Destiny has been accused of many things, but “having personality” is probably not one of them. It came out of the womb last September totally deadpan and remarkably serious, but apparently it wasn’t always going to be that way.
Indeed, noted joke person David Cross told IGN this week that Bungie flew him and fellow comedian Brian Posehn to Bellevue to apply some life to Ghost, the little floating robot voiced notoriously badly by Peter Dinklage. But then apparently they didn’t use any of their contributions.
“They did not use a single, solitary thing that we wrote, which is a shame because we wrote some stuff that — you know, we’re gamers, and they… — I would imagine somebody somewhere said, ‘We can’t inject this levity or humour into it,’ ” Cross said.
“When it came out I was way into it and way excited about it, and when you’re at an hour 20 of that thing, it’s like the Ghost is kind of monotone saying this thing, ‘We must get over the ridge. That’s the cabal — we’ve got to defeat him.’ Whatever, it’s boring as shit, and I speak for myself and Brian, and I know thousands if not millions of other gamers would be like It would be nice to have a joke or something in there.’ ” Head over to IGN for the rest of Cross’ comments on the matter.
As someone who played the same missions over and over in Destiny for several months last year, I agree that a joke or 50 would have been nice. Thinking about this is actually depressing me a little. BRB, gonna go cook up some “that joke came from the moon (and then was sent back)” memes.
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Comments
19 responses to “David Cross Says He Wrote Jokes For Destiny That Bungie Didn’t Use”
Yeah that would have been way better having a joke in places. It makes me think of the live action trailer and how a smidgen of that personality in the game would have made it way better to sit through the cut scenes. Also they got David Cross and didn’t use is stuff. Destiny I’m off to the blue man support group now.
Yep hes on point there. Ghost bores the shit out of me. You can hear the boredom in Dinklages voice with the dialogue.
I think that was the problem, Peter Dinklage is a great actor, but being a great actor doesnt mean they’ll be a convincing voice actor. Peter seems to thrive on being able to interact with other actors and bounce off of them, reading from a script just isn’t the type of actor he is.
It’s a shame really, Bungie seemed to go with a bankable name without actually looking at it properly. The whole “Wizard from the moon” thing should have alerted them to the problem.
Indeed, when I first heard ‘Wizard from the moon’, I was thinking ‘Oh awesome they’ll camp this up!’ and to be honest, Destiny could probably use some camp in it to alleviate the over-seriousness its pushing forward. WoW at first back in its first few months was overly serious, but then the silliness sprang forward and it became gloriously fun to play for the first five years (can’t say beyond that, stopped playing). Destiny doesn’t have to have slapstick comedy but the dialogue itself can definitely contain comedy and lighten the mood a little, it’s definitely needed.
Especially when you’ve got ‘wizards from the moon’ to worry about…
I wonder how well he was directed. When you’re on a set, with a script, you can see who you’re meant to be. But based on his acting, it’s like they chucked him in a sound booth and gave him the lines and said read them. Like he had no idea what they wanted the end result to be.
Microsoft Sam would have done a better job.
his voice acting on the telltale game of thrones games seems to be quite good
Destiny is like the epitome of AAA gamings woes:
– Overly hyped and polished with nothing new game play wise
– Takes itself so seriously it verges on boring
– Not fully tested on launch
– Has funny cool stuff people actually liked (loot cave for example), gets removed
– Relying on ‘the community’ to keep it interesting without adding anything interesting for a community to build around
It is a game made by formula and feels like it.
With David Cross at the helm, this Ghost character would have just spewed out a lot of innuendos and phrases that would make players question his sexuality. And then I would have bought Destiny.
“You totally blew that wizard…….away…..you blew him. Totally.”
“The powerful wizard came upon us and our jaws hit the ground.”
I would have enjoyed some more jokes too but I wonder if they cut them because of the repetition they knew would be occurring.
Jokes are always great the first or maybe second time you hear them but i imagine they thought that if you’re doing a strike for the 12th time they’d just become grating, I feel it’s easier to ignore boring dialogue over and over than a joke you’re heard before.
It would have been awesome if they could have recorded enough VO work to have some different speech each time you did a mission to help ease the repetition.
I don’t know – the rest of the game seems designed to feel overly-repetitive.
Your right. If you had the option to turn off the dialogue that should help prevent the grating you get from hearing the same crap over and over.
I dunno, depends on the writing. Portal, 1 and 2, still crack me up with their jokes.
I think a funnier Ghost would have clashed with what Bungie were going for. That whole every sentence is softly spoken and revolves around light, darkness, hope, etc thing. I think the game could have been better with a different script that included some comic relief or wit, but jokes don’t really fit with Bungie’s idea of Destiny being this huge, epic experience.
I’m not a fan of his standup but I loved Arrested Development and The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, so I would have liked to hear what they wrote. I think a bit more self referential humour would have made the single player much more bearable.
I don’t think people give Microsoft enough credit for how well they steared bungie and the halo series.
*smeared