User:Scofield/Uncharted: Sony's Fortune
Uncharted: Sony's Fortune is the name of a documentary that was filmed by journalist Sam Fisher, but never released. Originally an assignment to cover the excavation of Sir Francis Drake's coffin, the film evolved into an expose detailing the story behind Naughty Dog's highly successful 2007 video game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Though it received considerable media attention in the wake of the game's success, Fisher was unable to find a distributor for the film, and all reports concerning the documentary soon vanished from the internet. Many have attributed the tragic fate of the documentary to Sony's aggressive efforts to protect its trade secrets, which have proved to be a success, given the even more successful sequels of the game that have now been released.
Plot[edit | edit source]
The documentary begins with an underwater excavation and the digging out of Sir Francis Drake's coffin. Sam records archaeologist Henry Jones Jr. breaking open the coffin, and is shocked to find that there's no body inside. Henry, however, isn't remotely surprised, and instead knowingly chuckles as he explains to Sam that Francis in fact faked his own death, and was actually headlining an expedition to find El Dorado, the "City of Gold". Before Sam can get any more answers, however, their boat is ambushed by pirates. Sam is forced to engage in a firefight to survive, the boat is set ablaze, and he reveals via voiceover that this was the first of many times during the making of the documentary that he began fearing for his life. However, Henry's friend and partner in crime, Victor Sullivan is able to rescue them on a bi-plane, and they fly away to safety while the boat blows up.
It is on the plane that Sam learns he's in fact part of a Sony commissioned expedition to find El Dorado, and that Henry and Sully were the only archaeologists hired by the corporation in order to keep it off-the-books. Despite his efforts, he is unable to get any further details regarding the possible location of El Dorado, and Henry and Sully betray him by rushing off in the very speedboat he'd rented out.
The film then switches to Henry's perspective, as he had decided to film the rest of the expedition himself in order to gain some leverage against Sony. It is revealed that Henry had in fact lured Sam into the expedition in order to secure funding for it, as Sony could not finance it in full for fear of being traced. However, Victor had convinced him to abandon Sam, fearing that the publicity he'd draw would alert every two-bit scumbag to what they were up to. After walking through a lush wooded area, Henry comes across some ancient-looking pillars that he climbs atop and jumps across for no apparent reason, before finding a huge boulder and shoving it off the pillar. Miraculously, the ground caves in upon the boulder's impact, revealing an underground cavern, which Henry and Victor explore. After solving numerous weird puzzles seemingly there solely to test their patience, they discover that El Dorado was not a city of gold but a statue of gold. They then somehow find a massive Nazi U-boat dangling off a cliff, which Victor sensibly tells Henry not to explore.
Not being much of a sensible guy when it counts, Henry goes exploring it anyway, and discovers the dead captain's rotting corpse
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
In the game, the playable protagonist is the Nathan Drake. The game mostly involves running around in super-gorgeous environments, jumping over stuff and grabbing onto things, and solving puzzles using Sir Francis Drake's journal. A notable aspect of the game is how the player cannot even run for 5 seconds before encountering a ledge to jump on, or a puzzle to solve. The puzzles are notoriously difficult, as you have to rely on the archaic, incomprehensible language and poor, smudgy hand-drawings of Sir Francis Drake. This aspect of the game caused its players to get addicted to it for hours, hence heavily ramping up the popularity of the PS3, which was till now considered to be a waste of money as nobody ever turned it on for more than 5 minutes.
Another notable feature of the game was its heavy emphasis on combat. A major segment of the game involves fighting a huge battalion of pirates, defeating them, and then battling another huge battalion of pirates, and then another huge battalion of pirates. Most of the time you have to take cover at the right places, as the AI is very advanced and aggressive, and can shoot you down in 10 seconds if you're not hiding behind something. This resulted in players spending hours hiding behind a rock, shooting at army after army of enemies. However, despite all of this, the game is very well-paced, as 90% of the storyline is covered in uber-cool cinematic cutscenes, and the lengthy, tedious gameplay was just to give players the illusion that they were playing something.
Reception[edit | edit source]
The game was extremely well-received by critics, who praised the game's visuals, gameplay, and awesomeness. IGN said that "Till date, we thought that the only 'games' anybody could make exclusively for the PS3 were kiddy puzzles for tiny kids. Naughty Dog has proved us wrong once and for all." Gamespot said that "This game fucks Lara Croft right in the arse, in a good way!". Indiana Jones has said "The game not only reminded me of how much fun I used to have in my treasure-hunting heyday, but it also made The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull seem like a crock of shit!".
Was this based on a true story?[edit | edit source]
Given the extent to which this game changed Sony's fortunes, rumors are rife that this game was actually obtained as a result of a clandestine expedition conducted by Naughty Dog. There have been allegations by several gaming journalists that Sony's executives hired a team of archaeologists to search for El Dorado so that they could find an alternative business avenue to explore, such as gold merchanting, but instead they discovered the prototype of a video game. This game was allegedly so fucking awesome, they played it for days before reporting back to Sony's headquarters. In an expose that made headlines, GameSpot secured an interview with a Naughty Dog employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was actually based on an actual expedition conducted by a secret division of Naughty Dog." said the employee. "Pretty much the entire game is based on their expedition. They copied the awesome game's source code, and used it to recreate the beautiful tropical islands in Uncharted. Sony explored the legend of El Dorado, and stumbled upon the awesome video game the same way Nate and Sully discovered that El Dorado was actually a statue, not a city. The Golden Statue is the awesome video game!"
There have also been unconfirmed reports that the game was "cursed" with a "highly lethal virus", and that the expedition of Naughty Dog was ambushed by undercover agents from Microsoft, who planned to produce the game for themselves and use the virus to bug the PS3 versions of all video games.
Sony's executives themselves have vehemently denied these allegations. An executive producer of Uncharted has gone on record to say: "Even if we did go on such awesome adventures, do you think we'd actually bother to develop a game just so we can show-off about it, and possibly reverse the fortunes of the PS3? How desperate do you think we people are? I mean everybody was ravaged by financial crisis of 2008.....we weren't the only ones....screw Microsoft and their Xbox 360! Who's got the leading gaming console now, huh?!".