries, right? And she talks about them being like sort of brothers in arms and stuff, and then they’ve lost legacies. She’s kind of lost them all, so she’s dealing with that. And then like, that’s kind of tied to her being. But in cut scenes, there are always just like props in the background, basically, when like the main characters are talking, they just sort of stand there. And then they might point a gun or something. And it’s true, yeah, they’re just quite anonymized. So it’s a bit strange, I suppose. I just don’t think you can do this tropey adventure without that stuff, though. You know, I think the game… Not unless you have natural Nazis in them. Yeah, I’m surprised they never went down that route of, like, there was a secret Nazi sect. Well, you do have to kill zombie Nazis in the… It’s the zombie Nazis. They killed the Nazis, the zombies that were there, if I recall correctly. Oh, it was nonsense. Isn’t that like some… Whenever it goes supernatural, don’t they always try and explain it away with, like, real… You know, so they’re not actually zombies. They were just, like, infected by some gas and they killed everyone. They just look like zombies. Or are they actually zombies? I can’t remember. I don’t remember either. But, like, I just, you know, there’s… There’s obviously the thing with the yeti in 2 that turns out to not be a yeti as well. And that’s kind of, like, bizarre to me. And the genie in 3 isn’t a genie. It’s just a big pot. Yeah, there you go. That’s three games spoiled. Just a big pot full of gas. Three games spoiled in, like, 20 seconds there. Oh, come on. Have you ever played these games? Well, we did do that section at the start, I guess. Well, you know. Nah, it’s fine. But, yeah, it’s like… You’ll have fun finding out how it’s a pot of gas. Yeah, so, specifically with Liden Narrative Distance, it was one of those things that, like… So, it’s Clint Hock and who coined it. And I… Right. I felt like this might sound really cynical, but when I was in games media at the time, I felt like it was people trying to tell me how smart they were by using their phrase and, like, how above it they were a little bit. And it’s like, well, you know, it’s a fine criticism to level at a game, but if it comes up over and over again, what is the value of saying it? We all know this is part of the mix or whatever. I don’t know if it ever yielded much in the way of critical value or interesting thought. And so there are exceptions to that. I think that Spec Ops The Line, a game we’ll talk about, I’m sure, in a future episode, is a game that works because it kind of subverts the type of thing Uncharted is trying to do right down to having Nolan North play the main character. And that’s where it plays with that idea quite smartly. But I think just using ludonarrative destinies as a stick to be Uncharted with. I just never had much time for it, I guess, is where I stand with it, Matthew. Yeah, no, I’m in agreement. I only put it in the plan. I’m very defensive about this plan, so. I only put it in the plan because it was talked about so much that it is genuinely lodged in my brain as like part of the Uncharted thing. When I think Uncharted, it’s not what I first think. You know, I think of, you know, exciting level on a train or a particular bit of music or how nice the water looks in Uncharted 4. But when we get down to like 0.10, we’re probably into Lunar Narrative Distance territory. And yeah, you’re right, it’s just because it sounds a bit wanky. If people had called it like, not so Mr. Nice Guy or something, no one would be talking about it because it’d be stupid. Well, I think, yeah, I think like you’ve made me dumbed it down too much there, but like that’s, I do like the effort. That was a valuable effort. I’m trying to make my point seem more valid by really undermining it. It’s not quite working. They should have done, if I was Naughty Dog and I saw that discourse, I would have added a cheat mode, because they liked adding cheat modes like Fat Drake. I would have done apologetic Drake, where every time he killed someone he goes, sorry, sorry pal, oh no, oh no, oh my bad. One of the best solutions I saw to this was when Watch Dogs 2 added that non-lethal gun. And so your main character, it did seem very strange in that game, when this quite nice normal dude who could just hack stuff, got out like a machine gun and just start shooting people. And it was a bit like, I’m not sure about this totally. So they were like, we’ll patch in a non-lethal gun, which I thought was a good idea. But wasn’t his option of non-lethal takedown, like one is like he stabs you and the other one is, he just hits you over the head with like a pool ball in a sock, which I still would be pretty non-past about. I think he has like a taser gun or something like that, like a ranged weapon. Right. But I think you might be right about the stooker balls in a sock thing. If that’s the gentle option, I think you’ve still got to take quite a long hard look at yourself. I wouldn’t consider a knife to be non-lethal, I’ll be honest. But yeah, to each their own, I suppose. Matthew, one more point from this I’ll talk about before we get to our rankings is what would we like to see from the series in the future, if anything? So I’ll start off here by saying that like, again, after 3, I couldn’t really work out what they could do with 4 that would be new or interesting. And the action stealth hybrid is good to sustain that game, but I don’t know if another game could be built with the same formula you see in Lost Legacy and 4. Like I think that might have run its course and didn’t have loads of mileage in it anyway. And I think that if they brought Uncharted back, I don’t think you could do it with Drake because Drake’s story is very much over. If they did it as a Chloe game, I think that would be cool. I like Chloe a lot. But I do think they probably have to fundamentally change what Uncharted is or broaden its scope or make it something different again. Maybe go, I don’t know, lean more into the open world sort of like element that they had in Lost Legacy. What’s your sort of take on the whole thing? From a purely sort of selfish point of view, like I said, this is one of the two teams that are, I think, the best at this kind of world design. I would be sad if Naughty Dog’s art wizards didn’t get a chance to look at other places in the world. There are still, location-wise, there are more things to be done. There are more places I would love to see. One