Meaningful Echo / Video Games

Meaningful Echoes in video games.

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• Ace Combat:
  • Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War: "Yo, Buddy. Still alive?" At first, this is Pixy acting surprised that the rookie he's been assigned to fly with actually pulled his weight on their first mission. Then, it's Pixy relieved that they both survived the ordeal that was their first battle over the Round Table. And towards the end, it's Pixy coming back from desertion—to fight a battle to the death against his former flight leader.
  • Ace Combat: Assault Horizon: "I saw my death in my dreams, many times." First describing his nightmare, and then at the end describing him overcoming his nightmare.
• Assassin's Creed: Malik Al-Sayf hates Altaïr after the protagonist got his brother killed during a botched mission. When Altaïr delivers the standard greeting of "Safety and peace" early in the game, Malik's bitter response is "Your presence here deprives me of both." At the end of the game and after some serious Character Development, Altaïr again says "Safety and peace," to which Malik replies "Your presence will deliver us both."
• In Beyond Good & Evil, Double H is prone to spouting random sayings from his military training manual; one of his favorites is the faux motivational mantra "D.B.U.T.T! Don't Break Up The Team!" His normal usage of the phrase is akin to "Hey! Wait for me!" However, in a later scene, he dives to catch the heroine Jade as she falls from a roof. When he catches her, he says, with a sigh of relief, "Don't break up the team..." showing his dedication for her.
• In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, both General Shepherd and Captain Price note that "History is written by the victors." The point they're both making is that only they should be trusted to write the history of the events that occur in the plot. The twist is that Shepherd is the Big Bad, and Price, despite being He Who Fights Monsters, is one of the good guys. Price's use of the line at the end of the game even follows it up with a direct rebuttal, stating that "history is written by the victors" and immediately following up by claiming "history is filled with liars".
• The Ancestor's opening line in Darkest Dungeon is repeated at the end. In the opening, it describes the main character's family, which has been ruined by the Ancestor's foolish actions. At the end, it reflects all of humanity, whom are all an "aberrant growth" on the skin of an Eldritch Abomination. Ruin has, indeed, come to our family.
• In Deadly Premonition, the line "Welcome to Greenvale" is first spoken when York first arrives in town; it is repeated at the beginning of the second boss fight.
• When Pious Augustus introduces his chapter in the Tome of Eternal Darkness, he says, "To think that once I could not see beyond the veil of our reality, to see those who dwell behind... I was once a fool..." Alex repeats this word for word in the denouement of each path.
• Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water has this line: "No! I won't let you do it!" And in most of the listed examples below, an embrace from behind takes place as well.
  • Miu says this as she tries to call Yuuri back as Yuuri is walking deeper and deeper into the Black Lake. Her words and embrace jolt Yuuri out of her spiritually-possessed trance.
  • Miu does this again when getting Miku out of the Black Box that confines her.
  • The reason Yuuri reacts so powerfully to these words, as indicated in a flashback, is because these are what Hisoka says to her as she stops Yuuri from her own suicide attempt.
  • Yuuri herself says this to Hisoka to stop her from letting herself become a sacrifice.
• Cloud's comments about the Midgar train early in Final Fantasy VII - "No-one lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train. It can't go anywhere except where its rails take it." It's profound at the time, though, to some degree, since it's the first emotional thing we hear Cloud say; Barret, The Lancer, points this out. For him, especially, it sticks, and a mangled version becomes his catchphrase - "There ain't no getting off of this train we're on!" It's eventually used by the rest of the cast to complete Cloud's recovery from Heroic BSoD. Except Cait Sith, who viciously mangles it: "This train we're on ain't got no stops!"
• Final Fantasy X:
  • The Arc Words of "This is my story" is often repeated by Tidus and Yuna, until eventually, Auron changes the words to "This is your story", referring to all the characters.
  • There's a scene where Yuna and Tidus are discussing times when they have to force a smile and laugh during tough times, which seems to be about how important Yuna's position of summoner is. Later in the game, there is a flashback to this scene, which reveals that it's also about how Yuna must face her ultimate fate as a summoner.
