Best whales and dolphins in video games
If you’re looking for the most majestic, beautiful, and graceful creatures on the planet, you can’t do better than Creatures of the Deep. I bet if you’re like me, you’re reading this list because these amazing animals bewitched you from a young age – maybe you even wanted to be a marine biologist until you realized how much science and mathematics were involved.
The world of video games is a fantastic place to satisfy a compulsion to witness such aquatic beauty. The games are full of whales, dolphins, seals and all those mammals that were too dumb to evolve legs. This list is dedicated to them.
8 Ecco the dolphin
Tursipus
In real life, dolphins are pretty mean, but Ecco sidesteps those biological flaws and presents himself (swims?) as one of the most heroic examples of a sea creature in all of media. He saves the world from evil aliens, befriends dinosaurs, and even travels through time to defeat his deadly enemies. Of course, many of you will associate this cute little pinball machine with the raging difficulty of the games that bear its name, but I don’t think that’s anything to fault it for. Ecco’s heritage is something to be praised.
7 Kyogre
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Orcinus pokemanus
There are a ton of amazingly beautiful sea creatures in Pokemon that could have made it to this list, such as Wailord, Alomomola, and more, but they all lay eggs. Do you know what that makes them? Not mammals. Kyogre, on the other hand, doesn’t lay eggs, so it’s fair game. They’re the bestial blue killer whale with a crushing ax when it comes to a certain earth-type kaiju, and they deserve our respect, lest they devastate us with swathes of thunderstorms that threaten to overwhelm Earth. Sure, we’d be closer to those sea creatures we love, but I don’t know about you, but I don’t have gills, and I can’t afford to evolve them.
6 Bismarck
Macrocephaly nubes
If you’re a Final Fantasy 14 fan, you’ll know what I mean when I say Bismarck rocks. He appears a few times in the game, including being one of the more entertaining fights in the Heavensward expansion and a cold fae who helps you out during Shadowbringers. It also appears in many other Final Fantasy games, usually as a summoned creature with aquatic powers, something that associates the beast with its namesake – a German WWII battleship.
He’s a great addition to the game. After all, it’s not every day you fight a floating whale!
5 Lleviathan
leviathan cambrica
Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is packed with so many word games that you end up feeling like you can’t trust a single line of dialogue in the game. words (read the name backwards) and it’s also where you’ll fight the Lleviathan. It’s a dangerous, but memorable battle – it’s not every day you fight a floating whale!
4 Peach
Cetacean phantasia finalis
OK OK. Maybe that East every day you fight a floating whale. For much of Final Fantasy 10, Sin is the main antagonist and the driving force behind the vast majority of party action. You don’t get much more central than that in a video game, especially if you manage to do so without the ability to speak. As you learn more about the existence of this gigantic cetacean, Sin becomes a bit more tragic as an antagonist/setting, and for this reason he is one of the most memorable aquatic mammals of video game history.
I mean, I’m sure it’s a mammal. It is based on a whale. It’s not me who will check.
3 moon whale
Balaenoptera astralis
Does that even count as a mammal? It’s a whale-shaped spaceship that you use to get to the moon in Final Fantasy 4. I’m keeping it. It’s an awfully cool concept.
2 Sora when he is in Atlantica
Homo sapiens visitare atlantica
Listen to Me – Sora is a mammal and he becomes an aquatic version of himself when he travels to Atlantica. Still with me? Fantastic. Logic established.
Sora is obviously Kingdom Hearts’ most iconic character, and that’s for a whole host of reasons – he’s the chosen one, he saves the universe with an oversized magic key, and he’s Mickey Mouse’s best friend. You don’t get any better looking than that – unless you consider the fact that he can just become a newt and breathe water once in a while. Baffling to the end, Sora is a fantastic aquatic mammal and the best in Kingdom Hearts. Suck it, Monstro.
1 Pretty much everything at ABZÛ, to be honest
Pan oceanus, esse honestamus
If sea creatures are really your thing, Abzû is a must. This game is absolutely stunning and puts you in the role of a deep sea diver exploring underwater environments filled with stunningly rendered fish, whales, rays, sharks, dolphins, octopuses – just about everything what you can imagine. Forgive the fact that not everything in the game is a mammal, but a list like this can’t be written without mentioning this love letter to the real stars of the ocean. Abzû will leave you meditative, calm and searching for scuba gear on Amazon.
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