Name a Plot Hole and Has It Ruined the Game for You.

[senordesol]

Far Cry 2 & Far Cry 3: They seem to assume a complete reversal of established motivations that just don't make any sense. Why do I no longer want to kill the Jackal? Why on Earth would I betray the same friends I just went through Hell and back for saving?

 

[SajuukKhar]

isn't the FEV thing explained by the East coast magic that also turns the BoS into nice people and makes jet appear in closed Vaults?

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Owyn_Lyons
Fallout 3: Released 2008: Developer, Bethesda Softworks

"(...) I likened Elder Lyons's situation to that of the Vault Dweller in Fallout. Both of them were raised in an insular, xenophobic, technologically advanced society, were cast out of that society on a mission to find some important tech, and found themselves alone and in control of their destiny for the first time. And like the Vault Dweller ( at least, the Vault Dweller on my saved games ), he displayed that all-too human trait of compassion and went about helping people.

I think a lot of what kept the Brotherhood how the Brotherhood was, dogmatic, secretive, and so on, was their group-imposed isolation. Once you send a contingent out into the wastes, away from that continual feedback of norms and values, people are bound to start making up their own minds about things."

Sound familiar?

Fallout New Vegas: Released 2010: Developer, Obsidian
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Veronica_Santangelo
Veronica, a BoS member who spends most of her time outside BoS bases getting food, turns into a person who thinks its best to try to help the people of the wastes in order to save their dieing order.

Fallout Tactics: Released 2001: Developer, Micro Forté
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Tactics_endings

"The region sees new laws established to ease humanity back into civilized life, laws that are strictly enforced by the combined patrols of Brotherhood soldiers and pacification robots. To speed the unification process discrimination against mutants is outlawed, many prejudices are eliminated through education or the harsh implementation of Brotherhood Justice. The willingness to overcome differences opens avenues of recruitment that would otherwise remained unutilized. Mutated creatures that wish to live in peace under the new regime are welcomed, though hesitantly into the population. Old hatreds and fears are soon forgotten as the task at hand becomes apparent; humans, ghouls, super mutants and deathclaws all work together to begin transforming the wastelands into a post nuclear utopia. The combined knowledge of the Brotherhood and Calculator's databases are a powerful tool for reshaping the world and no time is wasted. Technology is slowly re-introduced into the land; irrigation systems are established bringing water to the barren soils for the first time in decades. "

Midwestern BoS, a group of BoS members exiled from the main BoS for thinking it would be best to use technology in order to get more recruits, ends up doing that very thing once they are freed from the bonds of the main BoS.

Lyon's change of heart is far from "magic" its happened both before Fo3, and after, because its basic common sense that "when dieing, you need more people, and that helping people gets them to want to join you".

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I know I've seen a few here and there, but I always sweep them under the rug. However, there are two that I will never be able to accept.

First is from Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Spoiler

If you don't shoot Mason in the head when you're playing as Woods, Mason shows back up again at the end of the game.

Yay! Warm feelings all around. Except...where the hell were you for the past twenty-five or so years? No, seriously, the game even asks that very question and it's never explained. It raises so many questions that it's very easy to pick the entire story apart if I focus on it too much.

Second is from Call of Duty: Ghosts

Spoiler

. Okay, Rorke just got the snot beat out of him (if I remember right, someone even hits him in the head with a fire extinguisher), shot clean through the chest, thrown off a cliff in an exploding train, and drowned. And yet...not only does he survive all of that, he's still strong enough to overpower Logan, drag him away with not support, and able to avoid being spotted by your allies because the entire enemy army has just been reduced to ash. How...? Did all that time in the Amazon turn him into a literal super human?

This was the final straw that broke the camel's back in Ghosts for me. I could, barely, accept the rest of the story, but when that came up, and couldn't accept it. There's no way any human could do that.

To be fair, every cod plot after cod 4 was a mess of plot holes and stupidity.

True, true. However, those I could overlook, or I enjoyed the 'fan theories' and just stuck with those. But these two, they broke even my tolerance, and seeing as I enjoyed every CoD campaign story up until Ghosts, I think my tolerance is very high.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Far Cry 2 & Far Cry 3: They seem to assume a complete reversal of established motivations that just don't make any sense. Why do I no longer want to kill the Jackal? Why on Earth would I betray the same friends I just went through Hell and back for saving?

