hey sorry for the extremely late reply, i been rather busy the past couple of days and when ever i was on here i would be to tired to write something this long. 

now the points where i said uncharted were influential and aspects that it changed were Animation, technology, level desgin, Cinematics, charecter development, story telling and graphics. now the reason why uncharted was so influencial not because these aspects did just stand out, but the way they blend together to create the game. its also why im finding it really hard to explain it and why somebody esle could have done it way better than me, but oh well.

as you pointed out that almost every game had story telling and character development in it, but yet uncharted's seems to stand out and thats because of many other factors. animation, voice/motion acting from nolan north, solid writing and interactivity with other characters. nathan drake is just the "main character" in uncharted, he isnt just a hero or a badass killing machine. everything he does telling you something about him, i would like to point out that nolan north has been in about a million video games, and not just small games but games like halo, god of war, assasins creed (main role here as desmond), resistance and a billion other games, yet his role in uncharted is by far his best and most memerobale. i once saw a video where nolan north was talking and he was saying that his wife was playing/watching uncharted and nathan did something and his wife stating saying to him "oh oh you actually do that when you talk!". naughty dog managed to take the "human" part of nolan and put it into drake, he doesnt just sound like him, he doesnt just move like him, his quirks, the way he talks in different situations and the way he thinks is all visible in nathan drake. nolan north is a huge part of nate, naughty dog created nate that way and really no developer has created a character like naughty dog created drake.

see buidling the character wasnt just writing what he is like on a piece of paper and creating his model to know what he looks like, nathan drake as a character grew along with the development of the game. the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he interacts with sully or elena, or the way he acts according to whats happening in the story all makes him what he is. uncharteds animation are the best in the industry whether its facial animations or body animations, and naughty dog used that not only to enhance gameplay, but to create and tell you more about the character, the way nate moves is so influencial to how you perceive him. and the fact they did that so good makes them poineers, its why nathan drake is so likeable and its why other developers are taking note. this is why uncharted was so influencial with character development and animation. is the way they blend in together, the way naughty dog use's these things to create uncharted.

technology, level desgin, Cinematics and story telling. all these are so tied up i dont know how to start or and explain it lol. i guess ill start with with technology and level desgin since you disgareed that uncharted had an influence on it (level desgin). from the get go naughty dog wanted to create an huge centimatic game with uncharted 2. the train level is probably the two most technologically advanced level in gaming, see the way that naughty dicided to do the level was completely different and new to any video game ever created. instead of having the train static and the enviroment moving around it, ND wanted to do it for real, having the train move for real and the level its self moving for real. this is where technology, level desgin and Cinematics all come together, to create this ND created the Dynamic Object Traversal System (DOTS) and whats DOTS enables drake and any other character to use their moves on any moving enviroment or object. to put it in a simple way, this was never done in any single game before it, never. level desgin was changed for ever, a new door opened in game development that developers only dreamed of. here is a quote from the  digital foundry article about uncharted 2 "This might not seem like a big deal but for those of us who have been working on 3D character action games for a while, it was pretty much the Holy Grail because it allowed us to do things that we'd only been able to dream of before".

 basically this new technology affected every aspect of the game, but it affected level desgin and cinematics the most. see everything about the level is now developed in an entirely new way, there are no limits to what they can do. the way the level is created and desgined has changed, the way the level progresses is entirely different. how can this not be innovative and influential when it was never done before? everybody who understood anything about game development looked at uncharted 2 with fascination! this level alone will change how levels are created forever! developers might have not catched up to it yet but sooner or later they will. this opened a whole new door for cenimatics too, since there are so many new stuff in the levels and how they play the cenimatics now can be created in en entirely new way, the train blowing up in uncharted 2, the hotel collapsing while nathan is still in it, a building burning down and collapsing on nates head and an entire level which was the boat level in uncharted 3 fliping over 90 degree's in mid gameplay. how can that not be a game changer in level desgin? what game can possibaly come close to offering the same level of centimatic experience? what game can actually offer gameplay like that? we are talking about an ENTIRE LEVEL flipping over in mid gameplay! gameplay, level desgin centimacts have changed forever, nobody can deny that, experts like digital foundry have been amazed. in 2011 when making their  uncharted 3 article they still said that the  unhcarted 2 among friends article was still their favorite 2 years after making it. 

