Powet Top 5 – Worst Lines in Video Games

There have been some famous utterances in the history of media. Famous lines such as “Yippie-Ki-Yay, Motherf**ker” and “Hasta La Vista, Baby” have been immortalized in our brains since first hearing them, and find themselves worthy of repeating upon anointed occasions. Video games are no exception, what with many games being dialogue-heavy, and thus producing a myriad of memorable lines.

However, not all dialogue is the stuff of writing gold. Indeed, for every fantastic line, there tends to be at least one line that’s so cheesy or utterly out-of-place that it defies logic to even include it in the game and makes us ponder how the game’s writers ever thought they were geniuses upon adding it. Alot of these truly awful lines are so bad, that they actually come full circle, and become immortalized even more than if they were an awesome line.

Thus, we have my Top 5 Worst Lines in Video Games, in no particular order since they’re all equally and awesomely bad.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Given who is the one actually writing this article, I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that Symphony of the Night made it on this list. Of course, when a game has overall crappy dialogue throughout its entire script, it’s kind of hard to to include it. Now with a lot of dialogue in mid-1990’s, games that were really putting a lot of emphasis on voice actors actually delivering the spoken words in-game, it became painfully obvious very quickly that regional translation to English was not always done to the highest of degrees. Thus, we have lines that are often haphazard, yet still delivered in a grandiose and over-the-top manner. While most of them are equally bad, one particular exchange is the one that sets in the mind of players the most and is the most referenced in both its hilarity and hamminess:

“WHAT IS A MAN?! A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS!”

These words, along with other snippets from the same titular exchange between Dracula and Richter Belmont as well as dialogue between Maria and Alucard later in the game, serve to so just how badly the game was translated from its native Japanese. Regardless, the cheesiness of the dialogue served to be an inside joke to Castlevania fans and gamers in general, and found itself often affectionately parodied. When Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP re-released Symphony as an add-on to the main game, the dialogue was in-fact completely re-dubbed with new voice actors and several lines changed, most notably the opening between Dracula and Richter. Oddly enough, fans of the game ended up denouncing the new re-dub, instead favoring their old school ham and cheese of the original. Go figure.

Devil May Cry

The Devil May Cry series is no stranger to hammy dialogue and bad quotes. Take pretty much any game from the series, and you’ll find at least one person chewing the scenery in one fashion or another. The 3rd and 4th installments were particularly caked with masticating the backgrounds, between Arkham’s Im-trying-to-be-serious power tripping which caused him to cheese it up on more than one occasion in the third game, to Agnus’s over-the-top and almost flamboyant characterization making a fantastic foil to Dante’s already bad tendency to slip into the realm of hamming it up. However, it was the first DMC game that probably delivered the best of the worst lines the series had to offer.

“I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO FILL YOUR DARK SOUL WITH LIIIIIIIIIGHT!”

Yes, it was series protagonist Dante who got his career of hamminess started at the end of the first game. The reason the line stand out the most over the other ridiculous lines the series has is due to two reasons in particular. 1.) It was the first game, and therefore had the most potential to be referenced back to from then on forward 2.) It was presented in what seemed to be a totally serious manner. Bad translation can’t be blamed for the delivery of the lines, so if the words themselves were not 100% proper with the original idea, the presentation of what should have been a heart-wrenching moment being punctuated with loud and horrible dialogue can definitely be blamed on Capcom USA. Way to go guys.

Resident Evil

Another series plagued with bad lines since the beginning of the series due to bad translation has a front-runner in Resident Evil. Since the original game, one of the best names in survival-horror gaming (at least, originally) had a notorious habit of sporting poorly translated and cheesy dialogue. Even in more recent years with the days of bad regionalization more-or-less behind us, the Resident Evil series has managed to still produce ham-tastic lines, such as the complete latter-end of Resident Evil 5 between Chris and Wesker, and Leon’s choice dialogue in Resident Evil 4 that tried to be badass and fell flat on its face. “No thanks, BRO.” However, some of the best bad-lines of the game undoubtly came from the original game, and it might be a surprising flip to anyone who hasn’t played the series before that the majority of said awful dialogue comes from none other than the grizzled weapon’s expert himself, Barry Burton. Now, there are two lines in particular that could be argued are worse than the other, but they’re equally BAD, so we’ll just save everyone to argument here and include them both.

“That was close! You were almost a Jill Sandwich!”

“Here’s a lockpick! Maybe you, the Master of Unlocking, could use it!”

The translation from Japanese turned most of Barry’s dialogue into that of an oblivious bumbler, and didn’t do much more of any of the other cast members. What’s worse is that even the live-action opening of the game was plagued by terrible lines, and is said to be attributed to the cast having to work with a Japanese director and some “misinterpretations” that could have probably been delivered better. Fortunately, Resident Evil 2 and 3 didn’t quite take after their predecessor’s terrible script and managed to avoid the hamminess almost altogether. In fact, when the Gamecube released a re-make of the original game, those same lines were re-written to be slightly less saturated with cheese. It wasn’t complete global saturation, mind you, but it was still notable.

House of the Dead

Remember going to the arcades (back when arcades were good, that is), and if you were lucky it had the fantastic horror shoot-em’up House of the Dead? Or maybe you managed to play House of the Dead 2? These games were the prime crop of bad dialogue and voice acting. Who can forget such truly awful lines as “…G’s Bloodstains!” delivered in mock surprise. Or the monotone delivery of the villains and bosses? The 3rd game’s dialogue was minutely better with less cheesy lines, but the overall spoken word was never a strong point of the games of the franchise up until that point. However, it wasn’t until the House of the Dead series came to consoles with “Overkill” that we got introduced to the grand daddy of all lines.

Actually, it wasn’t really a particular line at all that stood out. More like a word. A single word, that began with an “F”, and was consequently used so often it would make the McManus brothers blush. Isaac from Overkill was a large proponent of peppering his sentences generously with the word, to the point where the game earned itself a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for a sizable time for it’s gratuitous use. The final F-bomb count? 189. What’s class when you have a console sequel, though, right?

G: “Care to dial down the swearing, Wash?”
Isaac: “F**k that, motherf**ker!”

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Metal Gear games tend to be made of concentrated awesome, though some more than others depending on whom you ask. The action, the story, the complex characters; everything about the series is just made of pure win. Even a lot of the dialogue isn’t too bad, considering it’s translations. You have in-depth plotline dotted with complex backstory and interspersed with character conversations. However, even the brightest gems sometimes can have a small flaw. And sometimes that flaw can be hilariously bad. Colonel guides newcomer Raiden, the greenhorn prettyboy ninja who takes over Solid Snake’s role in the second MGS game, towards his goals. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite receive the badass assortment of lines Snake was given in the first game, and thus we have this crowning moment of facepalm:

“We’ve managed to avoid drowning!”

Yes, Raiden is so excited by the fact he has managed to successfully swim himself and his kidnapped target to safety, he just has to go ahead reporting the deed in. Despite being a solider trained to survive death on pretty much a regular basis. One could argue that he was merely reporting that they were safe and uninjured, but the choice of phrasing along with the overly excited delivery makes the line go over in what most people see as “so-bad-it’s-great’ way, and thus cemented the phrase into bad-lines history.

Of course, we’ll always have “I need scissor 61!” if the above phrase didn’t garner a cringe.