thing I think Uncharted 4 did generally slow the pace down. So you just spent more time looking around. There’s a lot more platforming exploration, even in the linear levels. The Scotland level, where I was replaying it recently, is pretty… outside of a couple of fights you’re just walking around this very nice coastland. I think the Uncharted collectible system, where there’s hidden trinkets, is basically designed to force you to engage with their art design. Rather than run through this level, take a bit of time to look around and pick up glinting balls of light. You almost accidentally just spend more time appreciating what it is they’ve made. I’d be sad if that was a muscle they didn’t get to stretch because they’re just determined to show us how unhappy everyone is in The Last of Us. That doesn’t particularly interest me. I know The Last of Us does have pockets of beauty in it, but not really enough for my money. And I like that side of the game so much that I could probably just stomach them, wheeling out the formula again, one more time, really unleash PS5 on it, really go for it visually. I think I’m dumb enough for that to be enough for me, I think. I just think the formula will naturally change anyway, just as a result of the fact that this is what Naughty Dog always does. There’s never a generational leap where they do the same thing again. There’s a massive, massive difference between The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part 2. Just the scope of that game is just enormous, and the tone of it is very different. It tries to do more in terms of story and world building and the broader world around you. I think that I would expect that to step up again if they were to do Uncharted again, but I don’t think they will. I think Naughty Dog is working on two games at the moment, I think they said. I think one is a multiplayer game, and one is something else. I would expect that neither of those are Uncharted games. So it would have to come down to someone else to make, is my guess. So yeah, who knows what shape that takes, Matthew. But yeah, I’m curious to see if it comes back in some form. I imagine it will just because it’s so enormous, you know. It’s got to be more fun working on Uncharted than The Last of Us, in terms of the stuff you have to do and see, and their attention to detail. It must be more fun animating a man comically slipping in mud than someone suffocating a dog, you know. That has just got to be true. Yeah, you’re making your hammer dog sound guide point again, Matthew. Oh yeah, I’m sorry, that’s one of my ten jokes. Wheeling it out again. That’s good, that’s right below Psychology of a Goomba in the list, so that’s good. Okay, good. Let’s take a quick break there then, Matthew, another break that you have instituted in this plan, and then we’ll do some rankings and listener questions to see how the episode goes. Welcome back to the podcast. So in this part of the episode, we’re gonna do some Uncharted rankings. There’s five different categories here that Matthew’s come up with. The best story, the best level, the best looking level, the best ending, and the best game, overall game. So those are categories that we’ll use to talk about the series in these kind of different ways. Dig a bit deeper into some of the specific bits we like. Matthew, before we get into that, anything you’d like to say about the categories that you’ve added here? Uh, I mean, no, not really. The things that popped into my head quite early on in the making of this part. Oh, I’m so glad I asked. And you obviously had a carefully prepared answer, so that’s good. You know, just remember, like I said earlier, it’s very off the cuff. It’s very Nathan Drake. If I could, you know how they say this, like, some things in life you can be certain of, like death and taxes. They say these are the two things you can be certain of. I can be certain that Matthew Castle will complain about the Uncharted 4 epilogue in this section of the podcast. Like, I would, like, bet a million pounds on it. I would absolutely, and I would be so rich at the end of it. So we’ll see how it pans out. Now I have complete control whether you have those riches, though. Yeah, but I mean, I suppose, but I haven’t actually made the bet. I’m just saying in a scenario where I didn’t say that and where I could actually make the money, I’d do it. But, like, now you’re going to be consciously avoiding it. But let’s kick off, then, with the best story in the series. So, Matthew, why don’t you tell me yours here, and then I’ll tell you mine. I don’t know if any of their stories I actually particularly love. I like these characters in the moment to moment. I think overarching-wise, I think they’ve actually got some problems with them in terms of in individual moments. I often don’t know what I’m actually trying to achieve in Uncharted, but, like, the craft of propelling you through a level is so good that it doesn’t really matter. Like I just know that when a tank’s chasing you, your worry is, like, the tank behind you rather than the plot motivation in front of you. Given that Naughty Dog are, like, considered these sort of storytelling legends, I think the storytelling is some of the weakest parts of these games. The overarching, like, plots, I would say. I actually think it’s Uncharted Lost Legacy for me. Oh, okay, that’s interesting. Like, I suppose, like, because it’s not overburdened with so many set pieces and the need for so many hours of content, it can be a bit slicker with how it’s told, that story. It’s also pretty much a straight-through buddy movie. Like, you know, the two of them together, Chloe and Nadine, you know, they’re basically on screen together for most of the runtime. There are some other surprises along the way that I won’t spoil if people haven’t played it. I think it’s probably like the most focused study of a character relationship, which are important in these games. You know, there’s always the banter. There’s lots of little arcs between Drake and other people, but very few of them last the length of an entire game like they do here. There’s a chance my thinking on this is just skewed because I once watched a really good GDC speech by Josh, one of the writers at Naughty Dog, about the storytelling in the open world bit where you explore the three temples in like the kind of grasslands. And he talks about the challenge of like mapping Naughty Dog’s linear style onto that level. Some of the tricks they come up with, some