Tiggum posted:

Xander77 posted:

2 Narrative dissonance - the secondary protagonists first solution to every problem is still murder. You're the head of the goddamn titular Assassin order, and all your mission (when not trading commodities, building a house or sailing the seas) consist of tracking dudes down to murder them. That's how you handle the first protagonist, that's how you handle every single one of his friends.

Jastiger posted:

Especially in games like Mass Effect where you're essentially a highly trained N7 operative. What, did you sleep through shotgun class?

Don Gato posted:

Or how in Mass Effect 2 Cerberus somehow had vast resources to construct an improved model of the most top secret ship in the entire navy and cure Shepard of the minor problem known as "falling-into-atmosphereitis", yet couldn't even turn on a toaster without something going horribly wrong. Half the missions in the game were just fixing poo poo that Cerberus did to the point that by the end of the game I decided to go against the Illusive Man's will because he'd probably somehow gently caress up (spoilers for a game that's been talked to death)[spoilers]his secret collector base[/spoilers] and end up killing half the galaxy before Shepard could fix it.

Angry Salami posted:

Which, ironically, makes the whole thing perfectly consistent - once again, one of Cerberus's secret projects has gone horribly wrong, though at least this time the fallout is limited to "That guy we brought back from the dead told us to gently caress off, blew up the technology we wanted to aquire, stole our prototype ship, and convinced all our people to defect..."

Don Gato posted:

How Saren was treated by the council was also pretty funny too.

Hate Fibration posted:

My favorite case of this was in the original Fallout 3. Super mutants were completely immune to radiation, and you could have a super mutant companion, Fawkes, with you. At the end of the game you have to go into an irradiated chamber and save the world. But the radiation will kill you, and you are offered the choice to let your companion go in and die for you. But if you have Fawkes with you, the game just outright refuses, with Fawkes saying IT IS YOUR DESTINY

They patched this out in New Vegas IIRC.

Hannibal Smith posted:

My favorite part will always be the trial the Council puts him on at the beginning of the first game.

Turian Councilor: "You have eyewitness testimony that Saren shot a fellow Specter in cold blood? Get this nonsense out of my court!"

*one hour later*

Turian Councilor: "So you're telling me a vagrant pulled some data out of an evil robot and the only portion that could be salvaged is a recording of Saren implicating himself and his co-conspirator for no real reason?

This is irrefutable!"

RandomFerret posted:

Metal Gear Solid 3. You're supposed to be the world's greatest soldier, leader and tactician, but when you're given a mission to stop the world from being engulfed in nuclear hellfire, you spend most of the time hiding in bushes with facepaint and no shirt on throwing frogs at people and giggling about it.

Alternatively, you're going around being a supercompetant one man ninja army, then you get on the radio and talk about how vampire movies give you nightmare and how you only ever really feel safe when you're inside a cardboard box.

MGS3 is the greatest game ever made.

sentientcarbon posted:

MGS 3 can't hold a candle to MGS 4's dissonance. I literally cannot think of a single piece of fiction, videogame or otherwise, that has such an insanely tone-deaf narrative. In one scene you have a guy tell you how the boss you just fought was a child soldier who was forced to watch as her parent were raped and murdered in front of her. Immediately followed by slapstick comedy about a man pooping his pants.

ElGroucho posted:

Pretty much any Bethesda game could be in this thread. The more they try to immerse you in the game, the more you feel the "gameyness" of their world.

It's the same reason I can't get in to any Elder Scroll game after Daggerfall. You can be literally good at anything, as long as you take the time to hop-hop-hop for the next 5 hours. Sneaking up on people with full plate armor? No problem!

I'm surprised the didn't add a mechanic where you have to quick event a bunch of buttons to make a pair of terrible shoes.

Full Battle Rattle posted:

The dissonance in MGS can be directly traced to the dissonance from 80's films. Grim dark really wasn't a thing back then, at least not to the extent it is now. The film Commando, for instance, has Arnold Schwarzenegger killing an absolute poo poo-ton of people while glibly rattling off one-liners. Like hurling a knife into a man's chest, watching the spark of life leave his body, and then saying "Stick around."

Cleretic posted:

I just thought of anther one. Again, one so old that at this point we've got plenty of attempts to explain it, but it's still extremely commonplace: "You beat my first form, but now it turns out I'm EVEN STRONGER."

There's only so much that can be explained by the villain being cocky or cautious, and most games don't even do that. It' always just 'well, you beat my first form, time to HULK OUT!' Because apparently, the guy that's crippled all yoru plans up tot his point, and is now beating down your door: apparently not worth bringing out all your power at once.

