Top Ten Video Game Disembodied Voices

[Music] foreign [Music] this world needs a speaker i shall be the avatar [Music] good day my vigorous vocalizers the green scorpion here and okay out with it what does that title mean well we've made a plethora of countdowns based around characters characters that annoy me characters that wield certain weapons really any strange category that we can use to acknowledge our favorite fictional friends and fiends but today's characters are hard to drag into the limelight as most of them would rather talk over an intercom or in your mind rather than show their face in person i refer to these individuals as disembodied voices through the use of voiceovers you can have someone speak without showing them on screen and this is a device that has existed since the invention of talkies but is a favorite tool of game developers instructions that come over the radio audio logs that fill in the history of a game's world or narration which delivers a story in a digestible way trust me this is ominous ominous ominous yeah no yeah yeah yeah ominous oh never mind now maybe there's a full body character out there somewhere telling us all of this but for the most part we get to know them only through their dulcet tones kind of the way most of you guys know me unless you watch my streams twitch.tv slash the green scorpion 64 by the way that being said some of today's entries are seen in game at some point but the majority of the time our heroes only interact with them through incorporeal language on one level this is a way of streamlining the experience just sticking a voice over the gameplay is going to keep things moving and saves time on developing a character model and animating cutscenes but distance makes the heart grow fonder and somehow without so much as eye contact these characters make a major impact credit goes to the voice actors that bring these characters invisibly to life but also some expert writing and game design to implement these personalities in meaningful ways so to celebrate i'll be doing the rest of the countdown with no visual elements whatsoever welcome to the first episode of the green scorpion podcast no i'm kidding it's a video these are my top 10 video game disembodied voices ladies and gentlemen it's show time before we get into the top 10 i want to take a moment for an honorable mention i'm a huge fan of fighting games not just playing them but just the whole aesthetic of the genre the character select screens the health and special meters and of course the announcers they do so much to make these simple one-on-one bouts feel like a spectator sport they don't have names but each series announcer is so distinct to the experience the game is going for soul calibur with his weird trailer bait ramblings before each fight the desire for power leads the warriors to the arab desert smash bros with his funny way of pronouncing names i never understand what the blaze blue announcer is saying but gosh i'm glad she's saying it the wheel of faith is turning rattles the way mortal kombat builds tension with that vicious or how killer instinct goes nuts whenever you get an ultra combo it's all such amazing hype thank god for the announcers number 10 is also an announcer and when else would this channel get the chance to talk about jack box this is an extremely popular series the centerpiece for thousands of drunken house parties the world over each quirky icebreaker and social deduction game in the party packs have their own hosts the most famous of which being cookie masterson from you don't know jack this is you know jack 2015 i'm your host cookie masterson and hey wipe that smile off your face this is serious okay just kidding there will be farts and stuff cookie isn't the only host on this fictional game show in fact i was surprised to find that this series has been on pc since 1999 but he is the most well known as the masterson of ceremonies when the game first got mainstream attention on the playstation 3 and as a facebook browser game in my opinion he is the game jack straddles the line between really smart and really stupid half the challenge of these questions is trying to discern what knowledge they're actually trying to test you on for example this question suppose the logo on the back pocket of your versace jeans had the same abilities as the magical creature it represents what would be the penalty for people checking out your butt your butt would sing beautifully then eat them your butt would tell a riddle then burn them alive your butt would unleash a powerful whirlwind or your butt would immediately turn them to stone that is so stupid cookies and ain't rambling for each question get you into the mindset of this entire game it's like he's coming up with him off the top of his head it also helps that he has a unique quip for just about every wrong answer and all of the right ones with the same consistent sense of humor every time i think at that point it would practically be coming out the other end with a brilliant irreverent performance by voice actor tom gottlieb you don't know jack comes off as an underfunded ratings failure on the verge of cancellation sponsored by opaquely terrible products hey cookie if jackbox ever goes under you already have all the training to be on youtube you even get these weird episode storylines in the background including a ventriloquist dummy voiced by cookie