They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot/Video Games: Difference between revisions

* ''[[RF Online]]''. The setting for the game is incredible - it's the far future in which three offshoot races of humanity are engaged in intergalactic warfare - the short, mostly-humanlike Bellato, the elven (and surprisingly savage) Cora and the Accretia, who are ''human minds transplanted into immortal robotic war machines''. There are mechs. There's magic. Spaceships. Spaceships which ''run'' on magic. Entire planets have burned in the backstory. The scope of the plot could be vast. And what do we get? A typical grind-heavy Korean MMO with ''one quest'' per level and no real plot to speak of. Seriously, CCR? Like, really seriously? This is the best you can do?

** As an example, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG-LCeSfVow this is one of the trailers for the game]. Look at that. ''LOOK AT IT'' and then realize that all that was made of the concept was a grindy K-MMO. It's heartbreaking.

* Many a gamer who played ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Brawl'' felt this way about The Subspace Emissary. They've got the entire Nintendo universe at their disposal; what stages, enemies and gameplay mechanics ''couldn't'' be gathered from THAT?! Instead, 92% of the stages and enemies in the game are original, and quite generic at that. This occurs in a game ''meant to celebrate memories brought from all things Nintendo''.

* ''[[Dino Crisis]] 3'' could have picked up the cliffhanger from the previous game, which in itself was pretty dramatic and implied a lot of time-travelling plotting and action-based rescue. Instead, the story is thrown out and the series changes so much that it seems to be a sequel [[In Name Only]].

** ''Mask of the Betrayer'''s campaign seemed to be be clearly building towards the destruction of the [[And I Must Scream|Wall of the Faithless]] only to be seemingly denied at the very last moment. Some players [[Epileptic Trees|assert]] that Wizards of the Coasts' notorious enforcement of story control may have been responsible.

* A Mario example is ''[[Super Mario Sunshine]]''. Mario and Peach leave for a tropical vacation, but Mario is arrested on charges of vandalism and pollution, Peach is unable to exert her royal authority on the island, the mysterious Shine Sprites have scattered and fled from the pollution, and poor Mario is sentenced to clean up the island while he tries to find out who's really behind the mess. Early on in the game, you learn that it's just Bowser's son who wants to kidnap Peach, and then the game forgets about the plot in favor of collecting Shines and blue coins (which you trade in for, wait for it, {{spoiler|Shines}}).

* ''[[R-Type]]'' is absolutely ''made'' of awesome plot. The backstory is basically that humans in the future created an artificial lifeform (the Bydo) that they lost control of. In order to prevent the lifeform from screwing up their present, they shifted them to another dimension, which, you know, alright. Then the Bydo found out how to manipulate their dimension to travel through time and attacked the humans of the ''past'' in order to gain dominance. Past humanity then builds the R-Type fighters, takes sample of Bydo DNA and creates Force weapons, and fights back. This amounts to, in the games, some quotes and loads and loads of ambiguous endings. And R-Type Final doesn't explain ''anything'', despite being the last game in the series. So much for time-traveling human creations with a thirst for destruction and revenge: it's just a [[Nintendo Hard]] side-scrollers shoot-'em-up.

* The adventure game ''The Colonel's Bequest'' (and its sequel, ''Dagger of Amon Ra'' - turns out Roberta Williams isn't remotely as good a writer as she thinks). The game is full of elaborate (if cliched) characters that have all sorts of plotting and intrigue going on in between them - all of which is ''completely irrelevant'' because {{spoiler|they all die like mayflies. The ultimate goal of the game is to be able to know that Dead Guy A that you never met before was going to Dead Girl B that you hadn't known either}}. Why would the protagonist even care?

** To be fair to canon, the journal bundled with collector's editions did a good job with connecting the plot of Reach to the rest of the expanded universe, including {{spoiler|explaining why Cortana was in the Forerunner ruins when she should have been on the Pillar of Autumn. She split herself in two in order to be in both places at once.}} Noble Six's last stand wasn't pointless, {{spoiler|s/he stayed behind to ensure the Pillar of Autumn could escape, destroying a Covenant cruiser in the process.}} Plus as a Spartan III, s/he is a [[Fridge Brilliance|a disposable Spartan intended for suicide missions.]] The real Wasted Plot here was Six's sabre training. We get a third of a level with six flying a sabre before s/he's back on his/her feet. It was a fun, short segment that really should have been more of the game. Hopefully 343 Industries will take a cue from player feedback and make a good space simulator game.

** There was also the fact you actually missed a lot of the actual major battles of reach (which seems to be a annoying trend with bungie). Which is also a case of this trope mixed with [[Offscreen Moment of Awesome]]. All the interesting stuff happens in ''THE BACKGROUND!!''.

** The entire game looks like this if you think about it, if the [[Moral Dissonance]] involving Elise's father wasn't present ( {{spoiler|Sealing an [[Eldritch Abomination]] in her, and making sure she never cries, and in turn, show not much emotion}}), Mephiles has incredibly clear motives, [[Complexity Addiction|just no clear]] ''[[Complexity Addiction|plan]]'', some things the [[Idiot Plot]] had done could also have been cleared up as well.

