Quote

Quote, also known as Mr. Traveler, is the main protagonist of the indie video game Cave Story. Quote is a robot hailing from the surface sent to eradicate the controlling forces of the Demon Crown. They were knocked out of commission before regaining control of themselves in a lonesome cave dwelling, many years later. Quote is one of the two surviving robots from the surface, the other being Curly Brace. During the events of the game, he experiences amnesia due to his sustained injuries.

Personal significance

At the time of my playthrough of the original PC freeware release of Cave Story, I wasn't aware of any cult followings or organised fanbases of the game, so my impressions and interpretations were self-produced. The game, being a Japanese indie, felt very much like a person's passion project, and less "manufactured" like any AAA title. I never anticipated the story depth I would get in a dingy-looking PC game, but the characters in this game have grown significantly on me during the story. The main protagonist, filling in the somewhat generic trope of "silent protagonist who you can project yourself as the player onto", is entirely what occurred at that point in my childhood, when I was emotionally reactive to the pleas of pixel characters on a screen.

Quote doesn't necessarily have any obvious personality traits, given that he utters no dialogue during the span of the game. The events of the game, however, impacts the player as much as it does the protagonist. During the start of the game, you are mutually similar in the fact that you are thrown in a remote location with no semblance of direction and have nothing but yourself to rely on to keep yourself alive. As time goes on and you start to meet people, you are thrown into scenarios and given choices that impact the lives and families of the inhabitants across the various biomes represented in this title. This progresses for most of the story until near the end, when you are personally asked whether you want to make the choice to seek refuge with a person who has lost their own [formerly strong] concept of hope. A person who, due to the events of the game, has to also make the choice to leave their family behind to die, or escape live with the loneliness and knowledge of the result of the tragedies that they tried to avoid. At the ripe age of 11, these gravity of these choices were unprecedented, moreso being the person to make them, even if it is merely a video game.

This impactful part of the game occurs before the player visits the Outer Wall for the first time. Despite being serene from an outside perspective, the Outer Wall (and its soundtrack, Moonsong) are personally attached to particularly melancholy emotions, entirely due to the events mentioned in the last paragraph. In the past, I have used assets from the Outer Wall in my assorted websites to discreetly hide public, but personal logs of ramblings that I wouldn't necessarily want on display on the homepages of those sites. Despite my initial emotional reaction, the Outer Wall serves as a symbol of personal sovereignty. During my initial playthrough, I chose to see the the escapist off and continue on my own. The player returns to the Outer Wall a few times, and the departing character seems hesitant on departing alone. As events progress, the person ends up disappearing, not even having the chance to say our final goodbyes. Making it more important to see the objectives brought forth to me through until the end, knowing that I was the person who made the choice to stop the threat from ruining the lives of everyone else, simultaneously understanding that a small degree of loss was inevitable, and coming to accept it. The Outer Wall's mere presence is a reminder of this, and Quote is the character I shared these experiences with.