Romance has become quite the topic in the gaming landscape.
I’m a sucker for a good romance and am always interested in where the game will focus its attention.
While love stories have been a part of the medium forever (one of the most famous cases being “save the princess”), it’s only in recent times that gaming has started to take on some more bigger and mature themes when it comes to romance.
Ideas like teen romance (Life is Strange Season 1), infidelity and commitment (Catherine: Full Body), and reconciliation (It Takes Two). I’ve written about love, death and endings in games like When The Past Was Around.
And it just so happens I’ve played another game recently that tried to tackle deeper themes with love.
South of the Circle is a narrative game first released for Apple Arcade in 2020, but was released late last year for consoles and PC.
I was immediately struck by its visuals and sound design, but was drawn in by it being labelled as a love story.
South of the Circle takes on the development of a whole relationship, societal pressures and conventions, but its main theme is memory, its failings and faults, and it perfectly works its way into the gameplay.
Best of British Luck – Love, Memory, and Lost Moments in South of the Circle
South of the Circle’s story focuses on two people, Peter and Clara, both lecturers at Cambridge University, how the two meet and fall in love, before a breakdown in communication leads to tragedy.
We play Peter throughout his time with Clara, but also during a research trip to Antartica, taking place after the two’s romance. This double story, of Peter searching for rescue at the South Pole and his growing relationship with Clara forms the narrative hook of the story.
The pair first meet on a train from Scotland down to Cambridge. It’s a perfect romantic introduction; Peter offering to help Clara put her suitcase on the top rack, her offering to share the carriage as everywhere else would be full.
South of the Circle‘s art design is evocative of screen prints from the 1960s, full of clean lines and stark contrasts. (Source: mezha.media)
The main point of interaction in the game is dialogue choices, but instead of seeing a preview of words, you see a shape that gives a general emotion.
A red circle indicates panic, confusion, or concern. A green circle indicates caring and honesty. The black square is for being strong an assertive, a pink circle is negative and shy, and finally a sunshine image is for enthusiasm and interest.
Not all emotions are accessible with each interaction, only three at one time. It’s a great concept for a replaying a past love story, of people thinking back on moments and regretting acting in a certain way, whether shyness or being too forthright, and it’s great to get a general sense of how Peter could have reacted differently.
It’s also interesting that in certain conversations, one of the prompts comes up before the other. For example, when Peter helps Clara with her suitcase, two options come up in response, one being strong and assertive (the “be-a-man” approach) or honesty and openness. For a few seconds, the strong and assertive is the only prompt on screen.
It gives Peter a little bit of depth; so many characters with dialogue choices can change on a player’s whim in a certain situation, leaving their backstory a little vague and blank as to why they are acting in a certain way, but here it gives a small detail as to Peter’s background.
Source: playstationcountry.com
The two keep crossing paths once they arrive in Cambridge. Peter drives Clara to work when she misses catching her bus in the pouring rain, and she sits in on his lecture and asks question about his work. Again, it’s a perfect romantic setting, of two people in their element, thrown together by fate, both seeing sparks fly as they talk.
Chance meetings turn into coffee dates, into a night at a funfair, into seaside holidays, and finally into secret Scottish highland hideaways (with Clara remarking “I don’t know what my father would say about me bringing an unmarried man up there.”)
It’s a gradual and believable slide into comfort and romance, yet it’s fleeting. It’s tableaus and snapshots, of little inside jokes (the game remembers what choices you’ve made and the characters reference them), the sort of thing someone remembering a relationship would envision.
Happy memories of times gone by. (Source: news.xbox.com)
Alongside the development of Peter and Clara’s relationship, we get further flashbacks into Peter’s life, such as his childhood and him with his fellow researchers.
His childhood doesn’t seem to be filled with fun, with an over-protective mother and a quick-to-anger father. A lot of the prompts in these sections are delayed; we see the prompt appear but it doesn’t become clickable for sometimes five to ten seconds, as if Peter is finding the courage to speak back to his parents. His responses are usually the panicked or negative choices.
With his friends, Peter is still a little shy and reserved, but given a few seconds the “man-up” choice is presented. A lot of the talk with his friends would be regarded as “locker-room talk”, with the two researchers always hunting for new “conquests” and seeing Clara as, quote, “inspiration” for Peter.
Peter’s childhood and social life is also explored in the game, giving glimpses into other areas of his life. (Source: mezha.media)
And to be fair, they are right with Clara being a muse for Peter. For three years he has been writing a research paper and has been stuck for a long period. But when Clara comes into his life, she reads his work and helps him complete it.
