While not the worst, I agree that the F4 story is just mindblowingly badI don't think anything beats The Third Birthday but imma just leave this here.
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In the "worst story ever" department, I summon The 3rd Birthday
- Thread starter Dreamboum
- Start date
I remember reading this, or something akin to this once, but I forgot how truly nonsensical and creepy that game's story was. I only played Parasite Eve years after this came out and knew it was a tire fire, but I don't think I can imagine the disappointment if I was a fan and played this.
Toriyama isn't the only horrendous writer at SE tho
And honestly say what you will about the original XIII's writing but I honestly thought the lore/setting/pacing (minus Chapter 11)/etc. was fantastic, IMO the plot was great until it unnecessarily shat itself in the finale. I think that was a fluke though because everything else Toriyama has written has been insultingly terrible
Capcom had 9 games to give closure to the Umbrella storyline (RE 0, 1, 2, 3, CVX, Outbreak, Outbreak 2, Survivor, Dead Aim), a full on remake, and an animated short (4D Executor) and the still didn't do it. Blame that shit on Capcom, not RE 4.
No. 2, 3 and CV all had cliffhangers with the main characters saying they will bring Umbrella down so that was what it was expected for part 4. We also know that early versions of RE4 were going to end the Umbrella arc. It was big part of the scenario until Mikami took over as writer.
So it's not Capcom fault. It was Mikami's. He stupidly discarded everything that was set up for "stocks". Say what you will about his game design but as a writer, he's a fool.
Hell, even the developers said that RE4 was like a side game when discussing story in the RE5 guide. UC and RE5 are direct responses to this fuck up.
When even Capcom devs talk bad about RE4's story you know it's shit.
Absolutely. I beat it years ago and nothing has topped it since. It's total nonsense told in the most convoluted manner.
As much as I want to argue Far Cry 5 is terrible in the narrative department, this game's clusterfuck cannot be topped any time soon.
The worst thing about 3rd Birthday is that it took a really interesting world & protagonist within a new Franchise and then murdered it to the point of no return. It's not fun obtuse like many of the ambitious games during that era that came from Japan - it's just another one of those, only it's as a sequel with almost zero inference to the previous title.
Like what if Silent Hill was followed up with Silent Hill 2, only the story was Silent Hill Pachinko.
Sucks, but for what it's worth that approach to esoteric storytelling that Japan was aiming for led to some really spectacular games (Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, Siren, Fatal Frame, etc).
Like what if Silent Hill was followed up with Silent Hill 2, only the story was Silent Hill Pachinko.
Sucks, but for what it's worth that approach to esoteric storytelling that Japan was aiming for led to some really spectacular games (Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, Siren, Fatal Frame, etc).
There are plenty of manga authors who can put together strong stories. They just went with a guy whose only good work is co-written with his sister (but didn't hire her too).
The reason "Aya" doesn't have her mitochondrial powers and they're never mentioned in the game is because Squeenix's contract with the publishing company, the one that published the Parasite Eve book, lapsed.
And another fun fact, the author of the original book had no idea there was a video game based on his work until the game released.
And another fun fact, the author of the original book had no idea there was a video game based on his work until the game released.
Yea, sounds bad.
But to me the story of FFXV is still the shittiest.
Like the movie was so good then they fucked up the game which was about friend wandering around for no reason and the villain pops in and out and helps them sometimes then decided to fight them away the end when they were much stronger?????
But to me the story of FFXV is still the shittiest.
Like the movie was so good then they fucked up the game which was about friend wandering around for no reason and the villain pops in and out and helps them sometimes then decided to fight them away the end when they were much stronger?????
Good lord, it takes a special kind of talent to write a plot that is that fucking bonkers. I genuinely need a cigarette after reading all that.
Those grown adults crying tears of joy at the 2015 announcement had me in stitches.
Like, this is beyond mere monkey's paw fare and in full-on "monkey's paw giving you a handy-j on a used mattress in an abandoned apartment" territory. People don't know what they're in for, and that they don't might be equally as terrifying as the aforementioned thing they're in for.
Tabata...well Tabata is a closer. For better or worse.
I loved Parasite Eve and adored Aya Brea as a character—so ahead of her time. Like many other posters have said, The 3rd Birthday makes me so angry at what they did to all that potential.
Also, it's the perfect example of one of the worst aspects of Japanese pop media storytelling in games and anime these days: constantly confusing plot complexity for plot sophistication.
I loved Parasite Eve and adored Aya Brea as a character—so ahead of her time. Like many other posters have said, The 3rd Birthday makes me so angry at what they did to all that potential.
