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The 12 most extravagant lines of dialogue in gamesOne Off The List
One Off The List
The greasy realm of the videogame is not always the best place to look for good writing. For everyDisco Elysiumthere are roughly 800Detroit: Beyond Humans. But it is a good place to look for wondrous, over-the-top nonsense. I’m talking about character dialogue so flamboyant and exaggerated, you could insert some line breaks and it would instantly become a verse in a glam rock anthem. Here are the 12 most extravagant, exuberant, and intense lines of dialogue. In games, subtext is just whatever’s written on the side of the nuclear submarine.
“Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space” - Gunnery officer,Mass Effect 2
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This military officer is very angry at his underlings. Luckily, he is an expert of communicating that anger in a productive manner through liberal revision of Newton’s laws of motion. Imagine a physics teacher who joined the royal marines for 10 years and went back to teach in his old school, screaming “No credit for partial answers, maggot” at the Year 10s. This 1 minute and 18 seconds of dressing down, delivered with all the terrifying authority you would expect from astrophysics boot camp, is loud, showy, and still better than anything in Anthem.
”What does a lowly, ephemeral speck know of all creation?" - Leviathan,Final Fantasy XV
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“In time, you will know the tragic extent of my failings” - geezer,Darkest Dungeon
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Tfw you run laughing and wailing through the blackened arcades of antiquity.
“Firing a gun is a binary choice. Either you pull the trigger or you don’t” - Max Payne,Max Payne 2
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Max Payneis mayor of the indulgent noir aphorism. If he had a sidekick she would be called Polly Pastiche, and then she would die. Officer Payne gets a lot of good lines. “I had a bomb ticking in my head,” he growls. “No amount of painkillers would disable it.” In Max Payne 2 he smooches Mona, a woman who is also a proponent of fair bullet distribution among the masses. “Kissing her,” he says, “I think of the cold laws of cause and effect.” This man is a machine ofwild dialogue, capable of delivering multiple-clause contempt even as he unloads shotgun shells into unprepared bellies. He is what would happen if Raymond Chandler stepped into the machine fromThe Fly, and at the last second a wandering Tom Clancy flew in and closed the door. Rom Chancy.
“There are no such things as things” - a thing,Everything
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“I used to be an adventurer like you…” - Guards,The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
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The extravagance of this death-flogged catchphrase has been lost to the dark well of memery. But throw yourself back to a humble time when this sentence did not exist. Imagine, if you will, hearing it for the first time. Picture yourself at the market, quietly buying a fish. A man with a sword appears behind you, as if from nowhere. “I used to be an adventurer like you,” he says, striking up an unsolicited conversation as you put a wet trout in a grocery bag. “Until I took an arrow in the knee”. Jesus, you think. This complete stranger went from zero to mentioning his war wounds in a mere 16 words. You try to hide your concern. How do you respond to something like that? “What a pity”? “Sorry to hear that”? You opt for a smile, you nod politely, and pointedly begin counting your change, hoping he will go away. The man remains there, staring. He stares, and stares, and he does not move.
“His real name is Mihaly [13 surnames follow]” - Dr. Schroeder,Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
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A masterclass in characterisation.
“And thus, guilt, repentance, mourning and every pain of the soul of all kind were visibly and tangibly manifested, everywhere and in all of us” -Blasphemous
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Aside from being delivered with an astounding John Hurt impersonation, this line will make even the most lapsed of Catholics sit up straight, and feel a single Rosary bead of cold sweat dripping down their back.Blasphemousis apretty decent soulsie, full of precise, gory side-on slashing. Its prose is purpler than a giant, self-inflicted bruise, and from an editor’s point of view, hilariously inefficient. Yet it seems to suit this world of weeping and prayer and blood-splashed cobblestones. This is big, brash videogame writing in biblical mode. Long-winded, ornate, barely understandable. Scares the shit out of me.
[Swearing] - Leon and Claire,Resident Evil 2
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Claire’s pitched “what-tha-faaack!” at 1m 18s is my favourite. What’s yours?
“I will not apologise for simply expediting the inevitable” - Caustic,Apex Legends
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Arena combatant andsecret 14-year-old Papa Roach fanin a fake beard, Alexander “Caustic” Nox, is keen to show everyone how clever he is. He uses the sciencey word “variable” as a placeholder noun for all sorts of things. Gas tank? That’s a variable. Footsteps? Those are a variable. Bullet in the back of the skull. That’s a variable right there, colleague. This line about him “expediting the inevitable” is the prime example of that carry-on, and I love it. He is an insufferable logic boi with a nascent fetish for watching people cough. “Some compounds are inert,” he says at one point, “having little to no effect on the outcome… like you.” God, Alex, you’re such a dick.
“Please let us kill you! We beg you!” - A barkeeper,Yakuza Kiwami 2
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This whole bit - Skull Face,Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
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For a man who wants to eradicate the English language, he sure talks a lot of it.
One Off The List from… the unhealthiest relationships
List-dweller “Skabooga” says the lady-meets-weapon relationship should be spared ridicule, because they “unambiguously enjoy each other’s company”. Which is true. “She didn’t really kill herself so much as move in with him,” they argue, “and that must be a good indication of their increasing commitment to each other.”
We don’t need to replace this couple with another unhealthy pairing. But if we did, says “Gorkon5567”, it should be with Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong fromResident Evil 2, “on the basis that nobody actually knows what their relationship is, including Leon.”
That’s it. See you next week, list dweebs.
