The gameplay was QTE heavy Gears of War cover shooting. There was a massive wave of cover shooters in the PS3 era and a similarly heavy push for QTEs. And… I would give Infamous 2 (2011) and God of War 3 (2010) the credit for likely reaching the peak of what QTEs can do narratively. And while they were contemporaries of Uncharted (07-11), so were games like Gears of War, Kane & Lynch (eww), and so forth. Also, Freedom Fighters (actually good) was 2003 and while I don’t think it had snap cover, it was very much in that vein.
The other two big things I will give Uncharted is the focus on climbing (which Ubi had been doing since PoP: Sands of Time in 2003) and overall “plays like a movie” that was a similar push throughout the industry with ties back to System Shock 2 (1999), Half-Life 1 (1998… somehow), Call of Duty 1 (2003), and… you know, the entirety of the FMV Adventure genre.
Also… it is literally Dude Raider.
Uncharted was GOOD but far from “groundbreaking” once you get outside of the PS3. And, even within the PS3, 2 and 3 were very much iterations and evolutions of the original formula.
Which is why I get back to The Last of Us largely being their big, some might say only, example of something so big that it transcended console borders.
The gameplay was QTE heavy Gears of War cover shooting. There was a massive wave of cover shooters in the PS3 era and a similarly heavy push for QTEs. And… I would give Infamous 2 (2011) and God of War 3 (2010) the credit for likely reaching the peak of what QTEs can do narratively. And while they were contemporaries of Uncharted (07-11), so were games like Gears of War, Kane & Lynch (eww), and so forth. Also, Freedom Fighters (actually good) was 2003 and while I don’t think it had snap cover, it was very much in that vein.
The other two big things I will give Uncharted is the focus on climbing (which Ubi had been doing since PoP: Sands of Time in 2003) and overall “plays like a movie” that was a similar push throughout the industry with ties back to System Shock 2 (1999), Half-Life 1 (1998… somehow), Call of Duty 1 (2003), and… you know, the entirety of the FMV Adventure genre.
Also… it is literally Dude Raider.
Uncharted was GOOD but far from “groundbreaking” once you get outside of the PS3. And, even within the PS3, 2 and 3 were very much iterations and evolutions of the original formula.
Which is why I get back to The Last of Us largely being their big, some might say only, example of something so big that it transcended console borders.