that may or may not be his own sapient person hello billy i'm not dilly i'm dilly's sister daddy wait what you heard me cookie masterson is a trivia genius who should never be given a microphone but hey it's not my money not to be disrespectful but i guess i don't think of puppets is really having any gender at all well if you die nee a few drinks sometime mr masterson i could certainly prove you wrong let's talk about this off mike this is the story of a man named stanley cookie masterson is a bit unstable but at the end of the day he just wants you to have fun the narrator from the stanley parable wants things to be done right i'm sure you've heard of this game by now you walk through the story of an office worker named stanley told to you by kevin breiting and his inviting english accent at one point the narrator preemptively states that stanley walks through a door on the left and you can either take the door on the left as the story dictates or you could take the door on the right and listen to the narrator at just his story to fit your actions this was not the correct way to the meeting room and stanley knew it perfectly well perhaps he wanted to stop by the employee lounge first just to admire it if you follow the narration to the letter you'll be given a victorious but ultimately hollow ending about stanley asserting his free will ironic because all you've done is follow orders on the other hand if you repeatedly defy the narrator by taking the wrong path pressing the wrong button or even just moving too quickly well that's when things get interesting do we just do we need to restart the game again well i find it unlikely that we'll ever progress by starting over and over again but it's got to be better than this this is hardly the first piece of media to play with the relationship between narrator character and audience in fact here's a list off the top of my head but it's possibly the most devoted to this concept as an interactive art form exploring the theme of player choice and what it actually means to have freedom in a game's narrative what it first seems like an impartial voice-over starts altering the environment like a passive-aggressive dungeon master spend too much time in a broom closet and he'll seal it off on future play-throughs put a password in before you should have learnt it and he'll make you wait two minutes for the door to open try to take the mind control device and he'll initiate an unstoppable self-destruct sequence okay maybe that last one's a bit more aggressive at times he seems like a cruel and angry god but he's also extremely fallible if you try to return to his story after a few wrong turns he gets lost in the script and can't seem to lead you back and in a few endings he'll break down beside himself that you don't want to follow him my entire game is destroyed it was the only thing in the world that was mine and you run it into the ground what did you think that would be funny you just had to see i think the museum ending puts it all into context a second voice actor steps in just before your demise to show pity to you and the narrator one who can't remember that the story keeps repeating and the other who can't tell him character and plot in violent opposition yet one cannot exist without the other that is way too much pathos for such an amorphous concept but in his eagerness to prove that he is in control of the story and no one gets to tell him what to do stanley left from the platform and plunged to his death good job standing i said the narrator in the stanley parable reminds us of an angry god but this next entry takes that idea more literally the talos principle a 2014 indie puzzle game sees you in the role of an ai who wakes up to this voice behold child you are risen from the dust and you walk in my garden hear now my voice and know that i am your maker and i am called elohim so yeah god a bit more complicated than that and to explain it i'll have to get into some spoilers so skip ahead if you would rather play this existential masterpiece blind i highly recommend it for any of you philosophy buffs out there anyway yes this is elohim and he really is a disembodied voice in that he has no body to speak of he is a self-proclaimed god of this world his name is even hebrew for god and he encourages you to walk through this literal garden of eden and solve puzzles in order to achieve eternal life just don't step foot in that enormous tower that tower is forbidden not suspicious at all right but then again this is the voice of timothy watson when has he ever been less than trustworthy sorry brothers hate to drop this on you but it's the monado they're after so have fun keeping him occupied for me i'm sorry he's the voice of mumkar from xenoblade chronicles okay that's hilarious given that you're a robot and there's a lot of hardware around you might start to suspect that this is some sort of simulation there are even old dos terminals that give you limited access to some sort of database and you can read notes from a group of designers who must have made this place but the more you try to get answers the harder it becomes access to the bigger files require the i am not a robot test which you totally are a robot so that makes things difficult but it starts getting weirder when the milton database assistant starts talking to you through the dos prompt insisting that you are not a person despite your