List of characters in the Uncharted series
Encyclopedia
The Uncharted
series, created by video game developer
Naughty Dog
, features many characters. The series includes two video games: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
, and the motion comic
Uncharted: Eye of Indra. It primarily focuses on the exploits of treasure hunter Nathan Drake
and his associates as they hunt down various mystical items. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, he must stop a group of mercenaries from collecting a cursed golden idol known as "El Dorado" and using it as a biological weapon. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, he races a homicidal war criminal to find the powerful Cintamani Stone. In the prequel comic Uncharted: Eye of Indra, he works for an Indonesia
n crime lord in order to get the money needed to raise the coffin of his relative Sir Francis Drake.
Nathan Drake is the primary playable character and protagonist
of the series. He has a shady past, in which he associated with a number of thieves and black market salesmen in order to obtain various valuable items. The development team sought to make him a generally average and likable character. He is accompanied by a number of characters, including his longtime friend, associate, and mentor Victor Sullivan
. He has two love interests in the series. The first is Elena Fisher
, a reporter who fights alongside him in both video games. Though Drake eventually begins a serious relationship with Fisher, he becomes involved with fellow thief Chloe Frazer
before this. Each different installment of the series has a different antagonist who dies at the end of the work. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Gabriel Roman is an acquaintance to whom Sullivan owes a large sum of money; he goes after El Dorado once Sullivan tells him that he has found something of great value. He is eventually killed by his second-in-command Atoq Navarro, who steals the idol to sell its cursing abilities as a biological weapon. Navarro drowns when El Dorado falls into the ocean, dragging him with it. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Zoran Lazarevic is a Serbia
n war criminal, thought dead, who seeks power by consuming the Cintamani Stone, located in the fabled city of Shambhala
. He reaches his goal, but before becoming all-powerful, Drake wounds him using the sap of the Tree of Life
, and leaves him for the guardians of Shambhala to kill. Finally, in Uncharted: Eye of Indra, Daniel Pinkerton hires Drake to find the Eye of Indra treasure, but Drake conspires to steal it from him. Another associate of Drake's, Rika Raja, shoots and kills Pinkerton in his house. The series contains other characters who either aid or try to kill Drake.
A team at Naughty Dog designed the character appearances, and Amy Hennig
was the main writer of their personalities and mannerisms. The voice actors were given considerable license to improvise the lines and influence character personality, and also performed the motion capture
work for their characters. Many of the characters were meant to highlight different aspects of Drake's personality. Reception to the characters in the series have been fairly positive, with most commentators focusing on the believable nature of the characters and their interactions with each other. The inclusion of strong female characters has also received praise, though one commentator pointed out that the women still fall into cliché roles. The voice acting has also received acclaim, including two Interactive Achievement Award nominations.
development team drew a number of concept sketches
depicting characters hanging from cliffs and handling weapons awkwardly; many of these concepts directly translated into the final character products. The more fluid character motions were improvised on a motion capture
stage, and were not scripted or drawn beforehand. Amy Hennig
, the series writer, designed the character's personalities and mannerisms. The production team sought to capture a certain tone in the character design, and closely studied the pulp adventure genre for inspiration. This included drawing characteristics from Tintin
, Doc Savage
, and a number of movies. They tried to contrast with other western games, which lead game designer Richard Lemarchand described as "overwrought and all a bit emo."
The game developers and animators worked closely together to ensure that the expressions and movements of the characters matched with the desired tone of the games. The character designs were kept intentionally simple, as the designers wanted character personality defined by actor performances, rather than "trinkets attached to the character model." Focus was instead placed on a realism in the animation to highlight character humanity. A blended animation system developed especially for the game allowed one character animation to begin before the previous one had ended, aiding this realism. The ultimate goal was to make the characters react as if they were real people in a realistic world. To accomplish this, many of the character reactions were conveyed through facial expressions and body language
rather than explicit dialog.
Hennig believes character emotion grew from the "production of the game as if it were a traditional movie or stage play." The two lead actors were cast because of their experience on stage and film works. The cast had a large role in developing the characters. They were allowed to ad-lib
dialog and participate in revising the script. The actors also read lines together on a sound stage, allowing them to play off of one another and organically grow the character relationships. Both games used the same actors for both motion capture and voice acting
. The actors did a number of read-through
s and practiced to get the motions correct before capturing.
Naughty Dog consciously avoided action game stereotypes, including super-powered heroes and overly sexualized female characters. They included a large cast of characters to ensure that the story was character-driven rather than story-driven. Co-president of Naughty Dog Evan Wells stated, "I honestly think that the key element, if you really want to boil it down, is characters. People will tell a story, but if it's not a character-driven plot then you are missing something." Many of these characters were specifically designed to highlight different facets of Nathan Drake's personality.
voices Drake and had considerable influence in the development of the character, mixing his personality with Drake's. Drake is a playable character
in the two video games of the series: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
, and the lead character in the motion comic
Uncharted: Eye of Indra.
Drake is depicted as a professional treasure hunter
with a shady background involving various people from the underground illegal goods market. He is a very intelligent man, self-educated in history and various languages, and a supposed descendant of Sir Francis Drake. In the first two games, he seeks a mythical treasure. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, he uses the diary of Francis Drake to track the mythical El Dorado
to a small island in the Pacific Ocean
. He and his partner Victor Sullivan
discover that El Dorado is actually a large golden statue that curses those who attempt to steal it. Drake must stop pirates led first by Gabriel Roman, and later Atoq Navarro, from using the statue's power to turn people into zombie
s as a weapon. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, he is hired to steal an oil lamp from a museum that might point to the location of Marco Polo
's lost fleet. When his employer betrays him, Drake sets out to stop war criminal Zoran Lazarevic from discovering the location of Shambhala
and the mystical Cintamani Stone. Drake tracks him to a monastery, where he discovers the entrance to Shambhala. Lazarevic locates and consumes part of the Tree of Life
, but is killed by Drake and the guardians of Shambhala.
Naughty Dog gave Drake a very strong personality, as they did not want him to act blandly. He often thinks out loud, and comments on the absurdity of his situations, a tendency Matt Casamassina
of IGN
called "lighthearted and amusing". Drake's appearance is generic, usually appearing in a plain shirt and jeans. This was to make him seem like an "ordinary guy". Throughout the series, he has various romantic interests. In the first game, there is tension between him and Elena Fisher
, a reporter filming a documentary on his findings. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Drake enters an affair with his crime partner Chloe Frazer
. However, by the end of the game, he has become involved with Elena.
voices Elena, and also acted as her motion capture
performer. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, she can be controlled during one sequence, where she fires a grenade launcher
from the back of a personal water craft
. She appears in all of the three video games in the series: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.
Elena is a professional journalist, who first focuses on documentary
work, and then moves into news broadcast. In the first video game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Elena follows Drake, filming a documentary on his archaeological findings. Her network has instructed her to film him while he raises the coffin of Sir Francis Drake from the bottom of the ocean, which he locates from coordinates on a family heirloom ring he wears around his neck. After she and Drake are attacked by pirates (Drake fought them off), he abandons her and leaves with Victor Sullivan to find the lost treasure of El Dorado. Despite Drake's attempts, Elena manages to find him, but when they attempt to fly to another location, they are shot down by anti-aircraft warfare
. They meet up with Sullivan, who they thought had been killed. After discovering that the statue is cursed, Drake must stop Gabriel Roman from using its power, and save Elena in the process. After doing so, Elena, Drake, and Sullivan drive off into the sunset a boat loaded with several small boxes of treasure In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Elena happens across him in Nepal
. Elena now acts as an investigative journalist; she and her cameraman Jeff are attempting to prove that war criminal Lazarevic is alive, contrary to the beliefs of the United Nations
. After Lazarevic executes her cameraman, she manages to escape with Drake. She goes ahead of him to a village in Tibet
, where she meets Karl Schäfer, a German who had led a Schutzstaffel expedition to Shambhala. Drake and Elena track Lazaravic to a monastery, where they find the entrance to Shambhala. Once inside, they discover that the monsters Drake has been seeing in the area are guardians of the city. Lazaravic apprehends them, but they escape when the guardians attack. Drake confronts Lazaravic at the Tree of Life, the sap of which comprises the Cintamani stone. Drake wounds Lazaravic, leaving the guardians to kill him, but Elena almost dies in the process. When she recuperates, the two return to the village and begin a relationship.
