Hello everyone. I wanted a more precise and accurate way of determining how many lines were in the Uncharted games as well as a way of predicting when Emotional Narwall would hit certain lines. And I wanted this method to be easily replicable or doable by anyone to fact-check.

If you just want the TLDR for how lines there are, here it is:

Game	Estimated Total dialogue lines
Uncharted 2	2,278
Uncharted 3	1,936
Uncharted 4	4,526
Golden Abyss	1,855
Lost Legacy	2,001

When will Narwal finish Uncharted 2:

If he posts exactly 1 script line per day from here ("Worst Case"):

Around April 5, 2032

If he keeps his current effective UC2 pace and makes more videos ("Best Case"):

around December 30, 2030

If you want to follow along with my method, here it is (NOTE Formatting breaks when viewed on Old Reddit):

Step 1: Figuring out the Approach:

I wanted to check if my method even would work. So I went back and looked at how many days it took Emotional Narwal to get through Uncharted 1. It was 1041. So if my method was close to 1041, then it was probably accurate.

I googled "Uncharted 1 script" and found this:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/932984-uncharted-drakes-fortune/faqs/51689

I copied and pasted its entire contents into a .txt file.

Reading through it, it had a lot of extra lines and directions and chapters. But I noticed every time a Character spoke, it had a colon. For example:

Elena: Are you sure you wanna be defiling your ancestor's remains like that?

Nathan: You make it sound so dirty.

Nathan laughs as he walks round to the other side of the coffin.

Nathan: Besides, I thought you didn't believe me. 

Bingo. I just had to count all the colons using Bash.

I ran the bash command:

grep -c ":" uncharted_1_script.txt

I got 1032. Which is only 9 less than the actual 1041. I have a few theories as to why. One could be that sometimes, Narwall breaks up longer lines into multiple memes spanning multiple days. Whereas my method counts every line in its entirety as one. Another could be that Narwall counts lines the GameFAQs post doesn't like certain optional lines, fail condition lines, collectible lines etc. Overall, it's pretty close which makes me happy.

Step 2: Applying it to Uncharted 2:

I googled "Uncharted 2 script" and found this one from the same guy as the UC1 Script on GameFAQs:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/955125-uncharted-2-among-thieves/faqs/58428

Applying the same bash command gave me 2318. Nearly double UC1! Which feels about right.

But I wasn't satisfied. The GameFAQs Script itself had a lot of addtional information such stage directions, chapter info etc. I wanted just the dialogue lines and them numbered. I did the following command:

awk '/:/{print "[" ++n "] " $0}' uncharted_2_script.txt > dialogue_lines_2.txt

This technically worked but here's what "dialogue_lines_2.txt" looked like:

[1] ASCII Art from http://www.network-science.de/ascii/
[2] | Game Title: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves |
[3] | Guide Type: Game Script                |
[4] | Platform: Playstation 3                |
[5] | Version: 1.0                           |
[6] | E-Mail: rcarr0(at)aol(dot)com          |
[7] | First Updated: 22/11/2009              |
[8] | Last Updated: 05/12/2009               |
[9] | FAQ Size: 203KB                        |
[10] Nathan: What's going on...?
[11] Nathan: That's my blood... That's my blood, that's a lot of my blood...
[12] Nathan: What...?
[13] Nathan: Oh God.
[14] Nathan: (screams)
[15] Nathan: Oh, crap.
[16] Nathan: ...It's ok... it's ok... come on...
[17] Harry: Buy me a drink, sailor?
[18] Nathan: Harry Flynn?! Hey!

Ooops. My bad. Should have read it more clearly. And I imagine something similar probably exists for the UC1 script.

So I went to "uncharted_2_script.txt" and edited the file to be more accurate, removing any hyperlinks and then I got this:

[1] Marco: "I did not tell half of what I saw for I knew I would not be believed..."
[2] Nathan: What's going on...?
[3] Nathan: That's my blood... That's my blood, that's a lot of my blood...
[4] Nathan: What...?
[5] Nathan: Oh God.
[6] Nathan: (screams)
[7] Nathan: Oh, crap.
[8] Nathan: ...It's ok... it's ok... come on...
[9] Harry: Buy me a drink, sailor?

This did end up dropping UC2's line count down to

$ grep -c ":" uncharted_2_script.txt
2307

However, I still wasn't happy. The script had addtional line breaks that didn't show up in places. For example:

uncharted_1_script.txt:

Elena: Well, I did do my research. And apparently, Francis Drake didn't have
any children.

Nathan: Well, history can be wrong, you know.

Which shows up as:

[14] Elena: Well, I did do my research. And apparently, Francis Drake didn't have
[15] Nathan: Well, history can be wrong, you know.

Cutting off "any children". So I then ran this monstrosity:

$ awk -v RS='' '
/^[[:space:]]*[A-Za-z][A-Za-z .'\''-]*:/ {
    gsub(/\n/, " ")
    print "[" ++n "] " $0
}
' uncharted_1_script.txt > dialogue_lines.txt

Which fixed the issue in UC1:

[1] Francis: "There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory."   - Sir Francis Drake, 1587
[2] Elena: I'm here off the coast of Panama, where we've just recovered what we believe to be the coffin of legendary explorer Sir Francis Drake, who was buried at sea over 400 years ago.
[3] Elena: Are you sure you wanna be defiling your ancestor's remains like that?
[4] Nathan: You make it sound so dirty.
[5] Nathan: Besides, I thought you didn't believe me.
[6] Elena: Well, I did do my research. And apparently, Francis Drake didn't have any children.
[7] Nathan: Well, history can be wrong, you know.
[8] Nathan: For example - you can't defile an empty coffin.
[9] Elena: What the hell-?

Recounting UC1's lines with my "fixes" got me 1007. Nearly 34 less than Narwall. So the original method might better allign with Narwall's final meme schedule?

I tested the updated version on UC2. On day 141, Narwal's meme line was "C'mon, what are you waiting for?". Searching for this in my .txt file, mine said it was Number 181?

[178] Harry: We've got to get up to that balcony. We can climb the gate over here.
[179] Nathan: Got it.
[180] Harry: Crap. I've got the other one.
[181] Harry: C'mon, what are you waiting for?
[182] Harry: Okay, we're almost there. I'll go right, you go left.
[183] Nathan: Okay, we should be able to lift this up, sneak right under.

I was initially super confused. How was I 40 off after only 140 days? Especially when on Day 139 was just "Crap" and not even the full line? I was expecting to underestimate his progress. Until I remembered Narwall has posted multiple video memes for UC2 where he did multiple lines at once. I also remembered one of his memes was about how he skipped he skipped 8 lines. If he ever reads this, I imagine it will be comforting to know he might end up finishing UC2 earlier than predicted. My code says UC2 has 2278 lines of dialogue technically.

Doing some quick napkin math:

When would Narwall finish UC2 if he literally did 1 entire line a day and is technically currently on day 181 instead of 141: 2278 - 181 = 2097. 2097 Days in the future would land about April 5, 2032. Assuming no breaks and more video memes. Or about 5.7 years.

