'Destiny 2' Forsaken Launch Trailer Just Fixed the Games Biggest Story Flaw
Players finally get their voice back.
by Corey PlanteOne of Destiny 2’s biggest narrative flaws is getting fixed with the Forsaken expansion. That’s right: Your Guardian just got their voice back.
Developer Bungie released a new launch trailer for Destiny 2: Forsaken that strings together the previously teases murder of Cayde-6 and cutscenes from the upcoming story. Ikora Rey and Commander Zavalla mourne Cayde back in the city; Zavalla says they need to focus on protecting the Last City but Ikora reckons they need to take some action for vengeance. “I refuse to bury any more friends,” Zavalla says at about the 1:30 mark.
“You won’t have to,” the player character says after a year of being silent in Destiny 2. “Uldren Sov is mine.”
This powerful moment couldn’t come at a better time, especially when the fan-favorite Cayde-6 just died.
In the trailer, the player character takes the form of a Titan — and they speak after an entire year on mute.
After this moment, the Human Male Titan featured in the cutscene blasts off on their Sparrow speeder for the trailer to then feature three different Guardians using their badass new powers to take down Fallen enemies. It took Cayde’s death for the Guardian to finally speak.
Plenty of video games, like the Zelda franchise, function perfectly fine without giving the player character an actual voice. But the past year of Destiny 2 suffered a bit when, in every cutscene, the player’s Ghost spoke for them rather than speaking for themselves, especially when every other character in the entire game gets a voice. In some scenes, a mute Guardian blinks while their Ghost chatters away. Far too often this came off as stunted and awkward.
From a practical standpoint, it makes some measure of sense that Bungie made the Guardian silent. Players can opt for a male or female character and choose between three distinct races, so Bungie would need six different voice actors to play a leading role in the game. They made this work in the first Destiny, but the developer decided to cut corners in the sequel. Now, Bungie’s fixing things in the best way possible.
Armed with all-new abilities and tons of revamped systems in the big update — and a brand-new voice box — players will have lots to do when Forsaken drops.
Destiny 2: Forsaken will be released on September 4, 2018.