of the solutions, the way they think about it. It’s so ingeniously done. It’s so clever where they put the storytelling in it. I didn’t really notice it when I was playing it. That’s why, like I say, this take is massively skewed by watching that video. But I found the kind of mechanics of it almost so delightful that it kind of made me think, oh, that seems like the best storytelling, if that makes sense. Yeah, I suppose like you are taking… Storytelling here is how plot is delivered. That’s essentially what you’re saying here. Yeah, I guess that’s probably overwriting what the plot is. I mean, the plot is still fundamentally two people trying to go somewhere to get some mystical doodad and there’s some military guy who also wants to doodad. That is pretty much the plot of every single Uncharted game. And you get to the end and, you know, maybe some lessons are learned along the way. And this still suffers from that. But definitely the thawing of those characters and the way they kind of warm to each other and become quite good pals. If it was a piece of like fit linear film telling it would be… there’s much more of a clearer through line to Lost Legacy. Again because it’s not a full title, it’s not a full price game, it was like a smaller sort of experiment, almost like an expansion that kind of turned into something a bit bigger. I will say though, I think the best single storytelling moment in the whole series is quite near the start of Uncharted 4 where Nate is diving underwater and then when he emerges it’s like a riverbed in a city. In that moment you realise that he’s like given up this life of adventure for this quite mundane domestic experience and I think that’s like in terms of one bit of visual storytelling, I think that’s absolutely top notch about as good as it gets. Yeah, that’s really, really good. Yeah, I suppose what I noted best story here, I suppose I’ve thought of it in terms of more individual bits of story, themes that I like and what I mean in the sense that I like, I agree that the method of storytelling and the elegance of storytelling, probably Lost Legacy is the best one because of the factors you’ve outlined there. But I think that Uncharted 4 has the best story in terms of characterization, which I think is what I’m interested in when it comes to storytelling, ultimately, I struggle when I’m like writing creative stuff, I struggle with plotting quite a lot. But I have a very firm, I start character first, I have a very firm idea of how those characters sound and stuff like that. And I think that whenever I watch something or play something, those are the bits I kind of gravitate towards and it kind of allows me to overlook sort of bad plotting, I suppose. Like I’m not really a plot holes kind of guy, honestly. But like if something has boring characters, then I’m not interested. But like, yeah, so I think Uncharted 4 because even though it’s doing something quite similar to Uncharted 3, where it’s like, it’s the arc of like, how much longer can you keep doing this? Can you keep putting your life at risk? I think because this is a more complete version of that theme realized in 4 in terms of like Drake’s interactions with Elena and like his brother being this force is trying to pull him deeper into it. And then also the fact that he is kind of like the semi mythical hero at this point as well, like the end boss is with a character who can’t quite believe that Nathan Drake has done all the stuff that he’s done. And he does have to come out of a normal life in order to become this person. And there is that thing where you’re like, will he pay the ultimate price for making this choice? And right until that cave is collapsing when you’re abandoning the ship in 4, you’re not sure if he’ll make it out alive because he seems to make one reckless choice after another, and you keep thinking, well, this will be the reckless choice, that finally costs him his life. And so that tension, I think, for me, made it probably the best story in terms of how I appreciate storytelling, if that makes sense. It’s interesting that Naughty Dog returned to that, having done that in the second Crash Bandicoot as well. Oh, very good. I like that. Have I eaten just too much wumpa fruit? Oh dear, yeah. So really good, really good diss there. The real reason that Matthew won’t consider Uncharted 4 story to be the best one is that he was forced to play Crash Bandicoot inside the story. I actually quite like that scene. That’s like a thing with the film again. In the show, in the game, he plays a PS4 and he’s like, what’s this? I don’t know the control. He’s not interested in tech at all. We’re in the thing. He’s like always using his phone to solve problems in the film. And you’re like, ah, that doesn’t that doesn’t feel. Does he have his little book like he does in the games? Oh, he just puts everything on his phone. If we just use some notes app. For fuck’s sake, that was like. I can’t say I saw him doing it. He carries around this load of postcards from his brother in the film. I guess that’s kind of like the book. Well, I always loved that in the in the second game, when you open Drake’s Styrene, you flicked like the back page or the front page. It would like, you go way beyond the Mission Objective stuff. And it’s like the many faces of Victor Sullivan and Drake’s just drawn sully in a variety of silly faces. And like, those are the kinds of like neat storytelling moments that you remember Uncharted 4. That’s the thing I remember from a game I played 13 years ago. So, yeah, it sticks with you for sure. So, but I’ve also put like, I think I agree that Lost Legacy would be the runner up here. But I did actually, I do think Uncharted 3 generally is a little bit underrated. I think the story, storytelling in 3 is good. I’m not massive on the fact that they kind of retrofit Sully into being this father figure. Whereas before, I sort of, sort of, the more it’s like partners in crime sort of thing. And then 4 rolls back the Sully relationship a little bit, I think, to be more like it was in 1 and 2. So, yeah, but I did like parts of 3. Like, I think like the sequence in the desert after the set piece I really liked is a bit of reflective. What the fuck are you doing, Drake? You are in the middle of nowhere and you’re probably gonna die out here. All because you just can’t let this this bullshit life go and just carry on with your life. And yeah, so I think that’s another individual moment of storytelling I really like. Even