Games that wasted a perfectly good premise/plot

[Dalisclock]

Also yes, there should have been the capability to just beat the Reapers in a straight fight instead of this Catalyst 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.

I really do hate the Crucible thing. It's a big thing that nobody really knows what it is or what it does but apparently cycle after cycle has been building onto it and such despite knowing next to nothing about it and apparently they just update the plans before everyone dies and leave them for the next cycle despite again, not really knowing what it is or what it does. Oh, but it's not introduced till ME3, and it's kinda wierd considering the SOP for the Reapers until this cycle had been "Get everyone to use the Mass Relays for everyone, base their government at the citadel and then have the keepers turn everything off JUST before the reapers pop in to kill everyone, so everyone is isolated from the word go and the reapers just systemically klll everyone for as long as is needed". So how the hell the previous X iterations of the catalysts even got started when the Reapers had apparently swept half the board on move one is a mystery when everyone is probably barely holding out so probably doesn't even have time to even entertain throwing resources at some mystery project.....Sorry, am I putting more thought into this then the writers did? I'm sorry....no I'm not.

And then it turns out it's part of the Reapers plan all along, and because Shephard got up there they just decide to let him push whichever button for....reasons. It's such lazy storytelling trying to pretend it's meaningful in a game that's full of otherwise really good writing(not all of it, but a lot of it). I really do like a lot of ME3 but man that whole part of it feels like a ketchup stain on The Last Supper.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

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.

Poor power scaling is one of the most prevalent pitfalls in story telling. Writers want a truly threatening enemy or threat but don't think about how they plan to resolve that threat. Mcguffins only work if they are introduced early and can't resolve the problem without cost (See Lord of the Rings). The more you make a villain seemingly untouchable, the less options you have to make their downfall believable (Aizen from Bleach as an example). And one of the common answers to this problem is to make your hero become just as broken as the villain, which just introduces a host of new problems (Like undermining the original spirit of Naruto).

People shoot for the moon too much.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Sorry, am I putting more thought into this then the writers did?

Depends, does your summary fit on a beer coaster?

 

[immortalfrieza]

Poor power scaling is one of the most prevalent pitfalls in story telling. Writers want a truly threatening enemy or threat but don't think about how they plan to resolve that threat. Mcguffins only work if they are introduced early and can't resolve the problem without cost (See Lord of the Rings). The more you make a villain seemingly untouchable, the less options you have to make their downfall believable (Aizen from Bleach as an example). And one of the common answers to this problem is to make your hero become just as broken as the villain, which just introduces a host of new problems.

People shoot for the moon too much.

It's not even shooting to the moon that's the problem. You can make the villains and the heroes as powerful as you want to, you can even make the villain much more powerful than the hero at first, it's fine as long as they're comparable to each other and thus the hero can realistically beat the villain. It's when you make the villains so monstrously more powerful than the heroes that the heroes don't stand a chance and then fail to improve the heroes to match by the end that you've got a problem. Bioware had an entire game time to establish closing the gap but chose to use a lazy deus ex machina plot device to beat the Reapers because it was easier than taking the time to set up the galaxy being able to win legitimately. It wouldn't even have been that difficult to do in the first place, just state at some point that the galaxy had been studying Sovereign's remains safely (which they had been anyway) and thus had developed a number of offensive and defensive tech that would make the Milky Way forces a match for the Reapers. From there, just show the Milky Way forces matching the Reapers blow for blow in the various cutscenes of battles against the Reapers that go on throughout the game.

That's why the Extended Cut doesn't really fix anything, because it doesn't fix the glaringly obvious issues underlining the entire plot. All it really does is add in some results of the player's choices throughout the series but still doesn't have any of them effect anything in the endgame itself.

 

[Dalisclock]

It's not even shooting to the moon that's the problem. You can make the villains and the heroes as powerful as you want to, you can even make the villain much more powerful than the hero at first, it's fine as long as they're comparable to each other and thus the hero can realistically beat the villain. It's when you make the villains so monstrously more powerful than the heroes that the heroes don't stand a chance and then fail to improve the heroes to match by the end that you've got a problem. Bioware had an entire game time to establish closing the gap but chose to use a lazy deus ex machina plot device to beat the Reapers because it was easier than taking the time to set up the galaxy being able to win legitimately. It wouldn't even have been that difficult to do in the first place, just state at some point that the galaxy had been studying Sovereign's remains safely (which they had been anyway) and thus had developed a number of offensive and defensive tech that would make the Milky Way forces a match for the Reapers. From there, just show the Milky Way forces matching the Reapers blow for blow in the various cutscenes of battles against the Reapers that go on throughout the game.

That's why the Extended Cut doesn't really fix anything, because it doesn't fix the glaringly obvious issues underlining the entire plot. All it really does is add in some results of the player's choices throughout the series but still doesn't have any of them effect anything in the endgame itself.

Along those lines, it would have been really interesting if the choice about the Collector Base at the end of ME2 had meant anything. Say, if you gave it over to Cerberus, it's easier to get anti-reaper weapons thus giving the galaxy more even ground but cerberus succumbs to indoctrination much earlier as a result(or even, hell, allliance ships). Or have you blow up the base, which actually means less indoctrination overall but also fewer anti-reaper weapons.