Naughty Dog designed Elena as a sidekick and a romantic interest to Drake, and her personality to complement his. However, she proves just as capable as Drake at gun battles and resourcefulness. Her voice actor commented, "In the first game, she's a lot younger, she's a lot more naive, and she looks at things as being very possible, and in the second (game), has seen murders and adventure...the way that any person grows, you see that in her. She's a little bit more hesitant, a little more cynical". Commentators have mentioned how unusually strong and resilient Fisher is for a female character, and GamesRadar
UK called her one of the strongest heroines in video gaming.
for him. Richard McGonagle
voices Sullivan for all three games in the series but appears only briefly in the second. Sullivan first appears near the beginning of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune when he rescues Drake and Elena from a pirate attack at sea with his seaplane
. Sullivan and Drake quickly abandon Elena, using a map found in the coffin of Francis Drake to hunt down the treasure of El Dorado. After discovering that the Spanish
had removed the statue centuries before, the two come across a U-boat
in the middle of the jungle. There, Gabriel Roman takes Sullivan hostage, eventually shooting him. Though presumed dead, Sullivan shows up later, and Drake must rescue him from a group of mercenaries, who are forcing him to help them find the statue. Sullivan manages to mislead his captors, allowing he and Drake to escape. The two realize that the statue is cursed, and Sullivan provides covering fire for Drake as he goes to stop Navarro, one of Roman's henchmen, from taking to statue to sell as a biological weapon. After Drake succeeds, Sullivan arrives in a boat full of several boxes of treasure, and picks up Drake and Elena. He appears briefly near the beginning of the 2009 video game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. He first shows up to bail Drake out of jail, using the remainder of his fortune and some of his own money to bribe officials into doing so. Afterward, the two go after war criminal Lazarevic in Borneo
. After destroying the base there, he is not seen again until the final cutscene of the game. He also appears as a playable character in the multiplayer mode of the game.
Sullivan is a business partner of Drake's. He was meant to act, not only as a partner, but as a mentor to the main character, and to provide insight into his criminal activities. In both games, Sullivan wears a bowling-style shirt, dockers pants, and chews on a cigar wherever he goes. He is constantly in enormous debt, but is likable enough to pull people into investing in his ventures.
voiced the character. Black's interactions with Drake's voice actor Nolan North played a large role in developing the character. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Frazer begins as a business associate of Drake and Harry Flynn when a benefactor hires the group to steal an oil lamp from a Turkish
museum. When Flynn betrays Drake, he ends up in a Turkish jail, and Frazer must bail him out. She then begins traveling with Flynn and Lazarevic, and discovers that they are after the fabled city of Shambhala
and the Cintamani stone, seeking immortality. Acting as a double agent within Lazarevic's group, she helps defeat his army in Shambhala.
Series writer Amy Hennig
designed Frazer to act as a foil to Drake, as such, she acts to highlight various parts of his personality. She contrasts to other main characters, and is essentially a darker version of Drake, and the "bad girl" version of Elena. Frazer is a professional thief, and often acts impulsively. She looks out for her self above all other people. She is a strong female character, and is very sexually forward compared to other women in video games. Tom Cross of Gamasutra
commented that she was perhaps a first in video games as a confident woman every bit the equal of the lead male character.
provided the voice and motion capture work for the character. At first, he is the lieutenant of Gabriel Roman, and helps him hold Sullivan and Drake hostage. He follows Roman to an island in search of El Dorado. When Roman finally has the statue, Navarro reveals that he has planned to double-cross him the whole time. He convinces Roman to open the statue, fully aware of the zombification effects it will have on the man; after that, he kills him with a gunshot to the head. Navarro plans to take the statue and sell it as a biological weapon. When Navarro airlifts the statue out by helicopter, Drake follows, and a gun battle between the two ensues. During the fight, Drake is disarmed, and pushes the statue into the ocean, the rope and netting used to airlift the statue wraps around Navarro's ankle, and he is dragged to his death. Navarro uses a SAS-12 shotgun with a laser as his main weapon.
. Roman first arrives while Drake and Sullivan are exploring the wreckage of a Kriegsmarine
U-boat beached in the Amazon Rainforest
. Roman, leader of a group of pirates and mercenaries, has loaned Sullivan a large sum of money in the past. Sullivan had called him, assuring him that he would soon find "something big", and then have the money to pay Roman back. Roman, however, decides to steal the information that Drake and Sullivan have gathered and find the treasure for himself. To force Drake into compliance, Roman holds Sullivan hostage, and eventually shoots him, nearly fatally. Roman discovers the directions to El Dorado, but fails to capture Fisher and Drake.
Roman forces Sullivan to work with him in finding the treasure. Despite numerous warnings that the treasure and the island are haunted, Roman continues to use his men in search of the treasure. Roman captures Fisher, but Drake and Sullivan catch up to him, just in time to see Roman about to leave with the statue. However, Navaro tells Roman the real treasure is inside the statue. Roman opens the statue to collect the riches inside. As soon as Roman does, he is cursed and zombified. Navarro shoots Roman in the head, revealing that he intended to sell the statue as a weapon the whole time.
Raja again encounters Drake during Eye of Indra, where Drake enlists his help in stealing the valuable Eye of Indra from Daniel Pinkerton. In Drake's Fortune, Eddy is the leader of a gang of pirates hired by Gabriel Roman. Raja helps Roman capture Drake, though he and Elena escape. After large numbers of his men begin mysteriously dying, Raja becomes convinced that the island is cursed, and tries to convince Roman to stop looking for the treasure. When he does so, Roman accuses him of cowardice and fires him; Raja pulls a gun on Roman, but is stopped by Navarro. Raja is next seen looking for the treasure himself, and tries to have Drake killed one last time by sending the last of his men after him and Fisher. When Drake and Fisher find the room where El Dorado is supposedly located, they are followed by Eddy and his last surviving pirate, running from a large number of cursed Spaniards. He and Drake briefly work together to fight the creatures while Elena tried to find a way out for them, but Raja is dragged down a hole but his fate is unknown for now.His famous line is "Don't mess with Eddy Raja!"
. He is a homicidal terrorist and Serbia
n war criminal. The majority of the world believes him dead after a bombing, but he survives with half of his face scarred. Lazarevic pays Flynn to betray Drake, tricking him into giving Flynn information on the location of Marco Polo's lost fleet and causing Drake's arrest. In reality, Lazarevic wants to possess the mythical Cintamani Stone, which the fleet was supposedly transporting. He discovers that the fleet never had the stone, and dispatches a group of mercenaries to Nepal
for clues to the location of the legendary city of Shambhala. He incites a civil war in the region to aid in his search and distract from any possible discovery. In Nepal, Lazarevic personally executes Fisher's cameraman Jeff, and follows Drake after he discovers the location of Shambhala's entrance. Lazarevic invades the small Tibetan village harboring Drake, seeking the key to reveal Shambhala. He kidnaps Schäfer and forces him to reveal the general area of the entrance. When Drake and Fisher follow, Lazarevic apprehends them and forces Drake to reveal the entrance to Shambhala. There, he drinks the sap of the Cintamani Stone, which is made of the sap of the Tree of Life. He battles Drake with his newfound powers, but is defeated by the guardians of Shambhala and assumingly killed when the temple fell apart. Lazarevic uses a sawed-off shotgun as his main weapon.
. In the second game, he approaches Drake, convincing him to help steal an oil lamp from a Turkish museum for a wealthy client. The two, along with Frazer, plan to keep the lamp for themselves, believing it will lead to the location of Marco Polo's lost fleet and the treasures it holds. In reality, Flynn is working for Lavarevic, and betrays Drake, taking the location coordinates and landing Drake in prison. He then works with Lazarevic in searching for the Cintamani Stone. When Lazarevic apprehends Drake, he has Flynn force him to find the location of the entrance to Shambhala. There, Lazarevic and his men, Flynn, Drake and company are attacked by the Guardians, where Flynn is gravely wounded due to a gunshot wound. Flynn ultimately commits suicide while attempting to blow up Drake but severely wounds Fisher with a grenade
. Naughty Dog used the dialog in the game to hint at the relationship between Drake and Flynn, but desired ambiguity regarding the exact nature of their past dealings, and to show what Drake could have become. Flynn mainly served to hint at the darker past where Drake performed less heroic activities. Flynn was not written as a British character; the casting of a British actor was mere coincidence.
