Games that wasted a perfectly good premise/plot

[Dalisclock]

Kinda sorta, it was how they 'preserved' organic life... by turning it into Reapers. *shrugs*

There's an insane troll logic to it. A Reaper will never die, presumably, and if a Reaper is made by using millions of a certain species into it, by proxy, that species will also never die as long as that reaper survives. There's a massive amount of egotism and some really sketchy logic about it not unlike the borg but there is some kind of logic to it.

 

[thebobmaster]

Just finished House of Ashes, the latest game (currently) in the Dark Pictures Anthology games by Supermassive Games. Doing so reminded me of one of the biggest wastes of a neat plot: Little Hope, the previous game.

You see, the game takes place in the town of the same name. A teacher, a bus driver, and several of the teachers' students end up stranded there after the bus crashes, and have to find their way out. While doing so, the characters have flashbacks to, essentially, the Salem Witch Trials, with one character being persecuted as a witch falsely. At the same time, these characters in the present have to deal with what appears to be demons created by the witch, with it being implied that the modern-day characters are reincarnations/descendants of the past characters.

That sounds like an interesting plot, right? Well, SURPRISE! Turns out, it was all in the bus driver's head. You see, as a young boy, he lost his family in a house fire, with him being the only survivor, and latched onto witchcraft as a way to deal with his survivor's guilt, in order to have something to blame on the fire besides himself. All the characters in the game? Don't exist, outside his head. He literally hallucinated the entire game. The teacher and students? Replacements for his family.

I don't care for that kind of twist at the best of times. Seeing it used like that just made me feel like I completely wasted my time with the game. There's a reason it took me several months and a sale to be bothered with the next game in the series. Luckily, that one was far better.

 

[Dalisclock]

Just finished House of Ashes, the latest game (currently) in the Dark Pictures Anthology games by Supermassive Games. Doing so reminded me of one of the biggest wastes of a neat plot: Little Hope, the previous game.

You see, the game takes place in the town of the same name. A teacher, a bus driver, and several of the teachers' students end up stranded there after the bus crashes, and have to find their way out. While doing so, the characters have flashbacks to, essentially, the Salem Witch Trials, with one character being persecuted as a witch falsely. At the same time, these characters in the present have to deal with what appears to be demons created by the witch, with it being implied that the modern-day characters are reincarnations/descendants of the past characters.

That sounds like an interesting plot, right? Well, SURPRISE! Turns out, it was all in the bus driver's head. You see, as a young boy, he lost his family in a house fire, with him being the only survivor, and latched onto witchcraft as a way to deal with his survivor's guilt, in order to have something to blame on the fire besides himself. All the characters in the game? Don't exist, outside his head. He literally hallucinated the entire game. The teacher and students? Replacements for his family.

I don't care for that kind of twist at the best of times. Seeing it used like that just made me feel like I completely wasted my time with the game. There's a reason it took me several months and a sale to be bothered with the next game in the series. Luckily, that one was far better.

I haven't heard anyone really talk about house of ashes which I'm a little sad because it apparently takes place in some ancient sumerian ruins and that's a bit of history nobody ever uses in games. So maybe it wasn't very good?

 

[thebobmaster]

I haven't heard anyone really talk about house of ashes which I'm a little sad because it apparently takes place in some ancient sumerian ruins and that's a bit of history nobody ever uses in games. So maybe it wasn't very good?

Honestly, House of Ashes is by far the best of the Dark Pictures Anthology so far. I think the reason no one really talks about it is because after Man of Medan and Little Hope, people just kind of gave up on it. And I will admit that most of the characters are not great in House of Ashes, either. That said, it's on sale on the Playstation Store right now, at least, and I would recommend it.

ETA: Just found out all three games are also on sale on Steam, so there's that. In the US, House of Ashes will set you back about $20 now.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

'The Sexy Brutale'

IT WAS ALL A DREAM!
(No I'm not putting that in spoilers because plots that do that shit can shove it)



Ugh. More on it though, the greatest flaw in the game is that it isn't designed to allow a "victory lap". The entire premise of the game is trying to figure out how to prevent the deaths of the guests in each area. A great and climactic way to end the game would have been to have some kind of victory lap be possible where you have to save all the guests in a single cycle. But no... it's that bullshit, "It was all a dream!" garbage and so you don't get anything fun like that and all the strangeness going on is just explained away as being the delusions of an old man wracked by guilt. UUUUGGGHHHHH.

