Game Clichés you hate the most

[Canadamus Prime]

It's also interesting to note that you also never see Gandalf or any other wizard in Tolkien's world flinging fireballs around. That is also mostly a D'n'D thing (and anything that takes inspiration from it).

IIRC Gandalf makes some acorns explode in The Hobbit (been a while since I read it, the scene where the goblins and wargs chase everyone up a tree), and IIRC he makes some sparks spring from his staff at one point. But otherwise, yes, your point is well taken. And this is the way much magic is in Tolkien's work. It's subtle, even spiritual. It's not a nifty machine for solving problems, it's a metaphor for untapped potential in the human heart.

Spoiler

In fact, it may be that Gandalf has no "spells", that everything supernatural we see him do is actually a result of him wielding Narya, the Ring of Fire. But even in what little is said about Narya, it may not be that the magic of the ring results in the actual ability to literally conjure fire. '"Take now this Ring," he said; "for thy labours and thy cares will be heavy, but in all it will support thee and defend thee from weariness. For this is the Ring of Fire, and herewith, maybe, thou shalt rekindle hearts to the valour of old in a world that grows chill"' (Cirdan the Shipwright to Gandalf) This is typical of magic in Tolkien's Middle Earth- that aside from a few token objects (Elven swords glowing in the presence of orcs or spiders, the One Ring actually making people invisible) most magic may be thought of simply as really, really well-made versions of ordinary real-world analogues.

Oh yeah I forgot about that. Still it's hardly the equivalent of throwing fireballs around and summoning what essentally amounts to an orbital bombardment.

Absolutely.

And IIRC none of Gandalf's tricks ever solve any of the company's problems. They're more a side-show, a way of showing Gandalf is different without actually changing the plot. It's funny, Gandalf is treated as this archetypal fantasy wizard, but he'd far more like Odin than he is like Merlin.

Not very often. He usually just acts like a guide or a sage-like figure.

 

[Vern5]

5. tech vs magic
tech is killing the environment! magic is better or some thing along those lines

Yeah, I always kind of want to see a game with tech and magic where the magic works in Dark Sun fashion and drains the life out of things around you (Either one thing massively for the evil guys, or spread across an area for the goody types).

The funny thing about tech vs. magic is that magic (as it is usually portrayed) actively bends or breaks the laws of reality in order to function whereas technology works with the natural properties of the world in order to function.

Take the act of creating a fire for example. Using (primitive) technology, you can create a fire by utilizing friction and readily combustible materials. Add a little effort and BAM you got a fire going.

When you see someone using a magic to make a fire, they think about that fire very hard and it bursts into being, competely defying all logic and the laws of the physical world.

If anything, magic seems a hell of a lot more dangerous and unnatural than technology ever could be.

 

[Lonewolfm16]

Is there anything -other- than Tolkien fantasy? He pretty much wrote the book on the subject(No pun intended). There's always steam punk I guess, but that's less of a genre and more of a stylistic element.

Okay, that reminds me of another cliche that drives me up the wall: Tolkien.

Not, as some might assume, games being Tolkien-esque. The assumption that the so-called "standard fantasy setting" is Tolkien-esque.

I won't pretend to be a Tolkien expert, but I've read many of his books many times. I've also studied Old English, though I've only dabbled in it while Tolkien was an expert. And what people today think of as "standard fantasy setting" is pretty far-removed from Tolkien's Middle Earth. If you* think having elves and dwarves is enough to make the two similar, you only shallowly read Lord of the Rings (or worse yet, never read the books and only watched the movies).

LotR is actually kinda terrible as narratives go. The characters' motivations are often unclear, there are plenty of plot-holes, and the less said about the way women are depicted the better. The appeal of LotR and other Middle Earth stories isn't in the plot. It's not even in the setting. It's in the experience of reading them. Tolkien was a linguist. He wrote his books as though they were themselves written by people from the world in the books. He actually built linguistic drift into the languages he constructed. His character names are not random (though they may appear to be gibberish to modern readers), many of them come from ancient languages or are derived by real-world linguistic principles. Theoden, King of Rohan, is actually derived from an Old English word meaning 'lord'. The prose of LotR is littered with Old English words that don't mean the same things now that they did a thousand years ago, so for example 'fey' means something more like 'crazy' and 'doom' means 'destiny' (not necessarily negative).

The experience is akin to being in a mead-hall, listening to an epic poem read by a proud skald next to a roaring hearth fire. It's an invented cultural heritage for English-speakers, since the real history of English people lacks the poetic origins that so many other European societies had.

