-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
In the "worst story ever" department, I summon The 3rd Birthday
- Thread starter Dreamboum
- Start date
Since I'm playing the 2nd game currently, I have to nominate the original Nioh for an awful story (The 2nd one is already following suit from what I've played), though I'm sure it's not the WORST ever. Outside of the introduction and the basic goal of getting your spirit back, almost nothing really makes sense. Characters just pop up, say stuff and things... happen, but with very little understandable flow or progression, if that makes sense. By 3/4th's of the way through, the plot becomes almost incoherent, with characters just spouting random things and things just moving on to the next piece without anything making much sense.
Team Ninja has never been master storytellers but some of their past stories in their games were at least serviceable. Nioh really just left me asking what the hell where they thinking with the story.
Team Ninja has never been master storytellers but some of their past stories in their games were at least serviceable. Nioh really just left me asking what the hell where they thinking with the story.
If you actually follow the historical characters they make sense but it's all very occluded to someone not in the know.
That's the funny thing, I'm actually somewhat versed in some of Japan's history, particularly in Sengoku and Edo periods, but even this was hard to follow to me. There were characters that popped up I'm famailar with, as well as some events (Even if this is a veeeery loose interpretation, what with oni, magical spirits, and the like) but the actual dialog and flow of the story were just very hard to follow, if that makes sense.
I can't even imagine trying to understand what was going on without having any knowledge of people or events from this era.
Yeah I know what you mean there, the story is set up more like a fan service rather than attempting an actual story apart from William's moments and the big baddie.
If we're just talking about awful narratives in general, I've got to mention Daemon X Machina. I really enjoy the game -- it does a wonderful job of filling an empty niche -- but the story is an absolute slog, and I've been at the last chapter since summer because of it. An endless parade of characters that you don't care about, each of which are a part of 16 different mercenary factions that you can't identify dealing with four or five ruling entities that are indistinguishable from one another. And it's all delivered as the worst kind of anime brainmush -- "What is the meaning of war?," power levels, quasi-religious overtones that are barely ankle deep -- with either pages upon pages of static text logs or cutscenes with awful, Episode I-style "lets all stand here in space and gesture vaguely at each other" blocking.
I don't think I've ever experienced so much exposition in a game while still being clueless as to what the fuck is going on.
I don't think I've ever experienced so much exposition in a game while still being clueless as to what the fuck is going on.
This game was directed by Tabata and written by Toriyama lol.
t3b was very very bad. it shows Toriyama's only good at being a goof lol
t3b was very very bad. it shows Toriyama's only good at being a goof lol
The concept of The 3rd Birthday is already baffling. Here, you had a video game framed as the sequel to a horror novel written by a guy who mostly did pharmaceutical research. The entire point of the original book was to make people more aware of human biology. You want to make a sequel to that game. But you don't want to pay the pharmaceutical research guy, so you just do it as a spinoff with your original character. Also, you take away the pharmaceutical aspect.
Square was going off the deep end.
Thankfully, they scaled some of that madness back since then.
The thing that comforts me is that if there was an outrageous Toriyama-style twist for FFVII, we would have heard about it by now.
People would break spoilers and scream about it from the rooftops.
That game is a not a parasite eve game,
it's a mix of time travel action-adventure that was suppose to came out and got canned but decide to replace every name of character with parasite eve name. Then they slap anoter cancel project, a tps online coop shooter that you play swat teammate to kill giant creature and unlock new gun and attachment to them with currency that you get for mission.
And they slap that DNA system to balance difficulty of bosses that are suppose to be beat by 4 coop player in the previous project i've mention and add a simple level up system, because......
See what happen ? (everything I've said is fiction just to be sure)
It would be epic to find the team that did the translation....
it's a mix of time travel action-adventure that was suppose to came out and got canned but decide to replace every name of character with parasite eve name. Then they slap anoter cancel project, a tps online coop shooter that you play swat teammate to kill giant creature and unlock new gun and attachment to them with currency that you get for mission.
And they slap that DNA system to balance difficulty of bosses that are suppose to be beat by 4 coop player in the previous project i've mention and add a simple level up system, because......
See what happen ? (everything I've said is fiction just to be sure)
It would be epic to find the team that did the translation....
Last edited:
Fun Fact, Toriyama was barely involved with the final game. He came up with the original concept when it was still a mobile game but that was heavily changed afterwards. Toshimitsu Takeuchi was the actual writer.
Yeah. Thank god for people like Naoki Yoshida (FFXIV), Yoko Taro (Nier) and Takeshi Uchikawa (DQXI). These guys don't have their heads up their ass.
At this point, Toriyama should have been removed from Square Enix alltogether , imo.
The thing is, he has his fanbase, and his games didn't completely bomb. I'm fine with his making games, I just don't want him to touch the FF franchise. He should make his own franchise and then do whatever creepy shit he wants with it. That he does this inside Square or outside doesn't concern me.
Strangely enough. I had a shitty dream about this mess.
Playing Parasite Eve 1 before sleep really was a mistake.
Square really fucked uo the series.
Playing Parasite Eve 1 before sleep really was a mistake.
Square really fucked uo the series.
Nah, when someone does a shitty job, you'd rather see someone else do it. Has nothing to do qith the medium.
I know some gamers can get really defensive and view every developer as their best friend, so I get where youre coming from.
