Bungie Explains Why Destiny: The Taken King Will Have More Story Focus

Despite reports in some publications that Peter Dinklage had been axed from Destiny's voice cast over his performance, the game's developer Bungie says that the actor had to be replaced due to his availability, not for any other reason.

We reported a few weeks ago that Dinklage had been replaced by Nolan North, the voice actor best known for his role as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series. North will be taking over Dinklage's role in its entirety, and all existing voiceovers for the Ghost character will be replaced with the new VO.

In an interview with GameInformer, executive producer Mark Noseworthy said, "Dinklage was awesome to work with but we needed to work with someone who is more available. Nolan is a pro, this is his thing.

"You can just call him up and say 'hey, next week we're doing this internal play test and it would be great to get some Ghost dialogue in there'. And he's available."

The game's upcoming expansion, The Taken King, will see Ghost have a more important role to play in the story. In addition to having a lot more dialogue, Ghost will be given an expanded role as a lore-giver to provide story details as players use him to scan the environment. 

This is all a part of the game's overall change in presentation, with a greater story focus. Actor Nathan Fillion will be playing the role of Cayde-6, and he'll have a lot to say. The Taken King will feature dialog between multiple characters during missions and more cutscenes than previous content in Destiny.

This is a step away from the game's previous direction, which saw much of its story dispensed through Grimoire Cards that you had to read by accessing a website outside of the game. It didn't do much to spur players' imaginations about the game's lore, and gave them little reason to care about anything that happened in the game outside of combat. 

Destiny: The Taken King comes out on September 15.