Biggest plothole in gaming?

[DirgeNovak]

I just started playing POP sands of time (Older one..) and you get to a point very early on where a guy releases the sands of time, and it got me thinking, why doesn't the prince just use the dagger to reverse time until before that? It was only a minute ago...

That got me thinking about plot holes in other games, and I wanted to know the escapists opinion on what the most glaring plot hole is in any game.

That's not a plot hole. It's fairly well established that the prince didn't know he could rewind time before the first fight against sand monsters (when Farah tells him). Also, the dagger was empty at that point.

More OT: Vorador's existence in Blood Omen 2. Apparently there is a cure for beheading, but they never told us what it is.

 

[Broken Orange]

I would mention the Reapers reason (or lack of one) for mass murdering, but I will wait until ME3 before claiming plot holes. Plus, the books hints at why they do what they do.

Spoiler: Mass Effect Retribution spoilers

So when Grayson is indoctrated by the reaper tech, it claims they were going to make humanity, the superior species, immortal. If this is just the brainwashing or actual intent, I don't know.

 

[Zay-el]

More OT: Vorador's existence in Blood Omen 2. Apparently there is a cure for beheading, but they never told us what it is.

EDIT: I applaud your skills in the art of the ninja.

 

[icame]

I just started playing POP sands of time (Older one..) and you get to a point very early on where a guy releases the sands of time, and it got me thinking, why doesn't the prince just use the dagger to reverse time until before that? It was only a minute ago...

That got me thinking about plot holes in other games, and I wanted to know the escapists opinion on what the most glaring plot hole is in any game.

That's not a plot hole. It's fairly well established that the prince didn't know he could rewind time before the first fight against sand monsters (when Farah tells him). Also, the dagger was empty at that point.

More OT: Vorador's existence in Blood Omen 2. Apparently there is a cure for beheading, but they never told us what it is.

So thats who was whining in my ear the whole fight...


Thanks for telling me. It will be interesting to see if the game can remain plot hole free throughout when someone has the ability to reverse time.

 

[Serenegoose]

Alright, portal 2 spoilers, but I mean, first 10 seconds of game.

Spoiler

When Wheatley moves the storage room you're in and bashes a route open to the test chambers, look at the door he came in - his rail doesn't connect anywhere. He can't leave that room. The entire plot falls down right there. BIGGEST PLOT HOLE EVER.

 

[Ridgemo]

ALSO WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IS JIM RAYNOR TRYING TO SAVE KERRIGAN IN STARCRAFT 2?!
BROOD WAR ENDS WITH HIM SAYING THAT HE'S GOING TO HUNT HER DOWN AND KILL HER NO MATTER WHAT
WHAT THE SHIT
SUDDEN RAGE

Spoiler

I believe they find an artifact that he learns has the power to turn Kerrigan human or some such nonsense. Then he starts thinking with his cock and shoots my favourite character in the face. I hated the end of that game.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

One thing about Dragon Age I found incredibly annoying was the supposed civil war in Ferelden, of which you don't really see much. Seriously, isn't any of the commanders going to point to the dark cloud to the south and say "you know, why don't we save killing each other over the proper succession of the throne to this most illustrious hellhole of a kingdom until after the apocalypse has been averted?" There are also the elves, who continue to go to the cursed forest under the guidance of the idiot who is responsible for the curse in the first place. And don't get me started on the stupid fucking dwarfs, who have first hand knowledge of the gathering blight, but refuse to do anything until some outsider settles their political problems for them. Sometimes I wish I could have just fled the country and left all of the retards to be devoured by the armies of darkness. I'm pretty sure that's how natural selection works in the forgotten realms. Argh, the stories in Bioware's games are full of plot holes, in addition to being shite.

 

[Redhawkmillenium]

the reapers in ME, fucking bioware keeps insulting my intelligence with their explanations

I don't accept that their only purpose is to make space terminators.

Is reproduction such a hard concept to wrap your mind around? If you just think it's stupid, that's not a plot hole, it's...just something stupid.

 

[chimeracreator]

the reapers in ME, fucking bioware keeps insulting my intelligence with their explanations

I don't accept that their only purpose is to make space terminators.

Oh god that. I hate that about ME so much.

Spoiler: spoilering the spoilerbot

this spoilerbot 3000 ruined the entire game for me, seriously. "you can't understand the reapers, just go shoot stuff."

i felt very insulted

I also wondered why they chose the cop-out answer "we are unknowable" for their motivations, and was annoyed. For what's it's worth, though, I eventually came up with my own explanation.

