Tunesday 5.6.25 - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune OST by Greg Edmonson

The Perfect Accompaniment for Your Next Globetrotting Adventure.

April chaos may be over, but instead of (to steal another April comparison) going in like a lion, out like a lamb, schedule-wise, it has only gotten me accustomed to having to deal with the lion, while May has tossed me a lamb to protect from said lion. Or something. The metaphor breaks down somewhere, and it seems more fun to avoid specifying where.

Ultimately, I hope this works out better than most escort-mission videogame quests I’ve had to deal with over the years.

All of that being said, I have seen a light glimmering at the end of the manuscript-revision tunnel, and it’s been fun to shift from an intrigue-y part of the story to a more action-adventure-y section.

Appropriately, I’ve had to find some music to fit the change.

What is the music from?

If you are unfamiliar with the Uncharted games, imagine an Indiana Jones video game, and you’ll get a pretty close feel for what we’re dealing with here.

I am not a huge fan of games with a lot of combat/shooter emphasis, so they probably aren’t games I would have picked to play through, myself. The pros of the exploration and puzzle-y parts wouldn’t have been enough to outweigh the cons of there being a decent amount of combat. However, I think the vast majority of gamers would enjoy a lot of the aspects that just aren’t my favorite.

The things these games do, they do really well.

They create a fun, high-stakes, world-spanning, treasure-hunting adventure, which I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing as a backseat gamer watching The Husband play through the series (well. The first three games, anyway. Our Nintendo-loyal selves haven’t been convinced we need to buy a PS4 or PS5 yet…).

This specific soundtrack is from the first game, but the others that I’ve experienced thus far have matched the feel quite well, even as the scale has gotten more epic through the series.

What is the music like?

In a fitting match to the games, the soundtracks for the series do an awesome job of invoking an ambiance of epic adventures searching for ancient treasures that walk the line between history and myth (though some of said treasures don’t bother to walk that line, and jump into myth with both feet).

The fanfares of the main theme get me every time, inspiring the feeling of standing atop some grand vista overlooking some majestic landscape half-lost to time, and it returns periodically throughout the tracks as a reminder of the nobility of the overarching quest, even when it’s accompanied by or built into the hectic intensity of a chase scene or the helpless despair of the Big Bad’s apparent victory.

Edmonson does a really awesome job incorporating the globetrotting nature of the games by including a wide range of instrumentation and musical styles to reflect different regions that the characters travel to and through. Even so, the core musical themes hold through, shifting stylistically to reflect the mystery of a local myth or the threat of an ancient curse depending on where the journey takes us.

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