Stupidity Is the Only Option: Difference between revisions

* 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]]:

** In the same game, she is unable to sail a ship to Alais without tampering with a compass and causing the ship to sail into a magical storm. And after she is punished by being locked in the hold, she must use an axe to (accidentally) sink the ship while she's still in it.

* The climax of ''[http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/C/city-of-vice/game/bow-street-runner/game.html Bow Street Runner]'' is an [[Egregious]] example. {{spoiler|The mastermind behind all the events leaves a woman who supposedly opposed him bound and gagged in his hideout after fleeing. The woman offers to lead the player into his current hideout. Given that said mastermind has a way of killing anyone who opposes him, the set-up is obvious}}. Of course there is no way to avoid it; worse, the villain berates the player for falling for "the oldest trick in the book"...

* In ''[[Phantasy Star Universe]]'', the second part of the Episode 3 story mission Ambition's End offers you the choice between taking one of four NPCs. Each one is effectively as useless as the others, but nevertheless each at least has some offensive potential, some variety of useful ability, and the potential to act as a passable meatshield when required. No matter which you pick, you are instead forced to take the most useless NPC in the game, a laughably weak liability named Lumia Waber who has pathetic weapons, inflicts pathetic damage, has absolutely no special abilities, dies if an enemy breathes on her too hard and who more often than not will choose to overwrite your level Awesome buffs with her level Useless ones.

* In the [[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]-[[Captain Ersatz|esque]] MMORPG ''[[Wizard 101]]'', if you play the Myth school, eventually your Snape expy teacher tells you to go get a book from the library without talking to the librarian. When you get to the library, there's no way to get a book for yourself (or if there is one, it's far from obvious); however, the librarian has the question mark over his head that denotes that you're supposed to talk to him. And he says the book doesn't exist. Then you go back and talk to your teacher again:

* ''[[Runescape]]'' has a depressingly large amount of quests where your character has to be incredibly gullible, usually by being tricked into doing something that helps the [[Big Bad]] of the quest. Granted, ''Runescape'' has a [[No Fourth Wall|fourth wall problem]], and it has a rather silly sense of humour.

** A particularly egregious (the word 'egregious' seems to crop up a lot on this page) example is the Priest in Peril quest, where your character is trying to find the missing priest Drezel in the temple of Paterdomus. The temple, as it turns out, has been taken over by a band of Zamorak monks who have imprisoned Drezel. When your character finds the front door locked, you are given the option to knock. The dialogue from the Zamorak monks is so jokey that it's hard to believe that the protagonist doesn't at least suspect that there's something up and it's not really Drezel telling him/her to kill the temple's guard dog. But you've got no choice but to do it anyway, and then be subjected to King Roald berating you for your stupidity. Otherwise, you'll never finish the quest, and never have access to Morytania and all its related places, mini-games, and quests.

* The First ancient temple of ''[[Golden Sun]]''. The class on field-trip made all the wrong choices to make when dealing with ancient ruins. Sometimes the player is asked "should we keep going" but gets shot down if the answer is the obvious "no". At some point it looked like the teacher might end up having some evil agenda, and he did make things really easy for the bad guys. Then later in some mining site, there's a sign that reads "don't touch wall". Guess what you have to do to continue on...

* In ''[[Geneforge]] 5'' the player is given the mission to track down the origins of an assassination attempt of a ranking member of the government, with explicit orders not to let that attempt be revealed to anyone. The clues lead to a fortification commanded by a general with the arrogant discrimination and control-freak methods typical of the culture, but the game cannot progress unless the players reveal their purpose for being there to the guy in charge. In spite of being the hardass overseer type he knows nothing about what's going on in his fort in this case, but suggests that he couldn't possibly know anything that might be going on in a deathtrap that has been barred to everyone, leaving him as the only one with the authority to enter. Maybe you should look in there, hero?

'''Guardian Makar''': Really? Well, you came to the right person! }}

* 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.

* At one point in ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'', you're informed that the Mexican Army has captured two of the fugitives you've spent the entire game pursuing and are holding them in a church for you to pick up. Of course, they've actually just found out you aided some rebels they were fighting, and are planning to ambush you the moment you walk in. Despite the fact that Captain De Santa is acting very odd, and Marston himself is [[Genre Savvy|extremely suspicious of the whole thing]], you nonetheless are forced to enter the church, where you are promptly knocked out.

* At the start of Chapter 3 in ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]] 2''. The player is trapped in the precinct morgue, wounded and unarmed, while a mook outside the only exit calls for backup and starts pounding on the door, demanding to be let in. What do you do instead of letting the obvious [[No-Gear Level|get-captured-break-out FPS spiel]] happen? Kick the door open (sending the mook flying on his ass) and make a run for it. Your pursuer makes a very good point:

** Less Stupidity and more Necessity: Max is ''trapped'' in the morgue, with no other exit, and he very clearly heard the mook outside the door calling for reinforcements to come and break the door down, and then kill him. They had no intention of capturing whatsoever. So, he does the only thing he can, and makes a break for it before the reinforcements show up.

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'': The first episode to feature Ra's Al Ghul has a lampshaded example:

'''Batman''': Must be. But what other choice do we have? }}