Also, it's the perfect example of one of the worst aspects of Japanese pop media storytelling in games and anime these days: constantly confusing plot complexity for plot sophistication.
I think I once read it described as writers mistaking plot twists for character development. Instead of creating a character who is fleshed out and has actual motivations and personality and so on, characters are a very generic archetype plus a series of increasingly far fetched plot twists. Events kinda just... happen out of nowhere to advance the plot along. It's like they take a single 2 dimensional piece of cardboard and then building a rickety, confusing jenga structure on top of that cardboard, and call it a character. The reason stuff like Coldsteel the Hedgehog makes us laugh is because real Sonic characters, and by extension a lot of pop culture Japanese characters are actually that ludicrous. The way villains are handled in Japanese pop culture is often literally this joke video.
This thread made me start another play through on insane, I'm gonna unlock the last few things I'm missing, thanks for the reminder OP!
Oh, there might be a runner-up. And I'm not even counting the deviant genres of porn games.
This very old (PC-98) game starts off decently interesting, and has some gorgeous (and/but sexualized) art. Things get really bonkers by the end, and the very ending is just gigantic levels of what the fuck.
CONTENT WARNING. Seriously.
This very old (PC-98) game starts off decently interesting, and has some gorgeous (and/but sexualized) art. Things get really bonkers by the end, and the very ending is just gigantic levels of what the fuck.
CONTENT WARNING. Seriously.
Here's the name of the game:
The game is centered around time travel. It's a point-and-click and visual novel hybrid, and there are four routes. Of those routes, one's your stepmom. We're off to a great start. Other routes include a schoolmate, who can't stand you after walking in on you and a teacher from your high school fucking in the teachers' room about a year ago. Said teacher is part of another route (she shares it with the school nurse). A fourth route stars Kanna, a very shy girl who seems mysteriously embroiled in your supposedly secret affairs regarding time travel.
You have sex with all of said people and then some. Incest count: 1
Game takes place in a coastal Japanese city- you've got the beach, your house, the school, and a few other places as settings.
All of the routes in the game end up leading up to one thing: A key to your suddenly-disappeared father's study. Using many time travel shenanigans (from getting abducted to stealing a crystal to getting lost in caves), you ultimately obtain the key and enter the study. Long story short, this lets you follow where your dad has gone.
Surprise. Your dad's disappeared off to a fantasy land called Dela Grante. You're stranded there, on the outskirts of civilization. The only person nearby is a mute girl called Sayless, who's on the outskirts of civilization due to religious things or something. In any case, she's the only person you know now, and you two live together in her cottage amidst the trees and pastures, and ultimately fall in love and have a baby.
You three are a happy family. There are monsters so you protect your family from them. But one day, hearing that the priestess has found love and has had kids, the king sends knights who rape and kill Sayless and take you captive in a quarry. The kid's abducted.
You spend a few months escaping the quarry, navigating the desert and finding your way to the capital to rescue your daughter. On the way there, you meet and fuck a redhead whose name eludes me at the moment. She'll be named the Redhead from now on.
Surprise. Sayless was an elf so your daughter, being a magical/chosen half elf or something, has already grown up to be a full woman (she was like 6 years old). You see your daughter there and can't recognize her at first. So you team up with the Redhead and your school nurse (she was an interdimensional cop all along) and storm the capital.
Well, it turns out that the nurse-turned-interdimensional-cop is there because your school principal back in Japan, who's the sort-of antagonist in the Japan part of the story, was actually an interdimensional criminal she's chasing.
You two basically corner the principal and blip him out of existence but the Redhead is sent through a vortex in time in the process. As it turns out, you impregnated the Redhead, who was sent back to Japan but like 18 years ago compared to your time, had a baby, and the baby was Kanna, who grew up alone as a prostitute after Redhead died suddenly and who you fucked shortly after being subjected this revelation back in her route (to affirm to her that her body isn't "soiled" or something). Incest count: 2
Then your now-adult daughter appears out of nowhere (back in Dela Grante) and reveals that she loves you, like love loves you, so obviously you two fuck (because who cares she grew up in isolation with literally you as the only male in her life). Incest count: 3
Then, for some incomprehensible reason, you and your daughter warp back to the literal beginning of time, where there's only infinite flat land and a single tree, and the two of you.
Surprise. You were Adam and Eve all along.
Incest count: Division by zero. You literally created the universe in a time loop by fucking your daughter
YU-NO: The Girl That Chants Love At The Edge of This World
The game is centered around time travel. It's a point-and-click and visual novel hybrid, and there are four routes. Of those routes, one's your stepmom. We're off to a great start. Other routes include a schoolmate, who can't stand you after walking in on you and a teacher from your high school fucking in the teachers' room about a year ago. Said teacher is part of another route (she shares it with the school nurse). A fourth route stars Kanna, a very shy girl who seems mysteriously embroiled in your supposedly secret affairs regarding time travel.
