In November of 2007 Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was released exclusively for Sony’s PlayStation 3. The protagonist was a confident, roguish treasure hunter named Nathan Drake who, at the time, was a much bigger breath of fresh air than he gets credit for. Before Drake, the vast majority of AAA video game protagonists were laconic, square-jawed meatheads — strong-silent types who let their fists and guns do the talking. It was grim.

Nathan Drake was portrayed by the then-little-known actor Nolan North who, thanks to motion capture technology, would bring the character to life with his physicality as well as his vocal stylings. North’s first big break as an actor came in 1997 when he landed a role in the General Hospital spin-off series Port Charles. When that show was canceled in 2003, North transitioned to voice acting and was eventually chosen by developer Naughty Dog to portray the titular hero in what would go on to become Sony’s flagship video game franchise. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune spawned three sequels and one spin-off, and while Drake didn’t quite become as synonymous with Sony as Mario is to Nintendo, he made the company a shit-load of money. 

North’s performance as Nathan Drake is remarkable because of how unremarkable it is. Nathan Drake is an endearing crook whose lust for the treasures of antiquity lands him in some wild predicaments. He’s a quiptastic lothario traveling the globe in search of valuable relics. On paper, there’s nothing ordinary about him. Drake’s life is pure chaos, and yet North somehow makes him relatable. It’s an authentic performance of an unrealistic character. Without North, Drake isn’t a normal guy doing abnormal things, he’s just a cartoonish Indiana Jones knockoff. 

Nolan North earned plenty of plaudits for his performance in Drake’s Fortune, and almost overnight became the most sought-after actor in the games industry. He had amassed quite a few video game credits prior to 2007, but it was Uncharted that really put him on the map as THE go-to video game voice actor. Post-Drake’s Fortune North was awarded key roles in big-budget franchises like Call Of Duty, Halo, and Batman: Arkham. But it wasn’t just Nolan North the actor who was sought after — it was Nathan Drake, the character North had brought to life.

A slew of Drake-esque protagonists followed in the wake of Drake’s Fortune’s release, and for a time, it was good. For its second game, the now-ludicrously popular Assasin’s Creed franchise ditched the drab, generic protagonist of its first game in favor of the now revered Ezio Auditore da Firenze — a charming, charismatic gallant with a complicated moral compass. Unlike his predecessor from the franchise’s first game, Ezio had his own fleshed-out personality that made it easier for players to engage. Then there’s the BioShock series. The first BioShock game featured a mute protagonist. The game is played from a first-person perspective and almost all of its cutscenes are presented through the eyes of the character the player is controlling, so the player never sees the main character’s face. The developers changed tack when designing BioShock Infinite, the third game in the series. Infinite was also played from a first-person perspective, but the main character, Booker DeWitt, had a voice and a personality of his own. Booker’s face wasn’t visible in the game, but it was all over the artwork, including the front cover.

Blank canvas avatar protagonists were all the rage prior to the release of the first Uncharted game. They were born out of necessity and can only truly exist in the realm of video games. The idea is that, since the player is the one controlling the protagonist, they should be able to project themselves onto the protagonist. Some games (RPGs, etc) allow the player to create their own main character, but this isn’t always a viable option. For narrative purposes, it’s sometimes easier to craft a largely plain protagonist to make it as easy as possible for the player to imagine that they are actually in the game. After Uncharted came out, it seemed as though a lot more developers were focused on telling their own stories, rather than letting the players fill in the blanks. Gone were the generic avatars of old. The games industry had finally realized that gamers, like moviegoers, enjoy characters with a personality.

The landscape of video games has always been exciting. From the moment the industry flickered into existence there has been a slew of forward-thinking, dynamic, and tantalizing projects that have enthralled and enraptured those who play. Of course, as enjoyable as the wonderful world of gaming can be, it’s never been flawless and some periods are more exciting than others. Blank canvas protagonists didn’t disappear as soon as Drake came along, but a trend was definitely bucked and rather quickly replaced with a new trend. 

When a trend takes hold in the games industry, it inevitably gets beaten to death until it’s no longer fun (assuming it was ever fun in the first place). And just like the trend of strong-silent, blank canvas avatar protagonists did before it, the Drake-esque protagonist trend also outstayed its welcome. It wasn’t long before seemingly every lead character in every video game was spewing out lines and lines of quippy dross that veered dangerously close into “so, THAT just happened!” territory. The Borderlands games, for example, are absolutely bursting at the seams with cringe-y quips and one-liners that would make James Bond blush and it’s very difficult not to place at least some of the blame at the feet of Nathan Drake.

Drake’s Fortune came out a year before Iron Man, so if you’re looking for someone to blame for the now-standard handsome hero with quiptacular vernacular, look no further than our boy Nate. Obviously, Nolan North didn’t invent the charming rogue archetype. But as soon as Nathan Drake entered the gaming lexicon, the vibe shifted. Non-militaristic AAA video games marketed towards the key demo were normalized. It was possible to play more than one game per year that didn’t feature the phrases “get some,” “oorah” or some variation thereof. 

It feels weird to eulogize both Nolan North and the fictional relic-hunting hero who made him famous (and for whom he returned the favor). At the end of the day, they’re both white, heterosexual males of the kind that very much still dominates the pop culture landscape to an obnoxious degree. But things were even worse before they came along. In video games, at least. 

It didn’t always seem like it at the time but, with the benefit of hindsight, the seventh generation of video game consoles was a very good generation of video game consoles. Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii both launched in November of 2006, and gamers suddenly had two more next-gen options on top of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which launched in November of 2005 and was firing on all cylinders by the time its two rivals hit the shelves. If you include the Nintendo DS (and you should, obviously), the generation in question featured four of the most successful gaming devices ever made, each one with its own amazing library of games. The influence of Nolan North on the success of this generation is difficult to quantify, but the sheer number of AAA credits he accumulated between 2006 – 2012 makes it very difficult to undersell his legacy.

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