1,538 words
Nathaniel Drake, the hero of "Uncharted" II: "Among Thieves"
On October 13, 2009, Sony Computer Entertainment released Uncharted 2: Among Thieves for the Playstation 3 video gaming console. It was received warmly by nearly every video game critic in the US, having won numerous awards including “Best PS3 Action Game” and given a nearly perfect rating across the board. Adam Sessler of G4 (a video gaming news channel) even claimed it is the “best single-player game I have ever played” in a recent review. The game’s Creative Director, Amy Hennig, recently stated that she “would definitely say it’s exceeding expectations” regarding total sales thus far; nearly 900,000 copies were sold within the first week of its release.
As white people still constitute the majority in the US (albeit probably for not much longer), and since video games are integral to the lives of American youth, the game’s nearly record-breaking sales certify that innumerable young white people are playing Uncharted 2. As a white racialist and a gamer, I thought it pertinent to give the game a whirl and see if it held anything racially positive for these young minds. I was skeptical at first, assuming the game was just another shootem’ up with no substantial plotline; having just completed the game, however, my opinion has done a 180. While the game is not quite the racial treasure trove that The Elder Scrolls and other role-playing games are, it still bears many notable, racially healthy qualities that make it a game fit for any wholesome white household.
The player assumes the role of Nathaniel Drake, a ruggedly masculine treasure-hunter and fictional descendant of Sir Francis Drake. At the beginning of the game, Drake agrees to take a job offer to steal a Mongolian lamp from a Turkish museum that is rumored to contain clues regarding the fate of Marco Polo’s lost ships. With the help of characters Harry Flynn and Chloe Frazer, Drake climbs, ducks, swings, grapples, and tranquilizes his way through the museum to the artifact—leaving a trail of unconscious Turks as he does so. He finds within the lamp a map written up by Marco Polo himself; the map reveals the location of the ships that were lost on Polo’s disastrous homecoming voyage, and hints that one of them was carrying a mythical object, the Cintamani Stone, which it recovered from the lost land of Shambhala. At this point, Drake is betrayed by Flynn and left for the Turkish police to apprehend.
After three months in a Turkish prison, Drake is freed due to the “palm-greasing” of a few officials by some of his fellow treasure-hunting friends, including Chloe. He then embarks on an adventure to track down Flynn and his employer, a brutal Serbian warlord named Lazarevic (who reminds one of paramilitary leader “Arkan”), and also to secure the Stone for himself. He ultimately discovers that the Stone has the ability to make those who possess it nearly invincible, hence Lazarevic’s desire for it. From Borneo to the Himalayas, the player must control Drake as he climbs mountains, belays himself across chasms, swings from vines, escapes collapsing bridges, shoots down helicopters, hops train cars, all while facing off against hundreds of heavily armed Serbian paramilitaries a là Indiana Jones. He meets a variety of interesting characters along the way: in a Tibetan village he discovers a former SS officer who murdered his entire expedition to prevent Hitler from obtaining the Cintamani Stone, and then “went native.”
Ultimately, Drake ends up in Shambhala itself to battle against Lazarevic while also fending off a legion of debased humanoid guardians of the realm.
Racially Healthy Themes
While the game provides a gripping, action-packed storyline that keeps the gamer on edge, it also offers a racially positive experience for the young mind. For starters, all of the main characters are white: Drake is a rugged, muscular brunette with a five o’clock shadow; the main female characters, Elena and Chloe, are an American blonde and English brunette, respectively; then there’s the American, Sully; the Australian, Flynn; the German ex-Nazi, Schafer; and the Serb, Lazarevic. The only non-white character of significance is a Tibetan mountain man, Tinzin, whose inability to communicate with the others in English makes him appear somewhat subordinate.
Next to this, the game promotes endogamous relationships: Drake has a romantic history with both Elena and Chloe, and there is even a steamy make-out scene between him and the latter. At the game’s end, a sarcastic yet affectionate dialogue between Drake and Elena implies that they will end up together for the long haul. Meanwhile, Sully begins to chase after Chloe, causing Drake to jokingly yell “You’re a sick old man, Sully!” To top it all off, these interactions come across as realistic and down-to-Earth—the sorts of conversations that regular people have regarding sex and relationships.
