Uncharted 4 was completely rewritten after Amy Hennig's departure, says Nathan Drake actor
Nolan North says Naughty Dog "got rid of everything we did"
Talking about the development of Uncharted 4, Nathan Drake’s actor Nolan North revealed the team had to redo seven months of production after the game’s creative director Amy Hennig left Naughty Dog.
Talking on the Couch Soup podcast (thanks, Eurogamer), North said: "We had shot Uncharted 4 with Amy Hennig for about seven months. We were well into the game. And she was dismissed from Naughty Dog, and they got rid of everything we did."
Explaining what changes were made during this time, North revealed: "[Naughty Dog] recast the whole thing." The actor then goes on to say: "The original cast had Graham McTavish [who played Cutter in Uncharted 3] had a huge role in Amy's 4." Not only this, but North also said that Todd Stashwick was set to play Nathan Drake’s brother Sam, and Alan Tudyk was booked to play Rafe.
Fans of the series will already know that Stashwick was replaced by Troy Baker and Tudyk by Warren Kole in the revised version. The final version of Uncharted 4 also added secondary antagonist Nadine Ross, played by Laura Bailey, to the list of changes as well.
There’s no hard feelings from North though, who said: "That’s the business," before explaining further: "That happens in films, television, I was just glad they didn’t scrap the whole thing and say 'yeah, it’s done.'"
As for what Hennig went on to do, the writer moved from Naughty Dog to Visceral Games back in 2014 with the aforementioned Todd Stashwick to work on the Star Wars game Project Ragtag. More recently, Hennig transitioned to Skydance Media to start a new division within the company.
As of yesterday though, Hennig publicly announced that she is working on a new Star Wars game at Skydance Media. It’s still too early to know what this game will look like however, a press release announcing the new title described it as a "narrative-driven, action-adventure game featuring an original story."
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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.