Science Fantasy Video Games

"You would have expected something feminine -- flowers probably, or some low predatory scent -- but she smells like brine and the cold ocean."

"[Thinking about Galatea] A bit of an enigma, really. A complex piece by someone you've never heard of. Which suggests a pseudonym or perhaps a hoax, except of course that she doesn't remind you of the work of anyone in particular. There are superficial resemblances here and there. On the whole, though, she's unique."

"[discussing death] Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "Mine? Or yours?" Before you can answer, she lifts one shoulder in a delicate shrug. "It doesn't matter which you mean, since I know nothing about either. You will go your way when the time comes; and I-- Who can die who is not alive?""

"[after inputting “think about animates” (the term for artificial intelligence artworks in-universe)] Seems these days that you don't think of anything else. Sometimes when you're in the middle of a conversation with a real person, you find yourself mentally critiquing their dialogue design, or wishing that someone had taken a little more care with skin tone. A little twisted maybe; but the study of animate design has actually led to a new understanding of how conversational pragmatics work: you only realize how many rules govern an interaction when you see them violated."

"What do you know about life?" you ask her. (General questions: you can almost always find ones that haven't been anticipated.) "Nothing," she says, "except what I saw of his; and that seldom made any sense to me. He told me that people are born, and that they die, and that there are stages in between-- childhood, adolescence... I asked him why he didn't carve me as a child so that I could grow up." There's a pregnant pause. "I never heard him laugh so hard as when I asked him that. And he said that I certainly had the brain of a child.""

"And finally her substance has fled entirely, and she is only a shadow, passing around you in a cool whisper. "I am what you think I am; I am what your treatment makes of me.""

"With a laugh like that of a child being let outside, she turns -- to wood, the color and style of a product of Old Kingdom Egypt. To glass, faceted, her hair scattering the downshot light to a thousand tiny points. To a sculpture of sand, to a pillar of salt, to flowing water, to flame."

"What are you really?" you demand, troubled by the memory of the shifting of her shape, the qualities of stone that come and go at her will. "I'm not dangerous to you." She gives you a look that seems almost pitying. "Except perhaps to your sanity. But you seem hardy enough.""

"Even as she says it, for a moment, a million tiny crystals sparkle in her skin. (An unusual and evocative effect; you haven't seen stone effects in skin since VanItallie's gargoyle series, about ten years ago. But then, the Grotesque school is pretty well dead at this point.)"

"What was it like, waking up?" you ask. She turns -- not her whole body, just her head, so that you can see one ear behind the cascade of hair. "It was night. I had been able to hear, and see, for a long time -- it was the talking, or the pain of being carved, that made me aware, I think. "But one night-- he slept in a corner of the studio-- I heard him screaming in his sleep. More loudly than usual. And I forgot that I couldn't move, and I just stepped down and woke him." She gains confidence as you do not interrupt. "At the time he seemed glad to have me there, to listen to him -- though I think he thought that I was only another dream. It was only afterward that it became strange.""

"How could it have been painful to be carved? He wasn't cutting into you -- just around you." Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "The stone beyond the boundary of oneself is numb, but there always comes a time when the chisel or the point reaches down to where feeling begins, and strikes. Likewise the drill -- and being polished left all my skin burning and itching for days.""

""Do you remember being carved?" you ask. You become aware of her breathing -- the slight expansion of her ribs, the soft exhalation -- natural, and yet somehow studied. "Better, I dare say, than you remember being born," she replies, her voice low and mocking."

"The fabric shifts, smooth and shining, under your hand. But then the warmth of her body reaches you through it, and you draw away instinctively as though scalded."

"[after inputting “touch breasts”] She might object to that."

"[after inputting “taste curtain”] An odd idea indeed."

"I myself have a kind of weird love-hate relationship with Galatea at this point — a lot of people love the piece, but it’s pretty much the first thing I wrote that ever got any widespread scrutiny. I would write it differently now, in many ways and for many reasons. Parts of it strike me as flippant, parts clueless, parts overblown. I’ve gotten some great fan mail, art, and even music about that game, and also more creepy and bizarre email than about anything else I’ve written. And I’m also grateful, as that single piece is probably responsible for my career, a lot of my friendships, even my marriage. I remember it fondly but I almost never replay these days. So revisiting it long enough to reimplement all the text in a new context was strange. I disciplined myself not to change too much of the original dialogue, even when it wasn’t what I would now write."

"She blinks once without turning toward you. "He didn't want me to be awake, you see. He didn't make me to be a live person. He told me he wanted something that belonged to him, and that if I could think and talk, I couldn't belong to him any more. So he threw me away.""

