5 Plot Devices That Make Good Video Games Suck
Writing a good story is hard. Making a good video game is hard. Trying to make a good video game that also tells a good story is damned near impossible.
Not that they don't try. Video game makers are working hard to achieve their dream of a playable movie, or at least a game that looks like a movie in a two-minute trailer. But when you're playing the games, that "I'm in the movie! Whee!" illusion disappears as soon as you hear things like...
#5.
"Hey, Nico! Instead of hijacking that armored truck, let's go bowling!"
In Grand Theft Auto 4, your average GTA player's thought process generally flows something like this in-game:
1. Steal a car
2. Find old lady
3. Run over old lady
4. Sex with hooker
5. Run over hooker
6. Grab Hot Pocket from microwave
7. Kill some cops
8. Visit car wash to get old lady and hooker bits out of stolen car's grille.
...and so on. If you were to follow that thought process from start to finish, not once would you see the words "I want to watch my fat cousin eat." But guess what you had to do, frequently, over the course of the game?
"Ooh! I know!"
And it wasn't just your cousin, oh no. Thanks to the relationship minigames they decided to include, practically every hard-bitten gangbanger you came across turned out to have abandonment issues, copious amounts of free time and a love of pool and darts that bordered on fetishistic.
I'd rather be playing darts.
The girls in the game are even more high-maintenance; bailing out on the relationship if you don't take them out often enough, or ramp your car into the river just once during a date. Though they can't hold a candle to the women you're supposed to "marry" in Fable 2. People have made detailed How-To Guides on how to stop a woman from divorcing you in that game (hint: get ready to spend lots of time gathering gifts and being romantic with her).
Seems Like a Good Idea Because...
It's just like the lovable characters in a good novel or, even better, real-life friends! What better way to add depth and drama to a game?
Doesn't Work Because...
We do favors for friends in real life because we enjoy their company. They're never going to code a video game character who'll give us anything like the feeling we get from human companionship, and it's probably unfair to expect them to. Instead it becomes a bunch of tedious minigames played with a robot who only knows 10 pre-recorded phrases, done purely out of an artificial sense of obligation.
It's Sort of Like...
Spending time with your in-laws during the holidays.
#4.
"I can get you what you need. But first, you must do something for me."
You're the Hero of Goodness on a quest to save the world from the evil machinations of Dark Lord Fuckblade. You're walking through town on your way to his Pointy Castle of Badness when WHAM, you walk straight into a locked door being guarded by some schmuck who with only two lines of dialog:
Pictured: The Mighty Dark Lord Fuckblade.
Not pictured: Machinations
"Sure, I'll let you through to the Pointy Castle of Badness," he says, buffing his nails on his lapel, "just after you go to the forest of Everthorn and gather me the testicles of six night slugs."
Fuck that guy, and all guys like him.
Bioware is a frequent offender of this kind of game-length-padding bullshit; in Mass Effect you play as Commander Shepard, a Spectre Agent. Spectres are basically space-flavored double-oh spy-types, empowered to exercise ass-kicking protocols and initiate the taking of names.
That is a complex expression on his face right there.
In one mission, Shepard and his/her crew touch down on an icy planet to investigate some shady goings-on. At one point you need to get into a garage, so you go find someone who can give you a pass to get in. But to get the pass and progress into the game you're forced to first participate in some corporate espionage that your average gamer couldn't give a fuck about even if you hooked them up to a fuck-giving machine.
This gimmick is at its worst when you near what you think is the end of the game. You're ready and excited to finally face the evil nemesis and- "Wait! First you have to go over the entire map again and find the five broken pieces of the ultimate weapon!"
This almost killed the Bioshock experience, where after the big showdown with Andrew Ryan is foreshadowed in the game's big twist, you're then forced to go on a series of "fetch quests" to get the stuff you need to take him on--a process that takes about as long as the entire game up to that point.
Seems Like a Good Idea Because...
More game is better, right? If the player is having fun, if you give him more stuff to do he'll have even more fun!
Doesn't Work Because...
Do you know why we didn't watch John McClane hunting for tape in Nakatomi Plaza for 15 minutes? Because it's not important to the plot that they spent the first 80 percent of the movie building.
Storytelling is a delicate thing, it takes pacing and well-defined objectives. When, in the name of making the game longer, you force the player to go circling back around a bunch of hallways it brings the narrative to a screeching halt. It also frustrates players by making them run around searching for macguffins like demented magpies.
It's Sort of Like...
Stopping a rollercoaster every 30 seconds to make everyone get out and grease up the tracks.
#3.
"Got the files? Good work, now come on home. You can go out the way you came in."
You have just tirelessly battled through hordes of foes, finally fighting your way into the heart of the enemy base/lair/dungeon to finally find and grab the macguffin. Your character grabs the secret files/treasure/magical orb and you set the controller down, ready to see a congratulatory cutscene.