if it does the whole desert mirage thing, which is very played out. So, yeah, next up, Matthew, you’ve got the best level. So why don’t you kick off with this one? This is also quite a tricky one because I think they do a lot of stuff in the early games, which is like astonishing and then they kind of riff on it in the later games. And there’s things where I feel like, oh, it’s that almost like it’s that effect. It’s like they worked out how to like have Nate inside a collapsing building in the hotel sequence in Uncharted 2. But then that collapsing building is done a lot more impressively in like four, for example. And so it’s quite hard to go whether you go with like the original sequences or whether you go for like a level which tells a complete story. Like it’s, you know, I doubt this would be the top of many people’s list and it’s not my number one, but like I do love the the auction house scene in four. It’s a bit like a Mission Impossible level. You sort of break in, you do some sort of stuff in the auction house, we try and do a heist, then it all goes wrong and you have to do an escape and it’s really a complete little arc like within that level which I really really like. That’s why and also because it’s at near the start of the game so whenever I try and replay Uncharted 4 it’s always I always get to that bit at least. So you know or whether you just go with something which is just so sort of like unbelievably visually astonishing like the ocean liner tipping over and sinking in Uncharted 3 which even having seen it at like the 3 demo I think I was still like amazed playing it which is a slightly rambling way of saying it’s neither of those. Probably has to be the jeep chase in Uncharted 4. Okay interesting what were you going down the hill and stuff and then there’s the mud kind of actually sort of the chase through town where you end up chasing and then you’re getting pulled along by the rope and you’re swinging down and then you end up getting chased by that truck basically the e3 demo for Uncharted 4 yeah that is good that is good I don’t know if you get this in games but I’m always amazed when any level in any game takes you over a huge distance because I always think man the amount of world you had to build just for us to race past this it’s kind of astonishing and like Naughty Dog they don’t like cut corners on that world like if you you know you look for a second away from Nate like there are other cars driving on the roads and there are like farms and farmers and things and you’re like someone had to build this probably someone quite unhappy had to build this but they did build it like the amount of work that goes into those into making those sequences feel like complete I think that’s pretty astonishing. I also like that stretch of the game, because it follows the bell tower, which I really love, where you climb in and the bell collapses. That’s just a really fun bit of platforming in that game. Yeah, I almost put the bell tower here for this, actually, because I think it’s like an individually outstanding moment. I don’t know if it’s entirely a level by itself, technically, but it’s just one of those things where you know what’s going to happen, but then the depiction of how it happens is so, so good that you’re just like, oh, this is beyond my wildest expectations in terms of how amazing this looks. Yeah, right. And so, yeah, it’s just like that kind of visual upgrade of having it uncharted on a more powerful console coming to the fore there. That’s a good choice. I think that I have to pick the train sequence in Uncharted 2, because this cemented in my head the greatness of Uncharted as a series. It was the thing of you had a slow build up as you’re going through that kind of warring city, and then you get to this set piece, which almost has an entire action movie arc in itself. It’s like you start at the back and it’s kind of stealthy and quiet, and then you get into more intense firefights, and then a helicopter turns up, and oh shit, it’s really action packed suddenly. And then there’s dudes on turrets and really tough enemies to fight, and then the helicopter comes back, oh shit, and then it’s like you’ve gone from the jungle to the snow. And then obviously it ends with the train being completely derailed and connects back to the prologue, which I think is a brilliant bit of storytelling as well. Oh, of course, yeah. And so, because you know that you start the game in a train that’s half fell off a cliff, so it’s really cool that you kind of know where it’s going, kind of, but you don’t know exactly how you get there. So I have to say that that sequence is the one where every time it starts, I’m like, oh, I fucking love this so much. It’s so good. It’s so much fun to just like move up this train and see the different bits of it play out. And when that chopper turns up, it’s pure greatness. And you see it destroy the kind of cars behind you and stuff. It’s just real, real good. So yeah, that’s my pick, Matthew. So next up, you’ve got the best looking level. This is a really quick one for me. The island in Uncharted 4 that you go exploring a boat with Sam. Like, it’s not really like a set PC level, but you see that same island in different weather. And I think that that’s like the nicest location, I guess. And I just found exploring that just wonderful. It looks so, so beautiful. What do you think, Matthew? What’s your best looking level from the series? I wrote the island in Uncharted 4. Oh, well, we did that. Same thing. Any more to add on that one? That’s the one you want to check out on PS5, because that frame rate, that water. Oh, it looks so good. Oh, shit, yeah. That makes you want to get deeper into it. Yeah, you got to get to that, at least. That’s the one. Yeah, for sure. That’s what I want the next Tomb Raider to be. That level is Tomb Raider Underworld on like a mega budget. It’s just what a treat. Yeah, OK. OK, good stuff. So the next one you got here is best ending to an Uncharted game, Matthew. What have you got for this one? Considering they escalate amazingly, I don’t think they’re very good at endings particularly. Like I often think their best set piece isn’t at the end. And some of them end with terrible boss fights. Just given what they pull off elsewhere, I’m always surprised that they slightly kind of biff the endings. I’m always like, wow, I would have really held back something huge, huge, huge for this. I quite like Uncharted 3, like the collapse of the city into