There's a section where, if you continue to avoid the narrator's prompts to take a specific door, it just brings you to an unfinished room - dev textures and all - while the narrator gives you grief for screwing up the game.
Multiple games have done it, but something along the lines "try not dying" as the loading screen tip after dying about a dozen times is always funny to me.
In Hollow Knight there's an accidental one at a pretty climactic moment. Hornet shouts something to get you ready for the big fight. It's in her usual gibberish language, but lots of people hear it as "GIT GUD!"
And for the translation, they probably just made it a reference to how your only dialogue options in the game are ever yes or no, so when the one NPC asks you an open-ended question, you sound like a weirdo.
Damn. Looks like I really should stop being lazy and check out some mobile clients that weren't abandoned like Sync. It's even reformatting my manually typed spoiler tags to the wrong format after I submit.
Portal and Portal 2 are packed with passive aggressive remarks. One of my favorites:
Well done. Here are the test results: You are a horrible person. I'm serious, that's what it says: "A horrible person." We weren't even testing for that. Don't let that horrible-person thing discourage you. It's just a data point. If it makes you feel any better, science has now validated your birth mother's decision to abandon you on a doorstep.
There is a spot in Space Quest 6 where you can skip a puzzle and go to the solution immediately... If you already know what to look for. I tried that once, since it was not my first run and I remembered the last step.
At first the narrator wonders how you did that, then he assumes you've been using a walkthrough. He shames you and punishes you by slowly draining your score counter... Before reverting it and telling you not to do it again.
:::spoiler Dialog
"How are you doing? Need some motivation to keep going? How about an award? Here, take this one that says you spent all your in-game playtime in an alien strip club. Oh, that's permanent, by the way. Everyone on your friends list can see that forever."
:::
The best part was: this was even in the installer! When setting up your sound card, there was a test button. If it worked, you heard “your sound card works perfectly”. But if you kept pressing it, eventually it would say “enjoying yourself?” And if you kept going after that, in an angry voice, “it doesn’t get any better than this!”
Ah old Blizzard, when even the installers had character.
In Postal 2 there's a platforming section and, because I suck at platformers, let alone in first person, so I was saving a lot. After a few very short and successive saves, the dude made fun of me for saving so much.
Also in Portal 2, just a lot of GlaDOS lines in general.
In Shadow Complex, a shameless ripoff of Super Metroid in its game mechanics, you play a guy who drives a girl out to a remote location in the Pacific Northwest and she gets kidnapped by a military organisation. You're cut off from your vehicle, but fairly early on in the game you are able to return to the start point. You are able to get in the car and drive away and an achievement pops saying "Plenty of Fish in the Sea." So you win but your guy gives up on his girl, leaving her to her fate.
Hack/NetHack had a similar thing where you could just leave without completing the main objective (retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, which has a random chance of appearing at the 35th level and below, and make it back out with the Amulet). I remember it saying something snarky on the Amiga version, but I don't recall exactly what. Like it said you went on to live a boring life or something like that. Any time you felt like you were locked out of the objective or outnumbered by enemies without the means to fight through them, you could backtrack and leave (though, things like disease, hunger, and thirst could take you before you got out) and you'd "win" (as in, you get to keep living).
Far Cry 6 has a similar easter egg. Near the beginning of the game (which takes place in an archipelago) you’re given a boat to head to the main island for the quest to start but you can just take the boat and point it towards the open ocean and you’ll end up drinking beer on a beach in miami completely skipping the entire game.
This is a running joke in the Far Cry games. I know Far Cry 4 does something similar. You meet the big bad at the beginning of the game, he asks you to wait for him, and if you just chill for like 15 minutes he shows back up, honors his word, and you finish the mission that you came to the island for.
In Wasteland 2 there is a museum of pre-war artifacts. One item is an undetonated nuclear bomb. If you monkey around with it you can find a big red button. It is obviously a terrible idea to push the button. If you still decide to push it you get a special game over screen.
The worst part is, in Super Mario 3D Land, at least, if you even see the invincible leaf, it locks you out of getting all the stars on your save file. The game doesn't even have the courtesy to tell you.
I would have swore there was a moment in Disco Elysium where a character makes fun of you for talking like you are trying to exhaust all the options in a dialog tree. But now I can’t find it. Anyone know?
