Stupidity Is the Only Option: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"If it's a trap then it's a plot point and we '''have''' to [[Railroading|follow the plot]]."''|'''Karn''', ''[[Adventurers!]]'' [http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/0114.html comic #114]}}

Thus, the game's only recourse is to [[Railroading|force]] the player to act like a moron. The game simply cannot progress until the player completes the necessary stupidity. Whether it's due to a [[Cutscene]] or [[But Thou Must!]], the player is not going to be able to prevent his character from making that obvious mistake.

 

 

Compare [[Press X to Die]], where the stupid action is entirely optional. Contrast [[Violation of Common Sense]], where the stupid action is optional, but results in ''rewards'' for the player instead of punishment. Also compare [[Trap Is the Only Option]], where the characters themselves are aware of an [[Obvious Trap]] but still feel it's the only way to progress.

 

=== [[Adventure Game]] ===

* In the adventure game ''[[The Longest Journey]]'', as protagonist April Ryan you are forced to wander into one of the most obvious traps imaginable. After hearing that "something" is lurking in a mysterious forest and killing/eating locals and wildlife, you come across a hideous, decrepit, Gollum-like, hissing old creature constantly letting slip obvious comments about wanting to eat you, all the while claiming to be a "poor old ladyyyy...hiss...jussssst picking bones...I MEAN FLOWERS, yessss, flowers, for my sssssteeeeew...". You are then forced to walk home to her little cave/hovel in the dark/evil part of the forest where she locks you in. It's made all the worse by the fact that April seems perfectly aware that she's wandering into a trap via meta-comments and her [[Genre Savvy|Genre-Savvyness]] regarding the fairy-tale-esque world in which she's adventuring, but that the logic and decision making sections of her brain are not communicating too well...

** This is hilariously [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade Hung]] in [[Now Where Was I Going Again?|April's Diary]]:

* ''[[Half-Life 2]]'' gives the player no choice but to climb into a Stalker pod in the Combine Citadel. And after being (of course) captured, stripped of your weapons, and escaping due to a [[Deus Ex Machina]], you are required to step into another, identical, pod. And be captured ''again''. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by the [[Big Bad]], who congratulates you for delivering yourself to him so conveniently.

** What makes this a particularly ghoulish example is that there are two pods you can climb into. One leads to the plot, [[Press X to Die|and the other leads to your brain being cooked out of your skull by lasers.]] Gordon can clearly see the brain-cooking path, but he has no possible way of knowing that the other track doesn't have a lobotomy center right around the corner. The second instance in which you put yourself into a the pod is just as bad: by that point, the Combine are fully aware of your presence within the Citadel, and are almost certainly aware of how you infiltrated the heart of the facility in the first place.

** The ''MoH'' series gets special mention here, seeing as how your character always sets 10-second timers on bombs that he plants during stealth missions (and sets off remote-detonated bombs barely out of blast range), making it impossible to get far enough from the explosion to avoid immediate implication.

** On one stealth mission in ''Red Faction'', it's actually possible, if goddamn hard, to get into the Deputy Administrator's office without being identified. Of course, you still have to shoot your way ''out''. Part of the reason for this is that while you only came here to steal a key, the only way to do so is to kill the (heavily guarded) guy that has it.

** Similarly, Private Allen in ''[[Modern Warfare]] 2'' is sent to infiltrate Makarov's terrorist organization to stop him from plotting attacks. Despite having a clear shot at the entire terrorist squad for the entire mission, Allen is forced to play along the entire time while they massacre civilians (read: perform exactly the sort of attack Allen was sent to stop). He has no option to attempt to subdue Makarov for capture. Naturally, at the end Makarov betrays you and pins the whole attack on the USA. {{spoiler|This is later explained that the [[Big Bad]] was Allen's commanding officer, but from Allen's and the player's perspective, it still comes off looking completely stupid.}}

** A more unique example from ''Call of Duty 2'': At one point in the Russian campaign, you are attempting to sneak through fuel pipelines to get past German soldiers and support allies at a heavily-defended station. The pre-mission journal entry even says that it's best to not let the Germans know you're in the pipe. So, naturally, as soon as you get to a hole in the pipe that would allow German soldiers to see you, one of your allies sent ahead ''blocks the path forward until the Germans in question discover you''. Naturally, said ally gets himself shredded by machine gun fire before he can exit the pipe, which shows you which path ''not'' to take.