From there, their relationship takes a turn for the worse, as society starts to turn its eye onto the couple.
First, it’s the time period. The game is set in 1964, the height of Soviet paranoia, anti-nuclear marches, and Russian spy rings working inside academia.
Second, the location. It’s only been fifteen years since women were first admitted to Cambridge University, and some of the old guard still believe they are “not built for academic work”.
It’s both the sexism of the time and guilt by association that causes the breakdown of Peter and Clara, the British “stiff-upper-lip” being the finishing blow, of words left unsaid, and memories now tarnished with emotion.
While half the game is set in the English countryside and sunlit offices and streets, the other half is of Peter and his ill-fated research trip to the Antarctic.
Maps, radios, and scientific equipment are all used to great effect in mini-puzzle sequences. (Source:mezha.media)
The game takes a little while before explaining the contrasting locations. It drops little hints and off-hand mentions of geography and weather patterns at the start, only really coming to the forefront once Clara and Peter have settled into their relationship.
The scenery is bleak and other-worldly, yet it works perfectly with the developing romance back in England. It says that even in chaotic and unsettling moments there is always some pin of normalcy, of hope and clearer skies at a later date.
The story in Antartica is as desolate as the landscape around it, with an increasing sense of foreboding and mystery. I won’t spoil it here for the story takes some jaw-dropping twists and turns as Peter stumbles through the tundra.
The snow and cold starts to affect Peter, blurring the line between memory and locations, with conversations, atmosphere, and even set design switching from Cambridge to Antartica.
It’s interesting visually if a little jarring the first time; editing cuts like this haven’t really been done before (lest people think their game is lagging for the quick cuts).
It keeps Clara in the forefront of the mind, this warm presence that may be lost to Peter, but he is fighting to find her.
There is no camera movement in SotC, but there is always something on the horizon to guide you forward. (Source: polygamer.com)
The story is very structured with only little spaces for Telltale-style branching, which can lead players to feel frustrated any the lack of choice, but that is the central point of the story, that memory can be influenced by emotion, but can’t change what happened.
Peter is in the Antarctic no matter what; that is the present and everything else is in the past. Events and choices start to contradict, yet Peter is always seen as the sympathetic one and Clara starts to over-react.
While Peter is the protagonist, we as players have to come to the realisation that he isn’t presenting us with the whole truth. It reaches an apex as Peter sets off for the Antarctic, with the player’s feeble attempts to change what happened, but for Peter mentally torturing himself by the final moments.
It’s a devastating ending to come to, that all choices lead to the same conclusion for our protagonist, and it’s only how he chooses to remember himself (and how we as players guided him) that gives him comfort.
It’s a hearty mix of mature themes and aching loneliness and despite the short run time (an average of three hours), I highly recommend it as a great interactive story.
After my first post on my top dialogues in gaming I got thinking about other games that I thought had great dialogue sequences. I started to move away from just my favourite scenes instead looking at the different ways that dialogue is used.
I still like all of the scenes that are listed below, but I’ve tried to pick some dialogues that are special in the ways that they use character interaction especially those that work within adaptations or use factors outside of a simple back-and-forth.
So, let’s skip this preamble and jump right in, this is Another Top Five Dialogue Scenes In Gaming.
Lara Croft and Pierre Dupont meet in Tomb Raider Anniversary
Tomb Raider Anniversary is a remake of the first Tomb Raider game. With a fantastic blueprint to work from in terms of level design, the creators, Crystal Dynamics, decided to focus on updating the story and fleshing out the characters who were mere cardboard cutouts in the first game.
While at this point we’ve already had a few verbal sparring matches with the morally-grey mercenary Larson, it’s Lara Croft’s interaction with fellow treasure hunter Pierre Dupont that takes the number five spot.
In the original game Pierre wasn’t much of a character. He would turn up during points of the Greece section of the game and shoot at Lara before running off and vanishing into thin air as soon he was out of line of sight.
Here in TRA we see two people who seem to have prior knowledge of each other. This can be seen by the fact that they are both on first name terms with each other, discussing each other’s personal philosophy that informs how they go about their work. This adds up to create a backstory for these two characters that will probably never see a gaming screen (although Pierre and Larson did come back for Tomb Raider Chronicles which was set before TR1). This gives all the characters a few different shades and facets rather than just “bad guy” and “good girl”.