Sorry if someone has already said this. I skim-read a lot of this thread.
The thing that gets me most about 3rd Birthday's plot, is that the game is only 6 levels long.
6 not-spectacularly-long levels too.
So all that plot is rammed in-between those levels, and it comes at you thick.
Those 2 blocks of spoiler text in the OP? Yea, they both represent 3 levels-worth of plot - each!
There is a truly redundant amount of characters pratting about in service of 'run around and shoot stuff, maybe teleport into a different body now and then'.
The thing that gets me most about 3rd Birthday's plot, is that the game is only 6 levels long.
6 not-spectacularly-long levels too.
So all that plot is rammed in-between those levels, and it comes at you thick.
Those 2 blocks of spoiler text in the OP? Yea, they both represent 3 levels-worth of plot - each!
There is a truly redundant amount of characters pratting about in service of 'run around and shoot stuff, maybe teleport into a different body now and then'.
Oh please, "I don't like his games so he should be fired" is pure shitty gamer bullshit. I have nothing against legitimate criticisms of his games and I have plenty of them of my own but blaming shit on him that he didn't even do, like 3rd Birthday's story, and saying he should be fired is trash.
Whether someone is trying to fix my toilet and fucks up or someone fucks up a game because they can't get enough of their waifu isn't really a difference to me. I still think they missed their profession, regardless of their job. The guy legit has 80% shit under his results.
I dunno why this thread was bumped, but people saying "nah, it's this other game" clearly have not played 3rd Birthday. You can barely follow the awful story, it's such a mess that it always gave me the impression the script was never finished and the final product is just random clippings of different drafts.
If your counter example has a bad written story that still can be followed/summed in a single paragraph/described as a hero's journey, you are wrong.
I like how you basically made the same post 2 years apart :D
If your counter example has a bad written story that still can be followed/summed in a single paragraph/described as a hero's journey, you are wrong.
I like how you basically made the same post 2 years apart :D
Tales of Graces was absolute trash, but I still can't say it tops The Third Birthday. That game should not exist.
Whatever happened to Sakomoto anyway? I think that game was the last one where he was the scenario writer.
parasite eve is not exactly a big dude games neither...especially the third one who leave almost all the horror stuff behind.
also isn't even worse having such a contrived story that no child is never gonna understand? (not to talk shit about kids intelligence but you get my point)
Kingdom Hearts follows fourth dimensional logic, but it does have logic to its madness.
The 3rd Birthday has characters dying and coming back to life without explanation. The barrier between life and death does not exist in this game. And pivotal plot moments, like the main character's wedding getting shot up by a SWAT Team, are not explained. They just happen.
Kids will at least think the anime nonsense is cool ( at least some) KH has a fanbase that loves the world and characters, 3rd Birthday however :^S everybody dislikes it
It lists these on Wikipedia
- Rhythm Heaven Fever (2011) — General Producer
- Kiki Trick (2012) — Supervisor
- Game & Wario (2013) — Producer, Game Designer
- Tomodachi Life (2013) — Producer
- Rhythm Heaven Megamix (2015) — General Producer
- Miitomo (2016) — Producer
- Metroid Prime: Federation Force (2016) — Special Advisor
- Metroid: Samus Returns (2017) — Producer
- Famicom Tantei Club: Kieta Kōkeisha Remake — Producer
- Famicom Tantei Club Part II: Ushiro ni Tatsu Shōjo Remake — Producer
Yeah, Kingdom Heart despite all the insane lore, still at its core a story about friendship and trust.
3rd birthday, i have no idea what it trying to say
i'm not sure he's operating in that capacity anymore. I don't think he directly said this remember there was an interview were someone on the writing team said that Samus is poor at coping with life's problems.
I don't know, maybe it was a translation issue but I think it was just a projection of their interpretation of what a woman is issue. That whole game had a weirdly sexist undertone to it, under the guise of "Samus has trauma too!" It felt regressive.
I also remember that. It was a quote by Ryuji Kitaura, the cinematic director of M:OM. There's the full thing:
Without going too in-depth .....i feel like the general wackiness of the time travel aspect was meant to signify the saying that-if you go back and change a piece of history, that change will have ramifications that will affect the present. Hence, saving one person but coming back to find 3 more dead, or now evil. JS.
Not to defend the game but... not true. You are altering shit in history and that has ramifications, so in some timelines some people are still alive. But this is only explained in the documents, not in any story cutscenes.
Not that it matters, the story and "characters" are still horrible. And yeah, there's never an explanation given for the SWAT team thing (though given the events of 2, it's not much of a stretch to think they were sent by the govt I guess).
SWAT being sent by the government makes no sense because Aya is still working for the government by the time that happens. Hell, she's one of the few people who can fight mitochondrion creatures without either A. Horribly mutating, or B. Instantly igniting into flames.
Plus, the database makes things even worse. For instance;
Do explain how the timeline change at Time Zero somehow makes Cray's daughter be alive again despite how she died years before the timeline split even happened
These quotes sure aged well, didn't they?
In all due honesty, given the FF7 Remake leaks, Square Enix should do what Intelligent Systems did with Maeda (the director of Fire Emblem: Fates) and give Nomura and Toriyama a spinoff series to quarantine them from the rest of the franchise. It worked well enough for Echoes and Three Houses.