the sand. That’s up there for me. Our city rules as well, like to look out. Yeah, that’s one of the best looking levels in the series as well. Probably going to go with the end of Lost Legacy, which is so almost a contender for my best level as well, in that it’s kind of like a best of like mega mix of like, of the train in Uncharted 2, but also like the Jeep chase, of which they’ve done it a couple of times. They did it in 2 and 3, where you’re kind of like jumping between vehicles. I always really like that thing where it’s like a shootout across moving vehicles. I think they do that really, really well, because, you know, you’re basically just on two moving platforms, but in the moment, you’re like, how the fuck are they doing this? This is moving so fast. You know, it has such like energy and momentum to it. And here, like you’re on the train, you’re jumping onto a car, you’re driving around, you’re back on the train, you’re constantly shifting between the Jeep and the car. You know, you’re trying to get to this station. I’m spoiling the end of Lost Legacy, those haven’t played it. Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff on a train, but you also get the fun of the Jeep. It switches up really seamlessly and it just feels like in that moment, the world feels like as big as anything could be. And again, you’re covering like miles and miles of terrain. It is a couple of things they’ve done already. It does feel like you’re playing those scenes from the previous games, but I love the mashup of them. And it ends with a really just a really satisfying shot of the two characters that I really love. Yeah, and a one of the less heinous boss battles. Yeah, I would say it’s like the only boss battle that’s not really annoying. Like, I think that I was actually kind of surprised that they… I don’t think three doesn’t have like a boss boss, right? It’s just like those fire dudes and then you run out of the city. Is that right? You actually have a little fistfight with Watch’s Chops. Oh, yeah. Helen Mirren’s sidekick. Well, Helen Mirren herself disappears into some quicksand if I recall. Helen Mirren gets sucked into some sand and then her mate is like really upset. He must be a big Helen Mirren fan. But it’s quite, you know, it’s using the fistfight system, which is quite broad and friendly. Total side note, Matthew, for ages, I used to, when you could, when the PlayStation Store was on PS3, you could download trailers to watch them. I don’t think you could just watch them there and then back then. And I had the Uncharted 3, like a Gamescom trailer or something, saved on my PS3. And it was just the opening after the bar fight, where the Helen Mirren character goes up to Nathan Drake and goes, you get off on all this, don’t you? And like, I watched that clip probably 20 times. And like, I have the way that the Helen Mirren character says that burned into my brain. And like, every now and then I just hear, you get off on all this, don’t you? And like, that’s right there. Right, I’m always like, about to think about that at some point, but yeah. Maybe I’ll put a clip of it in the episode now so people can hear it. There you go. Insert here. You get off on all this, don’t you? If this podcast is about anything, it’s that I had too much time on my hands in 2011. That’s like what this podcast is about. So my best ending, I’m picking Uncharted 4. I like the epilogue with the kid. Sorry, Matthew. That’s where I’m at with it. Sorry. Yeah, I think it’s earned personally. I don’t think that the boss fight with What’s-his-face is very good though. It’s when you have to have a tutorial of like a whole new combat system for the fight you’re about to have. Yeah. It’s also like the boss fight with Brucey from GTA 4 in Uncharted 2. Like when that you got to shoot those big blue sacks to pop on him or whatever and you’re like, this is very, very silly. And it’s like, it’s weird that they never quite learned their lesson from these bad boss fights and kept doing them, which is kind of strange because in Bioshock, they just, after the first one, didn’t have a good boss fight to end. They were like, well, no, we just won’t do them again. And like, it was a good move. So yeah, that’s my take then, yeah, so Uncharted 4. So finally, Matthew, the best game in the series, this has to be one answer, surely. What have you picked for this one? It’s probably Uncharted 4. Yeah, you’re gonna say Lost Legacy for all these categories. I had written in my notes, like very tentatively, is it Uncharted 3? I think like, I think the point you identified when we talked about this and best games 2011, that it’s just too annoying in places with the enemy types, like some of the elite enemy types with shotguns and shit. Just make it too annoying. That shipyard with all the snipers is too annoying. This episode is one of the ones I’m most paranoid about, but I’ve gone back on something I’ve already said and reversed one of my opinions. I’ve said my previous opinions without thinking too deeply about Uncharted. Now I’ve been thinking about it intensively. It has got a great load of variety, Uncharted 3, though. Yeah, you did also insect into my head the idea that 3 was better than 2 in some ways, because years ago… You’ve always been a big Uncharted fan. I remember when we worked at the office together, you said to me, the way that the Uncharted 3 in the Nathan Drake collection does that final city, portrays that location, is better than anything else in that collection in terms of it’s clearly just extraordinary art and loads of time and effort put into it, and it just looks fabulous. And I really agreed after playing again. I think I got a new appreciation for Uncharted 3 after playing again. There is some good variety in that game. You got the bar fight and, you know, you got some Charlie Cutter, fun character. You got the hat in the castle that sets on fire. Yeah, yeah. If anything, I don’t know why they didn’t bring Cutter back into Lost Legacy. That would have been more fun than the guy they do bring in, who I once knew. Oh yeah, I like that character. Yeah, he was good. I think four is slightly, like slightly lower key than the other ones. My take was gonna be that I thought they were a little bit embarrassed of Uncharted after The Last of Us. That’s a very extreme take, and I won’t go through with it. Because of Amy Hennig leaving and like Druckmann and Strayley coming in, you start like mapping narratives onto the game and you’re like, oh yeah, this