A Critical Analysis of Uncharted 4.

devlin-j41
Oct 30, 2022
16 min read

What is Uncharted 4?

Uncharted 4 is an action-adventure game (Naughty Dog, 2016/2022). The game itself is a sequel to Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception. Uncharted 4 follows the story of Nate, a retired treasure hunter who is brought out of retirement by his brother, who was presume dead, until now. Together, Nathan Drake, Samuel Drake and Victor Sullivan go on the search for captain Avery's long lost treasure, facing off against the main villain, Rafe Adler.

The Level

The level that I have chosen to analyse is “Chapter 18: New Devon”. In this level, Nate and Elena are exploring a ruined pirate enclave, New Devon is a hidden away paradise, housing the richest pirate’s treasures. Throughout this blog I will be discussing how Uncharted 4 guides the player with level design as well as its combat and Narrative design.

Guiding the player

Guiding a player will generate more player satisfaction, free up their concentration so that they can relax, improve the overall flow of the level, limit the frustration that a player could feel and helps to make a level feel less constrained and linear.

Act one of the level sees Nate and Elena approaching the war torn, skeleton ridden walls of New Devon. This is a short traversal section of the level, which ends with a beautiful vantage point, leading up to this is also a more open funnel and reveal effect there is a slight symmetry going on as to each side of the player is dense jungle and rubble in the image below you can see that if you draw out the symmetry the main POI (point of interest) is a small stone tower. This tower is the first step in the traversal mentioned previously. This use of symmetry helps point the player in the right direction, making the stole tower front and centre.

The below image shows two things, firstly in red I have outlined that, because the player has climbed up on top of the tower, they now have the opportunity for more traversal through the level, as they can jump from the tower onto the wooden beams. This shows the importance of making this tower stand out in the previous image. In yellow I have outlined a mechanic that has been used throughout the entire game, the ledge grab, to mark out climbable areas, the tower has protruding ledges that allow the player to climb the structure. When a player enters a new area within the game, they will be able to look for climbable areas by looking for these ledge grabs/white markings/dotted walls, this helps guide the player, showing them areas in which they can traverse The wooden beams that the player must then climb onto contrast against the green and grey of the surrounding area, making them feel important, which they are.

Contrast

To help guide the player, Uncharted 4 used contrast, contrast is something standing out against its surroundings, the example that I am going to use is that of a sunken house. The window of the house Is made from gold, so when the player dives into the water of the level, they will instantly see the bright gold colour bouncing off the brown wooden background of the house, showing the player that they can climb through the window and enter the house through this section. Below the window, the level also uses its ledge grab mechanic, which this far in the game, most players will be noticing as a sign of “oh I can climb this, because there are protruding ledges”. Contrast is rampant throughout Uncharted 4; the images below show great examples from the level I am analysing.

Once the player has reached the wall section, a lot of contrast can be seen. Circled in the image below, the player is guided by the white scratching in the wall, showing that they can move across, then the white rust on the metal cage shows the player to move upwards next, white markings and the wall falling extruding outwards shows the player to jump left and lastly the red flag, from the start of this sequence acts as an end goal for the player, an area for them to reach.

Vantage points/Landmark

The player reaches the top of the wall and is met with a cutscene that shows off the landscape of the level from atop a vantage point. This technique is great as it can show the player many things. Circle 1 shows where the player must go next, a decrepit old house that they must traverse to, circle 2 shows the player that they then need to travel over to the right into another house after crossing the water/small piece of land in the middle. Lastly, circle 3 shows off the main goal, the area in which the player is trying to reach, giving them a landmark to work towards. So, from this screenshot alone, the player now has 4 new landmarks, the house on the left, the island in the middle of a waterfall/the waterfall itself, the house on the right and finally the main mansion. This vantage point allows the player to create a mental map of the area, giving them an idea of how to traverse it, the level also makes good use of the fog, making the main objective seem far away and hidden. Looking at circle 1 there is some contrast, with the doorway of the house being made of gold, contrasting greatly with the overgrown greenery, guiding the player towards it.

