Just when I was feeling confident about the upcoming Destiny 2 expansion, something put a puzzling pin in those feelings.

Yesterday it was announced that Nathan Fillion, the longtime voice of Cayde-6, will be replaced by Nolan North in Forsaken.

This puzzles me.

For many, Fillion’s Cayde has been the most beloved character in the Destiny universe. In Forsaken, Cayde is killed (as we saw in the announcement trailer during Sony’s E3 presentation); to have a change in voice actor when the crux of Forsaken is the death of that character, well, it’s concerning.

No one can argue that Nolan North is a capable and talented voice actor. I will say I far preferred Peter Dinklage’s Ghost to North’s. In fact, North’s Ghost made me greatly dislike the character of Ghost (I’m not a fan of his take on Ghost and quite liked Dinklage’s drier, more robotic interpretation), and that worries me about his take on Cayde.

So, I see two issues here. One: I’m wary of what North’s take on Cayde will be. And two: why this alteration to a major character (on his exit from the series, no less) happened at all.

Let’s assume Forsaken has been in development a while. Bungie still has well over a month until release. If Cayde really is dead in the opening hour of this expansion (another topic entirely even though, yes, his Ghost died as well), it’s likely he didn’t have many lines to record. I’d imagine, even if he was exceptionally chatty in Forsaken, the time to record his voice lines would be minimal, perhaps a week or less. Surely if they made the conscious choice to kill off a beloved character from the game to get players invested again, they would know how important it would be to keep that same voice actor even if they had to work around his schedule.

It feels like we aren’t getting the whole story here, and something feels off, at large. I understand Bungie has a game to make and a deadline to keep, but this shouldn’t have been an option, especially with the character on his way out.

It also seems strange that North will be playing both Ghost and Cayde; there is the very real possibility he will be interacting with himself at some point during the expansion. I know his voice is treated as Ghost, and I’ve no doubt he will do a decent Cayde impersonation, but I find it odd they didn’t find a workaround to keep Fillion as Cayde. It makes me wonder: who could be next? I was sorry to see Dinklebot go; there are plenty of other characters I’d be sorry to see go, too.

What do you think about this change to the voice cast?

P.S. Sorry about the pun in the title. I had to. Sometimes a pun is bigger than me and I can’t not say it.

P.P.S. I guess since I still used it as my title, it means I’m not sorry after all.