Also a certain obsession with containers, if I recall correctly.
And at some point Kim mentions the detective's surprising endurance (especially given his physical and mental state) which allows him to keep running tirelessly all over the place.
::: spoiler Spoilers about the later.
Turns out Harry was a gim teacher before being a cop, and still has some good health from that time, despite everything that he did to himself after.
:::
This isn't quite in line with your question but it's adjacently meta:
the first time you fall to your death in Bastion the (amazing) narrator says "...and then he fell to his death. ... Ahh, I'm just foolin'." and then you respawn on the platform because videogame.
In Disco Elysium the game straight up called me out for apologising so much. It hit me so hard I stopped apologising as much irl. 10/10 game would be ashamed again.
Crosscode has a ton of dialogue changed if you turn on NG+ modifiers, such as carrying over levels or using a "cheat code" for ludicrous damage, 1shotting almost everything.
One NPC quotes the "you cheated not the game, but yourself" copypasta.
The old point-n-click flash game Johnny Rocketfingers had a bunch. There was a part where you had to find a way out of a jail cell or something, and if you used the hand tool on a crack in the wall, your character just says "feels cracktacular."
Oh, and there was the old original You Don't Know Jack game where if you told the host "fuck you" or something similar in the answer box, they'd just lose patience with you and exit the game for you.
I remember playing "you don't know jack" and someone accidently hit the buzzer before the question was even on the screen. The host said "okay smart guy, think you know the answer before the question is read? Go ahead." And the game gave them a blank screen to type their answer into.
In an old version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” for the computer, if you take too long before starting a game, Regis gets pissed at you and starts yelling at you. If you take a bit longer. He closes the game.
GLaDOS' constant mockery of your person, your ability to navigate tests, and general spite pretty much make both games. It all even manages to provide a lot of world-building without lore-dumping. 10/10, would get roasted again.
Far Cry Blood Dragon's tutorial section. The game is very aware of how impatient gamers are to get to the killing, and milks it for all the time it can while the PC grumbles about annoying tutorial sections. They throw in a ton of extra dialog boxes like accompanying reading recommendations, obvious tips,etc.
The whole game is meta and corny on purpose. If you like '80s action movies and sci-fi, they packed just about every trope possible into this thing. Heavily recommend if you haven't played it.
Marathon (1994) has several call outs to the player when the AI giving you mission briefing calls the PC out for not caring and just wanting to shoot things. There's a lot of meta commentary in that series.
I've only gotten like 1.5 hours in so I can't really say yet, but so far it feels similar to the first one with some improvements to stuff like gunplay.
In Drake of The 99 Dragons, each time you die, (which happens often), you get roasted and humiliated by some gods in the after life for 10 seconds before they allow you to revive again.
This has absolutely no reason to be here, except for doubling the loading screen time.
Could also mention, in the 6th installment of Touhou Project, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, if you play on easy, the game won't even let you fight the final boss, mocking your pride on such simple level, and this game mode is usually commented as child play by the games in the whole franchise.
I like the simple messages you get in Quantum Conundrum every time you die. They're not super serious things, but just things that the main character will never get to experience as they grow older, ranging from mundane things like not getting a drivers license to more realistic teen/immature young adult fantasy of eating a whole can of whipped cream as a meal.
I thought I was being so clever making the connections of what I could do with that and it turns out I would actually have been
::: spoiler spoiler
that one nomai who was way too excited to explode the sun
:::
Stanley Parable, the entire game is about making fun of the player.
The broom closet ending, specifically. The broom closet ending is my favorite
The segment in Ultra Deluxe where the narrator reads mean Steam reviews is so good lol.
And you finally get to jump
There's a section where, if you continue to avoid the narrator's prompts to take a specific door, it just brings you to an unfinished room - dev textures and all - while the narrator gives you grief for screwing up the game.
Super Paper Mario's line "I love going on message boards and complaining about games I've never played." is really good.
I‘ve never played that game and that is way too tacky.
Multiple games have done it, but something along the lines "try not dying" as the loading screen tip after dying about a dozen times is always funny to me.
“You can change the difficulty at any time in the settings screen” during loading screens after dying always gets me.
It's really annoying when you're dying to instant death pits so changing the difficulty wouldn't help, though. I'm looking at you, God of War.