Well, with that first one, it seems like you failed the mission already when you got sick with malaria and got your apartment raided by the Jackal. After that, there wasn't really much you could do besides just survive as best you can I suppose.

 

[SajuukKhar]

If somebody killed my dad today, that would not make me cease to exist. That made zero sense. It almost made dividing-by-zero sense.

They didn't kill him "today" they went back in time and killed him in the past, at the moment he was going to make the choice.

 

[Folksoul]

Not really. I tend to find most people bitching about plot holes to be asking "why?" too much, as a toddler would, irrationally ad nauseam.

Fun little experiment. Character A cooks dinner for themselves. Why? Answer and repeat with "Why?" until you're asking about the nature of human existence on a philosophical or biological level. You have just re created the argument 99% of "critics" bitching about stories. tl;dr You're not being thoughtful, critical, analytic, or insightful. You're being an asshole.

Or, more frequently for collaborative works like games, film, or television, the explanation was dummied out for time/ by executives for inexplicable managemently reasons and is on the dev team blog or something.

The only true plot hole I've ever seen is the Star Trek Voyager holodeck powersource thing. Didn't bother me. Saw the Voyager crew kill Nazi's because of it and Janeway as the queen of the spider people. All in all, fair trade.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Not a plot hole as such as I don't mind them but the element of time in GTA V. It's stated that for Trevor to drive into Los Santos it takes several hours, yet when playing it takes only a few minutes if that. Why couldn't he just say he lived a few minutes out of town? And why does the game progress in quickened time instead of real time and just have shorter days? It annoys me when games do that.

Again, not a plot hole but an inconsistency; While playing GTAV, I had Micheal go and take on the flight school to completion in the course of my dicking around. Once I had completed that series of tutorials I decided to get back into the game for a mission where I was told to have Franklin go and take those same exact flight lessons. Maybe all three characters need flight skills but why the Hell can't Trevor stick to flight duty? It was a minor thing overall but it annoyed me to the point that...I can't remember the last time I went and played the game. It isn't a plot hole so much as an inconsistency and I don't want to say it ruined GTAV for me but tutorials ruined SA for me so it wouldn't be the first time tutorials ruined a GTA for me.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Let's bring up my favourite two from Fallout 3:

1) Vault 87. Computers in Vault 87 specifically mention the FEV virus wanting to "level the playing field" by converting both males and females into androgynous subjects, yet in Fallout 1 you defeat The Master by revealing to him that Super Mutants aren't a viable branch of human evolution as whilst the males retain the ability to breed, females are rendered sterile, leading The Master to pull the plug on his experiments and end the Super Mutant threat. A seemingly small change, but one that invalidates the ending of F1 and by extension invalidates the entirety of F2 as the Vault Dweller would not have survived to found the tribe living in Arroyo.

2) Little Lamplight. A community that has existed for the last 200 years in isolation despite ejecting citizens as soon as they reach puberty. If you need this explaining to you then I officially give up.

1. "Male" super mutants on the west coast never retained their ability to breed, what Marcus said in Fo2 about "taking a few years for the juices to start flowing again" was confirmed to be a joke, both "male" and "female" super mutants are 100% sterile in all Fallout games.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Marcus
"While Marcus says that he is no longer sterile, Chris Avellone, who wrote that dialogue, confirmed that Marcus was only joking and that super mutants remain entirely sterile. "

Also, the strain of FEV used in Vault 87 was different from the Mariposa strain, hence why the Vault 87 super mutants look and grow differently. It is but one of many FEV strains that has different effects, like FEV strain "Curling-13", made by the Enclave to kill all mutants, and Eden's modified strain of FEV, based off of the curling strain, which does the same thing, but via water instead of air.

2. LL ejects kids when they reach 16, its possible to have kids as young as 14. Also, LL is not isolationist, they are proven to take in orphaned kids, such as the case from the kid from Greyditch, they are known to frequently send people out to scavenge food, and their city is well known to the people of the wasteland, from Paradise Falls to Rivet city, and given the state of the wasteland, its far from improbable that parents wouldn't either leave their kids at LL because they either don't want them, or can't feed them themselves.

