Gaming plot holes

[elvor0]

Final Fantasy VIII

Just... Final Fantasy VIII. All of it.

Though, I suppose there has been some discussion whether or not many of the things considered plot holes are actually just examples of "bad writing" and "simply not explained".

Spoiler

Memory loss by using GFs?
Cid being married to Edea and them running an orphanage of which all orphans end up being sEED members?
Why did Cid never tell the truth about the whole thing?
Do all monsters come from the moon?
The Shumi turn into Moombas if they fail their trails?
If the second Sorceress War didn't end until Laguna contained Adel, how could Deling have become president and fought against Esthar in the war?
What's with the whole "laguna sequences in the past"-thing?
You get your weapons taken away from you in prison, yet there's a prisoner who has set up shop there?
How do you become a sorceress?
Did Ultimecia create a temporal causality loop by transferring her powers to the past?
Time compression?

Spoiler

GFs memory loss I've got nothing, I guess it could be considered a "sacrifice" for them lending people their power, like a pact of some description, sort of based off stuff they say in game. But yeah the idea of them all growing up together was a bit shit, especially given Irvine knew.

You give Edea the idea of the SEEDs in order to keep time intact, the whole story is a massive loop, then Cid had the money, him and Edea hook up and set it all up. I'm guessing Cid didn't know that it was Squall that gave Edea the idea, so while he may have been involved setting it up, he may not of known the whole truth, or he didn't specifically want to tell Squall just encourage him. Edea presumably didn't tell him in case it had an effect on the timeline and because generally bad things happen to people that know their own future. Timy wimy wibbly wobbly

I believe all monsters do come from the moon, then they breed.

Shumi are a different race, can't really explain it, but I guess that's just what happens to em.

Ellones powers seem to stem from Adele, given she was supposed to be the successor, as I don't think she had her powers /before/ she was captured, so she's a sort of demi-sorceress.

They don't really explain how Sorceresses came into being, but the best explanations in game would be that humans used to have magic innately (they don't in game, as it's done through technology of some description and through GFs, a conduit if you will), which was given to them by a being called Hyne, who also created humans. it's stated in game that it gets weaker with each successor, so presumably it was stronger in some bloodlines and stayed around after it eventually was thinned out among humanity.

Yup, she did create a loop, though I suspect it was unintended and she just followed Squall as he was the slowest of the group to get back.

No idea what her ultimate goal was of time compression, though she needed Ellone to complete her power set, so the power displayed in game isn't what she actually wanted.

 

[UrinalDook]

Don't know if its a plot hole, but Dead Space had something that bugged me. You play an engineer. Just some shmook who goes to the Ishumora(spelling?) to fix the thing. The necromorphs start to show up and you kill them. Tons of them. Yet, an escape pod with 1 fucking necromorph docks onto a military ship and takes out nearly the whole damn ship. Either this is a plothole or that necromorph was the reincarnation of Bruce Lee.

It's worse than that. The necromorph that gets fired out in the escape pod is a regular old, run of the mill slasher. The game later shows that corpses only get turned into necros when an infector (the flying bat things) sticks its junk in one's head. There was literally no way, by the game's own logic, that a slasher could infect a single person, let alone a ship's worth of soldiers. So all we can conclude is that, yes, that one slasher killed enough of the crew that the military ship veered out of control and crashed into the Ishimura, allowing infectors to get on bored and turn the ship into just another set of necro-filled corridors for Isaac to plod down.

There are no words for how pants-on-head retarded the crew would have to have been to let that happen.

I love the game, but that whole bit was incredibly weak.

 

[Slaanesh]

Don't know if its a plot hole, but Dead Space had something that bugged me. You play an engineer. Just some shmook who goes to the Ishumora(spelling?) to fix the thing. The necromorphs start to show up and you kill them. Tons of them. Yet, an escape pod with 1 fucking necromorph docks onto a military ship and takes out nearly the whole damn ship. Either this is a plothole or that necromorph was the reincarnation of Bruce Lee.

