Ghost (Destiny)

About

Ghost (Destiny) refers to the Destiny protagonist’s artificial intelligence companion portrayed by Game of the Thrones star, Peter Dinklage. The character has come to great online notoriety due to Dinklage’s seemingly lackluster performance for the character, specifically in the alpha release of the game, and has since been dubbed “Dinklebot” by fans as a mix between “Dingklage” and “robot”, and sometimes referred to as such in the same vein as Dinkleberg. As of “The Taken King” DLC pack, all lines originally voiced by Dinklage, as well as all voice overs for the Ghost in the future, have been replaced by prominent video game voice actor, Nolan North.

Origin

On June 11th, 2015, during the Sony conference, Playstation Blog employee Sid Shaun interviewed Bungie community manager ‘DeeJ’ about whether or not Peter Dinklage was in fact in the game. DeeJ confirmed this and went on to say:^[1]

Peter Dinklage is the voice of the ghost in this demo. As you learn more about Destiny, you just might be hearing more from him.
The ghost is your interactive companion, he’s your partner, he’s your wingman. You’ll take him with you everywhere you go. A lot of Destiny is about going into these ruins of our lost civilizations and unlocking their secrets so that we can safeguard our future. The ghost is going to be a bit part of that. So when you come across technology from the golden age that fell and collapsed, when that cataclysm occurred, the ghost will be the thing that you pull out to resurrect that technology.

The interview was recorded and uploaded to Playstation’s official YouTube channel the same day (shown below).

Spread

Following the announcement of a playable version of the alpha build of Destiny, many fans began talking about what to expect from the game, including Peter Dinklage as the Ghost. The earliest known use of the term “Dinklebot” online was on June 10th, 2014, on Reddit, via the /r/Gaming subreddit in which user Merkinary inquired as to whether the Ghost was voiced by Peter Dinklage.^[2]

-Merkinary
Is it voiced by Peter Dinklage? Sounded like it to me.
-infestedjoker:
Yes some people like to call him tyrionbot lol
-Scaryclouds:
Dinklebot?

Following the release of the alpha build of Bungie’s Destiny, on June 12th, 2014, many fans began to criticize the seemingly poor performance of Game of Throne’s actor, Peter Dinklage, whom had become well known for his acting abilities. On June 14th, 2014, YouTuber SevenisYellow uploaded a clip from the alpha of Dinklage’s character saying, “That Wizard came from the moon,” (shown below, right).

On June 18th, 2014, YouTuber GameZone uploaded a parody of Dinklage’s line with various impressions of other famous actors preforming the same line (shown below, left). On July 20th, 2014, YouTuber hoodwinkedfool uploaded a remix of the “wizard” line along with samples of other lines by Dinklage which were considered poorly performed (shown below, right).

Due to the backlash from Dinklage’s performance in the alpha, Bungie stated that Dinklage would re-record his lines in time for the beta.^[3] On July 17th, 2014, Eurogamer uploaded a comparison video of Dinklage’s performances in both the alpha and beta (shown below, left). On October 18th, 2014, Smosh Games released an episode of the Honest Trailers series in which both Destiny and Dinklage’s performance are criticized (shown below, right). Elsewhere on the web, The website Dinklebot.net was created for personal tracking of a Destiny players character.^[4] On Twitter there a various posts with the hashtag “#dinklebot”,^[5] as well as on Tumblr.^[6]

Notable Developments

On August 4th, 2015, Bungie announced that with the upcoming DLC, “The Taken King”, it would be replacing all lines that included Peter Dinklage’s voice acting work, and replacing it with that of seasoned video game voice actor Nolan North.The story was reported on by several news outlets,^[7]^[8]^[9] as well as by “Rooster Teeth’s”: gaming news show, The Know in an episode titled “Destiny’s Dinklebot REPLACED?!” (shown below).