feelings that you are and that you should totally go into that tower never mind what elohim says so this commodore 64 is the serpent in eden effectively what proceeds is a journey of introspection and switch puzzles as you try to learn what's going on and eventually decide whether to go along with elohim or reach for that forbidden fruit i originally thought about putting milton on this list it's probably a more interesting character but he's not even a disembodied voice he's disembodied text elohim on the other hand plays his role of booming god voice completely straight there's no man behind the curtain he's fully committed to his role good you are learning as is your purpose but your choices must be your own therefore i will not guide you unless it is necessary some of the best moments are when you get elohim and milton talking at once elohim threatening milton with righteous fury and milton just shrugging him off like he's some disgruntled roommate looking for the laundry detergent that's already more spoilers than i want to give but seriously give this one a try even when you can kind of see where it's going discovering the story behind this place is deeply fascinating and it hit me on a pretty personal level too i'm a christian myself though i never liked the idea of blind faith to anything so to be put in the same position as adam and eve and thinking that yeah maybe this scary voice isn't the boss of me after all it was really affecting elohim's voice is so confident and yet so emotionally distant and the times where he did get emotional pleading with you not to venture any higher up the quintessential tower of babel what have you done why have you ascended the tower why have you betrayed my faith in you i was not expecting to feel bad for god today you were always meant to defy me that was the final trial but i was i was scared i wanted to live forever [Music] when comic and i started kicking around this topic a while back one game quickly sprang to mind bastion in 2011 it helped popularize the idea of indie gaming on platforms like xbox live and steam and while it's a pretty great action role-playing game in its own right everyone remembers it as the game with the narrator with the awesome voice he heads for the east side where wind banks used to keep the local forge somehow that old forge is still standing that would be rux and while you see a lot of games use dynamic narration nowadays rux really set the bar with his laid-back style even when you walked off a cliff for the first time the old man had equipped for it making everything you did feel like part of his story and then he falls to his death [Music] i'm just fooled but there's a potential issue here we see rux quite a lot you can visit him in the hub at any time granted when he's talking it's usually a voice over it's a framing device ruck's telling this whole story to zia at the end of the adventure but like he's right there i think there's enough wiggle room that we could rank him at number seven but luckily we have a similar example that i think will fit the spot better a game developed by the same team supergiant games and a character voiced by the same actor logan cunningham this is transistor and this is the boxer well this isn't the boxer you don't really see the boxer but that's kind of the point well okay you do see him a little bit in flashbacks but just before the game's opening he was run through with the game central mcguffin the transistor yeah this is another game that would prefer you play it blind but i'll try to avoid the big spoilers in case here's your time code so the boxer as fans sometimes call him we never do learn his real name was the bodyguard and lover of red an acclaimed nightclub singer in the virtual utopia of cloudbank a nefarious group called the camerata wanted to use red's influence to shake things up in cloud bank and when she didn't want to go along with it they attacked the boxer taking a lethal blow for red thing is when you get killed with a transistor the blade downloads your consciousness and while red was injured in battle and lost her voice she managed to take the weapon for herself so now the boxer is a talking sword like ara from dust so we got a singer with no voice and a bodyguard with no body like bastion it results in a top down action rpg with a major character commenting on everything that happens there's the same kind of snarky humor the boxer has a lot of dry wit when you're taking down basic enemies excuse us pardon us he's also very opinionated on what kind of flatbread you order from the deli sea monster is really the only choice here yes just have to get back to your place before it gets cold but when it comes to heartfelt moments i think this is actually the strongest of cunningham's voice performances i know his turn in bastion is more famous and for good reason but while rux has a deep connection with the game's world he's more detached when it comes to the kid and other characters red and the boxer have a deep camaraderie sharing in the good times and the bad like when red sees an old poster of herself and reflects on how much she misses singing the boxer knows he can't physically comfort her and you can tell it tears him up inside i'm so sorry they took your voice i couldn't stop them the boxer also isn't as poetic as rocks struggling with his words a lot but considering his words are all he has now you can feel