(but is credited just as "Serbian Soldier". Lt. Draza was first seen with Lazarevic, when they met(for the first time)' face to face with Nate. Lazarevic gave him the Phurba
from Nate. Later, when Chloe was taken to the train
by Flynn, Nate tried to save her, but Draza was in charge of the train and fought against Nate, but was defeated by Nate, who took back the Phurba. However Draza woke up and try to kill Nate, but was shot dead by Chloe. According to some articles, Draza and Lazarevic knew each other a long time ago. He uses a M4
carbine rifle as his main weapon.
provides his voice. Pinkerton is an American who has become a crime boss in Indonesia
. Pinkerton hires Drake, who is seeking the funds to raise the coffin of Francis Drake, to find the valuable Eye of Indra. After discovering that Pinkerton has unknowingly had the Eye in his safe the whole time, Drake attempts to retrieve it by raiding Pinkerton's home. Pinkerton captures Drake, and tortures him when he refuses to reveal the treasure's location. When Drake eventually reveals the location of the Eye of Indra, Rika Raja shoots and kills Pinkerton, and the two take the Eye of Indra for themselves.
. Marlowe is the coldly calculating leader of a secret society whose roots date back over four hundred years to the court of Queen Elizabeth I. She has a long-standing rivalry with Nathan Drake over Sir Francis Drake’s ring – something they both contend is rightfully theirs and is also the key to an ancient mystery. Katherine Marlowe is a much more cerebral enemy than Drake has confronted in the past, using both psychological and physical tactics to get what she is after. Marlowe also has the assistance of her team of highly-trained agents in this secret society – they are far more elusive and dangerous than the hired guns Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan have faced before. Marlowe appears to have studied Nathan's past and reveals that he's not actually the direct decedent of Sir Francis Drake-he merely was in an orphanage named after the great explorer. She first meets a teenage Drake in Columbia, forcing him to give he the Cipher disk he had just stolen from a museum to her but fails to get Sir Francis Drakes ring when he runs off. Twenty years later, she meets with Drake in an Alleyway and steals his ring. However, she soon discovers it's a fake and promptly loses both the disc and the ring when Drakes associates steal both and makes a spectacular escape from her London headquarters. Marlowe then sends Talbot and her agents to France and Syria and successfully gets the clues to the Iram of the pillars. She then captures Nate and Sully and leaves for the lost city. Nathan eventually finds her using a winch to drag out King Solomon's hallucinogenic Talisman from the lakes in Iram of the Pillars and destroys the foundations of the city, causing Marlowe to fall into a pool of quicksand. She goads Drake to save her, asking if he can earn his surname but is promptly consumed by the quicksand.
. He is the one who hired Charlie Cutter to provide security for the deal in the first level. He has a rivaly with Nathan Drake
and according to the developers acts as the "anti-Drake", with similar looks and abilities. He is the secondery antagonist. Talbot is seen almost every time with Marlowe, and later ordering Cutter to shoot Nate and Sully.Despite being normal sized, he is an extremely dangerous hand to hand combatant, being able to throw Nathan Drake through a window with one hand and use a combat knife with high proficiency in his final confrontation with Drake and Sully in the disintegrating Iram of Pillars. He also has a special weapon: a dart gun loaded with a special drug which grants him some hypnotic influence over people (he uses it to make Charlie Cutter disarm himself). He appears to care deeply for Marlowe, begging Nathan to save her from being consumed by the quicksand in the Iram of the pillars, and is driven mad when Drake fails. He tries to murder Drake on top of a collapsing cliff overlooking the Iram of the pillars but is briefly distracted by Sully who shoots him in the shoulder with a Walther P99. He is then finally killed by Drake who puts several bullets into him before he can flatten Sully's skull with a rock, and plummet to his dead.
. At the time of his appearance, he has been living in the village for 70 years. During World War II
, he had led an Ahnenerbe
expedition to find the entrance of Shambhala. However, afraid of what the Nazis would do with the power found in the Cintamani Stone, Schäfer shot and killed all of the members of the expedition but himself.
When first met, Schäfer sends Drake to look for the Cintamani Stone, after explaining what the jewel can do. While he is gone, Lazarevic invades the village and kidnaps Schäfer, and uses him to tell him where the entrance to Shambala is. Shäfer dies of his wounds following his capture, not before he told to Nate and Elena that they need to stop Lazarevic and Flynn.
. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Pema Dhondup provided the voice and Robin Atkin Downes
did the motion capture work. When Drake first wakes up, Tenzin leads him to Fisher and Schäfer. He is a Sherpa
guide who leads Drake through the mountain passes surrounding the area. There, he helps Drake through various challenges that require more than one person to pass. Despite acting as a guide, Tenzin cannot speak any English
. After returning, Drake and Tenzin find that the village has come under attack by Lazarevic.
The developers felt that the sequences involving Tenzin leading Drake through the cave systems, and then seeing his village burning, would create an emotionally moving experience for the player.
Tenzin has a daughter named Pema.
,were they team up to find Shambala. after Nate and Chloe investigate a Temple with clues as to where the location of Shambala are , they return to find Jeff injured by a bullet wound to the abdomen , Nate escorted by Chloe and Elena , take Jeff to safety ,in the process they are caught and Lazarevic kills Jeff by shooting him in the head.
. While she never appears in any of the one-player campaign games, she can be purchased as a skin for the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves multiplayer mode. She is voiced by Gwendoline Yeo
in the motion comics. Rika saves Nathan's life from two thugs that get in a fight with him in her bar. She then decides to help Drake on his mission to steal the Eye of Indra from Daniel Pinkerton. She double crosses Nathan as well as Eddy leaving with the Eye of Indra. She is the younger sister of Eddy Raja.
. First appearing to be one of Marlowe's employee's, he is revealed to be one of Drake's associates, helping them in the first part of the game with finding the clues to the Iram of Pillars. He's extremely loyal to Drake, asking for a gun to hold off Marlowe and Talbot while the other's escape. He's injured when jumping off a tower in Syria and tells Nate to Stop Marlowe or he'll never forgive him. Despite looking like a blunt, common thug, he appears to be well educated, quoting John Stienbeck's Of Mice and Men and correcting Sully's mistake when quoting Macbeth. He is voiced by Graham McTavish
.
. After Drake defeats the hemchmen in the desert ghost town, Salim comes to him on horseback and helps him escape. After Drake was rescued, Salim tells him that the Atlantis of the Sands is a dangerous place and that Marlow cannot enter because of the deadly powers within. Drake believes that she could use these powers to contol others through fear and that it was not treasure they were after. When Sully is rescued, Salim brings both of them to the open desert where the Atlantis of the Sands is located. Salim heads off and gets separated from Drake and Sully because of the heavy sandstorm. After Talbot is defeated and the pillars collapse, Salim appears in time to save them.
.
.
praised the characters of the Uncharted series for their growth and development, calling them strong characters. He also noted what he found as superior voice work and chemistry between the actors. He commended series writer Hennig for never having the characters say anything unnecessary that did not add to the relationships in the game. GameZone
called the characters "endearing", "charming", and "unforgettable", and claimed that they had more personality than characters in most other video games. Ryan Clements of IGN praised the acting, claiming it brought a lifelike quality to the characters. He went on, "the sexual tension, detailed character expression, natural voice acting and charming dialogue make... cutscenes a supreme treat to watch." Jeff Haynes said that the game was anchored by the strong characters.
Ellie Gibson of Eurogamer
said that the characters were easy to sympathize with because they were so realistic. Edge
claimed the characters "sizzle with zip and pith", and praised the believable interactions between them. Ars Technica
called the characters "oddly human" when discussing their realism. Ars Technica's Ben Kuchera also gave the voice acting high marks, claiming it set a new bar for video game voice acting. Johnny Minkley of Eurogamer claimed simply that players will care about the fate of all the characters in the series.
Tom Cross of Gamasutra
commented that the characters in the Uncharted series were some of the few in video games to portray human sexuality
realistically. However, he complained that the roles were predictable when compared to other fictional movie and television roles. He criticized, "while Among Thieves creates interesting, fun characters, it still pigeon holes them into stock character story arcs: the good girl, the guy who will become good, and the bad girl, who is allowed to be sexually suggestive because the plot will ultimately remove her as a viable partner for the ultimately good guy." Peadar Grogan of Edge commended the series for including strong female characters. Chris Roper of IGN stated that the characters of Uncharted are all unpredictable, and have a high level of character development. Andrew Reiner of Game Informer
found this exploration of character emotion integral to the series story development. The character acting in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves received two nominations at the 13th Interactive Achievement Awards, for the acting of North as Drake and Black as Frazer.