Framing + Leading Lines

Composition can be used to guide the player. The screenshot below can be seen using multiple leading lines in terms of the environment. The arrow on the left is showing the wooden beam, illuminated by the level lighting, going upwards to the back of the house, The arrow on the right shows the player that they can also go to the right, it has climbable rocks that the player will be used to seeing. Out of these two directions, the left is the most visible and the best example of a leading line, as it is a beam going in the correct direction as well as it being illuminated by sunlight, by doing this, the level is doing a good job at showing the player the easiest way to go.

Once the player has moved on in the level, they come out of a cave onto a ledge, once they jump off it, they will be facing forward and the framing of this part of the level is great. As they player jumps down, they will be able to see a clothed, hanging skeleton which is environmental storytelling, however in the building behind the skeleton the player can find a note explaining what happened. The player will also see a river flowing on their left, with waves crashing on the inside of the house walls, showing the player which way, the water is flowing, which is used in a puzzle in the same section of the level as the frame. The skeleton lures the player over to it as it is one of the few clothed skeletons as well as one that is not in a cage. Upon going closer to the skeleton, the player will also unlock unique dialogue from Elena about the area. This shows that the level does a good job at framing this section, as the skeleton and river are virtually impossible to miss.

Combat:

Looking at the flow of a level is very important as having too much intensity and combat will cause the player to begin to get used to that flow, causing boredom and repetitiveness, but if the intensity and flow is incorrect or inconsistent the player could get less excited from the combat experiences. The best mix for a game is both low intensity and high intensity situations placed in the correct parts of the game, this will allow the player to reflect on the previous engagement while also giving them a rest from combat, creating a more memorable and enjoyable experience for the player. Giving the player a rest from high intensity combat will allow them to prepare mentally for their next fight, formulating a much better attack plan while also letting them explore freely around the level without the fear of enemies chasing them down, which then leads to the player discovering the finer details within the level such as Easter eggs and subtle hints about the games story.

Better view on my Miro: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPSgKhw0=/

As can be seen in the new beat chart, there is plenty of down time after a bout of intensity. For this level, to play it to completion takes around 45 minutes. So, I am focusing on the first 15 minutes. The level starts off with a low level of intensity, revealing the chapter name. The player will then walk into an area with skeleton cages, causing intimidation and excitement to explore. Once the player crosses the wall, they will find out that Nates brother Sam is alive, crossing through the flooded area next, after this section the player will meet their first enemies as seen in the screenshot. In the screenshot, the enemies are spread out across a decrepit building, letting the player know that they are about to enter combat if they don’t use stealth, as well as letting them know that the area is crawling with enemies.

The player will have multiple ways to tackle the enemies, they could face them head on, they could stealth their way around the area and pick the enemies off as they approach the player, or the player can avoid them all together. How does the game tell the player this?

Upon entering an area deemed hostile, the players HUD will show their current weapon and its ammo.

If the player jumps into the water, the HUD will display the circle button on the PS4/PS5 remote, reminding the player that they can dive underwater, allowing the player to remain in a stealth state.

The enemy AI are set to follow specific paths, the player will notice this if they wait long enough and observe, this lets the player sneak around enemies when they are not looking, the player can make it through this section of the level without taking out any enemies if they time their movements correctly.

The player starts off this area by being able to see the enemies, almost giving the player a vantage point.

The enemies at this current stage of the screenshot, are very much so unaware of the players presence.

Everything above affects the difficulty of the encounter for the player, everything above is an advantage to the player, they get to decide which way to take the encounter. To offset this major advantage, the designers behind the level have placed enemies above, below and hidden behind the building, so that the player has a hard time finding all the enemies.

From this screenshot you can see how the designers have added in a risk/reward section to the level, as well as adding in a variety of enemies.

White outline is the player, with a great view of everything going on.

Blue outline is the reward for the player, a high-powered grenade launcher with a drum mag, perfect for taking out enemies.

Green is an easier enemy, only has a pistol, no armour whatsoever.

Orange is two medium enemies; they both have some armour and assault weapons.

Red is the hardest enemy in the screenshot, they have full armour on their torso and their head, as well as a high-powered weapon.

All the above is adding in a choice for the player, while also balancing the game. The player can try and take the weapon but will alert the enemies and must fight 4 separate enemies, but they will be doing so with a high-end gun. This also shows how the designers balanced the game, by having multiple enemies hidden throughout the decrepit building that the player must go through to progress the mission. The designers have also placed the enemies in good locations, the easiest enemy is closest, hardest is the next closest with available cover, the two medium enemies are in the background, but will be harder to kill as the player must aim for their heads, as the enemies will end up taking cover once the combat begins.