• Final Fantasy XIV: At the climax of the level 50 Dark Knight quest "Our Answer", Esteem tells the Warrior of Light that "when you tire of this charade" they will be there. Then in the level 60 quest "Absolution", fellow Dark Knight Sidurgu reflects to the Warrior that "to walk the path is to suffer. To sacrifice. Justice demands no less." The echo comes in the level 70 quest "Our Compromise", when the Big Bad of the 60-70 quest chain gives the Warrior a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about the pain and loss they cause to enemy and ally alike, ending by saying "to walk this path is to suffer. To sacrifice." Cue dialogue choice:
  ...Justice demands no less.
  I tire of this charade.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Auron echoes this awesomely when he bluntly tells Hades, "This is my story, and you aren't part of it."
  • When Saïx confronts Sora over how important Kairi means to him, Sora replies, "Yeah. More than anything." Kairi replies similarly later when Saïx questions her if she wants to see Sora.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
  • If playing as the Blue Lions, Dimitri's Pre Ass Kicking One Liner is "I'll cut through." After the timeskip, this line is repeated by Felix, who despite being terrible at showing it, does genuinely care for Dimitri, who has been consumed by a desire for revenge.
  • On the same route, after Jeralt's death Dimitri gives Byleth some comforting advice, one of which is to find something to believe in to continue on living. Five years later after Dimitri's gone through a second Trauma Conga Line (the first one happening four years before the game starts) and become obsessed with revenge, his Parental Substitute Takes the Bullet for him and dies telling Dimitri that he's not dying for him, but what he believes in. And later, Dimitri has a Redemption in the Rain asking Byleth who or what he lives for now, and they respond by telling him to live for what he believes in.
• God of War (PS4): In the story's climax, Kratos stops Baldur from killing his mother Freya in revenge, not unlike Kratos's own revenge quest against Zeus. In a reflection of just how far he's come since being the "Ghost of Sparta", Kratos echoes the words of his father Zeus from way back in God Of War 2:
  Kratos: The cycle ends here.
• Grand Theft Auto IV has Niko's cousin Roman saying "Welcome to America!" as he gets off a boat in the opening cutscene. If one takes the "Deal" ending in the game... After Roman dies, Niko hunts down Dimitri, he says the exact same thing before Dimitri dies of blood loss.
• At the beginning of Halo 3, Master Chief John-117 and Arbiter Thel 'Vadam are stopped from killing each other by Sergeant Johnson. Thel mutters "Were it so easy..." and stalks off. At the end, where Johnson is dead and Chief is MIA, Lord Hood tells Thel that he can't believe Chief is dead. Thel looks to the sky and sighs "Were it so easy...". This had to have tugged at some heartstrings.
• Honkai Impact 3rd: In Chapter 17, Mei berates Kiana for her Chronic Hero Syndrome and she answers with "This is my mission." Later, in Chapter 22, Kiana wants to stop Fu Hua from sacrificing herself in order to defeat Herrscher of Sentience and hears the same words in response.
• In inFAMOUS: Second Son, Brooke Augustine often quips "Yeah, I'm told that hurts" when using her concrete powers to torture people. When Delsin Rowe uses those same powers to encase her in concrete during the Final Boss battle, he throws that exact same line back at her.
• One meaningful echo was botched in at least one translation of the Kingdom Hearts games: If you're an English-speaking player, the first you saw or heard of the line "We'll go together" is as the closing line of both Sequel Hook trailers found in the original game—Another Side Another Story and Deep Dive. It appears again in the ending of Kingdom Hearts II from Sora to Riku, about returning home at last. The line's actual first appearance is in the opening, post-trippy-dream-sequence cutscene of the first game: Kairi to Sora, about leaving their home to go on an adventure, translated from "We'll go together" to "So what're we waiting for?"
• Legacy of Kain: "Become my Soul Reaver", the Elder God tells Raziel at the beginning of Soul Reaver. This rather throwaway line comes back to haunt the player at the end of Soul Reaver 2
• A Little Lily Princess: Early on in the Act 2 portion of Mariette's route, Mariette tells Sara a saying, "Avec des si et des mais, on mettrait Paris en bouteille" ("With ifs and buts, we could put Paris in a bottle"), to express that she'd rather be serving Sara than working where she is at the moment. In the ending, after Mariette apologizes for not realizing that her new employer Mr. Carrisford was looking for Sara, Sara says she's not to blame, since there are other ways by which Mr. Carrisford could have found out sooner, and repeats the saying.
