ND said it in interviews I believe, the main inspirations for Uncharted were Indiana Jones (The movies about an archeologist treasure hunter with a quirky sense of humour) and gears in part for the cover based shooting... Now if every game that features a jungle and some treasure chests is Thomb Raider, well so be it. I never liked the Thomb Raider games before the reboot. Even the new one, it looks like a cheap version of the ND games, the writing and set pieces are not as believable, however it's still a great game as it plays well and it's fun to explore.
as for the apparently more open areas in uc4, what's there to defend, I think this is great as that's the one aspect I like from Thomb Raider reboot (however, they may be more open ,you are still not very free on how you approach the different situations) TLoU does it better as it gives you many ways to approach many of the encounters, depending on your play style.
Point is, it's scemantics to call a game a complete ripoff of another game, there is enough money on the line, they would have settled it in court if that was the case... I prefer uc, but I still want Thomb Raider, as I love that kind of game!
