Destiny: Bungie Jettisoned Ideas Written by David Cross and Brian Posehn
In an interesting reveal regarding Bungie’s hit video game franchise Destiny, it turns out the game developer actually hired comedians David Cross (Arrested Development, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Men in Black) and Brian Posehn (The Sarah Silverman Program.) to write up some dialogue and jokes for the player’s Guardian sidekick, Ghost, voiced by Peter Dinklage. Fans have taken to making fun of the rather dry character by calling it the Dinklebot. Cross made the reveal in a recent interview with IGN.
According to Cross, he and Posehn were brought in to “punch up” the script for Ghost. For the most part, Ghost is a fairly monotone and humorless character, aside from when The Stranger and the Guardian player poke at him by calling him “Little Light.” Ghost simply replies, “Don’t do that.” Cross stated, “[We] jumped at the chance. We were flown up to Bellevue, Washington to do a punch-up on the Ghost character in Destiny about a year ago. We were both very excited about it.”
Unfortunately, the powers that be opted not to use any of Cross and Posehn’s material they wrote for the game. Cross continued and added some of his own criticism of the game: “They did not use a single, solitary thing that we wrote, which is a shame. [But] I would imagine somebody somewhere said, ‘We can’t inject this levity or humour into it.’ It’s a shame because I’ve played Destiny quite a bit. When it came out I was way into it and way excited about it, and when you’re at 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 s***, 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.’ You think we’re going to f*** with the tone? But it was very exciting to go up there and get paid to play a video game a year before it came out.”
In regards to the type of jokes he wrote, Cross said the lines were self-referential type jokes he thought gamers might like. He recalled, “We were there for a couple of days so we offered a bunch of stuff up.”
Destiny’s next expansion, The Taken King, is due out on September 15.