Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a second helping of treasure hunting joy
Our preview of the upcoming installment in the franchise makes a few key tweaks, but keeps the main ingredients that make Uncharted games great.
It's only been just over a year since we said goodbye to charming treasure hunter Nathan Drake and his pals in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, but we're already being treated to more from the universe in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. What started as an expansion turned into a fully-fledged game in the Uncharted universe set about a year after the events of A Thief's End. So if you weren't ready to stop climbing, fighting and exploring on your PS4, Naughty Dog's got you covered.
So what's different in The Lost Legacy? This time around, recurring Uncharted character Chloe Frazer is the hero. She's exploring India in search of the fabled Golden Tusk of Ganesh. Since she faces off against Asav, a notorious war profiteer also on the hunt for the tusk, she enlists the help of a woman familiar with combat: Nadine Ross, one of Uncharted 4's villains. It's an interesting pairing, as these two don't have any allegiance or long-time loyalty to the other; because of that, interactions I got to see offered rich backstory and fun banter.
My play time was brief, but packed with all the things that make an Uncharted game: I discovered lost treasures, flung myself across vast crevasses, climbed precarious rock faces, fought armed goons working for my foe, solved a couple puzzles and drove recklessly around a massive open space. There's a definite callback to Uncharted 4's Madagascar area, which was one of the highlights of that game's features, but Naughty Dog chose to expand The Lost Legacy wider than they've ever done before.
The area I played in (India's Western Ghats) was a good example of the game's "linear freedom." Instead of seeing a vast area with one lone destination and some smaller points of interest, Chloe and Nadine offer a variety of options for you to check out. You'll still need to end up in the same place, but it is a little less linear than previous installments, and I liked being able to decide which areas to tackle and in what order. Naughty Dog calls this "wide-linear," which is a nice way of saying "a really, really big line," but for Uncharted, it totally works.
According to Game Director Kurt Margenau, the team also chose to narrow the scope of Lost Legacy compared to the globe-trotting locales of its predecessors — you'll spend the game in one region of India this time around. It's still really beautiful, even if you aren't galavanting across the planet (bonus: it looks even better on PS4 Pro). In addition, the multiplayer and survival modes from Uncharted 4 are included with The Lost Legacy, so anyone hoping for some online play should be satisfied.
There are some new game mechanics, including a fun little lock picking function for Chloe, a new collectible that's tradable for in-game items, some added stealth abilities for avoiding combat, and Chloe's cell phone, which can snap pictures of any magnificent sights you happen to come across.
From what I saw (which was pretty close to the finished product, since the game ships August 22), if you're hoping for Naughty Dog to remake the wheel when it comes to Uncharted, this probably won't satisfy your needs. But if you loved Uncharted 4 and want a second helping of some really good comfort food? Uncharted: The Lost Legacy will probably be your jam.