* For a hardened criminal with opulent time doing experience [[Riddick]] does some surprisingly stupid things in ''Escape From Butcher's Bay''. Immediately upon his arrival to the slam some fishy dude with nervous voice and shifty eyes all of a sudden offers him a shiv (an illegal and relatively valuable item, mind you) completely for free. Although you can practically hear admiral Akbar shouting at that point, you have no choice but to go into the dude's cell and fall into an ambush.

 

=== Multiple ===

 

 

=== [[Puzzle Game]] ===

* One question in ''[[The Impossible Quiz]] 2'' reads, {{spoiler|"Press this button to kill yourself with death before the [[Timed Mission|bomb]] does!" The idea of pressing a large button that clearly reads "DEATH" sounds outright stupid, but guess what? Clicking it ''is the answer to the question''. And if you try to get clever and click the words "this button," '''you die.'''}}

* Both ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' games make heavy use of this.

** In ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'', during the [[Final Boss]] fight, GLaDOS is (inadvertently) giving good advice when she tells you to leave the "[[Expospeak Gag|Aperture Science Thing-We-Don't-Know-What-It-Does]]" alone. However, your only choice if you want to proceed is to ignore her and dump it into the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator.

** At the end of the Dark Brotherhood questline in ''Oblivion'' it's revealed that you've been following the assassination quests of someone else and not your leader, through "deaddrop" notes. The stupid part? It's completely obvious that the sources for the letters have been switched after the first two. The first two letters contain a clinical mission objective (such as "Kill so-and-so) whereas the fake letters are in a handwritten font and have more personalised orders (such as "so-and-so is wanted dead because they did such-and-such). You have no choice but to follow the instructions of the obviously fake notes until the questline's conclusion, getting your leader and half the Dark Brotherhood's Elders killed in the process. Worse, when you "discover" (in-character) the betrayal by finding the impostor's diary (and his mother's decaying head), you then meet with the heads of the Brotherhood, who have killed your boss thinking he was the traitor. The diary you've read (and could very well be carrying on your person) explicitly states that he wasn't, and that one of the other leaders of the Brotherhood is. Nonetheless, there is absolutely no option to mention this to the heads of the Brotherhood, no way to show them evidence of your boss's innocence or the fact that the traitor was still among them. Instead you have to go with them to the Night Mother's shrine, ''exactly as the diary said the traitor was planning on'', and allow the trap to happen. You can even take the decaying head out and show it to him. His dialog clearly shows that he is the only one affected by this, but you can neither tell the other members, nor do they notice his reaction.

** The main quest in ''Tribunal'', the expansion to ''[[Morrowind]]'', is ''made'' of this trope. To progress in the game you must complete a series of morally dubious quests for two different people, one of whom is clearly losing her sanity, while the other makes no secret of the fact that he tried to kill you (to be fair to him, given that he knows that the player character knows that already, admitting * might* be seen as making him ''more'' trustworthy, not less). The player is given zero motivation to side with either of them, and it's not even a 'choose the lesser of two evils' situation - an entirely possible alternative is simply to ignore them both and leave. Except, of course, that you can't complete the game that way.

* ''[[Terranigma]]'':

** The game has a point where Ark meets a Mudman across a chasm who, once defeated, causes a causeway to appear and asks Ark to cross it in the creepiest voice possible in a text box, so he can give him something that clearly does not exist on the Mudman's abandoned side of the cliff. You have to cross the causeway, which the Mudman naturally causes to disappear again with you on it. And, in the beginning of the game, you are warned not to open a certain door. If you open it, what comes out will destroy your entire village. But if you don't, [[But Thou Must!|nothing will ever happen]].

