Co-starring in Uncharted 4 was the "ultimate fanboy moment" for Troy Baker
Playing Nathan Drake's older brother in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was a dream come true for Troy Baker, and not just because it gave him the excuse to give Nolan North a ton of crap. Baker explained how he came to be involved with the Uncharted series in a panel discussion at the PlayStation Experience on Saturday. It all started when a PS3 and a borrowed copy of Uncharted was Baker's only solace while filming a "horrible, horrible movie" in Texas.
"I play it through and at the end of it I ended up emailing the audio department," Baker said, wanting to congratulate Naughty Dog on the game's voice work. "As a gamer I knew this was a watershed moment in gaming, that this game was going to change things."
A few years and gaming credits later, Baker found himself working down the hall from where Naughty Dog was doing capture work for Uncharted 2.
"And I literally would stand outside and poke my head in, just, 'I would love to just be shot by Nate Drake.' I never would have imagined that, cut to now, not only am I in the game, but I'm playing the brother of someone that I was a fan of first, and who now is a dear friend. That to me is the ultimate fanboy moment."
There's just one problem: Troy Baker is several years younger than Nolan North, while he was brought in to play Nathan Drake's older brother. Baker explained how Naughty Dog addressed that particular issue, in the process shedding more light on the relationship between the reunited brothers.
"For me, with Sam and Nathan, it's very much a situation where someone has never moved past a certain point in his life, and the younger has become the elder and the elder has become the younger. And so it was this really cool dynamic for Nolan and I to play with."
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I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.