On October 13, 2009, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was released in North America as the second installment in Naughty Dog’s adventure series about treasure hunter Nathan Drake. The game was released exclusively on PlayStation 3 and was a much more ambitious project than its predecessor. The developers wanted to create an adventure that would resemble a major Hollywood movie in its presentation while still remaining a video game where the player directly takes part in its most spectacular scenes.
The result was one of the most acclaimed games of the PlayStation 3 generation. Uncharted 2 received dozens of Game of the Year awards, demonstrated the technical capabilities of Sony’s console, and turned Nathan Drake’s adventures into one of PlayStation’s flagship franchises.
In 2007, Naughty Dog released Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. For a studio that had previously made a name for itself with Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter, it was a transition into a completely different format. The new series focused on more realistic characters, gunfights, exploration, platforming, and the atmosphere of classic adventure movies.
Drake’s Fortune laid the foundation for the series, but while working on the sequel, Naughty Dog had the opportunity to expand its ideas significantly. The developers wanted to make the second game bigger in practically every way, from its locations and animations to its story, technology, and cinematic sequences. Thus, development of Among Thieves began.
This time, Nathan Drake sets out in search of the legendary Shambhala and the Cintamani Stone. The story is built around a mystery surrounding the expedition of Marco Polo. After the explorer returned to Europe, part of his fleet and hundreds of people supposedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances — a historical mystery that Naughty Dog used as the starting point for its new adventure.
Drake, together with Harry Flynn and Chloe Frazer, attempts to find clues that could lead to the legendary city. The search eventually turns into a global race, with Zoran Lazarević becoming the main antagonist, as he is also determined to find Shambhala. The adventure takes players through cities, jungles, the snowy Himalayas, and ancient temples, constantly changing the scale and pace of the action.
One of the most famous scenes in Uncharted 2 is the train sequence, which Naughty Dog shows the player almost immediately. The game begins with an injured Drake waking up inside a train carriage. Within seconds, it becomes clear that the train is hanging over a cliff, and Drake must climb his way upward while the entire structure is literally falling apart beneath him. Only later does the story explain how Drake ended up in this situation.
The train sequence itself became one of the most challenging technical tasks for the developers. Instead of using a conventional static arena, Naughty Dog created a long sequence of train carriages moving through different parts of the world. Players could move between the carriages, climb onto the roof, engage in gunfights, and watch the surrounding scenery constantly change. For 2009, the sequence was remarkably impressive.
These moments became one of the defining features of Among Thieves. Naughty Dog tried to erase the boundary between regular gameplay and cinematic set pieces as much as possible. Instead of simply showing an explosion, accident, or destruction in a cutscene, the developers often kept control of the character in the player’s hands.
Drake ran from collapsing buildings, hung over cliffs, jumped between vehicles, and continued fighting even as the entire environment around him changed. This created the feeling of an adventure movie in which the player was the main character. At the same time, Uncharted 2 constantly changed its pace: large-scale firefights were followed by exploration, puzzles, platforming, and quieter story moments.
Among Thieves also became a showcase for the technical capabilities of the PlayStation 3. Naughty Dog significantly improved its technology following Drake’s Fortune, enhancing lighting, character animations, environmental detail, and the way levels were streamed. This allowed the studio to create much larger and more complex sequences without constantly interrupting the adventure.
Particular attention was paid to Drake’s animations. The character reacted to surfaces and his surroundings, touched walls while moving, changed the way he moved depending on the situation, and interacted with objects more naturally. Today, details like these may seem ordinary, but in 2009 they helped create the impression of a living character inside a cinematic adventure.
Among Thieves introduced another important change for the series — a full-fledged multiplayer mode. Players could compete against each other or take part in separate cooperative missions. For a series that had previously been focused entirely on single-player adventures, this was a significant experiment.
Naughty Dog adapted familiar campaign mechanics — shooting, the cover system, and vertical movement — for matches against other players. Multiplayer was not the main reason for Uncharted 2’s popularity, but it significantly expanded the game’s content after completing the single-player campaign and laid the groundwork for the development of multiplayer modes in the next installment.
Following its release, Uncharted 2 received exceptionally high praise from critics. The game was particularly celebrated for its presentation, characters, graphics, campaign pacing, and the way Naughty Dog seamlessly combined cinematic sequences with direct gameplay.
At the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards, Among Thieves won Game of the Year as well as several other awards. The game also received numerous accolades from gaming publications and other award ceremonies, becoming one of the most notable PlayStation 3 exclusives. For Naughty Dog, this was an important moment: the studio firmly established itself as a team capable of creating not only popular platformers but also large-scale narrative blockbusters.
The success of the second installment shaped the future of the entire series. Naughty Dog went on to release Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, followed by Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and The Lost Legacy. The principle the studio refined in Among Thieves remained at the heart of the series: spectacular set pieces should not simply be shown to the player but should unfold directly around them.
This approach later became characteristic of more than just Uncharted. Cinematic presentation, seamless transitions between cutscenes and gameplay, and large-scale interactive sequences increasingly became common in major story-driven games. For Naughty Dog itself, the success of Uncharted 2 also became an important milestone in the studio’s development ahead of its subsequent major projects.
On October 13, 2009, Nathan Drake embarked on his second major adventure. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves showed just how close a video game could come to becoming a spectacular adventure blockbuster without taking away the most important thing from the player — the ability to be at the center of the action.
As a reminder, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 — Treyarch’s riskiest experiment.
