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Basic Swap-Mods In Metal Gear Solid V Call Out The Developer's Bullshit

Understanding the complete plot of the Metal Gear series requires a PhD in Advanced Nonsense, but for our purposes, all you need to know is that Metal Gear Solid V has been widely criticized over the character Quiet, a super solider who must spend all of her time mostly naked ... because she can only breathe through her skin, thanks to an "experimental" procedure meant to heal burns. She then falls in love with the horned man who's responsible for all this. Yes, this is the most coherent description of these events.

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It's Almost Impossible To Beat Fallout 4 Without Killing Anyone

The Fallout games were once renowned for clever writing and letting you solve problems in all sorts of ways. Then Bethesda took over and removed both of those features. Fallout 4 received the most flack for this, with dialogue options being stripped down to near-uselessness, to the point where the only way to resolve most quests is via the liberal application of murder. It was a far cry from the original games, in which talking your way out of problems was a legitimate strategy. Bethesda insisted that players were still free to approach the game in a variety of ways, but one devout Fallout fan, Kyle Hinckley, took them up on that. He wanted to know if you could finish Fallout 4 without murdering anyone. The answer was technically yes, but, uh ... not the way you'd think.

Fallout 4 has a lot of combat. You murder crime lords in a vault, you murder the man who kidnapped your child, the ending features you annihilating anywhere from one to three rival factions, and then there's all the random scavenging you'll be doing. So how can you bypass all that death? Well, if you pump enough points into your character's Charisma stat, you gain the ability to ask a bad guy to surrender. Sounds good! Except it's not a strategy the game accounts for, so there's only about a 10 percent chance they'll take you up on it. So yes, Hinckley is able to talk everyone into submission, but every battle descends into him frantically shouting "Drop it," saving after every successful attempt and reloading when it fails (again, nine times out of ten). It worked, but Fallout 4 was just not built to handle peaceful outcomes. Todd Howard demands blood.

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"Choice" Games Don't Care If You Choose At All

Games like The Walking Dead, Beyond: Two Souls, and Tetris: Origins promise an interactive story wherein the player's every decision matters. While you can't exactly leave the zombie hordes behind and start a post-apocalyptic ballet studio, your actions supposedly do make the story play out differently. But one gamer, Adam Johnston, decided to put the game/narrative integration concept to the test ... albeit in the most damning, laziest way possible.

Johnston played Beyond: Two Souls while never touching the controller during quick time events. At one point a wild dog attacks the heroine, Jodie. It's the player's choice on how to deal with that, right? One of those choices should be "Life is oblivion, let it eat me." But no deal!

Sony Interactive Entertainment
You know it's a poorly thought-out game when they ask you to be pro-dog-punching.

It wasn't just one scene -- it was all of them. Later, when Jodie needs to drive away, she doesn't need Johnston's help to evade the cops. Beyond prompts him to press R2 on his controller and speed off, but when he refuses, the game hits the gas for him anyway.

Sony Interactive Entertainment
Beyond: Two Choices ... Kind Of ... Not Really ...

In other words, control is an illusion and the game plays with itself, which is fitting when talking about David Cage.

Meanwhile, AkariLT played the first "season" of The Walking Dead game, which has you control a man named Lee Everett during the zombie apocalypse. Throughout the game, you're prompted to pick dialog options for Lee, and the game informs you that "silence is a valid option." What it doesn't tell you is that the story unfolds the same way even if you play as an awkward, impossible mute. For example, at one point you're prompted to choose between two of your allies in an argument. If you stay silent, they don't both stop to marvel at how you actually found a way to make the situation even more uncomfortable -- the game chooses a side for you.

Telltale Games

Telltale Games
"Kenny's argument of rocking back and forth for 30 seconds while nothing happened spoke to me."

Silence also leads to some pretty hilarious moments, like when Lee is supposed to reassure Clementine, the little girl he's protecting. He tells her to think of something hopeful, she asks "Like what?" And he just does this:

Telltale Games

Thus proving that games like these really only offer you the illusion of choice, despite what the marketing says. They're the virtual version of those crosswalk buttons -- doing things only makes you feel better, while the world carries on fine without your input.

Adam Koski tried to start a Let's Play channel but one thing led to another and he ended up writing a hilarious and exciting fantasy novel instead.

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