Enemy Chatter

Thug #1: You're dreaming, Louie. Turner's Law clearly stipulates that ultra-high band energy interactions are inherently unstable. You can't just energize a quark and expect it to act like a tachyon.
Thug #2: All I'm saying is that Heisenberg clearly postulates— oh no! Hero-types! Get in character!
Thug #1: We'll smash you good!
Thug #2: Hey, you!

— Freedom Force

Sometimes, to show that the enemies aren't just mindless NPCs whose sole purpose is to provide a threat to the player, the developers may throw in some dialogue here and there if the enemies can speak the same language as the hero. This can either be the dialog equivalent of a random encounter, in which they mindlessly babble from a handful of pre-selected phrases (i.e. "Did you see anything?"), or entire scripted sequences with full-blown dialog between two or more enemies.

Also, this serves as an Anti-Frustration Feature, particulary in stealth and survival horror games and levels, as it allows a more immersive means of allowing the player to figure out what the enemy is doing without mechanics like a heads-up display or radar. Having enemies loudly announce "I heard something!" or "go check it out" allows the player to know they've been detected, hearing something like "must be my imagination" or "I'm just seeing things" clues the player in that the enemies failed to find them and are returning to their regular behavior, and hearing "I see him!" or "throw a grenade!" alerts the player to run for cover. It's a double-edged sword — when done well, it can make the enemies seem human and allow the player to run rings around them, when done poorly, it can make the enemies seem even more like just robots.

They're still mindless NPCs whose sole purpose is to provide a threat to the player, but now they have personality, and the player may feel sorry about killing them (well, depending on circumstances, the dialogue might just as well establish the NPCs as being major Jerkasses anyway). Retirony may also be used to further hammer the point home. If the chatter shows how terrified the NPCs are of you, you're participating in a Mook Horror Show.

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Examples:

Action-Adventure

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: One sequence of the first game has Fire Nation soldiers swapping recipes and debating what birthday presents to buy their kids.
• Batman: Arkham Series: All of the games feature lots of dialogue between enemy mooks (and sometimes other NPCs); ranging from various cocky taunts and threats directed at Batman during combat and stealth segments, discussions about other characters (especially Batman and his Rogues Gallery), commentary about various plot events happening throughout the game, funny anecdotes about their personal lives, creepy anecdotes about horrific crimes they've committed or witnessed, and other subjects.
• Destroy All Humans! had an interesting variation on the trope — the Player Character, an alien, is psychic and needs to absorb psychic energy to be recharge, much of the enemy chatter is in fact the hidden thoughts of the various humans (many of which reveal hidden sexual predilections, deep-seated stupidity and numerous pop culture Shout Outs) that the player encounters. The standard kind of chatter can also be heard as well. And scanning an agent's mind in the first game might have him wondering why does Silhouette give him the shitty jobs, then says that maybe he hit on her at a party, then scratches the thought because no one is supposed to know that Silhouette is a chick.
• Escape from Butcher Bay: The guards in Butcher Bay can sometimes be overheard talking about how bad they think their job is, demonstrating that they're not all just sadistic bullies.
• Iji:
  • The protagonist reads computer logbooks written by enemies that function more like enemy chatter than an Apocalyptic Log.
  • In addition, each enemy type has their own unique sound set and will say different things when they see you:
    • "HEY!"
    • "Contact!"
    • "C'MERE!"
• Legacy of Kain:
  • Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: If you're in a certain form, the villagers you can drain the life of converse about many things, from their dislike of the king to how hard farming is.
  • Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain: You can overhear any number of inane conversations from the residents of Meridian.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Near the beginning, you can see two Bokoblins conversing. You can't understand what they're saying, of course.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: A Zelda-possessed Phantom can converse with the other Phantoms WHO SPEAK IN ALL CAPS. Apparently, the lower-ranking Phantoms do not get on well with the elite ones.
    SOMETIMES IT'S LONELY BEING SO ELITE
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Idle Bokoblins, Moblin and Lizalfos found in enemy camps can be seen chattering away at each other as long as they aren't aware of Link's presence. Vocally it's all indecipherable squeals, growls and chirping noises, respectively, but their tones and body language convey the impression of a pleasant conversation between pals — Bokoblins in particular tend to accentuate their stories with expansive hand and arm gestures.
• Mega Man Legends has this during at least three boss fights, including the one against their ship the Gesselschaft.
• The Spore Galactic Adventures DLC allows you to customize NPC dialogue, allowing you to make enemies say things while they're patrolling.

Action Game

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002): The repetitive chatter of the enemy vampires can be quelled by application of sharp pointy wood to the heart.
• The Force Unleashed has some amusing chatter. The best though was the scripted chatter when escaping Vader's laboratory ship.
  "All escape pods have been launched... empty. Um. Wait for additional orders."
  "Aw, that's not good..."
• Heavenly Sword: The guards sometimes spout little quips as you beat the crap out of them or shoot them in the face.
  Guard 1: She's accurate, isn't she?
  Guard 2: You think?
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and its sequels, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, feature mooks making either funny, humanizing, or disturbing small talk before you murder them. (Quoth a Stormtrooper in Darth Vader's fortress: "I hope I never see a lightsaber..." right before Kyle Katarn rushes past the player — a different character in this installment — and hacks them to bits.)
  • The first game in the series, Dark Forces, did this too, though the Stormtroopers were generally confined to more generic phrases like "Stop, Rebel scum!" and "Blast him!"
  • During the Stealth-Based Mission in the Cairn Installation in Jedi Outcast, Kyle can listen to a lone stormtrooper talking via radio to an Imperial officer about whether he sees anything unusual (Kyle can only hear the trooper's half of the conversation). After saying something slightly imperious to the officer, the trooper apologizes profusely after promising to have a look around. He then gripes to himself, saying, among other things, "How about you get into this armour and try to see out of this damn helmet?" (Most likely a reference to certain members of the Star Wars fanbase's humorous explanation for the stormtroopers supposedly being unable to hit anything).
  • The Imperial Stormtrooper Marksman Ship Academy is given a further Lampshade Hanging by a conversation overheard between two stormtroopers complaining about their blaster rifles: "It's all in the kickback. You couldn't hit the broadside of a bantha with this thing. A rebel comes in, and next thing you know you're lying on the ground with a smoking crater in your armor."
  • Another conversation refers to the same by having a cultist soldier complain "I can hardly see in this thing. It's like being a stormtrooper all over again".
  • One conversation between two stormtroopers is about how it was one's "last day in Michigan."
  • During an early mission in Jedi Academy, two human mercenaries make racist remarks concerning Rodians. Fairly humorous if you're playing a Rodian character, because within the next 10 seconds you're striking them both down.
  • In Jedi Outcast and Academy, Gran mooks (and possibly mooks from other species as well) say "Apxmasi kipunya!", which means "Don't shoot!" in Hutteese. While they continue throwing thermal detonators at you.
• The Matrix: Path of Neo, also had both kinds, although the "pre-selected phrases" got somewhat repetitive. ("We've gotta stop this guy". Or "Dammit! Drop this guy!" repeated over and over)
• Titan Quest: Occurs when facing sentient bosses, but also the first human enemies, of Bandits in the Ragnarök expansion.

Adventure Game

• Grim Fandango has a variation of this; Carla is holding onto a handheld metal detector that she's too stubborn to hand over ^note Hence how she's an "enemy". and, after tricking her into a side room to ask her if you can have the detector, she ends up ranting about her depressing past; failing to interrupt her will lead to a constant loop of idle chatter.
  Carla: I remember this town we moved to when I was in first grade. The only industry was figs.
  [snip]
  Carla: Poor Grandma Hedwig was always forgetting things...
  [snip]
  Carla: He was as deaf as they come, but he'd still try to bark.
  [snip]
  Carla: I was shy all the way through highschool. I never went to a single dance.
  [snip]
  Carla: My Mom always said the best part of my outfit was my smile. Well maybe I would've smiled more, Mom, if you hadn't drank so much!

