It's funny the things you remember. For whatever reason I had a memory of Vic defending that specific line on USENET. A little bit of searching brought up this.
Post #1 defending the linePost #2 defending the lineDisclaimer: I am posting these to illustrate Vic's opinion on the lines, not my own.
Alunissage wrote:Yeah, when I first played TSS the funniest line to me was the book in Damon's library that said "Video games will eventually rot the minds of all they enslave." But fourth-wall-breaking is a little stale now. On the other hand, I still find Kung-Fu Mauri with the action grip, or whatever it was, somewhat amusing, because of the idea of making action figures of the "four heroes" of the time. And some references went past me so they didn't bother me too much. In general, phrases that didn't include actual names of things/people (Mr. E Bay, Tootsie Pops, Shannen Doherty...) and sort of fit into the setting were OK with me, e.g., Kyle saying "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" of Jessica. And it was something like 15 years after playing the games that I heard the song that "Welcome to the dungeon..." is based on. The guard making a rhyme out of the situation of having an out-of-control tyrant tossing people into jail kind of seemed like the sort of thing someone would say to avoid screaming.
This is pretty much my position. A character using a line that references some bit of pop culture? Fine. A character explicitly mentioning the William Shatner album? Jarring. I would say the goal should be for the line to still make sense in the context of the game assuming the player is not familiar with the material being referenced. My impression was that WD generally got better about this as time went on. I don't recall objecting to very many lines in either
Arc the Lad or
Growlanser. I haven't played anything published by Gaijinworks, so I can't really comment on how their localizations compare.
Likewise, I haven't played FFXV, but what I've seen of the product placement really seems like it would detract from the experience. If the game were set on Earth that would be one thing, but characters in a fictional universe paying with American Express? Doesn't really draw me into the game world.