Uncharted
Uncharted is an award-winning series of action-adventure/platform/third-person shooter video games developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment exclusively for the PlayStation 3 video game console. The series follows modern-day treasure hunter Nathan "Nate" Drake as he...
series, created by video game developer
Video game developer
A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...
Naughty Dog
Naughty Dog
Naughty Dog, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1986 as an independent developer, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001...
, features many characters. The series includes two video games: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an action-adventure platform third-person shooter video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. It is the sequel to the 2007 game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. It was first shown and announced on December 1, 2008...
, and the motion comic
Motion comic
A motion comic is a form of comics combining elements of print comic books and animation.-History:The earliest examples of motion comics are found in independent creations such as Broken Saints....
Uncharted: Eye of Indra. It primarily focuses on the exploits of treasure hunter Nathan Drake
Nathan Drake (character)
Nathan "Nate" Drake is the fictional protagonist of the Uncharted video game series, developed by Naughty Dog. He is a playable character in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and appears in the motion comic prequel...
and his associates as they hunt down various mystical items. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, he must stop a group of mercenaries from collecting a cursed golden idol known as "El Dorado" and using it as a biological weapon. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, he races a homicidal war criminal to find the powerful Cintamani Stone. In the prequel comic Uncharted: Eye of Indra, he works for an Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n crime lord in order to get the money needed to raise the coffin of his relative Sir Francis Drake.
Nathan Drake is the primary playable character and protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
of the series. He has a shady past, in which he associated with a number of thieves and black market salesmen in order to obtain various valuable items. The development team sought to make him a generally average and likable character. He is accompanied by a number of characters, including his longtime friend, associate, and mentor Victor Sullivan
Victor Sullivan
Victor "Sully" Sullivan is a protagonist from the Uncharted video game franchise. He is voiced by Richard McGonagle, who also did the motion capture for the character. In the games, he is a friend and mentor to Nathan Drake, the main series protagonist. He is a man with large debts and a criminal...
. He has two love interests in the series. The first is Elena Fisher
Elena Fisher
Elena Fisher is one of the protagonists of the Uncharted series created by developer Naughty Dog. Fisher appears in all the three video games in the series: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. While not a playable character, Fisher acts as...
, a reporter who fights alongside him in both video games. Though Drake eventually begins a serious relationship with Fisher, he becomes involved with fellow thief Chloe Frazer
Chloe Frazer
Chloe Frazer is a fictional character in the Uncharted series, and serves as a female protagonist of the 2009 video game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Frazer was designed to provide a darker counterpart to main series protagonist Nathan Drake, and to highlight these facets of his personality. She is...
before this. Each different installment of the series has a different antagonist who dies at the end of the work. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Gabriel Roman is an acquaintance to whom Sullivan owes a large sum of money; he goes after El Dorado once Sullivan tells him that he has found something of great value. He is eventually killed by his second-in-command Atoq Navarro, who steals the idol to sell its cursing abilities as a biological weapon. Navarro drowns when El Dorado falls into the ocean, dragging him with it. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Zoran Lazarevic is a Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n war criminal, thought dead, who seeks power by consuming the Cintamani Stone, located in the fabled city of Shambhala
Shambhala
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala or Shangri-la is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia...
. He reaches his goal, but before becoming all-powerful, Drake wounds him using the sap of the Tree of Life
Tree of Life
The tree of life in the Book of Genesis is a tree planted by God in midst of the Garden of Eden , whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. Together with the tree of life, God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . According to some scholars, however, these are in fact...
, and leaves him for the guardians of Shambhala to kill. Finally, in Uncharted: Eye of Indra, Daniel Pinkerton hires Drake to find the Eye of Indra treasure, but Drake conspires to steal it from him. Another associate of Drake's, Rika Raja, shoots and kills Pinkerton in his house. The series contains other characters who either aid or try to kill Drake.
A team at Naughty Dog designed the character appearances, and Amy Hennig
Amy Hennig
Amy Hennig is a video game director and script writer currently employed by video game company Naughty Dog. She began her work in the industry on the Nintendo Entertainment System, with her design debut on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City...
was the main writer of their personalities and mannerisms. The voice actors were given considerable license to improvise the lines and influence character personality, and also performed the motion capture
Motion capture
Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics...
work for their characters. Many of the characters were meant to highlight different aspects of Drake's personality. Reception to the characters in the series have been fairly positive, with most commentators focusing on the believable nature of the characters and their interactions with each other. The inclusion of strong female characters has also received praise, though one commentator pointed out that the women still fall into cliché roles. The voice acting has also received acclaim, including two Interactive Achievement Award nominations.
Creation and conception
Illustrator and designer Kory Heinzen worked on pre-visualization and concept design for many of the characters in the Uncharted series. Early on, the Naughty DogNaughty Dog
Naughty Dog, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1986 as an independent developer, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001...
development team drew a number of concept sketches
Concept art
Concept art is a form of illustration where the main goal is to convey a visual representation of a design, idea, and/or mood for use in films, video games, animation, or comic books before it is put into the final product. Concept art is also referred to as visual development and/or concept design...
depicting characters hanging from cliffs and handling weapons awkwardly; many of these concepts directly translated into the final character products. The more fluid character motions were improvised on a motion capture
Motion capture
Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics...
stage, and were not scripted or drawn beforehand. Amy Hennig
Amy Hennig
Amy Hennig is a video game director and script writer currently employed by video game company Naughty Dog. She began her work in the industry on the Nintendo Entertainment System, with her design debut on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City...
, the series writer, designed the character's personalities and mannerisms. The production team sought to capture a certain tone in the character design, and closely studied the pulp adventure genre for inspiration. This included drawing characteristics from Tintin
Tintin (character)
Tintin is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. Tintin is the protagonist of the series, a reporter and adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy....
, Doc Savage
Doc Savage
Doc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L...
, and a number of movies. They tried to contrast with other western games, which lead game designer Richard Lemarchand described as "overwrought and all a bit emo."
The game developers and animators worked closely together to ensure that the expressions and movements of the characters matched with the desired tone of the games. The character designs were kept intentionally simple, as the designers wanted character personality defined by actor performances, rather than "trinkets attached to the character model." Focus was instead placed on a realism in the animation to highlight character humanity. A blended animation system developed especially for the game allowed one character animation to begin before the previous one had ended, aiding this realism. The ultimate goal was to make the characters react as if they were real people in a realistic world. To accomplish this, many of the character reactions were conveyed through facial expressions and body language
Body language
Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously....
rather than explicit dialog.
Hennig believes character emotion grew from the "production of the game as if it were a traditional movie or stage play." The two lead actors were cast because of their experience on stage and film works. The cast had a large role in developing the characters. They were allowed to ad-lib
Ad libitum
Ad libitum is Latin for "at one's pleasure"; it is often shortened to "ad lib" or "ad-lib"...
dialog and participate in revising the script. The actors also read lines together on a sound stage, allowing them to play off of one another and organically grow the character relationships. Both games used the same actors for both motion capture and voice acting
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
. The actors did a number of read-through
Read-through
The read-through, table-read, or table work is a stage of film and theatre production when an organized reading around a table of the screenplay or script by the actors with speaking parts is conducted....
s and practiced to get the motions correct before capturing.
Naughty Dog consciously avoided action game stereotypes, including super-powered heroes and overly sexualized female characters. They included a large cast of characters to ensure that the story was character-driven rather than story-driven. Co-president of Naughty Dog Evan Wells stated, "I honestly think that the key element, if you really want to boil it down, is characters. People will tell a story, but if it's not a character-driven plot then you are missing something." Many of these characters were specifically designed to highlight different facets of Nathan Drake's personality.
Nathan Drake
Nathan "Nate" Drake is the main protagonist of the Uncharted series. Nolan NorthNolan North
Nolan Ramsey North is an American actor and voice actor born in New Haven, Connecticut. He has been described as "the nearest thing the games industry has to a bona fide leading man."-Biography:...
voices Drake and had considerable influence in the development of the character, mixing his personality with Drake's. Drake is a playable character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
in the two video games of the series: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an action-adventure platform third-person shooter video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. It is the sequel to the 2007 game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. It was first shown and announced on December 1, 2008...
