Nolan North: "We're not here to half-ass it"

The voice of Nathan Drake has given his thoughts on performance capture, game and film convergence, and spoken of how he stole one of Drake's lines from an eight-year old.

Speaking to IGN, popular videogame voice talent Nolan North described how the switch from motion capture to full performance capture has affected the Uncharted series.

"In the first game, we would do the mo-cap and then have to go back in and do [automated dialogue replacement] ourselves," North explained. "Now we have our own mo-cap studio. I think it makes a difference with the focus. You can't be as lazy. Being able to do the audio, I think the game's going to have a much more realistic quality.

"When you see cutscenes from the new game and your turn around quickly and didn't know what you were looking at, you'd think you were watching a television show or a movie, but it just happens to be a video game."

North also explained that he takes pride in his roles, irrespective of them not being for "a big feature film series like the Bourne movies" he wants the games he takes part in to be the best that they can be.

"The attention to detail that Naughty Dog has brought and that [director and script writer] Amy Hennig has given us, really focuses us," North revealed. "So, you don't have people saying, 'Why are you discussing this scene so much. It's just a video game.' 'Just a video game' is becoming a thing of the past. There's no such thing. This is a quality production. We want to make the best game. We're not here to half-ass it."

North said that the time taken on a game really enhances its quality as an entertainment product and that the "line [between games and film] is starting to blur", he added that he was grateful for the opportunities that affords him as an actor and that "[Naughty Dog] give us the time to try things and to adlib things during performance capture."

You can expect to see the results of this ad-libbing in Uncharted 3 thanks, in part, to North's eight-year old son from whom he stole the put-down line "Kitty got wet", uttered by his son during a game of Wii Tennis.

"I grabbed him and kissed him and said 'that's brilliant'. The next day I walked in and threw a punch in one of those ad-lib things and said 'Yeah, kitty got wet'," North explained "Eight-year old little boy, and I stole it!"

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception launches for PS3 worldwide this week.