Nothing happens.
You're just standing there. Suddenly the horror dawns on you that the game is going to make you turn around and fight your way back out of the building.
You are boned.
This happens in one of the last levels of Halo 3 (Cortana). You have to infiltrate a flood-infested covenant ship. It's filled with waves of enemies and it's incredibly disorienting, due to the fact that the fleshy walls make it seem like you are lost in an endless tunnel of meat.
After what seems like hours, the Chief finally rescues Cortana, and the player can finally breath a sigh of relief. The ordeal is over- wait, no it's not. Cortana tells the Chief that it is time to clear out, yes, back the way you came. To add insult to injury, even more enemies are coming out at you now, further extending your nightmarish romp in the bouncy castle of flesh.
Have you had enough of the meat carnival? No? Good, because you're doing it all over again.
Though that is not as evil as The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and the fucking Temple of the fucking Ocean fucking King. To access each new level of the game you have to go back through the same temple over and over again, solving the same puzzles, avoiding the same enemies. Over and over and over and over and over and...
Seems Like a Good Idea Because...
"We spent a lot of time designing this damned level! We'll be damned if you're going to just go blowing right through it!"
Doesn't Work Because...
Here's the thing. A movie ticket is the same price whether you're going to see Inglourious Basterds (153 minutes) or Zombieland (88 minutes) and moviegoers are OK with that. They really don't judge the movie by how much movie they got.
Maybe more Wikus.
Games are different. Gamers partly judge value by how long the game is, and that makes storytelling really freaking difficult. As we said before, stories have to move at a certain pace, and can only have so many plot points and twists before they start to seem pointless (see the middle seasons of Lost). So how in the hell do you extend it and make the gamer feel like they got their money's worth?
Honestly, pretty much anything but this.
It's Sort of Like...
Shooting a movie that's only 50 minutes long, but stretching it out by having every other scene be a flashback... of the previous scene.
Most people apparently suck at fable 2 relationships. Fable 2 doesn't need a how-to to not get divorced, just give her 4-6 times her weekly allowance. You make more than $100-200 in that timespan anyway. My wife never divorced me, even after being told I'd had a second marriage. In fact, she cared so little, she actually had a present for the next time I finally went home.
ReplyI disagree with #2. I for one actually think their isn't enough stealth missions in games.
ReplyI like playing stealth games (Thief) or playing as a stealthy character (Oblivion), but too often in games that just have a "stealth level" the game mechanics for it are no good, because the game isn't a stealth game, so the developers didn't spend the resources necessary to develop an interesting stealth system.
At least Fallout 3 had something for the morality system. Remember Megaton? Remember blowing it up? Remember the justice seeker guys that kept trying to kill you for it? Remember how your dad tells you he's ashamed of you?
ReplyMy favorite part is when they make you repeat the level in reverse and give you a time limit. Anyone play LOTR Return of the King for PC? Remember the level when you had to escape the lair of the dead AND there were guys fighting you that you had to kill to progress?
ReplyDon't get me wrong, I hate the f**k out of stealth levels, but they're not really that uncommon in Zelda. Both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask had some f*****g insane stealth levels too, where the only guards you could fight had attacks that, if not dodged or blocked properly, would result in instant capture. Most of them would capture you instantly if they saw you anyway. At least in Majora's Mask it was possible to get an item that let you breeze through it, if you found it.
ReplyStealth levels are alright, when you beat them you feel like James Bond.
Actually, Alpha Protocol did a hell of a good job with "morality system". As one of the characters in tutorial said: "There are no good or bad choices. There are only consequences". And that was true! I beat the game 7 times, each time I was discovering something completely new. Not to mention awesome conversations with my friend who played this game simultaneously, and most of the times it ended in a "You can do that? Awesome!" way.
ReplyAlpha Protocol, eh? I usually love games from Obsidian (they really seem to work hard to make morality and choice matter as much as possible), but I had heard not so good things about Alpha Protocol, couples with the setting... I wasn't really interested. But you've piqued my curiosity. Maybe I'll keep an eye out to see if it goes on sale on Steam.
Arcanum had a fairly basic morality system but it actually made a difference unless you were a demagogue which makes sense to be fair.
ReplyOh wow. Someone else who remembers Arcanum. Man. That game was the shit.
Knights of the Old Republic made the morality system worth it.
ReplyDeus Ex (the original) was an exception to #1: They had a choice system where you could avoid bosses, keep characters that would other die alive, and change how characters reacted to you.
ReplyThis was nicely put. One of my favorite games for the PS2 was "Champions of Norrath," and I thought the sequel, "Champions: Return to Arms" would be equally awesome. Instead, it ended up being guilty of 4 of these horrible plot devices. I gave up on the game when I found out that I had to sneak around through a maze of villains that would kill me immediately if I was spotted. Bull$#!+. I'm not looking for medieval Pac-Man; just point me at whatever needs killing.