, and the lead character in the motion comic
Motion comic
A motion comic is a form of comics combining elements of print comic books and animation.-History:The earliest examples of motion comics are found in independent creations such as Broken Saints....
Uncharted: Eye of Indra.
Drake is depicted as a professional treasure hunter
Treasure hunting
Treasure hunting is the physical search for treasure which has been a notable human activity for millennia. -In modern times:In recent times, the early stages of the development of archaeology included a significant aspect of treasure hunt; Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Troy, and later at...
with a shady background involving various people from the underground illegal goods market. He is a very intelligent man, self-educated in history and various languages, and a supposed descendant of Sir Francis Drake. In the first two games, he seeks a mythical treasure. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, he uses the diary of Francis Drake to track the mythical El Dorado
El Dorado
El Dorado is the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into a highland lake.Later it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold" that has fascinated – and so far eluded – explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors...
to a small island in the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
. He and his partner Victor Sullivan
Victor Sullivan
Victor "Sully" Sullivan is a protagonist from the Uncharted video game franchise. He is voiced by Richard McGonagle, who also did the motion capture for the character. In the games, he is a friend and mentor to Nathan Drake, the main series protagonist. He is a man with large debts and a criminal...
discover that El Dorado is actually a large golden statue that curses those who attempt to steal it. Drake must stop pirates led first by Gabriel Roman, and later Atoq Navarro, from using the statue's power to turn people into zombie
Zombie
Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
s as a weapon. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, he is hired to steal an oil lamp from a museum that might point to the location of Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
's lost fleet. When his employer betrays him, Drake sets out to stop war criminal Zoran Lazarevic from discovering the location of Shambhala
Shambhala
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala or Shangri-la is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia...
and the mystical Cintamani Stone. Drake tracks him to a monastery, where he discovers the entrance to Shambhala. Lazarevic locates and consumes part of the Tree of Life
Tree of Life
The tree of life in the Book of Genesis is a tree planted by God in midst of the Garden of Eden , whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. Together with the tree of life, God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . According to some scholars, however, these are in fact...
, but is killed by Drake and the guardians of Shambhala.
Naughty Dog gave Drake a very strong personality, as they did not want him to act blandly. He often thinks out loud, and comments on the absurdity of his situations, a tendency Matt Casamassina
Matt Casamassina
Matt Casamassina is a video game journalist who worked for IGN until April 23, 2010. In his time at the site, he was the author of many reviews and previews of Nintendo games. He resides in Los Angeles, California, is married and has two daughters, Zoe and Fiona Jade, and a son named Rocco Archer...
of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
called "lighthearted and amusing". Drake's appearance is generic, usually appearing in a plain shirt and jeans. This was to make him seem like an "ordinary guy". Throughout the series, he has various romantic interests. In the first game, there is tension between him and Elena Fisher
Elena Fisher
Elena Fisher is one of the protagonists of the Uncharted series created by developer Naughty Dog. Fisher appears in all the three video games in the series: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. While not a playable character, Fisher acts as...
, a reporter filming a documentary on his findings. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Drake enters an affair with his crime partner Chloe Frazer
Chloe Frazer
Chloe Frazer is a fictional character in the Uncharted series, and serves as a female protagonist of the 2009 video game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Frazer was designed to provide a darker counterpart to main series protagonist Nathan Drake, and to highlight these facets of his personality. She is...
. However, by the end of the game, he has become involved with Elena.
Elena Fisher
Elena Fisher is a recurring and an occasionally playable character. Emily RoseEmily Rose (actress)
Emily Rose Maier is an American actress. She is best known for her lead role in the Syfy TV series Haven .-Early life:...
voices Elena, and also acted as her motion capture
Motion capture
Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics...
performer. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, she can be controlled during one sequence, where she fires a grenade launcher
Grenade launcher
A grenade launcher or grenade discharger is a weapon that launches a grenade with more accuracy, higher velocity, and to greater distances than a soldier could throw it by hand....
from the back of a personal water craft
Personal water craft
A personal water craft , also called water scooter, is a recreational watercraft that the rider rides or stands on, rather than inside of, as in a boat....
. She appears in all of the three video games in the series: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.
Elena is a professional journalist, who first focuses on documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
work, and then moves into news broadcast. In the first video game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Elena follows Drake, filming a documentary on his archaeological findings. Her network has instructed her to film him while he raises the coffin of Sir Francis Drake from the bottom of the ocean, which he locates from coordinates on a family heirloom ring he wears around his neck. After she and Drake are attacked by pirates (Drake fought them off), he abandons her and leaves with Victor Sullivan to find the lost treasure of El Dorado. Despite Drake's attempts, Elena manages to find him, but when they attempt to fly to another location, they are shot down by anti-aircraft warfare
Anti-aircraft warfare
NATO defines air defence as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground and air based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures. It may be to protect naval, ground and air forces...
. They meet up with Sullivan, who they thought had been killed. After discovering that the statue is cursed, Drake must stop Gabriel Roman from using its power, and save Elena in the process. After doing so, Elena, Drake, and Sullivan drive off into the sunset a boat loaded with several small boxes of treasure In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Elena happens across him in Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
. Elena now acts as an investigative journalist; she and her cameraman Jeff are attempting to prove that war criminal Lazarevic is alive, contrary to the beliefs of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. After Lazarevic executes her cameraman, she manages to escape with Drake. She goes ahead of him to a village in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
, where she meets Karl Schäfer, a German who had led a Schutzstaffel expedition to Shambhala. Drake and Elena track Lazaravic to a monastery, where they find the entrance to Shambhala. Once inside, they discover that the monsters Drake has been seeing in the area are guardians of the city. Lazaravic apprehends them, but they escape when the guardians attack. Drake confronts Lazaravic at the Tree of Life, the sap of which comprises the Cintamani stone. Drake wounds Lazaravic, leaving the guardians to kill him, but Elena almost dies in the process. When she recuperates, the two return to the village and begin a relationship.
Naughty Dog designed Elena as a sidekick and a romantic interest to Drake, and her personality to complement his. However, she proves just as capable as Drake at gun battles and resourcefulness. Her voice actor commented, "In the first game, she's a lot younger, she's a lot more naive, and she looks at things as being very possible, and in the second (game), has seen murders and adventure...the way that any person grows, you see that in her. She's a little bit more hesitant, a little more cynical". Commentators have mentioned how unusually strong and resilient Fisher is for a female character, and GamesRadar
GamesRadar
GamesRadar is a multi-format video game website featuring regular news, previews, reviews, videos, and guides. It is owned and operated simultaneously in the UK and US by worldwide publisher Future Publishing...
UK called her one of the strongest heroines in video gaming.
Victor "Sully" Sullivan
Victor "Sully" Sullivan is the longtime partner of Nathan Drake, and a treasure hunter as well. Sullivan has mentored Drake for some time, and is a father figureFather Figure
"Father Figure" is the U.S. number-one song written and performed by George Michael and released on Columbia Records in 1988 as the third single from the album Faith.-History:...
for him. Richard McGonagle
Richard McGonagle
Richard Francis McGonagle is an American actor and voice actor.McGonagle was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Hildagard Virginia and William Francis McGonagle....
voices Sullivan for all three games in the series but appears only briefly in the second. Sullivan first appears near the beginning of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune when he rescues Drake and Elena from a pirate attack at sea with his seaplane
Seaplane
A seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are a subclass called amphibian aircraft...
. Sullivan and Drake quickly abandon Elena, using a map found in the coffin of Francis Drake to hunt down the treasure of El Dorado. After discovering that the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
had removed the statue centuries before, the two come across a U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
in the middle of the jungle. There, Gabriel Roman takes Sullivan hostage, eventually shooting him. Though presumed dead, Sullivan shows up later, and Drake must rescue him from a group of mercenaries, who are forcing him to help them find the statue. Sullivan manages to mislead his captors, allowing he and Drake to escape. The two realize that the statue is cursed, and Sullivan provides covering fire for Drake as he goes to stop Navarro, one of Roman's henchmen, from taking to statue to sell as a biological weapon. After Drake succeeds, Sullivan arrives in a boat full of several boxes of treasure, and picks up Drake and Elena. He appears briefly near the beginning of the 2009 video game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. He first shows up to bail Drake out of jail, using the remainder of his fortune and some of his own money to bribe officials into doing so. Afterward, the two go after war criminal Lazarevic in Borneo
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
. After destroying the base there, he is not seen again until the final cutscene of the game. He also appears as a playable character in the multiplayer mode of the game.