• In Mass Effect 2, if you romanced Thane Krios and played through the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, you will learn of a letter that he wrote to you, to be delivered to you in the event of his death, which ends with the poignant line "I will await you across the sea." In Mass Effect 3, after Thane is stabbed through the chest trying to protect the salarian councilor from Kai Leng, during his death scene at the hospital with Kolyat at your side, your final words to him are "Bye, Thane. Meet you across the sea." *sniff*
  • Badass Bookworm Mordin Solus is one of the prime examples for a Morally Ambiguous Doctorate, being a leading scientist in bio-weapons that have been refered to as genocidal by many people and has also been described as an emotionless killer when it comes to dispatching his enemies. The mission and the greater good always comes first with no room for doubts or regrets. Considered both a genius and ruthless by his own people, he appears not to be too far from the truth when he ends the demonstration of his singing talent with the line "I am the very model of a scientist Salarian." In the third game, he appears to have had a major change of heart, at least as much as someone as him would admit, and put himself in extreme danger to revert the effects of his earlier works, working with and saving the species he used to fight. He is heard humming the line "I am the very model of a scientist Salarian." as his last words as he starts the machine that will cure the effects of the bio-weapon, as the facility is exploding around him.
  • "Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."
  • "My work, my responsibility". The whole storyline uses this trope a lot.
  • In Mass Effect 3, during the Rannoch arc, at one point Shepard wishes Legion "Good luck", to which it replies "Acknowledged." Later reversed, when Legion wishes Shepard "Good luck" when s/he goes to take down a Reaper on foot, to which Shepard cheerfully replies, "Acknowledged."
  • The Rannoch arc also gets a lot of mileage out of the phrase "keelah se'lai", which throughout the series has been a generic quarian expression. It's explained that it literally means "by the homeworld I hope to someday see", which obviously means a lot more when they're standing on that homeworld, or when Shepard uses it at the height of persuading the two sides to stand down (a double reference — to Rannoch, which the quarians can resettle on if they stop antagonizing the geth, and Earth, which s/he hopes the quarian-geth alliance can help retake).
  • A variation in the form of a repeated scene. Whilst in the Geth Consensus, Shepard discovers that Legion archived their first meeting within the Geth's important historical records. When questioned about this, Legion reveals this was the first peaceful interaction between organics and Geth in over 300 years!
  • "Are you saying submission is preferable to extinction?"
• During the beginning of Max Payne, the titular character stubs out a cigarette in front of Alex and says "See? My last smoke. It's bad for the baby." Three years later, when B.B offers Max a cigar, Max retorts "I don't smoke."
• At the end of the first Mega Man Zero game, Mega Man X (now just a literal Virtual Ghost) appears to the title character, the latter exhausted from battling the Big Bad. X asks Zero to protect the world in his stead while X rests for a while, and Zero's answer:
  I'll do what you want... Rest for a while. I will handle it, you can count on me. I won't stop! If an enemy appears... I'll terminate it.
  • The last three lines would be echoed (in different words, but still had the same general meaning) before the Final Boss battle of Zero 4, with Weil taunting Zero on his ideals of justice. Cue speech.
    I never cared about justice, and I don't recall ever calling myself a hero. I've always only fought for the people I believe in. I won't hesitate. If an enemy appears in front of me, I will destroy it!
• Used very frequently in the Metal Gear. The series knows it has a mythos and isn't afraid to use it. A few of the more obvious ones:
  • "Kept you waiting, huh?"/"Sorry for the wait"/"Sorry to keep you waiting" (all the same phrase in Japanese) is used over and over as a reference to Snake speaking the line in the earliest Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty trailers, and in a different, increasingly poignant situation every time. The most poignant is Otacon's melancholic Lampshade Hanging - "[Snake's] always keeping people waiting" - at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, after Snake has left him to kill himself.
  • Big Boss unconsciously 'repeats' Snake's "I've never been interested in anyone else's life" speech to EVA in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, after she asks him the same question Meryl asked Snake in Metal Gear Solid.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 - after helping Raiden get through a door, Emma says "Are you impressed?" with exactly the same intonation that Meryl used when she said it to Snake in Metal Gear Solid. Obviously an unconscious hint for where the story was heading.
