Of all the Uncharted games that were released, Golden Abyss was the only game I never got to play.
Being locked inside the PS Vita has reduced my chances of playing it. As someone who never found any good reasons to purchase PlayStation’s second portable iteration, I moved on with my life, not looking back on Nathan Drake’s portable adventure. If Square Enix had released an exclusive Dissidia game for the PS Vita back then, I would have definitely gotten one.
But I digress, now feels like it’s high time Naughty Dog and Sony realized that they have a lot of untapped potential with a remake or a re-release of Golden Abyss.
Golden Abyss wasn’t technically a Naughty Dog-made game. It was, in fact, made by the studio behind Days Gone. Bend Studio had previously been hard at work with their portable pipeline, and they were the perfect fit to do a small-scale Nathan Drake story set before the events of the mainline titles.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss was a technical achievement of its kind. Nobody was expecting they’d be able to play an Uncharted game on a small screen. That glory once belonged to Ready At Dawn Studios after they brought Kratos’ God of War adventures to portable gaming with Ghost of Sparta and Chains of Olympus for the PSP.
But in Golden Abyss’ case, Bend Studios did a great job at translating Nathan Drake’s adventures with the same action and cinematic flair Naughty Dog created. Players could still feel like they’re on an epic adventure of a lifetime as they scour through ancient tombs and blow stuff up with their weapons. Even with the PS Vita’s gimmicky touch mechanics for its puzzles, it was still a solid Uncharted entry, and I think it really deserves its own place in the modern world.
I could see the PS Vita exclusive coming out as a Remake alongside the first Uncharted title.
Unfortunately, the Uncharted franchise is on hold at the moment. Naughty Dog currently has no plans to revisit Drake’s adventures, especially now that they’re busy building up their new IP with Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. However, a third-party studio could revive Golden Abyss (Winks at BluePoint). They’d only need to rework its touch-based controls with modern gameplay demands. The end result would be a bite-sized Nathan Drake journey before his days with Elena Fischer.
Should an Uncharted 1 remake happen in the future, Sony could rebuild Golden Abyss and integrate it into the first Uncharted experience. Its 10-hour puzzle-focused story complements well with Drake’s Fortune’s action-packed trip across the South Pacific.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss wasn’t the most revolutionary game in Sony’s catalog, but it was a bold attempt at translating a triple-A title to a console that could barely keep up. Now that the PS Vita has long been discontinued, not a lot of players are even aware of its existence.
I’d gladly play a Remake of the first Uncharted game if Golden Abyss comes alongside it as a package. Just don’t expect me to go through its ‘Crushing’ difficulty again.
There has to be someone from the Sony offices who would love to see this version of Nathan Drake rescued from the PS Vita jail, right?
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