1) Debatable - kind of. Also from the Faollut wiki: "Those who would not evolve would be forcibly sterilized and allowed to live out their lives in peace, though without the ability to pass on their imperfections to the next generation." The implications of this statement being that the sterility (or otherwise) of Super Mutants has been changed over the years to accommodate changing canon. Bear in mind that the wiki page attempts to combine all sources rather than favouring one over the other. Whilst I accept the current revision of the lore, I remain fundamentally opposed to changes in lore on principal.

2) Whilst Little Lamplight can in theory survive on it's own, it does require the subconscious acceptance of paedophilia, which however you wrap it up is repugnant. And even if one were to accept this enforced early maturity the player is still being asked to accept that a mother who had her child at age 14 would abandon it at the age of two because of a rule passed by a bunch of kids. Ie not fucking likely.

 

[MysticSlayer]

When it comes to Mass Effect, how did Udina end up as the Human Councillor in ME3? How did Anderson get ahead of Shepard in The Citadel at the end of ME3? Finally, in ME3 as you're making the final dash towards the Citadel Beam thing, what happens to your party? Personally, I kept Garrus and Liara with me so they should have been killed by The Reaper beam and yet we see both of them safe and sound on The Normandy...Tha Hell?! None of those plot holes ruined Mass Effect 3 for me since they're minor when compared to the awesomeness that is Kalros vs Reaper and certain other character moments.

The biggest plot hole for me was also the simplest.

Anderson: "Our objective is to reach that giant beacon, which the Reapers now control. It'll be a slaughter, but if we can get even one man inside that thing, they'll be able to activate our magic (Deus Ex Machina) super weapon and destroy the reapers forever. Any questions?"

Me: "So why don't the reapers just turn it off...."

Just like that the magic was broken. I still loved the game, but the whole time I kept hoping that the writers would explain the plot hole. Maybe this was just another layer of control. Maybe Shepard was indoctrinated, and he was supposed to lure the entire Allied fleet into one place so that the Reapers could destroy them in one fell swoop. Therefore, the Reapers wanted you to reach the beacon the entire time. After all, Bioware had great writers. They knew what they were doing. Obviously... that's not what happened.

Not a really good explanation, but the Catalyst indicates that the Reapers were trying to eventually reach synthesis as a final stage of evolution. They likely understood that if a human not under their control managed to reach the Catalyst, then it would indicate that life in the galaxy was ready for that final stage in evolution. They put up a harsh resistance as a test, but they wanted to leave that option open on a just-in-case basis, especially since they recognized by that point that the cycle was unlike any they had seen. After all, if organic life could make it past that resistance, they were likely as advanced as organic life would ever get, making it the ideal time to initiate the final stage in evolution. I doubt BioWare was thinking that, but it is a potential link that explains their motivation for not destroying it.

I will admit, though, I did chuckle at that part when I realized how ridiculous it seemed.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

BioShock Infinite

Almost too many to mention but...

Spoiler

The first time you switch dimensions why didn't Booker just take Elizabeth to Paris? He is now in a different dimension where he has zero obligations as far as he knows. He doesn't know that the people who gave him the mission could follow him, so in his mind, he can't even turn in the mission anymore.

Though the one I hated most was the ending. (note that Booker and Elizabeth/Ana "A" refers to the characters from the starting dimension). Sorry but killing Booker A after he fathered Elizabeth/Ana A would not have any affect on Elizabath/Ana A, let alone all of the Elizabeths. If somebody killed my dad today, that would not make me cease to exist. That made zero sense. It almost made dividing-by-zero sense.

/thread. Seriously. It astounds me that people think that there is a good story here. It's beyond fucking stupid.

No time travel story actually works if you assume that time travel works in any logical way. Therefore, in order to make time travel work in a story you have to make the assumption that time travel works the way it has been presented in the story, and once you do that there are no plot holes in Bioshock because time travel is working in exactly the way that time travel works for that story.

If/when humans actually figure out time travel we can worry about plot holes caused by time travel being presented incorrectly in media, but until then the very existence of time travel in a story negates the creation of plot holes, unless the time travel presented in the story doesn't make sense in accordance with the in-universe explanation of time travel.