However, Narwall does occassional video memes now and every video meme shaves off multiple lines per day. I can't predict how many video memes he'll do for the future but imagine he'll probably do some. I was thinking of going back, counting how many of his UC2 Memes were video based over the past 141 days or something, calculating his "efficency" or something and multiplying that by 2097 to get a more realistic date. But I am too lazy and just did 141/181 = 0.79005525. Then do 0.79005525*2097 = 1633.5746 days left. Which puts us around December 30, 2030. This napkin math calculation will likely get more refined as time goes on as we'll get a better knack of how often he does videos vs expands dialogue.

Step 3: Counting lines in the other Uncharted games.

I couldn't find the GameFAQs Script for the other Uncharteds but I found this guy who posted the scripts of UC3, 4, GA and LL:

https://www.reddit.com/r/uncharted/comments/at3v68/full_transcript_of_uncharted_4_a_thiefs_end/

These seemed generally more minimally formatted compared to the GameFAQs one. So I saved them and ran my code on them and got the following outputs:

$ grep -c ":" dialogue_lines_3.txt 
1936
$ grep -c ":" dialogue_lines_4.txt 
4526
$ grep -c ":" dialogue_lines_ga.txt 
1855
 grep -c ":" dialogue_lines_ll.txt 
2001

My observations are the following: -1- Why is UC3 nearly 300 lines less than UC2? My current theory is that UC2 probably had more text of Nathan bantering with others as well as more tutorial dialogue. UC3 has extended sequences where Nate is alone and more serious (such as when he thinks the Pirates have Sully) so he's not gonna be joking around as much.

-2- UC4 being nearly double UC2 feels about right.

-3- Golden Abyss was actually my first Uncharted. As for why it has enough lines comparable to UC3, my guess it's because Nate's rarely alone in GA for extended periods? Allowing him to rack up lines?

-4- I haven't played Lost Legacy so I can't comment on why it's the 3rd most dialogue heavy game in the series.

Step 4: Bonus Statistics.

I had to break out Python for this:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import re
import sys
from collections import Counter, defaultdict

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    print("Usage: python3 uncharted_stats.py dialogue_lines_2.txt")
    sys.exit(1)

filename = sys.argv[1]

# Matches either:
# [123] Nathan: Hello
# Nathan: Hello
line_pattern = re.compile(r'^\s*(?:\[(\d+)\]\s*)?([^:]{1,80}):\s*(.*)$')

stopwords = {
    "the", "a", "an", "and", "or", "but", "if", "then", "so", "because",
    "i", "me", "my", "mine", "you", "your", "yours", "he", "she", "it",
    "we", "they", "them", "his", "her", "our", "their",
    "is", "am", "are", "was", "were", "be", "been", "being",
    "do", "does", "did", "doing",
    "have", "has", "had",
    "to", "of", "in", "on", "for", "with", "at", "from", "by", "as",
    "this", "that", "these", "those",
    "not", "no", "yes", "yeah", "okay", "ok",
    "what", "where", "when", "why", "how", "who",
    "just", "really", "very", "all", "up", "out", "down", "there", "here", "s", "t", "re", "m", "c", "ll", "don", "ve"
}

speaker_lines = Counter()
speaker_words = Counter()
speaker_word_counter = defaultdict(Counter)
speaker_word_lengths = defaultdict(list)
all_lines = []

def get_words(text):
    # Keeps contractions like "don't", "I'm", "C'mon"
    return re.findall(r"[A-Za-z]+(?:'[A-Za-z]+)?", text.lower())

with open(filename, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    for raw_line in f:
        line = raw_line.strip()
        match = line_pattern.match(line)

        if not match:
            continue

        line_number, speaker, dialogue = match.groups()
        speaker = speaker.strip()
        dialogue = dialogue.strip()

        words = get_words(dialogue)

        speaker_lines[speaker] += 1
        speaker_words[speaker] += len(words)

        for word in words:
            speaker_word_lengths[speaker].append(len(word))
            if word not in stopwords:
                speaker_word_counter[speaker][word] += 1

        all_lines.append({
            "number": int(line_number) if line_number else None,
            "speaker": speaker,
            "dialogue": dialogue,
            "word_count": len(words)
        })

total_lines = sum(speaker_lines.values())
total_words = sum(speaker_words.values())

def print_table(title, headers, rows):
    print(f"\n## {title}\n")
    print("| " + " | ".join(headers) + " |")
    print("| " + " | ".join(["---"] * len(headers)) + " |")
    for row in rows:
        print("| " + " | ".join(str(x) for x in row) + " |")

print(f"# Stats for {filename}")
print()
print(f"Total dialogue lines: {total_lines}")
print(f"Total dialogue words: {total_words}")
print(f"Average words per line: {total_words / total_lines:.2f}")

# 1. Top 10 characters by number of lines
top_lines = [
    [speaker, count, f"{count / total_lines * 100:.2f}%"]
    for speaker, count in speaker_lines.most_common(10)
]
print_table(
    "Top 10 characters by number of lines",
    ["Character", "Lines", "Share of total"],
    top_lines
)

# 2. Bottom 10 characters by number of lines
bottom_lines = [
    [speaker, count]
    for speaker, count in sorted(speaker_lines.items(), key=lambda x: x[1])[:10]
]
print_table(
    "Bottom 10 characters by number of lines",
    ["Character", "Lines"],
    bottom_lines
)

# 3. Top 10 by average words per line
# Filter removes characters with only 1-2 lines, because they can distort the average.
minimum_lines = 5

avg_words = []
for speaker, lines in speaker_lines.items():
    if lines >= minimum_lines:
        avg = speaker_words[speaker] / lines
        avg_words.append([speaker, lines, f"{avg:.2f}"])

avg_words.sort(key=lambda row: float(row[2]), reverse=True)

print_table(
    f"Top 10 characters by average words per line, minimum {minimum_lines} lines",
    ["Character", "Lines", "Average words per line"],
    avg_words[:10]
)

# 4. Top 10 characters by total words spoken
top_total_words = [
    [speaker, speaker_words[speaker]]
    for speaker, _ in speaker_words.most_common(10)
]
print_table(
    "Top 10 characters by total words spoken",
    ["Character", "Total words"],
    top_total_words
)

# 5. Most common meaningful word per character
common_words = []
for speaker, _ in speaker_lines.most_common(10):
    if speaker_word_counter[speaker]:
        word, count = speaker_word_counter[speaker].most_common(1)[0]
        common_words.append([speaker, word, count])
    else:
        common_words.append([speaker, "N/A", 0])

print_table(
    "Most common meaningful word per major character",
    ["Character", "Most common word", "Uses"],
    common_words
)

# 6. Average word length per character
avg_word_lengths = []
for speaker, lengths in speaker_word_lengths.items():
    if speaker_lines[speaker] >= minimum_lines and lengths:
        avg_len = sum(lengths) / len(lengths)
        avg_word_lengths.append([speaker, speaker_lines[speaker], f"{avg_len:.2f}"])

avg_word_lengths.sort(key=lambda row: float(row[2]), reverse=True)

print_table(
    f"Top 10 characters by average word length, minimum {minimum_lines} lines",
    ["Character", "Lines", "Average word length"],
    avg_word_lengths[:10]
)

