Last week at E3, I was lucky enough to attend a behind closed door gameplay session for Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, alongside three senior Naughty Dog members.
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, is the first time we’re seeing Uncharted single-player DLC and it’s clear at this point it’s taken on a life of it’s own. Naughty Dog has confirmed it’ll be playable without Uncharted 4 and it’s for a great reason. There’s clearly more than enough content here to warrant a standalone release and it separates itself not only by telling a new story, but by changing up gameplay quite significantly too.
The demo which I saw lasted 10 minutes in total and showed off a nice variety of cutscene action, explosive combat and puzzle solving goodness. In this specific demo, Chloe Fraser and Nadine Ross have successfully stolen a mystical artifact and they’re being pursued by an Indian rebel leader called Asav (and quite frankly might just be the most badass villain Uncharted has seen).
But of course, it wouldn’t be an Uncharted game without a lot of climbing and it doesn’t appear a whole lot has changed in this regard. Combat though, is where we see a significant difference. Chloe and Nadine are constantly balancing off each other in order to deliver vicious blows to enemies. Nathan Drake could be criticised for seeming overpowered at times, but with Chloe and Nadine, there’s a sense of vulnerability and feeling like you’re the underdog when it comes to combat. 
It’s clear both in the trailer we saw at E3 and in this demo that Nadine and Chloe have a complicated relationship and this is one of the elements which I’m most looking forward to seeing play out. It’s not clear exactly why these two have been partnered together, nor their motivations for finding the treasure. But exploring their relationship is clearly going to feature throughout the entire game and it’s going to be a dynamic that I don’t believe we’ve seen in a Naughty Dog adventure before.
It’s obviously clear there’s some kind of power struggle too. A part of the demo which stuck in my mind was when Chloe and Nadine snuck up behind two guards, with Chloe insisting they each take one down. Before Chloe could even finish her sentence, Nadine had already taken them both out without flinching.
The Lost Legacy takes place in India and it’s clear the game is going to be a visual feast. We’re going to have some epic set pieces too with Chloe showing off she can grapple across some pretty gnarly landfills, just as Nathan Drake has done in the past.
The majority of the demo was fast-paced with Chloe and Nadine escaping an army truck (similar to a scene in Uncharted 4). It ended with both Chloe and Nadine falling through a roof, landing themselves in a tomb and face-to-face with the villainous Asav.
It’s very clear that Uncharted: The Lost Legacy isn’t pulling any punches. It might not star the series favourite, Nathan Drake, but I’m entirely confident in Naughty Dog’s ability to deliver an incomparable adventure with the standalone entry.
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy releases on August 22nd exclusively for PlayStation 4.