Driving Game

• Driver: The original has "Friend" Chatter, on missions where you had to pick up people in your car and transport them to a particular destination. However, in many cases this could be infuriatingly inane; such as, after having three police cars repeatedly crash into you in an effort to knock you off the road, your passenger would shout "Do something! We got ourselves a tail!" Thanks, pal. Hadn't noticed.

First-Person Shooter

• Aliens vs. Predator 2: During the first mission of the Alien campaign as a Facehugger, as you crawl around the facility in search of a host the NPCs will often talk to each other of one particularly lonely and lazy co-worker. Of course he ends up being the one you chest-burst out of.
• BioShock is full of enemy chatter that adds to the game's creepiness, from the unhinged ramblings and threats of the splicers to the eerily cheerful mutterings of the Little Sisters.
  "Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so, Little Ones to- KILL THE OUTSIDER!"
• Borderlands 2 has various lines that occur whenever you use your action skill. Some of the stupid or insane enemies use decidedly odd terms to refer to your turrets/phaselocks/invisibility.
  • Highlights include the following:
    Random Nomad: You idiots can't tell a hologram from a real person?! (In response to Zer0).
    Rampaging Goliath: I'LL JAM THAT TURRET RIGHT UP YOUR ASS! (Shouting at Axton).
    Psycho: Is it time-out again? But.. Bu-but.. MOMMY! (Seeing someone(?) in Maya's Phaselock).
    Random Nomad: "GET THE 'ZERKER!" (fighting Salvador)
  • In general, the games are just LOADED with these.
  • Not to mention psychos reciting Hamlet.
• Call of Duty: One of the more disturbing elements of the series is that the enemy is always speaking in foreign languages, but you can tell that they're actually conversing in that language, which makes it feel all the more like you're fighting Punch Clock Villains. It gets real disturbing when you start hearing them calling out each other's names, and realize they're using the same basic chatter as your allies.
  • The Nazi troops in Call of Duty 2 actually verbally identify which country the current player character and his allies are from when spotting you. Nazi mooks never seem all that villainous when you hear them talking about their girls or hometowns or how pants-shittingly terrified they are of the Russians. But then they get funny when you realize how obsessed they seem to be with telephone poles.
  • Modern Warfare:
    • During the mission "All Ghillied Up", you can listen to the Ultranationalist soldiers chatting with one another in Russian; they're having actual conversations, such as one soldier wondering aloud why Zakhaev wants so many guards in a place where no one hostile comes, and another telling him that he shouldn't worry about it if Zakhaev wants to throw away money on hiring them.
    • One of the unlockable perks in the Modern Warfare multiplayer allows you to listen in onto the chatter of nearby opposing players.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops: The Cuban soldiers speak recognizable Spanish during "Operation 40", both in the opening cutscene (Take out your papers! Now!), and in combat ("I see them! They're over there!"). In the multiplayer, they have even more lines, and will say when they're throwing a grenade, alert their comrades of snipers, or shout that there's a man down. Same for the Russians and other such non-English-speaking factions in the more recent games.
• Codename Eagle have enemy soldiers occasionally conversing with each other, which you can eavesdrop before killing them.
  Mook #1: I don't understand why we have to stand guard here day after day - nothing ever happens!
  Mook #2: You are right - we deserve better duties than this. Got a smoke?
  Mook #1: Sure, yes... here you go...
  [dies ten seconds later when you snipe them]
• Command & Conquer: Renegade had some particularly good examples of this; everything from useful information about weapons caches and warnings of what's about to come (a technician complains about cleaning up tiberium, only to turn into a mutant creature when you enter the room), to chatting about Communist theory and how the new Chem Suits itch and need anti-itch powder. It also helped you find enemy Officers, which controlled much of the respawn.
• Crysis has the enemies giving clues as to what they're doing and their alert level—on the other hand, at higher difficulty levels, they speak in their native language: Korean.
• The Darkness: Sneaking up on certain enemies can lead to the possibility of overhearing full-fledged conversations ranging from a construction worker talking about cheating on his wife, to Uncle Paulie's sadistic tendencies, to even a man asking his friend a hypothetical question about if he'd have sex with a moose for a million dollars. These are just a few of the various (possibly crazy) conversations you might overhear.
• Delta Force: Most games. But not always in English though, so bonus points if you understand the language they speak which includes Russian, Arabic, Indonesian, Spanish, and many other. Trust me, you will laugh hard if you understand what they are saying.
• Diluvian Ultra have mooks conversing in a few cutscenes. And when attacked, will shout, "Hostile! Hostile!" to announce your presence to their colleagues.
• Doom: Most of the monsters just spoke meaningless nonsense, with a few exceptions. The Arch Vile's death cry is a distorted recording of a teenage girl asking "Why?", for example. The makers explained this by saying that since the monster is a healer, it doesn't see any reason that anyone would want to kill it. This is despite the fact that, in the actual game, the Arch-Vile sets the player on fire and revives its comrades specifically so they can continue attacking you. In Doom 3, one of the Wraith's death cries sounds suspiciously like "Aw, hell!"
• Far Cry has piles of this kind of chatter, ranging from the typical combat yells and insults being flung at the player to long, drawn-out conversations revealing useful bits of background information or simply mercenaries chatting about their history and lives. It was so well-done that the chatter, combined with the huge, agonizing death screams and gasps of agony, left some players honestly feeling sorry about ripping through the mercenaries like a genetically-supercharged freight train through tissue paper.
  • Far Cry 2: The enemy chatter is back, and perhaps the most sickeningly fun thing about it is that, as you start taking down your enemies and losing them via stealth, they'll actually start freaking out. Their smack talk suddenly devolves into half-hearted taunts and other lines delivered in a tone that betrays their utter terror. Occasionally one of them will suggest charging or running, while the other tells him to stay put to avoid getting flanked. After some time they might gather the courage to enter an area they think you're in.
  • While they often repeat themselves, some dialogue isn't heard particularly often. After killing an enemy and hiding, you might hear them discussing the dead man by name and calling him the "new guy". Consider the fact that just like you, all of these men are mercenaries out to earn a buck. Is there really any true "good" guy?
• First Encounter Assault Recon: The games have context-sensitive enemy chatter, as a means of plot advancement as well as a tactical tool, as enemy squads will coordinate their movements by radio. The developers specifically included this to highlight the high quality of their AI, noting that historically players find the AI's decisions more intelligent if they can see the rationale behind it.
• GoldenEye (Wii): Some mooks and NPCs have scripted dialogue with each other in the campaign, and some of them are pretty funny, such as this one between two guards in the beginning of the Solar mission.
  Guard #1: So what are you going to do when this is over?
  Guard #2: Me? I'm Teegar, I'm going to take the money and buy a hotel!
  Guard #1: Yeah, right. You'll be poor to death in two weeks.
  Guard #2: Yeah, well what are you gonna do?
  Guard #1: I hear they're hiring up in Kabul. Big money! Lots of action! You'll be able to start two hotels. Start a chain!
  Guard #2: Hmmmm, maybe I'll think about it.
  Guard #1: You keep thinking. That's what you're good at.
• Half-Life:
  • The series had both kinds; the soldiers in the original game were meant to be considered faceless enemies for the player to kill, though they had dialog of their own, such as one who gripes that he "killed twelve dumbass scientists and not one of them fought back", or two soldiers wondering if Freeman sabotaged the experiment and angrily muttering about how Freeman had been "killing [their] buddies", and that "he will definitely pay." Non-scripted dialogue made use of a Mad Libs Dialogue system where each word was its own sound file, allowing for a flexible program based on the soldiers' actions. Half-Life 2 also contains instances of chatter, mostly from Civil Protection officers who radio for backup when attacked, but also have stock radio dispatch broadcasts playing in the first part of the game.
  • The Vortigaunts in the first game would screech "DIE!" before firing their lightning, and 'speak' to each other in a few guttural alien sounds. In addition, the Shocktroopers of Opposing Force had their own language that could tip you off to their strategies. The Alien Grunts, on the other hand, never talked even among each other, nor did the Alien Controllers, Alien Aircraft, or Gargantuas; one official website explained that they communicate telepathically.
  • The mod They Hunger features a lot of enemy chatter about the titular hunger.
• Halo has enemy chatter among the Covenant in most games, most amusingly by the helium-voiced, hyperactive Grunts. The original Halo: Combat Evolved had over 5000 lines, and the sequels push it even further.
  • Turning on the "I Would Have Been Your Daddy" skull in Halo 3, ODST, and 5 makes some of their funnier phrases more common.
  • The Grunts even talk about how sometimes they get thirsty.
    "Can I keep his helmet?"
    "He's going to kill us all!"
    "Leader dead! Run away!"
  • In keeping with the Darker and Edgier mood, the Covenant enemies in Halo: Reach and Halo 4 speak no English. To the joy of the fans, intelligible enemy chatter was brought back in Halo 5: Guardians:
    Burning Grunt: "I REGRET EVERYTHING!"
  • Halo 5 was also the first to have the previously unintelligible Jackals speak English. They mostly talk about getting paid.
  • Halo Wars 2 gave most of the units idle chatter.
    Marines: You got ants in your pants, soldier?! Stop fidgeting, or I'll nail your boots to the ground!
    Scorpion: I got shells older than some of these kids...
    Cannon Fodder: We'll fight them on the beaches! We'll... wait, there's a beach?!
• Killzone 2 had this gem when the player starts sneaking around on the enemy homeworld for a mission.
  Helghast 1: Did you hear? Two grunts from our unit got executed by Radec?
  Helghast 2: No shit? What for? Cowardice? Defeatism?
  Helghast 1: Uniform violations. I shit you not.
  Helghast 2: "The Dress Code is the foundation of discipline..."
• Medal of Honor games will feature this on occasion, usually if the player manages to sneak close to enemies they can sometimes hear them chatting to each other, although it's usually in German or Japanese so you can't really glean any useful information by eavesdropping on them (although some games will provide you with handy subtitles). In later levels of some games (which usually involve the player infiltrating an enemy stronghold) an enemy will come over the PA and try rather abysmally to talk the player into surrendering.
• Both The Stalin Subway and it's sequel, Red Veil, have instances where mooks can be heard chatting away with each other if you're nowhere in sight, from a bunch of mooks talking about the outcome of their latest football game, to a sergeant reprimanding two mooks for having dirty boots while his subordinates protests that they're on a construction site. You'll usually shoot everyone in their faces mere seconds after whatever conversation they're having.

