I never knew that you were affiliated with my sworn pirate enemies. For that you will pay.

In other news, when you're talking about good and bad game dialogue, you should expect to get about 20,000 emails about at least two games in particular: Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1, and Zero Wing on Genesis. FFT obviously has the much fabled "Off course!" and Zero Wing, well, if you haven't heard of Zero Wing, I don't think I can call you a true gamer. "Somebody set us up the bomb. All your base are belong to us." Can't say I ever played the game, but man oh man did that become a cult phenom. Anyhow, that's not my ninja point. The game I really want to throw out there for worst dialogue is Breath of Fire 2. And while I'm at it, I'm gonna throw it out for grammar as well. I mean honestly, I think it was translated by a horny retarded monkey during mating season, with A.D.D. to boot. Talk about short attention span. I think they just threw commas in the middle of nowhere to fsck with people. Well, at I thought so. Now that I think about it, there could be a way awesome drinking game where everyone drinks wherever they see a grammar error. I say zero to drunk in two minutes. Tops. As for a good dialogue... I'm gonna have to say the Resident Evil Remake. Yeah, I know most people would count it as bad dialogue, but I must say, the thought of a Jill sandwich gets me every ninja time.

~The White Stealth Ninja Dragon Retard, hope this is not Chris's blood...

I'll start by saying that one of your jokes in the random friday topic was
reallly good: “Square sold out yo.” I add the “yo” for street cred, I’m cool like
that.

Anyway:

Vagrant Story!!! VS had the best use of the english language I've seen in a
game. Evah. If you play it no more explanation is needed

El Quinto - Big pimpin' baby! oh yeah...

After much thought on the subject (at least thirty seconds), I can come to only one conclusion. Though I enjoyed the game itself immensely, I have to say that the people who wrote the script for Final Fantasy 10 should be taken out and shot for excessive use of "You know?"

On the other hand, despite its sometimes fatiguing verbosity, Xenogears had some pretty darned good lines in it.

~ Nicole

So the topic is game dialogue, eh? Well, in my mind the worst games when it
came to dialogue had to have been two Survival Horror entries on the old
PSX: the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

In Resident Evil, you had some of the most atrocious voice acting ("NO!
Don't open that DOOR!") and the worst script writing ever ("I'll give this
to you, the master of unlocking!"). In Silent Hill, the acting was a tad
better, but not by much ("Radio? What's going on with that radio?"), and it
was increasingly peppered with long pauses in between characters' lines. On
the bright side, the dialogue was at least adequate.

However, despite these short-comings, these two remain part of my game
library and are two of my favorites. Resident Evil introduced me to the
genre of Survival Horror and condemned me to be a Resident Evil junkie to
this day by combating zombies, monsters, and evil mega-corporations. Silent
Hill delved into the psychological horror aspect and delivered a gritty,
thought-provoking game that will still send chills up my spine every time I
hear those air-raid sirens go off as I travel into dark Silent Hill. So you
see that even if the dialogue may not deliver, it's still possible to make a
good game.

That all said, dialogue is still important to character-building and for
story-telling. Thankfully, Capcom and Konami have recognized that as
demonstrated by their sequels into both Resident Evil and Silent Hill, as
both have become staples in their respective line-ups.

-Nightstalker, who hides under the covers everytime a tornado siren is
tested.

Chris--!!
You rule--!!!
You actually printed my letter--!!!!

*sob*

That rocks, man, thanks. ^__^

As for the topic? I think the Kain games have had outstanding dialogue.
Sure, they sometimes turn into Anne Rice-inspired Goth-fests, and more often
than not they use too many adjectives and adverbs--just listen to Raziel's
l33t run-on sentence skillz in the Soul Reaver 2 intro--but they are, for
the most part, pretty literate. The fact that the arcing storyline for the
games kicks ass helps like you wouldn't believe. And Big Daddy Kain is one
bad honky mofo'.

Games with ****y dialogue? My heart will always save a little room for PS2's
Rygar. Not only was the voice acting downright demostrative of the word
"ASS, but the script actually contributed to the overall suck of it all.
GREAT game, though, and I wonder if perhaps that owes a lot to that one
scene involving Cerberus.

"Is that Cerberus, Guardian of Hades?...NO! 'Tis the Fang that rages against
injustice! Fang of Rage, fight with me!!!!"

Cerberus, flattered by the sheer idiocy of it all--and maybe a tad intrigued
by the adventures he could have with such a drop-kicked-as-a-baby lunkhead
like Rygar--joins in the Legendary whatever.

Or something like it. ROTFLMAO-quality stuff in that game, I tell you.
Redefining the sublime artistic boundaries of interactive entertainment.

Peace.

-The Absu-

1 Game. Followed by several others I will add in the hopes of making a response long enough to be included in the column.

Planescape: Torment

It's one of the best-written games ever concieved, if not THE best game ever, certainly one of the best RPGs made, based on one of the most creative fantasy RPG licenses. Ever.

Other than that, I suppose Baldur's Gate and it's sequel come as distant runners-up.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic certainly gets its own praise for have superlative voice acting and fully-voiced dialogue. It went to show how much more ass a game could kick when you could hear everyone talking and not sounding bored unless they were supposed to. Not to mention that it had a plot that was way cooler than the recent movies.

Xenogears and Xenosaga Episode I are well-written, though they both suffered a bit from a need to be The Greatest Story Ever Told...Or Watched In A Cutscene.

The Suikoden series always had a special place in mein herz for trying to be an ensemble piece rather than a on-man-show. Sure, you had the nameless voiceless hero (who had an "official" name that you'd only get by searching google like a madman), but you had the other 107 characters who did all kinds of stuff. That, and the stories were often more "human" than the typical "Fight this Big Bad Enemy Who Is Just Misunderstood And Wants To Destroy The World" stuff that Final Fantasies past the sixth were mostly made of. It was kingdom against kingdom, with politics, backstabbing, and your very own castle right in the middle.

Final Fantasy Tactics is often hailed as the best-written console game (or at least the best-written FF game), but it suffers from piss-poor translation, much the same way as Zone of Enders II does.