Most convoluted/confusing plots in a game/game series

[Dirty Hipsters]

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

I'd say Souls is all lore and no plot, and I'd describe it as cryptic more than anything else. It's there if you feel like fact-checking the Wikia but the gist of it is you're the Chosen One and you're saving the world by killing monsters. You get the weirdo backstory to a boss or NPC if you look really hard but nothing that matters or factors into your quest. Even if you don't fully appreciate the depth of your actions you always understand what's going on and why, unlike with say MGS, KH or a Suda game.

Yeah, I feel much the same way. The story any Souls Game is fairly simple. It just has a lot of really cryptic background Lore which is there if you want to dig into it. You can easily go through the games without really paying attention if you wanted to and be fine. In most cases, pretty much everything already happened before you showed up. You're just cleaning up the mess.

The lore in Dark Souls isn't just cryptic, a lot of it contradicts itself. Sometimes because of translation errors, sometimes because parts of the lore came from previous builds in the game.

For example in Dark Souls 1 there's a bunch of clues that Andre is Gwyn's first-born. That's because in a previous build of the game he actually was, and played a much bigger role in the plot than just being a black-smith. In the community there was this whole mystery about who Gwyn's first born was and there was never any consensus. Some people thought it was Andre, some people thought it was Solaire, and it turned out to be none of the above.

It was unclear what exactly the first born even did that got him banished. The first game says that he lost the annals of history, but that was a translation error, and what it meant to say was that he was lost TO the annals of history, meaning he and his transgression were removed from the history books so no one could know what he did. There was never meant to be an answer to what his transgression was, but because of a translation error the game accidentally had lore that wasn't supposed to be there.

Eventually Dark Souls 3 came out, and it featured Gwyn's first born and we found out that he was banished and erased from history because he sided with the dragons. That was never information that was meant to be in Dark Souls 1 though, it was a retcon. Miyazaki didn't realize that people would get so invested in the non-character of Gwyn's first born, so when he decided against making Andre the first born he never wrote a replacement, that part of the lore was never meant to be completed, but there was already so much work put into the game's areas and so much lore about the first born that it couldn't be removed. It was a scrapped story line that just ended up being in the full game because From Software didn't want to take the time to remove it.

People latched on to this lore, created this whole mystery about it, and it was just a cut story line from a previous build of the game punctuated with a translation error, but everyone still inserted it into their head-canon.

This is even more clear in Dark Souls 2 and 3, both of which had completely different stories until halfway through production. Dark Souls 2 was supposed to be all about time travel, and Dark Souls 3 was supposed to be about fighting 5 Dark Lords rather than people who previously linked the fire, and some of the lore in those games works much more coherently with the originally intended plot.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

None of the games ever quite finish development, and From Software tends to craft the lore to fit the world that they created rather than the other way around. Areas and enemies constantly get shuffled around in development, and then a new story and lore gets constructed around it.

Why is the story so hard to understand? Because it was constantly being rewritten during development so when you're trying to fit the lore together you're fitting together pieces from a bunch of different unfinished story threads.

Honestly, I find it rather admirable how effectively Soulsborne games convey information with minimal exposition. I could play a game like Final Fantasy 13, a game with hours of cutscenes and dialogue, for 40 hours and still only have a vague idea what Fal'cie and L'cie are, how the world works and who most people outside of the main party are.

Yet I can play Bloodborne, a 20 hour action game with minimal cutscenes and exposition, and still tell you who the Healing Church, the College of Byrgenwerth and the School of Mensis are, what theiy believe and how they relate to each other and Yharnam as a whole.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

KH is just a meme people bring forth. The parts of its plot that are convoluted are all background stuff you don't really need to pay attention to as you are playing the game. They're more stuff you notice later as you connect the dots. The wrong implication basically is that KH is so convoluted that you won't be able to follow what the hell is going on unless you play everything and write a master thesis on it, which is entirely wrong. KH is a game primarily made for kids and young teens, more so than practically every other square offering of the same production values. If it was this hard to get into a child who is likely coming into KH with KH3 in the current day would have no hope of enjoying the game, yet they still are making it as I describe, so clearly this isn't an issue.

I mean the story still did some massive shift that hard to reconcile without extra explanation (not saying that the extra explanation make it better). Like KH1 had a large arc about how the key blade was unique and Sora was the chosen one... but now there are millions of key blade and pretty much anyone can wield one. There's maybe 16 different version of Ansem running around, which can all be good or bad depending on the phase of the moon.

And ultimately the problem is that none of that bring anything to the story, nobody really cared whether Ansem was the reincarnation of some old guy, they just wanted a cool villain. But now playing KH3 will include mention to all the side project. Like how KH2 started following the event of chain of memory, which I'm pretty sure less than 20% of people who played KH2 even played. I was vaguely aware of what happened in chain of memory so it wasn't that much of an issue for me, but I imagine someone who didn't even know it existed must have been really confused. Now the problem is that between 2 and 3 there was something like 6 spin off that happened. How many people have any idea what happened in dream drop distance? Or even birth by sleep?