Actually, that would have been a really interesting idea, instead of Cerberus just being Reaper Proxies as they ended up being, make them on the Alliance side against the reapers at least at first, and then later have alliance assets slowly get indoctrinated as the war goes on, starting with Cerberus. Like have them legitimately being helpful and slowly as the game goes on have them start undermining the alliance in a various subtle until it becomes very obvious they indoctrinated, like some major battle where half the alliance fleet starts attacking the rest and helping the reapers. Though that would require making it a lot more a strategy game, at least on some level. It would also make the game harder and harder as it goes on because fewer of your allies would be trustworthy and the logistics start breaking down for the alliance.

 

[Asita]

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.

That's the thing though, they really weren't written to be that overpowered, but the main narrative of ME3 pretended they were so as to railroad the players into feeling that the Catalyst was the only solution. The codex gave us an inside look at their exact capabilities and it shows us that, despite their technological superiority, they were far from invincible. Point of fact, it strongly implies that their success was largely due to the fact that their strategy precluded a proper military response...which tracks with what we saw with the previous installments and even the importance of having the galaxy present a united front rather than letting the Reapers keep their forces spread out.

A Reaper Capital Ship, for instance, could only really comfortably defend itself against sustained fire from two dreadnoughts and would handily fall to four, whereas a Reaper Destroyer could be beaten by a single cruiser (or a bunch of fighters) provided they could get in range before the Reaper destroyed them. And that's before we take into account super-effective tech like the Thanix Cannon that the Normandy beta tested in ME2 and had been mass produced by ME3, never mind strategies to exploit the weaknesses they had revealed, such as their maneuverability and ability to land on a planet both being predicated on sacrificing their defenses.

It's still presented as an uphill battle, but far from an insurmoutable one. They just create the illusion that it was by having the galaxy playing keep away with the idiot ball. Eg, the Reapers have strong defenses but are vulnerable when you can concentrate fire on them. Their maneuverability creates openings that makes them easier to pick off, and failing to do so means they have a blindside that can be exploited. They're individually powerful, but their numbers are relatively limited, meaning that every loss is much more significant to them. ...So the Victory fleet decides to suicide rush them head-on, with firing-line tactics designed to cover as wide an area as possible without concentrating fire on any individual ship, and giving the Reapers ample time to get into formation and play to their strengths.

...It's about as tactically sound as the Battle of Winterfell in Game of Thrones. You know? Wherein they wasted the cavalry by having them do a head-on charge into the zombie army, and set up all that siege weaponry that has relatively little utility against the very mobile undead hordes? How they sacrificed both their siege weaponry and the infantry by putting them in front of the defenses designed to funnel infantry into a bottleneck? Same ballpark of bad tactics.

That's part of what makes it so frustrating. If you paid attention, you knew that the Reapers were powerful, but not unbeatable, with the game laying out breadcrumbs hinting at ways the playing field was being leveled...and then it's all promptly ignored at the climax because the writers at the helm for that part of the story wanted to force us to use the Crucible.

 

[Eacaraxe]

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.

I thought it made sense, but it could have been fleshed out better, or came across as slightly smarter rephrased a bit.

Organics created synthetics, synthetics rebelled, yadda yadda. Leviathans created the Catalyst to figure out a long-term solution, but because they themselves were so hubristic and amoral as to not think of it, they created the Catalyst without any sort of ethical or moral limitations. The Catalyst simply went HAL-9000, having found the most efficient and expedient solution to the problem it was given. And, the Reapers really are the collective existence and memories of the species that constituted them, but were cogs in a machine beyond their control, and could do good for the galaxy given freedom and independence.

You know, flipping Vigil's entire monologue from the first game completely on its head, understanding the Reapers may be the key to ending the galactic threat after all. So then, Shepard et al. face actual moral dilemmas at the end: is it possible to fix the Catalyst, do the Reapers have the right to existence and self-determination independent from the Cycle, or is it all too great a risk to take?

You know, make the gigantic, gaping plot hole the Catalyst's very introduction creates, the dramatic question itself.

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.

As others pointed out, all signs in the game pointed to "they're able to be defeated conventionally" anyways, and the Crucible shit was a huge deus ex players were forced to just go along with. Where BW fucked up establishing the stakes, was in saying "we just can't beat them" rather than "we can beat them, but it's going to be a pyrrhic victory on a galactic scale...so we need to at least try to find another way".

You know, a scenario like everything up to Earth happens, and if it turns out Shepard did to that point still wasn't enough...the last mission is a suicide run to detonate the Earth relay. Earth (and the rest of the solar system) are gone and humanity itself may well end up extinct...but it takes out most of the Reapers and the Citadel, so the sacrifice gives the other species a fight on their terms they're likely to win.

 

[Gordon_4]

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.