*** ''[[Sonic Adventure 2]]'' had some of this as well, though it's only minor. Professor Gerald is, as stated in game, Eggman's Grandfather. Therefore Maria must also be related to Eggman quite closely. A cousin, possibly even a sister. Yet the game never looks at how their deaths affected HIM. It would have been interesting to see Eggman's reaction to finding out what happened to his family. It could possibly have been even MORE interesting to show that he already knew and that this was his motivation for trying to take over the world... he wants to overthrow the evil, oppressive regime that killed his family. Admittedly, this would result in some SERIOUS [[Grey and Gray Morality]] and possibly have thrown the series too far into [[Darker and Edgier]] territory if handled badly.

* On the subject of the [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic series]], this was both [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|they wasted a perfectly good plot AND character:]] [[Ensemble Darkhorse|Sha]][[Breakout Character|dow]] [[Base Breaker|the Hedgehog]]. A huge contrast to the titular character Sonic, he was the artificial [[Anti-Hero]] [[Ultimate Lifeform]] (heck, he's the [[Trope Namer]]) who was on a mission to avenge the deaths of his friend Maria and his creator Prof. Gerald Robotnik, both murdered in cold blood on the space colony Ark 50 years ago. His appearance in the second ''Adventure'' game was originally supposed to be his last, but his popularity skyrocketed immensely, to the point where the [[Executive Meddling|developers gave him his own]] [[Story Arc]]. <ref> ''Which started in his story in [[Sonic Heroes]], and ending in his self-titled game, [[Shadow the Hedgehog]].''</ref> This led to a world of pointless sub-plots (Shadow being an android/clone ''[[It Makes Sense in Context|of the real Shadow]]'' being the notorious example, {{spoiler|but even that was debunked in [[Shadow the Hedgehog]] in the last story. Eggman openly admits that he was, in fact, the real Shadow and he saved him after his apparent death in [[Sonic Adventure 2]]}}), and it turn one of the most badass characters in the franchise into a [[Jerkass]] [[Gary Stu]] with constant [[Identity Amnesia]] and [[Wangst]]. Oh, and he's part-alien too. Yep, his blood comes from an advance alien race that, while having NO MENTION of their existence before hand, suddenly appear in his game.

* ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' has the female lead discover her heritage as an invincible, blue-fire-clad angel of destruction, after growing up an orphan who never knew her parents and had to struggle to make it on her own her whole life, and come into the ability to channel the energies of [[Green Rocks|ragnite]], the resource the war of the game is being fought over in the first place. None of this is important, or even addressed, and instead she becomes [[Cursed with Awesome|suicidal over her powers]].

** Well, can't blame Namdai for avoiding screwing up continuity (besides, the Tales series was never big on [[What If|What-Iffing]]). What they ''could'' have done, though, was showing some sort of epilogue detailing how and why Elraine brought him back to life, setting the stage for ''Tales of Destiny 2''.

* ''[[Ace Combat]] 6'' has not one, but two! The game has four initially-unrelated storylines. One involves an allied fighter pilot upset over the fact that they were forced to abandon their nation's capital (where his family lived) to enemy occupation. The second is about a refugee from the capital who believes her husband to have been killed in the defense of the city, who is now looking for her daughter, who went missing during the attack. The third followsan enemy intelligence officer stationed in the occupied capital. The fourth is about an allied tank commander hatching a ''[[Three Kings]]'' style plot to rob a bank under cover of the battle to liberate the capital.

** But wait, there was a fourth plotline! The tank commander/wannabe bank robber! Yeah, nothing ever happens with him except accidentally rescuing the intel officer and refugee's daughter from an incredibly pointless [[Locked in a Freezer|Locked In An Abandoned Tunnel]] situation, which was both completely superfluous in the first place and could've been solved by any other [[Deus Ex Machina]] they cared to whip up without wasting an entire plotline just to explain how that tank crew came to be there at that particular moment.

* The [[PlayStation 2]] game ''[[Steambot Chronicles]]'' has this happen to quite a few potentially interesting plotlines (one of which includes being able to become the leader of two organizations).

** That still has yet to be seen, with SCII only 1/3 done, story-wise. But...judging by how the rest of the game went, it's a safe guess that {{spoiler|Raynor will be too caught up in finally having Kerrigan back to care, or even acknowledge that he just killed his friend of who knows how many years.}} Wasted plot, indeed.

* ''[[Clive Barker's Jericho]]'' has a small band of government-ordained fighters of the supernatural who are, themselves, supernatural. Fairly early on, the player character and leader is killed - and [[Body Surf|Body Surfs]] from one party member to another whenever the player wants to control someone else, talking and using his healing powers through them. This is barely commented on. Yes, it's a shooter/horror game much more interested in gore, but the ''idea'' of someone being unable to act or even communicate except through others, and the issues that might result, is fascinating.