Fanon Discontinuity/Video Games: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

[[File:aerislives.png|link=Final Fantasy VII|frame|THIS IS THE REAL SCREEN FROM THAT SCENE DAMN IT.]]

{{quote|''"There's no such thing in the world as absolute reality. Most of what they call real is actually fiction. What you think you see is only as real as your brain tells you it is.... It's not whether you were right or wrong, but how much faith you were willing to have, that decides the future."''|'''Solid Snake''' encouraging use of this trope|''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]''}}

 

'''Note''': Do not include examples based only in [[Adaptation Decay]] unless [[Word of God]] has declared an adaptation canon. For example, the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime is not canon to the ''[[Pokémon]]'' video game series and thus should not be listed, but applicable adaptations of ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' should.

 

* Played for laughs with the [[Show Within a Show]] of the second [[Akiba's Trip]] game. While even the non-otaku in the cast enjoy Striprism when they marathon the series, everyone finds the last episode overwhelmingly awful [[Noodle Incident|for unstated reasons]]. Before they start the series is referred to as being 47 episodes long, instead of the 48 typical for anime.

* Fans of the ''[[Army Men]]'' franchise tend to not count anything after Sarge's War, which is justified since most are [[In Name Only]], with no semblance to the 3DO series.

* There are some ''[[Super Mario Bros. (video game)|Super Mario Bros]]'' fans who do not recognize the American version of ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' as a real Mario game, mostly due to it actually being a Mario-infused version of ''Doki Doki Panic''. This is mostly a case of the [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|dramatically different gameplay]], as opposed to ''The Lost Levels'', which is viewed as the legitimate sequel.

*** The (admittedly smaller) portion of the fanbase that throws the Japanese ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' into this does so in part because it's a [[Mission Pack Sequel]] and in part because Miyamoto didn't do any work on the Japanese ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' but did do work on ''[[Doki Doki Panic]]''/the American ''Super Mario Bros. 2''. All that said, elements of both do make further appearances in later games, which aren't subject to this trope generally.

*** Considering both games' inclusion in the immensely popular ''Super Mario All-Stars,'' I'd say the fans don't really have a problem with both games existing concurrently.

** Some fans dislike CC enough to ignore the DS remake of CT, which includes new content that canonically ties the first game's story to the latter to the outcome seen in the latter game.

** On the subject of CT, many fans were not pleased when the DS remake canonized {{spoiler|Dalton}} as the agent for Guardia's destruction.

* The ''[[Command & Conquer]]'' series is heavily debated among fans, but most people can agree on <s>three</s> four things:

*# The [[Camp]] heavy ''Red Alert 2'' and ''3'' and the [[Darker and Edgier]] ''Tiberium Wars'' are positioned on opposite ends of the [[Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness]] and trying to fit them together is an exercise in futility. The Tiberium series has meteors [[Terraform]]ing vast areas of the world into inhospitable wastelands, the bad guy is a [[Villain with Good Publicity]] [[Dark Messiah]] who turns the poverty-stricken third world into a [[Cult]] dedicated to him, and the heroes are particularly prone to [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]] and [[Moral Dissonance]] situations. On the other hand, Red Alert 2 and 3 (especially 3) has more [[Camp]] than ''[[Batman and Robin (film)|Batman and Robin]]''. Red Alert 3 has [[Everything Is Worse With Bears|WAR BEARS]] that can be shot out of a cannon and parachuted down to assault the enemy, for crying out loud.

** By way of explanation: it really was, and it shows. The game is little more than a faint echo of ''[[Deus Ex]]''. It features small stages, few real choices, and almost all of them are subverted by being meaningless or ridiculous. That by itself wouldn't render it [[Canon Discontinuity]]. The fact that the plot make your character from the first game a secondary character and a madman and functionally erased your choices from the first game was something of a insult. Apparently the game's creator really didn't want to do it kinda shoved it out the door so he could get on with other kinds of Awesome.

** To give you an idea, the original ''Deus Ex'' had three mutually incompatible endings. Rather than pick one ending as canon for the sequel and cut their losses, the devs decided to make all three (or major elements of all three) endings canon.

** And then there is ''[[DmC: Devil May Cry]]'', a [[Continuity Reboot]] ([[Flip-Flop of God|now]] [[Alternate Continuity]]) with such an [[Tainted by the Preview|overwhelming]] [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|negative]] [[Ruined FOREVER|response]] that it makes the flak thrown at ''Devil May Cry 2'' look tame in comparison.

*** Of special note since its discontinuity was practically universally declared ''before the game was even released''.

** Oh, and you thought the books had it rough! Go to Bungie.net on the eve or right after a new episode of ''[[The Anime of the Game|Halo: Legends]]'' comes out. Count the number of responses to [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]] threads that are some permutation of "It's not like this crap is actually canon, so who cares?" Go on. We'll wait for you.

** ''[[Halo: Reach]]'' has been viewed as discontinuity by fans disappointed that it retconned significant portions of the novel ''[[The Fall of Reach]]''. There's even a fansite called "Halo Reach Is Not Canon" devoted solely to this aspect of the game.

* Ask a bunch of ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' fans if Organization XIII is really dead. Count how many of them give you the right answer.

** To be fair, now that Nomura opened his mouth, the previously 'correct' answer might be the wrong one, precisely because of how fans feel about the Organization in the first place. Of course, that will probably throw the next numbered game into this trope itself.

** There's a great amount of time spent in the Shivering Isles demonstrating the effect they have on anyone who enters (madness). On top of that, every time Jygylag has appeared before, Sheogorath had to rebuild his realm from the ground up... INCLUDING himself. As far as anyone but the butler and PC know, this time the same thing happened, only with less destruction to the landscape.

** This Sheogorath states the solution himself, {{spoiler|the hero will be him}}. It would be a logical explanation in lore: Former hero becomes a daedric prince.

* ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]: Deadlocked'' suffers from a fairly large share of people who say it never existed.

** However the characters that appeared in that game did get a number of cameo mentions in the games after Deadlocked.

* ''[[King's Quest: Mask of Eternity]]'' is largely ignored and/or derided by the fanbase as [[In Name Only]], due to its drastic change in tone, reliance on violence in a series that usually rewarded you for thinking your way out of the situation, and protagonist that wasn't a member of the Daventry Royal Family.

* ''[[Donkey Kong]]: Jungle Beat'' is a prime example of this, as the only three things that even relate to previous Donkey Kong games are DK himself, the bananas, and the Jungle Hijinx music. Everything else is completely new and one of the directors said that it was because the old characters weren't fresh enough for a modern audience.

* Most ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]: [[Dawn of War]]'' fans deny that the ''Soulstorm'' expansion ever happened, due to the absolutely staggering ammount of [[Game Breaking Bug]]s (including one for unlimited resources) and the ridiculous unit imbalances that made it unplayable, the sheer amount of [[Narm]] (SPEHSS MEHREENS!), and the utter butchering of the background material (humans freely using Xeno technology, [[Magnificent Bastard|Alpha Legion]] portrayed as [[Axe Crazy|Khorne fanatics]], [[Memetic Mutation|100 Baneblades]], [[The Voiceless|Necron Lord]] sounding like he needed a cough drop, etcetera). ''Dawn of War II'', however, states that it actually ''is'' canon, but as [[Cold Sniper|Cyrus]] says in the campaign, the whole Kaurava campaign was [[Self-Deprecation|"best forgotten"]].