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| source// Square |
Although it’s something that any seasoned gamer will vehemently deny, gaming as a medium is rarely privy to any exceptional stories.
Now, before you weaponise your torches n’ pitchforks in the comments below, have a think on which stories you’d throw up as some of the best of all time. It’s about five titles right? The Last of Us, Red Dead, a Final Fantasy or three – hardly the overwhelming “How dare you?!” list necessary to combat this otherwise common viewpoint.
However, some developers take it upon themselves to craft amazing and thought-provoking narratives across all their titles – making for varied results in the execution when it comes to individual players skipping cutscenes, staring off in the wrong direction of simply not being capable enough to finish something through difficulty alone.
For those of us that do get through though, and do keep up with everything from the time-travelling madness of Bioshock: Infinite to the myriad of intersecting plotlines in Hotline Miami 2 – it makes for all the worse when something sticks out and derails everything anyway.
Now, this list isn’t going to pull apart anything in a remotely malicious way, but like every post-credits chat everyone indulges in with friends, co-workers and more – it’s in pointing out the tiniest inconsistencies that always makes for the best debates.
11. Heavy Rain – Why Do Ethan’s Blackouts Mean He Wakes Up With Incriminating Evidence?
Say what you like about David Cage, the maniacal narrative mastermind behind Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit and Beyond: Two Souls, middle-release Heavy Rain got almost everything spot on – besides something other than the voice acting anyway.
Fans have debated that main character Ethan’s blackouts are just in there as the biggest red herring in gaming history – something to throw you off the trail of Shelby’s big reveal at the end of the game. Others say it’s clear Cage wanted a big twist finale regardless of the preamble, thus choosing to divert away from where everything seemed to be heading just for the sake of it; crowbarring in Shelby’s killing of Manfred even though he doesn’t leave the room whilst you’re in control.
Either way, the fact that father Ethan Mars has random blackouts where he sleepwalks far and away from where they start, only to emerge with small origami models in his hands exactly like those the Origami Killer leaves on his victims is quite the gaping plot hole to say the least.
10. Gears Of War 3 – Why Is The Leader Of The Locusts A Human Woman?
Forever dancing on the precipice of full-on exposition, instead the phenomenal Gears 3 tangoed away from delivering what fans were convinced was going to be the final revelation – that Queen Myrrah was Marcus’ mother after all – and just… rolled credits.
Maybe it’s something tucked away for a future release, but as it stands everything else in the Gears canon – from Marcus’ dad Adam discussing his relationship to her and assuming she died, to her appearance being completely different from the rest of the Locust – it all points to something that was just lifted straight out the script instead.
Delving deeper into Adam’s research notes in-game reveals that the Imulsion substance found underground was thought to have active, sentient properties; something that could definitely mean either Myrrah was an unwilling human host after a dig gone wrong, or was created on planet Sera from scratch test tube-style.
Either way, right now you can only hope Gears 4 will shed a little light on things.
9. Fallout 3 – Why Can’t Someone Immune To Radiation Activate The Purifier?
Now for an oversight so egregious and annoying, developers Bethesda issued some DLC to rectify it.
See, come the close of the game you’re tasked with activating a water purifier for the good of humanity – a simple premise, no?
Well, disregarding the fact water doesn’t seem to be in short supply when it comes to your own inventory, rejigging the purifier isn’t an easy task when there’s radioactive material circulating around the place, making for an endgame more like MGS 4’s half-dead corridor crawl (minus making it to the end) instead of anyone’s salvation.
However, as the Super Mutants are immune to this radiation – if you happened to have the friendly Fawkes riding with you – literally everyone sat staring at the screen then wondered where the option to let someone else or Fawkes himself do the deed actually was.
Bethesda apparently hadn’t noticed, and it wasn’t until the Broken Steel DLC (that they charged for!) appeared that let you send Fawkes, Charon or Sergeant RL-3 in your stead that things got appropriately rectified.
8. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood – How Could Desmond Stab Lucy?
Yes, you could easily just have “All Of Assassin’s Creed’ as a subheading and nobody would bat an eyelid. The series has been on the brink of madness for years now; specifically ever since Desmond was addressed directly by a trans-dimensional God called Minerva. As you do.
Anyway, the overarching story of AC goes that as the ancient race of gods commanded all of humanity with the Pieces of Eden you see across the games, eventually an immunity strain occurred in evolutionary terms – turning into what would become the assassins over time.
These guys would eventually form the Creed as only they had the ability to break away from their predecessors and defy orders – so why, come the close of Brotherhood, does assassin-blooded Desmond suddenly get mind-controlled again into stabbing Lucy against his will?
Sure that’s one tiny thing in a sea of absolute gobbledygook-broth too many cooks have thrown their own signature spin on, but considering Lucy’s death was the first big endgame shocker since that awesome Minerva conversation from AC II, it definitely sticks out.
7. Metal Gear Solid 4 – Why Can Raiden Channel Lightning?
“I am lightning, the rain transformed” he says, making the save at the close of the game when Snake’s in desperate need of some backup, despite cyborg Raiden being armless and only able to attack dudes with a foot-mounted sword.
The thing is, it appears the only reason this comes about is because earlier in the game Snake makes a crack about him being “the lightning in the rain”, which assumedly in a canon where giant flaming space-whales can eat mid-air helicopters in the 60s alongside soldiers being made of bees… makes it okay.
Maybe, but it’s a little thin, don’t you think?
