Uncharted 2: Among Thieves context immersion guide

Larry Bates

Description

Immerse yourself completely in the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Gameplay with this in-depth context guide.

Context, history, background, plot, production, design, development, coverage, characters, setting, and gameplay is all covered in this extensive book that will make sure you get the most out of your Uncharted 2: Among Thieves experience.

This book covers the world that is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves with these in-depth context detail chapters:

720p, Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, Action-adventure game, Ahnenerbe, AK-47, Amy Hennig, Artificial intelligence, Beretta, BradyGames, Capture the flag, Cell microprocessor, China, Chloe Frazer, Cintamani (jewel), Cooperative gameplay, Deathmatch (gaming), Downloadable content, Elena Fisher, Game Developers Choice Awards, Game Informer, Game of the Year, Game physics, Giant Bomb, Greg Edmonson, Havok Physics, Himalayas, IGN, In medias res, InFamous, Jesse Divnich, Killzone 2, Kublai Khan, List of awards received by Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, List of characters in the Uncharted series, List of PlayStation Home Game Spaces, Marco Polo, Massively multiplayer online game, Metacritic, Mongol, Motion capture, Nathan Drake (character), Naughty Dog, Nepal, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Online multiplayer, Phurba, Platformer, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Home, PlayStation Network, Pokhara, PSM3, Qore (PlayStation Network), Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Shambhala, Single-player, Sony Computer Entertainment, Spike Video Game Awards, SS, Third-person perspective, Third-person shooter, Tibet, Tree of Life, Uncharted, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Victor Sullivan, X-Play, Yeti.

Topic relevant selected content from the highest rated wiki entries, typeset, printed and shipped, combine the advantages of up-to-date and in-depth knowledge with the convenience of printed books. A portion of the proceeds of each book will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation to support their mission.

Sujets

• Activities
• Video
• Games
• Mobile

Informations

• Publié par: Emereo Publishing
• Date de parution: 24 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781486433094
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 32 Mo

Extrait

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Topic relevant selected content from the highest rated wiki entries, typeset, printed and shipped. Combine the advantages of up-to-date and in-depth knowledge with the convenience of printed books. A portion of the proceeds of each book will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation to support their mission: to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. The content within this book was generated collaboratively by volunteers. Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information. Some information in this book maybe misleading or simply wrong. The publisher does not guarantee the validity of the information found here. If you need specific advice (for example, medical, legal, financial, or risk management) please seek a professional who is licensed or knowledgeable in that area. Sources, licenses and contributors of the articles and images are listed in the section entitled "References". Parts of the books may be licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. A copy of this license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License" All used third-party trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Contents Articles Uncharted 2: Among Thieves 720p Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Action-adventure game Ahnenerbe AK-47 Amy Hennig Artificial intelligence Beretta BradyGames Capture the flag Cell microprocessor China Chloe Frazer Cintamani (jewel) Cooperative gameplay Deathmatch (gaming) Downloadable content Elena Fisher Game Developers Choice Awards Game Informer Game of the Year Game physics Giant Bomb Greg Edmonson Havok Physics Himalayas IGN In medias res InFamous Jesse Divnich Killzone 2 Kublai Khan List of awards received by Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

1 12 13 14 17 28 42 44 69 73 76 80 93 112 114 116 120 126 130 134 140 144 158 159 167 168 171 185 190 191 203 205 216 233

List of characters in the Uncharted series List of PlayStation Home Game Spaces Marco Polo Massively multiplayer online game Metacritic Mongol Motion capture Nathan Drake (character) Naughty Dog Nepal Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine Online multiplayer Phurba Platformer PlayStation 3 PlayStation Home PlayStation Network Pokhara PSM3 Qore (PlayStation Network) Screen Space Ambient Occlusion Shambhala Single-player Sony Computer Entertainment Spike Video Game Awards SS Third-person perspective Third-person shooter Tibet Tree of Life Uncharted Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Victor Sullivan X-Play Yeti References Article Sources and Contributors

238 249 269 276 285 288 293 301 310 314 335 337 339 346 359 385 405 417 424 426 428 431 436 437 445 452 470 479 482 504 515 520 530 533 543

551

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors Article Licenses License

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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Developer(s)Naughty Dog Publisher(s) Sony Computer Entertainment Designer(s) Bruce Straley (Game Director) Amy Hennig (Creative Director) Richard Lemarchand, Neil Druckmann, (Lead Game Designers) Pål Engstad, Travis McIntosh, Dan Liebgold [1] (Lead Programmers) Writer(s) [2] Amy Hennig, Neil Druckmann, Josh Scherr Composer(s) Greg Edmonson Series Uncharted Engine Naughty Dog Engine 2.0 [3] Havok (game physics) Native resolution [4] [5] 720p Version 1.08 Platform(s) PlayStation 3 Release date(s) NA [6] October 13, 2009 AUS [7] October 15, 2009 EU [8] October 16, 2009 Genre(s) Action-adventure, Third-person shooter, Platformer Mode(s)Single-player, Online multiplayer, Online co-op

