'Destiny 2' Voice Commands Enabled Via Amazon Alexa, Ghost Skill Download

It has been an absolute banger of a news week for Destiny 2 . The popular first-person shooter/role-playing game hybrid was embroiled in controversy about deceitful in-game systems before developer Bungie posted an apologetic blog post detailing the near future of the game. All of the improvements Bungie outlined for Destiny 2 seem necessary and valuable, but none of them are as important as being able to finally talk to your favorite video game.

Polygon reports that Amazon Alexa smart-speaker devices can now interface with Destiny 2 on PS4, Xbox One and PC using the Destiny 2 Ghost skill. You can download that skill right here. Destiny fans may recall that the Ghost is the quippy little robot who floats around your character and does most of the talking for your silent protagonist.

With the Destiny 2 Ghost skill on your Alexa-enabled device, you can use voice commands to bypass the many, many hours you would otherwise spend staring at menus in the game. For example, you can set multiple different gear loadouts for different situations in Destiny 2 and use voice commands to have Alexa switch between them on-the-fly, as long as you are in orbit or in a social area. Here is a video showing off how that works:

The Destiny 2 Ghost skill comes with a bunch of unique dialogue from Nolan North, who voices the character in the game. You can ask it questions about the dense, often confusing lore about the Destiny universe, such as “Alexa, ask Ghost who are the Red Legion.” Destiny 2 still does not have an in-game repository for all of its lore entries, so that actually sounds somewhat useful.

The Ghost-ified Alexa will also give you recommendations about what to do next based on where you are in the game. The last major gameplay perk is it can tell you which of your friends are online, send messages and keep track of clan activities without needing to turn the game on. You can already do that across a few different websites and mobile apps, but having that all in one voice-activated place is neat.

For a limited time, you can even get a Ghost-shaped speaker that interfaces with your Alexa device for $90. Keep in mind that this is not an Alexa device in and of itself; rather it will just take commands and issue statements from whichever Alexa device you have connected it to. $90 might be a bit much for that, but collector’s items do not have to be practical.

The only problem with this new Alexa skill is the way you start every command. “Alexa, ask Ghost…” is pretty awkward and makes it feel like you are talking to your Ghost through an interpreter. Still, any way you can circumvent Destiny 2 ’s occasionally slow menus using a device you may or may not already own is pretty cool.