how difficult this is for him hey something i've been meaning to tell you once this is over maybe there's still time to skip town think about it i recommend the playstation 4 version of this game for one reason and one reason alone everything the boxer says comes out of the controller rather than your tv or speakers you know because his voice would be coming out of red sword it adds to that feeling of holding him trapped in a piece of technology but towards the end there's a point where to help protect cloud bank red has to temporarily dock a transistor and there's a point where it looks like she might lose him it's time you can't tell listening to it here but during his monologue his voice goes from your playstation 4 controller to the tv speakers and that's really smart is it a cheap gimmick maybe but i'm crying over here look at you you're alive me i'm not so sure hey say something already say something weird henry right yeah i'm delilah yeah that's what the guy said on the phone so what's wrong with you excuse me people take this job to get away from something so what's wrong am i getting credit for mentioning all these art house games firewatch puts you in the hiking boots of henry who in the wake of some difficulties with his wife takes a job in the wilderness of wyoming as a fire lookout sort of like a park ranger but with less authority it plays a lot like a walking simulator only with more specific tasks to carry out each day and the whole time you'll be joined in spirit by your supervisor delilah you can't see her but she can see you from her outpost several miles away and you'll be in constant contact over the walkie-talkie and like the other characters on this list the game hinges on delilah and the player's relationship to her reviews of this game are mixed and i can see why the story turns out to be more exciting and somehow less exciting than you might expect but as the glue holding the experience together delilah totally nails it get going you'll probably need a rope to get down the shale between you and the lake if i remember right there should be one in the supply box on the way the code is one two three four it's actually bad for all of them secure shut up great work by voice actress [ __ ] jones who has a track record of playing a lot of great supportive roles in video games like life is strange and the walking dead and right now you can hear her as lilith in the owl house but delilah is really her chance to shine and if not shorts then what do you normally like to wear tuxedos as often as possible oh really you bet how cosmopolitan i didn't realize boulder was so chic it is the peak of high society good to know yes she's smart funny quick with the witty retorts she and henry have some great back and forth uh there are uh panties i don't want to say that word again why because you're 12. she's also completely unapologetic about who she is probably in part because she's so far away she's not afraid to say anything how could these girls be so stupid trust me i never underestimate the stupidity of a drunk teenager also i never underestimate the balls of a drunk young woman having been one her personality won't be everyone's cup of tea but well the game gives you that choice to make like many games with dialogue trees you don't actually have much impact on how the story ends but you can decide what kind of person henry is and how delilah views him she'll even flirt with him on certain nights and it's up to you to decide how to feel about that for me i didn't really want to reciprocate it since you know henry's still married it's complicated but he does have a wife that he loves still delilah and henry forge a certain connection and being out here with only each other's voices it's hard not to romanticize things loving someone from far away maybe it's because you haven't actually met in person not in spite of which makes the relationship both cute and kinda sad they'll talk one night they'll really talk but realistically henry's about as likely to make it with delilah as well you are to make it with a video game character it's not gonna happen but the game leans you in to want to believe in it keep in mind what delilah said when you first arrive everyone out here is running from something and that includes delilah she's got her own baggage too so for being a great conversationalist with a lot of hidden depth she's more than worthy of the number six spot i don't think there's any fictional character i hate more than forest burns henry as an employee of the forest service that is treason yeah well he really freaked me out as a kid he inspired me to spend the bulk of my thirties keeping the wilderness safe a shrink would have a field day with you thanks mom that's enough highbrow indie talk let's chop some heads my name is howard buckshot holmes and along with my co-commentator chris creely i'll be giving you a slay bye slay account of tonight's bloodbath with access to the more than 10 000 cameras in this city you can be sure not to miss a single disembowelment or brutal ass shanking isn't that right key [ __ ] wrecked howard i've survived more than my share of these crazy contests and i can tell you that our audience is going to see more gushing blood and severed heads than a troop of girl scouts camping in an unexploded minefield i've discussed mad world plenty of times and just as often i've praised the depraved antics of these