- Apr 1, 2009
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Games that wasted a perfectly good premise/plot
- Thread starter Dalisclock
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To me Batman: Arkham Origins is the poster boy of wasting a good premise. It's a pequel set back in the day before Batman was particularly good at the vigilante game, but nothing in the gameplay reflects that. You get cutscenes of Batman fucking up stealth, combat and interrogation, but gameplay mirrors the experienced Batman from Asylum and City, complete with the gadgets he supposedly engineered later in the timeline. Asylum is a brilliant take on Batman and City expands his arsenal and moveset as it does the world map, but Origins does nothing to reflect its premise so it ends up feeling little more than a gimmick. The bottom line is that younger Batman is as powerful and capable as older Batman, which defeats the purpose of a story supposedly about a flawed, inexperienced Batman.
Even the story about Black Mask hiring 8 assassins is wasted. Black Mask is quickly and obviously replaced as the lead villain, and the assassin plotline falls by the side and strictly you only fight like half of them.
Even the story about Black Mask hiring 8 assassins is wasted. Black Mask is quickly and obviously replaced as the lead villain, and the assassin plotline falls by the side and strictly you only fight like half of them.
I remember that, I liked the combat in the game but I did not have a clue what the Hell was going on by the end of it. Mind you, I did only remember the game when you bought it up so I must have blanked most of the plot. I remember the girl jumping off a cliff and Chopin's heel turn at the end and that's about it. I beat Mr Chopin's arse. Accept your fate
Games that wasted a good plot... is that a problem? Good plot is so rare in videogames I can hardly call any instance of it a waste. Maybe I can just forgive a lot of issues if a game's premise is solid. What I see as a greater crime is games with great gameplay that could have been timeless classics if they had a better premise or plot or just decent storytelling. Tecmo's Deception series comes to mind. Great gameplay loop (with admittedly some awful camera issues) with a completely disposable and aggressively bad plot and storytelling. Hell, the Shadow of Mordor games. They slapped an established franchise on a game with silky smooth gameplay and the amazing nemesis system and made a good game. But take Tolkien out of it, and get a good writer to put a good original story behind it, and it could have been great. Instead it turned out like fanfic featuring some writers beloved self-insert original character moodily emo-ing it up beside the classic characters... with smooth gameplay and the innovative nemesis system. Hell, Watch Dogs greatest letdown was mundane characters and a lousy story. The gameplay and sandbox was pretty good, a better plot or premise would have made it a solidly good game.
Out of the dozens of games that I played growing up point and click adventure games are some of the very few that I can remember quite clearly to this day. Every now and then I still go back and play Teen Agent just for the fun of remembering it. I really hope the Thimbleweed guys take another shot at the genre - Telltale did a good job with a few things they tried, but they aren't around anymore so not many people are left who make these things.
- Apr 1, 2009
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- Whatever, just wash your hands.
Considering what we saw of the one we almost got, I think we dodged a bullet.
Yeah I remember seeing that one trailer of the bedtime story.
And I was just like "....fuck yes." I'm a HUGE sucker for concepts of "we are stronger together" and the idea of it being something of a legacy (another weakness for me in storytelling), of this man telling his child, who will likely one day become a wolf as well. It just, REALLY hit a lot of my buttons for storytelling hype. And then...the game came out, and it just looked like HALO to me, which I never cared for, and people said it sucked, like, in droves. So yeah, I just never bothered.
Yes he was completely broken after that attack. I think they established that the glass he was thrown through was highly impact resistant, and a combat cyborg threw him through it. Plus he was clearly broken, bloody, and had multiple pieces of glass stuck in him. So...yeah he was pretty screwed, and had to be upgraded. If you listen during the opening credits, which is also his augmentation sequence, you can hear the guy he was working for talking about upgrading everything, clearly arguing with the doctors.
Jesen would have died without the augment, that's very clearly established. But he was also overaugmented, his boss knew he was immune to rejection and he wanted Jense to be as good as he could be, so he loaded him with all augment possible. Spoiler for DE:MD:
at the end of MD you find out that the real Jense died at the end of HR and the one you play is some sort of copy, possibly fully mechanical. We'll probably never find out what that means since iirc the sequel got canned.
Well, at least we got 3 new Sam and Max games from them before they decided to do Visual Novels forever, and a strong bad game. So at least there's that.
And yeah, I do hope Terrible Toybox does try again. They came close this time.
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I’d argue that while most people are fine with basic augments to repair traumatic injury, Sarrif knew Jensen was going to be getting up to cyberpunk adventure hijinks. Being able to punch through a wall is great but not if the impact shears the arm off your body. Getting the full Robo (remember this very discussion occurs when Morton discovers one of Murphy’s arms was saved) was probably done so thar the augs he needed were properly supported. Don’t forget Jensen’s augs are top of line military grade, borderline experimental tech.
