Tiago Svn
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It used to be that hardcore gamers would get bullied at school by the cooler kids; now they're a tool of the Fourth Reich, and the cool kids all got deported. That's how you earn a little thing called "respect." Or scorn -- it's hard to tell the difference. But some poor fools still don't respect gamers, and we call those people: Game Developers. For example ...
Dark Souls is famous for being soul-crushingly ruthless, but perhaps the cruelest thing about it is a pretty little unassuming necklace. See, you begin the game by choosing a "starting gift" -- items like rings that boost your health, bombs that burn up enemies, or a pendant ... that does nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Namco
The game tells you this, to be fair.
Or does it? In an interview with Famitsu magazine, Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki said he'd pick the pendant over the other items. Naturally, it didn't take long for the internet to fill up with theories about what the pendant could really do. The short description ("A simple pendant with no effect. Even so, pleasant memories are crucial to survival on arduous journeys.") was taken to mean that the object was somehow magically filled with blocked memories, like a high school yearbook. Long wiki pages and hundred-post threads were written about it, with players exhaustively exploring every niche in the game, trying to use the pendant everywhere -- multiple times, in case it finally did something when you were on your fifth playthrough.
When told about this, Miyazaki gleefully encouraged fans to keep spending a ridiculous amount of time looking for the pendant's "meaning."
Game Informer
The interviewer should have known something was up because that "[laughs]" lasted one hour.
Almost exactly a year after that interview, Miyazaki casually revealed the true purpose of the pendant to his expectant fans:
"When it comes to the pendant," Miyazaki said to IGN, "I actually had a little bit of an intention to play a prank."
It has no effect. The stuff about memories is just some bullshit to fill up space. He saw the confusion and frustration of players looking for answers, and just thought "hey, I can add to that!"
From Software
The real gift of the pendant was the friends you made along the way. Or whatever.
Shadow Of The Colossus has a lot of secrets: That's part of its charm, in fact. Everything is up for interpretation. For example, in the end credits, you're shown a beautiful garden that you don't actually seem to get to, in the game. Video game fans being video game fans, they figured that this place must exist somewhere in the game's world, and they had nothing better to do than look for it. It was easy: All they had to do was tediously climb the same wall for 20 minutes.
Sony Computer Entertainment
This game came out before streaming was popular. You did this alone.
The secret garden is actually up on top of the big-ass tower, whose lower levels serve as your base of operations. In order to get up there, you have to raise your grip bar to its maximum (by finding and killing a shitload of white lizards), and then just start climbing until you run out of tower or will to live. If you lose your grip, or miss a jump, you have a decision to make: Start over, or smash your controller.
Sony Computer Entertainment
"Might survive this, might survive this, might-" *splat*
Once you get up there, you'll find a plethora of fruit trees, so you begin to gorge (there's an achievement for eating all of it, after all), until you slowly notice that ...
Sony Computer Entertainment
Your thumbs are surprisingly buff now?
... your painstakingly maxxed-out grip and health bars are being permanently depleted. The game's creators straight up Adam-and-Eve-ed you, except that they never bothered to warn you first. Dammit, video games; if we wanted to live in a world in which food makes you fat and unhealthy, we wouldn't be escaping reality into video games.
One of the most persistent stereotypes of the gamer is that they're forever 14 -- eternally obsessed with senseless violence, crude humor, and a teenager's idea of sex. We at Cracked, of course, can't sympathize with that at all.
Besides, it's just patently untrue. Anyway, here's a million-copy-selling game called Lollipop Chainsaw.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Imagine Rick Grimes on this cover.
LC tells the story of a teenage cheerleader who apparently traded most of her clothes for a chainsaw, which she puts to good use by killing zombies. One of the few pieces of clothing she does have is a short skirt -- why, if you rotate the camera to a certain position, your innocent eyes may accidentally get a quick peek at her panties. Doing so will unlock a special skirt-peeping achievement, forever tainting your otherwise noble gamertag with the pixel equivalent of sex offender registration.
Xbox Achievements
"Extra points for coming to this website and writing a whole paragraph on how you did it."
Something similar happens in the 2012 beat-'em-up game Asura's Wrath. If you absentmindedly tilt your character's view down, inadvertently zooming in on a scantily-clad female's breasts and lingering there for longer than is socially acceptable, you'll get an achievement called "View Of The Valley." Which is a very poetic way of saying "tit ogler."
Capcom
"Hey! My eyes are ... oh, wait, never mind."
It happens in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, too: if you happen to be admiring a pervy poster when you call the IT guy, you'll get scolded and granted the shameful title of "Snake Beater" through an achievement.
Konami
We're not sure if Snake is gasping from shame or ... other things.
Morrowind is Skyrim's older, jerkier brother. Not long after starting the game, you run into an old wizard -- just as that old wizard is running into the ground.
Bethesda
"Whoa, free penis hat."
Obviously you pilfer the old man's corpse, in case any of his possessions are useful to you -- because that's just what you do in RPGs as well as retirement homes -- and you find a magic scroll. Use it on yourself and you'll find your acrobatic stats have just shot up to 1000. In other words, you can Hulk-jump.
Bethesda
"Did ... did I win?"
Neat, right? There's just one problem. The effects only last seven seconds ... which is several less than the Hulk-jump itself. Meaning that by the time you land, your super-powered legs will have reverted back to scrawny normal legs, and this will happen:
Bethesda
"Oh, the wizard read the thing and then ... ohhhhh-" *splat*
If you're not one of those obsessive maniacs who saves their game every 15 minutes, you have to start from the beginning. But of course, you are that obsessive maniac -- you've got backup saves, for Christ's sake -- so it's more like the developers just spit in your eye, instead of spitting in your eye and stealing your wallet.
In the 1997 PlayStation/Sega Saturn video game, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum re-reprises his role as Dr. Ian Malcolm ... solely to call you a loser.
As all video games are legally required to do, The Lost World has a crapload of collectible items you must find to truly "complete" it. In this case, it is a bunch of "DNA keys" that you get by deviating from the main path, looking under rocks, or making ridiculously hard jumps. But it's aaaall worth it, because if you get all the keys, Goldblum himself appears in a secret video ending!
Electronic Arts
"If an all-female colony of dinosaurs can reproduce, there's still hope for you, buddy."
Malcolm begins by heartily celebrating your achievement ... before gradually becoming more despondent, telling you to turn off your console and go do something more productive with your life. The message ends with Malcolm abruptly rushing off as monstrous sounds and vibrations approach -- which is either a T. rex, or an army of betrayed nerds out for vengeance.
Tiagosvn is eager to read about your video game achievements on his twitter so that he too gets to laugh at them.
For more ridiculous gaming shenanigans, read The 5 Most Unreasonably Difficult Video Game Puzzles Ever and The 6 Most Absurdly Difficult Video Game Puzzles.
And be sure to check out 9 Types Of Coworkers To Make You Want Your Head To Explode, and let us know about other headsplosion-worthy employees we may have missed.
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