Destiny’s lead concept artist, Jesse van Dijk, explains why Peter Dinklage was replaced with Nolan North.
[dropcap size=small]T[/dropcap]he biggest surprise that came with the details regarding The Taken King expansion for Destiny wasn’t the new leveling system and it wasn’t the news about a revamped Light system either. The most surprising news was that the widely famous Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage, specifically his voice, was to be dropped from Destiny upon the release of The Taken King expansion. Jesse van Dijk, Destiny‘s lead concept artist, explained in an interview with Gamespot why Bungie made the decision to choose voice actor Nolan North to replace him.
“We wanted to improve the sense of what goals players were chasing after. Because very often we would find that they were chasing after a gun, or following a specific quest line. What we wanted to do was chart that more clearly, and ultimately that led to something that we call ‘questification.’ All of the The Taken King content has been given that treatment… And when we started working on that, we were actually so satisfied with that formula that we went, ‘Wait a minute, why don’t we give all our previous content the same treatment? Why don’t we questify that as well?”
So while Jesse van Dijk didn’t say that the reason Peter Dinklage’s voice was dropped because many players deemed his voicing too monotone, he didn’t necessarily deny it either. Rather, it seems that Bungie realized that not only was their Light system flawed in many ways, but so was Ghost’s voice. Nolan North has already gone on record to say his voicing for Ghost is a fine line between an A.I. and emotionally engaging as well.
Destiny is an MMO, and for an MMO to keep being successful in addition to keeping it’s players satisfied and happy, they need to constantly listen to what their players have to say about their game, even if its something they don’t want/like to hear. Once they realized that what Nolan North had brought to the table for The Taken King, Bungie decided it was best for their players and the company if they re-recorded all of Ghost’s dialogue. After all, if you’re going to add more lines of dialogue for The Taken King expansion, it is a smart decision to apply that to the rest of the game.
“When we started looking at voice actors, and we decided to work with Nolan North, the consistency of the entire universe is very important to us, so we decided to give the full treatment to all of our previous content too,” said Jesse van Dijk. “[This] is why Nolan North is also your Ghost from the very moment you start [the game].”
The Taken King will be released on September 15th, bringing sweeping changes to not only Ghost, but Destiny as a whole.
