An ex-Naughty Dog developer has compared a scene from Tom Cruise’s latest movie, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. While the developer didn’t directly mention that the movie took inspiration from their game, their post has kicked-off an interesting discussion among the fans.Uncharted 2: Among Thieves released in 2009 and was a critically acclaimed title that won several Game of the Year awards. Reviewers and fans praised Naughty Dog’s narrative and level design in the game, which also set a benchmark for the developer’s future titles. It also set an industry standard for how immersive games can be, and an ex-Naughty developer believes that a scene in the latest Mission: Impossible movie is inspired by one of Uncharted 2’s best sequences.Warning: Spoilers Ahead for Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1In a post on Twitter, Bruce Straley, who was Uncharted 2’s co-director, posted a few pictures comparing the train scene from the game to the sequence from Dead Reckoning. As mentioned earlier, there was no direct mention of this being an inspiration or anything else, but Straley did call it “the sincerest form of flattery!” The scene in Dead Reckoning features Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell trying to scale a dangling train compartment, which is quite similar to the scene from Uncharted 2 where Nathan Drake is trying to do the same.
The post by Straley managed to get a lot of attention from fans of the movie and the game, but many of them were divided on the developer’s perspective. For instance, one fan admitted that they immediately thought of Uncharted 2 upon watching the scene in Dead Reckoning, but another pointed out how neither of the two invented the scene. One user pointed out that both the scenes look very similar a sequence from The Lost World: Jurassic Park which released in 1997. However, Dead Reckoning’s director Christopher McQuarrie said that he wasn’t aware of the video game in response to a fan’s query on Threads.
Apart from Mission: Impossible, Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction 2 has also seemingly taken inspiration from Uncharted 2. The Netflix movie features a thrilling one-take sequence that starts in a prison and ends with Chris Hemsworth fighting enemies atop a train, much like the game. The similarities really become evident as both the sequences end with the trains crashing off the rails. While this might not be a direct copy of Uncharted 2's scene, it shows the kind of impact the game has had across industries.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves originally released for PS3.