MMORPG

• All of the English-speaking enemies (and their victims!) in the MMORPG City of Heroes have surprisingly extensive (and amusing!) repertoires of dialogue — repertoires that get larger and more varied with each major update of the game (and which have started to include some Lampshade Hanging and No Fourth Wall comments about the setting).
  • While in a canyon zone: "I'm bored. Let's go find a hero and toss him over the edge. Make sure he's a superspeeder.").
  • One particularly amusing one involves one gangster trying to explain what "oxymoron" means to another.
    "No, I didn't just call you stupid. I said your comment was an oxymoron. It's a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are put together. Am I the only one who reads the books we swipe around here?"
  • Ran across this one near an Architect building:
    "This is the third time my mission 'Statesman's Furry Adventure' was rejected for violating the terms of service."
  • Overheard conversation between two Council Supersoldiers:
    "This supersoldier serum tastes digusting."
    "What do you want it to taste like, cherries?"
    "That would be nice, actually."
    "What? Cherry-flavored supersoldier serum? We'd be a laughingstock!"
  • When encountering a Rikti:
    "Character: (Censored)"
  • Arachnos minion:
    "Who took my Half-Caf Vanilla Soy Caramel Double Froth-Whip?"
• Most humanoid enemies in Eden Eternal will boast about how they're going to kill you. For higher-leveled players this will look more like Suicidal Overconfidence, such as this Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  Carmela Mage: I like sunsets, long walks on the beach and disembowelments.
• Guild Wars has some rare conversations between enemy foes. In Nightfall Kournans would shout threats and insults on seeing you.
• In La Tale, certain enemies will walk around with talk bubbles over their head, the same as those that appear when player characters or NPCs speak. Their dialog almost never makes any sense.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: It's a BioWare game, so most everyone loves to talk. Some of the chatter is repetitive phrases, but sometimes (especially on Operation bosses), what the bosses say is important since it indicates a shift in mechanics.

Platformer

• In Conker's Bad Fur Day, he walks in to find some Tedi Doctors talking about how if any intelligent characters were in the game, they wouldn't affect the game. They then hear Conker cock his gun, and one quickly proclaims "What the @#$%! It's that bloody squirrel. Quick, into character!", followed by evil-sounding gibberish.
• The Xbox 360 version of Crash of the Titans has an achievement for listening to enemy chatter.
• Ivory Springs (an abandoned demo by the same guy who made Noitu Love) actually uses chatter as a game mechanic. At one point you have to sneak past a roomful of soldiers; the only time when you can move without being heard and captured is when they're all laughing.
• In some missions in Jak II you can overhear various different conversations between the Krimzon Guard troopers if you stay out of sight of them. Some of these include one guard saying their new uniforms are 'more comforting on the crotch', one soldier threatening to shoot another 'if something doesn't happen soon' (the previous guard had asked if he could shoot a townsperson), one soldier complaining about sewer patrol, and discussions on Jak, the Underground, and the Metal Heads. They also utter various lines (no actual conversations, though) throughout the game while patrolling Haven City and while going after you.
• In the Revenge of Meta-Knight segment of Kirby Super Star, Meta-Knight and his lackies comment on Kirby stampeding through the Halberd. A few lines are only seen upon entering a secret area, but it's worth it for some of the silly exchanges they make.
  • In the DS remake, Revenge of the King also had King Dedede and a particular Waddle Dee wearing a bandana (this Waddle Dee would be known as Bandana Waddle Dee) commenting on Kirby's progress in the final stage, with Dedede getting portraits exclusive to Revenge of the King, as well as the Waddle Dee's portraits being a reskin of Sailor Waddle Dee's portraits with the exception of a unique one.

Real-Time Strategy

• Brütal Legend features bits of chatter for every faction, but during the game's only stealth section, You can listen to two Hairbangers discuss hair cleansing rituals. They go on for quite some time if you don't kill them.
• Company of Heroes:
  • There's battle chatter during combat, on both sides. Not only that, many scenes in the campaign show German soldiers and their reaction to events. During the second mission, which portrays the attack upon German occupied French roads prior to the D-day invasion, there is a starting cutscene featuring three soldiers manning a flak emplacement. They good-naturedly joke about the coffee one of them makes while relaxing ^note Funnily enough, while the subtitles claim they talk about coffee, the spoken (in correct, unaccented German) dialogue is about food...apparently, one of the soldiers is a really bad cook, until one of them hears the roar of transport planes overhead and realizes the airborne are attacking. During one of the last missions, which features taking a port, a German soldier screams in a panic "ENOUGH! ENOUGH! STOOOOOP!" during massive shelling while hiding in a bunker.
    "I've heard the Nazis are all eight feet tall!"
    "We're killin' the bastards! GIVE 'EM HELL!"
  • When MP40 Volks were shooting, the squadleader (who tends to act like a mentor to the younger troops) says "When it's clicking like that you have to reloooad!"
  • They also converse with each other when you leave them alone long enough, mostly with this gem:
    One time in Carentan, this fat Kraut popped up on a balcony right where the company was marching. He must've been hiding somewhere. Sleep through a barrage? You ever been in a barrage? Anyway, this fat Kraut on the balcony pulls back with a freakin' potato masher^note slang name for German stick grenades. Me and Boogieman were 400-500 yards away, I just had time to open my mouth. One shot... and this Kraut officer just explodes. I mean, explodes! Figure, Boogieman must've hit the guys's grenade. BLAM! Sausage meat! It was everywhere! Yeah, but the brass figures Boogieman planned it somehow, so no medal. And he still got court-martialed.
  • Also, if you have two factions working together (Brits and Americans side-by-side) they sometimes comment on each other's equipment. Set up a US MG Team next to a British Bofors Emplacement, and the Americans may remark "Fucking hell! Now that's an autocannon!" and a bit later "Those Brits sure know how to design an AA-Gun."^note Though, funnily enough, the Bofors is a Swedish design. And now the Americans use it too.
  • The best remains the German infantry's response to American paratroopers: "It's raining the entire fucking Allied army!"
• Dawn of War has quite a lot of battle chatter as well, some of it quite hammy.
  Space Marine: SHOW ME WHAT PASSES FOR FURY AMONG YOUR MISBEGOTTEN KIND!!!