You have sex with all of said people and then some. Incest count: 1
Game takes place in a coastal Japanese city- you've got the beach, your house, the school, and a few other places as settings.
All of the routes in the game end up leading up to one thing: A key to your suddenly-disappeared father's study. Using many time travel shenanigans (from getting abducted to stealing a crystal to getting lost in caves), you ultimately obtain the key and enter the study. Long story short, this lets you follow where your dad has gone.
Surprise. Your dad's disappeared off to a fantasy land called Dela Grante. You're stranded there, on the outskirts of civilization. The only person nearby is a mute girl called Sayless, who's on the outskirts of civilization due to religious things or something. In any case, she's the only person you know now, and you two live together in her cottage amidst the trees and pastures, and ultimately fall in love and have a baby.
You three are a happy family. There are monsters so you protect your family from them. But one day, hearing that the priestess has found love and has had kids, the king sends knights who rape and kill Sayless and take you captive in a quarry. The kid's abducted.
You spend a few months escaping the quarry, navigating the desert and finding your way to the capital to rescue your daughter. On the way there, you meet and fuck a redhead whose name eludes me at the moment. She'll be named the Redhead from now on.
Surprise. Sayless was an elf so your daughter, being a magical/chosen half elf or something, has already grown up to be a full woman (she was like 6 years old). You see your daughter there and can't recognize her at first. So you team up with the Redhead and your school nurse (she was an interdimensional cop all along) and storm the capital.
Well, it turns out that the nurse-turned-interdimensional-cop is there because your school principal back in Japan, who's the sort-of antagonist in the Japan part of the story, was actually an interdimensional criminal she's chasing.
You two basically corner the principal and blip him out of existence but the Redhead is sent through a vortex in time in the process. As it turns out, you impregnated the Redhead, who was sent back to Japan but like 18 years ago compared to your time, had a baby, and the baby was Kanna, who grew up alone as a prostitute after Redhead died suddenly and who you fucked shortly after being subjected this revelation back in her route (to affirm to her that her body isn't "soiled" or something). Incest count: 2
Then your now-adult daughter appears out of nowhere (back in Dela Grante) and reveals that she loves you, like love loves you, so obviously you two fuck (because who cares she grew up in isolation with literally you as the only male in her life). Incest count: 3
Then, for some incomprehensible reason, you and your daughter warp back to the literal beginning of time, where there's only infinite flat land and a single tree, and the two of you.
Surprise. You were Adam and Eve all along.
Incest count: Division by zero. You literally created the universe in a time loop by fucking your daughter
Which is ironic considering that Square Enix is a manga publisher since the 90s with Enix and also fund anime for their property and for others. rs
Well that was some read...
I can't think of anything that bad but as someone who will pay attention to a story, no matter how bad it is, the only two games I've played a lot or all of where I just couldn't follow the story are Torchlight 2 and Nioh.
As for actual bad, I'd probably go with something like Fallout 3 or FF13 hut it's been a long while since I played them. MGSV was a train wreck too.
I can't think of anything that bad but as someone who will pay attention to a story, no matter how bad it is, the only two games I've played a lot or all of where I just couldn't follow the story are Torchlight 2 and Nioh.
As for actual bad, I'd probably go with something like Fallout 3 or FF13 hut it's been a long while since I played them. MGSV was a train wreck too.
I'm amazed that it' being mentioned here and there in this thread but never actually nominated:
Metroid Other M
It also shares the unfortunate angle of sullying the strong female main character of an old and cherished franchise. He didn't quite manage to destroy the Metroid franchise, but Sakamoto sure tried. That was some George Lucas levels of bullshit.
Worst part is that e.g. his insistence on Wiimote-only controls also left us with much inferior gameplay than otherwise possible - at least 3rd Barfday is still a blast to play.
Metroid Other M
It also shares the unfortunate angle of sullying the strong female main character of an old and cherished franchise. He didn't quite manage to destroy the Metroid franchise, but Sakamoto sure tried. That was some George Lucas levels of bullshit.
Worst part is that e.g. his insistence on Wiimote-only controls also left us with much inferior gameplay than otherwise possible - at least 3rd Barfday is still a blast to play.
Jeeze, that might give the 3rd Birthday and run for it's money. At least the 3rd Birthday didn't have incest.
Yeah. Kingdom Hearts (also mentioned) is also very bad for this.