All it did was have to kill a single person and it probably killed a lot more than that before being put down. And that given the necomorphs the material to work with. The main character of the series had an advantage because he read messages from other people how to destroy some of the necromorphs when he got on to the Ishimura. The military types didn't have that info.

This is a military ship we're talking about here. Most of the crew is trained to fight(I'm assuming). So when they open that escape pod and Mr. Necro greets them all with a "YYAAAAAAAAARGHBFLEBEL," I'd just thought it would be put down before it could get the opportunity to kill anymore than 2 people, then a quarantine to determine what in the hell it was.

But then again, I am forgetting this is a horror/action game we're talking about, so maybe every character has the intelligence of a typical horror story character(i.e:not much).

It's worse than that. The necromorph that gets fired out in the escape pod is a regular old, run of the mill slasher. The game later shows that corpses only get turned into necros when an infector (the flying bat things) sticks its junk in one's head. There was literally no way, by the game's own logic, that a slasher could infect a single person, let alone a ship's worth of soldiers. So all we can conclude is that, yes, that one slasher killed enough of the crew that the military ship veered out of control and crashed into the Ishimura, allowing infectors to get on bored and turn the ship into just another set of necro-filled corridors for Isaac to plod down.

There are no words for how pants-on-head retarded the crew would have to have been to let that happen.

I love the game, but that whole bit was incredibly weak.

I was under the impression that the infectors(both in gameplay and lore) just sped up the process, also with the benefit of necro-steroids.

 

[Zinzinbadio]

In Heavy Rain their is one as to why Ethan is making the dog origami while he is blacked out. As the people who learnt how shouldn't be him.

 

[BenzSmoke]

Fallout 3:
-Where does everyone (humans, muties, and ghouls) get their food from if there aren't any functioning farms?
-How do a bunch of ten year olds defend a town indefinitely from Super Mutants that are armed with rocket launchers and miniguns?
-If no one is manufacturing ammo on a large scale and all the ammo is pre-war, then why is it so cheap and plentiful?
-If the only way to make more Super Mutants is to expose humans to FEV, and the only source of FEV is Vault 87. Then how do they get the humans into the Vault without killing them? The surface entrance is irradiated and inaccessible, and the other is in Little Lamplight.
-What makes Tenpenny Tower so rich?
-Where does the Enclave get enough resources and recruits to invade DC if all of their manufacturing capabilities, "pure" genetic gene pool, and leadership were destroyed along with the oil rig in Fallout 2?
-If FEV was being developed by West Tek before The Great War started, and the virus was never completed, then how did it become part of a Vault-Tec social experiment on the East Coast?
-If the only person that knew how to make jet died at the end of Fallout 2, then how did jet get across the country to the East Coast and who is making it?

-Snip-

What am I looking at here some sort of puppet? But it's not to scale with the ground... a costume perhaps? I refuse to believe that something of that size, with such attention to detail, that would have cost several hours to put together is a sex thing.

 

[BenzSmoke]

In Heavy Rain their is one as to why Ethan is making the dog origami while he is blacked out. As the people who learnt how shouldn't be him.

Well, from what I understand, Ethan and the Killer were originally supposed to have a psychic link so during Ethan's blackouts he sees the villain commit murder and leave the origami figure "calling card." But the psychic link idea was scrapped later and they didn't come up with explanations for the blackouts and origami figures.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Any story featuring time-travel is going to inevitably cause a paradox, shift or plot hole of some sort. Even the simplest ones.

Spoiler: Yeah, Chrono Trigger

Reptite Paradox:
In the course of the game, Crono's Crew assists Ayla which prevents the Reptites from annihilating humanity in its infancy.

Now, this timeline can only occur a Lavos-centric timeline, because it's later discovered that Lavos fostered select parts of humanity and gave them magic...in short, humanity would have died out without Lavos.

(Chrono Cross delves even further into this, showing the future where Reptites thrived and built Dinopolis. It's heavily implied that this was the "paradise lost" or ideal timeline of the planet that was destroyed in Chrono Cross's very blunt environmental message...a message that Squaresoft seemed rather attached to at the time, but I digress.)