Role-Playing Game

• Enemies in Baldur's Gate chatter quite a bit, although the standard Mooks tend to be a bit repetitive.
  Guard: I can take Drizzt with both arms tied behind my back!
  Bandit: And then I kicked him in the head until he was dead, hahahaha!
  Inn Owner: My hotel's as clean as an Elven arse!
• The first Dark Cloud game occasionally had monsters talk before going to fight against you. In the second game, Dark Chronicle, you can use Monica's monster forms to talk to the monsters, who will talk about things like their dream of running their own circus, or about how great the bad guy is, or how snooty another kind of monster is.
• Drakengard 3 has these from soldiers either shouting to get Zero, as well as soldiers fudging themselves at the sight of the carnage she's unleashing upon waves of soldiers and monsters.
• The monsters in Dungeons of Dredmor will come out with random lines as they attack you, ranging from threats and insults ("what, you again?", "you festering poltroon", "thou art a hack") to expressions of fear and doubt ("why does nothing love me?", "i need an adult! help") to random Shout Outs ("FUS RO DAH!" "spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace")
• The Elder Scrolls series
  • In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, it is possible to initiate conversation if the player gets close enough undetected to certain hostile creatures that would otherwise attack on sight. Most, like the corprus monsters, just babble incoherently, but some of the stronger ones, such as the ash vampires, have some amusing chatter - among other things, inviting the player for a drink before the fight (from which you actually gain a bottle of the rare Dagoth brandy)!
  • If you like to sneak around in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, be prepared to hear the line "I better cut down on the ale. Starting to see things, I am," quite often. It's atmospheric the first time you hear it, but after the tenth one starts to wonder if all the humanoid enemies are just really sozzled. It gets even sillier when it is said by a blind monk — that monk must really be getting into the ale, then!
    • "Stop right there, criminal scum!"
    • "I saw a mudcrab the other day." "Nasty creatures, I avoid them when I can!" - to the point where discussing mudcrabs is considered a stock response to everything amongst the Elder Scrolls community. It's even referenced by M'aiq the Liar in Skyrim.
  • Bethesda upped the ante somewhat in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In addition to enemies who mutter random things to themselves, certain dungeons have fully scripted NPC interactions. One memorable one is a pair of necromancers bickering about how every time they raise a zombie, it comes back stupider.
• Fable series
  • Fable:
    • The first game had peasants and merchants. While it's usually not too bad, and occasionally amusing, they didn't give the hostages anything different. It's kind of annoying to listen to a merchant, living in the bandit camp home to the bandit king, announce in tones of hushed awe that he saw the bandit king.
    • They seem to also know every detail of your private life and can predict the future.
    • Due to a bug, sometimes the praise from one save file is heard while playing another. If you complete the game and then start another one (even with a new profile) the random chatter will reflect events from the original playthrough that are years in the future for the new character.
  • Fable II:
    • The sequel, thankfully, makes some of its predecessor's problems less of an issue. Particularly people talking about things with much overblown delivery. It's still there, make no mistake, but it's less frequent and therefore less annoying.
    • It's also possible to make the game absolutely hilarious inadvertently. By not changing your initial title (which is Sparrow), people will deliver line specifically keyed to that title. Such as, after saving the world, people will say "Don't worry, Sparrow, I'm sure you'll be famous one day".
    • Another Fable II example with the living gargoyle statues you're intended to shoot in a Golden Skulltula sort of way. They mock you in a Scottish accent, referring to you as the worst marksmen of all time and asking if you have any food or potions, since you have no skill. (A Shout-Out to the previous game)
    • The human enemies you fight, such as the Zorro-esque highwaymen, and the self-righteous bandits. When killing them, you hear them ask, "Why are you doing this? What do you have against bandits?"
  • At one point you can overhear a pair of bandits talking about how mundane guarding a destroyed bridge is.
  • Fable III:
    • This game increases the amount of reaction to your moves during combat, context sensitive to what you're doing. It also introduces animated garden gnomes. Like the gargoyles in II, they're hidden all over Albion, Unlike the gargoyles, the gnomes are not just insulting, but also threatening. ("You know what I like most about people? They die!")
    • On the other end of the scale, there's the Crawler's chatter during your fights in the caves more than halfway through the third game. Most enemy chatter is irritating or amusing. What comes out of its mouth is just scary as hell.
• Fallout series
  • In Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel has several cutscenes that are instances of this trope, added just to add in some more of the traditional Fallout gross-out humor. In one, a ghoul complains about his private parts falling off to another ghoul. In another, a super mutant complains to his superior that he must go to the bathroom, he then proceeds to the toilet and unleashes a disgusting torrent of green liquid against the wall.
  • In Fallout 3:
    • It's based on the Oblivion engine, which explains a lot. For example, if you should sweep your eyes past a locked container or look at it for more than one nanosecond, expect whoever owns it to exclaim "YES THAT'S LOCKED AND YES I CAN SEE YOU EYEING IT".
    • Or, "That's locked for a reason." Or something along the lines of "You'd better not do what I think you're about to." And looking at anything, like an item in a shop, gets you a similar, annoyed reaction.
    • Sentient enemies will most often speak if you hide from them, but they know you're there. Raiders will call you a "fucking pussy" and Super Mutants will scream, "NO USE HIDING! I CAN SMELL YOUR FEAR!"
    • A very interesting conversation between two supermutants:
      Mutant 1: Hey.
      Mutant 2: What?
      Mutant 1: Sometimes, I think... and it hurts! But it makes me remember things. I remember... a woman. Or maybe... I was a woman? Argh! Head hurt!
      Mutant 2: Talking to you is stoopid.
    • They also tell each other knock-knock jokes.
    • Earlier titles had sentient enemies spout random taunt lines in combat. Allied NPCs have their collections of combat lines as well.
    • While it's not exactly enemy chatter, Three Dog's lines between songs infamously comment on things you've done. Sometimes he just reports on the event without moral commentary, sometimes he gives you a What the Hell, Hero? speech (this gets particularly annoying in one case where if you take the option resulting in the fewest NPC deaths, he chews you out; granted, you do need to have played before, read a guide, or just realize the "peaceful" resolution is going to get a lot of people murdered in their sleep).
  • Fallout 4: This entry has a more sophisticated enemy chatter system than 3. You'll sneak into Raider and Gunner encampments and overhear the characters have entire conversations. In an example of this trope played for tragedy, if you kill one of them in a gunfight, you may hear one of their comrades crying out in grief and horror - that Mook has quite probably just watched their friend or even their lover be mowed down in front of them.
    • However, befitting Fallout 4 being Lighter and Softer than both 3 and New Vegas, the game also still has tons of comedic moments given by Enemy Chatter. For example, one of the funniest moments in the game is listening in on a group of Raiders near Trinity Tower (a huge Super Mutant stronghold in Boston) talk about "Grenade Guy", a person so bafflingly bonkers that he was able to confuse the Super Mutants enough to just let him go free (in part from his "grenades" which were actually rocks that he then made explosion noises with his mouth).
• Final Fantasy VI has several scenes showing Empire soldiers talking amongst themselves hinting about the true nature of Leo (noble soldier) and Kefka (complete whackjob).
• Fire Emblem for the most part doesn't have this. It's generally only unique enemies that say anything at the beginning of a fight, or at their death. One chapter in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance however, uses a variation. If you have Jill, a former enemy soldier who was stationed at the fortress from this chapter, fight the otherwise generic enemy wyvern riders, they yell at her for being a traitor.
• Mass Effect: "I WILL DESTROY YOU!!!" "YOU MUST DIE!!!" "ENEMIES EVERYWHERE!!!" "HOLD THE LINE!!!" "GO GO GO!!!"
  • Mass Effect 2, true to form, has this for many enemies, but none can compare to the raw Ham that is Harbinger.
  • To the surprise of no-one, it returns in Mass Effect 3, at least for Cerberus troops (geth forces and husks will also chatter, but do so in a machine language). Listening to the chatter can actually provide some information on what they'll do next, and you can heard them responding to your own tactics (such as calling out what weapons you've favored).
  • In addition to random dialogue and remarks on what you're doing, 2 and 3 also have scripted points of enemy chatter that mostly consists of lines to the effect of "HOLY S***! It's Shepard! Run!"
  • The Citadel DLC ups the ante. It's not just Shepard they're scared of. They're also horrified at the krogan, the turian who happens to be Archangel, and the prothean.
    Merc Captain: Rapier Squad, orders are to kill Shepard and his/her crew. No messing around this time.
    Merc Lieutenant: But they've got a krogan. Why don't we have a krogan?
• Mother 3:
  • Lucas and his party stumble upon a group of pigmasks who are carrying on a heated discussion about whether they remove their masks when using the bathroom.
  • Later in the game, while you traverse the ocean, you overhear two pigmasks using the Suspiciously merman-like oxygen tanks, one pigmask comments on how the things creep him out, the other says he kind of likes it, cue his partner backing away slowly.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Most quests have unique enemy chatter, especially when the player is undetected and the NPCs are left to go about their business. Some of it builds atmosphere, some contains tidbits of information about the game world, and some, well...
  Police Officer: (At night on a blood-drenched Ghost Ship) Hey guys! I just saw a baleen whale!!
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Earthblood: Endron guards are often found talking with one another when Cahal enters an area, which often serves as a source of information on Endron's internal goings-on and on the turnings of the wider Garou-Endron conflict.