Of no mean importance is the way the game lauds heroic masculinity. Drake represents the standard of the virile hero: he’s handsome, physically fit, athletic, and adheres to honorable behavior. On one mission, the player must control him as he hoists a wounded reporter, who is white, through the war-torn streets of a besieged Nepalese city. Though he does not know the man, and though he suspects he may even be Elena’s (his ex) new boyfriend, he endures the pain of dragging him out of harm’s way amid whizzing bullets. Even Chloe’s desperate wish that Drake leave him behind has no effect; he presses on like a classic hero. In other missions Elena and Chloe are captured at different times, but Drake does not cease his pursuit until he’s rescued both, as a truly Aryan man would.
The game is also littered with Indo-European mythological themes. Drake ultimately locates the seat of Shambhala, a mystical land of significance to the Indo-Aryan tradition. Esotericist and spiritual father of the European New Right, Julius Evola, describes it as “the mystical ‘northern city,’ or ‘city of peace,’ also thought to be the island on which the hero Gesar was said to have been ‘born’ (just like Zarathustra was born in the Ariyana Vaego).” It “will be the birth place of Kalki-avatara, the one who will put an end to the Dark Age.” Shambhala is of course an Eastern rendering of what the Greeks called Hyperborea, “the land beyond the North Wind” (Pindar), where Apollo is said to dwell; this was also Asgard to the Germanic peoples, wherein dwelled the race of gods (Aesir) led by Odin.
The game even does an excellent job of tying Eastern and Western Aryan Tradition together. When Drake reaches Shambhala, he finds that it is not actually a stone that Lazarevic is after, but a blue resin secreted from a giant tree in the city’s center, the “Tree of Life.” Anyone schooled in Nordic myth knows this tree to be the Yggdrasil, which connected Earth (Midgard) to the various realms beyond. One is also led to this conclusion upon reflecting on an earlier scene in the game when Drake finds a picture of the “Irminsul” among the murdered bodies of Schafer’s expedition crew. Instead of infinite knowledge, however, the tree in the game offers superhuman strength to those who eat its resin.
To be fair, the game does have a few drawbacks. For one, Lazarevic’s quest for Shambhala and the powers held therein is portrayed in a negative light. He comes across as a bloodthirsty mercenary eager to become a global tyrant. According to European traditions, however, such a quest is to be considered a heroic endeavor. An example is Parsifal’s quest for the Holy Grail (a symbolic representation of the powers hidden in Shambhala and the self-overcoming that one experiences upon receiving them), which he went on in order to help restore peace and order to Camelot. Evola would probably have this to say: “Here we find a fundamental and characteristic motif: the transformation into sin of what in the Aryan version of the myth was regarded as a heroic, bold deed, often crowned by success.” Another problem I have with the game is the use of a Serb militiaman as the main antagonist; this may perhaps further the American anti-European party line that the Serb Christians are evil but the Albanian Muslims and their drug-dealing, slave-trading, terrorist vanguard are completely innocent. These aside, the cons are much fewer than the pros in Uncharted 2.
In the ideal white ethnostate, video games will not play as crucial a role in young peoples’ lives as they do in the technocratic, zombified monstrosity that is America. The time that is spent on digital entertainment, however, would not be wasted on a game like Uncharted 2. It praises heroism; it shows that interpersonal relationships among whites can be adventurous and exciting, and that sexuality between a white man and white woman is enticing and invigorating, even if it is portrayed in a pixelised cartoon; it also informs the gamer of his Aryan ancestors’ myths, which may even encourage personal study along those lines. When I have children, Uncharted 2 will certainly be allowed to go on their game shelf next to The Elder Scrolls III and IV. Of course, they will not have access to these until they’ve completed their daily rounds of homework, personal study, and exercise!