Biggest plothole in gaming?

[LittleChone]

Toad.

How the hell did he get in all those castles in the first place?!?!?!?

 

[DefinitelyPsychotic]

Assassin's Creed II's ending...

That was a clusterfuck of plotholes!

 

[Nieroshai]

Except don't the item descriptions for Pheonix Downs say somewhere "return a party member to life?" I seem to remember reading that somewhere.

Not sure on the exact wording, but if it does say that then it's by this: a pheonix down is restoring their life. revitalizing, if you will. They may not be dead, but they've had the life knocked out of them and are now unconscious so the downs revitalizes the party member to a state wherein they are able to act. a.k.a. life.

In FF6 the status screen will even tell you that a player is unconscious as opposed to dead. Also, in 7, if "death" is really death, why does a body come back to life if you take it to an inn?

Basically, being "killed" in FF7 is being put in a near-death state. You are bleeding out but not dead. This happens in D&D too, you lose all HP but you're not really DEAD until you reach -10 HP, which indicates death as opposed to incapacitation.

Yep (although in D&D it's also possible to return a "dead dead" character to life with a revive spell and I don't like bringing that up in these debates because theres a revive materia in FF7 and I can't explain that one lol)

You can use revive to describe any instance of bringing someone back to consciousness from any state including comas and normal sleep. Maybe the real plot hole is that the items even say the items can resurrect.

 

[Nieroshai]

Toad.

How the hell did he get in all those castles in the first place?!?!?!?

Dressing like the princess maybe? Cuz we all know a wig is all it takes to pass off as anyone...

 

[XandNobody]

Toad.

How the hell did he get in all those castles in the first place?!?!?!?

See, I get the feeling that Toad is acting as some sort of ninja assassin trying to save the princess on his own. What happens is, he breaks into these enemy castles, bypassing all defenses, and starts looking for the princess. Yet, he can't find her. Then, to figure out where she is, he lies in wait for Bowser to sleep so he can ask the villain at knife-point where the princess is. Instead, this Mario klutz comes along every-time, Bowser escapes death in his lava proof submarine after the 'battle' with Mario, and it takes all Toad has not to kill Mario on the spot as he explains that the princess is in another castle.

That could just be me though.

 

[Bento Box]

Plot holes, eh?

Fallout:

Where did all the popular music from the alternate century between the bombs dropping in Japan and the bombs dropping in the USA -- go?

 

[renzozuken2002]

How do game characters live without eating?

Why do game characters never have to go to the bathroom?

What is sleep to a Pokemon Master?

And you rarely see them breathing! But what is oxygen to a ten year old boy?

Why was a ten year old given control of a creature that could destroy a city and then instructed to go catch more of them?

How is it I can carry hundreds of pokeballs at any given time, but only 6 pokemon?

 

[Magicman10893]

So instead, I'll just say this:
If Kessler caused Cole to get his powers in InFamous... how did Kessler get his powers? Time travel tends to leave tons of plotholes.

Said already, but Cole/Kessler's a conduit, which means he already has psychic powers. The Ray Sphere just made them appear faster.


My plot hole would probably be from Halo, and the existance of the Halo rings.

If one guy with a shotgun can clear out thousands of them in a single day, how long would they last against a billion guys with shotguns?

Failing that, the Forerunners probably have orbital-death-ray-things. Nuke them from orbit!

The problem with the Flood was they literally flooded you with immense numbers. They couldn't possibly kill all of them fast enough and any dead body that hasn't decayed to the point of being a skeleton became a viable host. So that is why the Forerunners built the Halo Array. Now, how humans and the Covenant survived the initial activation of the Halos I will never know. And also, Spartans are like the Green Berets and Spetsnaz on steroids, and not to mention that Master Chief is supposed to be the best one, so he could kill millions of them, but everyone else would be SCREWED!

OT: I would say Dragon Age 2 had some bad ones.

Spoiler: Anders

Anders needs your help to blow up the Chantry, but he somehow manages it even though you might not help him.

Spoiler: Sibling

Why does Carver join the Templars even if you are friends with him? Why does Bethany turn so cold even though YOU SAVE HER LIFE if she becomes a Grey Warden?

Spoiler: Mages

I go to Orsino (Mage leader) to help the Mages fight back against Meredith and he tells me to follow his students that sneak out at night. I go under the MAGE'S ORDERS and walk in on Templars and Mages working together to oust Meredith, and they claim that I am there under Meredith's orders to stop them EVEN THOUGH I DENOUNCED MEREDITH IN PUBLIC and they attacked, forcing me to kill all of them. Then I go the second meeting place and again, they attack except for the one Templar that I helped before. He then comes up to me and asks why I would work for Meredith.