Since the mechanics of time/dimensional travel is never explained in Bioshock Infinite you can't say that the story has plot holes because time travel is being used incorrectly.

 

[VVThoughtBox]

Not a plot hole as such as I don't mind them but the element of time in GTA V. It's stated that for Trevor to drive into Los Santos it takes several hours, yet when playing it takes only a few minutes if that. Why couldn't he just say he lived a few minutes out of town? And why does the game progress in quickened time instead of real time and just have shorter days? It annoys me when games do that.

It's implied that Trevor sells guns and drugs around the Blaine County area and he lives in Sandy Shores because it's "authentic." Plus, Trevor spends most of the game living in Los Santos, first at Floyd's apartment in Vespucci Beach and then at the Vanilla Unicorn in Strawberry.

 

[ecoho]

DAII
blood magic
done

I am not sure that this is an actual plot hole but in the otherwise excellent human revolution it always bugged the shit out of me that augmentations are that common. according to the original deus ex augs only became popular when they became small and unobtrusive (like Maliks), yet augs are super common in the game and most arms/legs look like someone ripped of part of a fork lift. people like Gunther Hermann, who have whole working body parts replaced, are supposed to be the exception. where did all those people go between games? and if they just replaced their augs with newer models, why didn't Hermann ever do that?

Let's bring up my favourite two from Fallout 3:

1) Vault 87. Computers in Vault 87 specifically mention the FEV virus wanting to "level the playing field" by converting both males and females into androgynous subjects, yet in Fallout 1 you defeat The Master by revealing to him that Super Mutants aren't a viable branch of human evolution as whilst the males retain the ability to breed, females are rendered sterile, leading The Master to pull the plug on his experiments and end the Super Mutant threat. A seemingly small change, but one that invalidates the ending of F1 and by extension invalidates the entirety of F2 as the Vault Dweller would not have survived to found the tribe living in Arroyo.

2) Little Lamplight. A community that has existed for the last 200 years in isolation despite ejecting citizens as soon as they reach puberty. If you need this explaining to you then I officially give up.

isn't the FEV thing explained by the East coast magic that also turns the BoS into nice people and makes jet appear in closed Vaults?

to be fair would you want to turn in a blood mage who is ether
A. the lover of the champion of Kirkwall
B. The champion of Kirkwall
C. the guy who literally ripped apart like 20 guys in front of you with magic and has knowingly killed Templars for being in the wrong place.
or my favorite
D. the guy working along side the knight commander of Kirkwall.

now the plot hole with the last one is she was thinking she could take you In the end

OT: fable 3, were the fuck did my will go and what the fuck is this glove?

 

[Nimzabaat]

If somebody killed my dad today, that would not make me cease to exist. That made zero sense. It almost made dividing-by-zero sense.

They didn't kill him "today" they went back in time and killed him in the past, at the moment he was going to make the choice.

Wrong.

Spoiler

"Present day" Booker, father of Ana, allows Ana to drown him. There was no going back in time to find the pre-Ana Booker at all. That's why it didn't make sense. It might have worked if Ana had taken "present" Booker into the past and Booker killed his younger self. But they didn't even attempt that. Then, to make even less sense, they added other Ana's that this Booker had nothing to do with and somehow because "reasons" they vanished as well.

 

[EternallyBored]

BioShock Infinite

Almost too many to mention but...

Spoiler

The first time you switch dimensions why didn't Booker just take Elizabeth to Paris? He is now in a different dimension where he has zero obligations as far as he knows. He doesn't know that the people who gave him the mission could follow him, so in his mind, he can't even turn in the mission anymore.

Though the one I hated most was the ending. (note that Booker and Elizabeth/Ana "A" refers to the characters from the starting dimension). Sorry but killing Booker A after he fathered Elizabeth/Ana A would not have any affect on Elizabath/Ana A, let alone all of the Elizabeths. If somebody killed my dad today, that would not make me cease to exist. That made zero sense. It almost made dividing-by-zero sense.

/thread. Seriously. It astounds me that people think that there is a good story here. It's beyond fucking stupid.