I was one of those who played CoM back in the day, loved it to death too and I think I beat it in like 2 days of nonstop playing. Thing is, you really didn't need to know who Namine was to enjoy KH2. This is like that with KH3 too. You really don't need to know what happens in BBS or the other spinoffs to enjoy the game, it just makes some of the other references a bit more meaningful.


I will repeat myself so that the point hits home. This game is primarily made for kids and young teens, more so than any other game of the same production values by square. This game is made to be enjoyable fully by someone whose first exposure to KH will be KH3, since you will have MILLIONS of young kids who will just get it cause it's Disney and looks anime and cool. That being the case, the game clearly doesn't require you to know all that backstory to have fun with it.

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

None of the games ever quite finish development, and From Software tends to craft the lore to fit the world that they created rather than the other way around. Areas and enemies constantly get shuffled around in development, and then a new story and lore gets constructed around it.

Why is the story so hard to understand? Because it was constantly being rewritten during development so when you're trying to fit the lore together you're fitting together pieces from a bunch of different unfinished story threads.

Honestly, I find it rather admirable how effectively Soulsborne games convey information with minimal exposition. I could play a game like Final Fantasy 13, a game with hours of cutscenes and dialogue, for 40 hours and still only have a vague idea what Fal'cie and L'cie are, how the world works and who most people outside of the main party are.

That's cause FFXIII's prologue novel series is what actually explains what Farushie and Ruishie are and you are expected to already know this stuff by the time you play the story, it was done to limit the exposition you have to slog through in the main game.

Back when the game was in production, the novels were being released chapter by chapter on the official Japanese website of the game for free. You even had fantranslation of them (which I believe are still up) that you could go and read in preparation for the hype. They also had Sera as the protagonist, which explains why everyone's so frantic about saving her and why she's the protag in the second game. She was the central char in the novels.

 

[Dalisclock]

That's cause FFXIII's prologue novel series is what actually explains what Farushie and Ruishie are and you are expected to already know this stuff by the time you play the story, it was done to limit the exposition you have to slog through in the main game.

Back when the game was in production, the novels were being released chapter by chapter on the official Japanese website of the game for free. You even had fantranslation of them (which I believe are still up) that you could go and read in preparation for the hype. They also had Sera as the protagonist, which explains why everyone's so frantic about saving her and why she's the protag in the second game. She was the central char in the novels.

This feels like a very poor idea for storytelling. Sure, there's a 50-ish hour game that's full of dialouge and cutscenes(something like 9 hours worth) but in order to get the story, ya gotta read the prequel book. That's as bad as FF XV doing the "Oh, the big war plot? That's in the movie. Watch the movie. Because fuck you if we're gonna include it in the game"

Seriously, you have a 40-60 hour game, would it kill you to do more with the story then "Watch the movie" or "Read the book"? Or would that take too much time away from dialogue like "Moms are Tough" or "Enemies of Cocoon" and those cutscenes where gods turn into motorcycles.?

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

That's cause FFXIII's prologue novel series is what actually explains what Farushie and Ruishie are and you are expected to already know this stuff by the time you play the story, it was done to limit the exposition you have to slog through in the main game.

Back when the game was in production, the novels were being released chapter by chapter on the official Japanese website of the game for free. You even had fantranslation of them (which I believe are still up) that you could go and read in preparation for the hype. They also had Sera as the protagonist, which explains why everyone's so frantic about saving her and why she's the protag in the second game. She was the central char in the novels.

That's a total copout, though. If you're making a storydriven game, yet understanding the story relies on information not actually in the game, you've failed at making a storydriven game.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

That's cause FFXIII's prologue novel series is what actually explains what Farushie and Ruishie are and you are expected to already know this stuff by the time you play the story, it was done to limit the exposition you have to slog through in the main game.

Back when the game was in production, the novels were being released chapter by chapter on the official Japanese website of the game for free. You even had fantranslation of them (which I believe are still up) that you could go and read in preparation for the hype. They also had Sera as the protagonist, which explains why everyone's so frantic about saving her and why she's the protag in the second game. She was the central char in the novels.

That's a total copout, though. If you're making a storydriven game, yet understanding the story relies on information not actually in the game, you've failed at making a storydriven game.

