Transhumanism In Media

"[after the player completes the Quadtych] You'll find your path to Ryan is now clear. Tell him Sander said hello..."

"War a terrible thing. Japanese kill every man in my city, except for Suchong. Suchong have opium. Very good opium. This war, terrible thing, too, but not for Suchong."

"You become Big Daddy, it's a one-way street."

"Fontaine scary son of a bitch, but Ryan cheap son of a bitch. You can no reuse protector suit. Take a man, graft skin and organs straight into suit, otherwise suit not work. Ryan say Big Daddy too expensive. Ryan can go suck egg."

"Once Big Daddy is ready, nobody cross the Big Daddy."

"[referring to Brigid Tenenbaum] That’s quite a little monster Fontaine's dug up. When she does speak, which is almost never, her accent is thick and grating. Her hair is filthy and she seems to wear the same mustard-stained jumper day after day. But I've got to hand it to Frank: Tenenbaum is the all-time diamond in the rough. No formal training, no experience... but put her in front of a gene sequence, and she's Mozart at the harpsichord."

"[to Jack, after shooting Splicer near a Little Sister] Stay away from her, or it is you who will be shot next!"

"[when Jack starts approaching the Little Sister] Here! [Jack turns to her] There is another way; Use this... [throws Jack a Plasmid bottle] ...free them from their torment... I will make it to be worth your while... Somehow."

"[if the player chooses to harvest the Little Sister] How can you do this thing? To a child? But there are other Little Ones who have need of your help... Will you be as cruel to them?"

"[if the player chooses to save the Little Sister] The path of the righteous is not always easy, yes? The reward will become clear in time. Be patient."

"[audio diary "Hatred"] One of the children came and sat in my lap. I push her off, I shout, "Get away from me!" I can see the ADAM oozing out of the corner of her mouth, thick and green. Her filthy hair hanging in her face, dirty clothes, and that dead glow in her eye... I feel... hatred, like I never felt before, in my chest. Bitter, burning fury. I can barely breathe. And suddenly, I know, it is not this child I hate."

"The Halo series is, obviously, not an allegory for America’s involvement in Iraq, or the war on terror, where America is the UNSC, the Covenant is radical Islam, and the Brutes and Elites are the Sunni and the Shi’a (or vice versa, it would be idiotic and wrong to try to map one onto the other anyway). It’s a ridiculous idea that breaks down in any number of flagrant ways. Obviously the first Halo came out long before we invaded Iraq, and was conceived and planned even further back (I think it came out November 2001). And unlike the Iraqi insurgents, the Covenant have, or at least had, technological superiority, and they don’t go in for terrorist tactics — they’re toe-to-toe fighters. And they’re aliens. And they’re obsessed with purple things. And on and on."

"Bungie followed the unlikely lead of Argonaut Games’ Alien Resurrection, which mapped moving and aiming onto separate analog sticks over a year before the Xbox launched. That precedent aside, though, the Bellevue-based studio set the standards for the modern shooter genre almost singlehandedly."

"Somewhat ironically, Halo began from a strategic position, rather than being mapped from the outset as a shooter. The project evolved spiritually as a kind of outcropping from the clotted battlefields of Bungie’s 1997 tactical game Myth, trading a Braveheart aesthetic for more of a Starship Troopers vibe, and then rendering everything in anthill 3D. Even as a primitive vehicular prototype, emphasizing the physicality of the terrain, there wasn’t really anything that looked quite like it."

"I think the great tragedy of Halo is that for years and years it provided wonderful single-player and co-op content, and we provided people with almost no fun incentives or excuses, almost no reason besides their own enjoyment, to go back and replay it. So Halo 1 built these 10 labor of love missions, and only if you decided to go back and replay them was there any incentive to do so."