No time travel story actually works if you assume that time travel works in any logical way. Therefore, in order to make time travel work in a story you have to make the assumption that time travel works the way it has been presented in the story, and once you do that there are no plot holes in Bioshock because time travel is working in exactly the way that time travel works for that story.

If/when humans actually figure out time travel we can worry about plot holes caused by time travel being presented incorrectly in media, but until then the very existence of time travel in a story negates the creation of plot holes, unless the time travel presented in the story doesn't make sense in accordance with the in-universe explanation of time travel.

Since the mechanics of time/dimensional travel is never explained in Bioshock Infinite you can't say that the story has plot holes because time travel is being used incorrectly.

Even using that logic. That doesn't mean the story wasn't absolutely awful to begin with. One more thing Bioshock Infinite did (and 1 as well) is you going through so much fucking effort to help someone to "progress" the story. Only for them to turn on you instantly and having to have a fight with them. The leader of the Vox chick was a prime example.

Can she really turn on you if you weren't really working for her to begin with? I've heard this complaint before, and I don't really understand it, she basically jacks the airship you steal from Comstock and coerces you into helping her on the vague promise that she will get you out of Columbia if you get guns for her, even Booker makes a comment that he doesn't trust her and he's only really getting the guns because it's their only real option at the moment.

The comparison to Bioshock 1 is similarly weak, the two events only really share vague similarities, the betrayal in 1 is set up to be part of the reveal and plot twist. We aren't supposed to see it coming until it happens, and when it does correcting the fallout of that betrayal becomes the main focus of the game.

In infinite, the betrayal of Daisy is pretty obviously telegraphed, the main character isn't even surprised by it, and its not a main focus of the story. The main purpose of the betrayal in Infinite was to expose Elizabeth to the truth that just because you fight against a tyrant, doesn't automatically make you a good person, or prevent you from falling into the same logic traps as the person you're fighting against.

The only real similarity between these two events is that both games involve a character betraying you, beyond that, they are both under very different circumstances, motivations, and serve very different purposes to the story. I have my fair share of problems with Infinite's storyline, but as proof of the story being "absolutely awful to begin with", using "both games had a character betray you" is a very weak criticism, and is not very persuasive as to the quality, or lack thereof, of Infinite's story.

 

[BNguyen]

BioShock Infinite

Almost too many to mention but...

Spoiler

The first time you switch dimensions why didn't Booker just take Elizabeth to Paris? He is now in a different dimension where he has zero obligations as far as he knows. He doesn't know that the people who gave him the mission could follow him, so in his mind, he can't even turn in the mission anymore.

Though the one I hated most was the ending. (note that Booker and Elizabeth/Ana "A" refers to the characters from the starting dimension). Sorry but killing Booker A after he fathered Elizabeth/Ana A would not have any affect on Elizabath/Ana A, let alone all of the Elizabeths. If somebody killed my dad today, that would not make me cease to exist. That made zero sense. It almost made dividing-by-zero sense.

/thread. Seriously. It astounds me that people think that there is a good story here. It's beyond fucking stupid.

No time travel story actually works if you assume that time travel works in any logical way. Therefore, in order to make time travel work in a story you have to make the assumption that time travel works the way it has been presented in the story, and once you do that there are no plot holes in Bioshock because time travel is working in exactly the way that time travel works for that story.

If/when humans actually figure out time travel we can worry about plot holes caused by time travel being presented incorrectly in media, but until then the very existence of time travel in a story negates the creation of plot holes, unless the time travel presented in the story doesn't make sense in accordance with the in-universe explanation of time travel.

Since the mechanics of time/dimensional travel is never explained in Bioshock Infinite you can't say that the story has plot holes because time travel is being used incorrectly.

Even using that logic. That doesn't mean the story wasn't absolutely awful to begin with. One more thing Bioshock Infinite did (and 1 as well) is you going through so much fucking effort to help someone to "progress" the story. Only for them to turn on you instantly and having to have a fight with them. The leader of the Vox chick was a prime example.

Can she really turn on you if you weren't really working for her to begin with? I've heard this complaint before, and I don't really understand it, she basically jacks the airship you steal from Comstock and coerces you into helping her on the vague promise that she will get you out of Columbia if you get guns for her, even Booker makes a comment that he doesn't trust her and he's only really getting the guns because it's their only real option at the moment.

