She's Pulling Her Weapon To Her Side.

[rionaleonhart]

My first reaction to Uncharted: The Lost Legacy: wow, I'd forgotten how gorgeous the Uncharted games are. This might be the prettiest one yet. There have been so many points where I've just stopped to stare at the scenery for a while.

Early impressions of Lost Legacy below the cut; I'm a couple of hours in. No real spoilers, but some thoughts on characterisation.



In several respects, Chloe feels very similar to Nate: the quipping, the lessons on architecture and history (although she doesn't share Nate's respect for history; priceless artefacts just happen to get destroyed when Nate's around, whereas Chloe will happily destroy them herself if it gets her closer to her goal). There are lines of hers that I could easily hear in Nate's voice.

Nadine: There's no telling how many guys are in there.
(Chloe enters an area with loads of enemies)
Chloe: You want to know how many guys are in here? All of them. They're all in here.

But, even if Chloe feels a little too close to Nate at times, Nadine feels different to any other Uncharted companion, largely because she hates fun and it's hilarious. I love it when she and Chloe snipe at each other. And Chloe isn't a complete Nate clone; one thing that becomes clear about her in Uncharted 2 is that she's more ruthless than he is, she'll do whatever she has to to stay alive and achieve her goals, and she's kept that quality here. Fundamentally, Nate wants to do the right thing. I'm not sure that Chloe does.

My first death in Lost Legacy, before even getting into the first fight, was when I tried to intervene in what looked like an abduction and got shot in the face. Even when I was trying to intervene, I was thinking, 'You know, this would be the right course of action as Nate, but I'm pretty sure I'm playing Chloe OOC right now; she'd judge the situation, conclude helping was too risky and keep to herself.' As it's impossible to progress with the game unless you keep to yourself (you can't prevent the abduction), I suspect my instinct was correct!

The other difference between Chloe and Nate is that Chloe doesn't have a journal that she steadily fills up with stupid doodles. This is a TRAGEDY. I do like that she can snap photographs of the gorgeous settings they visit on her smartphone, though. (If you never get a prompt to take a selfie with Nadine, I'm going to throw this game into the sea.)



My favourite part so far: there's a bit where you're in a car, approaching a section with enemies. You can get out of the car and sneak up quietly. Or, as I chose to, you can just plough the car straight into their midst.

Nadine: Not one for subtlety, are you?
Chloe: Not really.
(WE'RE GETTING SO SHOT AT)
Nadine: Was this really your plan?
Chloe: Sort of. You don't like it?

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Okay, I need to here more about "she hates fun and it's hilarious", because that sounds awesome.

Chloe doesn't do stupid doodles?

[rionaleonhart]

She's very serious and straightforward and impatient! She'll always take the most direct route while Chloe arses around enjoying the scenery. One of my favourite moments, very early in the game, is when you-as-Chloe settle in to pick a lock, and you get halfway through before Nadine gets fed up, smashes the glass panel in the door and reaches in to open it.

(She did get Chloe's attention in order to point out some monkeys in my most recent play session, though, which was cute.)

I'm so sad about the lack of stupid doodles. I did think 'Chloe probably won't have Nate's drawing skills and it's unlikely she'll have a similar journal to collect stupid doodles in' before the game came out, but I'm still sad about it.

[wolfy_writing]

Okay, I haven't even played the game, and I'm already starting to ship them. Especially with Nadine being all "No wasting time, no silliness...look, monkeys! Not that I like monkeys. Situational awareness is important, that's all."

[soranokumo]

because she hates fun and it's hilarious.

I mean, you know, when Nate and Company was trying to solve riddles and figure out their way to the pirate booty, Nadine was up top going "your way takes too long, Rafe, I'VE GOT DYNAMITE" and while I might prefer Nate's method... ... ...it's also entirely likely I wouldn't have had to deal with those horrible exploding mummies if we'd just blown our way into the mountainside.

I haven't played this new one yet! But according to Kotaku you can take shots with Chloe making ridiculous winky faces all the time, and that alone would be a major selling point for me.

Dear gods but I hope you can get a selfie with Nadine. Please report back!

[rionaleonhart]

...it's also entirely likely I wouldn't have had to deal with those horrible exploding mummies

THE EXPLODING MUMMIES WERE TERRIBLE. Was there a way to predict what would set them off? I couldn't work it out!

I shall certainly let you know whether selfies are possible! She's taken one photograph of Nadine so far (when Nadine was balanced precariously above a huge drop. Nadine's reaction was '...really?').

[soranokumo]

As far as I could tell SOME of the mummies were set off my proximity (so it was a plus if you could lure some of Nadine's army close to them, as the explosions tended to one-hit them), but for the most part in the long tunnel bits without enemies it seemed to be a matter of "time for them to go off now just as you're passing through to keep you on your toes lol!" With an aggravating number refraining from exploding just so you never felt certain in your safety.

That said I've only done the sequence once, so my observations could be totally incorrect! XD

Chloe! More pictures, hon, you can do it! ...do it at least for Nadine's reactions!