I'm currently replaying Uncharted 1 right now. I think they're written okay, but UC1 is where ND is most thoughtless in the story. The first cutscene basically has the enemies introduced with a rape threat to Elaine (drake says they only kill male prisoners) and Elena...well, she's charming like ND tends to write all characters, but she's also very...er, archtypical might be the right word?
The problem with interpretting the Uncharted games, especially 1-3, is that they super heavily lean on unrealistic, "we're playing an indiana jones movie!" like tropes. So you have really absurd situations where the island is swarming with pirates and mercenaries that are super hyper dangerous...but you also have all the characters basically mugging into the camera about how fun this adventure game is. And Elena plays into that by being super, hyper into making sure she captures everything going on for her job as a reporter, to the point where she just straight up doesn't take the threat of death and pirates and everything all that seriously even though she's basically in a constant firefight with no training. And that be fine except to some extent the game wants you to take it the threats seriously because halfway through Drake, of all people, just wants to escape the island, so Elena has to make up excuses for him to not simply take the boat and take off. Any interpretation of Elena trying to get a news story when her life is at risk characterizes her as simply insane if the threat is taken seriously, and rationale and fun if it's not, and uncharted is like struggling to find a middleground between these two contradictory interpretations that satisfyies them both.
So, if you take the interpretation that this is just a silly adventure, her being super willful to get her story is an act of agency that is in line with this universe, but it only works if you view the threat of the pirate army to be very low risk because otherwise these people are simply insane. And that kind of bleeds into the future games too, where she becomes something of the nagging housewife archtype, where she is 'right' because trying to find whatever treasure while an armed militia or supernatural monsters are trying to get it as well and will kill for it is insane and stupidly risky....but she's also wrong because since when are armed militias and supernatural monsters an actual threat to Drake or, for that matter, even her?
That said, to be fair, I think Uncharted 4 had the best Elena, because while it initially set her up as the nagging housewife for half the game, their reconciliation in the second half is just fantastic. ND does love stories pretty well and her and Drake basically falling back in love doing one last adventure is just beautiful to watch.