Rating(s)

Media

BBFC: 15 ESRB: T OFLC: MA15+ OFLC: R16+ PEGI: 16 Blu-ray Disc

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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Input methods

Gamepad

Uncharted 2: Among Thievesis an action-adventure video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony [9] Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. It is the sequel to the 2007 gameUncharted: Drake's Fortune. [6] [8] Officially announced in the January 2009 issue ofGame Informer, it was released in October 2009. A critical [10] and commercial success, it was named by Metacritic as the most critically acclaimed game of 2009, and won Game of the Year awards on IGN, Giant Bomb, AIAS, X-Play, Game Developers Choice Awards and the Spike [11] Video Game Awards for the year 2009.

Gameplay Uncharted 2is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective, with the player in control of Nathan Drake. Drake is physically adept and is able to jump, climb, and scale narrow ledges and wall-faces to get between points. Drake can be equipped with up to two firearms–single-handed and one two-handed one – and a limited supply of grenades. Drake can pick up weapons, automatically replacing the existing weapon he was using, and additional ammunition from killed foes. The player can direct Drake to take cover behind corners or low walls using either aimed or blind-fire to kill his enemies. The player can also have Drake fire while moving. If Drake is undetected by his enemies, the player can attempt to use stealth to take them out, such as by sneaking up behind them to knock them out with one hit, or by pulling an unsuspecting foe over a ledge from which Drake is [12] hanging. Some areas of the game require the player to solve puzzles with the use of Drake's journal, which provides clues towards the puzzles' solutions. When enabled, a hint system provides gameplay clues, such as the direction of the next objective. Throughout the game are special treasures that may be hidden or in difficult-to-reach places that the player can collect. Collecting these treasures, along with completing certain feats within the game, is tracked by the awarding of medals, which gives the player in-game money to use to unlock extra content on the disc, including concept art, game movies, and game cheats such as guns with infinite ammunition. The statistics tracked for a large portion of the in-game medals are used to award trophies.

Multiplayer Uncharted 2also features both competitive and co-operative multiplayer. The co-op multiplayer allows a maximum of three players to take the roles of Drake and two other "hero" companions and features missions involving [13] gunfights, platforming, and teamwork-based objectives. Players can also assist their comrades if they become [13] critically injured or if they are grabbed by an enemy. The competitive multiplayer allows a maximum of ten players to play against each other in two teams of five. Six competitive modes are featured: Deathmatch, Plunder, Elimination, Turf War, King of the Hill and Chain [14] Reaction. Deathmatch features two teams of five, with one team acting as heroes and the other as villains. Players can choose their own appropriate character models (such as Drake, Sully, Elena, and new characters Tenzin and Chloe for the heroes team). As players accrue points and rank up, they can purchase more skins for both heroes and [14] [14] villains. Players can select two Boost abilities which assist them in the matches. Plunder is similar to the traditional capture the flag game mode, and sees each team attempt to capture the treasure from a central point in the map and return it to their base; the player carrying the treasure is slowed down a great deal, and may also choose to [14] hurl the treasure away at any point, in order to keep it out of reach of the enemy, or to pass it to a teammate. Elimination has two teams of five players against each other with the objective of killing everyone on the other team. In Elimination, the players do not respawn. The goal is to eliminate the other team three out of five times. Chain Reaction has the player capturing posts, but the player must do them in a specific order–team works out one from their base needing to capture 1 through 5 while the other team starts out from their home and needs to snag 5 through 1. King of the Hill has players capturing a hill, spawned on the map to score points. They must stay in the

