A year after its release, the deliberately punishing walking simulator Baby Steps has spawned an elaborate fan theory: its protagonist might be Nathan Drake's son, cast as a total failure. And the game's developers may have intentionally hidden this connection throughout.
The premise alone seems absurd. Baby Steps follows Nate, a middle-aged couch potato in a onesie who stumbles into a world of talking donkeys with no memory of how he arrived. The entire game consists of methodically moving one leg at a time across increasingly hostile terrain—mud, sand dunes, mountains, ice—while Nate whines, falls constantly, and soils himself. He actively rejects help from others, refusing shoes, maps, and easier routes. He is, fundamentally, the opposite of the charming, competent Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series.
Yet fans noticed something odd: the details linking this disaster of a human to one of gaming's most capable adventurers kept piling up.
The Paper Trail
The theory began circulating in October 2025, shortly after Baby Steps launched, primarily in the game's official Discord. Players documented a trail of references that felt too deliberate to ignore.
Nate's father is also named Nathan, making him a "junior." His mother's name is Elena. He has a sister named Cassie. In several dream sequences triggered by wearing special hats to camp, Nate is called "Nate D" and "Nathan Bake," and at one point he goes by "Nate Dumbass." Nathan Drake's canonical daughter in the Uncharted universe is named Cassie—a detail Naughty Dog never gave him a son.
The smoking gun appeared when dataminers dug into the game's code and found Nate's character model labeled "Nathan Drake." That discovery, shared by Discord user Caleb (monkeylicker), transformed the theory from clever pattern-spotting into something harder to dismiss.
Visual parallels emerged too. A piece of official Baby Steps artwork mirrors the composition of Uncharted 4's cover art, down to the hand positioning. A portrait hanging in the game's New Game menu depicts Sir Francis Drake, the historical figure who inspired Nathan Drake's name. An achievement image showing "World's Best Dad" bears a suspicious resemblance to an older version of Drake himself.
One sequence where Nate wakes on a beach echoes a memorable Uncharted 4 scene. Another optional phone call with Nate's father becomes noticeably more enthusiastic when Nate mentions climbing aboard an abandoned train—a callback to Nathan Drake Sr.'s own history with trains.
Even the game's credits contain an easter egg: a thirty-minute cutscene plays if players skip every other scene, during which developers Bennett Foddy and Gabe Cuzzillo drop character and discuss Uncharted among other things, confirming they're fans.
By any reasonable measure, the evidence suggests Baby Steps' developers crafted Nate with explicit intent as Nathan Drake's estranged, disastrous son.
When asked for comment or confirmation, the dev team declined to respond.
The Catch
There's an obvious problem with this theory becoming official: Sony and Naughty Dog would almost certainly never approve it. For one, Nate appears to be dead or isekaied to another dimension, making any Uncharted canon integration functionally meaningless. For another, it's undeniably ridiculous. A grown man in a onesie, perpetually soiling himself, struggling to walk across a desert—it's far too absurd for the Uncharted franchise to claim.
So Baby Steps likely remains an unauthorized fan creation. A love letter disguised as satire. A secret sequel that can only exist in the margins.
But that doesn't diminish what the game accomplishes. It's a meditation on masculinity and inherited expectations, wrapped in deliberately agonizing controls. It interrogates what "character growth" actually means and challenges players to inhabit someone genuinely unlikable for twenty hours of slow, painful movement. That discomfort is the point.
Whether you read Baby Steps as a secret Uncharted 5 or simply as one of the most frustratingly brilliant walking simulators ever made, it's worth experiencing. Just bring patience—and comfortable shoes for yourself.
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