Game plots that went insane

[CelestDaer]

How can ANYONE loath XII? It's my favorite one! D:

I got as far as Fran and Balthier showing up before the ridiculousness of the battle system got so mind numbingly boring that I had to stop playing. The plot wasn't giving me any hope, either.
FF9 was a game that I really enjoyed because it's more the characters reacting to other influences, up until the final dungeon. It took me... 6 or seven playthroughs to realize the scene with

Spoiler

Garnet and her mom climbing into a boat at the destruction of Madain Sari were Zidane's memories, not Kuja's

I mean, yes, I understand where people are coming from with the strangeness past Terra, but it seemed pretty straight forward to me. Especially if you look at the whole of Memoria as the characters diving into their own minds.
I tried to play FF8 a handful of times for years, and never got past finding the second Garden, until I decided to get a trainer and just blast my way through the game for the story, and oh, man, is it terribad...

Spoiler

See, here's the thing, it doesn't matter what the story is, by going forward and fighting Edea, Squall and co create a stable time loop that might as well end up with Square saying, "If you hadn't played the game, this wouldn't have happened." Which is both incredibly ballsy and massively cheap at the same time.

The game that always went off the rails toward the end for me was Xenogears.

Spoiler

God is the heart of a space ship from a distant planet? Fei and Elly are reincarnations of themselves? One of Fei's previous selves is still alive and running around in the world? His desire to beat everything to a bloody mist has separated itself from his body? Why didn't we get to play the Soylent Factory, instead of getting it told to us through a horribly long narration? Miang was directing Fei to fight Deus?

And we're supposed to make sense of this?
Edit:

Xenogears goes from dark, mature storytelling to pure batshit as soon as you reach disk 2...

Sniped by a bad captcha

 

[GabeZhul]

I don't know if it counts since it was practically just the very ending/epilogue of the story, but here we go, Kingdoms of Amalur:

Spoiler

From the beginning you are treated as an anomaly in the system, a creature that has no pre-determined "fate" and thus can fuck up the predictable lives of anyone and everyone. In the end it turns out that your very existence is part of a Batman gambit by the eeeeeeeeevil god who is also chained by said fate, in trying to actually break free and take over the world... and to do that he needs you, the only person in the entire world who can kill him... and then he turns into a dragon, because why not...

Then once you defeated him your token sexy elf companion leaves you with a letter threatening you not to tell anyone of the god/dragon that his followers been talking about all this time and which you just killed, because she is part of a secret society (that only got introduced five minutes before the finale) sworn to hide this god (that you just killed) so that other people cannot fall prey to the temptation of his power (which is a non-issue, since he is DEAD), and then threatens you, saying that she will kill you if you tell anyone about him... EVEN THOUGH HE IS ALREADY DEAD!

It took me about five minutes to stop manically laughing at the sheer stupidity of this entire endgame once the credits rolled...

 

[VladG]

Well, since the obvious Fahrenheit has already been mentioned (and man, did that game start off awesome and end up a convoluted pile of crap) I have 2 more:

The Longest Journey 2. The Longest Journey is a pretty strange game to begin with but the plot was well written and made sense. The sequel starts off fairly normal (insofar as normal goes in a game where you hop between a futuristic setting and a fantasy-medieval setting) and then just goes bat shit crazy. To be fair, I don't really remember the plot (it's been like 8 years since I've played it) but it stuck with me just how crazy the game gets. And not in a good way either

And something I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned: Deus Ex Human Revolution. The game starts out great: Big city hub to explore, interesting characters and conspiracies waiting to be revealed. Aaaand then

Spoiler

you end up fighting what are essentially zombies and a fucking turret final boss right before you are offered the choice of 4 shiny red buttons to end the game with.

Bioshock Infinite.

The main problem I have with stuff like "infinite worlds" is that even within their own canon, stories that use concepts like time travel / infinite worlds are so goddamn contradictory and paradoxical that I cannot take any of them seriously. Any time a TV show, movie, game, etc. introduces those words, I instantly assume the story is not something worth getting into. And I'm usually right, cause they can be broken almost instantly using something like the grandfather paradox.

