Exclusive behind-the-scenes with Peter Dinklage

Courtesy of Polygon: http://www.polygon.com/forums/destiny/2014/6/17/5817944/exclusive-peter-dinklage-destiny-vo-session

I hadn't actually heard that line until today. Is that really the best take they got out of him? That's some "Aha! Is this our chance?" level shit.

@smcn:

I am a crazy person who likes Dinklage as Ghost in Destiny, because everything I like is terrible, it turns out, but that gave me a laugh.

I thought his performance was fine. The *Wizards from the Moon* bit was the best part of the Alpha's VO. Made me smile big time. Different strokes for different blokes, I guess.

I don't understand. The internet clearly states that your opinion is wrong.

Seriously guys, do you honestly think they wont throw some modifications on the voice before final release? It is alpha for christ's sake. Also the Ghost is a freaking robot, what do you want it to sound like? Did you want it to sound like Ronald McDonald or something? Also have you heard what Glados sounds like before all the voice work was done to make it sound synthetic? I will give you a hint. It sounded pretty dry and deadpan, exactly like what they intended.

However @turambar that picture is balling, so to speak.

But if it's Polygon telling him he's wrong, he's most likely correct.

I, non ironically, like the line "That wizard came from the moon", but Dinklage is just terrible.

It seems to me like a miscasting.

During the quicklook I was confused at first about where the voice was supposed to be coming from. Once I realized it was the little AI thing it made sense again, but felt like it should have some kind of GLADoS style processing overlaid.

I suspect the problem is that they hired a "big name" for the role, and so they don't want to distort the voice (thus making it unrecognizable). They should have just hired an unknown and gave it a robo-voice.

I wonder if we'll ever hear the story behind Dinklage's VO. I'd like to give both him and Bungie the benefit of the doubt, but it's hard to imagine how they would have ended up with that performance if everyone involved was taking it seriously.

I don't think his work is as bad as the lines he has to read. But I do expect some sort of midi cation to make it sound a bit more robotic in nature. Anyway I didn't think he was terrible

Listen man. Moon Wizards are fucked up.

Is that a joke, a sketch. That guy was giving him no motivation for the lines. No context at all. It was just read this. And he was like this doesn't seem right. So I fully understand why the lines come across as lacking in tone and emotion.

So, if this is going to be the new thing people yell at him when he walks by, I kind of wonder if he even remembers saying it, or if he'll just be really confused.

I think it's a waste of money to use visually prolific actors (from, like, movies and such) when there are so many amazing voice actors.

I think my favorite robot companion voice is still the one delivered by Stephen Merchant in Portal 2.

Also, I've been watching a lot of Bob's Burgers and Archer recently and really, really think they should use H Jon Benjamin in there.

@karkarov said:

They've released official trailers (also in gameplay back from 2013) with the same voice as the 'alpha'. They're not going to include his voice in a trailer unless they expect it to be representative of the final game, and they've had plenty of time to add a couple effects to the audio if they had wanted. I don't think anyone has an issue with him sounding like a robot if they added effects like glados has; the problem is without that, it sounds like a really flat performance from Peter Dinklage.

But at this point, with this probably being the point of most controversy with the game, I wouldn't be surprised if they do as you mentioned.

If the Alpha is anything to judge by, then the game has such a small focus on story that even if the voice acting is junky (not saying I think it is), then it doesn't really matter than much.

The only bad part I heard from the Quick Look was that one line about the Hive. Something to the effect of "Oh no, it's, the Hive."

Everyone is flipping out and being dicks about his voice work on this game. It boggles my mind. I think he sounded freaking rad and everyone should be super pumped to have a RoboDinklage companion.

First of all, it's just a teeny tiny small portion of the game that people are extrapolating to be the entire performance. There's a lot more content that no one has heard. Second of all, robots are robots and they talk like robots. Expect wooden performances when they're trying to be robots. Robocop, Terminator, A.I., I Robot, Prometheus, FUCKING EVERY ROBOT/A.I. PERFORMANCE EVER IS WOODEN! IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE! WHY IS EVERYONE BEING CRAZY FOR NO REASON! Thirdly, that wizard came from the moon.