* Probably every ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' has at least one stupid trap the player must fall into.

** ''[[Final Fantasy I]]'' has an elf king living in a decrepit castle in the middle of nowhere, who supposedly dropped his crown in a dungeon. Despite the party having - presumably - heard about how a random dark elf, Astos, stole Matoya's crystal ball, they go through the dungeon and give the elf the crown. Guess who the elf was.

** ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' had a point where the villains demanded the last of the four crystals in exchange for the life of the protagonist's love interest. Instead of refusing or at the very least switching the real crystal out for a fake one like any other smart person would, our brainless heroes decide that the only option is to trade the world away for the life of one person.

** Also in ''Final Fantasy IV'', twice in the face of decisive battles, the party decides, "Let's make the women [[Stay in the Kitchen]]!" Yes, they're the game's best spellcasters and the only reason they have made it this far. The men decide [[What an Idiot!|big boss battles are exactly where not to bring the heal spells and earth-shattering summons]]. Even worse, the first time they do this they get their asses handed to them and still get one of the girls abducted, but learn absolutely nothing from it.

* In the ''[[Fable II]] DLC'', there's a mission where the player must purchase a cursed skull and remove the curse. When you use the skull, you are transported to another world where you immediately run across a spirit trapped in a giant skull-shaped statue. It declares that it was once a famous knight, trapped in the skull by an evil necromancer. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, it's really the necromancer. Predictably, there is no other option than to free him. Once you do so, he mocks you for being gullible and tries to kill you.

* The only way to start the Devil social link in ''[[Persona 3]]'' is to repeatedly dump money into an obvious investing scam, the social link character even calls you out on it! It was noted in the [[Let's Play]] of the game, where the Main Character pays him anyway merely out of the fact that his Dungeon-Crawling adventures meant that the amount was pretty negligible to him.

* At one point in the third chapter of ''[[Marvel Ultimate Alliance]]'', you beat [[The Mighty Thor/Characters|Loki]] (who's famous for his [[Master of Illusion|illusions]] and [[The Trickster|trickery]]) in what seems to be an [[Anticlimax Boss]]. Then [[Nick Fury]] calls and tells you to collect 4 swords to get the armor Loki was trying to get, even though you would have absolutely no reason to do this. To nobody's surprise, this is a trick by Loki to get the armor. Naturally, you have to do this.

* ''[[Star Ocean: The Last Hope]]'' at one point you apparently {{spoiler|(it's actually an alternate universe)}} time travel to Earth in 1957 where you cheerfully agree to hand over your power source technology to a woman who may as well have "I AM A VILLAIN" tattooed on her face, she's so [[Obviously Evil]]. After only a ''few minutes of talk'', at gunpoint, during which she promises to save the world with the technology and assures you that the party member she is holding prisoner is just fine. It doesn't occur to your character to confirm any of this before going further in your dealings with her. Instead you hand over the power source and are shown to the room where your party member is being held. It looks suspiciously like a cell and your party member is unconscious and appears to have been the victim of an "enhanced interrogation." Still no concern is shown by your character and your entire party crams into the cell to see her. The cell door slams and locks behind you. The villainess then proceeds to {{spoiler|blow up the planet with your technology}}.

 

 

=== [[Literature]] ===

* The choose-your-own-adventure series of ''[[Goosebumps]]'' books, called ''[[Give Yourself Goosebumps]]'', always had the first choice in the story be about whether or not to do the [[Too Dumb to Live]] action that gets the player character in the mess in the first place. If you choose not to do it, the page you are told to flip to has some sort of "What's wrong with you? You are too chicken/boring to do anything fun, this book isn't for boring people like you!" message, and then makes you go to the page in which you do the stupid option anyway.