I'm guessing you haven't seen Futurama then.

 

[Littaly]

Seeing the title I immediately thought of Indigo Prophecy, not entirely surprised to see that was the game that inspired the thread ^^

Seriously, it's worth playing just to see how far it really goes. Before it goes off the rails it's an OK, decently atmospheric but pretty unremarkable supernatural thriller, but once it starts to derail, oh boy. I'm kind of glad it did, because the trainwreck is so much more interesting than the actual story.

As for other games, despite the fact that I really like (borderline love) the story in all three games, Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX all suffer from a confusing, needlessly complicated third act. VIII is the one that people complain about the most, and it's definitely the worst offender, but I think I would have enjoyed all three of them more if they didn't feel the need to introduce all those weird, complex concepts.

 

[GabeZhul]

I tried to play FF8 a handful of times for years, and never got past finding the second Garden, until I decided to get a trainer and just blast my way through the game for the story, and oh, man, is it terribad...

Spoiler

See, here's the thing, it doesn't matter what the story is, by going forward and fighting Edea, Squall and co create a stable time loop that might as well end up with Square saying, "If you hadn't played the game, this wouldn't have happened." Which is both incredibly ballsy and massively cheap at the same time.

I have no idea where you get the "If you hadn't played the game, this wouldn't have happened." thing from. What other option you have? Don't play the game? By its very definition, if you hadn't played the game in accordance to the time loop, it would have led to a paradox. There is literally no alternative.

The game that always went off the rails toward the end for me was Xenogears.

Spoiler

God is the heart of a space ship from a distant planet? Fei and Elly are reincarnations of themselves? One of Fei's previous selves is still alive and running around in the world? His desire to beat everything to a bloody mist has separated itself from his body? Why didn't we get to play the Soylent Factory, instead of getting it told to us through a horribly long narration? Miang was directing Fei to fight Deus?

And we're supposed to make sense of this?

To be fair, Xenogears turned out as it did thanks to some insane budget issues. They practically decided to focus on the beginning of the game and the end of it and only provided a footnote version of the middle. As for the things you bring up, practically every single one of those are perfectly explained in-game, so I don't know what you are talking about. Sure, you can say they are not explained "well" thanks to said budget cuts, but they are there and far from incomprehensible.

 

[GothmogII]

Final fantasy 8 and 9. They both went batshit bonkers near the end. FF8 Arguably went bat shit bonkers near the middle, i'm still not completly sure what the fuck was going on in the game, but i still like it.

I never finished FF8, but I'd say the plot went off the rails around the time characters started bating around the phrase "time compression."

Didn't squall and rinoa go into space at some point? Or am i remembering that wrong?

Yeah, that's where the 'song' happened. Still, the Ragnarok was pretty cool, only helped by the fact it's a spaceship shaped like a freaking dragon.

Spoiler

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[-Dragmire-]

Drakengard


Well, the plot's pretty messed up when you start fighting demon space babies.

The Stick of Truth also gets pretty insane but in some ways, that's to be expected.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Any time a TV show, movie, game, etc. introduces those words, I instantly assume the story is not something worth getting into. And I'm usually right, cause they can be broken almost instantly using something like the grandfather paradox.

I'm curious what you believe the point of a "story" to be.

There's an intriguing divide I'm seeing when it comes to the endings of things like Infinite. I used to ascribe it to absurd levels of pedantry, but I'm beginning to think it's more of a left brain/right brain thing.

 

[SKBPinkie]

Any time a TV show, movie, game, etc. introduces those words, I instantly assume the story is not something worth getting into. And I'm usually right, cause they can be broken almost instantly using something like the grandfather paradox.

I'm curious what you believe the point of a "story" to be.