It's a maximalist approach to storytelling: thinking that it works like math. "Wow, if one twist is good, then two twists would be twice as good!" without realizing that there are severe diminishing returns to this technique. You can't have a pizza with nothing but a mound of pepperflakes for topping. The basics of compelling stories—exploring themes and characters—can't get a foothold if the status quo and everyone's motivations are almost literally changing at every cutscene.
This video is great lol
EDIT: Actually this whole channel is brilliant, this masterpiece cannot go unnoticed:
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Kamikokuryo is amazing; he did some sublime work in FFXII. I'd pay good money for one of those Archades scenes in a print.
The world they had created -- a planet with nature red in tooth and claw with an amazingly futuristic satellite which has become a corrupt paradise -- had so much potential that I was fully hyped to play it.
Then when you play the game, you're thinking about how interesting it's going to be when the heroes meet the people on the surface world, and what kinds of interactions they're going to have, and whether there might be peace between the satellite and the planet. You reach the planet, you explore, you can't wait to finally meet the people. Will you be able to communicate with them? Will they be terrified of you?
You keep playing, you keep exploring, and... you get... what we got. Oof.
(I still think that about a decade from now, some enterprising modders will take all those beautiful art assets and make their own game with them, featuring an entirely new plot, which will be a lot more fun than the real game. So much potential in that world, and they Motomu'd it up instead of making something compelling.)
Most of what S-E staff wrote during that period (PSP original titles, being more specific) is an absolute disaster. Only their technical mastery of the system redeems the games they did. Pick any among the list, it's possibly the best looking game in the whole PSP library.
Yeah I agree Gran Pulse was a big disappointment. But yeah, the world of Pulse and Cocoon is fantastic IMO. And they had room to expand it with the sequels... instead we got stuff that's not even fanfic-worthy
I decided to replay the first game before REmake 3 comes and god damn it, it made me remember this mess. Just what the fuck was Square even thinking with this bullshit? It is so god damn offensive to me as a fan of the first game. Who the hell was responsible for this mess???
Hopefully one day we get a remake that acts as a reboot for the series and makes everything after the first non canon cause this shit needs to be thrown in the trash where it belongs.
Hopefully one day we get a remake that acts as a reboot for the series and makes everything after the first non canon cause this shit needs to be thrown in the trash where it belongs.
Interesting to note that I've seen more apologism for this game on ERA than I have in ANY other community. Thankfully, I'm not seeing it in this thread because people don't want to get piled on, but almost every time I've sniped at that game here, I've gotten a couple of people stepping up to defend shit-chan.
I don't think anything beats The Third Birthday but imma just leave this here.
story in and of itself was fine it just TOTALLY against player agency of a bethesda game.
"shit gotta find my infant son... hmm lemme scrounge junk and build some settlements. oh there's a district of abandoned factories down there, how about i dick around there for 4 hours..."
3rd birthday was pretty fun to play. At least the story was not predictable. That's something, right? :P
That would actually be pretty awesome; the main character piecing together the map little by little , to find out this Silent Hill is a big Pachinko machine, while coming to the realisation he murdered his partner after hiding away a wallet to limit a Pachinko addition and having to come to terms with it.
That would actually be pretty awesome; the main character piecing together the map little by little , to find out this Silent Hill is a big Pachinko machine, while coming to the realisation he murdered his partner after hiding away a wallet to limit a Pachinko addition and having to come to terms with it.
Parasite Eve 2 was one of my favourite games on ps1, What the hell happened????
Oh OK lmaoooo
Honestly, I believe that if the Third Birthday deleted everything related to the story, and removed Aya and all the sexualization, that the game would be considered one of the best games on the PSP. It wsa solid when it comes to gameplay...
...it is just everything else that fucked it up.
Can't wait until it turns out that Cloud is Aerith who time traveled by hijacking his body to do something we can't understand.
Thank god there's no time travel. That's half the battle in making a good Square Enix game these days.
sigh. I really wish he wasn't. Toriyama should have been removed from the FF franchise after his waifu simulators.
So,this is basically magic instead of pseudo-science.
Loved the first 2 games and yeah,aya shoots fireballs,thunderballs,turns into an angel-like form but they actually explained those powers,like aya just raises the temperature of her enemies' bodies to start a combustion or stuff like that.
That 3rd birthday is some bs,it's infuriating.
Loved the first 2 games and yeah,aya shoots fireballs,thunderballs,turns into an angel-like form but they actually explained those powers,like aya just raises the temperature of her enemies' bodies to start a combustion or stuff like that.
That 3rd birthday is some bs,it's infuriating.
Also, that plot summary is pretty much the plots to 90 percent of PC-98 RPG games