So when I see fantasy cliches with wizards casting fireballs with scrolls, I always grit my teeth when people think that's Tolkien and not from D&D. Because that's not from Tolkien. You'll note that in the canonical Middle Earth stories there is not a single human wizard- they are all either Istari spirits who only look like men or "the wise", i.e. people (usually elves, but sometimes people from advanced civilizations of an earlier age like the people of Numenor) whose powers come not from arcane might but simply from skills learned that mortal men do not have- not because mortal men lack arcane powers, but because humans in Middle Earth are effectively a civilization in decline set against much older civilizations (much like how the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms quickly fell into decline when Viking raids shattered their economy. Learned monks in monestaries often died in those raids, and the people who survived lost so much knowledge that people like AElfred the Great ("Elf counseled") had to institute a basic Latin literacy program for his arch-bishops.)

There are also consistent moral messages in all of Tolkien's work that almost never come out in the "Tolkien-esque" works that followed. For example, nearly every evil that is ever done in Middle Earth is done by someone who desires more than their due. There is a sort of polytheism (though mostly in the Silmarilion, not so much in LotR/The Hobbit themselves) but it's a very Judeo-Christian-influenced polytheism.

So this was meant to be a short little comment but has since become almost as sprawling as a Tolkien work itself. So TL;DR: Most things that people nowadays think of as a Tolkien-eque cliche actually only borrows superficially from Tolkien's work and more properly borrows heavily from D&D, and yes, I would include actual video game material from the Middle Earth franchise in that.

*This is a hypothetical 'you', not calling out Devoneaux personally.

Whenever people complain that fantasy is ripping off Tolkein I am usually quick to remind them that Tolkein was a expert in the Norse Myths and took tons and tons of stuff from it. Even the name of his world, Middle Earth, is a refrence to the Norse Midgard. Even Gandalf's whole look seems to be pretty heavily norse influenced as he looks pretty much like Odin when he disguises himself as a wanderer.

 

[Brainwreck]

Some more interesting protagonists might be nice (in games where you don't get to choose/make one).
Like, you know.
Not your typical cocksucker shitlord actionfucker whiteboi ruggedy ass 25-to-40 fuckface.

Also, the game holding my goddamn hand with stupid fucking reminders 'n shit.
UBISOFT STAHP

 

[Jfswift]

I hate it when the cutscenes in games don't match up with the actual gameplay. If I went back through the Mass Effect trilogy I could compile a list of at least 40 occasions when Shepard using his Biotics would change the outcome of a scenario. Or any game where you kill literally dozens of people with little trouble, but get surrounded by like 5 people and are arrested/captured. Another one is when I have some pretty good aim in the actual game, but my character has the shittiest aim ever when an enemy is just slowly escaping.

Then there's the reverse: when my character does something totally badass in the cutscene that completely contradicts the gameplay. Master Chief falls from freaking orbit at least twice and survives, but in game falling from around 30 feet will kill him. In Dragon Age: Origins my Mage killed the Archdemon with some fancy tricks with a great sword, but in gameplay, despite the fact that he's an Arcane Warrior, all he can do in is slowly swing the thing like a baseball bat.
The other cliche I hate is hilariously impractical melee weapons. Sure, your sword looks cool enough, but I doubt you would be able to swing it more than three times before you're out of breath, pull a muscle or throw out your back. I get that games being too realistic is a negative sometimes (like Battlefield 3 and the atrocious aerial vehicle controls), but seriously, how the hell is he swinging it that quickly with only one hand? Also, bonus points when the character has the long sword the size of a car door and just has it on their back with no problem as it phases through walls, chairs and everything else.

Beat me to it. I can't stand those scripted battles. There's one like that in Skyrim actually. My Khajiit warrior was a such a badass that I was able to slaughter pretty much every guard in Markarth and walk out the front gate when they were trying to incarcerate me. Then, during my escape, I get up on a stolen horse and suddenly I'm frozen and arrested. It was total, utterly, unrealistic crap.

I'll defend the ridiculous weapons only in a handful of games, like Dark Souls where your character is using the power of captured souls to become stronger than human anyway. It kind of makes sense there at least.

 

[Sleix]

The one giddy, annoying teenage character in the protagonists group that tries to be serious half way through the game, but it never works because you already view them as that one really annoying character that you can't relate to. I'm looking at you, Vanille!