Bungie brought in comedians to write jokes for Destiny, used none of them

By Sherif Saed

At some point in Destiny’s development, there was a plan to make your companion, Ghost, a lot less monotonous.

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Comedian David Cross, of Arrested Development fame, told IGN that himself and Brian Posehn, another comedian, were invited to Bungie’s HQ to play Destiny before its release and write a few jokes for the Ghost to use.

“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,” he said, explaining that the jokes were stuff that “made them laugh” and some of it was “self-reverential”.

“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.’

“I haven’t played since I’ve been over here and working on Bob and David, but you know 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 sh*t, 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.'”

As Cross points out, perhaps Bungie thought it would go against the game’s tone. Although, try as they might, players ended up finding something else to laugh about, and that time it definitely wasn’t intentional.

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