Shoot 'Em Up

• Berzerk, one of the first Arcade Games to feature speech, has Robo Speak voices urging the robots to attack and destroy the player-controlled humanoid. The voice also taunts the humanoid, calling him a "chicken" if he leaves a room without destroying all the robots first.
• Space Invaders Get Even has no shortage of over-acted enemy goofiness (gloating when they trap you, and telling you SPACE WEIRDOS where to go) and, when you're defeated, elation, declaring "We did it! Humanity wins!"
  "Dad says that we get extra points for the eighth and twenty-third hits on the UFO!"

Simulation Game

• The Ace Combat series loves this; apparently everyone on the battlefield uses the same radio frequency. You can hear allied air and ground forces, enemy air and ground forces, and sometimes even civilians. They often respond to the player's actions — for example, an enemy who you have locked on to will start to panic, enemies you've shot down will cry mayday or report that they're ejecting. Enemies that must survive for plotline reasons can still be shot down — and their radio chatter will inform you that they're returning to base with a severely damaged aircraft (and that they're pissed at you, and yelling at their friends to shoot you down). In later missions, both enemies and allies will react to your reputation. Flying air support over a ground battle, troops on both sides will recognize your plane's insignia and celebrate or despair.
  • The ability to listen in to all that chatter is handwaved by having the AWACS transmit the information to the player in the form of intercepted transmissions. The fact that it's not mission-critical is not addressed, but the fact that it does help the pilot get a better overall view of the battlefield as long as they're not completely inundated by the sheer amount of information is certainly useful.
  • Ace Combat 04 has some particularly in-depth ones; in the final mission, if you shoot down the enemy planes in the right order, you're treated to increasing levels of panic as command devolves onto lower and lower ranked pilots. The enemy squadron leader is killed in an earlier mission, so his second in command takes over for the final battle. If you shoot him down, the third in command will freak out, and the fourth in command has to remind him that he's the squad leader now. If you shoot down the third in command, the fourth in command will freak out when he realizes that he's the squad leader now. It's quite difficult to hear this whole sequence, because you have to shoot people down in the right order, and other than during the first clash (when everyone is flying in formation) it's impossible to tell individual planes apart.
• In Black & White II, the enemy leaders keep a running commentary on the development of your cities and their plans to defeat you. The undead god in its Battle of the Gods expansion escalates this to continual scenery-chewing rants about your imminent demise, even when it has no way of making good on its threats.

Stealth-Based Game

• The Assassin's Creed series populates its world with lifelike NPCs who talk animatedly among themselves while going about their daily business and react in kind to your more noticeable activities. The game makes note of which actions are "socially acceptable" and acting in High Profile mode or doing illegal things will get the citizens angry or scare them away, with dialogue such as, "Why is he doing that?" or "He's going to hurt himself, and when he does I won't help him." The sequels add such gems as, "He must be late - and she must be beautiful!" and "Mmmmm, nice pants." Guards also have a conversational repertoire when you annoy them or attract their attention, yelling at you to get down from ledges, pushing you around if you get them angry, and yelling, "Who did this? Show yourself!" upon finding a body. In Open Conflict, they will shout advice to each other about how to fight you. Shopkeepers and merchants have a great deal of stock dialogue too, much of it highly amusing, such as the Doctor's claims regarding his All-Natural Snake Oil remedies: "I have distilled an elixir of lead and pomegranate! Ideal for the liver!" or in Revelations, a rheumatism remedy made of coriander and lemon... that is also a fine salad dressing.
• Deus Ex:
  • It's possible to sneak up on characters (as early as the first mission) and eavesdrop on their conversations, which often reveal extra information about upcoming plot twists or additional character information. Enemies will also yell for help, or tell other enemies where you are if you're running away.
  • It being Deus Ex, you can also read their email, diaries and memos. One particularly jarring example comes in the first (optional) MJ12 facility under New York: an email to all employees discusses details about the upcoming company picnic. You can return there when you next visit New York—if you infiltrated it first time around without harming the "employees", you run into the MJ12 cleanup team that dumped the original inhabitants' bodies into the sewers. Anvilicious!
    MJ12 Mook 1: Man, I'll be glad to get out of here.
    MJ12 Mook 2: Me too. I don't like tunnels. Always sounds like someone's sneaking up on you.
• Dishonored:
  • The guards have a relatively small number of lines and responses which then get mixed together in an attempt to give the illusion of there being more conversations than there actually are. Many of them have been subject to Memetic Mutation.
  • The conversation of a guard asking his colleague whether he thinks he'll get his own squad after what happened last night became an Ascended Meme in the Knife of Dunwall DLC with a guard congratulating his commanding officer about getting his own squad.
• Occasionally used to some effect in the Hitman games, particularly Blood Money where NPC conversations elaborate on, among other things, the various subplots. It's also possible to listen in on the two FBI agents in a surveillance van during one level for a handy piece of information (namely the camera monitoring the kitchen entrance is not operating) which might have been a tad more useful to know if you hadn't arranged the delivery of some doped donuts to them.
  • Hitman (2016) introduces the Opportunities, which allows you to set up elaborate accident kills based on scripted conversations you can overhear. Usually, the start locations for these opportunities can be revealed by various conversations around the maps.
• In Manhunt, enemies will frequently mutter to themselves about various topics, often warning you about their presence before you run right into them. This is frequently lines designed to be an ironic counterpoint to the logical result of you sneaking up behind them (namely, their painful and gory deaths) — such as grumbling about being bored, stating that you're probably hiding scared in some corner, or making self-assured statements of invincibility. The Smileys are among the most interesting to listen to, being lunatics in an asylum.
• Used extensively in the Thief series of games, including ongoing conversations in some cases. Many of the crucial clues in the game can be found just from overhearing the guards chatting with each other. The most famous of these is probably the extended conversation about the bear pits by guards at the beginning of the first game, as seen here.
  • In addition, you will often hear characters chatting to themselves. Religious-order guards, for example, will be heard reciting Karras-related scripture to themselves. Others may be heard singing. The "make you feel guilty for killing them" aspect is in keeping with the game which actively discourages the player from killing human targets, particularly on harder difficulty levels.