The way that the cutscene plays also informs us about Pierre as a character. We only see his character model once during the sequence, instead following his voice as it reverberates around the room. This was meant to be a callback to his vanishing act from TR1, (1:50) but I read it as Pierre toying with Lara and messing with her head since she can’t find him.
When we finally see Pierre, he is in the shadows hidden from Lara and pointing both of his guns at her. He has a clear shot, ready to kill her, but backs off and disappears. This adds another layer to his character; he likes a challenge rather than eliminating his competition.
This continues through the game, as we hear his voice throughout the next levels, taunting us and finally ambushing us at the end, where once again, he and Lara’s conflicting worldviews clash.
All this makes him a much more interesting character rather than a simple shoot-first character like he was in the original.
(Cutscene starts at 10:32)
The Confrontations with Red Grant in From Russia with Love
This one is quite different as it is an adaptation/remake of a film, but the subtle changes make it a good one to look at.
From Russia With Love came out during a period in the James Bond series between Pierce Brosnan being let go and Daniel Craig being signed on to play 007. EA wanted to keep making James Bond games so got Sean Connery to come back to play the iconic spy and took one of his films, From Russia With Love (an odd choice due to the film not being action heavy like Goldfinger or Thunderball) and adapted it to a game.
While the game takes several liberties with the original story it also remakes scenes shot-for-shot, word-for-word. The scene I’ve chosen is a mixture between the two.
The two characters, Red Grant (the bad guy pretending to be an MI6 agent) and James Bond meet on a smoky Turkish train platform, each providing their part of the secret code to each other to identify themselves. Red Grant is rather jovial, coming across as naive as he plays sidekick to Bond.
But as soon as they get to the dining car, Grant’s jovialness twists on a dime. His smile becomes a frown. His light-hearted phrase, “old man” takes on a sarcastic touch. Bond catches on when Grant orders red wine with their grilled sole (which adds to a funny line later when Grant hits Bond over the head with a bottle and says “There’s your white wine, old man!”). After pulling into the train station, Grant and Bond trade words lifted straight from the film. It is a cool scene, seeing dialogue that was originally in a tense interrogation repurposed as the start of an action sequence.
The connections made through Bond and Grant’s dialogue adds to up to their final confrontation at the very end of the game. After destroying the multi-appendage contraption that Grant is piloting, Bond finds him lying on the floor, defeated. Bond levels his gun and Grant starts to mock him.
“Are you going to shoot me in cold blood, old man? You don’t have the guts. It’s not the ‘English’ way. It’s just like red wine with fish.”
The way Grant delivers the line is perfect. The sneering disapproval of ‘English’, the reoccurrence of “old man” as an insult, and the final hint of their previous encounter with the mention of red wine and fish. Grant and the organisation Octopus set up the murder of Bond in the story because they misread the “British mentality”, which is stated at the beginning of the game (and the film). That’s why is hits much harder when Bond blows Grant away before he even finishes the word ‘fish’.
Bond’s final line of “That was for Kerim” also adds a somber tone to proceedings. Throughout the game, Kerim Bey has been by your side, helping you out along the way. Grant kills Kerim just before you meet in the dining car, and we see no hint of emotion from Bond when he first learns of Kerim’s death during gameplay.
Adding it here adds a nice little pathos to the end of the game and cements the fact that these two characters had a friendship rather than Kerim being just a helpful NPC.
(19:29-21:58 and 29:13)
Sam Fisher in Ghost Recon: Wildlands
I put another Splinter Cell moment on my first list because the writing in Splinter Cell is top notch and Sam Fisher is one of the best-written characters in the entirety of gaming. Michael Ironside, the original voice of Sam Fisher, worked with the developers to create a more three-dimensional character, giving Sam not just a great voice but something more on a deeper level.
Ironside explains that originally Sam was going to be a G.I. Joe-esque, two-dimensional, flat, gung-ho type character. Ironside wasn’t interested in playing a character like that. He saw Fisher as, “…a weapon that the government has used too many times.” (0:52). The character is not a gruff, macho one-man army (who do have their place in gaming), Fisher is instead imbued with cynicism, dark humour and genuine moments of tenderness (such as when Sam is asked to tap phone lines for his former field handler Frances Coen, he says, “For Frances…of course I can” (2:30)).
But the moment I want to talk about it the character’s most recent appearance, as an NPC in the game Ghost Recon Wildlands. The Ghosts help Fisher with a mission (again voiced by Ironside rather than Eric Johnson, who took over for Splinter Cell Blacklist), before they help extract him and bring him back to their field handler, Karen.