Supeerme posted:

"heh this isn't even my final form!" (15 minutes cutscene)x3

Somfin posted:

On a similar note, action-rpg enemies not using the epic-level gear they drop on death. In some cases this is justified by them not having the limbs for it or it being the wrong size, but when a human bandit dies and he had Excalibur in his pocket and a rusty knife in his hand, I want to know why he chose the stupid option, given all the swearing and posturing and shouting he did during the actual fighting and subsequent dying.

sentientcarbon posted:

MGS 3 can't hold a candle to MGS 4's dissonance. I literally cannot think of a single piece of fiction, videogame or otherwise, that has such an insanely tone-deaf narrative. In one scene you have a guy tell you how the boss you just fought was a child soldier who was forced to watch as her parent were raped and murdered in front of her. Immediately followed by slapstick comedy about a man pooping his pants.

Calico Heart posted:

I can't think of any action movie that even approaches the death toll in an Uncharted game.

The_White_Crane posted:

I was playing Tales of Xillia 2 recently, and it had the dumbest bit of pre-boss-battle boasting I've ever encountered...

"You can't expect to beat all of $PROTAGONIST_PARTY by yourself, $VILLAIN_NAME!"
"No? My enhancements grant me the strength and acuity of two normal men!"

And I'm sitting there saying; "Yes, but there are four of us. One of us is a minor deity. And all of us have literally killed gods."

Full Battle Rattle posted:

In Final Fantasy VII the citizens of Midgar complain about poverty even though killing even the simplest of mobs (which are all over the drat place) can yield hundreds of gold pieces. Likewise when cloud is pushing Barrett to give him more money you probably have more gil than he begrudgingly gives you just from the short adventure you took just minutes before. If not, you can wander a couple screens over and earn enough money to pay for 'Marlene's schoolin' " several times over within half an hour.

Somfin posted:

On a similar note, action-rpg enemies not using the epic-level gear they drop on death. In some cases this is justified by them not having the limbs for it or it being the wrong size, but when a human bandit dies and he had Excalibur in his pocket and a rusty knife in his hand, I want to know why he chose the stupid option, given all the swearing and posturing and shouting he did during the actual fighting and subsequent dying.

The only game I've seen that doesn't have the enemy arbitrarily handicapping themselves that way was Titan Quest. It was a great feature- every now and again, you'd see an enemy (usually a random one-hit mook) with a spangly weapon or shiny unique piece of armour that would make it much tougher than the average enemy, and when you finally killed them, they'd drop that item and you'd get that item and use it to kill all their friends. I'm pretty sure that all enemies were set to use the most powerful of all the gear that they carried and could equip. If a fight wasn't going well for seemingly no reason, you were pretty much guaranteed a good drop.

Calico Heart posted:

That's not so much ludonarrative dissonance so much as just George Lucas levels of tonedeaf.

I watched the new uncharted gameplay footage, and while I'm sure it's been talked about to death I think it's a perfect example. The tone those games always wanted (and often succeeded) to have was a fun, adventurous one, the laziest example of course being Indiana Jones. the thing is, though, if the Uncharted games were films they would be loving X-rated being there is so much Goddamn killing in them, to the point where every single character must just not have any emotion whatsoever. I can't think of any action movie that even approaches the death toll in an Uncharted game. I really enjoy the games, but you really have to turn your brain off to the enormous body count (even worse when you consider the number of innocent people who die in the games).

Alouicious posted:

or just follow the John Woo Film Rules: the nameless faceless goons who pop up during fight scenes just to be shot don't matter because who gives a poo poo it's a movie/video game

Full Battle Rattle posted:

I don't think you understand this thread.

Full Battle Rattle posted:

I don't think you understand this thread.

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

See, when I'm playing Uncharted I never think about Drake's morality or whatever, I just wonder where the gently caress the Bad Guys got all their armed henchmen from? Like seriously the Serbian guy from 2 had about an army brigade's worth of dudes with him in the middle of Nepal. How did he even manage that?

Alouicious posted:

A bunch of nerds getting real angry about a made up term that exists so video games can have a special name for bad writing? I understand it perfectly.

RatHat posted:

This thread was a lot better before Uncharted was even mentioned.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

All games threads would be a lot better if people realized that you can criticize aspects of a game without hating or even disliking the game as a whole, but instead people just get pissy and defensive whenever a game they like is criticized because they're manchildren who build their entire identity around consuming media.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

All games threads would be a lot better if people realized that you can criticize aspects of a game without hating or even disliking the game as a whole, but instead people just get pissy and defensive whenever a game they like is criticized because they're manchildren who build their entire identity around consuming media.