The reapers, being robots, were built by an organic species as a weapon of war to wipe out organics that stood in their way. To prevent the AI from questioning it (and eventually deciding to reject the command), it was built to want to destroy organics, but no explanation is built in to the programming to justify this "desire." Thus, they use the "we are unknowable" cop-out to prevent themselves from realizing that they have no reason to follow their original programming.

Spoiler

I thought they actually did a fairly good job explaining reapers in ME2 already. The reapers are a hybrid species that require a massive number of organics to reproduce. They wait for a large enough mass of civilization to grow and then reap the harvest to produce more of their kind. To a reaper an individual mind is no more than a single cell, and it takes a lot of food to make a baby.

It's also possible that reapers can consume new minds after birth, but this isn't really explained or looked at. In ME1 they found Saren who they thought represented a worthy specimen and as such they most likely were going to focus their efforts on the Tureans, but then Shepard shows up and suddenly humanity becomes the real prize.

Now the plot hole comes in as they never explain why races need to reach a given level of advancement and why leaving the galaxy is thought to be necessary. It's possible that the reapers are afraid other races that are just as powerful as them, but I can see why the reapers wouldn't bother to inform you of that.

As for their origin it is possible given their hybrid nature that they were what a truly ancient race thought that their final evolution ought to be. So once that entire race became reapers they believed that it was their ultimate imperative to make more of their kind due to some kind of religious or even humanist belief. After all reapers can live for millions of years, isn't it cruel to let someone die in mere decades when you can offer them so much more?

Just because an NPC says something doesn't mean it's true. Isn't that one of life's most important lessons and one of the first things a good GM should remind his or her players.

 

[Arcadia2000]

I've seen a few other Final Fantasy ones show up. No one mentions the "favorite" though. =)

Srsly -> Aeris + Phoenix Down = [does not compute] apparently. I know it bothers you, too. =D

Spoiler: unnecessary nonsense

(Speculation: While dead, Aeris/Aerith understood that she needed to join up with the lifestream or whatever and decided she was happier with Zach since he was all the dead too and perhaps you can only revive those that -want- to keep on living. Works perfectly if someone would just bother to at least attempt closing the hole.)

 

[philosophicalbastard]

My plot hole would probably be from Halo, and the existance of the Halo rings.

If one guy with a shotgun can clear out thousands of them in a single day, how long would they last against a billion guys with shotguns?

Failing that, the Forerunners probably have orbital-death-ray-things. Nuke them from orbit!

Well, the Flood were intelligent enough to use Forerunner tech and could use the same nuke from orbit approach, but then they could assimilate all of their defeated enemies and aquire all their knowledge. Not to mention the fact that the Flood could rebuild themselves from a single spore. They also had the ability to corrupt AIs, so long term automated defenses would be useless. The Forerunner's decision to kill anything large enough to be seen with the naked eye in order to stop the Flood seems like a good idea when faced with an organic Borg. [/Halo Fanboyism]

 

[nokori3byo]

I found the explanation for how Eli and Mossman got away from the Citadel after Gordon blew the reactor to be pretty unsatisfying. Word of God says they took off in an escape pod, but that explanation feels chronologically very wonky with Mossman showing up in the Artic a short time into Ep. 1. Busy girl.

 

[CrustyOatmeal]

the reapers in ME, fucking bioware keeps insulting my intelligence with their explanations

I don't accept that their only purpose is to make space terminators.



ALSO WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IS JIM RAYNOR TRYING TO SAVE KERRIGAN IN STARCRAFT 2?!
BROOD WAR ENDS WITH HIM SAYING THAT HE'S GOING TO HUNT HER DOWN AND KILL HER NO MATTER WHAT
WHAT THE SHIT
SUDDEN RAGE

1. the reapers are a hybrid of organic and cybernetics whos sole intention is to "evolve" and become better and to survive by consuming other civilization

2. raynor is saving kerrigan, not the queen of blades. the simplest way to imagine this is to look at kerrigan as a mentally unstable/ insane serial killer and raynor has a way of curing her insanity. kerrigan and the queen of blades are different people and raynor loved kerrigan but hated the queen of blades. that is why he said he was going to kill her, he thought kerrigan was essentially dead

