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Videogame Storylines That Went South
- Thread starter SOLDIER
- Start date
I know I'm beaten but
It's weird, 999 and VLR are certainly some of my favorite stories in gaming and I was thirsty as FUCK for answers, but ZTD only ended up being a mediocre experience for me. It didn't really make me angry or sad or anything, it just was and happened and I sort of accepted the fact that we wouldn't get a proper sequel to VLR. I guess my expectations were just super low since the wait was pretty long. Plus I gotta say, I loved the absurdity of the main villain twist lol.
I can also agree with Mass Effect. 1 and 2 were so fucking good. 3 was bad from the very beginning, but the ending absolutely gets a special mention.
Kingdom Hearts counts too, but with the exception that I actually LOVED 2. I loved the convoluted anime nonsense, it was so fucking fun. But then we started getting tons of handheld games that always felt like they were missing something to me - low production values, disjointed messes and stories, the convoluted-ness of it started to become too much even for me, just a whole lot of jumping around, not resolving anything. DDD's ending twist was the final nail in the coffin - I think Xehanort is super boring, so the reveal that we're just going to be fighting a bunch of time-traveling Xehanorts in 3 was lame as fuck. I'm excited to finally play KH3, but mostly because it's FINALLY the sequel to 2 I've been waiting for. Not expecting a whole lot from the story.
We're talking about the series where...
Far Cry: Instincts - You turn into a literal monster by the end of the game, and laugh bitterly to yourself as you ride away in a helicopter.
Far Cry 2 - You commit suicide or blow yourself up. A piece of shit mercenary doing something worthwhile with their life for once.
Far Cry 3 - You turn into a metaphorical monster by the end of the game and either kill your friends (the proper ending based on the writer's comments) or don't (the ending where the game is unsubtly mocking you for thinking you get to walk away from this).
Far Cry 4 - You ascend the mountain, and discover the unpleasant truth and no matter what you do, you're standing in the ashes of a broken country beyond salvation. You should probably just kill yourself, you know. After you murder whichever leader of the Golden Path you sided with. (The child molester or the child slave drug trafficer).
Far Cry 5 - The whole "liberate Montana" thing was kind of a ruse because (while this is debatable the symbolism is unbelievably on the nose) you're actually kinda-sorta Jesus and the villain is actually kinda-sorta the anti-Christ and... yep, the world has just been consumed by nuclear fire and most of the human population is dead. But you stopped the anti-Christ by opening the seven seals and you're locked in a bunker with him until the fallout clears. Bravo. You were the only one who could do it. And even though the bad guys kept screaming at you about hubris and the horrors that are coming and how you're completely clueless about what is actually going on, you pressed on, like the massive champ you are. You paid $60 for this game and the fact the game straight up tells you to stop playing within 3 minutes -- that's like $20 per minute of gameplay. Most of which was a non-interactive cutscene.
Far Cry plotlines do not typically "go south". They're extremely elaborate 20-50 hour long "fuck yous" that tend to foreshadow this fact from the moment the game starts and they keep foreshadowing it and sometimes flat-out saying it to player's face right up to the end where they throw a jug of boiling water in your face and scold you for playing. They do this almost every single game. The only Far Cry games that don't end with "Have you stopped having fun yet?" are the original Far Cry and Far Cry: Primal.
Far Cry 2 - You commit suicide or blow yourself up. A piece of shit mercenary doing something worthwhile with their life for once.
Far Cry 3 - You turn into a metaphorical monster by the end of the game and either kill your friends (the proper ending based on the writer's comments) or don't (the ending where the game is unsubtly mocking you for thinking you get to walk away from this).
Far Cry 4 - You ascend the mountain, and discover the unpleasant truth and no matter what you do, you're standing in the ashes of a broken country beyond salvation. You should probably just kill yourself, you know. After you murder whichever leader of the Golden Path you sided with. (The child molester or the child slave drug trafficer).
Far Cry 5 - The whole "liberate Montana" thing was kind of a ruse because (while this is debatable the symbolism is unbelievably on the nose) you're actually kinda-sorta Jesus and the villain is actually kinda-sorta the anti-Christ and... yep, the world has just been consumed by nuclear fire and most of the human population is dead. But you stopped the anti-Christ by opening the seven seals and you're locked in a bunker with him until the fallout clears. Bravo. You were the only one who could do it. And even though the bad guys kept screaming at you about hubris and the horrors that are coming and how you're completely clueless about what is actually going on, you pressed on, like the massive champ you are. You paid $60 for this game and the fact the game straight up tells you to stop playing within 3 minutes -- that's like $20 per minute of gameplay. Most of which was a non-interactive cutscene.
