Here it is, Guardians: our first look – well, hear, technically – at Keith David’s Commander Zavala in Destiny 2: The Final Shape.
We already knew that Bungie had no plans to remove Zavala from the Destiny 2 story given he was “central” to the upcoming The Final Shape expansion, but this is the first time we’ve heard Zavala voiced by David. Up until now, Zavala’s voice work had been recorded in advance by his original voice actor, Lance Reddick, who sadly died last year.
The line is brief, yes – “I used to think I’d give anything to bring you back”, is all he says – but it’s especially powerful given the team had to unexpectedly recast the commander after Reddick, who was a committed and celebrated Destiny player himself, died.
You can hear it yourself in the video embedded below, which has been clipped from the full dev diary above.
“Couldn’t have picked a better replacement to carry the torch,” said one respondent on X.
“This scene right here made me cry. Lance would be so proud of Keith,” added another.
Unlike the player’s Ghost companion, which saw Nolan North replace all the voice work of Peter Dinklage after the latter exited the project, all lines already recorded Reddick will remain in-game, whereas all new content will be recorded by Keith David.
Reddick died in March 2023, aged just 60. With a prolific entertainment career spanning TV, film, and games, he’s perhaps best known to gamers as Destiny’s Commander Zavala, a pivotal character in Bungie’s ongoing narrative who first appeared in 2014, but he also starred in Remedy Entertainment’s 2016 action-adventure Quantum Break and portrayed Sylens in Guerrilla Games’ Horizon series.
The Final Shape – which Bungie recently referred to as the “culmination of a 10-year journey [but] not the end of Destiny 2 and…definitely not the end of destiny” – takes players into the Traveller for a confrontation with major antagonist The Witness. Expect a new enemy faction – the Dread – along with the customary new Exotics and Prismatic, a brand-new subclass.
If you’ve been curious to give Destiny 2 a try but think you’ve left it too late, don’t forget that Sony is giving all Playstation and PC players limited-time access to three Destiny 2 expansions – The Witch Queen, Beyond Light, and Shadowkeep – ahead of The Final Shape’s arrival in June. Additionally, Destiny 2’s current expansion, Lightfall, is available to PlayStation Plus subscribers.