One thing about Dragon Age I found incredibly annoying was the supposed civil war in Ferelden, of which you don't really see much. Seriously, isn't any of the commanders going to point to the dark cloud to the south and say "you know, why don't we save killing each other over the proper succession of the throne to this most illustrious hellhole of a kingdom until after the apocalypse has been averted?" There are also the elves, who continue to go to the cursed forest under the guidance of the idiot who is responsible for the curse in the first place. And don't get me started on the stupid fucking dwarfs, who have first hand knowledge of the gathering blight, but refuse to do anything until some outsider settles their political problems for them. Sometimes I wish I could have just fled the country and left all of the retards to be devoured by the armies of darkness. I'm pretty sure that's how natural selection works in the forgotten realms. Argh, the stories in Bioware's games are full of plot holes, in addition to being shite.

there are 2 civil wars you could be talking about in DA, the civil war between ferelden and the nation to the north (which was over well before the start of the game) or, the more likely one you are talking about, the small civil war between ruling factions for the empty throne. in DA the guy who betrayed the king at the beginning dismisses the fact that a blight is occurring and says it is just some dark spawns that will be easily cleaned up so he worries about securing his throne more than the coming blight

the elves did not know their leader was responsible for the curse, they had too many wounded to move even if they wanted to, and they were not going to leave any of their people behind. the elves thought they could defeat the werewolves if they could kill the spirit of the forest and so they held on to that hope. the leader never said he caused the curse because he felt responsible and he wanted the werewolves to suffer

in the DA universe the darkspawn are ALWAYS in the deep roads and so the only hint that a blight is happening for the dwarves is when there are fewer darkspawn in the deep raods (because they are now mostly on the surface). and so things are as usual for the dwarves facing darkspawn so they didnt see any threat (since they dont go to the surface) so they argued about who would rule their kingdom

 

[ZeroMachine]

... He's a plumber.

Why. The fuck. Is a plumber.

Fighting dragons.

And saving princesses.

WHY.

 

[Jack Macaque]

Deathmatch in any game...you just kill and die over and over again? No one stops to think for a second why they run around killing and dying for countless hours?

 

[badgersprite]

Heavy Rain.

Spoiler

So, what was the explanation for Ethan's blackouts again? Nope? You're not going to tell us? They just randomly stop once they've served their purpose in the game never to be mentioned again?

Admittedly, this plothole arose because the original explanation was utterly insane and made no sense and would have been really unsatisfying.

 

[Squilookle]

I just started playing POP sands of time (Older one..) and you get to a point very early on where a guy releases the sands of time, and it got me thinking, why doesn't the prince just use the dagger to reverse time until before that? It was only a minute ago...

That got me thinking about plot holes in other games, and I wanted to know the escapists opinion on what the most glaring plot hole is in any game.

That's not a plot hole- the Prince didn't have the faintest idea how to reverse time at that point, as far as I remember, and even if he did, there were too many guards there for the Prince to do anything about it even if he had reversed time.

 

[LobsterFeng]

Pretty much everything in Resident Evil 4. Why doesn't every enemy just sprout a plagas at once, and then dog pile on Leon? And why don't they just use guns? They set up an elaborate trap to push a giant bolder on Leon, but they can't just pick up a rifle?

 

[Nieroshai]

I just started playing POP sands of time (Older one..) and you get to a point very early on where a guy releases the sands of time, and it got me thinking, why doesn't the prince just use the dagger to reverse time until before that? It was only a minute ago...

That got me thinking about plot holes in other games, and I wanted to know the escapists opinion on what the most glaring plot hole is in any game.

There's a theory that a time machine cannot go back to a time before it existed, and the dagger was not a time machine until the sands were released. I haven't played 2, so I don't know if my friend's right in saying 2 happens somehow before 1 and whether or not this kills my theory.
EDIT: I KNOW THE REAL REASON!!!

The dagger is empty when you get it. You can't go back any farther than you have the amount of sand to do so. And to go that far back, you need more sand than the dagger can hold and than you can ever find in any one place.

 

[KefkaCultist]

I've seen a few other Final Fantasy ones show up. No one mentions the "favorite" though. =)

Srsly -> Aeris + Phoenix Down = [does not compute] apparently. I know it bothers you, too. =D

Spoiler: unnecessary nonsense

(Speculation: While dead, Aeris/Aerith understood that she needed to join up with the lifestream or whatever and decided she was happier with Zach since he was all the dead too and perhaps you can only revive those that -want- to keep on living. Works perfectly if someone would just bother to at least attempt closing the hole.)

I have a theory that I like to toss around whenever someone brings up the Aeris/Pheonix Down scenario.

In a FF7 battle when a character is knocked to 0 hp they are not killed, but in fact knocked unconscious. Pheonix Downs cure the knocked unconscious effect, but not death. When Sephiroth stabs Aeris he mortally wounded her and she died.