I just think that if you do actually read that stuff the game's story excellent though. It is fully gripping. Like, you know how Hope's mom dies early on and later on how he gets to meet his dad in this one brief part. Well, there's a whole entire chapter about his upbringing and that one fleshes out his mom a ton and illustrates his frayed relationship with his dad which makes all those moments incredibly impactful if you have that context. I remember reading it back in the day and it was excellent. Sure, it sucks if you don't read it for some reason (and it's fair to blame SE for not initially publicizing this content in the west, though there was the fantranslation that existed 6+ months prior to the USA release and anyone in the know would be told to go read it) but ultimately what they actually intended to do was great in my eyes so I can't diminish it.

It's traditionalism to say "all of the story has to be in the game" without examining how good of an experience it makes to do it that way instead. Maybe this new way is better. Not even entertaining the possibility that it might be, or that it might be interesting, different and worthwhile if not strictly better, and just dismissing it out of hand is I think myopic at best.

Also it's worth noting that there's almost no combat or even "action" at all in most of those books, it's more like a slice of life story with some world-building. So I don't think they'd make a very compelling element of a FF game which is expected to have random encounters and bosses and flashy action and so on. You'd have a good 10+ hours of visual novel style cutscenes which, while entirely my cup of tea, aren't really what mainstream gamers would really care for.


As for FFXV, the best storytelling in that game wasn't neither in the movie nor in the actual game but in the 5 short Brotherhood anime OVAs they did. Watching those and then playing the game made me wish they'd made the game's story more like that of those OVAs.

 

[Hawki]

It's traditionalism to say "all of the story has to be in the game" without examining how good of an experience it makes to do it that way instead. Maybe this new way is better. Not even entertaining the possibility that it might be, or that it might be interesting, different and worthwhile if not strictly better, and just dismissing it out of hand is I think myopic at best.

Even as someone who edits wikis and gets lots of EU stuff, not fond of this idea. If your story needs external material to function, something's gone wrong along the way. I can't comment on Final Fantasy, but I CAN comment on Halo 4 - even as someone who'd read the EU prior to the game, I was like "huh?" along most of the way. Those who only played the games, I can't imagine how they'd be able to make sense of a lot of the story.

Now, bear in mind, I actually like expanded universes, but they should always support the foundations of an IP, not be the foundations themselves (unless you're dealing with something like LoL or Overwatch).

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

It's traditionalism to say "all of the story has to be in the game" without examining how good of an experience it makes to do it that way instead. Maybe this new way is better. Not even entertaining the possibility that it might be, or that it might be interesting, different and worthwhile if not strictly better, and just dismissing it out of hand is I think myopic at best.

Even as someone who edits wikis and gets lots of EU stuff, not fond of this idea. If your story needs external material to function, something's gone wrong along the way. I can't comment on Final Fantasy, but I CAN comment on Halo 4 - even as someone who'd read the EU prior to the game, I was like "huh?" along most of the way. Those who only played the games, I can't imagine how they'd be able to make sense of a lot of the story.

Now, bear in mind, I actually like expanded universes, but they should always support the foundations of an IP, not be the foundations themselves (unless you're dealing with something like LoL or Overwatch).

I'm just fully agnostic about it conceptually and go in with an open mind. I just look at "how they intend the thing to be consumed" then consume it as intended, then report how that ends up as.

In the case of FFXIII, it was excellent.

That's all, really.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

It's traditionalism to say "all of the story has to be in the game" without examining how good of an experience it makes to do it that way instead. Maybe this new way is better. Not even entertaining the possibility that it might be, or that it might be interesting, different and worthwhile if not strictly better, and just dismissing it out of hand is I think myopic at best.

I'm not opposed to multimedia storytelling on principle but that comes with a whole bunch of conditions. For one, video games and the devices to play them on are expensive. If you expect the player to buy books or comics or a DVD in addition to that if they want the whole story then you can fuck right off. It's fine if it's released for free but you can't expect the player to pay extra for the story to actually make sense if you release a game for 60 ?. Final Fantasy XV went out of its way to separate each individual party member from the rest of the party just so they can have their own paid DLC. That's bullshit.

Also talking about FF XV, almost everything that's happened in Kingsglaive would have been more enjoyable, had it actually been playable.
It's a story about war and invasion, full of action. Why make it a movie?

Also, and I'm looking at Kingdom Hearts here: Telling a story over multiple different games is fine. Telling a story over multiple different console generations is tolerable. Telling a story over multiple different consoles within the same generation is unreasonable. Expecting the player to buy a PS4, a Gameboy Advance, a Nintendo DS, a Sony PSP, a Nintendo 3DS, a PS4, and a smartphone to get the whole story is, frankly, bleeding your costumer dry. Of course they rectified it by eventually releasing a collection of most of the series for the PS4 but it sure took them a while.

 

[Dalisclock]

Spoiler

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

I'd say Souls is all lore and no plot, and I'd describe it as cryptic more than anything else. It's there if you feel like fact-checking the Wikia but the gist of it is you're the Chosen One and you're saving the world by killing monsters. You get the weirdo backstory to a boss or NPC if you look really hard but nothing that matters or factors into your quest. Even if you don't fully appreciate the depth of your actions you always understand what's going on and why, unlike with say MGS, KH or a Suda game.