Third-Person Shooter

• In BloodRayne, sneaking up on two Nazis at a particular level but refraining from immediately killing them will reward you by overhearing one telling the other a particularly vulgar joke about a certain pig...
• The game Gun has a lot of this. At one point of the game you are breaking out of jail and you can hear guards singing incredibly crude, inane, and annoying songs. You then shoot them in the head with an arrow; or a shotgun if you don't care about stealth.
• kill.switch give us this gem:
  Mook 1: Hey, is your gun loaded?
  Mook 2: Um, I think so, why?
  Mook 1: BECAUSE YOU'RE POINTING IT RIGHT AT ME! YOU IDIOT!
  Mook 2: Oh! Sorry! I'll point it in the other direction!
  Mook 1: Good decision...HEY, YOU'RE STILL POINTING IT AT ME!
• Red Steel: You'll get very tired of hearing "Stop, you bastard!" from damn near every enemy.
• The SOCOM series sometimes has some otherwise inconsequential objectives require a player to listen to some of the baddies talk about whatever nefarious plans are afoot before turning the corner and shooting them in the face.
• In Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, the mooks will yell stuff to their comrades once they see you, and will say VERY interesting stuff... if you can read Spanish or Swahili.
  • They also talk normally (as normal as broken Spanish gets, mind you) amongst themselves in the village before they've seen you.
• MDK and MDK2, in line with Shiny Entertainment's quirky style, feature strange and wacky enemy chatter. In MDK, the aliens scream "You're going to get saaacked!" at each other and "I'm not taking this!" at the player, along with occasional bouts of mocking cries and mooning. In MDK2 the sentence "This had better be gobbledegook," appears amongst the enemy chatter, probably having appeared as a note on a concept document. The most annoying is some sort of weird grunting made by the first enemy you encounter in MDK2, waving a target.
• Warframe turns this trope on its head, as the rank and file of both the Grineer and Corpus use their own Conlang; the Grineer have a harsh and guttural-sounding language, whilst the biological Corpus units sound raspy and almost mechanical. This trope really gets weird when the Infested begin speaking to you with roars and animalistic screams, which get translated.
  Phorid: Revoke the frailties of flesh. Let us in.
  Lephantis: We are countless. Consume us. Be reborn.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Battle for Wesnoth: Because everybody (apart from pet animals) seems to be speaking the same language, there will be conversations between the opposing leaders in almost every scenario that is part of a campaign. Some go a step further; A Rough Life, for example, has the two Skeleton Guards Fear and Loathing, who act a lot like Those Two Guys, giving snarky commentary (they are introduced while complaining about their sentry duty). The protagonist, who was threatening them a few turns ago, even pities them by the time they die.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Godfather: The Game:
  • Walking past a rival family mamber will cause them to tell you something condescending and in a very gruff voice, e.g. "Why can't we just put a bullet in his head and be done with it?" or "This guy really bugs me"
  • Actually talking to them, however, causes them to say things in a smoother voice and in a lighter tone, e.g. "Keep moving, you're a big target around here!" or "We only want peace between our families." or "I'm think of getting out of this business."
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas:
    • Recent games set in people-packed areas, like this one, will typically feature people who run into each other (be they friend or foe to you) having smalltalk. This dialogue is often rather stilted (since it's literally back-and-forth banter), occasionally completely inappropriate (like famous characters talking about themselves in the third person), and above all, repetitive.
    • One of the random pedestrians dialogues in the game is a civilian enthusiastically saying "I've been resurrected 163 times!" This is quite funny considering that after you kill people, if you hang around, an ambulance will show up and bring them back to life.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV:
    • If you follow an NPC on foot for awhile, especially female ones, she will eventually notice she is being followed and tell you to go away.
  • In GTA IV's The Lost and Damned DLC pack, occasionally a female enemy voice will be heard during gang war battles — even though only male NPCs are seen.
  • Many gangs and especially cops in most games often makes comments to your player while giving a chase.
• The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and its Spiritual Successor [PROTOTYPE] had frequent enemy chatter ranging from the amusing (police officer: You have the right to re... aww, what's the point!) to nonsensical (Let's hear it for the Fighting Badgers of Alpha Squadron!).
  • Prototype deserves special mention for the sheer quantity of it. There's well over 30 minutes worth of unique lines for strike team chatter alone.