I'm not inherently bothered by the Crucible since given what we learn from Javik about the Protheans being a massive imperialist conquering empire, the idea that they would be working on a super weapon - even without the arrival of the Reapers - is not something I'd consider out of place. As for a lack of foreshadowing, it took the single most educated expert on the Protheans and someone who makes the mining of information their business on a galactic scale - Liara - to find it.

 

[BrawlMan]

Instead, we got a game that was just a weird mishmash of Gears of War and Resident Evil 4, that somewhat works, but needed more time in the oven. This concept would be used for Dead Space, and then Warframe later became a thing.

​

 

[BrawlMan]

Nothing against SH: Shattered Memories, but I prefer the original idea of a different protag coming to Silent Hill during winter.

Silent Hill: Cold Heart (lost rejected pitch from horror game; 2007) - The Lost Media Wiki

lostmediawiki.com

Silent Hill: Cold Heart was a pitch for a new Silent Hill game to be released for the Wii in 2007, to be developed by Climax and published by Konami. The game was to center around an emotionally unstable college student called Jessica Chambers. Struggling with nightmares and insomnia, she started speaking to a psychiatrist, shortly after decides to visit her parents to clear her head. Lost in a blizzard, she follows an ambulance that brings her to the town of Silent Hill. The game would have had a particular emphasis on demonstrating the Wii's motion controls. (typical of an early Wii title) The title boasted a complex character building system, where an in-depth psychological profile would be built from the player's experiences in the game. This psychological profile would go on to influence later events within the game, a rather ambitious concept for an early Wii title. Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection would be used to report real-word weather, and news, for dramatic effect during gameplay.

In 2014, the pitch document, a booklet consisting of 7 pages, was leaked online, from which all of this page was sourced. While the pitch was never picked up, the pitch contained a notably in-depth walkthrough for a level within the game, called "The Lake", suggesting that a build for this level could have existed, though is unlikely to ever resurface. It could be said that Climax overestimated the technology of the Wii, proposing unrealistic mechanics which the hardware, or, granted, the dev team, was simply not up to realizing. This may have contributed to its disappearance. While the game in this form never came to fruition, the game ultimately released as Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, with a few aspects borrowed from the rejected pitch.

 

[BrawlMan]

You don't get interact with the alternate versions of Bayonetta or Jeanne, aside from some minor exceptions in Bayonetta 3.

The lack of Crimson Heads in REmake2 or REmake3. I get why, but it would have been cool to see zombies at in-between stages of zombie and becoming a full Licker. The zombies getting more health and durability tries to make up for this. The Pale Heads counts as sort of stand-ins, but they only show up in the bonus modes in REmake2, and don't come until late game or early on harder difficulties in REmake3.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

You don't get interact with the alternate versions of Bayonetta or Jeanne, aside from some minor exceptions in Bayonetta 3.

The lack of Crimson Heads in REmake2 or REmake3. I get why, but it would have been cool to see zombies at in-between stages of zombie and becoming a full Licker. The zombies getting more health and durability tries to make up for this. The Pale Heads counts as sort of stand-ins, but they only show up in the bonus modes in REmake2, and don't come until late game or early on harder difficulties in REmake3.

They could have at least had one Crimson Head as an event encounter like in REmake.

 

[meiam]

Instead, we got a game that was just a weird mishmash of Gears of War and Resident Evil 4, that somewhat works, but needed more time in the oven. This concept would be used for Dead Space, and then Warframe later became a thing.

​

Wasn't dark sector the glaive/boomerang game?

 

[BrawlMan]

Wasn't dark sector the glaive/boomerang game?

Yes.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Maplestory, a MMO game started in Korea, will always have a special place in my heart.

The sense of adventure, partying up with friends, listening to the amazing soundtracks, it was all great.

Around 07/2010, the game went through a major reboot called big bang. I thought it was nice; new classes, more things to do, etc. And the story of you and your friends becoming the heroes that defeats the ultimate evil was great.

Now years down the line, it met the same fate as WOW did; the sense of advneture is gone, now replaced with build-oriented gameplay and marketsplace. The entire pseudo in-game economy revolves around finding, upgrading, buying, and selling the best piece of gear. Players now have to spend real-life money to get them. The game may be f2p, but the players have made it p2w.

It wasted a great premise of a fantasy game filled with various worlds to explore, but nowadays it's pointless to explore every corner of the game.

 

[BrawlMan]

Everything about Henry Cooldown in Travis Strikes Again and NMH III. Up until this point, Henry was fine, and more or less buried the hatchet with Travis. TSA he gets more jerkish, and in NMH III, he becomes a full blown villain because watching Thor reawaken his suppressed memories, and it turns out that all siblings, Travis, Henry, and Jean were separated and had their memories rewritten, when running away from their abusive father. Well, Jean has to be carried, because she was a literally baby at the time. The boss fight and atmosphere is awesome, but it feels unnecessary and unearned. Most of this development and change in Henry happens off-screen. All Suda really did was take some elements of David (Mondo's older brother) from Killer Is Dead, and put them in Henry. It's like he didn't know what to do with Henry, even though there was nothing left to be done, since both brothers left on a good note in NMH 2: Desperate Struggle. It is one part of III I dislike and wish he thought of something better.