If having trouble with game, get better
In Hollow Knight there's an accidental one at a pretty climactic moment. Hornet shouts something to get you ready for the big fight. It's in her usual gibberish language, but lots of people hear it as "GIT GUD!"
"Shoot at it until it dies"
Blood Dragon?
The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile unlocks and offers to let you switch to 'Pretty Princess' difficulty if you die too many times in a row.
This is similar to the tip i give anyone starting new in downhill biking.
Just don’t crash.
TIP TEAM!
Try these cool moves, like, playing the game!
In Postal 2 when the Postal Dude says "Didn't you just save?" if you savescum.
Is it save scum or saves cum?
Nothing precludes you from doing both tbh
I don't have a spare shoebox
In Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, the NPC who asks "where are you from" and we get the options "yes" and "no".
(He has not heard of yes town, nor does he believe we don't come from anywhere at all.)
Iirc this is an inside joke by the devs.
In Japanese, it's Hai (yes) town, which evidently was the name of the building they spent a lot of time in during development.
I can't find any real credible source, but some mentions of it going back 4 or 5 years.
And for the translation, they probably just made it a reference to how your only dialogue options in the game are ever yes or no, so when the one NPC asks you an open-ended question, you sound like a weirdo.
I always talk to Hypnos in Hades when I die. he always talks shit about how you died and it makes me laugh.
I love the sass.
There is nothing I want more than to romance Hypnos. He's my favorite character in a game that's filled to the brim with outstanding competitors.
The sheer genius of both Hades games is that dying is absolutely one of the best parts, since the hub-world is full of fun things like this.
Hypnos: My list says you got killed by a
REDACTED. What's that even mean?A few deaths later...
Hypnos:
REDACTEDgot you again, huh.I wished your attempt at spoilering had worked, as I didn't know that and now I do. 😂
Damn. Looks like I really should stop being lazy and check out some mobile clients that weren't abandoned like Sync. It's even reformatting my manually typed spoiler tags to the wrong format after I submit.
its all good! things do happen sometimes. its no problem. just a bit funny.
Portal and Portal 2 are packed with passive aggressive remarks. One of my favorites:
If you like sassy AI, take a look at ADA from satisfactory. She is insulting the player ins some way on every upgrade.
There is a spot in Space Quest 6 where you can skip a puzzle and go to the solution immediately... If you already know what to look for. I tried that once, since it was not my first run and I remembered the last step.
At first the narrator wonders how you did that, then he assumes you've been using a walkthrough. He shames you and punishes you by slowly draining your score counter... Before reverting it and telling you not to do it again.
There's that bit in Baldur's gate 2 where some NPCs decide they can take you on, die, and then reload the game.
I love that, I'm going to have to look that up
My favorite will always be the 'Spent 15 Hours at the Alien Strip Club' achievement in High On Life.
:::spoiler Dialog "How are you doing? Need some motivation to keep going? How about an award? Here, take this one that says you spent all your in-game playtime in an alien strip club. Oh, that's permanent, by the way. Everyone on your friends list can see that forever." :::
In the original Warcraft games (not World Of Warcraft), repeatedly clicking units would initiate irritation voice lines.
Humans would say something like, “why do you keep touching me?”
An elf said something like, “you never touch other elves like that!”
W-w, w-w, what do you want?
W-w, w-w, what do you want?
W-w, w-w, what do you want?
Why do you keep touching me?
Holy fucking shit, I totally forgot about this!
I award you, stranger! 🏅
Which was a parody of this!
Starcraft had some great lines like that too.
"Stop poking me!"
"What do I look like, an orc?"
"This is not Warcraft in space!"
"It's much more sophisticated!"
Zug zug
Dabu!
I think all Blizzard games have that. IIRC WoW does too.
Sure does.
The best part was: this was even in the installer! When setting up your sound card, there was a test button. If it worked, you heard “your sound card works perfectly”. But if you kept pressing it, eventually it would say “enjoying yourself?” And if you kept going after that, in an angry voice, “it doesn’t get any better than this!”
Ah old Blizzard, when even the installers had character.
In Postal 2 there's a platforming section and, because I suck at platformers, let alone in first person, so I was saving a lot. After a few very short and successive saves, the dude made fun of me for saving so much.
