But, I LIKE this Cliché!

[ace_of_something]

I love the airship, flying dragon, or spaceship that you get as a means of getting around toward the end of the game. That was until they invented fast travel. Which somehow makes LESS SENSE.
You mean I can travel across the wasteland through hazards that nearly killed me a dozen times over the first time through with NO ill effects and no time used?

 

[malestrithe]

Mostly an older one that never seems to work nowadays, but the one where you kill a monster and it drops things that it should not be carrying. Kill a rat and it drops a magical sword. Kill a deer and it gives you 500 gold pieces. Wizardry has this one in abundance, but I cannot tell you how many old school games have this one.

As for more modern cliches, I am getting tired of the "you need to use the correct key in this door" one. I have a mace, can't I just bash it down? If it alerts the guards, then so what? I want to roleplay the consequences.

 

[Le_Lisra]

The "whoops did I just.."

Which makes you suddenly unleash huge shit into the world. Like killing the Ocean planet in Kotor (which one? cant remember), the Dimension wand in Baldur's Gate 2..

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Humans being the kind, benevolent race...give me a break. We're capable of startling cruelty and selfishness, but we like to kid ourselves with the idea that we're wonderful and helpful towards all.

 

[Le_Lisra]

Humans being the kind, benevolent race...give me a break. We're capable of startling cruelty and selfishness, but we like to kid ourselves with the idea that we're wonderful and helpful towards all.

.. how many RPGs did you play yet?

I find this very hard to believe.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Humans being the kind, benevolent race...give me a break. We're capable of startling cruelty and selfishness, but we like to kid ourselves with the idea that we're wonderful and helpful towards all.

.. how many RPGs did you play yet?

I find this very hard to believe.

Plenty...granted, it needs to be an RPG where there are more intelligent, significant races than just humans, i.e. not Fable. What do you find hard to believe?

 

[Jared]

I love the cliche too how you can just go around someones home and then steal all the stuff and they will still be all smiles and sunshine!

 

[Le_Lisra]

Humans being the kind, benevolent race...give me a break. We're capable of startling cruelty and selfishness, but we like to kid ourselves with the idea that we're wonderful and helpful towards all.

.. how many RPGs did you play yet?

I find this very hard to believe.

Plenty...granted, it needs to be an RPG where there are more intelligent, significant races than just humans, i.e. not Fable. What do you find hard to believe?

Never played Fable tbh because nothing from it sounded remotely interesting..

But tell me, in which games did this happen? The Baldur's Gate Saga features a lot of annoying, stupid, racist, evil and about every other adjective you care for.. human. And elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome etc.
So are people in KOTOR (especially the old Jedis in 2, a friend likes to call them the "old nazis" [lit. translation]), I can't say how it is in the Elder Scrolls because you seldom meet people in Morrowind who are distictively human. Lotsa nords are battle-crazy, many Imperials are arrogant pricks.. Fallout features pretty much only humans, Divine Divinity doesn't exactly consist of role-models..

I dunno. Maybe you played other games than me.

 

[matrix3509]

BioWare/Obsidian games often times have a court/trial scene in them where you have to talk to individual voters and attempt to convince them to vote one way or another. To varying degrees, I think most of BioWare's games have had such a scene. This is definitely a cliche I've enjoyed.

I remember the one in KOTOR, which pissed me off to no end because the entire quest was a dark side trap. There was literally no way to finish that quest without getting dark side points. I was playing as a light side character for my first playthrough and I had to waste multiple hours trying to finish it in EVERY. POSSIBLE. BLOODY. WAY. After I discovered it was a dark side trap, I had to revert back to a DAYS old savegame. That still pisses me off to this day.

 

[CUnk]

Why is my character so willing to exchange the trusty sword that he probably received as a gift from his parents when he graduated from adventuring school and his well-worn suit of armor that fits him perfectly after all these years for some bigger-looking sword and thicker-looking armor that a random bandit leader was using before you stuck him full of arrows? Doesn't anything have sentimental value anymore?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

A cartoon I saw in my youth subverted the trap cliche`. Rather than guess where to stand and for how long to avoid the firey balls of impaling spear doom, they were able to locate the service passages the engineers used to perform routine maintenance of the death machine and simply walked around.

Haha, brilliant. This should be done in RPGs.

Would make an intereting twist.

 

[Pacifist Chris]

How about the ever abundant supply of Bandits? Almost every RPG I have played is flooded with tons of bandits, and for a good reason. They're a humanoid enemy you are allowed to fight without any need for plot exposition. Plus you won't feel guilty killing them. So they provide for a nice change from the constant hordes of *insert generic fantasy creature here*. Though with so many of them you'd think they would have banded together to form a massive army instead of menacing traveling merchants.

or the fact that no-one would want to be a merchant what with a million respawning bandits

 

[Good morning blues]

A lot of people seem to be forgetting that these cliches are supposed to be good.

With that in mind I offer "ridiculous economies." With the number of people I killed in Oblivion, and the number of swords I looted off their lifeless bodies, swords should have been worth less than gold pieces. Let's not also forget the price difference between spending the night at an inn in the slums of Midgar and one in Wutai.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Agressive rats.........why do rpg-rats have such a thirst for blood....if rats were as agressive IRL as they are in oblivion we would surely perish.

We're looking for GOOD RPG cliche's. Did anybody actually LIKE the fact that, minutes into a desperate quest to save the world in "Oblivion", you end up in a sewer fighting rats? Because I sure as heck didn't...

And while we're at it, scrap the "You are the CHOSEN ONE!" rubbish and let the hero earn his goddamn spurs. And with those spurs, let him earn some decent privileges that go with being the savior of the entire world. For example: in "Oblivion" you get a nice new suit of gold armour. Wooo! Shiny!

I tell you a good RPG cliche: SECRET PASSAGES. I can't get enough of 'em.

 

[Soet Poet]

the 'love interest' sub plots, Final Fantasy has gotten really bad about it lately (EI since 7) , while yea, can see it happening, but dose it need to be in every 'epic world saving quest'

.... and why do i always need to 'save' it all the time .... i've only played ONE rpg where i actualy ended the world ( SMT Nocturne fyi) >.> might reflect poorly on me, but i'd atleast like the option to end the world

In Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen you can choose weather to save the world or ruin it. The sequels build upon the assumption that you chose the latter too.

o.0 oh yeah, forgot about those, thanks for reminding me :3 sad thing is i've played that seires >.>;;

"Sad thing"? It's one of the few game series in existance with a consistant story and very good voice actors (Kain is played by Simon Templeman, the same guy playing Loghaine in Dragon Age). The only exception is Defiance which is pretty crap gameplay-wise.

 

[JeppeH]

Enemies never flee.. ever.
Even though you culled an entire platoon, the last bowman will faithfull stand his ground while a psychotic band of murderers storm his position.
So plus for heroism, minus for reality.

There is no surprice-tactics either, because every enemy (even goblins) knows exactly who the enemy is and where they are.

There is no reason to NOT kill everything, because you would loose loot and xp. So there is very little reason to sneak around, spare lives of henchmen and do a good clean in-and-out.
And if they are evil buggers, theres no way to exterminate except by hand... no smoking them out, no burning them alive, poisoning the well, blocking the ventilation, undermine the supportbeams, divert the river or start a panic-riot.

 

[fulano]

Agressive rats.........why do rpg-rats have such a thirst for blood....if rats were as agressive IRL as they are in oblivion we would surely perish.

Talk about your rats, pal. Where I'm from, rats carry laser guns and swords...well, not really, it's more like deadly diseases and freakish persistence.

 

[DracoSuave]

"Enchantment!"

ENCHANTMENT!