Anyway, we later discover that it was Azala who called Lavos to the planet as a form of mutually-assured destruction when she failed to annihilate humanity due to the intervention of Crono's Crew. Right before you rock her socks in Tyrano Castle, she is seen calling to Lavos, and after she says that her race has no future.

She knew that Lavos would annihilate her species. (how she knows this is never directly explained, perhaps being a plothole itself)

The question becomes: What was the "original" timeline?
It has to be one in which Lavos arrived on the planet entirely by chance, ushering in the ice age that ended Reptite domination, and lead to the point where time travel began.

This is a functional possibility..until we consider the paradoxes surrounding Ayla.

Ayla cannot die in the original timeline, or Marle disappears from existence (again) since she's descended directly from Ayla.

Yet, it is known that Ayla LOSES to Azala without the intervention of Crono's Crew (Reptites Rule ending).

Final Fantasy VIII

Just... Final Fantasy VIII. All of it.

Though, I suppose there has been some discussion whether or not many of the things considered plot holes are actually just examples of "bad writing" and "simply not explained".

Spoiler

Memory loss by using GFs?
Cid being married to Edea and them running an orphanage of which all orphans end up being sEED members?
Why did Cid never tell the truth about the whole thing?
Do all monsters come from the moon?
The Shumi turn into Moombas if they fail their trails?
If the second Sorceress War didn't end until Laguna contained Adel, how could Deling have become president and fought against Esthar in the war?
What's with the whole "laguna sequences in the past"-thing?
You get your weapons taken away from you in prison, yet there's a prisoner who has set up shop there?
How do you become a sorceress?
Did Ultimecia create a temporal causality loop by transferring her powers to the past?
Time compression?

Final Fantasy 8 seems like two vaguely related stories welded together. Like crap welding. Z-welding.
Sometimes I suspect that Laguna should have been the star of his own game and story, but then we wouldn't have been blessed with Squall and his "Anti-social Loner" attitude.
Even his antagonists are more likeable than him; at least Seifer's posse stuck together, even if they were total cretins.

 

[Toxic Sniper]

There are a few plotholes in Metroid: Other M.

* whine, whine, whine, whine... etc.

There, I think that covers about a quarter of them.

I can address every one, most just with a snarky flippant remark. Mostly because I hated OM less than most.

I'll respond to just one of my favorites though.

Why didn't Adam authorize the Varia Suit until I was at the peak of a freaking volcano?

Because unless the gamer was hopelessly ham-fisted or unfortunately disabled... this wasn't hard to just breeze through... just like going through heat damage areas without the varia suit wasn't particularly hard in 2 previous Metroid games (but it's even easier in OM, seriously if this troubled you... be a better gamer.)

This thread is about plot holes. It's in the title. I was not allowed to use my heat suit in a volcano because my CO was afraid that my weapons can kill survivors, even though my heat suit isn't a weapon and there obviously aren't any survivors in a volcano. That is a plot hole. It doesn't matter if it added a challenge to the gameplay (It didn't, Other M was too easy), it was still a plot hole.

Work on your reading comprehension before you try being a smart aleck and defending a terrible game.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

It's more a continuinity thing, but I have always wondered: in the original Deus Ex, mechanical augmented agents are considered outdated and worthless, but in Human Revolution, Adam, whose hardware is basically ancient in 2052, is far more powerful than J.C. with his nano augmentations, despite being a walking prototype.

So, why is mechanical augmentation considered obsolete when augmented combatants in 2027 have such nice features like instant healing, Icarus Landing System, C.U.S.I.O implant and so on that J.C. doesn't have? And why do the agents Hermann and Navarre look like tincans while Adam, whose "transformation" was an experimental emergency testrun, looks 99% human with his coat on?

Being in 2027, how the hell are the praxis kits supposed to work? We learn that Adam can't use all of his augmentations yet because he still needs to recover and get used to the augmentations. It makes sense since activating everything at once would basically scorch his central nerve system, but why doesn't bypassing the learn and recovery processes have any negative side effects? I mean you can easily activate four, five implants at once using praxis kits and it doesn't make any difference, which is actively defying the ingame explanation why not everything is active from the beginning.