two lunatics howard buckshot holmes and chris creely the co-hosts of death watch a high-stakes murder game show that by its very existence is a crime against all of humanity ultra-violent action games aren't anything new even the tongue-in-cheek variety and while this game is really fun to play with great bosses i can confidently say it would be utterly lost without these two commentating on your exploits man that guy looks like he was hit by a train as opposed to being hit by a barrel or a spiky bat or a chainsaw or a tire i get your point now [ __ ] off normally i'm not a fan of this kind of humor but the shamelessness of it all and how they'll reach for every low-hanging fruit they can get it's a guilty pleasure to be sure jack pulled that win out of his ass at the last second yes he did he really needs to do better or he's gonna get killed wait a minute what no clever remarks about pulling something out of your ass where's the gerbil joke the anal sex story dude i tossed you a softball you didn't even bunt sorry crease i was busy adjusting this third nut i had surgically inserted in my sack they should have warned me about the itching there you go that's my boy and to be clear howard and crease are terrible people played by two wonderful people great proofs of who's lying fame and bender bending rodriguez himself john dimaggio together they're a nightmare team up of sports casting one with a more academic understanding of the game and the other with experience on the field i've also said many times that these are the prototypes to whizz and boomstick from death battle crease is a past death watch contestant who will tell you a colorful story about every boss injuring him in some horrific way and it's clear that he sees no value in human life howard i hate that prick when we fought that dirty bastard kicked me with his spurs and tore my scrotum you know my nuts unraveled like two balls of yarn you know how [ __ ] long two balls of yarn is he's also a rabid anti-intellectual who'll degrade howard for smartening up the humor even a little bit jack really knows how to get a head yeah it's easy just cut it off i know i was making it oh never mind but while howard is more educated and likes to take the high road he's just as bad if anything worse bullied in school and cheated on by his wife he's basically snapped and now lives a life of deviancy and cynicism damn jack nailed that guy faster than than than what i'm starting to think of somebody who nailed your ex-wife but there are too many people to choose from should we give out a phone book so yeah both terrible but keep in mind they're the bad guys anyone involved in death watch is by extension a villain and how seriously can we take their tall tales anyway reminds me of halloween when i was a kid bobbing for zombies i dressed up like a princess that's not surprising they're at each other's throats half the time but it's their job to rib each other like the announcers on the worst radio station you can think of i kept expecting them to show up in person maybe jack would have to kill them in addition to the game's organizers maybe they'd be a surprise boss or just a cathartic moment of penance but no they're really just here to make jokes and maybe it's better that way wherever you are how to increase i hope it's together i normally don't approve of hitting women but way to go jack normally don't approve of hitting women didn't your ex-wife get a restraining order after you broke her nose and ruptured her spleen i said i don't approve of hitting women my ex-wife says she beast from hell oh sheepies well that's totally different the victory perhaps the turning point and yet again ruin has come to our family as told to us by our nameless ancestor the old man bored with his extravagant wealth got deep into the dark arts and accidentally unearthed an eldritch horror conscripting us his heir to do something about it before taking his own life in a bout of guilt and insanity like with the boxer and a few others we do see him in person from time to time mostly in cutscenes but for the most part the ancestor exists as a string of advice that hangs over the entirety of the game and man could they have picked a more perfect voice to talk you through this gauntlet of triumphant misery huddled together furtive and vulnerable rats in a maze that's wayne june doing the voice who among his many projects has spent a lot of time recording audiobooks his most popular of which are readings of hp lovecraft yeah sounds about right the wall of crafty and horror usually entails hopelessness in the face of impossible odds part of the genius that is the ancestor's remarks are integrated in a way to best curb your hope not outright destroy it there's something to be said about games confident enough to chase out casual players but darkest dungeon would rather you kept playing even after a grim defeat so when you emerge victorious from another encounter the ancestor will warn you to stay humble and moderate your positivity remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer but when you've just suffered the most devastating loss he'll chime in with something a bit more inspiring wounds to be tended lessons to be learned it's not the most lovecraftian philosophy to give us hope under such circumstances but this balancing act of encouragement and discouragement can help keep you balanced and mindful and for me at