Pre-order Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

The trick with writing this preview is that, as per the demo Sony showed at its booth, the elevator pitch for The Lost Legacy is "it's another Uncharted 4." It's puzzles, good dialogue, high-octane action sequences, and shootouts with mercenary squadrons who have no real sense of self-preservation, all in the name of being the first to track down an ancient relic. If you beat UC4, this is basically a second scoop of that ice cream.

The surprising bit is that Lost Legacy isn't just an add-on pack for UC4, as one might expect; it's a full additional campaign that's meant to take 10 hours or so to complete. It does cost $40 by itself, but it's a brand-new, stand-alone game in its own right, set after UC4 and featuring the return of Claudia Black's Chloe Frazier to the series, after she sat out the action last time. (Sadly, Charlie Cutter is still AWOL. First thing I asked. Sorry, guys.)

Lost Legacy is set largely in India, where Chloe is in pursuit of an artifact called the Tusk of Ganesha. She's assisted in this by Nadine Ross, one of the primary antagonists of UC4, who didn't get away from that game's ending quite as cleanly as she'd hoped. She's no longer the head of a private military company, and now, to make ends meet, has hired on with Chloe. Naturally, they've got competition in their search, an Indian war profiteer named Asav, who isn't as smart as Chloe but who has deep enough pockets to hire every gunman in India.

You play as Chloe throughout, with Nadine in the Sully/Elena/whoever role of conversation partner and helpful AI bot. The goal is that Chloe should feel a little different to play than Nathan Drake did, as she has a less visceral fighting style and, more crucially, thought to bring a silencer. It's Nadine who's the more brutal of the two, favoring quick, vicious takedowns.

The gameplay sample shown at E3 featured a strong slice of UC4-style gameplay, as Chloe and Nadine picked off a few loitering mercenaries before having to fight a running battle with more of them, all the while dodging incoming fire from a mounted gun on a heavy vehicle. The typical Naughty Dog attention to detail was on full display, as cover fragmented from the impact of bullets, set-pieces played out in an unpredictable fashion, no flat plane could be relied upon to stay that way for long enough to get across it, and in the end, both Chloe and Nadine ended up being held at gunpoint by a gloating Asav, with the demo fading to black with the sound of a gunshot.

The final product for Lost Legacy is intended to be about as long as one of the PS3 Uncharted games, with the same style of map design — broad, colorful, open-ended — that characterized UC4. If you pre-order it, you'll also receive a copy of the first Jak & Daxter.

Beyond that, there really isn't a lot to say here. Lost Legacy is the first Uncharted game to let you play for its full duration as somebody besides Nate; it brings back a fan-favorite character; it features the same action gameplay as noted Game of the Year contender Uncharted 4; and if you haven't seen Claudia Black and Laura Bailey having way too much fun with the voice acting, you're missing out. The quote you can use on the box is, "It looks like it's more Uncharted," which suggests that though Nate is theoretically retired, the series as a whole might not be quite over yet.