Yeah, most of those are just because Human Revolution is a prequel,and prequels almost always suffer from enhanced graphics technology making older things in continuity of the story look newer than the stuff that comes later.

However, regarding the praxis kits, there is an explanation hidden in the game for why Jensen can activate so many at once without any of the implied side effects. No one except his scientist girlfriend ever knew, not even Jensen himself, but he is preturnaturally compatible with augment technology. Somehow, his DNA makes it much easier to integrate synthetic augments into his body. It's not exactly explained more than that, but that's why the praxis kits work so well on him.

 

[Moonmover]

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

The game begins with you serving a sentence in prison for an unspecified crime. You break out of the dungeon and....nobody cares. Nobody notices.

Later in the game, if you commit a crime and are caught by the city guards, they will send you back to prison (sometimes even the same one.) If you break out THEN, you'll have a bounty on your head and everyone will be after you. But the first time you break out, nobody even comments on it.

Skryim has the same problem with its quite-similar opening sequence, but there at least people MENTION the fact that you're an escaped convict.

 

[uchytjes]

Most certainly is canon, but aside from the "guest apperances" from characters that wern't even born then, it's part of Big Bosses story, which includes Snake Eater, Portable Ops, Peace Walker and upcoming Ground Zeroes. I can only assume Big Boss was living in squalor, because he was sort of in hiding and while he was still using Genes funds, as he is in Peace Walker, he was trying not to be found by the Patriots, or at least their precursor to them, so staying under the radar is sort of the most logical choice. I mean he doesn't get Genes funds until the end /anyway/, so anything before that makes perfect sense.

The only games that aren't canon are Ghost Babel and Metal Gear Acid 1/2

Well then thats is an even BIGGER plot hole! What happened to the technology we see in Peace walker!? They had a working quadrapedal nuclear-ready battle tank that was developed and created by the U.S. in the 1970s that was FAR more advanced than any other in the series. Now you can say that it was destroyed and lost at the end of the game, but what about ZEKE? you know, the one that looks like REX? are you supposed to tell me that Big Boss scrapped that to develop an entirely new Metal Gear in Outer Heaven that was inferior to ZEKE? ugh. that game is one of my favorite in the series but it really makes me mad when I think about it too much.

 

[Kyrian007]

This thread is about plot holes. It's in the title. I was not allowed to use my heat suit in a volcano because my CO was afraid that my weapons can kill survivors, even though my heat suit isn't a weapon and there obviously aren't any survivors in a volcano. That is a plot hole. It doesn't matter if it added a challenge to the gameplay (It didn't, Other M was too easy), it was still a plot hole.

Work on your reading comprehension before you try being a smart aleck and defending a terrible game.

Uhh yeah... because it's not a plot hole. It's easy... i.e. (if you can connect the dots) not a threat. She's used to it (it happened in several Metroid games and was probably thrown in as a nod to those games.) She's obeying Adam's orders as a courtesy, if she was in any real danger nothing was keeping her from disobeying Adam and firing up the Varia. After getting through if she cared about what he thought she could always power it off afterwards and who would know? But she didn't see it as a threat (and neither did I) so she didn't bother... bam, not a plot hole.

See how easy that was. Unless you were too mad that "boo hoo, it wasn't the game I wanted or expected" that you could only see things in the worst possible light because that's what you WANTED to see. It wasn't a good game. There are several flaws. Mostly it was too short, too easy, and badly written. However, I can say the same about most games, say... Dishonored. And I really liked Dishonored. The "orders" system of upgrades WAS a terrible idea... but at least it was an attempt to get away from the "can't start with all the weapons" device that they terribly overused. The "tripped over my purse and broke my suit that can take bullet after tusk after lazerblast but flies apart when I fallz down" makes just as little sense really. So they tried something different... and it was dumb. Again a kind of tribute to most other Metroid games where the de-powering was just as dumb. Not really a reason for FANRRRRAAAAGGEEEEE to me, but it is easy for fanboy to pull that trigger I guess.

