I was watching a few behind the scenes footage from Uncharted and it struck me that it was like watching the making of a movie and not a game. Naughty Dog has been gaining a lot of attention from the way they make their voice actors give life into the characters they’re portraying…not by sticking them into a studio to record their lines, but actually physically acting them out.

You might think that game developers would have done this before but surprisingly Uncharted is the first. Instead of slapping a motion capture suit onto some random person and getting a voice actor into the studio to read lines, ND properly casts each motion capture actor. As in the character doing the motion capture is the same person doing the voice. And not only that, they don’t record their voices in the studio at all..they record it as they’re acting out scenes from the game. Something which I’ve never heard being done before. In the behind the scenes from the first Uncharted, you can see the actors acting in actual sets while their movement and voices are being recorded at the same time.

I find it so fascinating cause it really does make such a difference. For example, the main guy Nolan North not only voices Nathan Drake, he is Nathan Drake. How he walks, how he punches, how he holds a gun…right down to Nathan Drake’s personality. He said in an interview that his wife commented on how it was like seeing an exact video game version of him that whenever she was mad at him she would turn the PS3 on and make him jump off a cliff (haha). The fact that the actors are required to put their own personality into the characters and are even encouraged to ad-lib their lines…you just never hear these sort of things happening in games. It’s interesting to know that the witty and hilarious remarks in the game weren’t from the script but from the actors themselves. :D

Rehearsals (Nolan North is funny lol):

Meet the actors, you can see the comparisons of the actors with their characters:

Casting and audition process:

I’m just totally floored by Naughty Dog’s work. You guys should all go and watch some Uncharted 2 cutscenes…totally amazing. I’ll post them up next time maybe. :)

(Not that anyone is interested. Ignore me, I’m in my Uncharted 2 phase)