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'Destiny' Is Erasing Peter Dinklage's Ghost, Replacing Him With Nolan North

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Destiny players will have noticed that their ever-present, door-opening companion, Ghost, has been mysteriously silent the past few expansions. Though he has the most lines of any character in the base game, the floating robot voiced by Peter Dinklage, has yet to make an appearance in any content since, causing many to wonder if the character will ever return.

He will, but Dinklage’s version of him is being banished from the game entirely.

According to a recent Bungie studio visit by Game Informer, Destiny has replaced Peter Dinklage’s Ghost with a new version of the same character, this time voiced by legendary video game voice actor Nolan North.

“I was really excited to do this role,” North said “You want to give him as much personality as the world will allow, without making it unbelievable. There’s a fine line to walk there, and I think we found it.”

Originally, I thought this meant that Dinklage would simply be replaced going forward in this fall’s expansion, The Taken King. Perhaps players acquire a new Ghost, or the voice switches with some made-up technical explanation. Not so. The most incredible part of this news is that North’s Ghost is literally wiping Dinklage’s Ghost from existence. He’s re-recording every line from the base game, so that Ghost will be Nolan North, and only Nolan North, in every inch of the game.

The official given reason is one I can believe, but it’s definitely not the whole story. Bungie and North claim that they wanted to re-record the lines for “consistency,” so the voice wouldn’t just suddenly switch, despite the character staying the same.

“We wanted Nolan North’s version of the Ghost to wake you up at the start of the journey at level one and follow you all the way to level forty,” says creative director Luke Smith.

I can understand how that’s a good idea from a storytelling perspective, but most Destiny fans will probably be inclined to believe that Bungie will be more than a little relieved to erase Dinklage’s sub-par performance from the game.

Even since the Alpha test of the Destiny last summer, Dinklage’s voice acting has been a point of contention. Originally, it simply felt like he was just a very bored actor reading lines in a studio. Later, they added a bit more digital pizzazz to his voice, which helped, but did little to make his delivery any more convincing, and he currently serves as a bad storytelling instrument in what so far has been a pretty bad story.

I don’t think Dinklage can be blamed entirely for how poorly his Ghost has been received over the past year, as the script he was given certainly didn’t help matters. But his performance really is lackluster, especially when we have so many other great AIs to compare him to in video games from Cortana to GLaDOS to Wheatley. He’s several tiers down from any of them, unfortunately.

Still, replacing him entirely, and essentially wiping his performance from existence is certainly a drastic step. Everyone imagined that Ghost would get a new voice at some point, but few predicted a total exorcism of the existing character.

It’s hard not to have faith in Nolan North turning in a good performance, but again, hopefully the script itself will improve to aid him. Destiny has a whole host of absolutely amazing voice actors, yet most are criminally underused or saddled with bad lines (like poor Walking Dead actress Lauren Cohen having to deliver the famous “I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain” line). First and foremost, improvements have to be made in the writing department, and only then will the voice acting be able to improve the story. But yes, Dinklage’s turn was sub-par despite that, so North stepping in can really only be an improvement. I’m really curious to see how he alters the existing script in the story missions where we’ve heard Dinklage utter his lines dozens of times already.

This is certainly a strange turn of events, but one that ultimately seems necessary for the long-term health of the game. But between this development and an unfortunate co-starring role in Pixels, I have to imagine Peter Dinklage might be swearing off anything video game-related for quite a while.

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What should Destiny do with its $500M budget? Watch below: