The Dig

The Dig is a science fiction adventure game released by LucasArts in 1995. The game tells the story of crew members of a space expedition that, after having saved the world from a collision with an asteroid, are transported to a desolate alien planet.

Warning - Spoilers may follow on this page. Use caution.

Boston Low

• "Ten to one it's the power source for this place. All I need to do now is to find the light switch. Or the plug. Or the fuse box. Or whatever makes this thing work. (shouting) An instruction manual might help! (mutters) Maybe a map. And I could use a sandwich. (raises voice) And a hot jukebox and a cold beer! Or just a starship headed for home! (sigh) Get a grip, Boston."

• (picks up cylindrical artifact) "What are these things: wands, batons, bludgeons? With my luck it's a hand grenade."

• (enters the tram area) "So much for the cafeteria idea."

• (after riding the tram) "Now I know what my pet hamster felt like."

• "I'm beginning to take this personally. Nobody wants to stay with me. Maybe it's my deodorant. I think it failed somewhere back there on Attila."

• (after diving from a cliff into the sea) "That should be an Olympic event. I know I'd get the bronze."

• (after clearing the tidal gap) "First time I ever did the wave all by myself."

• "The way things have been going, I can pretty much bet that whatever that little beast just stole, I'm gonna want it really badly in a minute or two."

• "What if I hadn't brought this shovel along? No, that's not worth thinking about."

• "I'm warning you! You better not be laughing at me, because I'll have roast critter to eat before I starve to death in here!"

• "Great. He's decided to play hide and seek. Well, I don't have time to waste on children's games."

• (looking at huge alien) "He's very tall. Or I'm very short. I wish I didn't keep thinking of the term 'bite-sized.' Please be friendly. I hope you're friendly. I'm certainly friendly. Let's all be friends."

(quotes from playing Moon Lander)

• "I almost beat Maggie's high score."

• "It's not my fault. The buttons were sticky."

• "The Eagle has landed."

• "This game cheats."

Ludger Brink

• "A professor once told me, 'Astronomers are geologists with clean hands and a squint'."

• "Another random hole bulldozed by our fearless leader."

• "Boston -- it didn't just bring me to life. It brought me -- to LIFE."

• "I feel like I never knew what good health was until today."

• "It's almost worth falling through holes on alien planets, if you feel this good afterwards."

• (distracting an alien monster) "Come on, you ponderous exoskeleton... you cocoon-eating lobster-faced cave-dwelling arthropoidal alimentary sphincter muscle!"

Maggie Robbins

• "After so many years of bad TV shows and crackpot phony pictures, HERE is the real proof. There IS alien life."

• "Just when this place starts looking benign, it finds new ways to be dangerous."

• "Great. You get to look for metal things lying around on the ground while I have to decode a completely alien language without any information about how they think or what they might be writing about. Yeah, that's a fair division of labour."

The Creator

• "The Eye sees into all space and time. And where the Eye sees, the mind can fly."

• "There are two ways to protect your planet. One is if you return and warn them to stay away. The other is if you never return at all. Which warning do you think will be more effective?"

• "What raises the dead can debase the living."

• "I am the doer who undoes, the creator who uncreates. And yet I would gladly be the destroyer who undestroys, the dangerous one who protects."

Conversations

• Whether the stone hits the glass, or the glass hits the stone... it aint gonna hurt the stone.

• Boston Low: "Low to Borden, do you copy?"
  Ken Borden: "How do you think I passed my NASA exams?"

• Cora Miles: "My advice is - if you can pick it up, take it with you - because you never know when you might need it."
  Ken Borden: "I thought that only applied to women in bars. If you can pick her up... (laughs)

• Boston Low: "Attila is more dangerous now than when we first tamed it."
  Maggie Robbins: "Those were certainly profound words for first steps on Earth's new moon."

• Ludger Brink: "A good archaeologist doesn't expect to make any sense unless he's been digging at a site for years."
  Boston Low: "We don't HAVE years."
  Ludger Brink: "Maybe years are all we have."

• Boston Low: "This place is as desolate as the Midwest."
  Maggie Robbins: "ALMOST as desolate as the Midwest."

• Boston Low: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
  Maggie Robbins: "If only I had some ruby slippers."

• Ludger Brink: "Your name will live forever as the boneheaded space hero who destroyed precious data at the first alien archaeological site."
  Boston Low: "That's better than having my name live forever as the commander of an expedition that disappeared and was never heard from again."

• Ludger Brink: "I think we can safely say it is not a natural weather phenomenon."
  Boston Low: "How about a mirage? Anyone voting for it being a mirage?"

(The discussion about the "ghost")

• Boston Low: "We triggered it in that ship and now it's leading us."
  Ludger Brink: "Do you mean this is the last gasp of a holographic tour guide?"
  Boston Low: "Or the port authority. Maybe it's saying we're under arrest. Come quietly or self-aiming lasers will toast us to cinders in fifteen seconds."
  Maggie Robbins: "Stop it! Maybe you think that's funny, but the last thing I need is some mischievous boy trying to give me the creeps."
  Boston Low: "If I wanted to give you the creeps, I'd tell you that it was the ghost of a long dead alien."
  Maggie Robbins: "How do you know it ISN'T a ghost?"
  Ludger Brink: "What, do you think this is where aliens end up when they die? If it is, then this better be hell, because it sure isn't my idea of heaven."
  Boston Low: "Now you're starting to give ME the creeps."

• Boston Low: "Brink isn't dead anymore, Maggie."
  Maggie Robbins: "You have a very sick sense of humour. Goodbye."
  Boston Low: "No wait! I'm serious!"
  Ludger Brink: "Deadly serious."

• Boston Low: "This place is as empty as an ancient ruin -- but at the same time, almost everything is still in working order."
  Ludger Brink: "I know what you mean. This must have been how the bears' house felt to Goldilocks."

• Boston Low: "What's the project you're working on, Brink?"
  Ludger Brink: "You're not a scientist. There's no way you would understand it."
  Boston Low: "Oh, I get it. I can figure out alien technologies, turn the power on, work the tram system, adjust the lightbridge lenses... repair broken door control panels, and even resurrect one dead scientist -- but no, I'd NEVER understand YOUR work."

(Brink distracts a monster so Low can sneak by it)

• Ludger Brink: "Come here, you phlegm-carapaced slime-faced mucus-brained furry-legged abductor of luminously intelligent but pulchritudinous Earth women!"
  (Low doesn't move)
  Ludger Brink: "Low, you idiot! Why are you standing there?"
  Boston Low: "I'm still trying to figure out what you said."