# 7. Longest dialogue lines
longest_lines = sorted(all_lines, key=lambda x: x["word_count"], reverse=True)[:10]

longest_rows = []
for item in longest_lines:
    label = f"[{item['number']}]" if item["number"] is not None else ""
    text = item["dialogue"]
    if len(text) > 120:
        text = text[:117] + "..."
    longest_rows.append([
        label,
        item["speaker"],
        item["word_count"],
        text
    ])

print_table(
    "Top 10 longest dialogue lines",
    ["Line", "Character", "Words", "Dialogue"],
    longest_rows
)

# 8. Common words overall
overall_counter = Counter()
for speaker in speaker_word_counter:
    overall_counter.update(speaker_word_counter[speaker])

overall_words = [
    [word, count]
    for word, count in overall_counter.most_common(20)
]

print_table(
    "Top 20 meaningful words overall",
    ["Word", "Uses"],
    overall_words
)

Uncharted 1:

Total dialogue lines: 1007 Total dialogue words: 7531 Average words per line: 7.48

Top 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines	Share of total
Nathan	507	50.35%
Elena	223	22.14%
Sully	171	16.98%
Eddy	39	3.87%
Gabriel	32	3.18%
Navarro	23	2.28%
Guard	6	0.60%
Mercenary	4	0.40%
Francis	1	0.10%
Elean	1	0.10%

Bottom 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines
Francis	1
Elean	1
Mercenary	4
Guard	6
Navarro	23
Gabriel	32
Eddy	39
Sully	171
Elena	223
Nathan	507

Top 10 characters by average words per line, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average words per line
Gabriel	32	12.44
Eddy	39	8.08
Sully	171	8.07
Nathan	507	7.21
Elena	223	7.09
Navarro	23	6.61
Guard	6	2.50

Top 10 characters by total words spoken

Character	Total words
Nathan	3655
Elena	1582
Sully	1380
Gabriel	398
Eddy	315
Navarro	152
Francis	27
Guard	15
Mercenary	6
Elean	1

Most common meaningful word per major character

Character	Most common word	Uses
Nathan	oh	49
Elena	oh	23
Sully	nate	17
Eddy	hey	6
Gabriel	navarro	5
Navarro	el	3
Guard	oh	3
Mercenary	whoa	1
Francis	must	1
Elean	N/A	0

Top 10 characters by average word length, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average word length
Gabriel	32	4.21
Navarro	23	4.18
Nathan	507	4.03
Sully	171	3.96
Elena	223	3.94
Eddy	39	3.85
Guard	6	3.53

Top 10 longest dialogue lines

Line	Character	Words	Dialogue
[900]	Nathan	58	My men have all been murdered, leaving the task to me alone. No ship will depart this island; I destroyed them all, a...
[279]	Gabriel	52	See, your friend owes me money, Mr. Drake. A lot of money. So when he told me that you two were onto something big - ...
[436]	Eddy	41	Tai kamu! Listen to me, maggot - I was promised treasure on this goddamn rock! And now my men are dying. They can't e...
[733]	Gabriel	38	Don't be stupid. He knows we'll kill him once we find the treasure. He has no incentive to tell the truth. Really, Na...
[87]	Elena	37	Yes, that's what I said - it blew up. It sank. No, that's why we have insurance, right? Oh. Oh no, the camera - No, t...
[511]	Elena	37	Okay, see this building in the harbour? That's where all the boats coming into the colony would've unloaded their car...
[70]	Nathan	36	So look, when Drake sailed into the Pacific he took the Spanish fleet completely by surprise. He captured their ships...
[679]	Sully	33	Anyway, once they realised I wasn't dead, I convinced Roman that they'd never find the treasure without me. So I've b...
[740]	Sully	33	Well, the girl and I been reading some of the books down here and it looks like there's some kind of secret gallery a...
[2]	Elena	32	I'm here off the coast of Panama, where we've just recovered what we believe to be the coffin of legendary explorer S...

Top 20 meaningful words overall

Word	Uses
oh	86
right	64
get	62
don't	48
now	44
i'm	41
nate	41
like	39
sully	39
well	38
way	38
wait	33
got	33
whoa	32
it's	30
that's	30
hey	30
huh	30
know	30
go	30

Uncharted 2:

Total dialogue lines: 2278 Total dialogue words: 14196 Average words per line: 6.23

Top 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines	Share of total
Nathan	1185	52.02%
Chloe	368	16.15%
Elena	290	12.73%
Harry	201	8.82%
Sully	108	4.74%
Lazarevic	63	2.77%
Tenzin	35	1.54%
Jeff	17	0.75%
Soldier	4	0.18%
Draza	2	0.09%

Bottom 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines
Marco	1
Woman	1
Voice	1
Draza	2
Girl	2
Soldier	4
Jeff	17
Tenzin	35
Lazarevic	63
Sully	108

Top 10 characters by average words per line, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average words per line
Lazarevic	63	8.97
Harry	201	7.57
Sully	108	6.73
Chloe	368	6.67
Nathan	1185	6.16
Elena	290	4.96
Jeff	17	3.59
Tenzin	35	2.14

Top 10 characters by total words spoken

Character	Total words
Nathan	7304
Chloe	2453
Harry	1522
Elena	1437
Sully	727
Lazarevic	565
Tenzin	75
Jeff	61
Marco	22
Soldier	15

Most common meaningful word per major character

Character	Most common word	Uses
Nathan	right	115
Chloe	nate	30
Elena	nate	28
Harry	right	20
Sully	kid	12
Lazarevic	will	10
Tenzin	speaking	34
Jeff	whoa	2
Soldier	commander	1
Draza	take	1

Top 10 characters by average word length, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average word length
Tenzin	35	7.17
Chloe	368	3.98
Nathan	1185	3.97
Harry	201	3.96
Sully	108	3.95
Lazarevic	63	3.95
Jeff	17	3.90
Elena	290	3.90

Top 10 longest dialogue lines

Line	Character	Words	Dialogue
[57]	Nathan	57	Marco Polo leaves China with 600 passengers and fourteen ships, loaded down with treasure from Kublai Khan. Now, he l...
[39]	Harry	39	That puts us in the courtyard. From there we scale up the wall, run across the rooftops, and just drop down into the ...
[803]	Elena	39	Y'know what? This guy's a real monster, Nate. We're talking torture, mutilation, mass executions... But see, now he's...
[354]	Nathan	38	Sully, listen to this - 'In the kingdom of Shambhala lies the most precious thing to be found in all the world - a pe...
[176]	Nathan	37	Yeah - but we can only get to it from the roof, and we can't get to the roof from here. We're going to have to make o...
[2208]	Nathan	37	Elena... Oh, God... no... Elena, hold on, all right? Just hold on. C'mon, stay with us. You're going to be okay, all ...
[361]	Chloe	35	Hang on a minute, cowboy - that's easier said than done. The files are in his tent, and his tent is in the middle of ...
[1115]	Nathan	35	The answer that you're looking for. Okay? I know where the Stone is. But you're not gonna find it without me. So just...
[52]	Nathan	34	Wait, hold on... 'So that it should not fall into the wrong hands, I concealed my great sorrow in the unlikeliest pla...
[101]	Harry	33	Relax? (laughs) Relax? Have you ever been in a Turkish prison, mate? If we get caught, they will lock us up and throw...