"The guns on the [Halo 1] Ghost were balanced by making them really inaccurate. If you aim at something in Halo 1 with the Ghost and shoot at it, your shots are going all over the place. That balances the weapon, because it’s not overpowered. But it wasn’t balanced in a way that was empowering for the player. “I think one of the ways that I describe that is that every object, every player-facing verb, needs to be a power fantasy in some way. And so the Ghost was correctly balanced numerically, but it wasn’t that fun. It didn’t make you feel awesome. It wasn’t something you jumped on and thought you were going to tear the place up with."

"Halo 5: Guardians (2015)"

"Halo 4 (2012)"

"Halo Wars (2009)"

"Halo 3 (2007)"

"Halo 2 (2004)"

"Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)"

"As far as a character that’s evolved with the hardware, that would have to be Snake. If you look at the original Metal Gear, he was a very silent type of character—-he didn’t speak much. Probably the reason for that is, on that hardware, we were unable to make the characters speak. You could compare it to movies. The original Metal Gears were kind of like silent-era movies and Metal Gear Solid 1 is when it became talkies and sound movies. But at the same time with Metal Gear Solid 1, he could speak but there still wasn’t emotion on the face. So everything had to be done through the voices. He had to say whether or not he liked something or if he was feeling hot or it hurt. Everything had to be explained vocally. Then we saw 2000, the next step in his evolution, where we could have emotion on his face. We get things like motion-capture and try to make games realistic and believable. That was the next stage in his evolution. For Metal Gear Solid 4, we were able to get more resolution and add more detail to the faces. We added wrinkles and we added the aspect of age to the equation. So: telling a story through wrinkles. If you really look at the evolution of Snake, the character, it’s also looking at the evolution of the gaming industry and hardware. I think that’s something that’s pretty unique to Snake as a character and you don’t see it in any other form of media where the character evolves with hardware."

"More than anything, the themes of Metal Gear Solid are simply phantom whispers of the Cold War, where stocking piling [sic] and creating a bigger weapon is all that matters. The Moscow Times adds that Kartapolov continued in his statement by adding that these projects were “aimed at encouraging active protest activity and dissatisfaction with the country's authorities among young people.” In the broadest possible sense, this is not incorrect, but the dissatisfaction in these games is aimed at all governments who abuse their power with the goal of creating weapons of mass destruction."

"In a statement that shows both an ignorance of source material and a lack of critical thinking, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Andrei Kartapolov stated during a parliamentary roundtable that the Metal Gear series of games is an example of United States Intelligence services seeking to manipulate “public consciousness and especially young people” against the Russian government. To clarify the problems with such a statement, first we need to recall that Hideo Kojima is the creator of the series, and he was born and raised in Japan. Second, the games were produced in Japan by Konami, a Japanese entertainment and gaming conglomerate. Third, the first game in the series was released in 1987 and the story remains largely the same. Fourth, examining the content of the games, such as Metal Gear Solid, reveals an overall critique of the stockpiling of nuclear arms, and is highly critical of the United States in this regard."

"Snake: Chico, growing up means choosing how you're gonna live your life. [...] Treasure your memories, Chico. No matter what happens, keep them safe. [...] Nothing to be ashamed of. Pain gets the better of us all. [...] Remember, real heroes, are never as polished as the legends that surround them."

"Snake: [to Amanda] There's always another reason to keep on living."

"Paz: In school, I also learned that peace is an unnatural state for human society. And that war is a constant threat to our relationship with others."

"Dalton: What do you plan to do once your wounds heal up? Got any ideas? Snake: No plans. Just a personal goal. Dalton: And what would that be? Snake: To keep on living. All this time, I've been searching for my past. And now I know that I don't have one. I was manufactured in a lab. I'm not even a real human. I've got no past, and might not have much of a future. Nothing. But I'm alive. I was made to be a weapon. And I don't have squat to my name. But... as long as there's air in my lungs and blood in my veins, I'm gonna live. Right? Dalton: You're half right. You're way off about having nothing, though."

"Venus: Don't worry about Snake. He's been to hell and back. He's a survivor, you know. Always has been, always will be. Takiyama: ... Venus: He'll be just fine. I'm always right about these things."

