Overview
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune drops Nathan Drake into a centuries-old mystery rooted in a clue found inside the coffin of Sir Francis Drake. That single discovery spirals into a full-scale expedition to a remote Pacific island, where the legend of El Dorado turns out to be far more dangerous than any treasure map suggests. Naughty Dog built this game as a love letter to classic adventure cinema, and the bones of that ambition still show.
The story moves at a confident pace. Drake is accompanied by reporter Elena Fisher and his mentor Victor "Sully" Sullivan, and the three form a dynamic that carries the narrative even when the shooting slows down. Nolan North's performance as Drake set a new bar for video game protagonists in 2007, blending dry humor with genuine vulnerability in ways the genre rarely managed before.
Gameplay and mechanics
The core loop sits at the crossroads of third-person cover shooting and environmental platforming. Drake snaps to cover, blind-fires, vaults over obstacles, and shimmies along ledges with a fluidity that felt genuinely new at the time. Combat encounters are built around small squads of mercenaries and pirates, pushing players to use cover strategically rather than run straight at enemies.
Key mechanics include:
- Cover-based third-person shooting
- Ledge climbing and environmental traversal
- Hand-to-hand melee combos
- Weapon pickups from defeated enemies
- Environmental puzzle solving
The controls are direct and responsive. Switching between gunfights and platforming sections rarely feels jarring, which is harder to pull off than it looks. Some combat arenas are tight and can feel repetitive in the back half of the game, but the pacing keeps things moving before frustration sets in.
World and setting
The island itself is one of the game's strongest assets. Naughty Dog built dense jungle environments, crumbling colonial fortresses, and Nazi-era bunkers into a setting that feels layered with history. The art team used the PS3 hardware hard, producing lighting and foliage detail that genuinely impressed in 2007 and still holds up reasonably well today.
The narrative draws from real historical threads, weaving Sir Francis Drake's 16th-century voyages and World War II-era expeditions into the fiction. That grounding gives the story weight beyond the supernatural twist that arrives in the final act, even if that twist divides players on whether it fits the tone established earlier.
Impact and legacy
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune arrived in November 2007 and immediately became one of the PS3's defining exclusives. The game scored in the high 80s across critical aggregators and sold well enough to greenlight what became one of Sony's most important franchises. Three direct sequels and a spin-off followed, along with a 2022 film adaptation.
The influence on third-person action-adventure design is hard to overstate. Cover mechanics, character-driven storytelling, and cinematic set pieces became genre staples that studios across the industry adopted in the years after Drake's Fortune launched. Playing it now, after all the games it inspired, it reads as a foundational text for the genre rather than a dated relic. The craftsmanship Naughty Dog brought to the original still makes the adventure worth taking.