I guess I just wasn't as raged up as almost everyone else that OM wasn't good. I saw all the hate on for OM and really thought "wow, sorry it wasn't the game you felt you deserved. Felt you as a fan were "entitled" to, as it were."

Oops, I used the e-word. Now I've done it. But back to the so called plot hole. Usually people cry "plot hole" when they already hate something and need something petty to pick on. Think about a game or movie or book you love... do you pick apart all the "plot holes" in them? Most people don't bother. But when you hate something plot holes are fair game? People just don't usually use the argument in a fair handed manner. They are too blinded by their hate to think critically, fairly, or even realize that something might not even be a "plot hole" in the first place. It's pretty easy to ignore something you aren't looking for. Most people were just mad because; a. it wasn't as good as they thought they deserved, b. the personality they gave to the previously blank slate character didn't match the one they already gave to that character, or c. both. And I just saw both viewpoints as pretty childish.

 

[Shrack]

This is a military ship we're talking about here. Most of the crew is trained to fight(I'm assuming). So when they open that escape pod and Mr. Necro greets them all with a "YYAAAAAAAAARGHBFLEBEL," I'd just thought it would be put down before it could get the opportunity to kill anymore than 2 people, then a quarantine to determine what in the hell it was.

But then again, I am forgetting this is a horror/action game we're talking about, so maybe every character has the intelligence of a typical horror story character(i.e:not much).

Well, most people act stupid in a horror/action game/movie because they don't know they are in one. While the military personel certainly are trained to fight, are they going to have weapons on had to do it with? Look at modern navies. Most of the time they don't carry weapons unless they are marines or on security detail. When the pod was opened they probably had a couple marines at ready, but really expecting trouble.

 

[Smeatza]

Memory loss by using GFs?

The Guardian Forces draw power from the same section of the mind that stores memories - stated in game.

Cid being married to Edea and them running an orphanage of which all orphans end up being sEED members?

At the end of the game when time is all messed up Squall is transported back in time to when Cid and Edea ran the orphanage and he tells Edea about SEED and the sorceress'. It makes sense that the orphans from the orphanage they run would also be students at the school they run.

Why did Cid never tell the truth about the whole thing?

There's no reason to believe that Edea told him of her conversation with future Squall. Everything else he does tell the truth about when confronted.

Do all monsters come from the moon?

Yes, also stated clearly in game.

The Shumi turn into Moombas if they fail their trails?

The life cycle of the Shumi is also explained in game. Their reaching adulthood involves them evolving into a form that best represents their personality. The Moombas are the most common form of evolution for the Shumi

If the second Sorceress War didn't end until Laguna contained Adel, how could Deling have become president and fought against Esthar in the war?

This could be a legitimate plot-hole. Most information in FF8 points towards there only having been one sorceress war. But this is countered by the phrase "second Sorceress War" a couple of times.
In any case I don't think Laguna defeating the sorceress and Deling being president are mutually exclusive.

What's with the whole "laguna sequences in the past"-thing?

Ellone is using her special magic to send your consciousness back in time. This is also stated very clearly in game.

You get your weapons taken away from you in prison, yet there's a prisoner who has set up shop there?

This I cannot explain.

How do you become a sorceress?

By having a dying sorceress transfer their powers to you. Again, stated clearly in game.

Did Ultimecia create a temporal causality loop by transferring her powers to the past?

The entire game is a temporal causality loop.

Time compression?

A weird idea but not a plot hole.

Final Fantasy 8 takes a lot of flak for it's "plot holes, bad writing, crap characters etc." And while it's certainly not a masterpiece, I don't think it's anyway near as bad as people like to make out.
I certainly don't hate Squall as a character. I guess I empathised with him more than most people managed.

 

[Toxic Sniper]

Uhh yeah... because it's not a plot hole. It's easy... i.e. (if you can connect the dots) not a threat. She's used to it (it happened in several Metroid games and was probably thrown in as a nod to those games.)

Varia-less runs are optional in all Metroid games outside of Other M and are a form of sequence breaking. Therefore, I question that Samus is "used" to it; I haven't done Varia-less runs in any of the Metroid games I played before Other M, and I only started doing them recently.