Far Cry plotlines do not typically "go south". They're extremely elaborate 20-50 hour long "fuck yous" that tend to foreshadow this fact from the moment the game starts and they keep foreshadowing it and sometimes flat-out saying it to player's face right up to the end where they throw a jug of boiling water in your face and scold you for playing. They do this almost every single game. The only Far Cry games that don't end with "Have you stopped having fun yet?" are the original Far Cry and Far Cry: Primal.
It's understandable why the meta "this entire game is a ruse, BTW" thing is offputting to some who just wanted to have a nice time, but it's a tradition at this point.
The game has MASSIVE payoff if you can finish it. Like, I cried at the end.
I feel this way about story-driven games quite often. I guess it's just that most of those games suffer from having to drag their stories out for the entire duration of the game itself. In RPGs you can especially see this, where they have to force in twists, or just repeat the same couple of scenes over and over again to pad things out until they reach the next actually important location. I think as a result, I often prefer side-stories over the main narrative.
Naw the overall structure is solid, it's how it's told that irks me.
Also unlike most of the examples in this thread it actually ends well.
This is the only answer as far as I'm concerned. Nothing gets close
What if there were TWO One Rings, though? It's like, you loved Jaws, right? So what if there were TWO sharks? And also there was a third shark that was a sexy lady.
Most people don't play fighting games for the story, but most people also expect it to be there, and it tends to get sillier as a series drags on. People get attached to their characters and expect them to return in the next installment, but this means that the status quo can't change too much (e.g. death is never actually consequential), and the reasons to keep everyone involved can get convoluted over time. Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu turned out to be a not-so-ultimate technique once Gouken was found alive, and Akuma in general doesn't come across as strong as he once did since I can't recall a single person that he's actually canonically killed since SF2. I think the current Tekken has at least 4 different generations of able-bodied Mishimas present at the same time. Even Smash Bros doesn't make much sense anymore; 64 and Melee were about a kid (Master Hand) playing with his Nintendo figures, but I don't have a clue what Tabuu and Master Core are.
For me, it's Resident Evil:
In the first game you're uncovering the dark secrets of an deserted mansion after a rescue mission goes awry, by the end of RE5 you're battling a half-man, half-airplane shrapnel monster in the mouth of an active volcano.
In the first game you're uncovering the dark secrets of an deserted mansion after a rescue mission goes awry, by the end of RE5 you're battling a half-man, half-airplane shrapnel monster in the mouth of an active volcano.
This.
Also, I can't believe no-one has mentioned Fallout 4 yet... what a fucking shitshow.
Paul Phoenix in the Tekken series. He goes from fighting to a draw against Kazuya freakin' Mishima, to damn near winning the King of Iron Fist Tournament 3 (if only he knew about True Ogre...), to redeeming himself personally in Tekken 4 after his loss in the last tournament, on top of a struggling martial arts studio, to... fighting aliens in Tekken 5. That was the moment Paul became a joke. Sure, some of his endings were silly in previous games, but stuff like getting a speeding ticket and messing up your friend's move is believable. Fighting aliens is just ridiculous, even in a series with fighting kangaroos, bears, and dinosaurs. Tekken 5, great game, but it changed Paul, and not for the better.
Yeah Wesker the double agent to
"Damn Wesker. He's actually serious about destroying the entire planet!!"
I completely disagree. It's not just how it's told. If you think about literally any aspect of the plot you'll realize that absolutely nothing makes sense. For example: why can Pryna teleport with some stupid penpal notebook, but not the fucking ring? Why did Gentiana not do shit during the events of Kingsglaive and Altissia, considering that she loves humanity, is the "right-hand man" to Luna, etc.? Just 2 of the seriously dozens upon dozens of examples one could come up with if they sat down and wrote them all. They put zero fucking effort into the rewrites and it shows. The entire shitshow of a main story is seriously insulting from beginning to end.
P.S. this anger isn't towards you it's just towards the game lol
Final Fantasy Tactics.
Story starts as a socio-political Thriller about two warring factions fighting for the throne and the role the corrupt church has influencing the war and turns into a cliche "stop the thousand years old evil" plot into the 3rd act, your character becoming so removed from the original plot that it resolves itself with little to not input from you.