 

[Dalisclock]

'The Sexy Brutale'

IT WAS ALL A DREAM!
(No I'm not putting that in spoilers because plots that do that shit can shove it)

View attachment 6320

Ugh. More on it though, the greatest flaw in the game is that it isn't designed to allow a "victory lap". The entire premise of the game is trying to figure out how to prevent the deaths of the guests in each area. A great and climactic way to end the game would have been to have some kind of victory lap be possible where you have to save all the guests in a single cycle. But no... it's that bullshit, "It was all a dream!" garbage and so you don't get anything fun like that and all the strangeness going on is just explained away as being the delusions of an old man wracked by guilt. UUUUGGGHHHHH.

Yeah, I was honestly disappointed that once you've solved a murder and prevented it, you move to the next part of the mansion and can't go back to prevent that murder again, so essentially you are doing a bunch of isolated murders and in the end none of them matter.

I liked the game but that was one of it's biggest flaws for me.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Yeah, I was honestly disappointed that once you've solved a murder and prevented it, you move to the next part of the mansion and can't go back to prevent that murder again, so essentially you are doing a bunch of isolated murders and in the end none of them matter.

I liked the game but that was one of it's biggest flaws for me.

From an aesthetic and atmospheric standpoint the game is absolutely solid. Fantastic presentation and when you're initially going through it it is really tense and exciting trying to figure out how things play out in the cycle. I too enjoyed the game but the way it ended left a very bad after-taste in my mouth that retroactively soured my experience with the rest of it.

 

[Worgen]

'The Sexy Brutale'

IT WAS ALL A DREAM!
(No I'm not putting that in spoilers because plots that do that shit can shove it)

View attachment 6320

Ugh. More on it though, the greatest flaw in the game is that it isn't designed to allow a "victory lap". The entire premise of the game is trying to figure out how to prevent the deaths of the guests in each area. A great and climactic way to end the game would have been to have some kind of victory lap be possible where you have to save all the guests in a single cycle. But no... it's that bullshit, "It was all a dream!" garbage and so you don't get anything fun like that and all the strangeness going on is just explained away as being the delusions of an old man wracked by guilt. UUUUGGGHHHHH.

That does sound lame. I'm not disappointed that I never beat it. If you want a game with a similar premise, of trying to save people from dying like that, check out Ghost Trick...


Although... I'm not sure where you can get it anymore. But, it really is amazing and totally overlooked.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

That does sound lame. I'm not disappointed that I never beat it. If you want a game with a similar premise, of trying to save people from dying like that, check out Ghost Trick...


Although... I'm not sure where you can get it anymore. But, it really is amazing and totally overlooked.

Oh, I've played it and yes, it's most excellent and is a much better execution of the idea. It's a shame that it seems to be fated to die on the DS.

 

[Worgen]

Oh, I've played it and yes, it's most excellent and is a much better execution of the idea. It's a shame that it seems to be fated to die on the DS.

They did release a version of it for ios, but yeah. I really wish it would at least get a remaster for PC since I think mouse would work fine as a substitute for touch screen. Plus, steam deck/touch screen laptops.

 

[BrawlMan]

Vanquish ends on a sequel hook. We definitely never getting a sequel, because Mikami left Platinum a year after the game launched.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Kind of a joke, but really bummed we never got to experience Dutch’s plan.

All he needed was some money.

 

[Worgen]

Vanquish ends on a sequel hook. We definitely never getting a sequel, because Mikami left Platinum a year after the game launched.

Did it really waste a good plot or premise? I mean, I recall the plot being kinda shit and just there, but the gameplay being spectacular.

 

[BrawlMan]

Did it really waste a good plot or premise? I mean, I recall the plot being kinda shit and just there, but the gameplay being spectacular.

