Nathan Drake's Regenerative Health Was Actually His 'Luck Running Out'

So the same then with Joel in TLoU?
We could also call it “the plot armor wearing off”

@tatsumi Joel didn't have regenerative health. There were medkits instead.

@piggyhero woah, my memory must have become terrible, omg

Takes a lot of luck to survive a near miss of a rocket launcher blast that sends you flying though

Okay, but I'm still going to refer to that as health to keep things simpler.

One thing's for sure. All the enemies he has fought, have the most terrible aim.

Yep, makes sense. And spoilers for UC2.. Nate does get shot in that one. And as you would expect, it does some serious damage. There was no regenerating in 30 seconds from that.

Yeah, around here we call the luck system a "health system".

That’s awesome! Didn’t know that.

Isn't this just freaking amazing?!

@tatsumi
Ellie had plot armor though, which wore off in time for the sequel

Funnily enough I always thought this was the case. If you watch during gunfights, Drake rarely takes a direct hit. Especially in Uncharted 4, bullets sometimes graze him and the blast of a grenade will be just enough to make him stumble, but it never looks like a clean hit unless it's the one that kills you.

It's a really clever system that's a lot better than just having Drake get turned into Swiss cheese every ten minutes, in my opinion.

@stevenfins descendants of Stormtroopers, apparently 🤔

That's actually clever and cool at the same time

He's very unlucky in crushing mode.

That is super cool. They should have said this years ago.
@Shogunrok I’ve never noticed that, I’ll to pay closer attention next time I play.

Whether its 'Luck' or 'Health', its still the same principal - just different for 'story' purposes but its still 'Health' in the MP as you do take 'direct' hits for definite. It still also works in the same way, whether its hiding to regenerate 'health' or 'luck', to the other games that use a similar mechanic.

From a story perspective it does make 'more' sense for the realism - after all you can't recover from a bullet wound or other major physical damage in that short a time. You can't have your hero being blown apart by grenade and/or Shrapnel so why not say he got 'lucky' and avoided damage but that the luck was used up so needs to recover...

I know they built in the mechanic where the first couple of shots miss you anyway to give you an indication of position, a chance to react etc but those bullets do hit - maybe the luck is that those bullets pass right through without doing any 'major' damage, missing all vital organs, those grenades and any shrapnel misses you too but you do get hit....

Luck or health, I really like this system in the Uncharted games.

Seem legit

Makes sense. But as much as I am a huge fan of the series, why are some of the enemies such bullet-sponges? I know I didn't get 15 'near misses' on them. Not complaining though... I love the games, even on Crushing difficulty.

But don't get me started on the fun-sucking Brutal difficulty introduced in the remasters.

Woah, that’s indeed clever. I tend to loathe regenerating health in games (especially shooters), but I really like when game mechanics or plot points in fiction are “justified” in a rational, clever way, even if it doesn’t change the substance.

I like this a lot. Very clever and adds both a layer of realism and cartooniness!

They should have animated it like The Last of Us then.

Haha, that's awesome, it's great that Amy also joined and confirmed it.

@SlimDrizzyLamar Of course you do! XD

That's really good to know. The regenerating health happening when there's no in-universe justification for it is one of my biggest pet-peeves in games, enough that it's stopped me from playing said games (the mechanic just breaks all immersion for me and yanks me out of it).

Sounds like I need to give this series a shot sometime...

@fchinaski Have you watched an action movie lately? They are all over the top with "unrealism" so I am just fine with Nathan surviving some blasts.

Oh my god this is a complete game changer fort me ! I always thought that this was THE big design mystake of the game ! I originaly discovered this concept of "regenerating health" in the first Halo and was totally seduced by it. It was perfect for me : the game was stil challenging (you were not invincible) but not too much (take cover, think and wait). But in Halo it made sense : you had an energy shield (AND a health metter, in the first episode anyway).

When I found this system again in Uncharted, I was like : "ok, cool, but it doesn't make any sense... Basically, Nathan Drake is Wolverine ?"
And in the second one, when Drake is shot (in the story) I instantly thought : " so I can recover from a machine gun assault by taking a 30-sec break, but here, ONE SHOT and I'm gonna die ???"

Now it finally make sense. It gives me the will to do them all again. And makes me think : was I stupid, at the time, for not interpretating the system right ?

I think I jokingly gave a friend of mine this explanation a few years ago, when they asked "How is this guy still jumping and climbing all over the place? He's taken like 50 bullets to the chest by now."

I think it's a really nice touch, though. Reminds me of the sort of health systems that you might see in tabletop RPGs, where a character's HP is more an abstraction of how much fight they have left in them than it is their actual, physical condition. I'd like to see more games implement something similar.

Use cover!
Float like a butterfly sting like a bee!

Brothers in Arms on PS3 had the same thing by the way.