While the game is amazing, i think that's the most disappointing aspect of it for me.
You can always chalk it up to the kid just creating much more sophisticated storylines for their dolls as he grows up, lol.
Story starts as a socio-political Thriller about two warring factions fighting for the throne and the role the corrupt church has influencing the war and turns into a cliche "stop the thousand years old evil" plot into the 3rd act, your character becoming so removed from the original plot that it resolves itself with little to not input from you.
While the game is amazing, i think that's the most disappointing aspect of it for me.
You can always chalk it up to the kid just creating much more sophisticated storylines for their dolls as he grows up, lol.
Last of Us 2 hasn't even come out yet and Torment: Tides of Numenera isn't a sequel to Planescape Torment.
Azran Legacy though. The last 5 minutes of the game was dumb twist after dumb twist, with no time for any of it to sink in. "This character is this one's brother and their dad is this guy, this character was an evil double agent the whole time except not really, Hershel Layton is actually this character's name and not the main guy and also steampunk robots"
Like, pick one dumb twist and run with it
Definitely Gravity Rush 2 for me, started great and around the final third of the story it turned into some typical Naruto shonen that I didn't appreciate. The epilogue was even worst...
I can forgive things like that, because there's the 'god who only tries to point humans to do the right thing' trope. Other stuff, like the journey, the villain, and the politics surrounding the story has a lot of promise.
Out of all the FF, I think this if made into an series can be one of the beat under a good screenwriter.
It's like, I love FF7, but it doesnt really have the strongest story structure. You can also easily find faults or plot holes like FFXV in that. This one however has that promise.
OP
OP
I feel like every single Tekken character that isn't a Mishima has turned into a joke.
The super-short character endings in Tekken 7 seem to Paul-ify every single fighter.
But none probably got it as bad as Asuka, who started Tekken 5 with a hint that she had some hidden power that could cure the Devil Gene, only for that to be immediately forgotten. Every Asuka ending from then on revolves around different people lusting after her tits, right down to Lili moving to Asuka's house without her permission on the implication she gets to motorboat her fun bags all day every day.
Eddy got screwed in his own ending. Getting trolled by Lucky Chloe, with no closure to his storyline regarding Kazuya.
I did like the notion of Ramza being all "fuck your power struggles, this kingdom is literally being taken over by demons." The real problem was that the demons themselves were so one-note and had so little presence that you honestly couldn't really call them characters, so the whole part centering on them turned into a macguffin chase.
Yea this is my favorite Jrpg of all time but this bothers me to no end.
6 went even more over the top though. YOu were literally fighting a human transformer that changed from a lion to a T-Rex to a giant fly.
You can say what you want about the games, but the devs went through with their crazy ass monster ideas until the end no matter what. That's kinda admirable.
Tbf I always felt that was part of the series charm- like the joke is that the plot revolves around finding the 'rational explanation' to some supernatural phenomenon, but the 'rational explanation' always ends up being far more implausible then if it had just been caused by magic or whatever.
Yeah, like I said earlier, that's the whole appeal of the series. It's like complaining about who time travel isn't consistent in Doctor Who. That's sort of the point. It's an opportunity to be maximally creative and silly, while still delivering moving emotional beats and character arcs.
FF13 Trilogy.
From gods that sound similar "LCie, FalCie,Cieth" to
Time Travel and another villain that no one knew about to
A world that was small and was dying to
Creating the Earth and Lightning in France for some reason.
From gods that sound similar "LCie, FalCie,Cieth" to
Time Travel and another villain that no one knew about to
A world that was small and was dying to
Creating the Earth and Lightning in France for some reason.
I disagree with OP's example completely. It tried to juggle too many characters at once and felt more forgettable as a result. Felt like a mess.
Rise feels more simple and to the point, and it just works.
Rise feels more simple and to the point, and it just works.
Resident Evil Code Veronica. Starts off maybe even stronger than the previous games and quickly turns into a clusterfuck of legendary proportions.
The director's cut amazingly manages to make it even worse.
The director's cut amazingly manages to make it even worse.
Deleted member 47619
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Act 3 of Dragon Quest XI was pretty bad. Character Development Wise, I think Martina/Jade was the only character that benefited from it because her story line in Act 2 was terrible to begin with...
I was disappointed with that too, but the ending as well as
seeing the characters that made up Erdwyn's party have a bigger role and backstory than it first seemed, as well as learning more about the world's origin