Top 20 meaningful words overall

Word	Uses
right	175
oh	138
go	127
get	127
it's	99
i'm	87
don't	83
way	82
now	75
that's	70
nate	70
got	70
well	69
you're	63
gonna	57
know	56
can	56
c'mon	55
see	53
ah	53

Uncharted 3:

Total dialogue lines: 1936 Total dialogue words: 17632 Average words per line: 9.11

Top 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines	Share of total
Nathan	761	39.31%
Sully	482	24.90%
Cutter	215	11.11%
Elena	146	7.54%
Chloe	92	4.75%
Young Nate	43	2.22%
Young Sully	41	2.12%
Talbot	40	2.07%
Kate Marlowe	35	1.81%
Salim	26	1.34%

Bottom 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines
Boss	1
Big Thug	1
Woman	1
Young Kate Marlowe	1
Security	2
Guard	2
Harris	2
Shopkeeper	2
Pirate	2
Horseman	2

Top 10 characters by average words per line, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average words per line
Kate Marlowe	35	17.91
Voice of Kate Marlowe	6	17.67
Salim	26	14.15
Young Nate	43	13.12
Young Sully	41	13.02
Rameses	15	12.07
Purple Horseman	6	9.83
Nathan	761	9.70
Elena	146	8.55
Cutter	215	8.43

Top 10 characters by total words spoken

Character	Total words
Nathan	7380
Sully	3578
Cutter	1813
Elena	1248
Chloe	684
Kate Marlowe	627
Young Nate	564
Young Sully	534
Salim	368
Talbot	333

Most common meaningful word per major character

Character	Most common word	Uses
Nathan	right	128
Sully	right	43
Cutter	right	28
Elena	right	13
Chloe	well	9
Young Nate	him	10
Young Sully	kid	12
Talbot	now	8
Kate Marlowe	little	5
Salim	drake	7

Top 10 characters by average word length, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average word length
Purple Horseman	6	4.10
Voice of Kate Marlowe	6	4.01
Kate Marlowe	35	3.91
Salim	26	3.89
Mercenary	8	3.86
Talbot	40	3.73
Rameses	15	3.73
Elena	146	3.72
Chloe	92	3.69
Cutter	215	3.67

Top 10 longest dialogue lines

Line	Character	Words	Dialogue
[1538]	Nathan	159	Look at this place. Shit. Here goes nothing. Okay. Making progress. I see you buddy. Just don’t turn around don’t tur...
[1490]	Kate Marlowe	84	In fact - I suspect I know you better than anyone, Mr. Drake… Of course, that’s not your real name, is it? - but we w...
[1690]	Nathan	82	Ha! It worked! There’s gotta be a way out of here. Ah, shit! This is getting ridiculous! Ah, shit! This is getting ri...
[1715]	Salim	74	If they find Iram, we are all dead. Three thousand years ago, King Solomon commanded the power of the Djinn. Demons, ...
[1540]	Nathan	73	Hang in there, Sully. On my way. Oh, crap. Damn it. Don’t leave without me, boys. Holy shit! Big wave, big wave! I ca...
[71]	Young Nate	72	Okay… I gotta get that wallet. Crap! Can’t go down that way. He’s cutting through that building. I bet I can spot him...
[1812]	Nathan	69	They’re here. I’m gonna kill ’em. You killed Sully! I’ll kill you, you killed Sully! Demons… Demons born… born of smo...
[790]	Cutter	67	Look, just forget all that. You’ll never guess what we’ve discovered. I’ve got it all in here… Not only did Elizabeth...
[1862]	Nathan	65	We gotta find a way out here, fast! Keep moving! Sully, this way. We gotta get outta here. C’mon I need your help. Oh...
[438]	Nathan	64	I’m getting to that… See, after the war, Lawrence said that if he were ever to go back to Arabia, it would be to sear...

Top 20 meaningful words overall

Word	Uses
right	222
oh	177
get	127
go	106
way	105
can	103
sully	101
got	101
come	98
well	84
let	82
nate	79
gotta	76
like	73
hell	71
look	71
hey	70
shit	70
know	67
one	66

Uncharted 4:

Total dialogue lines: 4526 Total dialogue words: 42376 Average words per line: 9.36

Top 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines	Share of total
Nate	1857	41.03%
Sam	1122	24.79%
Elena	482	10.65%
Sullivan	430	9.50%
Rafe	157	3.47%
Nadine	95	2.10%
Alcazar	58	1.28%
Jameson	55	1.22%
Vargas	49	1.08%
Mercenary	34	0.75%

Bottom 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines
Henry	1
Elma	1
Radio	1
Hehchman	1
Alcazai	1
Waiter	1
It started with the cross	1
Sallivan	1
Sillivan	1
Nam	1

Ooof Looks like some formatting issues in the Script!

Top 10 characters by average words per line, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average words per line
Girl	17	25.06
Auctioneer	14	14.14
Rafe	157	12.73
Cassie	14	11.43
Gustavo	23	11.35
Jameson	55	11.29
Alcazar	58	11.14
Old Woman	21	10.86
Nun	13	10.69
Vargas	49	10.49

Top 10 characters by total words spoken

Character	Total words
Nate	17658
Sam	10453
Elena	3622
Sullivan	3534
Rafe	1998
Nadine	872
Alcazar	646
Jameson	621
Vargas	514
Girl	426

Most common meaningful word per major character

Character	Most common word	Uses
Nate	right	196
Sam	right	119
Elena	nate	45
Sullivan	hey	33
Rafe	right	20
Nadine	rafe	9
Alcazar	samuel	19
Jameson	right	9
Vargas	find	6
Mercenary	let	4

Top 10 characters by average word length, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average word length
Auctioneer	14	4.25
Henchman	13	4.15
Guard	30	4.04
Nun	13	3.94
Alcazar	58	3.93
Cassie	14	3.91
Old Woman	21	3.90
Girl	17	3.90
Gustavo	23	3.84
Salvage Worker	9	3.82

Top 10 longest dialogue lines

Line	Character	Words	Dialogue
[2824]	Nate	271	All right… c’mon, Nate. I gotta get off this beach. Sam! Sam, can you hear me? Maybe farther up shore. All right, fir...
[4184]	Nate	207	Okay. Hey, what’s that? Footprints… Sam! Ah, God damn it. I’m sure he’s a ways off by now. Just gonna head to the cre...
[263]	Nate	206	Great thanks. There we go. Piece of cake. Need my gear. (he takes a rope) Bingo. Now we’re in business. Here we go…! ...
[2886]	Nate	157	Years. Decades, even. How the hell did they keep it a secret all that time? (find a letter) This letter’s still legib...
[4022]	Nate	139	I gotta get out of here. Oh no. Oh, wonderful. Ah, Christ, how many of these trucks did you bring, Rafe? Ah, crap! Oh...
[4468]	Girl	124	And not here either. Okay, well… guess I just wait, then. (looks at some artifact) Whoa.… Good job cleaning this up. ...
[1768]	It started with the cross	115	a cryptic message from my old compatriot with a vague promise of Paradise. I was skeptical, but the thought of living...
[4469]	Girl	97	(chuckles) Who what is this? Pirate coin. Kinda looks like Avery’s sigil? Wait… is it Avery’s sigil? A Spanish doublo...
[3119]	Rafe	88	Just a second. (sighs) Thing is, Nate; I never stopped looking for Avery’s treasure. I just kept running into these d...
[897]	Alcazar	74	Now… If you run, or try to hide the treasure or do something really stupid like go to the authorities… I’ll know. And...