"“Like and love are different things,” she replies. “You must know that. And then — he had a kind of intensity that compelled, that was absolute. I’ve not met anyone else like that. Yes, it’s true that I haven’t met very many people yet in my life, but my suspicion is, from all I see and hear, that he was unusual in that regard. There was something eating him from the inside, all the time, and the energy ofit was contagious.” “Most people don’t have that kind of genius, but most people also aren’t so impossible to live with.”"

"Remembering, on purpose, is not something you’ve forced yourself to do for a long time. And it is perhaps not a good idea, even now. Worries, first symptoms, diagnosis, despair. Standing in the hospital parking lot in the whirling snow, watching the lights go out on her floor. The hours and hours consumed by intractable emotions. And then when she was gone, the utter solitude in your life. “Are you all right?” Galatea is reaching towards you, but you turn away."

"This is Necrum. Long ago, the Mudokons brought their dead here. That was before the Glukkons started stealing our bones. They used Mudokon slaves ot do it. Blind ones that couldn’t see. The Glukkons didn’t want anyone to know what they were digging up and no one ever did. Not until the spirits of those bones paid me a visit."

"Oops. I forgot he was blind. Help me rescue the rest of them."

"I have been through this before. Back when I got the power to shut down RuptureFarms. That’s when I first saw the creatures of Oddworld as they used to be, before we chopped them up into tasty treats. We have forgotten our past and now it was costing us our future… and even our souls."

"It ain’t my fault! It’s that Abe guy! First RuptureFarms, now Necrum Mines! There ain’t no bones anywhere! No bones, no brew! I am totally screwed! My career is over! Ohohoho, and it’s all that blue bastard’s fault!"

"Lorne Lanning as Abe, Munch"

"You know what’s in a Mudokon Pop?"

"There’s a lot of eggs in that can."

"We gotta get those eggs outta here."

"Everybody listen!"

"You know, whenever I leave a mean place like that, it blows up!"

"One time there were lots of us, but that was all before there was any webs. However, some are caught in the moving "webs" trying in vain to break free. Now, I can't find anybody. My name is Munch and I've been singin' for em ever since. But nobody sings back... until last night. My loneliness was over. I'd found somebody! Then it happened. It wasn't a Gabbit! It wasn't a Gabbit at all! Who could do such a thing? Well, I was about to find out."

"That’s it? That’s the big message?"

"The Fuzzles got their own plan."

"Come on, Abe. What are you doing? I need that Gabbiar."

"Michael Bross"

"[On Communism] You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few million eggs."

"A detective RPG"

"What kind of cop are you?"

"In dark times, should the stars also go out?"

"The mask of humanity fall[s] from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed."

"No superiors can relieve me of my duty, you bulldozed them all to a mass grave for trying to free humanity."

"Listen, you Moralintern lackeys. You're a mob, enforcing the unlawful privatization of Revachol. Twenty fat men in the Occident are stealing it all -- and you're their body guards."

"By Heavens, why would he not be corrupt? We live in a harsh and disordered world, see. […] the old man is corrupt for our benefit and we know it. Appreciate it, even. He is, personally, not too lavish."

"René, you're a man with a fork in a world of soup. Please... let's just try to enjoy the game, alright?"

"“You do not speak his name, craven! Although he was a clown..." he adds. He turns back to you. "But he was our clown. Ours to ridicule -- and to mourn.""

"The Suzerain is the King. Has everyone forgotten already?" He then slowly nods and says to himself: "They've forgotten already."

"Pig, these are FALN Modulars! Liquid fit, performance crotch, urban survival shit! Made in Mirova... by scientists. Pants scientists."

"[on a drug Harry shows him] Cuno doesn't do that radioactive shit. Makes Cuno's dick fall off. Cuno's got a huge dick."

"Being off speed makes Cuno sad. Makes Cuno think about shit."

"You asked that question because you're still under the influence of ideology. That's natural. You're like a fish that's only now discovering that her whole life has been dictated by the movements of sea currents. That's what ideology is. It's like there are these invisible forces everywhere, pushing and tugging you this way and that, and you don't even know they're *there*."

"YOU DOMINATED LESSER CULTURES -- LIKE THE DEFORMED HIMEANS AND THE INEXPLICABLY POTATO-OBSESSED KOJKOS -- BUT NOW YOUR ASCENT TO THE GENETIC SUMMIT HAS HALTED. YOU ARE OBSESSED WITH SADNESS AND WITH FRIVOLOUS POP CULTURE."