Grave Gamer News & Views — bungie

Destiny Warlock

by Garrett Post

Destiny Year 1:

*laundry list of complaints and nitpicks*

*fans dump hundreds of hours into the game anyway*

Destiny Year 2:

*addresses all complaints, becomes a fundamentally better game than what launched a year ago*

*fans trade-in Destiny for $11 bucks*

*$49 to go until Fallout 4*

Dinklebot is Dead – Nolan North Takes Over as Destiny’s Ghost

In the oddest bit of news to ever come out of Bungie’s co-op space-gun opera, the role of your floating AI companion Ghost, voiced by Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage since the game’s launch last year, has been recast.

Criticisms of Dinklage’s half-awake delivery date all the way back to Destiny’s Alpha. The (usually very good) actor puts as much emotion into the role as a 60-year-old high school teacher puts into roll call. His Ben Stein impression can be heard across every single on-disc mission. It wasn’t much of a surprise that Bungie deliberately forgot to write any dialogue for the Dinkster in either of the game’s expansions.

But Ghost is back for September’s massive expansion, The Taken King, but this time he’ll have the pipes of Mr. Nolan North (Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed) to voice him to life. North was initially brought in to lay vocals down for only the third expansion, but Bungie fell in love with the veteran’s performance, going as far as to re-record every line with him.

“They really wanted me to put my stamp on it. They let me bring what I wanted to the role,” North said to Game Informer. “You have to give it your own spin.” North isn’t kidding when he says he aims to make the character his own. The actor refused to hear anything his predecessor had already recorded to avoid affecting his take on Ghost.

And Nolan apparently hopes to take ownership over the character for a long time to come. “I’m hoping we’re doing this for years. If I get a chance to continue with the role, I think we can evolve Ghost as we move forward over the years. In the same way that the player learns about the game and the world, maybe the Ghost grows with them.”

Maybe, Nolanbot. Maybe.

Destiny’s ‘The Dark Below’ Dated and Detailed, Drops December

I know what you’re thinking, Guardians. “Why in the world would I need even more content to contend with when I’m perfectly happy to play the same handful of Strike missions over again for the three-hundredth time?”

Listen, I’m with you. It’s a valid point. Originally, I was a little miffed at being locked into the same cutscenes where Dinklebot reads out exposition like he would names in a phone book sixty times over. But after sixty-one times, I loved it.

Come December 9th, though, it’ll be time to influx a brand new set of missions you’ll play into the ground, sanding your joystick nubs into… nubbier nubs. Destiny’s first expansion, “The Dark Below,” launches across all platforms, the standalone DLC pricing in at $19.99 or $34.99 when bundled in the Season Pass (which includes the upcoming “House of Wolves”).

“The Dark Below,” a supposedly substantial expansion to the Destiny universe, includes:

• Three new story missions doled out by a new character, Eris, who apparently spent her time hiding among the Hive like a sci-fi Dian Fossey
• New weapons, armor, and five additional bounty slots (that’s twice the grind!)
• Light Level cap raises to 32; irrelevant, I will forever be stuck at 26
• A new Strike, “The Will of Crota,” where you face down the Omnigul’s plans for Moon domination
• Another six player Raid called “Crota’s End” in which your Fireteam has to venture into the Hellmouth to prevent Sunnydale High from being overrun with uber-vamps (wait… no, that’s correct)
• Three new PvP maps — The Cauldron, a close-quarters Hive arena; Pantheon, a bout inside a Vex temple; and Skyshock, an abandoned defense array now home to your pulse rifle murder streaks

Additionally, if you count yourself apart of the PlayStation family, you’re privy to an exclusive Strike mission dubbed “The Undying Mind” which I sincerely hope pits players against a giant Dinklebot.

Destiny

by QuinSepter