The two characters of them have some nice banter (with Sam calling her Linda, to which she replies that she’s “Karen nowadays”). Karen notices that Sam has gotten old and he responds, “I’ve heard they don’t make them [spies] like me anymore” (14:44) before mentioning one guy that used to be like him. Most fans got a kick out of the scene because Fisher starts to describe Solid Snake. Karen cuts him off with, “I heard he finally retired.” (15:04).
Whether this was a reference to David Hayder being passed over for Keifer Sutherland or a wider swipe at Metal Gear Solid being shut down by Konami, Sam replies with a quiet, “Then it’s only me.” (15:09).
The beauty of this line is that it has so many different layers. The initial reaction is one of smug superiority; after many years of the two competing franchises Sam Fisher has outlived his greatest rival. But then it’s a sad dawning. Sam’s line of “they don’t make them like me anymore” has extra metatextual meaning; they don’t make spy/stealth games like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid anymore.
Looking at it from a character perspective, what has Sam got? He’s outlived every other rival, and what does he have to show for it? He’s pushing sixty, in a job that he will never get any recognition or respect for, all of his friends have either betrayed him or died, he’s lost countless lovers, and he hardly knows his only daughter.
It’s a sad realisation and as Sam thinks through his place in the world, Karen snaps him out of his pondering, saying that he has a new mission and he’s shipping out in one hour. This adds even greater sadness to the scene and character. Just as he looks at his life from a different perspective and starts to have doubts, he gets pulled back in.
(Cutscene starts at 14:44).
The Cristina Memories from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
I am not a fan of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. I feel that it was a step down from Assassin’s Creed II and negates the entire downer ending of that game (although Revelations did bring it back round for the finale).
The only thing that kept me remotely interested in the game were the Cristina Memories. Cristina Vespucci was a minor character in the opening of Assassin’s Creed II and is one of Ezio’s many conquests throughout the game. She’s rather important because they are childhood sweethearts. It is safe to assume they were each other’s first relationship. While we hardly see any of that in AC2, their relationship is explored during the “Cristina Memories”, little vignettes of their relationship in Brotherhood.
These scenes are interesting because we get to see what being an Assassin does to a relationship. All of Ezio’s other ladies; Caterina Sforza, Rosa The Thief, Lucrezia Borgia, countless courtesans, they are all mainly one-offs or “distractions”, sex just for the hell of it. Cristina is so much more, and it can be seen during the dialogue.
Their first meeting is beautifully awkward with Cristina initially being dismissive but then intrigued by her would-be suitor (with his plea for a “second chance” to woo her (1:12)). The second memory has so much in what isn’t said. When Ezio asks Cristina to come with him, she simply says, “I want to…but I can’t…my family,” (9:55) reflecting Cristina’s conflicting priorities between her life and her love for Ezio.
My favourites of the Cristina Memories are the third and fourth. In the third scene Ezio returns to his belle only to find she is betrothed. His previous playful banter with Cristina is diminished as he learns that while he has been gallivanting around Tuscany sticking Templars and collecting feathers, Cristina has been living her life in quiet desperation. She has had to move on with her life while he is still chasing people that took away his former happy existence.
While Ezio has had to mature beyond his years to care for his mother and sister, but when he sees Cristina again he regresses back to being 17 years of age and hoping that pure love she had for him hasn’t waned. It hasn’t, but he sees that his life isn’t compatible with hers, and his final line of, “He’ll make a good husband, I made sure of it,” (13:55) is gently tender yet painful as he must accept that she can’t wait for him forever.
The fourth scene is especially heart wrenching, as Ezio tries to recapture that spark of what should have been, if only the couple had time and history had been different. When the two meet in a dark Venetian alley Cristina is understandably pissed at him. He pretended to be her husband and he says he, “…was afraid that you [she] wouldn’t come if I [he] just asked.” (17:00). Cristina confirms this, and it’s here that we see the pain of loving and losing someone.
Cristina stills loves Ezio, but she had to change. He was forever teasing her, reappearing every few years, tempting her with a life and a love that was true and innocent, but with him racing off faster than he arrived, leaving her alone again. And she couldn’t do it anymore.
She loves him too much, and to paraprhase a line from Professor Laytonand the Unwound Future (and another great romance scene), “ she doesn’t want to say goodbye again. She can’t, she won’t.” (1:00). Because it hurts her every time when he leaves. She tells him that she loved him but she has to end their connection. He had his “second chance” and she leaves, telling him to never find her again.