Yeah, I feel much the same way. The story any Souls Game is fairly simple. It just has a lot of really cryptic background Lore which is there if you want to dig into it. You can easily go through the games without really paying attention if you wanted to and be fine. In most cases, pretty much everything already happened before you showed up. You're just cleaning up the mess.

The lore in Dark Souls isn't just cryptic, a lot of it contradicts itself. Sometimes because of translation errors, sometimes because parts of the lore came from previous builds in the game.

For example in Dark Souls 1 there's a bunch of clues that Andre is Gwyn's first-born. That's because in a previous build of the game he actually was, and played a much bigger role in the plot than just being a black-smith. In the community there was this whole mystery about who Gwyn's first born was and there was never any consensus. Some people thought it was Andre, some people thought it was Solaire, and it turned out to be none of the above.

It was unclear what exactly the first born even did that got him banished. The first game says that he lost the annals of history, but that was a translation error, and what it meant to say was that he was lost TO the annals of history, meaning he and his transgression were removed from the history books so no one could know what he did. There was never meant to be an answer to what his transgression was, but because of a translation error the game accidentally had lore that wasn't supposed to be there.

Eventually Dark Souls 3 came out, and it featured Gwyn's first born and we found out that he was banished and erased from history because he sided with the dragons. That was never information that was meant to be in Dark Souls 1 though, it was a retcon. Miyazaki didn't realize that people would get so invested in the non-character of Gwyn's first born, so when he decided against making Andre the first born he never wrote a replacement, that part of the lore was never meant to be completed, but there was already so much work put into the game's areas and so much lore about the first born that it couldn't be removed. It was a scrapped story line that just ended up being in the full game because From Software didn't want to take the time to remove it.

People latched on to this lore, created this whole mystery about it, and it was just a cut story line from a previous build of the game punctuated with a translation error, but everyone still inserted it into their head-canon.

This is even more clear in Dark Souls 2 and 3, both of which had completely different stories until halfway through production. Dark Souls 2 was supposed to be all about time travel, and Dark Souls 3 was supposed to be about fighting 5 Dark Lords rather than people who previously linked the fire, and some of the lore in those games works much more coherently with the originally intended plot

.

Well....I just...*sigh*.

When you put it that way it makes it feel like pondering any of it was and is a huge waste of time, or at the very least indelibly futile. Although I also agree that it perhaps never was meant to have a ?plot? and is cryptically lore-based. I remember also reading Miyazaki saying only he kept the true meaning of it all to himself; probably because we as players were meant to do the same and draw our own various conclusions. Hoping Sekiro?s story is approached somewhere in the middle of that and something more traditional though.

Another one that twisted me was Silent Hill. I loved the series (even, and in some ways especially 4) and the sense of tension, unease and dread it invoked, but damn if it didn?t get messy. Or perhaps simply difficult to interpret based on what was presented. Especially the first movie, which all things considered at least nailed the audio-visual presentation if little else.

As for the MGS series, I?ve also played all the main games, although have yet to finish ?all? of V?s missions. Taking a long break seemed wise after finishing the primary chunk and a plethora of side missions.

However, this is one of the better writings [https://www.gamesradar.com/mgs5-unfinished-s-entirely-point/] I?ve found to help acquiesce my feeling about the series? culmination, and there are even better commentaries wiki?d about here [https://www.metagearsolid.org/reports_mgs4_longdark.html] of Kojima?s possible reasoning for the latter games being as they are. It?s enough to make me wonder if he really isn?t a crazed genius whose messages are simply lost in translation and/or cultural dissonance.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

It's traditionalism to say "all of the story has to be in the game" without examining how good of an experience it makes to do it that way instead. Maybe this new way is better. Not even entertaining the possibility that it might be, or that it might be interesting, different and worthwhile if not strictly better, and just dismissing it out of hand is I think myopic at best.

I'm not opposed to multimedia storytelling on principle but that comes with a whole bunch of conditions. For one, video games and the devices to play them on are expensive. If you expect the player to buy books or comics or a DVD in addition to that if they want the whole story then you can fuck right off. It's fine if it's released for free but you can't expect the player to pay extra for the story to actually make sense if you release a game for 60 ?. Final Fantasy XV went out of its way to separate each individual party member from the rest of the party just so they can have their own paid DLC. That's bullshit.

Also talking about FF XV, almost everything that's happened in Kingsglaive would have been more enjoyable, had it actually been playable.
It's a story about war and invasion, full of action. Why make it a movie?

