It turns out that there’s more going on in the Uncharted demo than I previously realized — and it’s why playing it is likely to be way more fun than watching it on YouTube. This section of the game, which happens a few hours after Drake has reunited with an older brother he thought was dead, finds Drake and his pal Sully trying to escape an ambush in a stolen Jeep. Hot on their trail is an enormous, speedy, tank-like vehicle that riddles their ride with bullets. To get away, you have to lose the tank — and that means darting through blind alleys, crashing through fences, and otherwise laying waste to a tropical village.

Uncharted
Watching the demo, you might assume that there’s only one way to go — that survival rests upon memorizing the precise series of twists and turns you need to take to escape the truck. But Naughty Dog built the game with a series of branching paths. So long as you’re traveling generally downhill, says Neil Druckmann, the game’s creative director, you’ll make it out alive. This is how Uncharted gives you control over a moment that looks like a film: the turns you take are up to you, but the outcome is predetermined.

MOSTLY YOU'RE WATCHING AN ILLUSION

In other words, it’s a magic trick. You have a degree of control, but mostly you’re watching an illusion. Like any art, the best games stay with us because they force us to suspend our disbelief and buy the notion, however briefly, that we are in control of that jeep, and one wrong turn means certain death. When you make it safely through, you breathe a sigh of relief — and feel proud of yourself for successfully navigating the path. It’s a feeling you can only get by playing — something Naughty Dog wouldn’t yet let us do.

I still have my concerns about Uncharted 4, whose demos to date have betrayed a certain more-of-the-sameness that have left it looking a bit stale. Once again, Nathan and his pals are hunting for treasure — and once again, a rival gang is hot on their heels. The emotional core of the story — Drake coming back for one last score, after promising his wife he was out of the business — feels as obvious as they come. Uncharted 4 began life with a series of ugly executive departures. It remains unclear that the game — which is due next year, after delays — is back on track.

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