For the finale we see that Cristina still carried a torch for Ezio after all the time spent apart, hoping that one day he might return to her. She whispers, “I wish we could have had a second chance,” before passing away in Ezio’s arms.
What hurts more is that Ezio never truly recovered. Despite having endless flings and floozies throughout the subsequent games, no one ever comes close to Cristina until Sofia Sartor arrives, when Ezio is well into his fifties.
And in a similar way he originally doesn’t want to get Sofia tangled up in his messed up life and endless struggle against the Templars, but she stays anyway. In a letter to his sister Claudia, Ezio says, “When Cristina died, something withered in me,” (15:55) showing that even with time, some wounds never truly heal.
Elena and Nathan and “Are you happy?” in Uncharted 4.
I know I mentioned in my first post that the Grosvenor McCaffrey interview in L.A. Noire is my favourite dialogue in all of gaming, but this one takes a close second.
After Uncharted 3 many people thought the series was over. Most games go for trilogies rather than quadrilogies, but Naughty Dog came back to tell one last hurrah.
The scene in Uncharted 4 shows life in the Drake household now that the two treasure hunters have “settled down”. Elena still has a little bit of adventure, travelling all around the world for travel magazines, while Nathan is relegated to menial cleaning jobs.
The two eat dinner and Nathan starts to zone out while Elena goes on about her current assignment. She can tell that he is dissatisfied with his job, but even when she tries to push him in a direction that would make him happy, he refuses.
Elena goes to wash up but Nathan says he wants to do it. He says he’ll play her for it on her “TV game thing” (a lovely jaunt through Naughty Dog’s Crash Banidcoot). One short game session later Nathan has lost and Elena starts to sweetly trash talk him, “You can give it another shot. C’mon double or nothing, my car could really use a good cleaning…there’s this mode called “easy mode”, I just switch it. It’s way easier on easy mode.” (12:37).
The two start to bicker like the cute married couple they are until Nate snaps and grabs Elena, tickling her into submission on the couch. The two stop and stare lovingly into each other’s eyes, until Elena says one of my favourite lines in all of gaming,
“Hey, are you happy?”
Nate’s unsteady reply of, “Yeah…course,” says so much about the two’s relationship, of settling down and moving away from hopes and dreams so they could have a shot at a safer and normal life.
The scene ends beautifully too with Nate asking, “You?” Elena puts on a mock thinking face and says “Um,” before the two laugh and kiss.
I would call the scene verisimilitudinous, but that would be a disservice to the scene, because it isn’t a simulation of the real, it is real. I’ve had this conversation in real life and similar ones like it as I assume many other people have. This isn’t just a sweet scene with some heartfelt emotion and some beautifully understated lines, this is a perfect representation of real life with all of its mundanity and shows of affection. And that’s why it tops my list as one of the best dialogue scenes in all of gaming.
(Start at 5:49).
Conclusion
Rounding out the list are some honourable mentions as well as a few single lines not from dialogues that I like. In terms of dialogues pretty much all of 2008’s Prince Of Persia is excellent with the main characters of the Prince and Elika seamlessly morphing from vaguely antagonistic to potential lovers over time (and all in optional dialogue, which is interesting).
In the Hitman series Agent 47 and Diana Burnwood’s interactions are fascinating dialogues mainly because of their working relationship. Diana is the only person that is “close” to 47, and even then he doesn’t see her face whenever they are together. Like the Prince and Elika their relationship has changed as the games have gone on, developing as the stories have got more intricate and personal.
For single lines (disqualified from the numbered entries because I wanted more than one character in the scene), the Max Payne series always has good lines. While I and my housemates have fun shouting lines from Max Payne 3 at each other (especially the over-the-top ones where Max’s voice cracks), my favourite line from the series is the last line of Max Payne 2;
“I had a dream of my wife. She was dead, but it was all right.”
That line sums up the pain of Max and his redemption over the first two games, quietly bringing the second chapter of his life to a close.
And lastly a funny one (warning, phonetically-spelt swear words ahead). From Rainbow Six Siege, the SAS Operator Thatcher has a hatred of all electrical gadgets, listing them, “GPS Satellites, Unmanned drones…” and my favourite, “…fookin lazeh soights…” (as it is phonetically pronounced). The delivery of the line sealed my appreciation of it, and much like Max Payne 3, this line became a staple of my university house, with much hilarity ensuing when a barely audible “fookin lazeh soights” would be heard when passing each other on the stairs.
TOM CLEMENT | WRITER | NARRATIVE DESIGNER | PRODUCER 