least it made me always want to keep trying i mean someone's gotta clean up after this mess grandpa left us with howard and kris may indulge in blood sports but at least they never sacrificed a young maiden to the deep ones for money i don't think so anyway hideous matriarch vile queen of the aquatic depths she has no place in the sane world hello hello uh i wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night i know it can be a bit overwhelming but i'm here to tell you there's nothing to worry about you'll be fine i can feel a collective groan from the internet as i start talking about five nights at freddy's the world got a little over saturated with this series but for one thing this is one of my first times ever mentioning the jump scare generator in a video no jump scares here by the way you're safe endless sequels and merchandise aside i actually want to talk about one of the most popular and least merchandisable characters the phone guy at least that's what fans call him cause he's just the guy on the phone he's the game's way of explaining the rules to new players though i admit the way they actually do it always kind of confused me in the first fnaf he's the previous security guard to you and calls once a night with tips and updates except he's not actually calling he's actually recording his messages ahead of time during his last week of employment and these recordings are being sent to you over the phone one at a time who's doing this does he have some kind of automated system that relays the appropriate message every night i get that this is all to save money for a low budget series that can't afford to show him in person but that's kind of weird a little too weird thought some fans they'll probably try to forcefully stuff you inside a freddy fazbear suit now that wouldn't be so bad if the suits themselves weren't filled with cross beams wired and animatronic devices especially around the facial area so you can imagine having your head fortunately pressed inside one of those could cause a bit of discomfort and death phone guy makes a reappearance in fnaf 2 explaining the drastically different mechanics in monsters in his same understated manner no new system is without its kink you're only the second guard to work at that location the first guy finished his week but complained about conditions we switched him over to the day shift 3 you get this sad replacement who fans have dubbed phone dude and i'm like boo bring back phone guy but then on the second night the dude finds some old tapes in a supply room and i can't tell you how excited i got to hear this voice again hello hello hello welcome to your new career as a performer slash entertainer for freddy fazbear's pizza great to have that awkward voice back though some fans speculated there's more to him than that the five nights at freddy's continuity is an interesting thing all the games are out of order set in different locations with different animatronics and only the slightest hints to piecing together the larger narrative this made fenaf into one of the biggest hubs of fan theory debate and for a while one of the biggest prevailing theories was that phone guy was also purple guy the enigmatic figure in the secret minigames responsible for killing all of those kids but evidence from the more recent games and books what there are books now oh screw that makes it extremely unlikely for that to be the case but it is true that phone guy seems to be at least aware of some of the darker stuff that he's not allowed to tell you under the corporate's watchful eye hey listen i i had an idea if you happen to get caught and want to avoid getting stuck into a freddy suit try playing dead you know go limp then there's a chance that uh maybe they'll think that you're an empty costume instead then again if they think you're an empty costume they might try to step a mental skeleton into you i wonder how that would work still what an interesting few years for this character assumed by many to be the secret antagonist of the series i tried to watch some theory videos from five years ago to research this but i just couldn't guys it's way too much so let's put that aside and just worry about the big question here why are we so enamored with this guy is it because he's the one friendly voice in a hostile environment maybe but i also partly think that phone guy speaks so much to the unique setting of this series fnaf isn't just a horror game it's a parody horror game and never is that more apparent than when scott cawthorne the series creator himself voices this put upon weirdo phone guy is in the same boat as you while making these recordings hiding in his office from bonnie and chica but even at the worst he never gets too enthused about it maybe sometime you can check inside those suits in that's because while nightmare chucky cheese is scary he's also committed to the mindset of a bs low income job we've all been there right like you know this place sucks and you kind of want to warn the new hires but you also don't want to upset management and why be the one to break the bad news they're going to find out on their own anyway yeah phone guy is a big mood but hey first stationary breeze i'll chat with you tomorrow uh check those cameras and remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary gotta conserve power all right good night this one's a little debatable the thing about