I found the plot to be fine and serviceable, but I'm more so talking in advancing gameplay mechanics that could have been done with the sequel. Because that game at least deserves one sequel from a gameplay perspective. The sequel could have ditch the regenerating health and gave you two meters. One for your actual base health, and one for the AR meter. Add a weapon wheel and get rid of that stupid upgrade mechanic or refine it better (I would do a by either finding hidden upgrades or by spending it on the points you make by being stylish), and I would be all in that. With that said, that's why I tend to dislike games endings that end on sequel hooks. You don't know what's going to happen, and the publisher or developers just assume that it'll be a knockout franchise success.

 

[Dalisclock]

I was recently reminded of this.

Outpost by Sierra.

So by this point it's unlikely most of you are even aware of this game, but Outpost was basically the first take on SImCity IN SPACE! Or more accurately, an attempt to depict mankind having to flee earth and set up shop on another planet. It predated SId Meyer's Alpha Centauri by 5 full years(being released in 1994 as opposed to SMAC in 1999) but unlike SMAC Is was a city builder/survival game rather then CIV IN SPACE! Basic idea is that a massive Asteroid is found on a collision course with Earth and while there's attempt to blow the thing up, it fails(specifically it gets blown into two huge pieces, both of which hit the earth, which fixes nothing) and the earth is fucked regardless, so the UN/NASA/ESA all build a massive space ark in earth orbit which you're given command of.

Before Leaving, you are tasked to use probes to scout for systems with a decent chance of having a suitable planet for colonization and allowed to pack the ship for the trip, having a mass limit to adhere to. Once you're packed you get probe data back and have to pick one of the star systems to commit to because you only have enough fuel to get to one. Pick wrong and you're stranded with no way to go anywhere else(ending the game right there). Pick right and best you find a planet kinda like Mars(there are no Earthlike planets in the game at all) and you'll be able to start landing supplies and people to build a colony on your new home and if you don't have food, water and power production up and running before the supplies you brought run dry(you packed supplies, right?), people will die quickly. Oh, and you were able to take 200 people at most, so you don't have much room for error here.

There was a fair bit of hard science and apparently a NASA consultant invovled but the game itself wasn't very good. I remember playing it when it came out and the longer you played and the more stuff you build, the slower the game would go because bad optimization or something. Like it would slow to a fucking crawl after a while and I'n not talking about a play session, just the entire run. Apparently a lot of promised features weren't in the game at launch and while some were later patched in, being 1994 you had to know about it and download the patch or have the disk sent to you by mail.

Surviving Mars does a lot of the things Outpost tried to do in 1994 but Surviving Mars has the premise that Earth is only a interplanetary transfer away and more people and supplies can be shipped in as needed, even if it's expensive to do so. Outpost is basically 'If you didn't bring it with you, you don't have it until you can make it onsite and if you were dumb enough not to bring the important shit like generators and such that's totally on you. Humanity is fucked because you're stupid".

So one of those cool ideas, really really mediocre execution at best and at this point the only way to get it is at abandonware sites because no online store bothers to sell it. It's unlikely whoever owns Sierra's IP at this point will bother to revive it considering how badly it flopped. There is a sequel, Outpost 2, that you can buy digitally but that's got a lot of RTS stuff in it as opposed to Simcity. I'm not gonna pretend for a moment it didn't have serious flaws in the game itself, but what it was trying to do was spot on and I kinda wish there was something else along the same lines but good. It's telling Outpost 2 has the exact same premise but flat out pretends the first game doesn't exist(though still called itself Outpost 2).

 

[Drathnoxis]

Killer 7 - There was a lot of backstory/lore that was removed from the cutting room floor, or put in to supplemental books or comic adaptions. Yes, Killer 7 had a short American comic adaption that tied in to the main game. Not all of the Smiths receive an equal amount of focus or are barely there within the story. Not counting use in gameplay. Due to time and budget restraints, Suda could only focus on so much, with the major plot being the conspiracy.


I prefer the Heaven Smiles as they are in the game and definitely unique, but it's still would've been cool to see them as straight up, rage/berserker type zombies. Or have in-between evolution stage between berserker and later manic kamikaze forms.