Also in Portal 2, just a lot of GlaDOS lines in general.
"Look at you: Sailing through the air majestically. Like an eagle. Piloting a blimp."
The "Plenty of Fish in the Sea" achievement.
In Shadow Complex, a shameless ripoff of Super Metroid in its game mechanics, you play a guy who drives a girl out to a remote location in the Pacific Northwest and she gets kidnapped by a military organisation. You're cut off from your vehicle, but fairly early on in the game you are able to return to the start point. You are able to get in the car and drive away and an achievement pops saying "Plenty of Fish in the Sea." So you win but your guy gives up on his girl, leaving her to her fate.
Hack/NetHack had a similar thing where you could just leave without completing the main objective (retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, which has a random chance of appearing at the 35th level and below, and make it back out with the Amulet). I remember it saying something snarky on the Amiga version, but I don't recall exactly what. Like it said you went on to live a boring life or something like that. Any time you felt like you were locked out of the objective or outnumbered by enemies without the means to fight through them, you could backtrack and leave (though, things like disease, hunger, and thirst could take you before you got out) and you'd "win" (as in, you get to keep living).
Far Cry 6 has a similar easter egg. Near the beginning of the game (which takes place in an archipelago) you’re given a boat to head to the main island for the quest to start but you can just take the boat and point it towards the open ocean and you’ll end up drinking beer on a beach in miami completely skipping the entire game.
This is a running joke in the Far Cry games. I know Far Cry 4 does something similar. You meet the big bad at the beginning of the game, he asks you to wait for him, and if you just chill for like 15 minutes he shows back up, honors his word, and you finish the mission that you came to the island for.
And it's arguably the best ending for the island and its inhabitants considering what your allies do.
Nier Automata has many moments where you can walk away from a mission and get one of it's 20+ bad endings
That's pretty hilarious.
Quit messages in old shooters like Doom, Heretic, Quake, and Duke3d.
"Are you sure you wanna quit? Press N to continue kicking-ass and chewing gum. Press Y if you're a little pussy bitch."
Classic Doom even razzes you a little bit on the difficulty selection screen, with "I'm too young to die" as the easiest one.
I don't recall Heretic or Hexen giving you guff for quitting, but I could be wrong.
Wolfenstein 3D (and the newer ones, too) with "Can I play, daddy?" with BJ in a baby bonnet and pacifier as the easiest option.
In Wasteland 2 there is a museum of pre-war artifacts. One item is an undetonated nuclear bomb. If you monkey around with it you can find a big red button. It is obviously a terrible idea to push the button. If you still decide to push it you get a special game over screen.
I enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D's quitting messages, "Chickening out already?" or "Press N for more carnage. Press Y to be a weenie." and the like.
The worst part is, in Super Mario 3D Land, at least, if you even see the invincible leaf, it locks you out of getting all the stars on your save file. The game doesn't even have the courtesy to tell you.
I would have swore there was a moment in Disco Elysium where a character makes fun of you for talking like you are trying to exhaust all the options in a dialog tree. But now I can’t find it. Anyone know?
Don't remember that dialogue, but the OP made me think of the Jamrock Shuffle (constantly running around town like a crazy person).
Yesss that was so good lol.
It’s possible I’m thinking of another game entirely on the other thing. Haha
Also a certain obsession with containers, if I recall correctly.
And at some point Kim mentions the detective's surprising endurance (especially given his physical and mental state) which allows him to keep running tirelessly all over the place.
::: spoiler Spoilers about the later. Turns out Harry was a gim teacher before being a cop, and still has some good health from that time, despite everything that he did to himself after. :::
That was during the dream sequence at the end, no? You can even correct the character saying that they're not lists, but trees or something like that.
Risk of Rain 2's death messages crack me up.
And so on
This isn't quite in line with your question but it's adjacently meta:
the first time you fall to your death in Bastion the (amazing) narrator says "...and then he fell to his death. ... Ahh, I'm just foolin'." and then you respawn on the platform because videogame.
In Sam & Max Hit the Road, when you repeatedly try to pick a stationary object up. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/szTtHNEg6vo
In Disco Elysium the game straight up called me out for apologising so much. It hit me so hard I stopped apologising as much irl. 10/10 game would be ashamed again.