There's an intriguing divide I'm seeing when it comes to the endings of things like Infinite. I used to ascribe it to absurd levels of pedantry, but I'm beginning to think it's more of a left brain/right brain thing.

Well, I like a certain amount of believability in stories. Even if the story is based in some sort of sci-fi / fantasy magic stuff, I'd like it to at least be consistent and logical within its own realm.

The problem with time travel (to the past) and multiverse-hopping is that they can never make sense. Even within the world of that particular story, it just cannot work and introduces several "what-if" scenarios that almost render the main story pointless. As in, the events that happened in that story are something that never happened or can be repeated for different results.

To be fair, people have different tolerances for that kinda stuff. For me, it's the two things mentioned above, and for others, it may be magic, which I don't necessarily have an issue with. So yeah, BI was pretty disappointing seeing how the game's only claim to fame, its story, was something I just couldn't care about.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Well, I like a certain amount of believability in stories. Even if the story is based in some sort of sci-fi / fantasy magic stuff, I'd like it to at least be consistent and logical within its own realm.

The problem with time travel (to the past) and multiverse-hopping is that they can never make sense. Even within the world of that particular story, it just cannot work and introduces several "what-if" scenarios that almost render the main story pointless. As in, the events that happened in that story are something that never happened or can be repeated for different results.

To be fair, people have different tolerances for that kinda stuff. For me, it's the two things mentioned above, and for others, it may be magic, which I don't necessarily have an issue with. So yeah, BI was pretty disappointing seeing how the game's only claim to fame, its story, was something I just couldn't care about.

Fair enough. It's not really an issue to me. I've run into stuff like this before...like a condemnation of, say, A Song of Ice and Fire because he didn't account for why the seasons were so strange with his geography and thus outraged climate wonks. I understand a desire for a certain degree of verisimilitude in your fiction...I too enjoy a "real" feeling story...but when you're dealing with fantasy and/or magic realism I do feel like there's a lot of wiggle room for authorial fiat provided it moves the core of the story in a positive direction. In Infinite's case, the core of the story was Booker and Elizabeth, the cycle of violence, and Booker's redemption. All the Quantum Mechanics and Columbia's social anachronisms were just window dressings for a human story. It's possible I'm just becoming a soft touch in my old age, but as long as that human story worked, I was fine hand-waving all the other stuff as it was obviously irrelevant to the outcome.

The same would be true of something like To the Moon. HOW everything is happening wasn't important to that game's emotional punch. Simply THAT it happened.

 

[KazeAizen]

Spoiler

It's a bit annoying though trying to maneuver god around the planets. Sometimes it goes off without a hitch, sometimes I crash into the planets after the asteroid belt a dozen times. Still, that's gotta be one of the best ways to end a game on I've ever seen. It's a bit like the climax to Saint's Row the Third in terms of sheer ridiculousness and that feeling of awesomeness mixed with laughter at sheer WTF factor. Wish more games would be like that.

Saint's Row the Third took the kinda dark and serious plot of the previous games and beat it to death with a dildo bat before you got 10 seconds into the introductory cut-scene. And then it got crazy. God I love that game so much.
It's also kinda funny how the dildo bat became the symbolic weapon of the game despite being completely optional and honestly kinda crappy. I never used it throughout my multiple playthroughs, but damn if mere mention of it doesn't capture the spirit of that game so perfectly.

As for other games... well I'm pretty easily entertained so I guess I tend not to notice things going completely bonkers unless it is in a particularly entertaining fashion, like saint's row 3.

Spoiler

I've never had trouble maneuvering Jubileus through the planets. The only time I crashed was when I intentionally did it just to see how it plays out. In that climax though I ask myself how they ended up that far away when it seemed like at most they made it to the moon maybe? I then chalk it up to "magic" because the rest of the game is so damn fun, funny, and entertaining I refused to let that bother me.