Sullivan is a business partner of Drake's. He was meant to act, not only as a partner, but as a mentor to the main character, and to provide insight into his criminal activities. In both games, Sullivan wears a bowling-style shirt, dockers pants, and chews on a cigar wherever he goes. He is constantly in enormous debt, but is likable enough to pull people into investing in his ventures.
Chloe Frazer
Chloe Frazer is a love interest for Nathan Drake. She appears in the second video game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, where Claudia BlackClaudia Black
Claudia Lee Black is an Australian actress and voice actor, known for her portrayals of Aeryn Sun in the science fiction television series Farscape, Vala Mal Doran in the science fiction series Stargate SG-1, Chloe Frazer in the Uncharted series, the witch Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins and...
voiced the character. Black's interactions with Drake's voice actor Nolan North played a large role in developing the character. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Frazer begins as a business associate of Drake and Harry Flynn when a benefactor hires the group to steal an oil lamp from a Turkish
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
museum. When Flynn betrays Drake, he ends up in a Turkish jail, and Frazer must bail him out. She then begins traveling with Flynn and Lazarevic, and discovers that they are after the fabled city of Shambhala
Shambhala
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala or Shangri-la is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia...
and the Cintamani stone, seeking immortality. Acting as a double agent within Lazarevic's group, she helps defeat his army in Shambhala.
Series writer Amy Hennig
Amy Hennig
Amy Hennig is a video game director and script writer currently employed by video game company Naughty Dog. She began her work in the industry on the Nintendo Entertainment System, with her design debut on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City...
designed Frazer to act as a foil to Drake, as such, she acts to highlight various parts of his personality. She contrasts to other main characters, and is essentially a darker version of Drake, and the "bad girl" version of Elena. Frazer is a professional thief, and often acts impulsively. She looks out for her self above all other people. She is a strong female character, and is very sexually forward compared to other women in video games. Tom Cross of Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
commented that she was perhaps a first in video games as a confident woman every bit the equal of the lead male character.
Atoq Navarro
Atoq Navarro is the main antagonist and the final boss battle of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Robin Atkin DownesRobin Atkin Downes
Born in London, England, Robin Atkin Downes is an English actor who is one of the most prolific voice-over actors in Los Angeles. He is well known for his work in film, television and voice acting...
provided the voice and motion capture work for the character. At first, he is the lieutenant of Gabriel Roman, and helps him hold Sullivan and Drake hostage. He follows Roman to an island in search of El Dorado. When Roman finally has the statue, Navarro reveals that he has planned to double-cross him the whole time. He convinces Roman to open the statue, fully aware of the zombification effects it will have on the man; after that, he kills him with a gunshot to the head. Navarro plans to take the statue and sell it as a biological weapon. When Navarro airlifts the statue out by helicopter, Drake follows, and a gun battle between the two ensues. During the fight, Drake is disarmed, and pushes the statue into the ocean, the rope and netting used to airlift the statue wraps around Navarro's ankle, and he is dragged to his death. Navarro uses a SAS-12 shotgun with a laser as his main weapon.
Gabriel Roman
Gabriel Roman is one of the main antagonists of the first video game in the series, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. He is voiced by Simon TemplemanSimon Templeman
Simon Templeman is an English voice actor known for his role as Kain in the video game series "Legacy of Kain", and as Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir in Dragon Age: Origins. He is also known as Simon Templeton. He is married to character actress Rosalind Chao with whom he has a son and daughter.- Animated...
. Roman first arrives while Drake and Sullivan are exploring the wreckage of a Kriegsmarine
Kriegsmarine
The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...
U-boat beached in the Amazon Rainforest
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
. Roman, leader of a group of pirates and mercenaries, has loaned Sullivan a large sum of money in the past. Sullivan had called him, assuring him that he would soon find "something big", and then have the money to pay Roman back. Roman, however, decides to steal the information that Drake and Sullivan have gathered and find the treasure for himself. To force Drake into compliance, Roman holds Sullivan hostage, and eventually shoots him, nearly fatally. Roman discovers the directions to El Dorado, but fails to capture Fisher and Drake.
Roman forces Sullivan to work with him in finding the treasure. Despite numerous warnings that the treasure and the island are haunted, Roman continues to use his men in search of the treasure. Roman captures Fisher, but Drake and Sullivan catch up to him, just in time to see Roman about to leave with the statue. However, Navaro tells Roman the real treasure is inside the statue. Roman opens the statue to collect the riches inside. As soon as Roman does, he is cursed and zombified. Navarro shoots Roman in the head, revealing that he intended to sell the statue as a weapon the whole time.
Eddy Raja
Eddy Raja is a character who appears in the first video game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, as an antagonist, and then the motion comic Uncharted: Eye of Indra as one of the main protagonists. Voiced by James Sie, he is a longtime rival of Drake. Raja first met Drake before the events of Uncharted: Eye of Indra, where they worked together on a job. Drake double-crossed him, however, and Eddy continues to hold a grudge.Raja again encounters Drake during Eye of Indra, where Drake enlists his help in stealing the valuable Eye of Indra from Daniel Pinkerton. In Drake's Fortune, Eddy is the leader of a gang of pirates hired by Gabriel Roman. Raja helps Roman capture Drake, though he and Elena escape. After large numbers of his men begin mysteriously dying, Raja becomes convinced that the island is cursed, and tries to convince Roman to stop looking for the treasure. When he does so, Roman accuses him of cowardice and fires him; Raja pulls a gun on Roman, but is stopped by Navarro. Raja is next seen looking for the treasure himself, and tries to have Drake killed one last time by sending the last of his men after him and Fisher. When Drake and Fisher find the room where El Dorado is supposedly located, they are followed by Eddy and his last surviving pirate, running from a large number of cursed Spaniards. He and Drake briefly work together to fight the creatures while Elena tried to find a way out for them, but Raja is dragged down a hole but his fate is unknown for now.His famous line is "Don't mess with Eddy Raja!"
Zoran Lazarevic
Zoran Lazarevic is the main antagonist of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. He is voiced by Graham McTavishGraham McTavish
Graham McTavish is a Scottish television and film actor.He has played the character Warden Ackerman in Red Dwarf in five episodes of series 8. McTavish has also had many supporting roles in British dramas and films such as Casualty, Jekyll, The Bill, Taggart and Sisterhood...
. He is a homicidal terrorist and Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n war criminal. The majority of the world believes him dead after a bombing, but he survives with half of his face scarred. Lazarevic pays Flynn to betray Drake, tricking him into giving Flynn information on the location of Marco Polo's lost fleet and causing Drake's arrest. In reality, Lazarevic wants to possess the mythical Cintamani Stone, which the fleet was supposedly transporting. He discovers that the fleet never had the stone, and dispatches a group of mercenaries to Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
for clues to the location of the legendary city of Shambhala. He incites a civil war in the region to aid in his search and distract from any possible discovery. In Nepal, Lazarevic personally executes Fisher's cameraman Jeff, and follows Drake after he discovers the location of Shambhala's entrance. Lazarevic invades the small Tibetan village harboring Drake, seeking the key to reveal Shambhala. He kidnaps Schäfer and forces him to reveal the general area of the entrance. When Drake and Fisher follow, Lazarevic apprehends them and forces Drake to reveal the entrance to Shambhala. There, he drinks the sap of the Cintamani Stone, which is made of the sap of the Tree of Life. He battles Drake with his newfound powers, but is defeated by the guardians of Shambhala and assumingly killed when the temple fell apart. Lazarevic uses a sawed-off shotgun as his main weapon.
Harry Flynn
Harry Flynn is a longtime business associate of Drake's and one of the main antagonists in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. He is voiced by Steve ValentineSteve Valentine
Steven John Valentine is a Scottish actor, singer and magician who has performed on stage and screen, but is best known for his role as the eccentric Nigel Townsend on NBC's crime drama Crossing Jordan...
