During PlayStation Experience, Naughty Dog revealed a lot more details during their panel on Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End story and gameplay, such as dialogue choices for the story, and a new character, Nadine Ross. During the panel, they talked about why Nadine Ross is being played a Caucasian woman, Laura Bailey.
“When we cast this character, we had no final look for the character. We just had kinda who she is and that she’s from South Africa, so we sent a big casting call to all the agents, including Laura’s agent.
So we brought into audition black actors, white actors, American actors, actors from South Africa, and they were all.. Well, not all, some of them were not so good, but a lot of them were really good.
And then Laura walks in and just kills it. And I’m there with the casting director and our co-writer Josh Scherr… We were just floored with how good she was. There was no question in our mind, that’s Nadine.
So then going back to the office, and looking at all these character designs, and we got this really awesome character concept artist who came up with the look of the character that’s very close to what you’re seeing in the game. I was like “this is awesome, how often you see a character of color like this… that’s ripped and all…”
Someone on the team said “well, we have a white actor, it’s a black character… You’re inviting controversy.” I said “well, you might be right, let’s hold off on changing it… Let’s get in the game and see it all together, and then make the call.”
Some people have questioned the choice, but the casting seems to have worked fine, so we’ll have to see on release, along with more details on who Nadine is. So far, she seems to be an antagonist with an army of her own that Drake and company will have to deal. Meanwhile, the alternate dialogue choices will not change the story drastically, but what they change will have to be seen. More can be read in the source below.
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is set to release on March 18, 2016 for the PlayStation 4.