Also, and I'm looking at Kingdom Hearts here: Telling a story over multiple different games is fine. Telling a story over multiple different console generations is tolerable. Telling a story over multiple different consoles within the same generation is unreasonable. Expecting the player to buy a PS4, a Gameboy Advance, a Nintendo DS, a Sony PSP, a Nintendo 3DS, a PS4, and a smartphone to get the whole story is, frankly, bleeding your costumer dry. Of course they rectified it by eventually releasing a collection of most of the series for the PS4 but it sure took them a while.

FFXIII's novels, like I wrote above, were available for free. You would just go to the official website and read them on your computer or even your ps3 if you only had the device that lets you play the game and nothing else. Same goes for the FFXV stuff, both kingsglaive and Brotherhood can be watched online for free. As for FFXV DLC, most of it is free I believe.

As for KH, you really are blurring the lines by considering spinoffs as parts of "one story" when in fact it's all pretty self-contained outside of the main numbered trilogy. You really don't need to play any of them before playing any other. Also, there is a bundle for ps4 that has all those games ported and combined in one purchase, so you just need the one console to get all of it.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Spoiler

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

I'd say Souls is all lore and no plot, and I'd describe it as cryptic more than anything else. It's there if you feel like fact-checking the Wikia but the gist of it is you're the Chosen One and you're saving the world by killing monsters. You get the weirdo backstory to a boss or NPC if you look really hard but nothing that matters or factors into your quest. Even if you don't fully appreciate the depth of your actions you always understand what's going on and why, unlike with say MGS, KH or a Suda game.

Yeah, I feel much the same way. The story any Souls Game is fairly simple. It just has a lot of really cryptic background Lore which is there if you want to dig into it. You can easily go through the games without really paying attention if you wanted to and be fine. In most cases, pretty much everything already happened before you showed up. You're just cleaning up the mess.

The lore in Dark Souls isn't just cryptic, a lot of it contradicts itself. Sometimes because of translation errors, sometimes because parts of the lore came from previous builds in the game.

For example in Dark Souls 1 there's a bunch of clues that Andre is Gwyn's first-born. That's because in a previous build of the game he actually was, and played a much bigger role in the plot than just being a black-smith. In the community there was this whole mystery about who Gwyn's first born was and there was never any consensus. Some people thought it was Andre, some people thought it was Solaire, and it turned out to be none of the above.

It was unclear what exactly the first born even did that got him banished. The first game says that he lost the annals of history, but that was a translation error, and what it meant to say was that he was lost TO the annals of history, meaning he and his transgression were removed from the history books so no one could know what he did. There was never meant to be an answer to what his transgression was, but because of a translation error the game accidentally had lore that wasn't supposed to be there.

Eventually Dark Souls 3 came out, and it featured Gwyn's first born and we found out that he was banished and erased from history because he sided with the dragons. That was never information that was meant to be in Dark Souls 1 though, it was a retcon. Miyazaki didn't realize that people would get so invested in the non-character of Gwyn's first born, so when he decided against making Andre the first born he never wrote a replacement, that part of the lore was never meant to be completed, but there was already so much work put into the game's areas and so much lore about the first born that it couldn't be removed. It was a scrapped story line that just ended up being in the full game because From Software didn't want to take the time to remove it.

People latched on to this lore, created this whole mystery about it, and it was just a cut story line from a previous build of the game punctuated with a translation error, but everyone still inserted it into their head-canon.

This is even more clear in Dark Souls 2 and 3, both of which had completely different stories until halfway through production. Dark Souls 2 was supposed to be all about time travel, and Dark Souls 3 was supposed to be about fighting 5 Dark Lords rather than people who previously linked the fire, and some of the lore in those games works much more coherently with the originally intended plot

.

Well....I just...*sigh*.

When you put it that way it makes it feel like pondering any of it was and is a huge waste of time, or at the very least indelibly futile. Although I also agree that it perhaps never was meant to have a ?plot? and is cryptically lore-based. I remember also reading Miyazaki saying only he kept the true meaning of it all to himself; probably because we as players were meant to do the same and draw our own various conclusions. Hoping Sekiro?s story is approached somewhere in the middle of that and something more traditional though.

Another one that twisted me was Silent Hill. I loved the series (even, and in some ways especially 4) and the sense of tension, unease and dread it invoked, but damn if it didnmt get messy. Or perhaps simply difficult to interpret based on what was presented. Especially the movie, which all things considered at least nailed the audio-visual presentation if little else.

As for the MGS series, I?ve also played all the main games, although have yet to finish ?all? of V?s missions. Taking a long break seemed wise after finishing the primary chunk and a plethora of side missions.

However, this is one of the better writings [https://www.gamesradar.com/mgs5-unfinished-s-entirely-point/] I?ve found to help acquiesce my feeling about the series? culmination, and there are even better commentaries wiki?d about here [https://www.metagearsolid.org/reports_mgs4_longdark.html] of Kojima?s possible reasoning for the latter games being as they are. It?s enough to make me wonder if he really isn?t a crazed genius whose messages are simply lost in translation and/or cultural dissonance.