This is one of those internet reactions where I look at it and just shake my head. The weirdest part is that the gaming press is spear heading the whole thing. It's like they want people to not like Dinklage for some arbitrary reason. Kotaku had that dumb article and a bunch of others complained during E3. At least that Polygon bit was funny about it though.

Ghost was awesome in the alpha and is going to be even better in the full game (because there will be more). Ya'll are being crazy!

That soundbite in the Polygon forums? That's not real. That's just Justin McElroy doing a bit. *giggles*

Check him out in " the Baxter". a great underrated movie.

@sergio said:

Agreed.

@theht: yeah I agree. To me personally it's really the dialogue that is kinda garbage. Seriously, I challenge all of you to try and say "Oh no. It's the Hive!" And not feel like a dumbass. Go on... Do it.

K I don't have Twitter so I have to take this verbal dump somewhere

via @bradMr. Shoemaker on Twitter - "People ragging on Dinklage in Destiny are nuts. That's exactly the sort of stilted, off-kilter detachment I want from a talking alien robot."

Nah. Because if it was a stilted, off-kilter detached alien robot, it should either be even more flat than it already is or the dialogue should not be written in a way that makes it seem like this robot is thinking and speaking emotionally like a human. If it can ponder than it can adjust the tone of it's voice. COME ON BRAD geez.

Ugh F'n hate twitter and hate that I can't respond to this stuff or even if someone does it'd just get lost in an ocean of responses that people won't look at anyway.

Going by the alpha, I also thought the story wouldn't amount to much, but having seen the trailer below, it seems like there will be actual cutscenes at least, so who knows.

Ah, I couldn't tell on listening through these crappy laptop speakers, sound quality was terrible. That makes more sense then.

This happens to be an area where video games are quite storied, talking robots that is. And in recent memory this is by far the most flat and uninteresting "robot" performance I've heard in a long time, especially from such a big profile project. GladOS, Legion, HK-47, Wheatley, the VI from Mass Effect, the robots in Fallout, and many more have all done robots from measured to animated to great success. I don't buy into the idea that the fact that a character is a robot means a "flat" performance can't be bad.

Justin Mac El Roy is a treasure and that voice work is straight bad. You gotta figure they'll do some juicing to it now that it's out there and hilarious in the bad way.

I enjoy the deadpan delivery and I'm glad that there's no way in hell that they'll ever change it because that stuff is way too expensive to throw out.

I read somewhere that the VO in the alpha is raw. so not what the final stuff will sound like.

Remember when the Sony E3 conference this year opened up and the Ghost spoke a little? That voice that time was filtered treated Dinklage. Not to mention this, the thing that you got to see every character you created:

Hell, if you held the Ghost in your hand when it spoke you'd hear an automated little DSP going on filtering it.

But hose of you who think the raw untreated voice of Ghost in the alpha was demonstrative of the final product, welcome! It's nice to see so many people with anencephaly survive for so long only to gather on the same forum of the internet.

..Justin's fun though and I kinda like the moon wizard, it's hard to not have a good giggle. Looking forward to what other things this Ghost (interesting lore behind them) says over the course of the game.

Unfortunately it's on Polygon and I will no longer go to that site: so I don't have any clue what you're intent with this thread is as you have little to no actual content in the OP.

If the point of this thread is how strange his voice work is in Destiny; what little I have heard of it sounded fine all-be-it deadpan, but he's a robot so I don't see the problem. They probably could stand to add a little flair to it, but we'll see what they land on.

Supposedly this game is in Alpha (give me a second while I laugh continuously at the incorrect usage of that title- this game as it is shown is not in an Alpha state) so they still have time to consider what their intent is with the voice.

@somejerk: I actually just checked and he talks the entire time and the entire time it has some sort of filter over it.

This could've potentially be funny, but it's not.. at all.

And I also have no problem with Dinklage performance in Destiny, he's an AI, he just recites things without too much emotion, like an AI would do. The line 'The Wizard came from the Moon' is not that weird in Destiny's universe, right? There is this alien race, they are everywhere in our solar system and some of them are wizards. I heard it and I was 'Ah, ok, so he was from the Moon, what was he doing here then? Let's move on.'

Video game dialog

@dussck: Ghost mentions that there was some kind of wizard prison on the moon which they broke out of. Can't remember where but I know it's in the Alpha.