"Lucy: You're a cloned soldier—patterned after the legendary Solid Snake. We recovered his body from Lobito Island and created you through a fusion of his cells and our data. You were our Model 3, Snake."

"Alice: The Children of Hamelin looked up to you as a hero. You were a man created by those in power and performed mighty works for them. The Legendary Hero—Solid Snake. That's what we were always taught. [...] Our pledge was, "May me someday be great like the honorable and mighty Snake.""

"La Clown: If I die here, it means I'm not the hero. The hero is supposed to survive to the end. So... I guess that makes me the villain. The villain is always supposed to take the hero's side right before dying."

"Hans: [to Snake] Are you familiar with the term "doppelganger"? Everyone has two personalities in them. One of them a persona for everyday public life, and the other the exact opposite. The personality lurking in one's subconscious is referred to as the "Shadow" in psychological terms. The Shadow negates its symmetrical opposite, the "Light" persona, and in some cases grows to the same level. If it manages to grow large enough, it takes on its own shape, separates from the body, and can walk around on its own. And that, my friend, is why we're both here."

"Solid Snake: Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies...what we've seen, heard, felt...anger, joy and sorrow...these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for. We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light.We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with. The human race will probably come to an end some time, and new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still have the responsibility to leave what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing."

"Revolver Ocelot: Gift of the silver tongue. They say it's the mark of a good officer... and of a liar. Americans are too in love with the sound of their own voice to speak the truth."

"Big Boss: The nightmares? They never go away, Snake. Once you've been on the battlefield, tasted the exhilaration, the tension... it all becomes part of you. Once you've awakened the warrior within... it never sleeps again. You crave ever bigger tensions, ever bigger thrills. As a mercenary, I'd think you would have realized that by now. You care nothing for power, or money, or even sex. The only thing that satisfies your cravings is war! All I've done is give you a place for it. I've given you a reason to live."

"Big Boss: You destroyed Metal Gear 1 and made me a cyborg. Now I want revenge."

"[Intro text] Lt. Snake, we received information from our intelligence man at the enemy's base. They have a weapon. Is it Metal Gear, which you destroyed 3 years ago? Go to the enemy base with 2 men. The pilot knows the route."

"Big Boss: ...can you hear me? Solid Snake... I'm not dead... Someday, I'll get even with you. Someday... we will meet again!"

"Solid Snake: This is Solid Snake... Metal Gear has been destroyed. Operation Intrude N313 was a success! No big deal, the job is done, that's all... No big deal... I'm coming back now... OVER"

"Big Boss: Solid Snake! I've been expecting you... I am the supreme commander of the FOXHOUND unit... And... The leader of the fortress of Outer Heaven, Big Boss! I gave this mission to you, a rookie, thinking I could use you to fool the rest of the world... But you were too good. You went too far! Solid Snake! I'm not going down alone. I'm taking you with me! Prepare to die!"

"Let's get one thing straight: we've got our share of crooked bureaucrats -- fact -- but this is still UNATCO, and by and large the people in this building are twenty-four carat gold."

"My unit killed a bunch of Afghans one time, but we weren't proud of it. In fact, our liaison at the UN went to the funeral."

"Direct intervention is always part of the game. In my day, we were just more civilized about it."

"I guess it's not surprising to find a few crooks in a place protected by security procedures. The shadow of secrecy; it protects indiscriminately."

"A pistol is more than adequate. Hell, I dispatched a whole platoon one time with a pocket knife."

"Try to remember: people have rights. Don't just shoot everything that moves."

"In my day, international peacekeepers were citizens first and soldiers second. You can forget about that extra ammo. I'm only going to give you the multitools; I think you should concentrate more on mission objectives and less on the enemy body count."

"Being a soldier isn't just following orders, it's following those orders in the service of a higher cause. When that cause is betrayed, we're not soldiers anymore, just pieces on a chess board dying for the wrong reason."