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3 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves hill to score points while the enemy team tries to do the same. Gold Rush is a cooperative mode of play where 2–3 players must team up to obtain a treasure, which is randomly spawned on the map, and take it back to their base, much like Plunder. However, AI enemies try to stop the players from returning the treasure. If a player goes down and is not revived before the timer goes out, they will not come back until the next round. In each consecutive round the enemies become tougher to defeat. Survival is the second cooperative mode of play, where 2-3 players must work together to defeat a total of ten waves of enemies, each wave becoming more and more difficult. A new co-op game mode, titled "Siege", was also added, in which 2-3 players must team up to secure a zone whilst holding off waves of enemies. On September 15, 2009, another beta was released and an open beta was released to the EU and US on the [15] September 29, 2009 via the PSN store. Both expired on October 12, 2009. Plot Among Thievesrevolves around the doomed voyage home of Marco Polo from China in 1292. After spending almost 20 years in the court of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, Marco Polo departed with fourteen ships and over six hundred passengers–when he arrived at Persia a year and a half later, only one ship and eighteen passengers but remained. Polo never revealed what had happened to the lost ships. The story beginsin medias res, with a wounded Nate waking up to find himself in a train hanging off a cliff. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that Harry Flynn and Chloe Frazer approached him with a job offer to steal a Mongolian oil lamp in an Istanbul museum. Nate accepts the job when he learns that the lamp may lead to the treasure of Marco Polo's lost fleet. Flynn and Drake acquire the lamp, which contains a map showing that the lost fleet had been transporting the Cintamani Stone from Shambhala before being thrown ashore in Borneo by a tsunami. Taking the map, Flynn double-crosses Drake, who is arrested and imprisoned for three months before Chloe, who claims to have had no knowledge of Flynn's treachery, asks for the help of Drake's friend Victor "Sully" Sullivan to secure his release.  Nate and Sully follow Flynn and his boss Zoran Lazarevic, a war criminal who is widely thought to be  dead, to Borneo. With the help of Chloe working within Lazarevic's camp as a mole, they discover that the lost  fleet never actually possessed the Cintamani Stone. They locate a tomb containing the bodies of Polo's passengers,  as well as a Tibetan phurba and a letter from Polo saying that the next clue is in Pokhara, Nepal inside a temple. Flynn and his men appear in the tomb soon after and take Drake climbs a hotel in Nepal as he attempts to locate a temple. the letter, while Nate and Sully make their escape by jumping off a cliff into a river. While Sullivan decides that the quest is too risky, Nate and Chloe head to Nepal, finding the city in the midst of civil war as Lazarevic ravages the city looking for the right temple. After surmising that the temple they are looking for would also be adorned with one of the symbols on the phurba, the couple survey the area on the rooftop of a local hotel, thus finding its location. En route to the temple, the pair runs into Elena Fisher and her cameraman Jeff, who are tracking down Lazarevic to prove he is still alive. The four reach the temple and discover that the stone and Shambhala are in the Himalayas. Just as they are about to leave, the group is ambushed outside the temple, and Jeff is shot by one of Lazarevic's men. Despite Chloe's insistence to leave Jeff behind, the group pushes on until they are ultimately caught. Chloe reluctantly pulls her gun on Nate to protect her "cover", while Lazarevic executes Jeff. While Lazarevic and Chloe leave for the train yard, Nate and Elena manage to escape just as Flynn is about to kill them. The couple manages to

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves catch up with Lazarevic's train on a stolen jeep. Nate boards the train and finds Chloe, who is upset about Nate having taken Elena and Jeff along earlier and refuses to leave with him. As the two argue, Flynn suddenly arrives and shoots Nate in the abdomen. With no other option, Nate shoots a pile of propane tanks, killing Flynn's men and sending Nate's half of the train over a steep cliff. Returning to where the game began, Nate escapes the train and travels through a snow storm, recovering the phurba among the wreckage before falling unconscious. He awakens in a Tibetan village, where he is reunited with Elena and is introduced to a 90-year-old German man named Karl Schäfer. Schäfer tells Nate that the phurba is the key to finding Shambhala, but Nate tells him he is no longer interested. Schäfer sends Nate and the village leader, Tenzin, to find the remains of the men in his expedition, who were looking for Shambhala and the stone 70 years earlier. Traveling through a series of ice caves to an ancient temple filled with yeti-like creatures, Nate and Tenzin discover that Schäfer's men were SS members on an Ahnenerbe expedition and that he had killed them to protect the world from the power of the stone. They return to find Lazarevic's men attacking the village. After securing the village, Nate and Elena find out that Schäfer has been kidnapped along with the phurba. They then track Lazarevic's convoy to an abandoned monastery. The two locate a mortally wounded Schäfer, who tells Nate that he must destroy the Cintamani Stone. Nate locates Chloe, who surrenders the phurba after he promises to take Lazarevic down. Nate and Elena use the phurba to unlock the secret passage to Shambhala underneath the monastery, but Lazarevic corners them and forces Nate to open the gate. When the gate opens the group is attacked by the monsters from the ice caves, but Lazarevic manages to kill them. It is then revealed that they are actually human guardians of Shambhala, powered by the Cintamani stone and dressed like monsters to scare off anyone who trespass the city. Just as Lazarevic prepares to kill Elena and Nate, another wave of guardians attacks, which allows them and Chloe to escape.

