Uncharted 2 and 3: From Istanbul to the Empty Quarter

Uncharted 2 opens with a heist. Nate and Flynn break into a museum in Istanbul and find the lamp, which carries a map showing that Marco Polo's fleet was shipwrecked in Borneo. Flynn then double-crosses Nate and leaves him to be arrested. The game never ties the museum to a real building, so the story belongs to the city itself, one that sits on two continents, with about two-thirds of its people living in Europe and the rest in Asia.

Location precision: The game's museum is invented; the pin marks Istanbul as a whole.

Three months later, Chloe frees Nate from custody and the hunt moves to Borneo. Nate and Sully infiltrate Lazarevic's camp, with Chloe working as a mole inside it. The trail ends at a temple holding the bodies of Polo's crew. Borneo is the third-largest island in the world, crossed by the equator and covered in some of the oldest tropical rainforest on Earth.

Location precision: The game's jungle camp and temple are not tied to a named site; the pin marks the island of Borneo.

Sully backs out, so Nate and Chloe continue to Nepal, which has been ravaged by Lazarevic's mercenaries. At the temple they use the phurba to uncover Shambhala's location in the Himalayas. Nepal is a landlocked country in South Asia, lying largely within the Himalayas. The chapters here turn the heist into a chase, with Elena joining the hunt.

Location precision: The game does not name its Nepalese town or temple; the pin marks the country's centre.

Beneath a monastery, Nate and Elena unlock the secret passage to Shambhala. In the city they learn that the Cintamani Stone is a giant amber, a lump of ancient sap from a tree of life. Nate defeats Lazarevic, and the city crumbles with the collapse of the tree and the exploding resin. In Tibetan Buddhist tradition Shambhala is a spiritual kingdom; the game borrows the name for a lost city set among peaks that include the highest on Earth.

Location precision: Shambhala exists only in legend and in the game; the pin marks the Himalayas.

Uncharted 3 begins in London, where Nate and Sully meet Talbot, who wants to buy Nate's ring, inherited from Sir Francis Drake. The meeting turns into a fight and a shooting, and it sets the whole plot going: the ring is the key to Drake's lost voyage. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England.

Location precision: The meeting place is not tied to a named London address; the pin marks the city centre.

A flashback takes the story to Cartagena, Colombia, twenty years before the present. A teenage Nate searches a museum for the ring, only to be caught. Sully rescues him and takes him on as his protege, which is how their partnership begins. Cartagena is one of the major ports on the northern coast of Colombia.

Location precision: The game's museum is not identified with a real building; the pin marks Cartagena.

Drake's map points to two clues: Crusader crypts in a French chateau and a Syrian citadel. Nate and Sully locate the chateau and find one half of an amulet. Talbot and his henchmen ambush them, take the amulet and set the chateau on fire, and the pair escape. The game gives no location in France, and the country lies mainly in Western Europe, so this stop marks the country rather than a building you could visit.

Location precision: The game names no chateau or region; the pin marks the middle of France.

In Syria, Nate and Sully meet Chloe and Cutter and learn that their rivals belong to the same secret society to which Francis Drake once belonged. They find the other amulet half, revealing the next clue in Yemen, before their rivals catch up with them. The game's citadel is a story setting, and Syria lies in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. The pin marks the country only.

Location precision: The game names no real citadel in Syria; the pin marks the country's centre.

In Yemen, Nate and Sully reunite with Elena, who helps them locate a tomb that details the location of Ubar in the Rub' al Khali desert. Later, Nate washes ashore in Yemen. The country lies in southern Arabia, and the game uses it as the last stop on the way into the desert. The pin marks the country only.

Location precision: The game names no port or tomb in Yemen; the pin is the country's capital, standing in for the country.

Drake's map was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I to find the lost city of Ubar. Nate and Sully find and enter it after a sandstorm, and in the finale Nate brings the city down as the desert engulfs it. The Rub' al Khali is a desert encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula. Legends of a lost city of pillars, Iram, are mentioned in the Quran, and the game borrows that mystery.

Location precision: Ubar is a legendary city and the game's version is invented; the pin marks the Rub' al Khali desert.