We don’t always think too deeply about the things characters say in video games, but someone has to. A developer wrote the lines that cheerful or despondent NPC fed your character at the edge of the wasteland, or in a quiet room overlooking a gambling den. And the spectral form who visited your hero in their dreams could have just wailed. Instead, she questioned the nature of humanity, like a proper person.

Some lines stick with us more than others. They linger long after we’ve stopped playing. We use them in conversations with strangers at the supermarket or with coworkers at the office, until they become a part of who we are. That’s why Polygon contributors gathered a list of the 100 greatest video game quotes of all time earlier this year. We considered games from all eras. In the end we came up with one quote that rules them all. And now, after months of debate and 40 years after the game that included the quote........

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