ReplyThere where some things I wanted to say, and then I kept reading, and there were a couple more, and they just built up to the point where practically all I can say (without wasting my time) is, not all of these are true.
ReplyDo you mean there are some games that "get it right"? Because there are. But... that doesn't mean that those games that "get it wrong" need to stop.
I have to say, Indigo Prophecy was one of the best games (in my Top 50 Games of All Time list) I have ever played. I loved the storyline, I loved the gameplay, and the graphics for the time we exceptionally good. It was so hard to explain the game to people that never played it because I thought the description was too amazing to turn into words. Almost like Star Wars: Republic Commando.
ReplyFor #1, there was a game that used the morality system correctly and well put together. True Crime; Streets of L.A.
ReplyIt had like 4 differnt endings for the choices and mistakes you made through out the game.
I loved that game and the stealth was good because you could still kill people then!
at #2 ,I actualy like the games where your sometimes thrown a mission where you have to do something other than the same thing youve been doing for the last 20 (probaly straight) hours.
ReplyTrue, its f*****g annoying when its put in without being interresting, but when it does work, its great! :)
Like its said, its in CoD4, and my favorite missions where the ones where you had to sneak around, and be ready to snipe when your partner told you to. and the end mission where you had to rush as fast as you could, something you wasnt doing the rest of the game either.
You know, you are kind of right. My favorite mission in Halo Reach is Long Night of Solace, in which you get to do some space combat. I hope that Halo 4 has some of that, maybe even multiplayer.
A very annoying variation of #2 is turning a strategy game into a rpg in some missions, the age of empires saga does this a lot. Do you know those skills, such as resource gathering and management, training and upgrading troops, bulding defenses, etc, you worked hard to master? Well, they are useless in this mission where you are going to have to manage with a handful of soldiers and no ability to train anymore. f**k you!
ReplyPersonally I hate vehicle missions. I'm mostly thinking of Resident Evil 4 when I've spent the whole game learning how to be awesome and kill the s**t out of zombies. Then it plunks me with a mini turret, immobalizes me and makes me fight a giant by repeatedly dying and learning his every move. Why? I don't play racing games to shoot, I don't play shooting games to race. Stop putting crap in that isn't why I bought the game. Just saying.
ReplyJust to clear things up, the fight you're referring to happens in Resident Evil 5, not 4. Also even though I usually like turret and vehicle sections if they're done right, I agree that the boss fight against the giant with the turret is irritatingly difficult.
I think the most retarded sneakytime missions were the ones in Max Payne and Hulk.
ReplyIn Max Payne, there is absolutely no stealth mechanic (you can't even walk/crouch to make less noise), because the rest of the game is built on SHOOTING THE s**t OUT OF THINGS IN SLO-MO, so it didn't really matter if you got noticed. That, and there were a LOT of enemies on that level, a good chunk of whom you meet before you get your weapons back. Yep, with absolutely no ability to hide.
As for the Hulk one, it's kinda obvious that when I installed a Hulk game, I wasn't holding my breath for the concept of controlling a weak-ass scientist awkwardly running from soldiers; to everyone but the developers, it seems.
The only "morality" decition game I have liked were The Force Unleashed games, because it was really one decition in the end of the game (Fight Darth Vader and get revenge or fight the emperor and save the Alliance) so you actually GET two endings to the same game.
Replyyou get 55 Internetz Points for referencing the Angry Video Game Nerd.
ReplyBioshock could be mentioned in #1 as a false morality choice. If you save those little sisters, you get half the Adam you normally would, but you feel better about yourself for doing the right thing and deliberately making things harder for yourself in the name of goodness. That was the original idea.
ReplyBut it didn't end up that way, since saving them all the time meant you'd very soon get back all the Adam and other things you would have missed out on in "gifts" dropped off for you to pick up as a thank-you for saving them. Invariably, inside was a load of Adam, as well as other useful things. It ended up making no difference which option you picked.
The only real difference you cause by being good or bad to the little sisters is how Tenenbaum reacts to you, and getting either the good or bad ending. You'd think the latter thing would be significant, but the ending feels like it's less than a minute long either way, and has no impact at all on the gameplay, even in the fight with Fontaine, during which you'd think the sisters would act a little differently, but they do the same thing regardless of how you've treated them up until then.
Oh, and one plot device I'd like to add that applies to many sequels: "In the last game, you attained Godlike powers to defeat the ultimate evil. Now you have to completely start over from level 1, without every single thing you earned in the last game, as if none of that ever happened." Most offensive in Final Fantasy X-2 and sometimes appropriately called the "Yuna Rule", since at the start of the game she's pathetically weak and has inexplicably lost every bit of power she had in X.