feels more like The Last of Us. This is a slightly more like dangerous, sinister, unhappy world. But actually playing it now, I’m like, there’s this dumb like Mission Impossible level at the auction. There’s a huge tower that collapses. It gets dragged along by a jeep for about 100 miles. I mean, it’s stuffed as shit and really well executed. Yeah, it’s just more spread out. 4 is definitely the best one. 4 is like the best shooter. It has the stealth bits, which are fine. I think it looks extraordinary. It’s, yeah, set pieces are spread out, but they’re very, very good. Yeah, I’m still very fond of 4. And I think it’s like, yeah, it just simply has not dated in the way that the PS3 ones have. Like, the PS3 ones have definitely dated. It’s just, you notice it when you contrast the two, as you said earlier. So Matthew, we’ve done it. That was our Uncharted episode. Oh, what a ramble. It really was. Wasn’t the most ramble-y episode ever. Only you at home could decide. There are numerous ways to tell us that, including our new Discord, which you can find on Twitter in the profile description for our Twitter page at Back Page Pod. You will find the link to the Discord. I’m not prepared to go nitro and create a custom link for the Discord just yet. Maybe that could be a Patreon goal, I don’t know. What is that? I don’t even know what that means. Is that like a bit of youth slang? No, no, no. That’s just a paid tier they have in Discord. Oh, right. Because I also will not go nitro. So, yes. So, to end with, Matthew, we have some listener questions here. Yeah, I hope that’s okay. Just a few of them here. Because we have a listener questions channel in the Discord, we’re getting loads of them now, which is quite nice, because it means we’ve got plenty to dig into. So, Matthew, do you want to read this first one? Hi, both. Medium turn listener, first time questioner. I just got Monster Hunter Rise for the Switch, almost a year after it came out. I absolutely love it. And I’m now questioning, why didn’t I get it earlier? I could have been playing it this whole time. Have you ever had that with a game? The one that you took a while to get around to and loved so much you wish you played earlier. Love the show, including the existentialism. That’s from Roberto Carlos. Yeah. So I’ve got loads of games that this describes. Probably Deus Ex from last year is the most, the one that springs to mind. But I quite enjoyed revisiting that years later. I mean, I’m currently playing Horizon. And I do sort of wish I’d take this off when I was playing like 400 Hours of Destiny instead. Just because I had all that time, I could have just poured into this. I could be playing the sequel right now. But that’s more of a time management thing than I kind of like coming to a game later on and being dazzled by it. I will also say to Roberto Carlos, Monster Hunter Rise is not an old game, really. It’s like a year old. So shouldn’t feel too bad about coming to it at this point. Do you have any answer for this one, Matthew? I played the Dragon Age games very late and kind of wish I’d got on board with them earlier because, you know, I like the vibe of them. And I don’t know why it took so long. For years and years, I just sort of sneered at people being mean about the characters on Twitter. And then you play them and you’re like, oh yeah, they’re good characters, aren’t they? Yeah, it’s just because if you’re sort of like bored of fantasy tropes generally, and you feel like you’re just seeing those rehashed in an RPG and like, except now the characters are extra horny, you’re probably like, oh, I don’t really give a fuck. But then you play and you’re like, oh yeah, these people sure can write. Witcher 2 as well. I played it just before The Witcher 3 came out, which is a bit of a gap, I think. Yeah, I was instantly like so, so in on it. I loved it. I loved it. Yep, good answers, Matthew. So, okay, next up, another one from, this one’s from Alex on Discord. So, hi guys, I’ve been listening to the pod for about a year and really enjoy it, especially the magazine chat. I’ve never stopped buying print mags. One thing I’ve had to get used to though is your use of the word cursed. What makes something cursed? Is it just something that’s bad? Or does an evil witch have to have put a spell on it? Thanks, Alex. So, the word curse, Matthew. I mean, I feel like you know it when you see it. It’s like, if I can give you a very specific example of something, right? Like there is an episode of the anthology show Tales of the Unexpected, where a bloke hates his wife, played by Joan Collins, and then chops her head off at the end and it’s a bit of dark humor. And it’s all like very sort of 70s and kind of grim interior design and grim looking Britain from the 70s vibe to it. That’s cursed. That’s an example of something that’s cursed. A really shit looking picture of a roast, sorry, like a roast dinner or like a cooked breakfast on a cafe menu, a laminated cafe menu. And it’s like discolored, right? That’s cursed. Like these are just two examples. There are many. Any thoughts on this, Matthew? And from that, you have to work out the definition of cursed. So it’s like an episode from Tales of the Unexpected that you’ve not seen. And a picture of a roast that Sam is imagining. Good luck with that. It’s just an internet term. I’ve picked it up because other people say it. And I’m quite like this with words. In every couple of years, I’ve got a few words which I massively overuse until someone points it out, like in this message. And then I get really self-conscious about it and never say it again. That’s why Matthew never says I’m a big brackets game series head anymore. Or like I’ve got big X energy. I’ll tell you what’s cursed in Bath for the people who are planning to come to Bath for the Back Page tour. There’s a ice cream store which has got outside, it’s got like a plastic ice cream cone with a statue of like a boy sitting in the ice cream bit of the cone, like eating the ice cream from underneath him. I think that’s cursed. You are absolutely right. If you saw it, you’d know exactly why it was cursed. Just like, if you ever read about the like Noel’s House Party Mr. Blobby theme park attraction, like a look at pictures of it, that’s cursed. In fact, just Mr. Blobby generally is quite cursed, I would say. Do you want me to tell you about my Mr. Blobby incident? I feel like Mr. Blobby has come up before on this podcast, but maybe not an incident, so please go ahead. I