  • The script on the Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 Making-Of disc has large amounts of stage directions for the actors saying things similar to 'This line should be said in the same way the line was said in Metal Gear Solid'.
  • One which crossed the voice-acting barrier - "I have no family", first said by Snake in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake as a simple answer to a question about whether he was married or not, and later said by Snake in Metal Gear Solid to highlight his loneliness upon being asked about whether there was anyone who cared about him at all.
  • And another which crossed the voice-acting barrier - "TURN OFF YOUR MSX AT ONCE!!". Echoed by Campbell in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, as "Turn the game console off, right now!" Since Big Boss's order to switch off the MSX happens right at the end of Metal Gear just before his betrayal, it's fairly clear what it was trying to do.
  • Even the radio frequencies are like this, starting from Metal Gear 2. Your commander will use 140.85, the girl will use 140.15, the mentor 141.80, the save girl 140.96, the ninja 140.48 or 140.00, and so on. It's used to make a point in Metal Gear Solid, which plays around with assigning behaviours to Meryl and Naomi which we have seen in Metal Gear 2's Holly and Nastasha, and swaps around which girl is which at the last moment.
  • In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, when Sam claims that Raiden denies his blade "its purpose" to "bathe in the blood" of his enemies, Raiden retorts this his sword is "a tool of justice." Raiden repeats this phrase right before the final battle with Senator Armstrong after his high-frequency blade has been broken by Armstrong and Blade Wolf gives him the fallen Sam's high frequency blade, Murasama, as a replacement, only to retort that "now I'm not so sure... and besides, this isn't my sword!" Both Sam and Raiden also exclaim "Okay. Let's dance!" right before fighting Raiden and Armstrong respectively.
• Metroid: Adam Malkovich ends every mission briefing with the line "No objections, right, Lady?" to acknowledge Samus. (Who, in turn, gives a thumbs-down just to be cheeky.) The Sector Zero cutscene in Metroid: Other M turns the exchange into a Tear Jerker as Adam departs on a suicide mission to destroy the sector.
  • Anthony's thumbs-down in the ending is also an Ironic Echo.
  • In Metroid Fusion, set chronologically after Other M Samus reminisces about Adam, saying the computer she's taking orders from reminds her of him, except that Adam finished his orders with "Any objections, Lady?" (The game was made before Other M). She accidentally calls the computer Adam to its "face" later in the story, in a moment of frustration. Moments later, the computer goes against the Federation's orders by ordering Samus to take out the planet and the station in one fell movement, finishing with "Any objections, Lady?"
• "What can change the nature of a man?" - The question of Planescape: Torment. It's asked more than once during the course of the game and in the end it turns out to be the prerequisite of the whole story: the protagonist longed to atone for some crimes so hideous that a whole life of good deeds wouldn't suffice. Regret drove him to seek and obtain immortality.
• In Issue #7 of The Secret World, the player teams up with a glamorous and decidedly mysterious agent of the Council of Venice, and after an Almost Kiss, the agent flirtatiously promises you that "the best is yet to come." Later, after revealing herself to be the Big Bad in disguise and stabbing you in the back with a syringe full of sedatives, she repeats her earlier promise in a much creepier manner as you lose consciousness.
• Soma has protagonist Simon Jarett twice say "You know, Indians thought cameras would steal their souls." Both times he is scanning his brain into a machine. The first time he is just making conversation with his doctor about his experimental brain injury treatment, but by the second time he knows what the brain scan actually does and the line suddenly becomes much more literal.
• Spec Ops: The Line has this a couple of times - Walker's droll "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai" at the start of the game is thrown back at him by Konrad when revealing some of the depths of what Delta have gotten into. The second time crosses into full Ironic Echo territory, if you choose to murder the squad sent to evacuate you and damn yourself fully in the epilogue, with Walker using their radio to broadcast the same message to the new rescue force.
• Star Fox 64 (aka. Lylat Wars): One of Peppy's catch phrases is "Never give up. Trust your instincts." It's later repeated twice by James McCloud's ghost as he guides Fox out of the exploding remains of Andross' base - the first time as "Don't ever give up, my son." and the second time word-for-word.
