Great Dialogue

There’s an almost infinite number of “things” to like about a video game. One of my favourite things in Killzone was running into a grenade supply, waiting behind cover as Hahka loaded up the M82 Assault Rifle’s grenade launcher with my new-found grenades, and while I catch a glimpse of his fingerless gloves, Rico shouts “Hey, these Helghast Elites look like yo’ moma!” (or something to that effect), before I pop out of cover, aim for the sky and shoot a grenade perfectly onto my enemies’ feet. There are a lot of elements coming together to create this beautiful moment, but it’s simply the “pting!” sound of firing a grenade (it’s up there with the sound of opening a can of Relentless – it makes me smile and say “Ahhh” out loud) that I truly adore.

It’s usually the little things. However, it’s almost certainly never the dialogue. And if it is, it’s always for the wrong reasons. Nier allowed me to achieve stomach pain with its delivery of “I am just a man, and a hard one, at that!”, at the scene of a man who is supposedly innocently enquiring after his daughter.

Now check out Vanquish, a third-person sci-fi shooter that will hopefully grace our shelves this year.

Vanquish

It looks incredible. Big robots. Cool suits. Missiles flying everywhere. But the one thing that really struck me about this game was, in fact, the dialogue. It’s not quite Nier, but it’s close.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOkr4YqZAME[/youtube]

“We’ve got approximately 8 hours to stop that from happening” says cyborg-esque Santa. “We will… stop that from happening.” Inspiring stuff! As I’ve hopefully already established, my sense of humour is incredibly simple, and this dialogue seriously tickled my simpleton senses, to the point where I no longer care for the robots, cool suits or missiles. I want more stunning speech from this bearded fellow, who looks a little like General Knoxx, yet with two lines of dialogue has already surpassed the face of Borderland’s latest DLC (I’m sorry, I still feel sour about downloadable slice of lag).

Another current game that’s up there with a choice of wording that I can only describe as exquisite, is Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Luckily the trailer is executed in a fashion that gives us KEY TEXT in CAPITAL LETTERS, so if, like me, you are easily distracted by melons (that was a reference to Metal Gear Rising, by the way), here’s the IMPORTANT STUFF.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

A whole new adventure? Good god! I can barely contain myself! Tell me more!

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Oh god… oh jesus… what could it possibly be?!

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Oh.

Okay.

Does that mean we’re all going to stick our fingers in our eyes and forget about this previous lovely fellow from Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness?

Pointless Fellow

This guy (I can’t even remember his name, probably because he was pointless, so I’m just going to call him Pointless Fellow) was presumably swallowed up by a crack in space and time that conveniently removed him from all existence. Because that’s totally fine with me. Come to think of it, I remember Lara falling down an endless black hole in Angel of Darkness, and I had to reset the console and start again. Pointless Fellow obviously had no such luxury.

Never mind though, there are bigger things to worry about, say, if you’re a Metal Gear fan and you’ve just seen footage of Metal Gear Solid: Rising, and you’re wondering, where is Snake? Cigarettes? Cardboard boxes? Nay, where’s the stealth, for that matter? Oh wait, it’s OK, Raiden can slice melons, and I love melons, so everything is fine. Just fine. Maybe they’ll fill those huge gaps between ‘Snake’ and ‘Stealth’ with some excellent dialogue, so, if you’ll excuse me…

“For the love of all that is holy, stop pounding me!”

Comments

7 responses to “Great Dialogue”

  1. Markatansky avatar
    Markatansky

    The highest rated comment on that video is “This is what would happen if we elected Hillary Clinton for president.”

  2. The Rook avatar
    The Rook

    Did you actually play Angel Of Darkness? I couldn’t forgive its flaws and never got very far in it.

  3. Emily avatar
    Emily

    I did indeed. A few big problems for me: Lara controlled like a slug, and also, the setting. It was so bleak, dull and uninspiring. Disappointing!

  4. Kirsten avatar
    Kirsten

    Karl, Kurt, Kirk… it was something along those lines.

  5. Michael avatar

    It was Kurt. He was a spaz.

    You just liked Killzone cos Sean Pertwee was Hahka, didn’t you? 😛

  6. Emily avatar
    Emily

    I’m very fond of Sean’s voice, but there were other things I liked about Killzone! Like, the uh.. grenades! And erm… Sean’s voice!

  7. Celeste avatar
    Celeste

    Angel of Darkness really wanted you to hate it. I mean when you tried to like it, it would just give you reasons not to. You’d try to work with the ‘slug-like controls’ and the ‘bleak setting’, and it would just plummet you through the floor, make you dance with the scenery or, my personal favourite, encase you inside Lara’s head. I think broken dialogue would have been an improvement on the game.

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