In Uncharted 3, a teenage Nathan Drake searches a museum in Cartagena, Colombia.
The sequence is set roughly twenty years before the game’s main 2011 storyline. Young Nate breaks into a museum in Cartagena while pursuing a ring and astrolabe connected to his supposed ancestor, the English explorer Sir Francis Drake. His burglary brings him into contact with Victor “Sully” Sullivan and Katherine Marlowe, setting up relationships that shape the rest of the series.
Cartagena is a major Caribbean port city on Colombia’s northern coast. Its colonial walls, historic fortifications, and maritime history make it a fitting location for a story involving explorers, shipwrecks, and stolen artifacts. The game uses the city as an origin-story setting rather than as the location of the later search for Ubar.
Players sometimes confuse Cartagena with Bogotá, Medellín, or Cali because all are prominent Colombian cities. The distinction is important: Cartagena is the coastal historic city shown in Nate’s museum flashback, while Bogotá is Colombia’s inland capital and Medellín and Cali are major inland urban centers.