Uncharted’s Defining Romance Is Messier Than You Realize

Uncharted's Defining Romance Is Messier Than You Realize



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Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End’s release in 2016 brought with it several changes to the Naughty Dog series’ status quo. Launching five years after Drake’s Deception, it was the first entry on PS4, and that generational leap saw a massive increase in graphical quality.

As if to match the added visual fidelity, its narrative tone skewed closer to realism, too. The set pieces were less outlandish, the performances were more subtle and nuanced, and the character writing became more grounded. This was epitomized by the brief glimpses we get of Nate and Elena’s home life, where we saw that the two adventure-seekers had now settled into a comfortable domestic rhythm.

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I Missed Something Extremely Important In Uncharted 3

If you’re anything like me, you played Uncharted 4 several years after Uncharted 3, and probably played through the early level in Nate and Elena’s house and thought, “Oh cute, they got married between games.” And that’s true, but not between the games I thought they did. During my recent playthrough of Uncharted 3, I took a break to look up a plot summary on Wikipedia.

I do this with these games in particular because I often find their MacGuffin-driven stories compelling but confusing.

As I read through the synopsis, I reached the point where Elena enters the game, soon after Nate and Sully arrive in Yemen. I was shocked that the article referred to Elena as “Nate’s estranged wife.” I figured this was a mistake but, as I did some digging on that particular question, I found that yes, Nate and Elena canonically got married between Uncharted 2 and 3.

This is key to Uncharted 3’s resolution, but it also isn’t communicated in an especially obvious way. When Nate runs into Elena in Yemen, he says, “You’re still wearing it?” to which she replies, “It helps in this part of the world… Seriously, don’t flatter yourself.” That leads Elena to point out that Nate is still wearing his ring, too — that is, his necklace bearing Francis Drake’s ring — and the conversation moves on.

For a few hours, that’s all the exposition we get to set up the backstory that Nate and Elena got married, then separated, between the events of 2 and 3. As a 17-year-old playing the game at launch, it went completely over my head.

A Strangely Understated Beat

A while later, we get a bit more context, but it’s equally oblique. When Nate meets up with Elena after escaping the ship from hell where he spends the middle chapters of the game, he tells her he’s sorry, but the reason for his apology is vague. We have to infer what he’s talking about, and the game moves on without explanation. Then, in the final scene, Sully reveals that he has been carrying Nate’s ring and gives it back to him. Nate puts it on, shows Elena, they hug it out, and the trio walk off into the sunset.

Uncharted 4 Screenshot Of Nate, Elena, and Sully.

Nate and Elena’s estrangement is key to the game’s emotional resolution. Sully’s paternal relationship to Nate is one of Uncharted 3’s central threads and his final way of parenting Nate is to tell him to make things right with Elena. Though it would be explored more in Uncharted 4, the conflict straining Nate and Elena’s relationship is his obsession with treasure hunting, and specifically, Sir Francis Drake. With this ending, Naughty Dog ties those two strands in a bow, with Sully being the catalyst for Nate to change his relationship with Elena.

Their estranged marriage is key, but Naughty Dog never goes out of its way to underline what exactly is going on between them. It’s a strange approach that makes it feel as though some of the most important beats have happened offscreen.

That makes sense for legacy sequels — you couldn’t believably have Harrison Ford return as Han Solo in 2015 without many of the important moments of his life having occurred offscreen. But Uncharted 3 came out two years after Uncharted 2. Why is something so crucial getting the yada yada treatment?

I imagine that as more of my generation age and return to the games we loved as teenagers, this kind of surprise will be more and more common. Who knows what other things I believe about games I played in high school that are actually completely wrong? Were GLadOS and Chell actually sisters? Were those soldiers in COD actually commanding me to “know Russian”? Was the guy in the cart actually saying, “So, you’re finally A. Wake?” and Skyrim is, in fact, part of the Remedy Connected Universe? I don’t know, but discovering Nate and Elena got married years earlier than I had previously believed was as surprising as any of those revelations would be.

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