A quick note on the hard/medium enemies, the main difference between these two characters it eh amount of armour that they wear, to let the player know which is which, the designers have put the medium enemies in red Berets, both to show what type of enemies they are, but also to let the player get easier headshots, as the player will pick up on the red and aim for it. Whereas the hard enemies have grey bullet proof helmets to counteract this newly learned information.

Going over some more techniques, to keep the player moving forward, the designers have used a section at the start of the combat area to insert a singular enemy that the player will almost always be able to stealth kill without alerting any other enemies, this both allows the player to know that they can use stealth to get through this area while also luring the player into the combat area, making it more difficult for the player to retreat from where they just came from, giving the player a sense of map control this helps defeat the problem that Andrew Yoder proposes in a blog post https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-door-problem-of-combat-design

The problem stated is that the player sees enemies within an area, attracts them over to another room and defeats all the enemies by funnelling all the enemy AI through a door, making the level super easy and dull. While Uncharted 4 is unique in its style of combat as the areas are normally quite open, the designers will still be aware of this problem proposed by Andrew Yoder and use various techniques to get around it, such as the technique stated above, as well as the following:

Once the player has gone further after the first kill, they are able to climb up higher to gain a vantage point of the combat area, to give them this idea, a variety of climbable areas are pointed out using the techniques that I have gone over in “guiding the player”, one of the techniques is contrast of the “grab ledges”.

Another technique that the designers use that I’ve gone over briefly is risk vs reward, this is mainly used to lure the player into a combat area, this consists of putting a powerful weapon or pick up in an area surrounded by enemies, so that the player goes into to get the weapon/pick up and then must fight the enemies in unique and varied ways. The section that I have already mentioned above, uses this by placing a high-powered grenade launcher in an area with a variety of easy – hard enemies to fight. The pickup itself encourages the player to pick it up and fight the enemies in the screenshot, before moving on to fight any other group of enemies that appear.

Lastly, most of the enemies within this decrepit building section of the level are hidden inside of the building, so the player does not see them from the start of the level. This will lead to the player believing that they have more map control than they do, resulting in them pushing rooms more and taking out more enemies, indirectly and unconsciously causing them to pick up a more aggressive play style for the combat section.

Each technique mentioned helps the designers achieve a higher level of engagement for the encounter, making it fun to play and allowing the player to choose from a variety of play styles (mainly aggressive/stealth). By using their chosen tactic, both types of players will be able to enjoy the level and receive a challenging experience at the same time.

When it comes to Uncharted 4, the game is that expansive and has that much

variety included within it that I may miss some techniques that are major to a designer’s development of the game, however I am covering only Chapter 18: New Devon.

Narrative

Within games, a variety of techniques are used to tell a story to the player. Small scale stories tend to give context to specific parts of the game, while the larger story is usually told through the overarching theme and plot of the game. The pyramid below breaks down the story elements into three specific sections, that can be visualised by using a pyramid diagram:

High Level

High level storytelling is most often associated with environmental storytelling. Environmental storytelling is great as it makes the player use deductive reasoning to connect details to create a story. Players end up using investigation skills to determine, cause and effect, relationships, and the history behind the environment, this makes players active participants in the storytelling process instead of acting as a passive viewer to the story. It also allows players to focus on the gameplay, if they don’t like the story, environmental storytelling won’t get in the players way. Environmental storytelling is the notes that you can pick up in a game, the skeletons that are positioned in a specific way by the developers, objects that help paint a picture of what happened within a given space.

In the level “New Devon” the player can find a note near the start of the level. Once they have climbed up the wall and traversed the first section of water, they will climb up through a sunken house, eventually coming into a bedroom. They will then be able to see a light shining through onto the bed, directing the player towards it, if the player goes to the left of the bed, they will be able to pick up a note and in front of the note is a dead pirate’s skeleton, with a sword sticking out of him. The note goes onto explain who the skeleton is and why they were killed, giving the player information about the surrounding area and its inhabitants from years ago. In short, the note lets the player know that the founders of the area were infighting and had begun to kill each other, or ransack each other’s homes, hence the dead skeleton. Notes are a great way of rewarding the player, as they give lore about the game that other players may not have found yet, but also act as a reward as a player would normally have to go out of their way to find them.