I've been thinking a lot about MGS V and Hideo Kojima as an artist in general and there's something to be said about him. The man's a postmodernist to the core. As a matter of fact MGS 2 is the go to game to explain to a gamer what postmodernist fiction even is. And while I'm not sure if it's a mandatory part of post modernist fiction, what most of it does share is the fact that it puts theme above everything else. Above plot, above structure, above logic and certainly above mass appeal.

If we look at MGS V as an attempt to satisfyingly conclude the Metal Gear series as a story or even as an attempt to make a game that's enjoyable to play it's not only a failure but both mechanically and narratively nonsensical. Noone in their right mind could look at MGS V's story in the context of the larger series and think "this is a good story" or at mechanics like pretty much everything surrounding the management of Outer Heaven and think "this is fun gameplay". However, and this occured to me, if we look at MGS V as a vehicle to explore themes that Hideo Kojima has definitely explored before in the series, a lot of it starts to make sense.

Previous Metal Gear games have talked about war as a neverending spiral of dehumanized violence carried out by PMCs with little personal connection to the political or emotional realities behind it. What do you spend most of MGS V doing? Playing the leader (or, optionally, a member) of a PMC participating in local conflicts, committing dehumanized acts of violence with little personal connection to the human or emotional realities behind them.

Most Metal Gear games are about a protagonist who is led to think of himself as a heroic soldier finding out that all along he's been the pawn of forces and institutions following their own selfish agenda? Well, MGS V ends with the player finding out that when all the time he thought he was Big Boss he was actually a random underling led to think he was Big Boss in an attempt to distract the actual Big Boss's enemies from his real plans that you never get to see first hand.

Previous Metal Gear games have talked about the war economy as a series of abstract business transactions removed from the death and suffering that war brings to the people it directly affects? Well, a large part of MGS V consists of sending your mercenaries on missions that are only depicted through minimalist representations, developing weapons and training soldiers, all of which are only represented as abstract numbers and statistics while managing Mother Base.

Previous Metal Gear games have talked about how everything we think of as information is a barely coherent patchwork that undergoes numerous revisions and manipulatiosn as soon as it's communicated through any medium, full of blank spaces, ambiguities and aspects that are downright illogical? Well, look at the games story.

All of this sounds like I'm trying to defend MGS V as a masterpiece of subtle storytelling and I'm really not. I don't know if the attitude towards MGS V is gonna change in any significant way as time goes by but, to loosely quote Roger Ebert, while one day it may be perceived as a deeply subversive work of art, I don't think it'll ever be perceived as a very good game. It's just not enjoyable enough for that.

Fact is, well before the game came out, Kojima twittered that he was planning to do something with it that might prove so controversial he may have to leave the industry forever. Which lead to some puzzlement when it actually came out, because nothing that happens in the game is particularly provocative. But maybe that's what he meant. Maybe it was his intention to forego any sense of narrative closure or satisfying gameplay (To be fair, mechanically the gameplay is absolutely fine, but the mission design is rather barebones) in favour of communicating some of the central themes of the franchise directly to the player, not through plot but through design philosophy. And, I mean, it probably doesn't help that at this point he was very tired of both Konami and the Metal Gear fanbase for having him make more Metal Gear games when he's been wanting to do something else for over a decade, that he simply didn't care if people would like it or not.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Resident Evil is a dumb one too. What's so frustrating about it is that it doesn't "have" to be confusing or convoluted, but it sure got that way the more the games delved into the past of Umbrella and came up with ways to keep it alive after its official demise.

 

[BrawlMan]

Resident Evil is a dumb one too. What's so frustrating about it is that it doesn't "have" to be confusing or convoluted, but it sure got that way the more the games delved into the past of Umbrella and came up with ways to keep it alive after its official demise.

RE suffered the case of sequel escalation/DBZ syndrome. The whole Neo Umbrella conspiracy was stupid and I am glad they dropped it in VII. At least Blue Umbrella is trying fix past mistakes even though it's a different kind of retcon. The Devil May Cry series suffers from this to a slight degree. You can blame Capcom for trying to rush the sequel out the door without asking for permission from the original creator.

I'll throw in Tekken (fuck the Mishima storyline!), Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or almost any fighting game.

Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive too. See this ridiculous shit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fczFx4SR41s

Sonic got convoluted post SA2 until Unleashed.

 

[Dalisclock]

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

I'd say Souls is all lore and no plot, and I'd describe it as cryptic more than anything else. It's there if you feel like fact-checking the Wikia but the gist of it is you're the Chosen One and you're saving the world by killing monsters. You get the weirdo backstory to a boss or NPC if you look really hard but nothing that matters or factors into your quest. Even if you don't fully appreciate the depth of your actions you always understand what's going on and why, unlike with say MGS, KH or a Suda game.