Yes, Killer 7 was a mess. I remember when I finished it for the first time and looked up a plot explanation online and it involved parallel worlds and split timelines because there's no other way to explain the events of the game. I don't know if I'd really call it wasting a premise, because it did accomplish something with what it set up, it just didn't make any sense.

Just finished House of Ashes, the latest game (currently) in the Dark Pictures Anthology games by Supermassive Games. Doing so reminded me of one of the biggest wastes of a neat plot: Little Hope, the previous game.


You see, the game takes place in the town of the same name. A teacher, a bus driver, and several of the teachers' students end up stranded there after the bus crashes, and have to find their way out. While doing so, the characters have flashbacks to, essentially, the Salem Witch Trials, with one character being persecuted as a witch falsely. At the same time, these characters in the present have to deal with what appears to be demons created by the witch, with it being implied that the modern-day characters are reincarnations/descendants of the past characters.


That sounds like an interesting plot, right? Well, SURPRISE! Turns out, it was all in the bus driver's head. You see, as a young boy, he lost his family in a house fire, with him being the only survivor, and latched onto witchcraft as a way to deal with his survivor's guilt, in order to have something to blame on the fire besides himself. All the characters in the game? Don't exist, outside his head. He literally hallucinated the entire game. The teacher and students? Replacements for his family.


I don't care for that kind of twist at the best of times. Seeing it used like that just made me feel like I completely wasted my time with the game. There's a reason it took me several months and a sale to be bothered with the next game in the series. Luckily, that one was far better.

This is a really good one. The witch trial plot was completely pointless. It's rare you see a story undermine it's own plot so completely.

I haven't heard anyone really talk about house of ashes which I'm a little sad because it apparently takes place in some ancient sumerian ruins and that's a bit of history nobody ever uses in games. So maybe it wasn't very good?

Yeah, I agree with Bobmaster. House of Ashes was the best one. I actually even kind of liked the characters for a change and wasn't rooting for them all to die, which is completely atypical of a Supermassive Games game.


Though I am a little disappointed they didn't use the same twist for the third game in a row. It would have been terrible, but it would have also been hilarious.

'The Sexy Brutale'


IT WAS ALL A DREAM!

(No I'm not putting that in spoilers because plots that do that shit can shove it)


Ugh. More on it though, the greatest flaw in the game is that it isn't designed to allow a "victory lap". The entire premise of the game is trying to figure out how to prevent the deaths of the guests in each area. A great and climactic way to end the game would have been to have some kind of victory lap be possible where you have to save all the guests in a single cycle. But no... it's that bullshit, "It was all a dream!" garbage and so you don't get anything fun like that and all the strangeness going on is just explained away as being the delusions of an old man wracked by guilt. UUUUGGGHHHHH.

Can't agree more, in fact, I listed the game myself in this very thread a year ago back on page 5. I'd say more about what a disappointment the game was, but I've already wrote at length about the game, so I'll just post that.

 

[Terminal Blue]

There's an insane troll logic to it. A Reaper will never die, presumably, and if a Reaper is made by using millions of a certain species into it, by proxy, that species will also never die as long as that reaper survives. There's a massive amount of egotism and some really sketchy logic about it not unlike the borg but there is some kind of logic to it.

Indeed, there's a pretty coherent logic to the whole thing which, sadly, is completely unexplained and only conveyed by implication.

That implication being the Geth.

Basically, imagine if someone made a perfect copy of your brain by creating another brain which duplicated it right down to the subatomic level. That new brain might be a perfect copy of you, it might have all your memories and think exactly as you do, but it's not actually you, it's a copy.

The Geth don't work that way. They are just software running on interchangeable computer architecture, and they are aware of this. The Geth don't distinguish between their individual programs and copies of those programs. This means, for example, that they aren't concerned with being killed. As long as copies of their programs exist then they continue. Personal identity doesn't really exist to the Geth, they are just collections of data.

The behavior of the catalyst is explainable as a misunderstanding about these two different forms of consciousness. It sees organic life only as data. In Mass Effect, your DNA apparently contains a record of all your thoughts and memories (which is really, really dumb, but then noone cared about the series being dumb until ME3). The reapers harvest DNA from organic species and use it to make more reapers, thereby preserving the data that those people were made of, including their memories and experiences, in a more durable form.