Unsorted

• Max Payne makes use of both scripted dialogue and random "canned" dialogue for its enemy characters. Late in the game, if you stop and listen before bursting into a room, you'll hear one enemy mention to another that he has two boys at home whom he's very proud of. This may make it a little hard for you to pull the trigger on him when you kick down the door... except when you do, he starts firing while shouting "Kill the bastard! Kill the bastard!!" (He also mentions he has no qualms about killing, it's just a job he gets paid for.) Things get more amusing when one mook suggests to another that a Guns Akimbo One-Man Army taking down an entire drug cartel only happens in action movies.
  • "You know in action movies, I mean the coolest of the cool, where time slows down and you can see the bullets flying..." Cue Max.
  • One early bunch of mooks questions why vampire movies always take place in California, saying that if he was one, he would move to Alaska "Where there's one long night!" This was one year before 30 Days of Night was published, and six years before the movie was even out in trailers.
  • Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne takes this a step further. In a level set in a high class apartment block, the inhabitants of which the mooks have murdered, one of the flats you enter has two mooks chatting while one of them plays the theme music on the dead inhabitants piano.
• In MechWarrior 3, by the end of the first mission, you take out a communication center and your Mobile Field-Base manages to salvage codes from the wreckage and break into Clan radio encryption which in turn allows you to know what they are planning, their chatter distinguished by faint static and brief feedback squeaks which means the times you hear enemies talking without static, that means they're broadcasting on open frequencies to address you or your Lance in particular. This doesn't carry over into the Pirate's Moon expansion pack, as you fight new enemies and don't find a chance to break into their encryption, which contributes to the expansion's higher difficulty.
  Clanner Point: I have good position. Enemy unaware.
  Mobile Field-Base: That's what he thinks.
• Medieval II: Total War:
  • The game loves this, especially with the English units. They also occasionally mourn dying comrades for a moment before going back to beating the snot out of some poncy Frenchman or whatever enemy of the day is facing you.
    "HACK 'IS ARM OFF!"
    "Bloody Hell!"
    "I can't see!"
  • The chatter that humans make during the Predator campaign is especially funny when you're invisible and right behind them.
• Starting with Mega Man X4, many of the bosses you face will have conversations before you make them taste the pavement. Even though some bosses mean no harm, you have no choice but to kill them anyway.
• Metal Gear features many cases, although on occasion the guards' chatter is used to convey vital information such as whether they have spotted the player.
  • One scripted sequence has Snake knock over something, and a guard slowly approach him. Before the guard gets to Snake, another guard sneaks up behind the first guard, taps him on the back, and scares the bejesus out of him. The guards joke about it, and go on their way — completely forgetting about Snake, who is most likely about to die from a heart attack.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater gives us the option to blow up the guards' food supplies. Afterwards, you can overhear them complain about being hungry.
  • There's a variation of good ol' Johnny's soliloquys within MGS1 and MGS2, although it doesn't happen in MGS4, as he's not an enemy.
  • In some of the games, it's a significant gameplay element. Guards are expected to contact HQ regularly, and if they fail to do so, a heavily-armed search team is dispatched to investigate. Similarly, if a guard is found dead or unconscious, once he is awakened (or replaced) he will radio HQ with "Nothing here" next to constantly, giving you a window of about 5 seconds before reinforcements are sent should he fail to do so.
• There's no dialogue in Metal Slug, but you can still see the mooks chatting and laughing it up amongst themselves. This is actually to your advantage, because they freak out when they see you coming, and that's vital time to kill them before they open fire.
• The Uruk scattered throughout Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor will frequently jabber amongst themselves. Their conversations usually cover their love of grog, accomplishments in brutality, schemes for advancing through the ranks and debates about combat and killing. They will also gossip about Talion, either to boast about how easily they could kill the ranger or to tell tall tales of the terrifying Gravewalker who has been picking off captains and warchiefs.
• In the Myth series, the fourth level of Soulblighter features a pair of guards talking to each other about a giant turnip. A little research reveals that it's taken from Cheech & Chong.
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Carbon let you eavesdrop on the cops' radio channel to anticipate your moves.
• The guards in Ninth Rock will mumble randomly to themselves, often about finding food in their pockets.
• No One Lives Forever and its sequel had many genuinely funny conversations that could be overheard by the player.
• Perfect Dark for the N64 gives the guards a few lines. Some of the more amusing ones include "I bet this is another drill" (said by a guard who has heard/seen you, but can't find you now), and "Ah, I never liked him anyway" (said by a guard who found one of his comrades dead). Other guards scream out the Big "NO!" when finding an ally dead. It's possible to shoot someone in the middle of a line.
• The Punisher (THQ):
  • Mooks tend to talk a lot whether it's taunting you ("You can't aim worth a shit!"), giving justifications when they shoot one of their own by mistake ("Punisher would have killed him anyway."), or just talking among themselves. Most of the time the dialogue just makes them sound as stupid as their A.I. makes them.
  • It becomes much more fun when you start grabbing random mooks and interrogating them, not for the information they'll give you (which is usually worthless) but because of the false bravado that quickly fades to nothing. Example: Point a gun in a mook's face, the obvious intent being "talk or I'll shoot", and he'll start trash-talking to the Punisher. Then, he breaks and just whimpers repeatedly. Then, you shoot him.
  • Some interrogating brings weird flashbacks for the Punisher, with fades to classic comic book art. Then it's time for the mook to die (try to find a kill spot, like impaling them onto an elephant tusk).
  • Scripted chatter can be listened in on, such as card games or groups of enemies discussing what they know or do not know. Entire conversations can be overheard, or if one is bored, they can be interrupted by a well-placed AK-47 burst.
  • A Shout-Out by the villains. In one episode the Yakuza have broken into Stark Industries. The Punisher can grab one, kill him, then the other's find the body.
    "Oh my God, they've killed Kenji!"
    "Those bastards!"
• Rainbow Six games feature this, most notably in the Vegas sub-series where you can catch a number of unique conversations if you just sit back and listen before shooting everyone. Of course, you're also likely hear the same few conversations multiple times per level.
  Generic Tango 1: Eyes up, we may have a situation.
  Generic Tango 2: What kind of situation?
  Generic Tango 1: The killing kind.
  Generic Tango 2: The killing kind?
• Ratchet & Clank has had a lot of this since Tools of Destruction.
  • Enemies will not only talk to Ratchet in combat, but also amongst themselves (often about entirely trivial things, such as how their favorite show Jumped the Shark last night) if you manage to catch them idle.
  • They even have unique reactions to most of your weapons/items. E.g. "The Lombax has engaged Hoverboots."
  • In Going Commando it's possible to find two idle enemies playing rock-paper-scissors.
• In one level of Jet Li's Rise To Honor, a pair of museum guards can be overheard talking... and one of them mentions his son wanting Rise to Honor for his birthday.
• Scarface: The World Is Yours features a lot of enemy chatter, and often people from the streets who notice you might either engage a conversation with you, which you can also respond to, or talk to each other about various topics.
• Second Sight features enemy chatter at several points if you're stealthy enough. A few examples include one instance where two security guards play a game of "I spy", another features a Russian soldier bragging about his high score in an arcade game, with his friend questioning how he can play the game when there's no electricity in the building. The game also features a non-enemy version of this trope in the Teamwork mission where you can hide just outside a building and listen to Cortelli and J.C. talk/complain about you. If they spot you in the middle of their conversation, they quickly change the subject and pretend they're talking about something else.
• Sometimes happens in Shadow Complex, of both random and scripted kind. Scripted chatter about the enemy plans can be overheard in one scene in a control room while the player is crawling through the vent above. They also often talk about how Jason is just "one guy", but later in the game they get more panicked.
• Appears throughout Shadow the Hedgehog, although it just happens randomly, and is not really affected by your actions.
  "Mr. Yuji Naka is alright!"
• Shadow Warrior (2013) has a limited number of encounters with human enemies. The yakuza curse at you, becoming increasingly frantic as they are killed off while the police give increasingly frantic radio reports. Both have special lines from the last survivors of the squad.
• The majority of Shin Megami Tensei games (and their spinoffs) that include Demon Negotiation as an alternative to combat. Although the mechanics vary from game to game, the protagonist can encounter hostile demons on the field and try to converse with them in order to a) invite them into his party, b) get an item from them, or c) send them away without fighting. Some demons are serious or haughty and will look down upon humans; others will reveal a funny bone and engage in comic banter with the protagonist and/or his party members (including other demons.) It's up to the player to recognize the demon's personality and approach them in an engaging manner, otherwise they'll just get mad.
• One mission in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time has you eavesdropping on the robot guards in medieval England for vital information. Amidst said info they also chat about activity days amongst the guards and their families, which hilariously gives them more personality than the actual living and breathing guards you face in other levels.
• SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos had a different pre-fight conversation for every character combination, although the overall effect was spoiled by poor translation to English (giving characters totally inappropriate lines, such as the demonic Akuma shouting "Poppycock!", for example).
• The King of Fighters XIII features this. Luckily, the quality of SNK's localizations has improved since SVC Chaos and the pre-KOF 2003 era, so the exchanges don't usually come across as silly.
• Sonny has dialogue at the beginning of a fair portion of fights, even during fights, between Sonny and company and whoever they're fighting. Sonny (primarily in the second game) will respond in true Deadpan Snarker fashion to enemies:
