Hiding what he was doing from Elena never really made sense to me in the first place, given that he was ostensibly doing it to save his brother's life. He lied just to add that tension to the story, and I don't think it worked that well given the context.

Sam's lie about the break-out and the debt was interesting, if only because I somehow actually didn't see that coming, even though it seems like it should be obvious in retrospect.

Edit: Also, I do think bringing Chloe in the manner you describe would have been absolutely perfect, especially given the note you can find from her in Nathan's attic. Plus, there can never be enough Claudia Black.

The main conflict for Drake was ostensibly that he'd be torn between a life of danger and adventure vs a normal life with Elena. This was played up a little bit, but I was never that convinced by that angle to the character, simply because I never felt like he was plausibly tempted into leaving his normal life.

It's established that Nate's really only doing it to save his brother, and as soon as he finds out his brother is not in danger should he not get the treasure, he loses interest in even finding it. This was pretty apparent even from the get go, and while Elena was hurt and disappointed, I feel like it'd have been worse had it not been for altruism.

What would I change to heighten this aspect of the conflict?

First of all, I would eliminate Drake's altruistic motive to save his brother and replace it with a selfish one. The twist involving Alcazar being a made up story was interesting, but didn't really take that well and didn't have many repercussions in the end. You could just have dropped that, because a plausible motive was already there: it was the treasure they'd been looking for all along. Nate's hope died with his brother, and now that his brother is alive his thirst for the treasure could be too. So have his brother come back, with a new clue, and tempt him to resume where he left off. Because this treasure was important to both of them and their mother, Nathan should simply take the job for selfish reasons.

This now makes his lying to and betrayal of Elena hit even harder.

I've heard some complaints that the last section of the game is too long, and I do agree there is a long stretch where no meaningful story progression happens. We could solve this by bringing back Chloe.

Nate could realize he needs extra help, and call on Chloe to assist. The two of them could get right back into things, and while rediscovering his love for adventure, he could also rediscover her. I always got the sense that she tapped into Nate's darker side. They could potentially (or actually!) start an affair. So, this could place doubts into his own head about Elena. He loves the life of adventure, and here's a woman who loves it too. Can he go back? Does he want to go back?

Now I think if that were done he'd actually be tempted both ways, and it would make all his subsequent decisions have more weight. I never got the sense he'd actually abandon Elena, but doing it this way would put that possibility on the table. This would also make the ending even better than it already is, since he'd have made the tough choice to leave it behind.

My two cents on improving an already wonderful tale.

STAHP IT! you guys are really making me want to play Uncharted 4 ;)

You absolutely should play this game. It's my game of the year right now without question.

I don't really know how game sharing works, but I'd be happy to hook up with you for that if you want to play it.

STAHP IT! you guys are really making me want to play Uncharted 4 ;)

I've only stopped playing because I had to go to the doctor, because my hard on for this game has been raging for much more than 4 hours and I gotta get that checked out.

Thinking back to Destiny, it is funny how "all over the place" the game feels in many ways, and I don't think that's a fluke or a failure to deliver. I've seen/read several interviews over the past 18 months where Bungie employees have mentioned the fact that the team is still discovering "what Destiny is"... and I think that's clear when I play the game. It doesn't feel "authored" in the way that Naughty Dog games do. It feels like a collection of ideas and systems and goals, some more thought out than others, some well executed, others not. Of course, Naughty Dog games are nowhere near as "groundbreaking" as Destiny is aiming to be. But again, I think that is a conscious choice on ND's part: they keep the scope of their games to a size that they can nail damn-near flawlessly. If there is something they want to include in their game, but they lack the time or resources to nail it out of the park, they cut the feature.

Concentrated coolness ;)

There really isn't much to tell the player that "this used to be an academy" aside from your Ghost telling you as much.

They needed more in the style of the statues and library hall.

The biggest weak spot IMO is Mars. Great cities have character; New Alexandria has a gleaming exoskeleton of white curves and struts, New Mombasa has a huge chevron of grand skyscrapers, Seattle has Space Noodles, everyone hates Lynnwood. What descriptions can be applied to Freehold, besides that it's covered in sand? Speaking of which, nobody even ever even uses the city's name. Prior to this post, "Freehold" was used a total of 11 times on DBO, most of which were lore material quotes, mission description quotes, and references to "Freehold Station" for game play reasons. There are a total of 3 instances in the history of DBO where someone used the city's name spontaneously. It looks nice enough, but what ponderings are there to have? Where's the carcass of a great palace that once loomed over the area, where's the huge underground skate park, where's the derelict moa burger stand? I wonder what sorts of fish the denizens wrapped in their TPS reports in these medium-sized buildings.

I was just hanging out by the main OWT transit hub entrance area of Freehold yesterday, farming Vex majors for a bounty, and thought about how cool of a play space it would be if it was part of some kick-ass campaign mission, filled with allied and enemy forces fighting each other with vehicles (a la New Mombasa/Outskirts), instead of a static MMO environment with periodically respawning enemies.

And that made me real depressed, 'cause pretty much everywhere in Destiny feels like that for me.

The ending is perfect by the way.

Just when I think, "This can't possibly get any better . . ." the next chapter proves me wrong. Just when I think I've seen how pretty this game can be, the next chapter takes us to an even prettier location.

I just finished Chapter 15 (How did I not see that coming?!). I want to keep going, but if I don't stop now I'll be up all night finishing it (and probably immediately starting over).

Naughty Dog is truly on another level right now. I cannot wait to see what they're going to do next (and I'm desperately hoping it's not The Last of Us 2).

There really isn't much to tell the player that "this used to be an academy" aside from your Ghost telling you as much.

They needed more in the style of the statues and library hall.

