The rest of the clutter comes from a mild overabundance of little moments and extras. He’s consistently shifty and untrustworthy - an unusual misfire for Naughty Dog which has such a good track record for great characters, and even the unnaturally charismatic actor Troy Baker can’t make him likable. The indulgence on Sam would be easier to forgive if he was likable, but he’s not. (A few later levels could also easily disappear without harm.) My playthrough lasted about 16 hours - cut the preamble and Sam-building and you’d get a 10 hour game that started with treasure hunting adventure from the off. The game has to work so hard to establish this interloper that much of the opening is ‘Expositional Climbing: The Game’. The Sam-related levels aren’t bad, they just get in the way. That’s where the game really starts and it’s about five hours in, except Sam replaces Sully most of the time. All the flashback/backstory levels and anything relating to Sam, including Sam himself, could simply be cut to create a shorter, better game - just Nate and Sully hunting for treasure. His forceful retconning means the game has to tell two stories - Nathan’s search for the Pirate Every’s treasure and the brother’s previously unmentioned existence. And Sam - Nathan's newly discovered and never before mentioned brother. Which brings me onto that earlier mention of clutter. The fantastic looks, improved mechanics and extra freedom make for some really impressive moments. It can create exhilarating moments: when everything hits its mark the expanded repertoire gives the game a wonderful breadth, providing the player far more agency to engineer their own mini-adventures from encounters - 100% stealthing an area, fudging it with grenades and running, or sliding uncontrollably towards an abyss before leaping into the void with a last minute rope swing largely built on hope.
However, Libertalia, the pirate city named in Uncharted 4, was actually the creation of another book called ‘A General History of the Pyrates', another popular book at the time but potentially more a work of fiction than factual account. John Avery the Famous English Pirate’ has him escaping to Madagascar to set up a pirate utopia (and, by the way, while ‘Every is the accepted spelling, both history and the game occasionally throws in the alternate ‘A’ spelling). A 1709 pamphlet called ‘The Life and Adventures of Capt. There’s some uncertainty there because no one really knows what happens to him, but what is known is that he was one of the most successful pirates the world has ever seen, uniting several other captains into a raiding squad that ultimately netted £52.4 million in today's money. The big haul the gang are after this time is the treasure of the Pirate Every, who lived somewhere between 16.