Alan Tudyk, who is due to appear in the upcoming Star Wars: Rogue One, has shed light on his departure from Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, having originally been offered a role in the upcoming PlayStation 4 action-adventure sequel opposite Nolan North.
Speaking with IGN, Tudyk wouldn’t confirm whether or not he was fired from the project or opted to leave on his own accord, but made it clear there’s no love lost between him and developer Naughty Dog. He also pointed out that he and North were previously acquainted, having worked together on the upcoming Con Men.
"I worked on Uncharted, the one that has yet to come out – I was doing a role on that,” Tudyk said. “Really, I hadn’t seen [Nolan] since he and I had recorded years before.
“I liked it… they… ummm… they fired… ummm… [lets out a massive sigh] I left, I quit! [laughs] So, I didn’t like it. I mean, I left because they decided to go a different way with it and so when they did that, when they changed leadership, it made my contract null and void and I was able to take that opportunity to walk away which was great because I got the experience of doing it, I made some friends – not with Naughty Dog – but I made some friends with the people that left.
“Todd Stashwick was in that as well who is in Con Man and he did the same thing I did which was ‘yeah we’re gonna leave now. Y’all are making some weird changes, we’re gonna leave’. Sorry Nolan, we left you, we just walked away, we abandoned him.”
Stashwick was among the original voice actors to join Uncharted 4 in the early stages of development, and was due to voice Nathan Drake’s brother, Sam, before Troy Baker took over the role. Presumably, the changes that Tudyk mentioned is in reference to the departure of Amy Hennig, which North said resulted in around eight months work on Uncharted 4 being scrapped outright.
Uncharted 4 is due out on March 18, 2016. North recently completed motion-capture work on the hotly anticipated sequel, with Naughty Dog describing the project as the ‘end of an era‘ for the California-based studio. The future of the series, which has sold over 21 million units worldwide since 2007, remains unknown at this point, though Naughty Dog has said that continuing the franchise without Drake is difficult to imagine.