went to that theme park where there’s Mr. Blobby World and it had a miniature railway that ran like the perimeter of the park. And there was like a big castle, which was like Noel Edmonds, it was Crinkley Bottom, it was meant to be, and it’s where they did like the Mr. Blobby stage show. And the miniature railway went round the back of them, of the building where they held that stage show. And I saw half a Mr. Blobby having a fag. So, there you go, that was cursed. I was not ready to be confronted with that anecdote on a Monday night. Holy shit, that’s so good. Wasn’t that theme park like a famous disaster? Like didn’t they seal or something? It was like a whole thing, wasn’t it? For me, that’s the day the magic dies. Well, there you go, so you’ve got like a Mr. Blobby stage show behind the scenes, Tales of the Unexpected, a picture of a cooked breakfast that I’ve imagined, and a boy eating ice cream off of himself on a statue. Those are like your points of reference. We wish you the best of luck. That’s kind of about it. Okay, so here’s a bit more straight face one, Matthew. This is from Gadget8bit on Discord. If you could fuse any game world with any genre you enjoy, what would it be? For instance, Dead Space’s setting, but with the mechanics of a 2D Metroid would absolutely be my jam. I could say that’s working quite well. I’d have to be a bit slower paced in a Metroid, I would say, but that’s me that bit. What do you think about this one, Matthew? I swear, didn’t we? Yeah, you said Open World Monkey Island, didn’t you? Sorry to recycle the previous answer, but I still think Open World Monkey Island, basically Assassin’s Creed 4, but with the art and humour and character of Monkey Island’s Caribbean. Oh, I’d love that. That’d be great. Yeah, I’d be curious. It is quite a random one I’ve just sort of plucked out thin air. A side-scrolling Devil May Cry I would play. I think that could work quite well. Just sort of like a more action-y version of a Castlevania type game. And it’s got a lot of the same moveset and the juggling and stuff like that. And you’re dealing with the volume of enemies. It’s got a bit of a Dead Cells vibe. That could work quite well. Yeah, I’ve really kind of plucked that out of nowhere, to be honest. But it’s definitely not that, but the slightly more varied combat in the 3DS Castlevania Mirror of Fate. Like, you know, while it is sort of a Metroidvania, the combat was still quite like Lords of Shadow, the main series. So it had a bit more kind of depth to it. And I actually thought that worked really well in 2D. I like, another one that I kind of wanted to happen is happening, which is a Star Wars turn-based game. Like that’s happening from some former X-COM people published by EA that was announced recently who have become part of Respawn, I think, under their kind of like vague umbrella. Oh, did I pass you by? There were like 3 Star Wars games they revealed. There’s a Jedi Fallen Order sequel, a first-person shooter made by that team that made the Medal of Honor VR game, I think. And then I think some new people are working on it too. And then yeah, this turn-based game made by one of the leads on XCOM 2. So yeah, that’s quite exciting. I kind of just want to see Star Wars apply to a variety of genres, really. Match 3, you name it, basically. So yes, if video games cease to exist, what would you do with your time? That’s some mega-slippers, Matthew. I read and watch film, television as much as I play games. So I’d just do more of those. Sorry, that’s a really boring answer. It is true, though. It is true. Do you think we would have found ourselves doing a podcast regardless? I don’t know. I think we would have felt quite self-conscious about doing a film podcast because we didn’t have the background for it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, you know, a lot of us… I could see a film podcast where a lot of the same sandwich talk and cursed bath objects come up over and over again, but I don’t know. It’s… yeah, hard to say, Matthew. Luckily, we don’t live in that reality. We live in this reality. If that reality didn’t exist, I wouldn’t even be in Bath. I would never have met you. That’s true. Would Brexit have happened? It’s like a Butterfly Effect thing. People… more youngsters would have voted because they would have been wasting less time playing, like, Pokemon Go. I love that idea. Because you picked a game from 2016 as well. That makes it extra good. If only people weren’t catching Pidgeys, they would have… That’s it. They would have turned the vote around. And, yeah. Just because all these feckless teenagers would rather find a Diglett than stay in New York… I look forward to your sci-fi novel, Matthew. That’s good. Yeah. So, I think… I agree with this. If anything, games are just stopping me from being more responsible in my spare time and doing a bigger variety of things. I’m always amazed by Matthew’s discipline with watching everything, reading everything, doing everything he wants to do. Matthew is so good at organizing his time. Whereas, I’ll just have a whole evening where it’s like, I think I’ll just stare at a wall tonight and eat some dark chocolate buttons. And that’s a whole evening for me. Whereas, I feel like Matthew will always fill his evening with good things, like leisure activities. Would you say that’s fair, Matthew? Yeah. I would say I could probably afford to invest a bit more in my own creative thinking or trying to achieve something in my own time rather than just consuming mountains of other people’s work. But, you know, let’s not get too deep into therapy. Let’s move on to another fun one here, Matthew, which is, what were your favorite lunches in London? Brackets, Pret is not an acceptable answer. That’s from Zach Forrest on Discord. That’s not wrong with Pret. No, nothing wrong with Pret. I mean, if you’re at the station and it’s the only thing that’s open, I’d always go for an upper crust, first of all, try and get me a basic bitch cheddar and tomato baguette. But, you know, Pret is an acceptable alternative. Well, it’s the same price everywhere, that’s the thing with Pret. It’s democratic in that way. But what are your favourite food places in London, Matthew? You lived there for years. You must have plenty of them. Yeah. I mean, I lived there for years, but I was always poor because I was on a not great future salary in London. I used to have, in Marlbone Station, there was this cheese shop that did really nice cheese sandwiches. I want to say it was called, like, World of Cheese, or something quite broad. That was quite nice. By West Hampstead Station, there was this really nice, I don’t know if it was like Persian, but it was kind of like rice and sort of chicken and lamb, sort of kebab type things. