Sam Drake

The ''Uncharted'' series, created by video game developer Naughty Dog (with two titles developed by Bend Studio), features many characters. The series includes the video games '' Uncharted: Drake's Fortune'', '' Uncharted 2: Among Thieves'', '' Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception'', '' Uncharted 4: A Thief's End'', '' Uncharted: Golden Abyss'', and '' Uncharted: The Lost Legacy'', as well as a motion comic prequel, '' Uncharted: Eye of Indra''. It primarily focuses on the exploits of treasure hunter Nathan Drake and his associates as they hunt down various mystical artifacts.

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 and mythical Cintamani Stone in Shambhala. In ''Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception'', he competes with a secret order to search for the fabled 'Iram of the Pillars', and in the prequel comic ''Uncharted: Eye of Indra'', he works for an Indonesian crime lord in order to get the money needed to raise the coffin of his supposed relative Sir Francis Drake.

Nathan Drake is the primary playable character 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 likeable character. He is accompanied by a number of characters, the main ones being Elena Fisher and Victor "Sully" Sullivan. He has had two love interests in the series so far; the aforementioned Elena Fisher, a reporter and now his wife, and Chloe Frazer, another treasure hunter and an old flame, but was involved with Rika Raja in the motion comic. He is also accompanied by his longtime friend, associate, and mentor, Victor Sullivan.

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. 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 Dog 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' creator and writer for the first three games, designed the characters' 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 dialogue.

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-throughs 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 said: "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.

Main characters

Nathan "Nate" Drake

Nathan "Nate" Drake is the protagonist of the ''Uncharted'' series. Nolan North voices and gave the physical performance capture for Drake. North has had considerable influence in the development of the character, mixing his personality with Drake's. Drake is a playable character in five video games of the series: '' Uncharted: Drake's Fortune'', '' Uncharted 2: Among Thieves'', '' Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception'', '' Uncharted 4: A Thief's End'', and '' Uncharted: Golden Abyss''. He is also the protagonist of the motion comic