@chstupid said:
1. He likes killing and jokes about it.
I never remember him actually joking about a kill. I don't ever remember him saying "Haha, I just killed that guy. Yup! Stabbed him in the back. He never knew I was there. It was funny!" No, I only ever remember Nathan joking about benign things. Like him saying "Marco!" when he jumps into the pool. All the other things he says are usually just exclamations. Like "Omg, did that really just happen?," or something to that effect. Sure, they are humorous sometimes, but they are a far cry from him gleefully making jokes about the fact that he just killed someone...
Even if he does at some point make a joke about it, as I recall all the people that he is killing are bad people. They deserve it. Regardless even of that, I'd probably still be making jokes simply to cope. Bad person or not, it's probably always unnerving to kill someone. Maybe jokes are the characters way of coping?
@chstupid said:
2. He kills people for treasure not revenge or to save the world. 3. He is made out to be a lovable charming guy but he's contently murdering people.
As I recall, the bad guys in both games reveal themselves to be bad from the very beginning. In Uncharted 1, Nathan is being shot at first while on the boat within the first few moments, and then it's all down hill from there. If a group of bad guys shot at me first, in my mind that gives me the right to shoot back whenever I want from that first encounter onward. Next time I see that group, once I recognize that it's the same group of people working for the same person, I'm going to open fire. I'm not going to wait for them to start shooting first, because I already know that they will. They've already established that they are willing to shoot at me right off the bat. I don't need to discover that a second time.
In the second game, I remember it being a similar situation except for the first sequence. However, the very opening sequence isn't kills, it's all choking them out (or one guy falls from really high up into water), all of which you could easily argue that they survived, and were just fine. Once the guns come out, I seem to remember Nathan being shot at first. Hell, I don't even think he initially had a gun at all when he first starting getting shot at in Uncharted 2 (he might have had a tranquilizer gun). Later, he identifies his attackers, knows which guys are bad, and then starts killing them back.
All of the above indicates that none of what he is doing is "murder," as you put it. It should be looked at as self-defense, or as killing members of an enemy army. I feel like the motive, reasoning, and emotion behind Nathan killing those people is similar to soldiers killing each other in a war. Or at least I feel like that's what they are trying to portray.
As far as Nathan's motives for being in this situation never being that he's trying to "save the world." Isn't the bad guy at the ending of the second one totally about to get his hands on an incredibly powerful artifact, and then actually states that he is going to use it to gain control of the world? I mean, to me that counts as "saving the world." I'm not sure why you would think it wasn't. /shrug
@Ashen said:
EDIT: Okay I found a Indiana Jones kill count, which is 55 over 4 films (http://www.allouttabubblegum.com/main/?p=481), compare this to at least 200 (combining the two smallest head shot trophies) that Drake has, I'd say Drake is a tad more "insane" than Indie.
This brings me to my final point. It's an action game. If you were to turn the same storyline into a 2 hour movie, he would probably have a similar kill count as Indiana Jones. However, this is something that actually has to be padded out with gameplay, and that gameplay is usually going to be killing dudes. The game has to last 6-10 hours, not 2 hours like a movie... It's no different then Read Dead Redemption, or Grand Theft Auto 4. Those games portray two people that have quit their old ways, that want to be good, and are basically now decent individuals. Yet in those games you can still choose to go on a murderous rampage, even so far as killing innocent civilians (at least all of Nathan Drake's kills are "bad guys"). Why do they allow this? Because it extends the gameplay, they are more able to justify the 60 dollar price tag, and it entices more people to buy it. That's just how this medium works. It's true, sometimes the "gameplay" doesn't jive with the type of personality that the writers are trying to portray, but this doesn't make characters like Nathan Drake, John Marston, or Niko Bellic evil, or insane. It just means that you have to mentally separate the gameplay from the story a lot of the time.
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