I like over the top endings. Bayonetta and Kingdom Hearts 2 are the gold standard for over the top fun and over the top serious climaxes. I mean I'm hitting buildings into a metallic dragon for christ's sake. I don't know why but that should be silly and stupid but whatever choices they made, be it music, design, or whatever it never becomes to silly and remains epic which after all the hell you went through it should be.

Also a game that was bonkers literally from start to finish. Lolipop Chainsaw. So many colors in such a violent game. Plus my crush Tara Strong as the main character. *heart melts*

 

[spartandude]

Spoilers for Gears of War 2

That totally stupid ending where they blow up the last human city. I just doesn't make sense.

Because if the Humans didnt blow it up, then The Locust would have blown it up and that would be bad... because aliens blowing it up is... worse some how.

Personally when they found out about the giant worm...

Spoiler: I think they should have just taken Jacinto, and pushed it somewhere else.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

As far as series go I'd like to nominate Kingdom Hearts for going from a nice little Disney-meets-Square adventure into full-fledged Square mode with an army of quietly snappy protagonists getting themselves killed and resurrected over and over.

 

[CelestDaer]

I have no idea where you get the "If you hadn't played the game, this wouldn't have happened." thing from. What other option you have? Don't play the game? By its very definition, if you hadn't played the game in accordance to the time loop, it would have led to a paradox. There is literally no alternative.

To be fair, Xenogears turned out as it did thanks to some insane budget issues. They practically decided to focus on the beginning of the game and the end of it and only provided a footnote version of the middle. As for the things you bring up, practically every single one of those are perfectly explained in-game, so I don't know what you are talking about. Sure, you can say they are not explained "well" thanks to said budget cuts, but they are there and far from incomprehensible.

If, at any point during FF8, Squall had just turned sideways from the plot and done nothing for a bit, the game wouldn't have actually happened. It says more for Edea, though... if she were to kill the party, she would break the time loop, and never actually end up where she did. And that's what I mean by 'if you didn't play the game'...
Okay, let me see if I can explain my problems with Xenogears a bit better...

Spoiler

Fei is life 7 (it's been a while... I'm probably wrong) but two of his previous lives are still out there in the world (Lacan and Graff, I think?) So, Fei shouldn't be there? Temporal causality? Reincarnation, fine, but your previous life has to end first.
Whenever Id showed up, did Fei just disappear, subsumed into the overriding personality? And no one noticed he was missing?
The Soylent Factory is more a niggling to me, cause I would've much preferred the time to grind, instead of thirty minutes of mediocre dialogue, with a sudden boss fight at the end.
Where did Miang come from when Deus landed on the planet? She was just, there?

There's a difference between 'perfectly explained' and 'just kind of hinted at', for instance, while I find myself enjoying Dark Souls (both 1 and 2) I'm not really going out of my way to find the lore for it, it's more of a case of, here's the set up, now go kill things, because we say so, and that's fine. The answers to my questions might be in Xenogears, but they don't mesh with the game as it was presented. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the game, it just went kind of sideways around the middle and didn't clearly spell the rest out.

 

[RedDeadFred]

There's of course Assassin's creed. which everyone wanted to be about an assassin in ye olde times but turned out to be about future-man desmond. And then the plos goes bananas.

I have only completed the first two, but i can already now this series isn't for me, since the second is supposed to be the "good one", and the plot just goes completly bananas. Apparently hologram-exposition lady at the end explains that before everything there lived some kind of gods, and they left pwoerful artifacts, and then there's these templar dudes who control everything through-out history even though you kick their asses in everey single game, and seriously I couldn't give a fuck anymore.

Who honestly writes assassin's creed? Do they have any sence of sublety or decent storytelling? It just seems they want us to go "woah dude? these medieval dudes control everything? woaaahhhhh".

Black Flag takes a step in the right direction as far as having the modern day shit be less important. It's mostly just easter egg stuff although there are some forced "missions." On a whole, it places the focus a lot more heavily on simply being a pirate. I had only played the first two games as well and I have to say, I liked this game as much as the second one mainly because being a pirate is so damn fun that it overshadows the game's other shortcomings.