The biggest weak spot IMO is Mars. Great cities have character; New Alexandria has a gleaming exoskeleton of white curves and struts, New Mombasa has a huge chevron of grand skyscrapers, Seattle has Space Noodles, everyone hates Lynnwood. What descriptions can be applied to Freehold, besides that it's covered in sand? Speaking of which, nobody even ever even uses the city's name. Prior to this post, "Freehold" was used a total of 11 times on DBO, most of which were lore material quotes, mission description quotes, and references to "Freehold Station" for game play reasons. There are a total of 3 instances in the history of DBO where someone used the city's name spontaneously. It looks nice enough, but what ponderings are there to have? Where's the carcass of a great palace that once loomed over the area, where's the huge underground skate park, where's the derelict moa burger stand? I wonder what sorts of fish the denizens wrapped in their TPS reports in these medium-sized buildings.

It really is a masterpiece in terms of environmental storytelling. Much as I adore Destiny's environments from an art-design point of view, they really do pale in comparison to Naughty Dog's work when it comes to communicating the living history of each location. Bungie didn't go much deeper than "here are some buildings" or "here is a cave". There really isn't much to tell the player that "this used to be an academy" aside from your Ghost telling you as much. The cosmodrome has a bit more detail in this regard, but not as much as I'd like to see in the future.

Yes, you've pretty much nailed it. Especially given the context of the game and the rich universe Bungie has created, it really is quite a shame.

After finishing Uncharted 4, the thing that stood out to me was how ALIVE the environments felt. More specifically, they felt like they used to be alive. Walking through Libertalia I absolutely got the sense that actual people lived there, and that it thrived in its day. You could see and feel the history.

Can you nail down what exactly is missing from Destiny's environments? What specifically could be changed to make them more ... formerly alive? (this is a completely honest question here. How does one make their environments feel more lived in?)

I haven't played Uncharted 4, but one of the many things that jumped out at me about The Last of Us is what an incredible job Naughty Dog did in creating environments that felt like they had "real history" to them. Almost everywhere you look, you see little details that tell a story. There's the base-level stuff like "I'm walking through an abandoned city". Then the more specific details like "this used to be a library, this was a cafe, this was a school". And then it gets into the much deeper, more subtle stuff like "There's a bunch of furniture arranged in this hallway in a way that makes me feel like someone tried to hole-up here for safety", or "this ballroom is all decorated for a highschool prom... the plates are still on the tables... this place must have been filled with kids when everything went down".

And then, on top of all that, you have the finer, specific storytelling that happens through a combination of everything I mentioned above, combined with little notes or journals you find along the way, combined with dialog between the player characters as they uncover a specific series of events. You literally discover the stories of specific groups or individuals as you move through the game by piecing together clues from all of these little details.

It really is a masterpiece in terms of environmental storytelling. Much as I adore Destiny's environments from an art-design point of view, they really do pale in comparison to Naughty Dog's work when it comes to communicating the living history of each location. Bungie didn't go much deeper than "here are some buildings" or "here is a cave". There really isn't much to tell the player that "this used to be an academy" aside from your Ghost telling you as much. The cosmodrome has a bit more detail in this regard, but not as much as I'd like to see in the future.

After finishing Uncharted 4, the thing that stood out to me was how ALIVE the environments felt. More specifically, they felt like they used to be alive. Walking through Libertalia I absolutely got the sense that actual people lived there, and that it thrived in its day. You could see and feel the history.

Can you nail down what exactly is missing from Destiny's environments? What specifically could be changed to make them more ... formerly alive? (this is a completely honest question here. How does one make their environments feel more lived in?)

I had the same feeling in Destiny. Large buildings with pointless and big empty rooms, random spacing between buildings, no sign of logical roads, infrastructure, businesses, houses, offices, life...

The environments feel fake.

After finishing Uncharted 4, the thing that stood out to me was how ALIVE the environments felt. More specifically, they felt like they used to be alive. Walking through Libertalia I absolutely got the sense that actual people lived there, and that it thrived in its day. You could see and feel the history.

Can you nail down what exactly is missing from Destiny's environments? What specifically could be changed to make them more ... formerly alive? (this is a completely honest question here. How does one make their environments feel more lived in?)

And I will say I agree with them about the gunplay, even 4 feels about the same. It's kind of a shame because it feels good in Last of Us, but that's I suppose mostly because it's intended to feel more difficult to shoot in that game. In an action game series it's disappointing the shooting mechanics aren't tighter.

In Last of Us, every bullet counts, so to miss because of dodgy controls would be terrible. In Uncharted, you're being shot at all the time and outnumbered, so it makes sense you can't just pop off headshots from 100 yards away. For what it's worth the shooting in the Nathan Drake collection and in 4 feels just fine. However I remember the original game on PS3 to be unbearable to control.

Same. The jerky movements, gimmicky six-axis integration, and terrible aiming are why I never bothered getting into the Uncharted series. None of these issues were present in The Nathan Drake Collection. The games have felt more or less right throughout (although the shooting in U3 is the smoothest by far), and I really enjoyed the Uncharted 4 Beta's shooting and movement.
I never expected Drake to be a military commando when it comes to shooting (heck, he was raised by nuns), so it's never really bothered me, since the controls were responsive.

But now I think about Destiny, and how Venus and Mars were supposed hotspots of the golden age, yet neither feel remotely like you can sense any past human presence. None. The past feels very 'dead' because of the Destiny environments. There's not much sense of human habitation, or a glimpse of what life was like. This is in huge contrast to Uncharted. And we are even searching for golden age relics!

I simply can't look at Destiny the same way anymore, and I hope we will be treated to some of that much needed life in beautiful environments designed only for current gen in Destiny 2 (or is it Des2ny?)