Later in the same level, a Skeleton can be seen hanging from a broken building, the skeleton is still clothed, instantly the player knows that the cause of death was hanging, but if they go just behind the skeleton into the broken building, they will find a note on a table that explains what happened to the skeleton. The note explains to the player again, that the pirates are fighting and lets the player know who the skeleton is. The skeleton that can be seen outside is the wife of “Founder Want” and “Founder Baldridge” has killed her via hanging as “Founder Want” has been destroying the life of Baldridge. Uncharted 4 uses the notes found within the game well, as the player gets a lot of the background lore by finding them. This specific level is all about letting the players know that the “pirate paradise” that they are looking for in the game, never truly existed, all the pirates hated and betrayed each other after all moving to the same location.

Medium Level

The medium level is the area within the level, the buildings that can be seen, what their architecture and the overall environment tells the player. An example would be that an office and a bunker within a given game would have different layouts and purposes which would be expressed through the levels design.

In the level, Captain Tews house is used as a last stand point by Captain Avery and his cohorts, the player can tell this through the use of dialogue within the game, as well as being able to visually see fragments of the battle that happened so long ago, for example the retrofitted cannons that are outside the house that were used to defend it and the secret room that Nate and Elena find by moving the world sphere. All of this tells the player that Captain Avery/Tew did not trust their pirate friends and that in the end, they tried to escape with all the treasure. Speaking of treasure, a lot of the houses within the level are made out of wood and have a littering of treasure and luxury, but when compared to Captain Tew house, his house is the largest, the only one that didn’t get flooded, has marble flooring, tonnes of antiques, a bust of his own head, chests of treasure and overall much more luxury and uniqueness when Avery compared to the other houses. The house being designed like this tells the player that Tew was the top pirate, the leader, the most prolific and efficient, but in the end his greed got to him. The player will also learn that the reason that they are not finding all the promised “hordes of treasure” is because Avery/Tew moved their treasure and all of the other treasure, by having a “panic room” the level suggests that Avery/Tew have moved it down there, both the existence of the room and the dialogue that is spoken about the missing treasure possibly being down there.

Another section of the level, near the start as the player comes over the wall, shows that the majority of the area has been flooded on purpose, pointing out a dam that has been destroyed as the root cause, showing the player that naturally the area did not look like this and that during the war the pirates had with each other, someone destroyed the dam to drown the pirates and flood their homes.

Low Level

Low level storytelling is the overarching theme of the game, this is everything from the characters and factions within the game to where the game takes place, to why the game is taking place in the first place. Imagine it like a movie with 3 acts.

New Devon’s low-level story telling is the conflict between each of the pirate lords who founded libertalia (the area in the level) this conflict lets the player know that they will be exploring ruined buildings, traversing dangerous terrain, and doing their best to figure out what happened to each pirate and why the war started. Notes and skeletons scattered throughout the level as well as dialogue help let the player know that the main pirate Captain Avery, is nowhere to be found and in one particular seen that shows a lot of the pirate lords at a dining table, having all been poisoned by wine, Captain Avery is missing, leading the player to discover that he didn’t die with the other pirates, that he killed a lot of them so that he could take their treasure for themselves. (Later on, in the game the player will find Avery and all the treasure). The whole point of the game is Nate and Sam are trying to find Captain Averys hidden treasure, this level explains how he got so much treasure by showing the conflict as well as furthering how paranoid he was about having so much treasure in the first place, ending with captain Avery turning on Captain Tew, after killing all of the other pirate lords together.

When all of the techniques mentioned are used on their own, they aren’t enough to tell a story, but when a team of developers combines all of them it starts to paint a clear picture for the player of the setting, the levels story, it shows the player everything they need to know about the level while also allowing for exploration that will lead to a deeper understanding of what is going on within the level.

Some links that I used to help write this analysis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_1Ym8xRRd8&t=600s ( Playthrough of the level)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjC-um6VcM (Level guiding techniques FEAR 2)
https://www.clement-melendez.com/portfolio/articles/push-pull/introduction (An essay on push and pull techniques)

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed.

Josh, Devlin.