. In the second game, he approaches Drake, convincing him to help steal an oil lamp from a Turkish museum for a wealthy client. The two, along with Frazer, plan to keep the lamp for themselves, believing it will lead to the location of Marco Polo's lost fleet and the treasures it holds. In reality, Flynn is working for Lavarevic, and betrays Drake, taking the location coordinates and landing Drake in prison. He then works with Lazarevic in searching for the Cintamani Stone. When Lazarevic apprehends Drake, he has Flynn force him to find the location of the entrance to Shambhala. There, Lazarevic and his men, Flynn, Drake and company are attacked by the Guardians, where Flynn is gravely wounded due to a gunshot wound. Flynn ultimately commits suicide while attempting to blow up Drake but severely wounds Fisher with a grenade
Hand grenade
A hand grenade is any small bomb that can be thrown by hand. Hand grenades are classified into three categories, explosive grenades, chemical and gas grenades. Explosive grenades are the most commonly used in modern warfare, and are designed to detonate after impact or after a set amount of time...
. Naughty Dog used the dialog in the game to hint at the relationship between Drake and Flynn, but desired ambiguity regarding the exact nature of their past dealings, and to show what Drake could have become. Flynn mainly served to hint at the darker past where Drake performed less heroic activities. Flynn was not written as a British character; the casting of a British actor was mere coincidence.
Lt. Draza
Lt. Draza is Zoran Lazarevic's right-hand man and an antagonist in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. He is voiced by Michael BenyaerMichael Benyaer
Michael Benyaer is a Canadian actor and cartoon and video game voice actor.Benyaer was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. He enjoyed playing Hadji in The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, stating, "[he] is one of the few roles for an ethnic actor that is not a bad guy...
(but is credited just as "Serbian Soldier". Lt. Draza was first seen with Lazarevic, when they met(for the first time)' face to face with Nate. Lazarevic gave him the Phurba
Phurba
The kīla is a three-sided peg, stake, knife, or nail like ritual implement traditionally associated with Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Bön, and Indian Vedic traditions. The kīla is associated with the meditational deity The kīla (Sanskrit Devanagari: कील; IAST: kīla; , pronunciation between pur-ba and...
from Nate. Later, when Chloe was taken to the train
Train
A train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track to transport cargo or passengers from one place to another place. The track usually consists of two rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway.Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate...
by Flynn, Nate tried to save her, but Draza was in charge of the train and fought against Nate, but was defeated by Nate, who took back the Phurba. However Draza woke up and try to kill Nate, but was shot dead by Chloe. According to some articles, Draza and Lazarevic knew each other a long time ago. He uses a M4
M4 carbine
The M4 carbine is a family of firearms tracing its lineage back to earlier carbine versions of the M16, all based on the original AR-15 designed by Eugene Stoner and made by ArmaLite. It is a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 assault rifle, with 80% parts commonality.It is a gas-operated,...
carbine rifle as his main weapon.
Daniel Pinkerton
Daniel Pinkerton is the main antagonist of the Uncharted: Eye of Indra motion comic. Fred TatascioreFred Tatasciore
Frederick "Fred" Tatasciore is an American voice actor who portrays secondary characters as well as monstrous-looking types...
provides his voice. Pinkerton is an American who has become a crime boss in Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. Pinkerton hires Drake, who is seeking the funds to raise the coffin of Francis Drake, to find the valuable Eye of Indra. After discovering that Pinkerton has unknowingly had the Eye in his safe the whole time, Drake attempts to retrieve it by raiding Pinkerton's home. Pinkerton captures Drake, and tortures him when he refuses to reveal the treasure's location. When Drake eventually reveals the location of the Eye of Indra, Rika Raja shoots and kills Pinkerton, and the two take the Eye of Indra for themselves.
Katherine Marlowe
Katherine Marlowe is the main antagonist of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception and is voiced by Rosalind AyresRosalind Ayres
Rosalind Ayres is an English actress. Active since 1970, Ayres may be best known by a wide audience for her role was in the 1997 film Titanic, in which she played Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon....
. Marlowe is the coldly calculating leader of a secret society whose roots date back over four hundred years to the court of Queen Elizabeth I. She has a long-standing rivalry with Nathan Drake over Sir Francis Drake’s ring – something they both contend is rightfully theirs and is also the key to an ancient mystery. Katherine Marlowe is a much more cerebral enemy than Drake has confronted in the past, using both psychological and physical tactics to get what she is after. Marlowe also has the assistance of her team of highly-trained agents in this secret society – they are far more elusive and dangerous than the hired guns Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan have faced before. Marlowe appears to have studied Nathan's past and reveals that he's not actually the direct decedent of Sir Francis Drake-he merely was in an orphanage named after the great explorer. She first meets a teenage Drake in Columbia, forcing him to give he the Cipher disk he had just stolen from a museum to her but fails to get Sir Francis Drakes ring when he runs off. Twenty years later, she meets with Drake in an Alleyway and steals his ring. However, she soon discovers it's a fake and promptly loses both the disc and the ring when Drakes associates steal both and makes a spectacular escape from her London headquarters. Marlowe then sends Talbot and her agents to France and Syria and successfully gets the clues to the Iram of the pillars. She then captures Nate and Sully and leaves for the lost city. Nathan eventually finds her using a winch to drag out King Solomon's hallucinogenic Talisman from the lakes in Iram of the Pillars and destroys the foundations of the city, causing Marlowe to fall into a pool of quicksand. She goads Drake to save her, asking if he can earn his surname but is promptly consumed by the quicksand.
Talbot
Talbot is Marlowe's right-hand man and second-in-command in Uncharted: Drake's Deception. He is voiced by Robin Atkin DownesRobin Atkin Downes
Born in London, England, Robin Atkin Downes is an English actor who is one of the most prolific voice-over actors in Los Angeles. He is well known for his work in film, television and voice acting...
. He is the one who hired Charlie Cutter to provide security for the deal in the first level. He has a rivaly with Nathan Drake
Nathan Drake (character)
Nathan "Nate" Drake is the fictional protagonist of the Uncharted video game series, developed by Naughty Dog. He is a playable character in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and appears in the motion comic prequel...
and according to the developers acts as the "anti-Drake", with similar looks and abilities. He is the secondery antagonist. Talbot is seen almost every time with Marlowe, and later ordering Cutter to shoot Nate and Sully.Despite being normal sized, he is an extremely dangerous hand to hand combatant, being able to throw Nathan Drake through a window with one hand and use a combat knife with high proficiency in his final confrontation with Drake and Sully in the disintegrating Iram of Pillars. He also has a special weapon: a dart gun loaded with a special drug which grants him some hypnotic influence over people (he uses it to make Charlie Cutter disarm himself). He appears to care deeply for Marlowe, begging Nathan to save her from being consumed by the quicksand in the Iram of the pillars, and is driven mad when Drake fails. He tries to murder Drake on top of a collapsing cliff overlooking the Iram of the pillars but is briefly distracted by Sully who shoots him in the shoulder with a Walther P99. He is then finally killed by Drake who puts several bullets into him before he can flatten Sully's skull with a rock, and plummet to his dead.
Rameses
Rameses is the antagonist in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. He is voiced by Sayed Badreya. Shortly after Drake is drugged and passes out, he is taken to a shipyard. Rameses tied him to a chair and demanded him to tell him where Atlantis of the Sands is located. When Drake told Rameses that he honestly did not know, Rameses walked out and threatened to interogate Sully. After Drake breaks out of his capture and defeats all of the guards, he climbs onto Rameses' cruise ship. From there he find a decoy of Sully and realizes that he was never there to begin with. Rameses tells him that he lied - he is after all a pirate. After Drake makes his way into the ball room (the ship turned onto its side at this point because it was sinking), Rameses shoots the glass window and causes the rest of the ship to flood and kills himself in the progress. Drake survives by drifting to shore on a piece of flotsam.Karl Schäfer
Karl Schäfer is a main supporting character appears in a remote town in Tibet in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and is voiced by Rene AuberjonoisRene Auberjonois
René Murat Auberjonois is an American actor, known for portraying Father Mulcahy in the movie version of M*A*S*H and for creating a number of characters in long-running television series, including Clayton Endicott III on Benson , Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Chef Louis in The Little...
. At the time of his appearance, he has been living in the village for 70 years. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he had led an Ahnenerbe
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...
expedition to find the entrance of Shambhala. However, afraid of what the Nazis would do with the power found in the Cintamani Stone, Schäfer shot and killed all of the members of the expedition but himself.
