Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is my favorite game of the year, and probably in my top 3 of this console generation. It is the complete package, a cinematic jaw dropping adventure from start to finish. Riding on the coattails of this success we are starting to see Nathan Drake in countless adventures in other mediums including comics.
After playing through the fantastic story mode in Uncharted 3, and getting dominated in multiplayer for a while, I scoured the Internet for any other Uncharted lore I could find. I realized that there was a book published not so long ago about Nate, so I bought it. After finishing the book, I began to get worried about the comic, which will be released on November 30th. The book was very poorly written, featuring very little involvement from Naughty Dog. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised by this, video game novelizations are from the best literature on the market.
Naughty dog seems to be very involved in this new comic project though, and if they play their cards right, it could be the first truly successful transition of video game characters to comics.
The success will lie in the author’s ability to enhance the story, rather than work around it. Where the novelization fails is that right at the beginning there is a disclaimer claiming that the book was not intended to affect the overall story of the game in any way. The comic series needs to explain events that set up the 2nd game from the first, as this is the time period in which the comic is set. I want to know what happened between Elena and Drake during this time. I want to know how Drake met Chloe, and why exactly they both know Flynn.
The other thing this comic needs to do is introduce the characters well. Comic readers should be able to pick this up without ever having heard of Nathan Drake. Nathan Drake is a character for the ages, he represents what we’ve all hoped videogames could always become. His adventures rival those of Indiana Jones, and he needs to be represented in such a way that this comic does not sully (hah. Get it?) his reputation.