Top 20 meaningful words overall

Word	Uses
right	412
oh	281
hey	281
well	264
go	257
get	239
got	220
let	200
can	197
ah	188
one	183
know	181
sam	179
see	173
like	173
whoa	167
way	165
good	157
mon	153
look	151

Uncharted Golden Abyss

Total dialogue lines: 1855 Total dialogue words: 19529 Average words per line: 10.53

Top 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines	Share of total
Nathan	872	47.01%
Marisa	479	25.82%
Dante	214	11.54%
Sully	195	10.51%
Guerro	69	3.72%
Mercenary	18	0.97%
Chase	3	0.16%
Girl	2	0.11%
Francisco	1	0.05%
Prologue	1	0.05%

Bottom 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines
Francisco	1
Prologue	1
Photo	1
Girl	2
Chase	3
Mercenary	18
Guerro	69
Sully	195
Dante	214
Marisa	479

Top 10 characters by average words per line, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average words per line
Guerro	69	14.01
Dante	214	13.73
Sully	195	12.16
Nathan	872	9.78
Marisa	479	9.44
Mercenary	18	5.56

Top 10 characters by total words spoken

Character	Total words
Nathan	8529
Marisa	4524
Dante	2939
Sully	2372
Guerro	967
Mercenary	100
Chase	30
Francisco	29
Prologue	16
Girl	15

Most common meaningful word per major character

Character	Most common word	Uses
Nathan	get	67
Marisa	oh	50
Dante	drake	33
Sully	oh	25
Guerro	se	22
Mercenary	sir	7
Chase	humm	2
Girl	hey	3
Francisco	can	1
Prologue	telling	1

Top 10 characters by average word length, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average word length
Guerro	69	3.73
Nathan	872	3.71
Marisa	479	3.70
Sully	195	3.63
Dante	214	3.62
Mercenary	18	3.61

Top 10 longest dialogue lines

Line	Character	Words	Dialogue
[959]	Nathan	95	I’ll just be out here. (to himself) Perez was so close… the sword must be in here somewhere… Now where would a 16th c...
[1699]	Dante	81	Maybe we should ask ‘em. Hey, did you hate living with all this beautiful gold? Huh? Let’s take a moment and cry for ...
[901]	Nathan	61	It should. Friar Marcos de Niza was a scout, working for Coronado… the governor of what’s now Northern Mexico. See, M...
[1685]	Dante	58	Same way I always beat you Drake… by being smarter than you. I’ll take that… (he takes Drake’s gun) Hey babe. I’d tak...
[1575]	Marisa	56	I told you… don’t call me that. I know what you’re going to say. You’re gonna say this isn’t worth my life, right? Bu...
[1630]	Marisa	56	According to my grandfather, in Quiviran mythology this place is called the Tears of Chihopotex. She was separated fr...
[1697]	Dante	56	Don’t be so melodramatic, Drake. Huh? It’s just low grade, nothing worse than an x-ray or two, huh? Can you feel it? ...
[181]	Dante	53	Would you put that thing away. It’s nothing. It’s just a little misunderstanding, that’s all. All right? I’m gonna be...
[916]	Nathan	53	‘The Temple of the Serpent guards the pathway to hell. The Sword of Stephen, like the flaming sword of Uriel, shall g...
[1613]	Marisa	53	When I was a kid my grandfather used to take me all over the world on his artifact hunts. We took a boat not much big...

Top 20 meaningful words overall

Word	Uses
oh	154
know	135
hey	120
get	120
can	96
way	92
guerro	87
dante	84
go	83
alright	82
well	80
see	79
right	75
mon	73
like	72
got	70
let	70
look	68
chase	66
one	65

Uncharted Lost Legacy:

Total dialogue lines: 2001 Total dialogue words: 16067 Average words per line: 8.03

Top 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines	Share of total
Chloe	838	41.88%
Nadine	752	37.58%
Sam	184	9.20%
Insurgent	102	5.10%
Asav	57	2.85%
Meenu	26	1.30%
Orca	21	1.05%
Civilian	7	0.35%
Lieutenant	7	0.35%
Mercenary	4	0.20%

Bottom 10 characters by number of lines

Character	Lines
Soldier	1
UNCHARTED	1
Aid Worker	1
Mercenary	4
Civilian	7
Lieutenant	7
Orca	21
Meenu	26
Asav	57
Insurgent	102

Top 10 characters by average words per line, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average words per line
Asav	57	12.91
Chloe	838	8.99
Sam	184	8.21
Insurgent	102	7.94
Orca	21	7.90
Nadine	752	6.70
Meenu	26	6.42
Lieutenant	7	5.14
Civilian	7	3.43

Top 10 characters by total words spoken

Character	Total words
Chloe	7531
Nadine	5038
Sam	1511
Insurgent	810
Asav	736
Meenu	167
Orca	166
Lieutenant	36
Mercenary	30
Civilian	24

Most common meaningful word per major character

Character	Most common word	Uses
Chloe	oh	93
Nadine	get	45
Sam	right	29
Insurgent	get	10
Asav	will	12
Meenu	hundred	3
Orca	take	3
Civilian	please	2
Lieutenant	hey	2
Mercenary	hope	1

Top 10 characters by average word length, minimum 5 lines

Character	Lines	Average word length
Asav	57	4.03
Meenu	26	4.00
Orca	21	3.99
Nadine	752	3.79
Insurgent	102	3.74
Chloe	838	3.73
Sam	184	3.57
Lieutenant	7	3.56
Civilian	7	3.50

Top 10 longest dialogue lines

Line	Character	Words	Dialogue
[450]	Chloe	109	Here’s our three symbols. Well, that took less time than I expected. Parashurama’s bow... Let’s see here... Aimed rig...
[1166]	Insurgent	65	I don’t understand. The other city was far grander. The great treasure is here? The American claims this is the true ...
[1131]	Chloe	62	He was the guy that couldn’t walk away. The Ministry of Culture offered to finance... one more of his expeditions. ‘C...
[752]	Chloe	56	It’s my stress toy. It showed up in the mail a few weeks after we got to Australia. All right, we better get a move o...
[606]	Insurgent	48	Nice to be out of that shit-hole, finally. I was starting to think the boss was all talk. I’d watch your mouth. Soon ...
[1085]	Chloe	43	Try this way. (coughs) All right. (coughs) That’s more like it. Whoa, oh. Oh, shit. Get down, get down. Holy shit, is...
[431]	Chloe	42	Let’s have a look at the map. (Chloe pulls out a map) Okay, let’s see. We are right about here. I can mark it up as w...
[893]	Chloe	42	If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some kind of lock mechanism to open... that door. Okay, on the left we have... Shiva ...
[1997]	Sam	40	Um-hmm. I got it. Private collector. Just hear me out for a second. I understand taking the moral high ground and tha...
[569]	Chloe	39	It had its moments. I learned a lot. Hoysala Empire was kind of his thing. (sighs) Took up a lot of his time, though....