The comparison to Bioshock 1 is similarly weak, the two events only really share vague similarities, the betrayal in 1 is set up to be part of the reveal and plot twist. We aren't supposed to see it coming until it happens, and when it does correcting the fallout of that betrayal becomes the main focus of the game.

In infinite, the betrayal of Daisy is pretty obviously telegraphed, the main character isn't even surprised by it, and its not a main focus of the story. The main purpose of the betrayal in Infinite was to expose Elizabeth to the truth that just because you fight against a tyrant, doesn't automatically make you a good person, or prevent you from falling into the same logic traps as the person you're fighting against.

The only real similarity between these two events is that both games involve a character betraying you, beyond that, they are both under very different circumstances, motivations, and serve very different purposes to the story. I have my fair share of problems with Infinite's storyline, but as proof of the story being "absolutely awful to begin with", using "both games had a character betray you" is a very weak criticism, and is not very persuasive as to the quality, or lack thereof, of Infinite's story.

The betrayal is for absolutely no reason other than the sake of it. After going through all sorts of shit to get the guns and helping her and her forces during their takeover. She just decides that you must die. It's so obvious and just terrible storytelling.

It wasn't my example of how the games themselves have an awful story. It's just one part of many that I find shit. Same thing with Bioshock 1. You spend the first half of the game trying to help Atlas. Only for him to be the big baddie Fontaine. It wasn't as great a twist and it's made out to be, same with Infinites story. They are both just mediocre shooters with an average story.

I think Daisy decides to kill you because in the universe you tear into where she holds him up as a martyr to her cause if it is revealed that you're alive to the Vox, she loses credibility in her efforts and thus loses her army, thus the need to get rid of Booker to prevent that - think of the episode of southpark that talks about the wristbands and Jesus having done drugs instead of his works being miracles kind of thing.

 

[EternallyBored]

If somebody killed my dad today, that would not make me cease to exist. That made zero sense. It almost made dividing-by-zero sense.

They didn't kill him "today" they went back in time and killed him in the past, at the moment he was going to make the choice.

Wrong.

Spoiler

"Present day" Booker, father of Ana, allows Ana to drown him. There was no going back in time to find the pre-Ana Booker at all. That's why it didn't make sense. It might have worked if Ana had taken "present" Booker into the past and Booker killed his younger self. But they didn't even attempt that. Then, to make even less sense, they added other Ana's that this Booker had nothing to do with and somehow because "reasons" they vanished as well.

While the game certainly doesn't do a very good job explaining it, and they do dip into metaphorical concepts that would have, and should have been set up earlier, they do make an attempt to explain this in the long, rambling finale.

Spoiler

The Booker that all the Ana's/Elizabeth's drown in the finale is a dimensional representation of Booker making the choice to end himself, to prevent any dimensions Comstock from coming into being. The ending isn't getting into strict time travel mechanics, the drowning is less about the physical act, and more about the confusing quantum mechanics established by the light house scene and the Luteces. It's Elizabeth using her dimension powers to cut Booker out of the continuity at the moment he was baptized. The event as shown is largely metaphysical, by having Elizabeth, and a bunch of her alternate dimension counterparts kill Booker then and there by his own choice, her power allows her to basically erase his entire timeline from existence across multiple dimensions.

So yeah, it's supposed to be symbolic of Booker finally taking responsibility for his actions, rather than running away, or deluding himself with his own ego, when he makes the choice, Elizabeth's powers allow her to cause all incarnations (supposedly), to never survive the baptism.

It would have been set up a lot better if the game had actually explored the metaphysical side of Elizabeth's powers, rather than just taking them to alternate dimensions where the only differences are some slight historical revisions. The Luteces and the audio logs kind of touch on this concept before the end, but it throws the bulk of the real quantum fuckery in at the last second, so really doesn't make any sense if you try to take the whole thing at face value.

So yeah, it's symbolism, and quantum mechanics rather than straight time travel, but I'll agree that it's fairly weak, and only really hits you with these concepts at the finale, so it can look like a total cop-out.