And it doesn't matter if she's used to it, not using your heat suit when you're constantly taking damage and have the chance of falling into lava is a dumbass move by any measure.

She's obeying Adam's orders as a courtesy, if she was in any real danger nothing was keeping her from disobeying Adam and firing up the Varia. After getting through if she cared about what he thought she could always power it off afterwards and who would know? But she didn't see it as a threat (and neither did I) so she didn't bother... bam, not a plot hole.

Adam's orders were about avoiding collateral damage. The Varia Suit is not a weapon, it's armor. Samus was taking damage that she could have instantly and effortlessly prevented by donning her armor, and it should not have done anything to offend Adam. This is a plot hole.

See how easy that was. Unless you were too mad that "boo hoo, it wasn't the game I wanted or expected" that you could only see things in the worst possible light because that's what you WANTED to see. It wasn't a good game. There are several flaws. Mostly it was too short, too easy, and badly written. However, I can say the same about most games, say... Dishonored. And I really liked Dishonored. The "orders" system of upgrades WAS a terrible idea... but at least it was an attempt to get away from the "can't start with all the weapons" device that they terribly overused. The "tripped over my purse and broke my suit that can take bullet after tusk after lazerblast but flies apart when I fallz down" makes just as little sense really. So they tried something different... and it was dumb. Again a kind of tribute to most other Metroid games where the de-powering was just as dumb. Not really a reason for FANRRRRAAAAGGEEEEE to me, but it is easy for fanboy to pull that trigger I guess.

I guess I just wasn't as raged up as almost everyone else that OM wasn't good. I saw all the hate on for OM and really thought "wow, sorry it wasn't the game you felt you deserved. Felt you as a fan were "entitled" to, as it were."

Oops, I used the e-word. Now I've done it. But back to the so called plot hole. Usually people cry "plot hole" when they already hate something and need something petty to pick on. Think about a game or movie or book you love... do you pick apart all the "plot holes" in them? Most people don't bother. But when you hate something plot holes are fair game? People just don't usually use the argument in a fair handed manner. They are too blinded by their hate to think critically, fairly, or even realize that something might not even be a "plot hole" in the first place. It's pretty easy to ignore something you aren't looking for. Most people were just mad because; a. it wasn't as good as they thought they deserved, b. the personality they gave to the previously blank slate character didn't match the one they already gave to that character, or c. both. And I just saw both viewpoints as pretty childish.

Since the only part of this that actually relates to the topic is the part about losing the power-ups, I'll only address that.

There is a very easy solution to the "bag of spilling" problem Samus has: Just start the game with her at base mode. It was done in Super Metroid, nobody complained. It was done in Metroid Prime 3, nobody complained. Hell, even with the games where Samus loses all her power-ups, people just laughed at the problem and moved on. Some plot holes, like the one I talked about earlier in Metroid Prime, are acceptable because the game doesn't focus on them or shove them in your face, and so it's easy to forgive them. Yeah, it doesn't make sense that Metroid Prime was found outside of Impact Crater, but nobody cares because there aren't sections like the Varia-less run to remind you why that's stupid. The problem with Other M's approach was that it took an alternate approach that had a ton of plot holes and then kept shoving it in our faces over and over.

As for the rest, if you want to argue plot holes, I'd love to continue this discussion. If all you are going to do is yell "HATER HATER HATER HATER!" at the top of your lungs, I'm not going to respond.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Memory loss by using GFs?

The Guardian Forces draw power from the same section of the mind that stores memories - stated in game.

Cid being married to Edea and them running an orphanage of which all orphans end up being sEED members?

At the end of the game when time is all messed up Squall is transported back in time to when Cid and Edea ran the orphanage and he tells Edea about SEED and the sorceress'. It makes sense that the orphans from the orphanage they run would also be students at the school they run.

Why did Cid never tell the truth about the whole thing?

There's no reason to believe that Edea told him of her conversation with future Squall. Everything else he does tell the truth about when confronted.

Do all monsters come from the moon?

Yes, also stated clearly in game.