Top 20 meaningful words overall

Word	Uses
right	155
oh	126
get	114
shit	106
go	85
can	82
let	81
well	75
got	72
like	70
now	69
good	63
one	62
way	62
hey	61
asav	59
know	58
see	56
look	49
ah	48

Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the 2024 game Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League and wanted to talk about it. Spoilers ahead.

While I understand it now (kinda) I found this was a really confusing game to Platinum because there's essentially 2 games here and some conflicting information and I wasted a fair amount of time "doing the wrong thing and wondering why I wasn't progressing".

There's "the main campaign and open world" that has its own set of trophies. And there's the postgame grind and live service content which has its own set of trophies some of which overlap and ended up affecting the former. As a result, some of the online guides I found had conflicting and unclear information. For example, take "Blaze of Glory - Achieve 39 Stars in Riddler AR Challenges". At one point this trophy seemed to have been bugged because Rocksteady added additional Riddler AR challenges as part of content updates and expansions and the trophy now required you to do all added challenges in addition to the base game ones. So many older guides from the time mention that this trophy is bugged and you need to do all Added Challenges. However, Rocksteady patched this and it is explicitly mentioned in their patch notes. You only need to do the base game ones.

The more confusing thing for me was how the endgame trophies worked due to a combination of bugs, patches, and the game's own descriptions being unclear, how the game works now may not be reflected in how some guides write about it. But in order to explain my confusion, I need to first give a crash course on how the endgame works:

So the base game has 3 difficulty levels: Walk In The Park (Easy), Best Pay Attention (Normal), Sweating Bullets (Hard). These are the options the game gives you when you first boot up the campaign and can change at any point. The Higher Difficulties also increase EXP and Loot you earn.

Once you beat the main campaign, a sort of separate but still connected new difficulty system opens up called "Mastery Levels". So when you start up a postgame activity, the game asks you "what difficulty do you want? Walk In The Park (Easy), Best Pay Attention (Normal), Sweating Bullets (Hard), Mastery 1 (harder than Sweating Bullets and unlocked by playing a hard activity on Sweating Bullets difficulty), Mastery 2 (harder than Mastery 1 and unlocked by playing a hard activity on Mastery 1 difficulty), Mastery 3 etc". All the way up to Mastery 60 or something. Later Mastery Level Difficulties are locked until you complete certain activities on the previous Mastery Level Difficulty.

You can apply these Mastery Difficulty options to content in the main open world as well as specific endgame activities and depending on the activity, the difficulties are "tracked separately". This confused me when I first played the game because most guides said some variation of "difficulty doesn't matter for your playthrough.... difficulty matters for endgame so make sure you play on the highest difficulty possible". I was like "wait, so which one is it? Does Difficulty matter or doesn't it? Can't I just grind for a few extra hours on the lowest difficulty and eventually get the Platinum?" The truth is that for the base game/campaign, difficulty doesn't matter. You can play on whatever. But for endgame, you have to play on the highest difficulty possible to unlock the next highest difficulty and keep progressing.

For the purposes of the Platinum Trophy, this matters for 3 specific trophies: "The Venom Connection - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 1 Bane Infamy Set", "All Sorts of Fun - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 2 Bane Infamy Set", and " The Reaper - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 3 Bane Infamy Set". I feel these are the hardest and most demanding trophies in the game. You get these and everything else is an easy clean up.

To get the platinum, you need to get at least 3 drops of Bane's Tier 1 set, 3 drops of Bane's Tier 2 Set and 3 drops of Bane's Tier 3 set. How do you do that? There's 2 parts to the equation that determines which loot gets dropped.

The first is that there's 3 specific missions that open up in the endgame called "Incursion Missions". These missions are "World’s Un-Fair" (and tends to drop Bane Shields and Grenades as loot), "Sending a Signal" (Tends to Drop Bane Guns), and "Invasive Species" (tends to drop Bane Neck Bomb Mods and Lucky Charm Drops). These missions require a currency called Promethium (around 250-1000 per player per mission) to attempt.

The second part of the equation is something called "The Finite Crisis Rank". The rank is determined by adding up the Mastery Levels of highest completions of the 3 Incursion Missions. So for example, if I do "World's Un-Fair" at Mastery Rank 3, "Sending a Signal" at Mastery Rank 2 and "Invasive Species" at Mastery Rank 1, my Finite Crisis Rank will be 3+2+1 = 6. Your Finite Crisis Rank will not decrease even if you decide to go back and do "World's Un-Fair" at Mastery Rank 1 or something.

Specific Tier Bane Gear will be added to the pool of rewards you can get based on what Mastery Level you complete an Incursion Mission at, and what your Finite Crisis Rank is. For example, Tier 3 Bane loot requires playing an Incursion Mission at Mastery Level 24 or higher while your Finite Crisis Rank is at least 6o. The thresholds are about "Mastery Levels 1-9 and Finite Crisis Rank 1+" for Tier 1 Bane Gear, "Mastery Levels 10-24 and Finite Crisis Rank 30+" for Tier 2 Bane gear and "Mastery Levels 24+ and Finite Crisis Rank 60+" for Tier 3 Bane Gear.

This is where one of the first confusions I ran into. Turns out, upon the game's release, these loot drops were bugged and ended up dropping at earlier levels than intended. Many guides used that info to say Tier 3 Loot dropped after Mastery Levels 20. When instead, they should have dropped after Mastery Level 24+ (and this is something Rocksteady's patch notes explicitly noted was an issue and has since been corrected). I wasted a lot of time grinding at Mastery Level 20 missions and was so confused because "my Finite Crisis Rank is 64 and I am doing a Mastery Level 20 mission. What gives? Where's my Tier 3 loot?". Even online, I can't find any guide that has the corrected info. The game technically does tell you the correct Mastery Levels required but it's easy to gloss over and it instead highlights the Finite Crisis rank requirement more so. So uh.... ooops on me.

Moreover, in earlier versions of the game, the game would sometimes "take away" these main 3 Incursion Missions and instead ask you to play another Incursion Mission (usually a Horde survival mode or a repeat of the final campaign mission at a higher difficulty) as a combination of "Break from the grinding" and "test to see if you're ready to continue grinding". Many guides and videos I watched do mention this. However, in the current patch, the game will only do this once or twice and then leave you free to grind the main 3 Incursion Missions as long or as many times as you want.