You can see more about that there (Although it seems I was miss remebering some of the details)
he's a clone, not a mehcanical version
deusex.fandom.com
Is Adam Jensen a Clone in Mankind Divided? A Review of the Evidence
After Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was released, players were quick to speculate on whether the Adam Jensen featured in the game was a clone. This article complies and reviews the clues surrounding this theory, often referred to as the "clone theory." At the end of Deus Ex: Human Revolution...
deusex.fandom.com
Yeaaaaahh....that's some really shaky speculation at best.You can see more about that there (Although it seems I was miss remebering some of the details)
he's a clone, not a mehcanical version
Is Adam Jensen a Clone in Mankind Divided? A Review of the Evidence
After Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was released, players were quick to speculate on whether the Adam Jensen featured in the game was a clone. This article complies and reviews the clues surrounding this theory, often referred to as the "clone theory." At the end of Deus Ex: Human Revolution...
They never cite a single example in any of the games of cloning technology actually being discussed. They imply things could maybe clone someone, and infer the use of neutral pronouns to imply it's not actually Adam. No mention that I can recall, actually IN GAME, suggests that cloning is even possible at all. It's also completely pointless. Having a new Jensen doesn't change anything at all in the plot of the game, as it's never brought up as a plot element, or narrative arc. It's basically the Deus Ex equivalent of that movie Beerfest, where they just kill off a character, but then immediately replace him with his "identical cousin", who asks to be called Chuck 2 (or whatever his name is). Played by the same actor, with zero impact on the story. Besides that adds another layer of complication to the already heavy story about augmented rights and their status as humans, to then throw a "are clones peeeplez too?!" midstream is just messy writing. I think that's just a really big stretch from fans, that isn't actually supported by the game itself.
Devil May Cry 2 & 4. Dante was supposed to go to hell in the second half of 4, and fight his own unique bosses. Due to Capcom rushing Itsuno and his team for a release on the then new consoles. It's really noticeable as soon as you play as Dante. Everything about DMC 2 is in history itself. It's been explained so many times, that I really can't add much other than Capcom being idiots and not asking for Hideki Kamiya's permission.
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I will always be grumpy about Halo 5.
The marketting campaign was so good.
The Master Chief and his squad from the books have gone AWOL, and whichever planet they seem to visit ends up being destroyed. The military ends up sending another group of newer generation super-soldiers to go and hunt him down, all the while, the space version of the CIA is up to some creepy bullshit, and is working hard to discredit the Chief, labelling him as a traitor - and they even go as far as to publicly (fakely) announce his death. The whole theme is "nothing is as it seems", going with conflicting perspectives.
Then the game starts, and all of the intrigue is gone. The reason why the chief goes AWOL is dumb. The hunt for the Chief is barely there. The main villain is the Chief's supposedly dead AI friend, who is evil now for some reason. All of the new characters are boring. Its just such a waste.
Ugh.
The marketting campaign was so good.
The Master Chief and his squad from the books have gone AWOL, and whichever planet they seem to visit ends up being destroyed. The military ends up sending another group of newer generation super-soldiers to go and hunt him down, all the while, the space version of the CIA is up to some creepy bullshit, and is working hard to discredit the Chief, labelling him as a traitor - and they even go as far as to publicly (fakely) announce his death. The whole theme is "nothing is as it seems", going with conflicting perspectives.
Then the game starts, and all of the intrigue is gone. The reason why the chief goes AWOL is dumb. The hunt for the Chief is barely there. The main villain is the Chief's supposedly dead AI friend, who is evil now for some reason. All of the new characters are boring. Its just such a waste.
Ugh.
I'm not even a big halo fan, but I feel bad for the other fans. Microsoft should have just ended it at 3. It was a definitive ending.
As a Halo fan who never plays Halo (I got into the books for some reason), Halo 5 was indeed insanely disappointing. I was interested because they were fucking bringing back Linda, Kelly, and Fred, only for them to be absolutely nothing in the story. I don't get how they managed incorporate so much of the lore from the extended universe, and still manage to do shit unrelated to both the previous games and the books.
OT: Arkham Knight. Jason Todd, the whole Batfamily, Batman's final night of crimefighting???
It should have been so much more than "Arkham Knight totally isn't Jason Todd, oh and I hope you aren't sick and tired of the Joker yet!". Jason is such a great character, and yet all he does in the game is show up to be angsty and immediately fuck off. The Joker plotline wasn't bad, but that's essentially all of the game. All the side plots they were leading up to and hinted at in City were reduced to mere cutscenes. Robin and Nightwing had a good two minutes each in the game. Their goodbyes to the man who is essentially their father were weak as hell. Catwoman as well.
The amount of effort they put into that game is INSANE, they obviously love what they're doing, but you can definitely feel the change in writers.
You have the power to make Halo 3 the final part of the story especially considering it had a definitive ending. You can personally just disregard things like Indiana Jones in my world is a trilogy. TLOU works perfectly fine as a standalone piece, TLOU2 can't ruin it for example, you can just hand wave it away if you don't like it.
Yeah, Halo 3 works fine as an ending - aside from the Requiem teaser in the Legendary ending. Halo 4 works as a great ending for the character, too - though I have always found it odd that Halo 4's story ends without really setting up a sequel, especially as it was supposed to be the start of a new trilogy/saga.