The Shumi turn into Moombas if they fail their trails?

The life cycle of the Shumi is also explained in game. Their reaching adulthood involves them evolving into a form that best represents their personality. The Moombas are the most common form of evolution for the Shumi

If the second Sorceress War didn't end until Laguna contained Adel, how could Deling have become president and fought against Esthar in the war?

This could be a legitimate plot-hole. Most information in FF8 points towards there only having been one sorceress war. But this is countered by the phrase "second Sorceress War" a couple of times.
In any case I don't think Laguna defeating the sorceress and Deling being president are mutually exclusive.

What's with the whole "laguna sequences in the past"-thing?

Ellone is using her special magic to send your consciousness back in time. This is also stated very clearly in game.

You get your weapons taken away from you in prison, yet there's a prisoner who has set up shop there?

This I cannot explain.

How do you become a sorceress?

By having a dying sorceress transfer their powers to you. Again, stated clearly in game.

Did Ultimecia create a temporal causality loop by transferring her powers to the past?

The entire game is a temporal causality loop.

Time compression?

A weird idea but not a plot hole.

Final Fantasy 8 takes a lot of flak for it's "plot holes, bad writing, crap characters etc." And while it's certainly not a masterpiece, I don't think it's anyway near as bad as people like to make out.
I certainly don't hate Squall as a character. I guess I empathised with him more than most people managed.

FF VIII is original in quite a few ways - not just the story - but it is also has flaws in pretty much every aspect (not in the least the paradoxical Junction System or the ridiculously overpowered Limit Breaks and Card Refining).

This brings me to all the things you answered with: "Yes, also stated clearly in game." In know they are stated in the game, that's why I bring them up. I wouldn't have known of them if they weren't stated in the game. I was just pointing out how ludicrous some of them are, to the point that they might not qualify as a "plot hole" per se, but I already said at the beginning of my post that some of the questions are merely examples of "bad writing" or "simply not explained enough".

1)
I've always found "memory loss" a cheap plot device. Giving it the cause of "the GF did it" instead of "I bumped my head really hard" or "I repressed a trauma" doesn't change that. That also goes for the orphanage thing, maybe it would make a little bit more sense if they never got adopted and stayed in the orphanage till the academy opened. And then they all went to the academy. But we know at least some of them got adopted, not to mention they didn't all go to the same sEED academy where Cid was. It's just really forced.

2)
Same with the interactive flashbacks with Laguna. Yes, I know Ellone is behind it, but it seems like such a cheap explanation. They clearly just wanted to have playable Laguna segments, but their best excuse to activate said sequences is the equivalent of "a wizard did it". I think I'd even prefer a simply ATE (Active Time Event) like in FF IX over something like this. I mean, is it ever even explained how she got the powers? Yes, because of the powers, she becomes a target of Adel, another plot device, but how did she get them?

3)
Monsters. From the moon. You know, I can take the fact that "being shot into space by a gigantic revolver" is a legitimate means of space travel, even though they clearly have space crafts. But the whole "monsters from the moon"-thing... That's really pushing it.

4)
Shumi turning into moomba. In your answer, you pretty much repeated why I just said, but in slightly greater detail, yet it didn't really answer the most poignant question: "Why?" What's the point? Where's the logic? How? How do you even... It is hardly ever mentioned or talked about, yet it seems like such a big deal and completely out of place. There is nothing similar in this game that could warrant a race having such weird physiolo- oh, wait, monsters from the moon. Right...

5)
- "How do you become a sorceress?"
o "By having a dying sorceress transfer their powers to you. Again, stated clearly in game."

Edea wasn't dying when she gave her powers to Rinoa. That said, who was the first sorceress? Was it Adel? Have sorceresses always existed? Can there be a sorcerer? How many sorceresses can there be at the same time? At the start of the time compression, when you fight various incarnations of sorceresses from different time periods, are you changing the timeline by defeating them? Etc.