OT: I'm going to go away from the trend of plots going insane that have a negative impact on the game and pick one that had a positive impact. Saints Row 4 did this for me. Alien invasion where a super-powered president fights for freedom in a matrix type computer world while occasionally going back to the real world to rescue old friends and have casual sex with them.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Final fantasy 8 and 9. They both went batshit bonkers near the end. FF8 Arguably went bat shit bonkers near the middle, i'm still not completly sure what the fuck was going on in the game, but i still like it.

I never finished FF8, but I'd say the plot went off the rails around the time characters started bating around the phrase "time compression."

Didn't squall and rinoa go into space at some point? Or am i remembering that wrong?

Yes, but I think that was after they stated talking about how some ***** from the future wanted to compress time or some shit. I don't know.

 

[balladbird]

Well star ocean 3: till the end of time (one of the best fucking rpgs in the goddamn history of humanity) when you're near the end of the game, a FUCKING HUGE plot twist happens

Spoiler

You find out that the whole milky way galaxy is a computer program, and you're basically a game for the real people, but somehow humanity managed to break those boundaries so they sent some super strong monsters to destroy the galaxy, and you stop it by killing the master of all that shit. That is the best I can explain because it's simply a mindfuck, people hated that plot twist, but I thought it was fucking genius.

If it was handled well perhaps. I haven't played it, mind, but the way you described it makes it sound completely out of left field.

Dragon's Dogma did go bat shit insane by the end, but it did so with some degree of foreshadowing. Things like lines and actions from the Dragon not fitting with the "ultimate evil" image and the seemingly mis-named Everfall among them.

The biggest flaw with the twist in SO3 wasn't the twist itself, but the fact that they tried to squeeze it in too close to the end of the game, and rushed it out too quickly. Spending 50 hours playing the role of a star trek ensign trying not to break the prime directive, only to discover that

Spoiler

it was all just a game inside a game inside a game, and that all the characters, political intrigue, and throne-gaming you did had next to nothing to do with the main story at all

the twist in SO3 was actually really cool, I thought. Alas, it was too ambitious.

 

[William Fleming]

My personal favourite bat shit insane plot twist has to be Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. End game plot details in spoiler.

Spoiler

In basic terms, the character's universe is the matrix run by 4D beings for entertainment purposes. It get's weirder, some little kid pulls you out of the matrix after they hit the reset switch (no seriously, that's the best way to describe it). You then go BACK into the matrix to do something (I forget what though) then come back out to fight the higher ups of the corporation running the matrix (who all seemed kind of similar to the 10 Wisemen from the 2nd game). I gets even weirder, you climb up a high tower (like most JRPGs) to fight the head of the corporation who has a seriously god complex. After the fight, he destroys the matrix and kind of wiping the main characters from existence except they go on about how they perceive their universe to be real and wish their universe back where they live happily ever after.

I barely touched upon it but the last 1/3 of the game goes bat shit insane and many fans despise the game for that twist. But yeah that's a simplistic summary of what happens.

 

[pspman45]

as one of the seemingly two people who have played Capcom's Dragons Dogma, I'm putting that up for judgement

Spoiler

The plot starts out as "oh no, a dragon stole your heart and going to destrooooyyyy the woorrrrllldd, you should stop him!" after killing the dragon however, half of the main city is lost in a huge collapse, the sun is perminantly blocked out by ashes, and brand new super powerful demon enemies show up. from there, you have to journey through the collapsed section of the city, which reveals that the city is above an infinitely looping chasm. after collecting 20 of these special stone things, you travel to heaven, kill god, take his place, and can only start NG+ by stabbing yourself in the chest with a special sword and starting the journey to kill the new god, YOU!

its kind of so ridiculous that it's awesome though

 

[Saint of M]

My money is on Final Fantasy X-2. it doesn't start to have a plot until about the second chapter, and meanders around it enough times that I have to wonder what is going on when the music wasn't making me insane.