• The main theme of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Lifelight, has the chorus of "Colors weave into a spire of flame" repeated throughout it. This is what happens in the true ending of the game's adventure mode: once Galeem and Dharkon die at the same time, the spirits once under their control all traverse the cosmos in the form of a colorful flaming spire as their worlds are restored.
• In Tales of Symphonia:
  • Shortly after the Angel Remiel tells Colette that he is her father, she gets a little confused about who she is and what that means for her. In response to this, Lloyd tells Colette, "It doesn't matter who your father is, you're still you". Much later in the game, while Lloyd is distraught after finding out that Kratos is his father, Colette delivers that same line right back to him. It was just the thing that Lloyd needed to snap out of it.
  • There's the cryptic "Don't die, Lloyd," that Kratos gives right before you head to the Tower of Salvation. It's a hint that, despite his apparent Evil All Along reveal, he may still be on your side. It's echoed in the final cutscene, and this time it's a Tear Jerker, and it's extended: "Don't die before I do, Lloyd...my son."
• Near the end of Chapter 1 of Venba, when Venba and Paavalan are in bed after having learnt that she is pregnant, Paavalan agonizes about whether they should return to India or raise their child in Canada. Venba is less worried, saying that the child "will turn out just fine"; when Paavalan asks how she is so sure, she replies, "It's our child. How else could they turn out?". In Chapter 2, about six in-game years later, while Venba and Paavalan (and an asleep Kavin) are lying in bed, Venba expresses her frustration in her inability to connect with Kavin and her worry about his lack of connection with his heritage. While Paavalan is also concerned, he insists that "he'll turn out just fine"; when Venba asks how he is so sure, he replies, "He's our child. How else could he turn out?"
• In Warhammer: Dark Omen, after the first battle Bernhardt crows he never loses a battle. (Which segues into a point that "I deal in gold for red blood, or green blood.") Towards the end the sentence is repeated, but the Commander's attitude has changed through fighting the Undead.
• While fighting your way through the raid content of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, you encounter Yogg'Saron, during the Battle in the Center of the Mind, he will tell you that "no King rules forever", referring to the Big Bad. These words are repeated by the ghost of Arthas' father after his defeat by the players. Yogg'Saron is also know as God of Death.
  • It's even better than that: Yogg's line is: "He will learn, no king rules forever". And King Terenas's line is: "You see, my son, no king rules forever".
  • A great one you can easily overlook: Arthas' last words were "I see... only darkness before me." In the Forsaken's questline in Silverpine Forest, faction leader Sylvanas Windrunner, who as of Cataclysm is adopting more and more of Arthas' tactics and ruthlessness, briefly spends some time dead. Her words after coming back? "I saw... only darkness before me." Sadly, it's not an epiphany moment.
  • In the Horde version of the Icecrown Citadel raid, when you defeat Deathbringer Saurfang, his father, Varok Saurfang, comes to collect his body and, upon leaving, tells the players, "Honor, young heroes. No matter how dire the battle: Never forsake it." This comes back again in Cataclysm during Horde questing in the updated Stonetalon Mountains zone where Garrosh Hellscream repeats this line to a general who bombed a school full of civilians before picking him up by the neck and dropping him off a cliff.
    Garrosh Hellscream says: You! Are! DISMISSED!
  • In the trailer for Ulduar, Thrall says "You disappoint me, Garrosh" after Garrosh fought King Varian of the Alliance in what was supposed to be a peace summit. After Garrosh is defeated at the end of the Siege of Orgrimmar, Thrall says it once again.
• Due to Shulk's visions, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 uses this beautifully. The first time you hear the line you're left wondering what it means due to the line being presented without context, but when the character actually says the line, you understand just why they said it. One particular line is Egil stating that the Monado did not cut deep enough, which was one of Shulk's first visions.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 uses this in a fairly interesting way as well during its final moments. The party has met and befriended the Architect, who accepts to help them but cannot do so unless they defeat the final boss. The problem is, the Architect is one half of Klaus the scientist, and shares his life with the other half: Zanza, the Big Bad of Xenoblade Chronicles 1. As the final fight proceeds, he starts hearing echoes of the final battle of the first game, with Shulk's iconic "Today, we fell a god and seize our destiny!" going from victorious climax to dreadful sign that our heroes are almost out of time.

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