colonel from metal gear solid is that not only do we know what he looks like but we've met him face to face multiple times even when he's calling you we can see a big picture of him his lips are moving in everything so is the voice really disembodied at this point well i look at it this way 1. none of the other characters on this list have had as many appearances in such a prevalent series we were bound to meet colonel in person sooner or later two this image of kernel on the codec isn't diegetic it's not like snake can actually see colonel on his earpiece that's just there for the player but it still accomplishes largely the same thing as the other entries on this list and three until portable ops and metal gear solid 4 we never actually stood in a room with the guy unless i'm missing something i hope i'm not so let's give some appreciation to the unsung hero of metal gear solid colonel roy campbell please sneak just stop them to serve your interests because we're relying on you campbell makes his first appearance in metal gear 2 solid snake taking over as snake's ceo after big boss's bloody betrayal after the zanzibar land mission he retired from the military but if there's one truth about metal gear it's that no one's allowed to stay retired for long and the pentagon twists his arm into commanding snake through shadow moses island campbell's joined by a small support team any member of whom would also warrant consideration but none are as stalwart and memorable as campbell well maybe otakon the series guy in the chair but he makes a few too many public appearances in my opinion campbell doesn't get the memorable one-liners like some characters not an mgs-1 at least but he's a straight man to snake in the rest of the cast and the guy you want to talk to when you're not sure how to proceed just give him a call on good old 140.85 or he'll call you be careful you absolutely must not use weapons in that area a lot actually but then again everyone talks a lot in these games colonel's been sworn to secrecy on some of the details in the mission despite promising snake total transparency and he's a real bad liar about it but you'll later discover that campbell's niece merrill has been held hostage at shadow moses this entire time and the pentagon is using her as a bargaining chip to keep campbell compliant even so you can tell that he has snake's best interests at heart he is one of snake's only true friends after all colonel's straight-laced approach also makes it pretty funny when the game gets silly i've got it the controller socket plug your controller into socket 4 do that and he won't be able to read your moves if it weren't for that idea some players would still be stuck on psycho mantis colonel makes his return in metal gear solid 2 as ryden's superior officer or does he yeah um that's not colonel turns out that's an ai copy of kernel designed to manipulate ryden for the sake of the patriots because mgs2 is weird and it gets so much weirder even my patience has its limits i just can't leave this thing up to you any longer i'll do the fighting you can just go home as the system starts to degrade you get some of the weirdest line reads ever witnessed ryden something happened to me last thursday when i was driving home i had a couple of miles to go i looked up and saw a glowing orange object in the sky to the east it was moving very irregularly suddenly there was intense light all around me and when i came to i was home what do you think happened to me huh metal gear solid just became a fever dream and i don't think that'd be as effective if the series hadn't worked so hard to first establish campbell as a respectable no-nonsense leader it's incredibly surreal i could get into campbell's other appearances throughout the series but that would all just be extraneous to the example set in mgs one and two but do i still credit campbell with the stuff his ai said is number two a tie between real campbell and simulated campbell or maybe number two is just paul lighting i don't know it's all gotten so complicated but what else would you expect from a kojima game i'm sorry to have to lay it all in your lap but you're all i've got bust out of there and get to the communications tower also what merrell right yeah i'll save her thanks [Music] please note that we have added a consequence for failure any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record followed by death good luck when it comes to video game overs few have made the instant connection that glados achieved in the first portal game but i'm sorry glados you're not our number one say what it's just we've seen this evil robot in the flesh metal a few too many times but this series has one other character that fits the category just a little bit better [Music] existing only as a hidden username in the first portal game cave johnson gets his proper introduction halfway through portal 2 when chell falls into the derelict bowels of the facility and activates some old audio announcements from the big guy himself good thing these guys all rig their recordings to play automatically huh there's a thousand tests performed every day here in our christian spheres i can't personally oversee every one of them so these pre-recorded messages will cover any questions you might have and respond to any incidents that may occur in the course of your science adventure your test assignment will vary depending