When first met, Schäfer sends Drake to look for the Cintamani Stone, after explaining what the jewel can do. While he is gone, Lazarevic invades the village and kidnaps Schäfer, and uses him to tell him where the entrance to Shambala is. Shäfer dies of his wounds following his capture, not before he told to Nate and Elena that they need to stop Lazarevic and Flynn.
Tenzin
Tenzin is a main supporting character and the leader of a remote Tibetan village in the HimalayasHimalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Pema Dhondup provided the voice and Robin Atkin Downes
Robin Atkin Downes
Born in London, England, Robin Atkin Downes is an English actor who is one of the most prolific voice-over actors in Los Angeles. He is well known for his work in film, television and voice acting...
did the motion capture work. When Drake first wakes up, Tenzin leads him to Fisher and Schäfer. He is a Sherpa
Sherpa people
The Sherpa are an ethnic group from the most mountainous region of Nepal, high in the Himalayas. Sherpas migrated from the Kham region in eastern Tibet to Nepal within the last 300–400 years.The initial mountainous migration from Tibet was a search for beyul...
guide who leads Drake through the mountain passes surrounding the area. There, he helps Drake through various challenges that require more than one person to pass. Despite acting as a guide, Tenzin cannot speak any English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. After returning, Drake and Tenzin find that the village has come under attack by Lazarevic.
The developers felt that the sequences involving Tenzin leading Drake through the cave systems, and then seeing his village burning, would create an emotionally moving experience for the player.
Tenzin has a daughter named Pema.
Jeff
Jeff is a supporting character in Uncharted: Among Thieves. Jeff is Elena's cameraman. He is voiced by Gregory Myhre. Jeff, along with Elena, went to Nepal to prove that Lazarevic was alive. He and Elena run in with Nate and Chloe in NepalNepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
,were they team up to find Shambala. after Nate and Chloe investigate a Temple with clues as to where the location of Shambala are , they return to find Jeff injured by a bullet wound to the abdomen , Nate escorted by Chloe and Elena , take Jeff to safety ,in the process they are caught and Lazarevic kills Jeff by shooting him in the head.
Rika Raja
Rika Raja appears in the motion comic Uncharted: Eye of Indra as one of the main protagonistsProtagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
. While she never appears in any of the one-player campaign games, she can be purchased as a skin for the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves multiplayer mode. She is voiced by Gwendoline Yeo
Gwendoline Yeo
-Early life:Born in Singapore, Yeo is the niece of George Yeo, Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs. She moved to California as a teenager, graduating from St. Ignatius College Preparatory in 1994...
in the motion comics. Rika saves Nathan's life from two thugs that get in a fight with him in her bar. She then decides to help Drake on his mission to steal the Eye of Indra from Daniel Pinkerton. She double crosses Nathan as well as Eddy leaving with the Eye of Indra. She is the younger sister of Eddy Raja.
Charlie Cutter
Charlie Cutter is a supporting character in Uncharted: Drake's Deception. He suffers from severe claustrophobiaClaustrophobia
Claustrophobia is the fear of having no escape and being closed in small spaces or rooms...
. First appearing to be one of Marlowe's employee's, he is revealed to be one of Drake's associates, helping them in the first part of the game with finding the clues to the Iram of Pillars. He's extremely loyal to Drake, asking for a gun to hold off Marlowe and Talbot while the other's escape. He's injured when jumping off a tower in Syria and tells Nate to Stop Marlowe or he'll never forgive him. Despite looking like a blunt, common thug, he appears to be well educated, quoting John Stienbeck's Of Mice and Men and correcting Sully's mistake when quoting Macbeth. He is voiced by Graham McTavish
Graham McTavish
Graham McTavish is a Scottish television and film actor.He has played the character Warden Ackerman in Red Dwarf in five episodes of series 8. McTavish has also had many supporting roles in British dramas and films such as Casualty, Jekyll, The Bill, Taggart and Sisterhood...
.
Salim
Salim is a supporting character in Uncharted: Drake's Deception. He is voiced by TJ RaminiTJ Ramini
TJ Ramini is an English actor best known for his role as DC Zain Nadir in The Bill.He attended King Alfred School in North London. His father is Palestinian, while his mother is Australian and was a newsreader for ITV. He is also of Russian Jewish and Scottish ancestry. At 19, he moved to...
. After Drake defeats the hemchmen in the desert ghost town, Salim comes to him on horseback and helps him escape. After Drake was rescued, Salim tells him that the Atlantis of the Sands is a dangerous place and that Marlow cannot enter because of the deadly powers within. Drake believes that she could use these powers to contol others through fear and that it was not treasure they were after. When Sully is rescued, Salim brings both of them to the open desert where the Atlantis of the Sands is located. Salim heads off and gets separated from Drake and Sully because of the heavy sandstorm. After Talbot is defeated and the pillars collapse, Salim appears in time to save them.
Jason Dante
Jason Dante is a main character in Uncharted: Golden Abyss. He is Nate's old friend who helps him to find a lost city of Spaniards. He has a rivalry with Marisa Chase. He is voiced by Jason SpisakJason Spisak
Jason Spisak is an American voice actor in animation and video games, and a Computer Programmer.Spisak is also the co-leader of the Symphony OS Project. He is the designer of Symphony's unique Mezzo desktop environment and wrote the Laws of Interface Design, for which the project tries to adhere...
.
Marisa Chase
Marisa Chase is a main character in Uncharted: Golden Abyss. She is the granddaughter of an archeologist who has mysteriously vanished without a trace. She has a rivalry with Jason Dante. She is voiced by Christine LakinChristine Lakin
Christine Helen Lakin is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Alicia "Al" Lambert on the 1990s ABC/CBS situation comedy Step by Step and as Joan of Arc in Showtime's Reefer Madness...
.
Reception
Matt Casamassina of IGNIGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
praised the characters of the Uncharted series for their growth and development, calling them strong characters. He also noted what he found as superior voice work and chemistry between the actors. He commended series writer Hennig for never having the characters say anything unnecessary that did not add to the relationships in the game. GameZone
GameZone
GameZone is an American multiplatform video game website. GameZone's daily coverage includes reviews, previews, news, hints & cheats, and editorials. Additionally, GameZone offers downloads, a child-targeted website and in association with GameStop, hosts GZGameShop, an online retailer...
called the characters "endearing", "charming", and "unforgettable", and claimed that they had more personality than characters in most other video games. Ryan Clements of IGN praised the acting, claiming it brought a lifelike quality to the characters. He went on, "the sexual tension, detailed character expression, natural voice acting and charming dialogue make... cutscenes a supreme treat to watch." Jeff Haynes said that the game was anchored by the strong characters.
Ellie Gibson of Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
said that the characters were easy to sympathize with because they were so realistic. Edge
Edge (magazine)
Edge is a multi-format computer and video game magazine published by Future Publishing in the United Kingdom. It is known for its industry contacts, editorial stance, distinctive anonymous third-person writing style, yearly awards and longevity....
claimed the characters "sizzle with zip and pith", and praised the believable interactions between them. Ars Technica
Ars Technica
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
called the characters "oddly human" when discussing their realism. Ars Technica's Ben Kuchera also gave the voice acting high marks, claiming it set a new bar for video game voice acting. Johnny Minkley of Eurogamer claimed simply that players will care about the fate of all the characters in the series.
Tom Cross of Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
commented that the characters in the Uncharted series were some of the few in video games to portray human sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
realistically. However, he complained that the roles were predictable when compared to other fictional movie and television roles. He criticized, "while Among Thieves creates interesting, fun characters, it still pigeon holes them into stock character story arcs: the good girl, the guy who will become good, and the bad girl, who is allowed to be sexually suggestive because the plot will ultimately remove her as a viable partner for the ultimately good guy." Peadar Grogan of Edge commended the series for including strong female characters. Chris Roper of IGN stated that the characters of Uncharted are all unpredictable, and have a high level of character development. Andrew Reiner of Game Informer
Game Informer
Game Informer is an American-based monthly magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of popular video games and associated consoles. It was formed in August 1991, when FuncoLand started publishing a six-page magazine, free in all its retail locations...
found this exploration of character emotion integral to the series story development. The character acting in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves received two nominations at the 13th Interactive Achievement Awards, for the acting of North as Drake and Black as Frazer.