The DOTS not didnt only effect that it even effected story telling, it allowed story to progress as levels were moving, nathan would have never reached the himalaya the way he did. the story in uncharted progresses around nathan, nathan drives it and not anything else, as i said before everything blends in together, animation, voice/motion acting by nolam north, character development, sully, elena and every other character make nathan what he is, all these aspects push the story because they make nate what he is. nathan isnt nathan whithout sully, sully is a part of who nathan is and you can see that in uncharted 3 very clearly. like everything else in uncharted the story if effected by almost every other factor in the game, whether its technology, animation or level desgin. 

all these aspects dont even start to explain the genius of uncharted and naughty dog, its why uncharted 2 blew up the gaming indusrty in 2009, its why it has a 96 meta crtitic and its why it won over 200 game of the year awards, it literally changed everything. not just how the game plays but how the game is made. uncharted 3 went on to expand on that. and here is why its more influential than gears, gears mostly changed TPS genre, uncharted effected everything, every damn genre, whether its FPS, open world, TPS, platformers or hack and slash you name it. uncharted changed them. to a simple gamer uncharted might not have been all that new if he didnt understand how games work, it would have seemed like a really awesome game that did almost everything right. but its so much more. but to game developers it was the new standerd, the game to beat, the game to learn from. it simply became a legend, and thats not me saying so, its digital foundry. here is the quote in their uncharted 3 artiicle

"Uncharted 2 was the game that changed everything, redefining the third-person genre, setting new standards in technology, production values, characterisation and gameplay. Its legend is so powerful that any faults it may have had are perhaps forgotten in a haze of happy nostalgia. Its deserved success at the time was unparalleled"

I'll admit that that was an amazing response regardless of how late it was :P lol  You put a lot of thought into it and I appreciate that.  i sadly don't have that long of a response in me today lol  You mention the 200 rewards, the voice acting, and animations mostly.  From my point of view the biggest thing that Uncharted brought to the table was not the animations, or the voice acting.  It was the way it is played out like a action movie.  As I've stated before though, this was already being introduced to the industry before Uncharted (2) though.  I put the 2 there because that is the one that got people's attention.

Uncharted 2 came out on Oct 13th 2009

All these games came out before it which also had the same approach in making it like a movie.

Gears of War - 2006

Gears of War 2 -2008

Grand Theft Auto IV -  2008

Modern Warfare 2 only came out a month afterwards 

Modern Warfare 2 has the same exact approach as far as an action movie but the story being played out while actually playing the game, where characters talk to each other, stop and do animations etc was already done in the first gears of war in 2009.  Im sure im missing a bunch of games but those was the three that came to my mind.

As far as animations go, that hasnt really carried into different games.  That is an advancement of technology, not anything new.  Just like in 10 years uncharted 3 and gears of war will look mediocre compared to games in 10 years.  Some games go with fully animations like Far Cry and that was emphasized in far cry 2 which came out in 2008.  If you are saying that Unchared has influenced the industry then bring up examples of games that has been using things that it has?

Think of all the games that use a cover base system like gears now, inluding uncharted.  Think of all the games that are adding coop gameplay like horde, or revives to stay in the game.  Think of how many people are chaning the camera around and how people are running, rolling, etc.

Uncharted made a footprint in gaming forever, but not because it has changed gameplay its self, but because there is little to nothing that is as good as uncharted.  That 200 rewards was given because it was a spectacular game.

as i said at the start i didnt really know how to write it down lol animations are not the main points i was trying to say, if i overstated it or over used it it was a failure on my part. i didnt even want to make the thing longer, my point was not about how good the animation was, but how it was used and how everything blend together. and as i said it uncharted changed how games are made from the get go, how technology will be used. 

im not denying gears didnt influence uncharted it did, it influenced alot of games as well. but i would like to point out that using the right anolog stick to change camera wasnt something new. wasnt it used in halo CE? even though the genre is different its the same concept, i think more credit should go to bungie/halo for that than gears.

as for modern warefare2, i understand that they aimed for the cintematic experience too, but it just looks silly compared to uncharted. the story telling/story characters/set pieces are really nothing compared to uncharted, specially 2 and 3. MW2's strenght is its awesome online. and as i said its not that uncharted did it first its how everything blends in together that makes it so unique.

lol the 200 game of the year awards is just something i said out of ecxitment, i really dont think thats the reason it has an influence, a game doesnt need game of the year awards to be influencial 

as i said at the start i didnt really know how to write it down lol animations are not the main points i was trying to say, if i overstated it or over used it it was a failure on my part. i didnt even want to make the thing longer, my point was not about how good the animation was, but how it was used and how everything blend together. and as i said it uncharted changed how games are made from the get go, how technology will be used. 

im not denying gears didnt influence uncharted it did, it influenced alot of games as well. but i would like to point out that using the right anolog stick to change camera wasnt something new. wasnt it used in halo CE? even though the genre is different its the same concept, i think more credit should go to bungie/halo for that than gears.

as for modern warefare2, i understand that they aimed for the cintematic experience too, but it just looks silly compared to uncharted. the story telling/story characters/set pieces are really nothing compared to uncharted, specially 2 and 3. MW2's strenght is its awesome online. and as i said its not that uncharted did it first its how everything blends in together that makes it so unique.

lol the 200 game of the year awards is just something i said out of ecxitment, i really dont think thats the reason it has an influence, a game doesnt need game of the year awards to be influencial