4 YouTubers Who Broke Video Games In Delightfully Crazy Ways

4

It's Impossible To Be A Good Person In Grand Theft Auto V

One of Grand Theft Auto V's biggest selling points is that you can do absolutely anything you want. Want to rob a bank? Go nuts. Want to play tennis? Do it up. Want to visit a super embarrassing digital strip club? Sure, that's an option too. But in 2014, YouTuber Jeremy "GoldVision" Mattheis wanted to find out if GTA would allow him to simply exist in its universe without behaving like a total maniac. So he launched "Grand Theft Auto Pacifist," about the adventures of a character named Francisco who tries to find meaning in virtual life without committing any crimes. It's like if Bob Ross did a Let's Play. And along the way, he found some interesting gaps in a game which supposedly lets the player be whatever kind of person they want to.

Francisco's philosophy of nonviolence is immediately challenged when the game's multiplayer tutorial requires him to rob a convenience store. He attempts to get around the need to point a gun at the clerk by practicing shadowboxing and kicking some candy bars, but is ultimately compelled to pull out the gun. In order to atone for the mandatory violence, Mattheis has Francisco return and slowly, tediously buy 3,730 dollars' worth of $2 sodas and cigarette packs, plus a little extra to get the clerk a counseling session.

Rockstar Games
This is what redemption looks like.

While buying these sodas, Mattheis notices that the game's drinking animation makes his character toss the empty cans on the ground. Even when trash bins are near, Francisco's programming forces him to litter, further polluting the digital world.

Rockstar Games
In beta versions, this caused a crying Native American chief to appear for you to rob.

So Mattheis comes up with the ingeniously stupid workaround of having Francisco climb into a dumpster whenever he finishes a can, thereby making it drop into the garbage. In a world in which everyone is an asshole criminal, the greatest act of rebellion is trying to be a decent citizen.

Rockstar Games
Literally and metaphorically taking a stand in a garbage pile.

The best discovery Mattheis makes on his nonviolent journey happens when he accidentally runs over an NPC running across the street. Francisco parks his car between traffic and the injured person, gets out, and calls an ambulance. When the ambulance arrives, the EMTs disembark, run in little circles, then get back into their ambulance and try to drive off.

Rockstar Games
Preview of GOP healthcare.

3

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.

2

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.

1

"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.