Plus, when Platinum Games decided to make Metal Gear Rising – set after the events of MGS 4 – why weren’t these awesome powers included? Most likely because the guys went to MGS creator Hideo Kojima, asked “Hey, what was the deal with that lightning stuff?” and got nothing but a Neo-like “There are no lightning powers” quote in return.
6. Batman: Arkham Origins – How Does Past-Bats Have All His Future Gadgets?
And don’t say “Because he’s Batman”, even though it’s mighty tempting.
So following Asylum and City, developers Rocksteady had amassed quite the amount of trinkets and gadgets for Batman, with one in particular being the prototype grapple hook mentioned in its testing phase in the latter – so why and how could it turn up in Origins, when Bats himself has only been on the job for a couple of years?
Not only that, but things like Bane knowing his identity only to randomly forget it after taking the Titan formula and the Electrocutioner’s gloves popping up only to disappear don’t make for the tightest overall experience across the three titles.
5. Bioshock – How Did Jack Survive On Land Without Any Parents?
So we know following the end of Bioshock that your playable character of Jack was a mind-controlled infant pre-programmed to return to Rapture at the right age, bringing with him the package that arrived on his doorstep at just the right age.
However, although it’s established that he was given growth hormones at age two, the images and memories he has of his parents are implanted – so just how did he survive by himself after being marooned essentially as an infant?
Growth hormones are one thing, but did Andrew Ryan manage to encode all the necessary experiences usually imparted from the first 20-odd years of life into Jack too? Just what was he doing in the years between arriving on the surface and being summoned?
Sure you’ll still have been reeling from the big expository-overload near the close of the game (or the terrible Fontaine boss fight) to pick up on this too much, but it seems like a plot point born from convenience rather than specificity.
4. All Zombie Games – Getting Bitten And Shrugging It Off
Chalk this down to gameplay if you like – but how do you set up a world centred around the idea of flesh-hungry zombies turning anyone within reach of their teeth, only to then allow the protagonist to get attacked and survive?
Naturally the only way around this is a contrived “They have a temporary cure!”-sort of thing, but when you’re making such a massive deal (in Dead Rising’s case for example) of their being a need to retrieve Zombrex for your daughter’s slowly-turning fate following a bite, there should be something in place that allows you to roam around unimpeded instead.
Sorry, did that just ruin every zombie video game ever?
3. Mass Effect 3 – How Did Shepard’s Crew Get So Far Away So Fast?
Okay so this is one for those who didn’t get the Extended Cut DLC – or even if you don’t count that flipbook-style ending cutscene as canon considering how assumedly the retail version of something should be the ‘proper’ one.
So come the end of Mass Effect 3 you’re taking the fight to the enemy Reapers all laying waste to your beloved Earth, city by city. Following hours and hours of character-building, brilliant dialogue, a sex scene or three, you’ve reconciled to it not necessarily mattering what happens, providing you get to see the end with your loved ones by your side.
Except within one fell swoop, they go from literally fighting alongside you – shooting the enemy horde and getting enveloped within a Reaper’s beam – to being on the Normandy with Joker, seemingly miles away from Earth as they all attempt to outrun the blast radius of the Mass Relays’ simultaneous explosion.
The stupid ending with the Instagram filter makes sense (sort of, kinda) within the realms of not knowing what that giant blue beam would do to someone inside it, but having party members literally warp from one place to the next – despite how intimate or close you may be to them across all three games – is just ridiculous.
2. Red Dead Redemption – Jack Marston’s Combat Abilities
Like father like son – except when the father is a career criminal who dies and the farmhand-trained son tries to follow in his footsteps, it’s not going to end well.
This point actually popped up over here, but it’s worth remembering that John’s son Jack only had a measly three years to get himself in shape following the slaughter of his father – and that’s not taking into account how long he looked after his mother and their farm too.
Jack basically turns into his father despite not being trained in the ways of a train-slaying cowboy by anybody; moving and operating firearms with just as much proficiency as his old man as he cleans up all the loose threads you left behind.
Again, like the zombie point you can say this was a way of continuing the game following the death of John – alongside giving us one of the greatest endings in gaming history – but the timeframe doesn’t make for this to be the most believable of events.
Maybe the time between John’s death and Jack’s emergence as a new n’ improved gunslinger is where Red Dead 2 is heading?
1. Final Fantasy VII – Why Not Use A Phoenix Down On Aeris?
One of the most famous video game plot holes in the history of the medium – partly down to it tying in with one of the most devastating deaths in gaming overall.
Now it must be said in the face of the many, MANY forum threads or commentaries around FF VII bringing up this point – that Phoenix Downs are intended to bring people back from a knocked out state in battle and not death – there are however, two things:
1. There’s Revive materia out there, and the first thing a dictionary definition of the word will throw back at you is to “restore life or consciousness” to any given thing, and
2. Between the image in the instruction booklet for the game of Aeris standing near the Highwind (that’s not in the final game) and their being a spot in the final area against Sephiroth where she could’ve stood, plenty more fans have come to the conclusion that she wasn’t supposed to die in the first place.
Either through a Phoenix Down, Revive materia or some other FF VII-type nonsense (the planet’s lifestream could’ve healed her, surely?) you can easily say that not only is Aeris’ death a bit suspect, but it wasn’t supposed to happen at all.
Are there any we missed, or that you can clear up from those listed? Let us know in the comments.
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