  • At the beginning of the first fight of Sonny 2 after the optional tutorial:
    Prison Guard: More Hostiles! You made a big mistake coming in here.
    Sonny: Sorry about the gate, I couldn't find the doorbell.
  • In Zone 2 of Sonny 2 after taking the first Knight to low health:
    Knight: Lay down your arms, I (cough) accept your request.
    Sonny: Your membership fees are too high. I think I'd rather kill you.
    Knight: Heretic! My master will have your heads!
• Spec Ops: The Line: So you're in stealth mode, and you happen to come across a couple of guys standing on watch and looking out over the city. Are they going to worry about you sneaking up behind them or express bloodthirsty rage? No. They're going to share gum and cigarettes, laugh about their friends, admire the view, discuss the fragility of peace, mournfully talk about going home, and act like normal, likeable people... which is what they are. Just like you. Still going to pull that trigger? Of course you are. Isn't that why you're here?
• Spider-Man 2: One of the most irritating parts of the game is the very small amount of soundbites provided to both the titular hero and the NPCs and villains he encounters. They get very old, very fast. Doubly annoying given how long the game takes to complete. The game does have a few gems, though.
  Woman: You the man, Spidey!
  Spider-Man: You da...um...woman?
• Taken to hilarious levels on Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. In one Noir level, the mooks talk about how they're gonna kill Spidey, only to end up stating that that's why they're mooks, just to talk about random things. And on another level, before a fight, on the Ultimate Deadpool level, a group of mooks/Deadpool fans talk about how their suits were made. What.
• Splinter Cell:
  • Many levels have mooks do pre-scripted chats with each other, assuming you haven't tipped them off. In the Japanese house level of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, one guy talks about the anti-ninja flooring and the other guy scoffs at him. Enter Sam Fisher... It gets even more hilarious if you actually grab one of them.
  • A common complaint about Splinter Cell: Conviction, because it's almost incessant. Besides the Mooks non-bulletproof skulls, this will get them killed more than anything. The storyline justification is that the Black Arrow mercs aren't used to hunting stealthy guys like Fisher, and are trying to psych themselves up so they can get past their terror. When it's Sam vs. other Splinter Cells later on, they are noticeably quiet and professional.
  • Parodied in this Penny Arcade.
• The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series does this extensively. If one can manage to sneak up to a military/bandit/mercenary camp, they'll be rewarded with dozens of unique conversations, and the enemies can even play on the harmonica and guitar, eat food, go to sleep, etc, and there are just as many audio files for the enemies as there are for neutral or friendly NPCs. One optional mission in particular has the player steal a case full of documents from a heavily-guarded military checkpoint in the dead of night, where you actually sneak through a military barracks while the soldiers are sleeping (and snoring). The player can even hear the grunts outside talking in Russian about their low-end assignments. In combat this doesn't fall short either. Enemies will taunt you if they have friends around or are behind cover, yell in pain as they take damage, communicate with their allies to flank the player, alert their buddies if they find a fresh body, and even cry for help when incapacitated on the ground and bleeding out.
• In Star Trek Online, it's possible to sneak up on enemies in story missions and listen to them talk amongst themselves. Typically, it's plot relevant, such as pirates talking about what they'll do with their cut of the profits or so on; in others, it will contain foreshadowing about later missions in the story arc. However, in the mission "Under the Cover of Night", one of the Orion Syndicate members says to another, "I've got some things that will blow your mind. How does the unrated cut of Vulcan Love Slave VI sound?" Fans of Deep Space 9 are sure to recognize that as the name of a Holodeck program...
• The Star Wars: Battlefront series has the normal use of this, but there's also another application of it in 2. If you jump into an enemy ship, you can spy on their communications.
• Stormtroopers in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will regularly engage in banter with each other when they haven't spotted Cal yet.
• Star Fox 64: One stage, Area 6, consists of you and your squad breaking through a massive line of defense. Instead of scripted dialog between the squad, you hear mostly the enemies discuss your efforts. As you destroy more and more ships and beat more and more minibosses, they start to freak out. Then you start eliminating these characters one at time, sometimes hearing their last words as their dialog boxes fill with light. It's funny and kinda creepy at the same time. The dialogues include:
  • "Caiman here. No problem." *Ally is shot* "Do you copy?! Emergency maneuvers!"
  • "FIRE! FIRE! DON'T LET THEM THROUGH!"
  • "THE LAST LINE HAS BEEN BREACHED!!"
  • "These guys are crazy! Dang! Deploy it NOW!!"
• The military personel in Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse have a few lines too. Some are regular orders, but some are pretty funny, like "Ah! My penis! ...I mean, my arm!" when you rip their arm off or "Better dead than red!" when they see you. (Since the game takes place in the late 1950's, they don't seem to come after you so much because you're a zombie but because you're something worse...)
• System Shock 2 put this trope to good use. Every single formerly human enemy had dialogue that mainly served as a reminder that they were out there, stalking you. The enemies would beg you to run away or stay hidden, or in an alien voice simply say the opposite... and some would cry and bemoan their fate.
• TimeSplitters Future Perfect:
  • The game contains a lot of Enemy Chatter that the player canlisten in on if he sneaks up on enemies, and each level contains a drunk grunt somewhere which provided some of the game's funniest dialogue if the player stays around long enough to listen to the whole thing.
  • During the mission "The Russian Connection," you find a drunk sniper atop a water tower. "Sssoon, Soon we rule WORLD!... And I get car, a sports car 's a red one * burp* . And I'll love it like a thingy...WOMAN! and they'll say OOH what a big red one OOH so impressive heheheh."
• Used well in Tomb Raider (2013), where listening to the enemy conversations emphasises that while some of the mooks you mow down are clear psychopaths, others are pretty normal people trying to survive a hellish situation.
• Tomb Raider: Legend is much more rewarding if you stop to listen to some enemies. Definitely stop to listen to the two guys in Bolivia.
• The IL-2 Sturmovik series of flight sims allows the player to tune in on the enemy frequency to listen to their radio chatter. This can actually be of some use - provided you know the language. Your own radio chatter is subtitled, so you know what's being said no matter which side you fly for. The enemy's isn't.
• Tron 2.0: If Jet lies low, he will often hear the enemies speaking among themselves. Some of it is snarky commentary (Virus-infested Programs will giggle insanely over finding a "clean" one, security programs will transmit orders to one another), other times, it's full-blown conversations between the mooks. True to the universe in question, almost all of it is loaded with computer-based puns. This actually makes the highest-level mooks, the Datawraiths, even more terrifying, as you can hear their garbled, "encrypted" language, but can't make out what they're saying.
• Urban Chaos: Riot Response. It does get tedious after a while but it is unique from other games. The enemies swear and tell you what they will do to your family after you die.
• In Valkyria Chronicles II when you approach an enemy's dead body just after killing one of them, you can hear what his comrades were saying. Knowing that many of them were forced to fight with the rebels and that you are in the middle of a civil war makes you feel bad, but when you hear their companions literally crying for a simple "mook", you can't help but feeling guilty.
• Velvet Assassin features extensive mook chatter as a way to humanize the Nazi soldiers and show that they are real people. They would spend their time discussing the nature of heroism, how some of their friends are going through a rough time, their girlfriends, the newest model of the U-boat, history of art, among other more banal topics. It has the effect of making the player character (an Allied spy) always cruelest/most evil person in the room as you murder every one of them.
• Subverted in Vivisector: Beast Within. Only some versions of the human enemies and the Black and White Wolf Overbrutes have some form of distinguishable enemy chatter; the rest can only growl and make other animal noises. This is, for the most part, explained away as the animalistic enemies not being taught human speech by their creator, with the exception of the Humanimal leader Lion.
• Wolfenstein 3-D featured some of the first in-game speech, when its World War II German soldiers would shout at the player in German. By the time Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released, they were ready to include some standard-issue enemy chatter... but now it was all in generically-accented English.
• World of Warcraft has this in varying types, from guards who will yell warnings on spotting an enemy to pre-scripted conversations among NPCs that can run on a loop or activate when you approach. Amusingly, there's a pair of non-aggressive enemies in the early Deadmines dungeon who do nothing but act as enemy chatter not noticing the wholesale slaughter of their fellows. Most players don't notice them either.
• In XIII, the player will often hear enemy guards discussing things while they sneak up on them. This even goes as far as having one guard make reference to a guard you'd killed earlier in the same level.
• X:
  • Enemy ships in the series will broadcast for help when they're taking damage, yell that their shields are down to their allies, and taunt you — even if they're about to die.
  • Some of the chatter you can overhear contains important plot elements and will occasionally trigger a flashback. Most plot-related chatter cannot be avoided though, as they're linked to scripted events and you have no way of silencing the speaker before the flashback occurs. In addition, there's a running gag about a soldier sent to an insane asylum after insulting a high-ranking Colonel, and various people singing an odd song. One instance has a bad-guy soldier doubting the need to kill all the good guy soldiers.
• One of the oldest examples would have to be Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter, where red-headed hero Adol can acquire a spell that transforms him into a cute little monster, allowing him to pass unharmed through the enemy ranks - and allowing him to talk to every single monster in the game like they were a regular NPC, thus revealing that even the freakiest-looking among them are mild-mannered Punch Clock Villains who are scared and upset at the 'red-haired demon' running around slaughtering their friends, workmates and family members.

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