I liked that line.

Mainly because it was one of the few in which he didn't completely fuck up the intonation.

I have to imagine the v/a director was too much in awe of Dinklage to ever correct him or ask for another take. I've never seen him act, but I can't imagine anyone would be allowed to deliver lines that way on a big-budget HBO series.

I didn't think he was very good, but I still really loved his voice acting for some reason? Hope they don't change it.

Yep not funny at all. I did think the VO in the alpha came off a bit flat but I had no issues with it. It was no where near the worse thing I've heard in a game.

I mean, how else can you say "That wizard came from the moon." ?

Seems like a problem with... erm... direction. Something Bungie has messed up a few times in their career.

I think whoever directed Peter Dinklage was really going for the HAL 9000 vibe. Two problems with that.

Not everyone can pull that off (depending on how good your ear is). Second, casting a well known actor for that part, especially one who more well known for more "emotive" roles, is going to sound very, very weird. It's hard to divorce Peter Dinklage, or Ghost from Tyrion Lannister.

I'll be honest, I played a little of the Alpha and when I finally, just now, heard the source material and realized he was the guy doing the narrating or whatever, I was surprised it was him. But in a good way. I really liked that voice and thought it was one of the more interesting parts of the game. I gave up during the zombie fight because, well, I guess I'm bad at video games but I did like his voice in it.

Christ this comment editor. Once that chat goes gold and stable and subsystems feel better, can the engineers work on that one? Would it work better if I switched to Chrome away from Firefox?

Was going to reply and say "I was thinking about the E3 stuff, shouldn't be too long until Bungie drop some new material on us", and add:

"An icon of Ghost lights up and animates in the upper right when it speaks, something a startling amount of players never noticed."

There's a difference between "deadpan robot" and "terrible".

Deadpan robot: Spacey in Moon

Terrible: this

Yes, a perfect comparison. Data would be another one as well to prove that you can still have 'robot dialogue' sound natural and not utterly bored and phoned in like Dinklage's.

EDIT: Also, like @seikenfreak mentions, Dinklage's robot guy was very clearly given more of a personality than most robot characters and expresses some degree of emotion in its (rubbish) delivery.

You know Stephen Merchant is a pretty big and recognizable actor right?

They really need to tweak his voice a bit... man, his delivery is just so ridiculous. It's like he's reading a children's book to a circle of kids on a carpet in a library. I'm sorry but people saying his performance is good are just plain wrong. This is terrible.

It's kind of like they were aiming for a mix of HAL but with the emotion and humanness of the OS voice from "Her".

Yea this is the sort of thing it comes across to me. Like someone just reading a book they have no interest in.

@yummylee Knew I wasn't the only one. They could either go the route of making it literally flat monotone robot and use like the text-to-speech type stuff. Or if going the more ultra futuristic route, have the lines read as if it wasn't even a robot and just a companion.

...or make it like C3PO from Star Wars just weird middle ground that sounds cool.

In general the game needs more Star Wars esque sound effects like R2D2 noises when I interact with things or something haha

I like Peter Dinklage because of GoT and I'm fairly certain he could deliver some proper VO. I don't really have an issue with the "Wizard from the Moon" junk.. It sounds corny but I think anyone reading that would make it sound corny.. even Morgan Freeman I think... I think. So I don't know if the fault lies with the script or with whoever was directing or coaching the voice over session. Maybe a bit of both.

And I don't buy the "It's alpha dewds" stuff. Obviously this isn't alpha and I think most people here know that. But I think the voice work would be done by now. And I imagine putting a general voice filter over a bunch of sound files wouldn't take too long. But I'll be damned if Bungie doesn't take all this widespread talk into consideration and try to do something to fix it up and all those people will be like "See I told you bro! God it was just an alpha!"

One last thing. Lets say it's all working as intended and that is the final voice work and it is the sound they were going for. Then it's just plain boring to listen to.

@seikenfreak: That's THE ENTIRE POINT OF AN ALPHA, to get players reactions and feedback, and if that feedback is to put a filter on some VO then they will do just that.

Maybe the fact that it sound stilted is the whole point? I don't know. At first it irked me, but its completely fine. People just want something to complain about, and this fits the mold!