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was right next to West Hampstead Station, like, you know, it was the neighbouring shop. I used to go there a lot when I was, you know, taking Katherine out on our first dates and trying to impress her, but otherwise mainly junk. Me and Joe Scribs, who was a staff writer and M&M at the time, we used to go to Subway a lot and we used to get really cross. There was a man there who is incredibly stingy with the lettuce. And you’re like, lettuce is like the most common ingredient. Like, that thing is practically, it’s just like water, isn’t it? Like, lettuce is nothing. And he was, he used to sprinkle it on and his name was Altaf. Right. And we used to call him Altaf, we used to call him Altaf the Sprinkler. I can’t believe you remember his name. That was like… Well, I remember him because he was Altaf the Sprinkler because he was really stingy with the lettuce. I mean, how many years ago was this and you’re just like, it was Altaf, he was stingy with the lettuce. That was like eight years ago. Amazing. Yeah. You always remember the bull, the bull, the good bull. Yeah, I would say that’s true. Yeah. Yeah, I do like that you named like two places and they went to Subway. That was really funny. Like, I don’t think you realize how funny that is that you kind of run out of places like almost immediately. Anyway. Yeah. Okay, so I’ve got a few a few to mention here. So got it. You’re a gourmand. It’s remembering the names of all of them is hard. It’s like in terms of chains, there’s the Dirty Bones, no, Dirty Bones. I’m thinking bit. What’s it called? Damn it. It was Bone Daddy’s. That was it. That’s the ramen place. Dirty Bones is another place in near Soho actually. It’s really good. Dad does fancy cocktails and fried chicken, but Bone Daddy’s is, I’m sure a lot of people in London will be familiar with it. It’s like a ramen place, basically. Did seem to have a bit of a pandemic-deprived menu. They used to do a lovely soft-shelled crab in a ramen, and they stopped doing that after the pandemic. I thought, I guess COVID killed crabs or something. I don’t know, but that’s what happened there. That was good. I used to love this fried chicken place that was also near Soho called Billy and the Chicks. That was actually one of the cheapest, nicest places in London. I did a mean mac and cheese that went with the chicken. That was really tasty. I think there’s a picture house cinema called the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill, and that has loads of delicious food in this American-style cafe that’s attached to it. The Electric Cinema Cafe is called something like that. That’s a great place for that diner-y style food that you don’t really get in many places in the UK. I rate that. Those are the places that come to mind, Matthew. There are also lots of nasty places at Paddington I’ve had after going to a future for the day that I won’t go into here. Also Paddington has the off-brand Angus Steakhouse that I always see and laugh at. It’s kind of like the Ken’s Fried Chicken of steak places, but we don’t need to litigate that. Do you want to read out the next one, Matthew? I think old games getting re-released with newly created expansions, like the Quake Remaster and New Levels by Machine Games, is very cool. What’s your dream version of this? For example, Bethesda could definitely sell me Morrowind yet again if they included new DLC with an extra city and quests. That’s from John Lachetham. I have a few answers for this. If they did a new version of GTA IV with another Lost and Damned sized expansion set in that city, I think that would rule. They would never do that. But if they were like, oh yeah, so we’re re-releasing GTA IV, it’s got the previous DLC, we’ve given it a bit of a facelift, and it’s out now on PS5 or whatever, and it’s like, yeah, here’s like eight hours more game with a new playable character and his story intersects with the other characters like happens in the other expansions, that would be cool. I also thought that if they did another Command and Conquer remaster, as I predicted in our episode, the Predictions episode, if they did like more Red Alert 2 levels, a Red Alert 2 expansion and added a new faction, that would rule. I think when they do that in like an RTS, like Age of Empires 2 has had a whole bunch of them over the years from these fan developers turned like custodians of the game, that would be cool. So those are those are my answers, Matthew. Do you have an answer for this one? I loved the expansions for The Witcher 3. I thought that’s where some of the best stuff happened in that world. It’s almost like they’d so fully worked out what made that game tick and then they stopped working on it. That’s the curse of these things. Often the expansions in RPGs have got some really juicy, fun stuff in it. Maybe that’s a bit of a basic answer, but I’d happily go for another. It doesn’t even have to be a new region. Could be like Heart of Stone, just sticking some mad, mad quests. I’d be up for that. Oh yeah, if they added another expansion to The Witcher 3 tomorrow, that would be like a mega seller. People would be well up for that, I reckon. Because the game hasn’t gone anywhere. People are still playing it and buying it, you know. Yeah, I’d rather that than have to wait for a potential Witcher 4 if they ever do that. I was excited to see that they’re doing more standalone Gwent games. I don’t know if that’s going to be like Thronebreaker, because that was rad as hell, but I’d definitely be up for another one of those. It sounds like there’s at least like two different former Witcher studios going around making RPGs now too, so that’s kind of cool. There’s like a Witcher-likes becoming a kind of subgenre maybe, that could be kind of good, Dark Fantasy games. Okay, yeah, great question there, so thank you for all those questions. Like I say, if you want to send us questions, backpagegames.gmail.com for the email and it’s the Discord, you can find a Backpage pod on Twitter. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? At MrBazzill underscore pesto. I’m Samuel W Roberts. I don’t remember what next week’s episode is about, but let’s assume it’s going to be a good one.