10 Best Uncharted Moments
Our favourite moments from the Uncharted series
The Uncharted series is one of Naughty Dog’s greatest achievements.
And for good reason. Everyone loves Uncharted’s relatable characters, gorgeous settings, and heart-pounding action sequences. All that goodness makes for some great moments that deserve to be appreciated and revisited once in a while. The following is a short list of some of our favourite moments from the Uncharted series.
Warning: Contains spoilers for the Uncharted series. Read at your own risk.
The U-Boat (Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune)
Nate’s interaction with the U-Boat happens during the first instalment to the series, Drake’s Fortune, where he stumbles across the marooned vessel atop a waterfall in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Nate, while aboard the U-Boat, discovers that its crew was searching for El Dorado. Before getting off, Nate accidentally activates a torpedo, narrowly escaping the explosion it causes by crawling through the torpedo tube to safety.
This is a great Uncharted moment because it includes everything we’ve come to know and love about Uncharted. Nate is clumsy, and loves to blow things up.
The Elephant Family (Uncharted: The Lost Legacy)
I’m a sucker for a heartwarming moment and the sixth Uncharted title, The Lost Legacy, had one of the best of the series. Much like the giraffe moment in The Last of Us, Naughty Dog knows how to make us coo: give us animals. In the first Uncharted title without Nate as the front runner, The Lost Legacy puts previous side character Chloe Frazer with Uncharted 4’s antagonist Nadine Ross on an adventure in India. At one point they encounter an elephant trapped under some rock rubble. They help the elephant escape and reunite her with her family in the most “aww” inducing scene ever.
What makes this particular moment even better is that, in a brief break from the drama and the shooting, Nadine tells Chloe to pose in front of the elephants and takes a picture of her. Then, when you go to look at the pictures in Chloe’s phone it’s there to see and cherish. Yes, I totally ship them.
These Are Nice (Uncharted: The Lost Legacy)
This may be one that not many people remember from The Lost Legacy because it happens so quickly. After Nadine and Chloe meet up with Sam Drake, they begin chase after Lost Legacy’s antagonist Asav. The three adventurers steal a truck from one of the baddies, and Sam, being the thief that he is, steals a pair of sunglasses off the driver before they take off. In a short but silly moment, Sam wipes off the sunglasses, puts them on and states, “These are nice.” The sunglasses aren’t mentioned the rest of the game, but Sam does unfortunately break them not long after taking them.
It is small moments like this that makes the Uncharted series so brilliant. An equal combination of silly and serious that makes the characters feel like real, three-dimensional people.
The Cargo Plane (Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception)
The cargo plane is the most iconic moment of Uncharted 3 – not least because the plane is featured on the cover of the game case. What makes the cargo plane moment so huge is that Nate is horrifically thrown from it while it’s flying. After a series of difficult gun and fist fights, Nate manages to cling to a cargo box, and releases a parachute allowing him to land safely in the middle of the desert.
What follows is one of the more desperate situations for Nate as he must find his way to some kind of civilisation before dying of dehydration or exposure.
Naughty Dog aren’t very nice to Nate, are they?
Ditching Elena (Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune)
Before players got to really know who Nate is, they weren’t given a very good first impression of him. Especially considering the intro to Drake’s Fortune involved being attacked by pirates. Players also weren’t very fond of him ditching Elena, his soon to be wife, after being attacked by said pirates. Still, it makes for a good laugh.
While Nate is discussing their next move with Sully, Nate’s best friend and father-figure, they decide to ditch Elena by speeding off in their boat so they don’t have to bring her along. To them, Elena is just a journalist looking for a great story and they’re on the hunt for the lost city of El Dorado. She’d just slow them down.
Little do they know, she doesn’t give up that easy.
Flirty Ending (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves)
We all ship Natelena. Or is it ‘Elate’? Either way, we ship the crap out of them so any time the pair get a little lovey-dovey, we eat it up. One of our favourite flirtatious moments is at the end of Among Thieves, just before the credits roll. Elena, after a near death experience, asks Nate how scared he was that she was going to die. The following conversation ensues:
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how scared were you that I was going to die?”
“Four.”
“Four?!”
“Yeah”
After a bit more bickering:
“What’s a ten?” asks Elena.
“Clowns.”
“Clowns over my death?”
“I…I hate clowns.”
Naughty Dog writers really have a way of making light of some serious situations as well as making the characters relatable, funny, and charming. It’s no wonder Natelena became a thing.
Exploding Mummies (Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End)
Because it’s an adventure game, Naughty Dog has to pull out some pretty crazy stops in order to keep Uncharted’s stories exciting and new. In Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Nate finds himself searching for the treasure left behind by a famous pirate named Henry Avery. Unfortunately, Avery didn’t want his treasure found and booby-trapped a passage underneath his home that Elena and Nate are forced to venture through. The booby traps are bodies strapped to the walls of the passage. After the third or fourth exploding body, Nate starts talking to them, asking them kindly to not explode.
This moment in the game added a bit of fun with added danger – because, like I said, explosions. It also offers some back-and-forth Nate and Elena banter which is always gold.
Crash Bandicoot (Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End)
Perhaps one of the most memorable moments for players in Uncharted 4 is when you’re able to play Crash Bandicoot on Elena’s PlayStation 1. After getting home from work Elena has dinner waiting for Nate, who offers to clean up the dishes. They get into a short argument before Nate offers to play her for it. He starts up Crash Bandicoot on the dusty old PlayStation console and players get to play through the Boulders level of Crash with Nate and Elena talking in the background.
It is impossible to beat Elena’s score at this moment (rigged!), but it’s still fun and nostalgic to play through. Especially considering that the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy hadn’t come out yet so fans were excited to see their favourite bandicoot on screen again.
Sam’s Betrayal (Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End)
Even though Sam was a brand new character to players in Uncharted 4, Naughty Dog still managed to make us fall in love with him in only a few short hours. We care about who Nate cares about, and it’s obvious that Nate loves his brother. That’s why when, towards the second half of A Thief’s End, we find out that Sam had been lying to Nate about the reason he wants Henry Avery’s pirate treasure, we were shocked. Just shocked. It’s a strong moment when Nate screams, “I left my life for you!” and players can see that he regrets ever trusting his brother.
This is one of our favourite Uncharted moments because of the raw emotion that comes from finding out that someone you loved betrayed you, and the strength it takes to get back up from it and forgive.
Crazy Train (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves)
If anyone disagrees with our number 1 spot on the list, they’re wrong. We respect your opinion, but you’re wrong. The final spot on our favourite Uncharted moments list just has to go to the opening scene from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. As soon as the game starts, players see Nate, strapped to a seat in a train dangling off of a cliff, badly injured. You must make your way off of the train before it careens towards the icy depths below. The train scene made for one of the most heart-pounding moments of the series – especially considering that Nate was badly injured and not his usual confident climber self.
Then, if that wasn’t enough, the story skips forward in time, leaving the player to wonder why Nate was on the train in the first place and how he got injured. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves still remains one of the best rated in the series due to its fantastic storytelling and extraordinary moments such as this.
