me@MTV: Hunting for a great video-game one-liner.... and it's not "Do you know where I can find some sailors?"
This entry was posted on 3/27/2007 10:02 AM and is filed under Are Games Ever Funny,MTV News,Writing in Games.
My expectations for Arnold Schwarzenegger movies were always pretty low, and yet those films provided some of the great one-liners of my generation. Who can forget: "I'll be back" or "I ain't got time to bleed"? I've enjoyed "Hasta La Vista, Baby" and "It's not a tumor," even if I didn't enjoy the movies they were in.
So presumptuous me has been wondering why video games, which are certainly as sophisticated as "Predator" or "Kindergarten Cop" don't seem to have a lot of really great one-liners. That's the main topic for my MTV GameFile column today with answers, lists of one-liners and even a challenge to my premise supplied by actual people who write duologue for major video games (you know, like "Gears of War")
Two excerpts from my piece:
Matt Williamson, editor of the online magazine The Gamer's Quarter, could only think of the messy aspects. When asked if he could cite any memorable one-liners, he thought of five -- all groaners. He had "All your base are belong to us" from "Zero Wing"; "Metal ... gear?!" from "Metal Gear Solid"; "Perhaps the same could be said of all religions" from "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night"; "You're not Alexander" from "God Hand"; and "Do you know where I can find some sailors?" from "Shenmue." He noted the common quality of those lines: "They stand out for their high level of hilarity ... they're cheesy, poorly acted and great to laugh at with your nerd friends at parties." Naturally, there's already a Web site that has hosted some of the worst audio clips: AudioAtrocities.com.
...
"You could argue that 'Gears' should've had a zillion one-liners, since it was such a bombastic, big-budget action game," [the game's script-writer Susan O'Connor] told GameFile in an e-mail last week. "But we were never shooting for that in the script review sessions. It's worth noting that often the people reviewing the scripts come from left-brain backgrounds -- the programmers, who are now producers, say -- and they don't skew towards one-liners. They're more interested in delivering key data to the player as quickly as possible."
More at the link above. Click the link and make my day.