Yeah, I feel much the same way. The story any Souls Game is fairly simple. It just has a lot of really cryptic background Lore which is there if you want to dig into it. You can easily go through the games without really paying attention if you wanted to and be fine. In most cases, pretty much everything already happened before you showed up. You're just cleaning up the mess.

The lore in Dark Souls isn't just cryptic, a lot of it contradicts itself. Sometimes because of translation errors, sometimes because parts of the lore came from previous builds in the game.


This is even more clear in Dark Souls 2 and 3, both of which had completely different stories until halfway through production. Dark Souls 2 was supposed to be all about time travel, and Dark Souls 3 was supposed to be about fighting 5 Dark Lords rather than people who previously linked the fire, and some of the lore in those games works much more coherently with the originally intended plot.

Yeah, once I found out about the time travel stuff from the original plans from DS2, suddenly the intro movie(which right now has almost no connection to the rest of the game) suddenly makes a lot more sense(well, broadly speaking anyway).

Speaking of contradictions, didn't DS3 pull some BS about Orestein and Smough from DS1 just being illusions or something? I guess that rankles me a bit because getting smashed by a giant hammer or speared from halfway across the room 30 times in a row sure didn't feel like an illusion. The fact that beating them is kind of a point you're entitled to feel like a badass is the other reason I'm annoyed by the idea, like "oh, you just beat up some shadow puppets. Your victory was fake"

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

I'd say Souls is all lore and no plot, and I'd describe it as cryptic more than anything else. It's there if you feel like fact-checking the Wikia but the gist of it is you're the Chosen One and you're saving the world by killing monsters. You get the weirdo backstory to a boss or NPC if you look really hard but nothing that matters or factors into your quest. Even if you don't fully appreciate the depth of your actions you always understand what's going on and why, unlike with say MGS, KH or a Suda game.

Yeah, I feel much the same way. The story any Souls Game is fairly simple. It just has a lot of really cryptic background Lore which is there if you want to dig into it. You can easily go through the games without really paying attention if you wanted to and be fine. In most cases, pretty much everything already happened before you showed up. You're just cleaning up the mess.

The lore in Dark Souls isn't just cryptic, a lot of it contradicts itself. Sometimes because of translation errors, sometimes because parts of the lore came from previous builds in the game.


This is even more clear in Dark Souls 2 and 3, both of which had completely different stories until halfway through production. Dark Souls 2 was supposed to be all about time travel, and Dark Souls 3 was supposed to be about fighting 5 Dark Lords rather than people who previously linked the fire, and some of the lore in those games works much more coherently with the originally intended plot.

Yeah, once I found out about the time travel stuff from the original plans from DS2, suddenly the intro movie(which right now has almost no connection to the rest of the game) suddenly makes a lot more sense(well, broadly speaking anyway).

Speaking of contradictions, didn't DS3 pull some BS about Orestein and Smough from DS1 just being illusions or something? I guess that rankles me a bit because getting smashed by a giant hammer or speared from halfway across the room 30 times in a row sure didn't feel like an illusion. The fact that beating them is kind of a point you're entitled to feel like a badass is the other reason I'm annoyed by the idea, like "oh, you just beat up some shadow puppets. Your victory was fake"

Ornstein being an illusion was a theory for a while even before Dark Souls 3. Might have even been before Dark Souls 2.

The story gets away with killing Ornstein in 3 different games because "time and space are convoluted in Lordran" so you don't even necessarily need the illusion angle.

 

[rosac]

Resident Evil is a dumb one too. What's so frustrating about it is that it doesn't "have" to be confusing or convoluted, but it sure got that way the more the games delved into the past of Umbrella and came up with ways to keep it alive after its official demise.

RE suffered the case of sequel escalation/DBZ syndrome. The whole Neo Umbrella conspiracy was stupid and I am glad they dropped it in VII. At least Blue Umbrella is trying fix past mistakes even though it's a different kind of retcon. The Devil May Cry series suffers from this to a slight degree. You can blame Capcom for trying to rush the sequel out the door without asking for permission from the original creator.

I'll throw in Tekken (fuck the Mishima storyline!), Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or almost any fighting game.

Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive too. See this ridiculous shit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fczFx4SR41s

Sonic got convoluted post SA2 until Unleashed.

I was really glad that 4 managed to ignore umbrella for 99% of the game. It's a zombie game, we do not need massive conspiracies.

 

[Dalisclock]

It's been 17 posts and no one mentioned the Dark Souls games?

I LOVE those games, but holy shit is the plot and lore nonsense.