In short, the catalyst doesn't understand the difference between an original and a copy. As far as it is concerned, everything checks out and has been preserved.

This is also a nice bit of dramatic irony, because it means that the Catalyst is (unknown to it) the proof of its own thesis. It is a machine that destroys organic life because it isn't capable of comprehending what organic life is.

 

[BrawlMan]

I don't know if I'd really call it wasting a premise

It is when you don't get to know the full deal of all the Smiths.

 

[Dalisclock]

Since it came up in one of the other threads, Haze sounds like it fits this. The core premise being that your squad, hell, your entire army are basically immature adults who through a combination of drugs, propaganda, and I think technology, fight wars but think it's a video game. Of course, you're actually the bad guys all along (WHAT A TWIST) and the people you were told were the bad guys are actually the good guys(I think) so you defect to them and start seeing the war for what it really is without "War is cool and fun" blinders on.

Except the game itself apparently doesn't do anything to really take advantage of this premise very much, or when it does it's ham-handed and predictable as shit. Even watching the first couple minutes of the game, it's not even remotely surprisingly to learn you are one of the baddies if you have any awareness of the medium at all. And apparently, once you defect to the other side, the game doesn't really change at all, except now the enemies wear different uniforms and have better tech. You're still following orders blindly, just for a different faction.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Indeed, there's a pretty coherent logic to the whole thing which, sadly, is completely unexplained and only conveyed by implication.

That implication being the Geth.

Basically, imagine if someone made a perfect copy of your brain by creating another brain which duplicated it right down to the subatomic level. That new brain might be a perfect copy of you, it might have all your memories and think exactly as you do, but it's not actually you, it's a copy.

The Geth don't work that way. They are just software running on interchangeable computer architecture, and they are aware of this. The Geth don't distinguish between their individual programs and copies of those programs. This means, for example, that they aren't concerned with being killed. As long as copies of their programs exist then they continue. Personal identity doesn't really exist to the Geth, they are just collections of data.

The behavior of the catalyst is explainable as a misunderstanding about these two different forms of consciousness. It sees organic life only as data. In Mass Effect, your DNA apparently contains a record of all your thoughts and memories (which is really, really dumb, but then noone cared about the series being dumb until ME3). The reapers harvest DNA from organic species and use it to make more reapers, thereby preserving the data that those people were made of, including their memories and experiences, in a more durable form.

In short, the catalyst doesn't understand the difference between an original and a copy. As far as it is concerned, everything checks out and has been preserved.

This is also a nice bit of dramatic irony, because it means that the Catalyst is (unknown to it) the proof of its own thesis. It is a machine that destroys organic life because it isn't capable of comprehending what organic life is.

That makes me think of a game called SOMA. For those who don't know, the premise is that the world is screwed and the very few survivors can't rebuild, so you're trying to upload yourself to what is essentially a perfect simulation of reality with thousands of other people and help it launch into space so that something of humanity can live on.

If the Reapers had something like that as their motivation, then what they do would make more sense. Not defensible, but it would make more sense. The entire problem with the motivation of the Reapers in ME3 was that it made no sense with even the most twisted logic, along with the fact that ME2 already gave the Reapers a perfectly plausible explanation by reaping simply being what they do to reproduce, with the whole Milky Way galaxy pretty much being a massive organic farm. Had the writers simply left it at that and focused the third game entirely on just stopping the Reapers there wouldn't be a problem. In fact, now that I think about it that's pretty much the exact same motivation that the bad guys in Mass Effect Andromeda had too.

Also yes, there should have been the capability to just beat the Reapers in a straight fight instead of this Catalyst (EDIT: Crucible) superweapon that's pulled out of nowhere to justify the galaxy winning, when they could've very easily simply had the Milky Way armies be improved to the point they could go from taking a whole armada to kill one in the first game to being able to take out the same sort of Reaper with two or 3 ships at the most. The Reapers were written to be so powerful as to be near invincible that they needed a deus ex machina to be beaten, even at the end of the series when any competent writer would have had them losing their edge by that point precisely so they wouldn't need a deus ex machina to beat.