Making their way to the stone, Nate discovers that the stone is in fact a giant amber of petrified blue resin embedded in a giant Tree of Life. As they prepare to go after Lazarevic, a wounded Flynn arrives and detonates a grenade, killing himself and seriously wounding Elena. Nate leaves Elena in Chloe's care and sets off to confront Lazarevic at the tree. Nate arrives just as Lazarevic drinks the tree's sap, which renders him nearly indestructible. Detonating the pockets of explosive resin in the tree, Nate defeats Lazarevic and leaves him to be killed by the guardians. Nate reunites with Chloe and Elena and they escape the city as a series of explosions begins to destroy Shambhala. Back in the village, Chloe asks Nate if he loves Elena, which he does not deny. Chloe bids Nate goodbye as Sully leads a recovering Elena over to him. While Sully chases after Chloe, Elena and Nate pay their respects at Schäfer's grave before embracing. They share a kiss and together they walk over to the edge of a cliff and watch the sun set behind the mountains.

Development First revealed byGame Informerin December 2008, the first teaser trailer shows a weary, wounded Drake marching [12] through a snowstorm to reach a phurba half-buried in the snow. Lead character artist Richard Diamant remarked [16] that the trailer was rendered in real-time, using the game's engine. A second teaser trailer was released soon after, showing a badly wounded Drake stuck in the remains of a wrecked train hanging precariously over a cliff. Uncharted 2features an online multiplayer component, the beta phase of which was playable by those who bought [17] early copies of the gameinFamous. The beta was also accessible by annual subscribers of the PlayStation [18] Network service, Qore, on June 3, to those who have subscribed to Qore by May 15. The beta codes from Qore began to be sent out on May 8, 2009. Beta codes frominFamousshipped inside the game's packaging, on May 26, 2009.

On July 27, Naughty Dog Co-President Christophe Balestra revealed through a Twitter post that the game would not [19] require installation to the PlayStation 3's hard drive.

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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves 5 Motion capture In E3 2009 videos from Naughty Dog showed the voice actors of the characters performing the motion captures in [20] some of the scenes. The actors act out the scene wearing specially designed Motion capture suits, and their performance was used to provide both the motion capture and voice work. The actors would even rehearse together [21] in a room and had discussions with the creative directors of the game before carrying out the performance. Graphics and technology Naughty Dog intended to maximize the utilization of the Cell's SPUs, as their estimates for utilization in the first [22] Unchartedwere only around 30%. As a result, the game has more realistic environments and animations. Uncharted 2uses Naughty Dog Game Engine 2.0, a revamped and optimized version of the original engine that has allowed the game to have real-time moving environments, more realistic textures, and animations. The Naughty Dog Game Engine 2.0 also works in harmony with Havok Physics. It is notable that the game is one of the few to utilize Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. On August 26, 2009, it was revealed thatUncharted 2uses between 90 to 100% of the Cell's processor and uses all [23] 25GB of a single Blu-ray Disc. However, Evan Wells later pointed out "...now it's at least busy 100% of the time, but it's still not fully-optimized code. I mean, in order to get to that 100%, it was more about making sure the pipeline was filled, and we weren't running into one of the processors becoming idle because there wasn't a job ready [24] for it." In the interview, Christophe Balestra also pointed out how important it is to ship every system with a hard drive. "The fact that every PS3 has a hard drive is huge for us." He went on to describe how the game takes advantage of Sony's offerings. "It's the combination of Blu-ray and hard drive. You can play the entire game without loading. We [23] don't require an install. We're doing all the post-processing effects on the Synergistic Processing Units." Post-release Special editions Naughty Dog's creative director Amy Hennig revealed a special Fortune Hunter edition ofUncharted 2that isn't obtainable in stores. The Fortune Hunter edition contains the game, a replica of the Phurba Dagger artifact and stand, a BradyGames strategy guide, an art book, the official soundtrack, and a collector's case autographed by Naughty [25] Dog. It is also said to include various downloadable content. A collector's edition ofUncharted 2has not been announced for sale in the United States. SCEA marketing manager Asad Qizilbash told readers of the PlayStation Blog that the limited edition giveaways will take place on that blog, PlayStation Home, the game's multiplayer demo, and a few other unnamed places. [25] Qizilbash also mentioned that only residents in the US are eligible to win. Only 200 copies were released. Exclusive to the PAL region, theUncharted 2special edition contains the game, gold versions of the Beretta and [26] AK-47 weapons, two post cards, a PlayStation 3 theme, and multiplayer skins. The game comes packaged in a steel case by SteelBook. Never formally announced, the Special Edition was discovered on the game's official European launch site, with the only link for the special edition leading to one of Britain's major game retailers, [27] Game.