I will note this grind for Tier 3 Loot was challenging. By Mastery Level 15, I was getting Smacked around hard that I actually had to dig in and start sorta buildcrafting. Something I am terrible at in every RPG/Looter shooter/MMO I have ever played. My main approach was Deadshot and giving him Bane's Tier 1 and 2 gear I had collected. Bane's gear tends to synergize with a status condition called "Frenzy" which makes enemies temporarily ignore the player and start attacking each other at the cost of taking reduced damage from your own attacks and being harder to drain Shield/HP from. I also had a bug? I think where if enough enemies around me were frenzied, their models would disappear and be replaced by a giant green swirling cloud of light which it impossible to tell what that enemy was even if they weren't frenzied anymore. I ended up getting sucker punched a lot by that.

However, it was still worth it because the rest of my build synergized well with Frenzy. I got gear that increased my damage on Frenzied enemies, a sniper that could Frenzy enemies on Critical Hits (and eating 10% of my Shield when this happened), and a perk that made Frenzied Enemies do more damage to each other. I also dumped Overflow points into "Doing 8% bonus damage to enemies while airbourne" and "Bonus 3% Shield Capacity". Both helped me because I needed to hover close to enemies as Deadshot. It was only barely enough to squeak by and I was sometimes failing Incursion Missions as my DPS wasn't enough and if enemies KO-ed me, I'd lose precious time on the clock. On one attempt, I literally ran out of time, the Timer went away and the game was doing the mission fail dialogue when I just barely killed the final enemy so the game awkwardly continued the next phase of the mission despite telling me I just failed.

This is why I said these were hardest trophies in the game. The rising difficulty levels do not mess around and you may have to grind Overflow Levels just to stand a chance. Every victory I had made me feel worse because it meant I had a higher Difficulty Level to go through. When I reached Mastery Level 24 and started doing attempts, it felt so discouraging to not get a single Tier 3 Drop. I was begging the game "please, I just need 1 shield/grenade and any weapon. I don't even want to use it. I don't even care if the perks are trash. Just give me this so I can be done with this!". I felt the game mocked me when it dropped 2 Tier 3 Grenades I already had. When it finally dropped the Tier 3 Sniper Rifle, the high was greater than that of Walter White's finest meth.

Onto more mundane stuff, another example of a trophy I found whose guides were somewhat inaccurate now was " Number the Dead - Defeat 10 Raising Hell Hit Squads". Upon launch of the game, the way this works is that the game gives you 5 random challenges you can see on the map and have to do in the open world. These can range from "kill x enemies in y location" to "Afflict X enemies with a Status Condition" and everything in between. Completing these 5 challenges raises a notoriety level and sends a "Hit squad" after you of harder enemies. If you leave the immediate area, the Hit Squad also disappears and you need to do 5 more challenges to get another Hit Squad to Appear. Killing all the Hit Squad Members also ends their pursuit and you need to do 5 more challenges to get another Hit Squad after you. This trophy requires you to kill 10 Hit Squads.

However, this Hit Squad System has been updated. For one, it's 3 challenges now, not 5. Plus, there is an Incursion Mission called "Killing Time" that throws you into a survival mode where killing enemies raises your Mastery Level and gives you more time. The goal of this mission is to survive as long as possible and then extract safely without dying or running out of time in order to keep your loot. However, every few Mastery Levels, the game might spawn a Hit Squad even if you didn't do any Raising Hell Challenges. So I was able to do 6 of my 10 Hit Squads in this mission and the remaining 4 in the open world. This mission is a godsend and saved me so much time.

And that's mostly all for the trophy side. While I am here, I might as well review the game itself.

As for the game itself, I am.... mixed on the game. Like I said earlier, there's 2 games here. The Story/Main Campaign/Open World side, and the post game grind side.

Starting with the postgame, it's.... fine. I am historically not a fan of live service type games. And the whole reason why I even I went for the platinum was because SSKTJL was free on PS+, and PSNProfiles said it was a brisk 50 hours total and a 4/10 difficulty to platinum the game. I had already finished the main story, saw there were no unmissable trophies and figured it wouldn't be too bad to go for the platinum. And it... wasn't too bad but I do feel it was kinda repetitive. Grinding the same 3 missions over and over again for a few days, for loot I wasn't interested in, while the story froze and no longer progressed. I was listening to YouTube videos on the side which helped. And the combat wasn't mindless as the increased difficulty meant I was always under pressure to keep moving and performing to my best. I can't say the experience was 100% mindless but I will note that if the game was Mastery Level 25 or higher to unlock Tier 3 loot, I would probably have stopped playing. At Mastery Level 24, I often had a 70% success rate on my attempts. I was lucky the game showered me with Promethium so I never had to grind more. I think in total. I must have done at least 40-50 attempts total before getting 3 Tier 3s.

I suppose this is the norm for this Looter shooter/Live Service Endgames. Repeatedly doing the the same few missions to unlock harder runs for better gear. I will comment that at least the way SSKTJL handles its loot is a lot less "arbitrary" in a sense. In something like Borderlands, a weapon drop's quality is in part dictated by the level you get it at. So a Level 20 version of a gun is going to be way stronger than a level 10 version of a gun and there's no way to bring up a Level 10 up to a 20 or reroll or tune its perks.

SSKTJL operates a bit differently. Loot is mostly static and disconnected from level. So a Notorious Drop you get in like chapter 3 of the main story is just as capable as an endgame drop. The exact perks may not line up but by and large, you're not forced to have to keep equipping newer and higher levelled gear. If you find a set or loadout you are happy with, the game lets that you roll with that. There are NPCs that can help reroll perks or upgrade status on the weapon to improve it slightly at least.

I do wanna highlight some little things I liked about the game before moving onto the main campaign. I love the use of the Dualsense’s features. The R2 adaptive trigger being harder to use when melee-ing was a great way of reminding me I was overextending my characters. I loved the lights indicating my health, weapon and character. I love the use of the speakers for radio transmissions and wished more games (including the Arkham ones) did that. I love the extended database/codex complete with voice acted audiologs that can play in the background. Aesthetically and graphically, I felt the game and map looked cool

Now, as for the main story/campaign/open world, I may hurt my credibility with this review (as if I had any left) but I really enjoyed the first 80% of the campaign's story.

Like, I would have expected a Suicide Squad game to "play it safe" where Task Force X would have a "side mission" far from any actual heroes and certainly wouldn't kill any mainline Justice League members. But no. The game goes all in on its premise. It really does have the Squad kill off most of the Justice League. It doesn't "coddle" or "protect" the League. The end result for me at least is a way more interesting and novel story. I know this game is very controversial for its story but like, I felt it commits and does a great job with it.

I feel the story does a great job in characterizing the Squad. I flip flopped between "God! These are absoluty despicable heels" and "Golly gee, I feel kinda bad for these guys. Maybe they don't deserve this suffering. Maybe there is some humanity in them".

Like, when the Squad kills Flash, Boomerang prepares his whole speech. That's expected of him. He is an egotistical villain that gets off on hating Flash. But when he begins to desecrate Flash's corpse, at first Deadshot holds him and berates him like "Man, this is the Flash, what are you doing...." but when he sees Boomerang's junk, the whole squad turns around and praises him. It's this switch between "Hey maybe the Squad aren't bad people" to "God, these guys are monsters" that I find so interesting in the story.