Crosscode has a ton of dialogue changed if you turn on NG+ modifiers, such as carrying over levels or using a "cheat code" for ludicrous damage, 1shotting almost everything.
One NPC quotes the "you cheated not the game, but yourself" copypasta.
The old point-n-click flash game Johnny Rocketfingers had a bunch. There was a part where you had to find a way out of a jail cell or something, and if you used the hand tool on a crack in the wall, your character just says "feels cracktacular."
Oh, and there was the old original You Don't Know Jack game where if you told the host "fuck you" or something similar in the answer box, they'd just lose patience with you and exit the game for you.
I remember playing "you don't know jack" and someone accidently hit the buzzer before the question was even on the screen. The host said "okay smart guy, think you know the answer before the question is read? Go ahead." And the game gave them a blank screen to type their answer into.
In an old version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” for the computer, if you take too long before starting a game, Regis gets pissed at you and starts yelling at you. If you take a bit longer. He closes the game.
Portal and Portal 2.
GLaDOS' constant mockery of your person, your ability to navigate tests, and general spite pretty much make both games. It all even manages to provide a lot of world-building without lore-dumping. 10/10, would get roasted again.
In one of the Leisure Suit Larry games, you get called out for saving the game too often during a particularly difficult section.
Far Cry Blood Dragon's tutorial section. The game is very aware of how impatient gamers are to get to the killing, and milks it for all the time it can while the PC grumbles about annoying tutorial sections. They throw in a ton of extra dialog boxes like accompanying reading recommendations, obvious tips,etc.
The whole game is meta and corny on purpose. If you like '80s action movies and sci-fi, they packed just about every trope possible into this thing. Heavily recommend if you haven't played it.
Seconded.
I have more fond memories of blood dragon than I do of farcry 3 and 4 combined, despite blood dragon being like a 20 hour standalone dlc
Having to grovel to lower the difficulty in God Hand.
Marathon (1994) has several call outs to the player when the AI giving you mission briefing calls the PC out for not caring and just wanting to shoot things. There's a lot of meta commentary in that series.
What is this game called? 👀
It's The Outer Worlds 2.
Is this the main menu that looks like a dialogue encounter, or is it a dialogue encounter in the game that suddenly acts like a main menu?
It's the main menu. Pretty fun idea, but from what I've played of the actual game so far, it isn't nearly as creative or meta unfortunately.
How does it compare to the first one? It was fun for a bit but quickly lost its charm for me.
I'm enjoying it a lot. It scratches that itch for a Bethesda RPG pretty much perfectly, with the added benefit of an Obsidian roleplaying focus.
I'm enjoying it. It feels like the game that Obsidian wanted the first one to be, but couldn't quite get there, for whatever reason.
I've only gotten like 1.5 hours in so I can't really say yet, but so far it feels similar to the first one with some improvements to stuff like gunplay.
Thanks! I'll check it out!
In Drake of The 99 Dragons, each time you die, (which happens often), you get roasted and humiliated by some gods in the after life for 10 seconds before they allow you to revive again. This has absolutely no reason to be here, except for doubling the loading screen time.
Could also mention, in the 6th installment of Touhou Project, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, if you play on easy, the game won't even let you fight the final boss, mocking your pride on such simple level, and this game mode is usually commented as child play by the games in the whole franchise.
There is no game
Eternal Darkness on the GameCube
It makes the Volume go up and down and a bunch of other wacky things.
Frets on fire tutorial
The Soul Urn in Deadlock is very chatty and will constantly sass you while you're trying to pick it up for your team.
Really love the moonman talking to you on every boot up. I always find myself looking forward to seeing what he says.
Bards Tale. That game was full of shit actively taunting or tricking the player. Best ps2 game.
I like the simple messages you get in Quantum Conundrum every time you die. They're not super serious things, but just things that the main character will never get to experience as they grow older, ranging from mundane things like not getting a drivers license to more realistic teen/immature young adult fantasy of eating a whole can of whipped cream as a meal.
Outer wilds, if you manage to
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Break the universe ::: You get the end credits but with a kazoo rendition.
Like, “well done dipshit, I guess this is the end”.
I thought I was being so clever making the connections of what I could do with that and it turns out I would actually have been ::: spoiler spoiler that one nomai who was way too excited to explode the sun
:::
Baba is you