Synopsis

It all begins with a coffin recovered off the coast of Panama.

Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter who claims to be descended from explorer Sir Francis Drake, retrieves the coffin of his supposed ancestor alongside journalist Elena Fisher. Inside lies a centuries-old journal containing a clue to El Dorado, the legendary treasure generations of explorers sought without ever finding.

Nathan decides to follow the trail with his mentor and friend Victor “Sully” Sullivan. The investigation takes them to a lost island in the Pacific, covered in ruins, abandoned military installations and traces left behind by those who searched for El Dorado before them.

They are obviously not alone.

Mercenaries are also hunting the treasure and quickly turn the expedition into an armed race. What still resembled an archaeological adventure gradually becomes a fight for survival, as Nathan discovers that El Dorado hides a truth far more dangerous than its legend suggests.

From its very first installment, Drake’s Fortune establishes the foundations of the series: a charming adventurer who always seems slightly too confident, historical ruins transformed into playgrounds, a trio of characters whose chemistry relies largely on dialogue, and a final discovery reminding us that some treasures become far less appealing once we understand what they really are.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered preserves this first adventure almost intact, while removing some of the technical distance that still separated the 2007 game from the installments that followed.

Overview

The first Uncharted, eight years later

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was originally released on PlayStation 3 in 2007. It is the first chapter in the series and introduces Nathan Drake, Elena Fisher and Victor Sullivan, along with the combination of exploration, climbing, puzzles and third-person combat that would become the foundation of Uncharted. PlayStation still presents it as the adventure that launched the entire series.

Its remastered version appeared in 2015 as part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, a compilation bringing together the solo campaigns of the first three games. The collection was released in France on October 7, 2015 for PlayStation 4.

The remaster therefore does not attempt to reinvent Drake’s Fortune the way a remake might.

The overall level geometry, story progression, characters and main systems remain those of the original work. Bluepoint Games mainly focuses on making this first adventure more consistent with its sequels and more comfortable to play on a different console generation.

Bluepoint Games behind the remaster

The remastering of the three games in The Nathan Drake Collection was handled by Bluepoint Games, in collaboration with Naughty Dog. At the time of the announcement, Naughty Dog explained that it had worked closely with the studio to transfer and adapt its technology to PlayStation 4.

Bluepoint Games does not appear in the available entity list for this PANACHES CULTURE entry. The studio is therefore not artificially added to the entites field.

Naughty Dog remains associated as the studio that created the original work and as a partner on the remastering project, while Sony Interactive Entertainment is the official publisher of the PS4 version. The PlayStation Store still lists the title under Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Moving from the PS3 game to 1080p/60 fps

The most immediately noticeable improvement is obviously the presentation.

Bluepoint adapted all three games to target 1080p and 60 frames per second, while reworking lighting, shadows, materials, shaders, textures, models and visual effects. Ambient occlusion and motion blur were also added in places where those techniques were not supported before.

The cutscenes were likewise re-rendered to incorporate the visual improvements and support 1080p/60 fps presentation.

These changes obviously do not turn a game designed in 2007 into a production born eight years later.

Animations, the size of certain combat arenas and the way levels distribute enemy encounters still reveal their era. But the higher resolution and, above all, the increased frame rate make both movement and gunfights noticeably smoother.

The remaster therefore does not hide Drake’s Fortune’s age. It mainly wipes away some of the dust that had settled on it.

Aiming is rebuilt

Drake’s Fortune is the game in the trilogy that receives some of the most specific gameplay corrections.

To harmonize the trilogy, Bluepoint adjusted camera speed, various movement-related behaviors and the strength of aim assistance. In Drake’s Fortune specifically, the targeting assistance was rebuilt.

That may sound like a technical detail, but it directly affects one of the parts of the first game that had aged most quickly.

Drake’s Fortune relies heavily on gunfights. Many areas are structured as arenas where Nathan must defeat several waves of enemies before exploration can continue.

More consistent aiming therefore does more than improve peripheral comfort. It affects a considerable portion of the overall experience.

