Destiny 2 captain Zavala, Lance Riddick, talks about his character’s future

Lance Riddick, the actor behind Lieutenant Daniels in the wire And Sharon the Doorman in the John Wick films, is also the voice of one of Destiny’s oldest and most important characters: Titan Vanguard Commander Zavala.

Riddick is also an avid Fate 2 player. And he’s not shy about it.

For years, Reddick has regularly interacted with Destiny fans on his personal Twitter by sharing videos He has the record in his locker or Recording fan-requested fonts using Zavala’s character’s voice. but with the captain Zavala’s last battle with death in the Mukhtar season – And Famous actors have expressed Bungie’s apparent willingness to kill the Vanguards – I’m starting to worry about the future of one of my favorite Fate characters.

In a recent interview with Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, the game’s upcoming expansion, asked Game Director Joe Blackburn and Project Leader Blake Battle about how Riddick’s presence in the community affects his character. Will his fans’ love for him and his apparent love for fans make it difficult to kill the future tower leader?

“I think people love Lance Reddick, we love Lance Reddick, we love Zavala,” Blackburn said. “I definitely think we’ll always make the choices based on what Destiny needs first. But for sure, we love having Lance not only as our voice actor, but as a top bodyguard. […] We obviously have plans for Zavala – Zavala could go different ways – but Lance is a very resilient actor on his set. […] That leaves the door wide open for us with Zavala.”

Zavala carries a lot of weight in the Destiny story, as he plays both a steady tower bureaucrat and a level leader, depending on the situation. It’s hard to think of how the story of fate in “The Saga of Light and Darkness” could go on without his buzzing, confident yet tense voice in your ear. Blackburn seems to be talking about that here. While it’s certainly possible that something could happen to Zavala down the line, it looks like he might have some character development to take on first.

However, there is always a twinge of fear for the beloved characters and the fate that might befall them. So I sent Blackburn’s quote to Riddick himself to get his opinion on Zavala’s future.

Well, first of all, it’s funny, because in one of the last recording sessions, I actually asked them if they were killing me,” Reddick said in an email to Polygon. They answered him. (Obviously I wouldn’t say what it is [winky-face emoji]). Anyway, it’s hard for me in some ways to get a measure of my Zavala’s character arc over the years because working on the game has been pretty choppy in the midst of the rest of my acting career, but also, even though I play Destiny almost every day (I even Part of a clan now), as soon as I play through each iteration of the game, over time I kind of forget the story and just focus on strength, getting great weapons, and grinding through playlists. At the end of the day, I’m just a huge fan who just happened to voice one of the characters.”

When Reddick says “recent recording sessions”, it’s unclear if he meant it for upcoming sessions witch queen Expansion or something like that on the way. With the number of hits and ‘off’ in his recordings, it’s also possible that the recording session he was referring to may have already passed in-game, perhaps when Zavala nearly had the biggest recording of the past year. Either way, it’s nice to see that the voice behind Zavala is able to relax and unwind in a way his character never could — even if Reddick mains a Warlockdespite filming Titan Vanguard.

I asked Reddick how he treats the Destiny community, and why he takes so much time out of his day to chat with them.

“Honestly, I communicate with Destiny fans differently because they interact with me differently than my other fans,” he said. “I don’t think the fan base is necessarily larger than other fan bases (especially fans of John Wick and bush admirers), but they are the most afflicted with rabies. And for a while I felt that nothing else I had done in my career was important to them. It’s like, “It’s Zavala, and he might do some other things sometimes, but we can’t worry about that! It’s Zavala!”

While Zavala hasn’t always been the most popular character in the Destiny community – in part due to his unwillingness to fly and take revenge on Cayde-6 in forsaken Reddick helped change this narrative by dealing with players. But from what I’ve heard, Reddick has always enjoyed dealing with Destiny players. A few years ago, I heard a rumor about Reddick volunteering to help Bungie emerge Fate 2 To the excited fans at the booths, so to finish the interview, I asked him if he remembered doing it.

“Actually, I’ve done it twice,” Riddick said. “I was at the initial launch in 2014, and then again, I think it was Vegas, when they were launching Fate 2. There’s actually a picture of me at the launch event with Common and Joe Manganiello. It was fun. In the first party I played the game quite a bit. I wasn’t much of a player at the time, so I was kind of appreciative, but it was fun. In the Fate 2 At first, I was more game-faced, so I gave a big presentation on stage. I kind of felt like Steve Jobs, so that was cool. 🙂 Then I met a lot of people who worked on game development, as well as the CEO of Bungie at the time. It was great.”

Reddick has outgrown Zavala and become a dear member of the community. Fans appreciate that the popular actor and voice actor loves Destiny and fans share that love. And while I don’t know where Zavala’s character will go in the future – although I have high hopes he’ll be around for a long time now – it’s clear that Reddick will always be a fellow Guardian.