You know, writing all of this, now that I think of it, Final Fantasy VIII doesn't really have a lot of plot holes. It simply glances over so many aspects and withholds so much information that it isn't even possible to punch a hole into the plot. If plots where made of cheese, FF VIII would be a molten Camembert, too liquid to have any holes, spread all over the place, touching on tons of interesting ideas, but spread too thin because of that, so it cannot guaranty a full taste.

Whelp, I've started making cheese allegories, I guess that's my cue.

 

[SajuukKhar]

-Where does everyone (humans, muties, and ghouls) get their food from if there aren't any functioning farms?

All settlements have brahmin for meat, except Tenpenny Tower, and it's said that Rivet City clones other types of food, like apples and carrots, in their labs, and trades it with the rest of the wasteland for things needed to keep the ship floating.

Not to mention the iguanas, yao guai, mirelurks, radscorpions, radroaches, and other animals that still exist, and can be hunted for meat.

-How do a bunch of ten year olds defend a town indefinitely from Super Mutants that are armed with rocket launchers and miniguns?

The super mutants, while highly aggressive, have been known to avoid things that they cant convert. LL probably doesn't actually have to defend themselves from the Super Mutants, as the kids cant be used to make super mutants, and thus, the super mutants largely avoid them.

Furthermore, most super mutants only have hunting rifles, and normal sledge hammers, it's only the masters, and overlords, which are VERY rare, and probably make up less then a fifth of the super mutant population, that have miniguns and missile launchers, and not even all of them have access to that kind of weaponry.

-If no one is manufacturing ammo on a large scale and all the ammo is pre-war, then why is it so cheap and plentiful?

Have you played The Pitt? Ashur makes ammo on a HUGE scale.

-If the only way to make more Super Mutants is to expose humans to FEV, and the only source of FEV is Vault 87. Then how do they get the humans into the Vault without killing them? The surface entrance is irradiated and inaccessible, and the other is in Little Lamplight.

You don't exactly have to be alive to be turned into a FEV monster.

Beyond that, all the vaults/caves presumably have tons of entrances that we don't see. All those holes in the ceiling that have daylight shining through, that don't exist on the world overmap, for example.

-What makes Tenpenny Tower so rich?

People who earned lots of caps by some means, be it trading, or being a merc long enough to retire.

-Where does the Enclave get enough resources and recruits to invade DC if all of their manufacturing capabilities, "pure" genetic gene pool, and leadership were destroyed along with the oil rig in Fallout 2?

-Their leadership wasn't destroyed in Fallout 2, it was transferred to Eden
-Thier pure genetic pool isn't gone also, I don't know where you got such a notion.
-They don't take over all of D.C., they hold a limited number of 3-5 man outposts, and the water purifier, and that's it. they are a very small operation that only succeeds because their tech is so much better then everyone else's that the concept of "lesser numbers" doesn't effect them.

Also, most of their armor/arms/vertibirds were all things from before the war, left in Raven rock/taken from the oil rig/Navarro after the Enclave fell there. They dot make new things, just repair what they have.

-If FEV was being developed by West Tek before The Great War started, and the virus was never completed, then how did it become part of a Vault-Tec social experiment on the East Coast?

becuase they were testing different strains of it on the east cost, virus development is not a one off deal, multiple strains are usually tested simultaneously in order to find the one that works the best. The whole point of vault 87 was to find a strain that did work.

-If the only person that knew how to make jet died at the end of Fallout 2, then how did jet get across the country to the East Coast and who is making it?

Jet was able to be made by many people, the creator of Jet died, but that doesn't mean the crime family he worked for didn't have the process to make it written down.

Furthermore, as ghoul Murphy from Fallout 3 shows, people not only know how to make Jet, but also how to change it into ultrajet.

As for who brought it, the BoS, Argyle, Harold, or any of the other MANY people who have traveled cross country. The wasteland survival guide made it from Megaton to Vegas in just a few years, jet just took the trip in the other direction.

 

[00slash00]

this isnt really a plot hole, just something i dont understand. in final fantasy 13-2, serah wakes up in strange clothing. they even mention it several times but i dont think it was ever explained why it happened. was it just the result of a paradox? a sudden wardrobe change seems like a bit of a strange paradox