Video games can teach deep truths about life, society and human nature.
Which ones stand out for you?
“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”
-Cave JohnsonSo motivational and inspiring.
"There will come a day when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life, and your bright spirit will fade before a growing emptiness.” from Stardew
“Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer” Javik (Mass Effect)
“A man chooses, a slave obeys.” — BioShock
From Andrew Ryan, the founder of Rapture, the underwater utopia gone wrong in BioShock. This is Ryan’s philosophy valuing individual freedom and rationality over collectivism and morality. I can never decide whether I agree with this or not. There’s truth in it, but it can be misguided and extreme as well.
“Number One: In 1945, corporations paid 50% of federal taxes; now they pay about 5%. Number Two: In 1900, 90% of Americans were self employed; now it’s about 2%… It’s called consolidation; strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time.” - Leo Gold in “Deus Ex”
‘All your base are belong to us’
They set us up the bomb!
What you say?
We get signal.
“What is better: to be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?” — Paarthurnax, Skyrim
That is the quote that stayed with me the most after 30 years of gaming. Also, fuck the Blades.
I’ve always thought this quote was silly, because the first one is obviously better.
Paarthurnax did atrocities. Plural. If he were born good, less people would have died horribly, which is better all around.
The quote isn’t about which is more good, because yeah, obviously it would be better if no one was evil, but the quote is asking which is more praiseworthy. Do you think the person who naturally is a hero saving everyone they meet is more honourable, or is it the one who desires violence and destruction by nature and rejected that to choose to do good instead?
“Rise and shine Mr. Freeman… […] The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world."
I don’t trust a man that doesn’t have something strange going on about him, 'cause it means he’s hiding it from you. If a man’s wearing his pants on his head or if he says his words backwards from time to time, you know it’s all laid out there for you. But if he’s friendly to strangers and keeps his home spick-and-span, more often than not he’s done something even his own ma couldn’t forgive.
-No-bark Noonan, FNV
I know there have been a lot of great meaningful quotes in games I’ve played throughout the years…
But all I can remember is shit like “this guy are sick” and “Oh no! The truck have started to move!”
My all time favorite, though, is “The president has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?”
In a world without gold, we might have been heroes!
—Blackbeard, Assassin’s Creed IV
Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment? I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle…and wonder if we’ll ever get the chance to kill him.
—2B, Nier Automata
I am a potato
—GLaDOS, Portal 2
NieR: Automata is pure love, joy, and sadness, mixed with action and philosophically induced emptyness.
And this quote is just the perfect example of how strong it starts.
KotOR 2 Kreia:
To be united by hated is a fragile alliance at best.
Apathy is death. Worse than death. Because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects
“it’s my business doing pleasure with you”.
- some Madame in Hitman
I have two, both from the same game and both by the same character.
It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it.
And
It is a far greater victory to make another see through your eyes than to close theirs forever.
Both by Kreia from Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Fantastic. Whoever wrote this had an inspired day.
Chris Avellone was the writer, he’s had his hand in some incredible games