Grenades finally work like they do in the sequels

The grenade system is also heavily harmonized.

In the original game, using grenades relied on a specific control method that disappeared in later installments. For the remaster, Bluepoint brings the system directly closer to the one used in Among Thieves and Drake’s Deception.

It is no longer necessary to equip a grenade separately before throwing it. Nathan can also use grenades in more situations, including while hanging or positioned behind cover.

It is a small detail that reveals a great deal about the work done on this version.

Bluepoint is not trying to turn Drake’s Fortune into Uncharted 2, but to remove certain control differences that no longer meaningfully added anything to the game.

The charm of a still-imperfect first installment

Even remastered, Drake’s Fortune remains very different from what the series would quickly become.

Combat occupies a huge amount of space. Some sequences throw enemies at the player with an insistence that later games would gradually learn to balance more effectively with exploration, dialogue and large-scale action scenes.

Climbing is also more limited. Movement is more rigid and the environments offer less variety than those of Among Thieves or Drake’s Deception.

But these limitations also give the game a particular place within the series.

The essential instincts are already there: the relationship between Nathan, Elena and Sully; humor used to give rhythm to dangerous situations; historical clues opening the door to a larger fiction; and the desire to bring adventure games closer to cinema without completely removing the pleasure of controlling the character.

Drake’s Fortune sometimes feels like the first version of an idea Naughty Dog would spend ten years refining. And that is precisely what still makes it interesting.

Photo Mode and new game modes

The remastered version also benefits from the new features added across The Nathan Drake Collection.

Photo Mode allows players to freeze and frame different scenes, while new trophies and expanded statistics accompany progression.

Several modes also modify the difficulty or the way the game can be played:

  • Explorer Mode greatly reduces combat difficulty in order to prioritize the story and exploration.
  • Speed Run Mode adds a timer and allows players to track chapter times or a complete playthrough.
  • Brutal Mode offers a difficulty level above Crushing and unlocks after completing that mode.

These options are particularly relevant for Drake’s Fortune.

A player who mainly wants to discover the origins of the series can reduce the importance of its numerous gunfights, while an experienced player can instead use the relatively direct level structure as a playground for speedrunning or extreme difficulty.

Key takeaways

  • Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered revisits the first Uncharted, originally released on PlayStation 3 in 2007.
  • The remastered version first appeared on PS4 as part of The Nathan Drake Collection in October 2015.
  • Nathan Drake searches for El Dorado alongside Elena Fisher and Victor “Sully” Sullivan.
  • The gameplay combines third-person shooting, exploration, platforming, climbing and puzzles.
  • Bluepoint Games handled the remastering work, in collaboration with Naughty Dog.
  • The remaster targets 1080p and 60 fps and improves lighting, textures, models, shaders and effects, among other elements.
  • Drake’s Fortune’s aim assistance was rebuilt to make its behavior more consistent with the other games.
  • The grenade system was brought closer to the two sequels, with more direct use.
  • Photo Mode, Explorer Mode, Speed Run Mode and Brutal Mode are among the main additions of the remastered version.
  • The remaster is entirely single-player. The PlayStation Store lists one player, and The Nathan Drake Collection includes only the solo campaigns.
  • It is a PS4 version, even though it can be used on PS5 through backward compatibility.
  • A standalone digital version of Drake’s Fortune Remastered was later released separately on the French PlayStation Store.

PANACHES review

The first Uncharted benefits most from controlling better

It would be easy to reduce this remaster to a higher resolution and 60 frames per second.

For Drake’s Fortune, however, that is not the most important change.

The rebuilt aiming, harmonized controls and revised grenade system do more for the game than a handful of sharper textures.

The first Uncharted already relied heavily on gunfights. When those encounters become smoother, the entire adventure breathes a little more easily.

An old game allowed to remain old

Bluepoint could have tried harder to erase the differences between Drake’s Fortune and its sequels.

Choosing not to do so completely is a healthy decision.

The clearly defined combat arenas are still there, the enemy waves can still feel excessive, and the climbing remains fairly rudimentary. But it is also possible to see the series beginning to find its identity.

