On the subject of one-liners and personality:
From my personal observations, recapturing the lightning-in-a-bottle that were the one-liners of Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior in a new game, whether it has classic or modern gameplay, is a task I consider very hard to achieve, and requires not only a good sense of tact and comedy, but also good skills in the writing department.
What makes a memorable, likeable, one-liner spouting character in a video game that has minimal character interactions or story?
On one hand, they need to radiate some sort of unique personality so that the character remains in people's minds for long after they finish the game. On the other, the lines need to mesh well with the overall setting and the gameplay, so that they do not stand out in an overtly negative way or get annoying over time. Another important condition that needs to be fulfilled, at least according to my own observations, is that the lines the characters say need to be timeless and generic enough so that they are applicable in various different scenarios, but also fit the personality of each individual character. This means that memes and dated references to cultural phenomena that are likely to become disliked within the next years or even months are usually a very bad choice for one-liners. However, references to timeless classics in pop culture, such as movies like the Evil Dead series, or even other video games can be acceptable, given that they are subtle enough and not cringeworthy.
There's actually a very good example of this in Ion Maiden that I'd like to point out. Upon killing an enemy, on rare occasions Shelly will state "Laputan Machine", referencing Gunther Hermann's killphrase from Deus Ex. It's not an incredibly obvious reference, since it requires someone to have played through most of Deus Ex to know where it comes from, but it also is very applicable to the situation in-game itself, since the enemies are mechanically augmented humans, and the phrase itself is basically insulting them as failed machinery. If you intend on doing references in more common one-liners, this is the way to go.
Other lines like "Hail to the king, baby" or "I stick a firecracker in your ass, haha!" are appropriate in any setting, and fit Duke and Lo Wang perfectly. And of course, the delivery of these lines is also essential. Lo Wang's stupid quips wouldn't be half as funny if it weren't for John Galt's unique voice and delivery. The same goes for Duke and Jon St. John, and doubly so, since we can observe in World Tour that some of the re-recorded lines don't have nearly the same effect they did in the original recordings.
Finally, it also helps if the lines are few and far between, i.e. that they are not triggered on every possible instance where they could occur. They also need to be varied enough so that the same line can't be triggered twice or three times in succession. This can be seen in the recently released PSX TC for Duke 3D even, where the "Hehehe, what a mess" line, while usually pretty funny, overstays its welcome quickly simply due to how often it is triggered. Or in the ROTT remake, where each time a new weapon is picked up, the character you play as spouts another tired line that you've like heard about 10 times before.
Few modern games have managed to find this sweet spot of enjoyable one-liners. Most either undershoot the target, and make the character rather boring and forgettable, or they overshoot and make them annoying as fuck.
Bubsy the Bobcat, for example, is a good role model for unique personality, but a very bad one for making a character likeable. One could even argue that the only reason Bubsy is memorable is due to how incredibly annoying he is.
Other bad examples can be found in Interceptor's previous games. As mentioned before, in the ROTT remake, the lines the characters spout are way too common and in some cases, extremely annoying, causing me to turn them off by the second level.
The absolute worst example here is Lorelei Ni by far (
for your own displeasure). Not only are her lines extremely cringeworthy and annoying (like when picking up the shrooms powerup, jesus christ, who thought that making her shout BAD TRIP multiple times in a row like an autist was a good idea?), but she also sounds like a sassy American prep girl instead of a Chinese special-ops agent. Literally every single decision in the design of this character was terrible, and the game would have been better off having the characters be mute rather than having them chatter constantly.
Since the ROTT remake got mostly positive reviews despite the fact, it was obvious that Shelly was also going to have really frequent and annoying lines in Bombshell. While not as bad, it suffered from many of the same problems, and this fact was often pointed out in reviews for the game.
As for Rad Rodgers, that I cannot fairly judge that since I never played it, but from the gameplay videos, I can tell it relies on a very high dose of self-referential humor.
This brings me to another point:
Don't do overtly self-referential humor. It's been so overdone in recent times to the point where every time a game tries to act clever by breaking the fourth wall, I almost want to groan. It's just lame, and more importantly, it destroys immersion. Breaking the fourth wall is not clever if you overdo it.
Let's move on to positive examples when it comes to one-liners in shooters:
The first one is the Postal series, whose Dude is the closest a more modern character has gotten to the likes of Duke and Lo Wang in terms of one-liners. The Dude has a large repertoire of consistently good lines to say upon performing common actions (such as blowing stuff up) that satirize American culture, but also don't get old over time. This also carries over into its recently released expansion "Paradise Lost", proving that it is still possible to do clever lines without coming over as lame or annoying.
In terms of personality, Serious Sam probably comes closest to Duke Nukem, and his lines have also been consistently good over all games he's appeared in. However, most lines in the Serious Sam games only occur as scripted events, so the comparison might not be as fitting as with the Postal games.
So how does Ion Maiden and Shelly fare?
In my opinion, especially compared to some of the worse examples I mentioned, Voidpoint did a good job with Shelly's lines. It's not as good as Postal, but definitely in the 95th percentile of these kinds of shooters.
The aforementioned "Laputan Machine" line is great, but the "Domo Arrigato Mr. Roboto" line for example is a bit too in-your-face and "eh" for my tastes.
Furthermore, there are only very few lines that really do get on your nerves, and most of them are generic enough not to become annoying or repetitive after a while. ("Dodge this" or "I never miss" for example, are hard to overdo)
Also, and I think this is also partly due to the engine, lines on killing enemies are themselves pretty rare, which is a big step up from Bombshell. And the delivery from the voice actress is also pretty good.
However, one downside I see at the moment is that her lines don't really entertain as much as Duke's or Lo Wang's, and are mostly pretty bland. At the end of the day, we need to keep in mind that one-liners are first and foremost supposed to entertain.
Otherwise, why even have them be there, if not to add to the enjoyment of the game?
Overall though, I vastly prefer bland one-liners to one-liners that get annoying and make you disable them altogether, hence why I value this more positively than ROTT or Bombshell.
I do hope we are going to see some more variety, and some expansion on her personality in the final game.
All in all, I'd say Voidpoint did do most of these points pretty well, resulting in a good end product.
(I will now go and reconsider my life decisions, and evaluate what brought me to the point of writing an essay on one-liners in FPS games on a random Duke 3D forum...)
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