Designing a new Rainbow Six Siege operator takes about nine months to complete, but when Ubisoft started designing Thunderbird, the game's newest operator, her background hadn't been identified. That was until the team decided on her voice actress.
When Sera-Lys McArthur finished her audition, Ubisoft knew she was the right person for the job. But her voice wasn't the only thing that caught Ubisoft's attention - her background as a Nakoda woman did too. "We ended up casting McArthur before deciding on the operator's heritage and identity," Marie Roy, Ubisoft's user research lab coordinator, tells The Loadout. "We based Thunderbird's background on her. We wanted to create an indigenous character that other Nakoda folks could relate to."
Although Thunderbird was based on a Nakoda woman, Ubisoft wanted to make sure that they captured the essence of what it is to be a Nakoda inside a game. Instead of just speaking to McArthur, Ubisoft spent time scouring the web, speaking to game developers, universities, and cultural centers, looking for Nakoda people who'd be able to help them during the design process. After a short while, Roy and her team locked down the people they needed and got to work.
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