I'd say Souls is all lore and no plot, and I'd describe it as cryptic more than anything else. It's there if you feel like fact-checking the Wikia but the gist of it is you're the Chosen One and you're saving the world by killing monsters. You get the weirdo backstory to a boss or NPC if you look really hard but nothing that matters or factors into your quest. Even if you don't fully appreciate the depth of your actions you always understand what's going on and why, unlike with say MGS, KH or a Suda game.

Yeah, I feel much the same way. The story any Souls Game is fairly simple. It just has a lot of really cryptic background Lore which is there if you want to dig into it. You can easily go through the games without really paying attention if you wanted to and be fine. In most cases, pretty much everything already happened before you showed up. You're just cleaning up the mess.

The lore in Dark Souls isn't just cryptic, a lot of it contradicts itself. Sometimes because of translation errors, sometimes because parts of the lore came from previous builds in the game.


This is even more clear in Dark Souls 2 and 3, both of which had completely different stories until halfway through production. Dark Souls 2 was supposed to be all about time travel, and Dark Souls 3 was supposed to be about fighting 5 Dark Lords rather than people who previously linked the fire, and some of the lore in those games works much more coherently with the originally intended plot.

Yeah, once I found out about the time travel stuff from the original plans from DS2, suddenly the intro movie(which right now has almost no connection to the rest of the game) suddenly makes a lot more sense(well, broadly speaking anyway).

Speaking of contradictions, didn't DS3 pull some BS about Orestein and Smough from DS1 just being illusions or something? I guess that rankles me a bit because getting smashed by a giant hammer or speared from halfway across the room 30 times in a row sure didn't feel like an illusion. The fact that beating them is kind of a point you're entitled to feel like a badass is the other reason I'm annoyed by the idea, like "oh, you just beat up some shadow puppets. Your victory was fake"

Ornstein being an illusion was a theory for a while even before Dark Souls 3. Might have even been before Dark Souls 2.

The story gets away with killing Ornstein in 3 different games because "time and space are convoluted in Lordran" so you don't even necessarily need the illusion angle.

Honestly, that's how I preferred to look at it when I meet him in DS2. I mean, other then the fanservice angle.

 

[Dalisclock]

FFXIII's novels, like I wrote above, were available for free. You would just go to the official website and read them on your computer or even your ps3 if you only had the device that lets you play the game and nothing else. Same goes for the FFXV stuff, both kingsglaive and Brotherhood can be watched online for free. As for FFXV DLC, most of it is free I believe.

I know you can watch Kingsglaive and Brotherhood for free. That's not the point. The point being, if you can make a 40-50 hour game, it really isn't too much to ask that the game tell more or less the complete story. Final Fantasy was really good at this for a while, even if the stories weren't always great and numerous other RPGs I can rattle off if you want. Being able to stick a bunch of cutscenes in there does not excuse the need to tell a story properly and develop the characters.

Hell, I'm not a terribly huge fan of FFX or it's story but the story it told was pretty complete without having for me to wander off into the web to watch a movie, an anime series or read a short novel. That game was linear as hell and full of cutscenes, not unlike FFXIII and it's brood(sequels), but it suceeded in using it's runtime fairly efficently to explain what was going on. FFXIII, OTOH, has a core of a good idea that's buried under some terrible pacing, crappy dialouge, boring characters who talk a lot but don't say much.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

FFXIII's novels, like I wrote above, were available for free. You would just go to the official website and read them on your computer or even your ps3 if you only had the device that lets you play the game and nothing else. Same goes for the FFXV stuff, both kingsglaive and Brotherhood can be watched online for free. As for FFXV DLC, most of it is free I believe.

I know you can watch Kingsglaive and Brotherhood for free. That's not the point. The point being, if you can make a 40-50 hour game, it really isn't too much to ask that the game tell more or less the complete story. Final Fantasy was really good at this for a while, even if the stories weren't always great and numerous other RPGs I can rattle off if you want. Being able to stick a bunch of cutscenes in there does not excuse the need to tell a story properly and develop the characters.

Hell, I'm not a terribly huge fan of FFX or it's story but the story it told was pretty complete without having for me to wander off into the web to watch a movie, an anime series or read a short novel. That game was linear as hell and full of cutscenes, not unlike FFXIII and it's brood(sequels), but it suceeded in using it's runtime fairly efficently to explain what was going on. FFXIII, OTOH, has a core of a good idea that's buried under some terrible pacing, crappy dialouge, boring characters who talk a lot but don't say much.

Aaaaactually...
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X-2.5_~Eien_no_Daish%C5%8D~


FFX's　sequel novel series is also a thing, and it's pretty good. Also there were talks a while back of making a third game in the X world following the story of Eien no Daisho based on the popularity of the story since it was written by the writer of the games themselves. Though they're too busy with the VII remake atm to work on that too.