on the manner in which you have been the world to your will we learn a lot about cave johnson over a short period of time how he founded his cutting edge research company in the 1940s which originally sold shower curtains yup this dude knows nothing about science but hey he made a billion dollars and decided to invest it in the future of america you see this archetype in a lot of other media the howard stark varric from legend of korra the eccentric inventor type cave johnson doesn't have the intellect of those prior to examples but he subscribes to the same philosophy of pursuing every stupid idea in hopes that some of them are going to pan out so while aperture lapse shifted paradigms with inventions like the portal gun matter manipulating gels and eventually artificial intelligence it had 10 times as many horrible failures those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis dna i've got some good news and some bad news bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely good news is we've got a much better test for you fighting an army of mantis men pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line you'll know when the test starts so in case you thought glados was responsible for all the danger around here cave johnson can assure you that aperture labs has always been an osha nightmare all of this insanity is voiced by jk simmons by the way who has a myriad of memorable film roles but to me will always be j jonah jameson from the first three spider-man movies there's a reason why that role was never recast in other live-action films it's because no one else could master that same level of endearing arrogance tomorrow morning spider-man page one with a decent picture this time move conway to page seven there's a prominent page i'll make a page eight and give him ten percent off i'll make it five percent that can't be done get out of here it's the same here you constantly hear johnson disregarding his more qualified advisors and casually briefing volunteers on the unethical experiments they unknowingly have already been subjected to just a heads up that coffee we gave you earlier had fluorescent calcium in it so we can track the neuronal activity in your brain there's a slight chance the calcium can harden and vitrify your frontal lobe anyway don't stress yourself thinking about it i'm serious visualizing the scenario while under stress actually triggers the reaction at first i kept questioning myself why i was writing this entry at all i could just play his line for three minutes and it'd be self-explanatory but once you're past the humorous anecdotes you'll get to the heart of cave johnson's story competition with other super science firms terminal disease from exposure to moon rocks and a race to upload his dying brain to a computer which it seems he died too early to see completed suddenly the entire series has new context why we have glados why she's so angry and how one man was both the reason for aperture lab's existence and the cause of its downfall [Music] of course that's nothing compared to a cut sequence that was gonna document cave johnson forcing his secretary to undergo the brain transference the clip still in the game's data but i'm not gonna play it it's pretty intense no if you want more cave johnson i recommend getting the portal 2 dlc a non-canon edition where a still living cave johnson talks to you through tests across alternate realities it's as ridiculous as it sounds cave johnson new owner and ceo of black mesa that's right you've been bought first order of business we're renaming you under the aperture brand i'm leaning towards blappitzer mesa marketing boys think something else so blah but sure it is putting these 10 entries in order was difficult actually comparing apples to oranges most of them give a unique performance that serves as the foundation for the entire game they appear in firewatch wouldn't be firewatch without delilah madworld would be a shell of itself without howard increase weirdly the further through these ranks i got the more incidental these voices became within their game phone guy is just a tutorial campbell's just one character and cave johnson's only in a specific section of portal 2 his dialogue only adding up to about 11 minutes but even sharing the spotlight with glados and wheatley i can't shake how big an impact cave johnson makes to the game in such a limited amount of time when it comes to writing few video games can get on the same level as portal 2. i'm the green scorpion and i think that's enough out of this disembodied voice for today let me know what you think of the entries how you would order them and if you have any favorites that you think i missed believe me there's a lot more examples than you might think i hope you all have a wonderful day and remember when life gives you lemons don't make lemonade make life take the lemons back get mad i don't want your damn lemons what am i supposed to do with these demand to see life's manager make life through the day and thought it could give cave johnson lemons do you know who i am i'm the man who's gonna burn your house down with the lemons i'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down [Music] you

Channel: The Green Scorpion

Views: 27,921

Rating: 4.9801784 out of 5

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Id: WxTZjnZx-Ns

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020