Presentation
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves takes the foundations of Drake’s Fortune and assembles them with far greater fluidity. Naughty Dog keeps the linear adventure, climbing, gunfights and puzzles while multiplying changes of location and creating smoother transitions between exploration, combat and staging. Nathan’s journey takes him from Istanbul to Borneo, then Nepal, Tibet and the Himalayas before reaching Shambhala.
Climbing gains variety and becomes more integrated into the environments. Nathan moves across facades, temples, cliffs, train cars and structures that are not always stationary. Verticality also plays a larger role during combat, allowing some areas to be approached from different heights instead of following only a ground-level corridor.
The cover system remains central to gunfights, with pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, grenades and heavy weapons collected from the battlefield. The combat arenas are more open than in the first game, however. Enemies move, flank positions and regularly force Nathan to change cover rather than remain behind the same obstacle.
Stealth also becomes more useful. Nathan can approach some enemies without immediately starting a firefight, eliminate them quietly and use verticality to observe an area before acting. The game never becomes a dedicated stealth title, but this option gives encounters greater variety.
Melee combat remains simple, while the game continues to favor the combination of firearms, movement and environmental use. Encounters with heavily armored enemies or some of the creatures found later nevertheless require players to adjust habits developed against ordinary mercenaries.
The spectacular progression is the most visible evolution. The opening shows an injured Nathan inside a train hanging over a cliff before returning to the events that led to this situation. Later, the player actually crosses the moving train, passing from one carriage to another and fighting enemies while the landscape moves around them.
This sequence illustrates how Naughty Dog tries to integrate spectacle directly into gameplay. Collapsing buildings, moving vehicles and destructible environments are no longer merely backgrounds for cutscenes: Nathan must continue climbing, aiming or moving while the world changes around him.
The geographical variety strengthens this approach. The humid ruins of Borneo are replaced by a Nepalese city at war, then snowy mountains, a Tibetan village and the monumental architecture of Shambhala. Each major stage has a visual identity strong enough to give the journey a scale absent from the single island of Drake’s Fortune.
Puzzles remain relatively accessible, but they make greater use of Nathan’s notebook and temple architecture. Their main role is to support the archaeological dimension of the journey and occasionally slow the pace between action sequences.
Chloe Frazer also brings a new dynamic to the story. A former romantic partner of Nathan, she shares his pragmatism, appetite for danger and a more flexible morality than Elena. Her ambiguous position between Nathan and Lazarević’s organization creates much of the story’s tension.
Elena represents a different relationship with Nathan. Their connection since the first adventure remains complicated, but she acts more clearly as a counterweight to his obsession with discovery. The contrast between Chloe and Elena therefore does not rely only on romantic rivalry: they also represent different ways of responding to danger and to the consequences of the search.
Lazarević gives the adventure a more direct threat than the antagonists of the first game. He commands an actual army, invades the locations Nathan is searching and sees the discovery of Shambhala as a way to gain military power. His presence regularly turns archaeological exploration into a race against a force capable of destroying what it seeks.
The mystery of Shambhala preserves the series’ characteristic mixture of historical references, legends and fantasy. Marco Polo provides the historical starting point, but the investigation gradually shifts toward the Cintamani Stone, the hidden city and an explanation for the power behind the stories surrounding it.
Among Thieves also introduces multiplayer to the series. The PlayStation 3 version offered competitive modes as well as cooperative experiences built around the campaign’s traversal and combat mechanics. This component remains separate from the solo story but shows that the formula could work beyond Nathan’s adventure.
What to remember
- Nathan Drake’s second main adventure, built around Marco Polo’s lost fleet and the legendary kingdom of Shambhala.
- A journey that passes through Istanbul, Borneo, Nepal, Tibet and the Himalayas.
- Chloe Frazer joins Nathan, Elena Fisher and Victor Sullivan among the central characters of the series.
- Zoran Lazarević searches for the Cintamani Stone in order to exploit the power hidden within Shambhala.
- Gameplay that expands climbing, cover-based gunfights and stealth while making greater use of verticality.
- Spectacular sequences integrated directly into gameplay, including the moving train that became one of the game’s most iconic moments.
- A more varied and better-paced structure than Drake’s Fortune, with smoother transitions between storytelling, exploration and action.
- The first Uncharted to include competitive and cooperative multiplayer in its original PlayStation 3 version.
Conclusion
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves remains deeply linear, but it uses that linearity with far greater confidence than its predecessor. Each new environment prepares a different situation, and the transitions between climbing, combat, dialogue and spectacle are fast enough to create the impression of one continuous journey rather than a series of separate sequences.
The evolution is particularly visible in the action. Gunfights remain frequent, but verticality, stealth and moving environments give them greater variety. The train perfectly summarizes this ambition: it is simultaneously a setting, a level to cross, a combat arena and a narrative sequence whose progression depends directly on the player’s actions.
The characters also gain importance. Chloe brings a more ambiguous relationship with Nathan, Elena reveals more clearly the human consequences of his choices, while Sully remains a stable enough presence to recall the life Drake has outside this particular search. The adventure keeps its humor, but begins to question more openly the obsession that drives its hero forward despite the risks imposed on those around him.
Shambhala works in the same way. The city first represents the culmination of a treasure hunt, but discovering it forces Nathan to consider what Lazarević could actually do with the power it contains. The archaeological mystery therefore retains its spectacle while giving the final act stakes that go beyond possession of a valuable object.
With this entry, Naughty Dog finds the balance that will define Uncharted for years. Drake’s Fortune established the characters and essential principles; Among Thieves manages to bring them together in an adventure where movement, combat, story and staging feel like parts of the same continuous flow. Later games would expand the formula further, but this is where it truly takes shape.
Good to know
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.
- The original game was released for PlayStation 3 in October 2009, with a North American launch on October 13.
- Nathan Drake is again voiced in English by Nolan North; Claudia Black plays Chloe Frazer and Emily Rose returns as Elena Fisher.
- The story draws partly on Marco Polo’s lost fleet and legends surrounding Shambhala and the Cintamani Stone.
- It is the first entry in the series to include both competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes.
- Online services for the PlayStation 3 version were shut down on September 3, 2019.
- A remastered version of the campaign is included in Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, released for PlayStation 4 in 2015.
- The Nathan Drake Collection includes only the single-player campaigns of the first three games and therefore does not include the original multiplayer from Among Thieves.