I like the arc of the characters. They start out barely tolerating each other, forced to work together because of their internal bombs. And by Batman's mission when hit with fear toxin, they've worked together enough that they are able to pull through as a team and counter Batman despite the fear toxin really pull at the Squad's insecurities and pushing them to cut and run. Whereas Batman would have expected them to easily fall apart like any other group of disorganized and distrustful criminals.

Moreover, I just love the dialogue and production value in the game. Between Batman's Radio Dialogue, the news broadcasts, the Squad's own quips, Brainiac's performance. It's legit good stuff.

I feel my biggest complaint is the fact this game is/was a live service game (Ironic given the first half of this post). It bleeds into the story. The game can't start with the squad truly hating each other and being dysfunctional like in other SS media because you need the 4 Squad Members kitted and functional by like Hour 2 for coop and Seasonal Events. The game can't have more handcrafted set piece like missions (like the past Arkham Games) because it needs to accommodate multiple players (potentially different characters depending on what players chose or even if there are multiple players).

For example, there's 2 missions in the game where the Squad are being hunted by Batman. They feel like they're from a horror game where you're on your own, using your flashlight to peek around while Batman leaves traps and occasionally ambushes you. It's really cool. But these sections have basic gameplay and don't go really far with how you respond against Batman.

Another casualty is the final 20% of the story. The squad kill Superman and are celebrating when Brainiac freezes them and brings teleports them on his ship. Brainiac has been built up this entire game. You don't hear or see him. And now here he is. He speaks in this eloquent way. He prepares his brainwashing machines while telling the Squad he will "give them everything they could ever want" and plays to their insecurities. Lex 2 Teleports the Squad last second off the ship and to Lexcorp. The squad try to catch their breath after what happens. And Boomerang even drops a rather funny "wait, I wanted to hear Brainiac out".

It feels like the game is shaping up for the final fight against Brainiac. Maybe the Squad could lose here or betray each other. Hell, you could even have a sequence where the character you were controlling when the mission starts eventually gets brainwashed by Brainiac and the remaining 3 Squad members have to kill him and then Brainiac to end the game in this bitersweet moment. Or hell, you could have a moment where the Squad embrace the end and let their neck bombs go off to save the world to end the game.

But the story has Lex 2 tell you "well actually, there are 13 Brainiacs across different dimensions/Elseworlds. You need to do some grinding to take on this one first". And now the story loses its momentum. It doesn't feel like I am preparing for a final battle against Brainiac. It feels like I am grinding to do a mission. And now I know the Squad will beat Brainiac and it devalues Brainiac because now the Squad will also have to challenge and beat the other 12 in post game live service updates.

I also feel it "devalues" the premise of the Squad and their accomplishments. What makes SS/Task Force X interesting, especially in this game, is the fact they're the longshots. The fact they've made it 30 minutes without failing or dying is a miracle. Every hero underestimates them. Waller even picks this group because "they are C-D tier villains. Nobody expects them to truly succeed so when they fail/die, it's no huge loss". The actual Justice League couldn't take down Brainiac. The fact the Squad are being sent in isn't because they actually are the substitutes but because they're the desperate "we got nothing to lose" option.

But if the Squad are now grinding to take on Brainiac, and also are aware of the 12 other ones coming in live service updates. All of that changes. Braniac no longer feels like such an insurmountable task, but like, another villain and one the Squad doesn't have to worry too much on. It feels now like any group could have done this and devalues the fact that the Justice League failed to stop him.

The gameplay also suffers. I already mentioned some main missions were limited but also, a lot of missions are "kill x number of enemies an arbitrary number of times". The game has to do this rather than more specific scenarios since that would require scripting unique sequences and enforce structure on the player. But the game can't guarantee what squad member you are playing at, what gear they have, and what other players are active so it needs this more generic mission template to accommodate that.

Even the boss fights against the other JL members showcase this. How do you beat Flash? You wait for him to run around and begin one of his charging attacks. Then you "counter shoot him" with L2+R1. This opens him up to damage from your regular attacks. How do you beat Green Lantern? You shoot his green constructs, counter shoot him to render him vulnerable then shoot him with your regular attacks. How do you beat Superman? You wait for him to fly around and begin one of his charging attacks. Then you "counter shoot him" with L2+R1. This opens him up to damage from your regular attacks. The animations of the hero changes but not the "flow of the fight".

The only boss fight that is unique is Batman's because it can only be played solo and it dictates your character selection to some extent. So it can have a Horror game sequence beforehand where Batman douses the squad with Fear Toxin. And the Boss fight itself is against a Giant hallucination of a Demon Batman with custom attacks you have to jump over and shoot. It's still somewhat basic from gameplay but more unique compared to Flash, Supes and Hal. Even the Brainiac Boss fight has Brainiac turn himself into Flash and repeats the Flash boss fight but with more minions.

The open world also suffers here. Prior Arkham games also had relatively static open worlds to some extent (Arkham City and Knight took place across a single night after all). However, in Arkham City, as you played through the main story, the progression of the turf war between Joker, Penguin and Two Face occasionally intersects with Batman's story in a way that's simultaneously in the background but also influencing the story in way that makes replays so much more interesting as you can see the puzzle pieces moving in real time.

For example, in Arkham City, the villains have established clear territories: Two-Face in Park Row (Solomon Wayne Courthouse), Joker in the Industrial District (Steel Mill), and Penguin in the Bowery (Museum). Rumors spread that Joker is dying. This looming power vacuum motivates Penguin and Two-Face to plan their moves, while Joker's crew becomes increasingly desperate and divided. Penguin uses his influence to distract Joker's crew at the GCPD building while secretly holding Mr. Freeze in his museum. He further escalates the war by destroying bridges to isolate the Industrial District. Once Batman defeats Penguin, the Bowery falls into chaos. Two-Face capitalizes on this, seizing control of the Bowery and absorbing many of Penguin's men.

You can see the progression of this as you play with the thugs doing makeshift alterations to their uniforms, their dialogue and even where they are located. And they end up as obstacles to Batman not because Batman is directly involved in their turf war but because they happened to be in his way to his own separate objectives. Batman doesn't take out Penguin and Joker's men in the subway because he wants to disrupt their turf war but because they're on the way to Wonder City and as a result, learns more about their conflict. It makes the story and world feel so much richer.

SSKTJL can't really do this. The map is mostly static at the start of the game as it is by the end barring more destruction and surface level collateral. The early chapters had cutscenes showing Brainiac's forces capturing civilians and transforming them but they're not present during gameplay. Instead just wandering around or holding down territory. You don’t get side stories from other heroes or villains surviving the onslaught. Yo don’t see the progression of the war. It’s like time freezes when the game starts. Metropolis trapped in a perpetual live service limbo.

In another timeline, SSKTJL was a 8-10 hour singleplayer game that was able to make a more story focussed one and done game that didn't have to be completeable by different players and support years worth of live service content. It may even help its legacy over time as a bold new and risky game. But instead, even though its servers are still up, even though it technically has an offline mode now, I worry this game wouldn't be around long enough for future players to appreciate any of its positives.