The remaster improves the framework enough for us to observe the 2007 game without demanding that it pretend to have been born in 2015.

That is probably the right balance.

An origin that became easier to recommend

Among the three games in The Nathan Drake Collection, Drake’s Fortune benefits the most simply from being surrounded by its sequels.

It immediately becomes possible to understand what is going to change.

The characters are already there. The taste for spectacle is already there. So is the treasure-hunt structure. But the rhythm, movement and way action is integrated into the environment are still under construction.

Playing the remaster today therefore feels a little like visiting the workshop before all the machinery has been installed.

It is not yet the most spectacular Uncharted. It is the one that shows how the series learned to become spectacular.

Good to know

First release of the remastered version

  • Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered first appeared on PS4 as part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection.
  • The collection was released in France on October 7, 2015.
  • Naughty Dog explicitly presents Drake’s Fortune, Among Thieves and Drake’s Deception as the three remastered games included in the compilation.
  • The entry therefore uses date_sortie: '2015-10-07', corresponding to the remaster’s first availability in France.

Separate digital release

  • The French PlayStation Store also lists Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered as an individual product.
  • This standalone digital edition is listed as having been released on November 16, 2016.
  • That date does not replace the 2015 date in the main field, since the remaster had already been available beforehand in The Nathan Drake Collection.
  • The standalone product remains a single-player PS4 version.

PS4 and PS5 backward compatibility

  • The PlayStation Store officially lists the game as a PS4 version.
  • There is no separate native PS5 remaster of Drake’s Fortune in Legacy of Thieves Collection; that collection contains only Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy.
  • The entry therefore keeps only ps4 in plateformes.
  • The ability to run a PS4 version on PS5 through backward compatibility does not make the work a native PS5 release.

Bluepoint Games

  • Bluepoint Games handled the remastering of all three titles in The Nathan Drake Collection.
  • Naughty Dog worked with Bluepoint to adapt its technology and games to PS4.
  • Since Bluepoint Games is not present in the authorized entity list supplied for this entry, it is not included in entites.
  • Naughty Dog is retained as the studio connected to the original work and the remastering project; Sony Interactive Entertainment is listed as publisher.

Graphics and frame rate

  • The three remasters were designed to run at 1080p and up to 60 fps.
  • Improvements include lighting, shadows, materials, shaders, effects, models and textures.
  • Bluepoint also added ambient occlusion and motion blur where they were not used in the original versions.
  • Cutscenes were re-rendered with the visual improvements for 1080p/60 fps presentation.

Changes specific to Drake’s Fortune

  • Aim assistance was rebuilt for the first game.
  • Camera speed and various aiming parameters were harmonized across the trilogy.
  • Button layouts were also adjusted to avoid changing control logic between the three games.
  • The grenade system in Drake’s Fortune was brought closer to the one used in Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3.
  • It is no longer necessary to select a grenade separately before throwing it, and grenades can be used from more positions.

New modes

  • Explorer Mode greatly reduces combat difficulty.
  • Speed Run Mode introduces a timer and time tracking.
  • Brutal Mode adds a difficulty level above Crushing.
  • Photo Mode allows players to capture scenes and environments from the game.
  • The remasters also add new trophies, expanded statistics and different character skins.

A single-player-only installment

  • Drake’s Fortune already had no multiplayer mode in its original version.
  • The remaster likewise remains entirely single-player: the PlayStation Store explicitly lists it as a one-player experience.
  • The Nathan Drake Collection itself includes only the solo campaigns of the three games.
  • The entry therefore uses modes_de_jeu: 'solo'.

The engine remains intentionally unspecified

  • Naughty Dog and PlayStation discuss transferring and adapting the technology of the original games to PS4, but the official sources consulted do not provide a sufficiently stable and precise engine name for this version.
  • The moteur field therefore remains blank rather than assigning the game an unverified technical name.

A completed work

  • The remaster contains a complete, self-contained narrative campaign.
  • The work itself is not tied to any episodic publication system or ongoing content model.
  • The entry therefore uses statut_parution: completed.