I explain to him that I work for Orsino to HELP THE MAGES JUST LIKE I SAID IN PUBLIC!!! He points me to their hideout where they kidnapped my brother to prevent me from interfering with their plans, again, despite me calling out Meredith IN PUBLIC!

Whatever, I go to the hideout to get my brother and tell them that I came to help their cause. I get there and what do I find? The Templar that I helped in aiding some apostates escape the Circle and those same apostates, and he comes up to me and says, "You're a reasonable man, surely you can see Meredith is wrong? Why do you choose to help her?" Which, at this point I explain, yet again, that I OPPOSE MEREDITH AND WANT TO HELP THE MAGES!!! Then the Mages I helped before kill the Templar that helped them and want me dead because I killed their leader WHEN HE ATTACKED ME FIRST WITH NO QUESTIONS ASKED! And for some reason, they use Blood Magic to kill the Templar in charge there, and the rest of the Templars are on the Blood Mage's side and everyone is trying to kill me.

I kill everyone except for the one reasonable one and he frees my brother, who is now finally accepting my help and appreciating me saving him for the billionth time and for making him a Grey Warden instead of dying from the Blight. At least one plot hole is resolved... by making one the size of the Grand Canyon.

 

[viranimus]

The biggest plothole in gaming?

The fact that piracy, Used and Rental markets are all choking the life out of one of the worlds most profitable industries.

Ok, being serious? Theres been several instances of "they had a whole big section of the game devoted to this one story arch and then they trailed off and never came back and explained what happened" moments in gaming history, but it has seemed to me, that when those instances come up, the offending game really wasnt that memorable in the first place.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

A war between nations is not a civil war, so yes, I did refer to the squabble over the throne business. I don't know if you've noticed this before, but reports of destruction spread quite easily. There is no way that all of Ferelden could have been ignorant of the incoming Blight, given numerous reports of destruction.

As for the elves, yes, they were in bad shape. That still doesn't explain why the idiot who started the curse led them back into the forest in the first place, though that might have just been out of his own vanity. Also, why don't the werewolves just wipe the elves out? Yes, the forest spirit has something against that, but there is literally no opposition to the beasts!

Uhm, then how the hell did that dragon get down there? Or for that matter, how could the dwarfs not have known about the broodmother (or the delightful porn of it)? And don't forget, you actually see a bloody army of darkspawn marching down there. Man, those dwarfs must be really good at fightin' them darkspawn considering how much attention they pay to them.

Ooh wait, I've got another one: where the hell did the mage faction that summoned the sloth demon come from? I played as a mage, and I did not hear of any such organization when I started in the tower. Or did they just form after my amazing betrayal of my supposed best friend? I'm sure they were all awestruck by his masterful use of the emo I'm-cutting-myself-and-sprinkle-things-with-blood magic. But whatever, I don't exactly expect coherence from Bioware games, or fantasy stories in particular. I just enjoy poking holes into them while playing the game, basically the same approach I take with SyFy original movies.

About the civil war. Simply put, Loghains a dick and a mad one at that. So the PC has two choices, either let the mad dick do things his way (not too profitable, considering he sacrificed the most elite troops at his disposal for political reasons) or fight the mad dick (in which case the civil war happens).

The elves pretty much have to live in the forest to avoid coming under the heel of human rule and being put in a ghetto. You could obviously argue that it's still better than being killed off or turned into werewolves, but it's obvious from your interactions with them that the Dalish elves are insufferably proud. The werewolves don't just wipe out the elves because they want them to suffer for what's been done to them and as such try to drag it out for as long as possible. It is entirely possible for the PC to say "Fuck it, those elf guys sounds like dicks. We should kill them all and then you can fight for me since you're awesome".

The Dwarves don't much care about the blight because as you know they have to deal with the Darkspawn every day and they lost most of their civilisation to them. It is therefore rather hard for them to be sympathetic to the humans when they have to deal with the Darkspawn once. It's not their problem and it's only the Grey Warden treaties that oblige them to fight. Those treaties have to be acknowledged by a king which is where the trouble starts because the dwarves have to do everything officially and 'properly'.

As for the whole mage tower thing... well that just seems to be a problem because it's very hard to have an idea of the time span between the origin story and you returning to the mage's tower, since at no point is it indicated how long it actually takes to travel anywhere.

 

[Jubbert]

I don't get why everyone is claiming that the Reapers don't make sense, it's pretty well-established that they come after organic life after it's developed for several millenia so that they can steal their advances in technology and thus become more advanced themselves.

Probably 'cause they're like the Covenant in Halo - As in, they don't adapt to environments, they just mimic things already in the environment, which is why they all use Forerunner tech instead of making their own shit.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Pretty much everything in Resident Evil 4. Why doesn't every enemy just sprout a plagas at once, and then dog pile on Leon? And why don't they just use guns? They set up an elaborate trap to push a giant bolder on Leon, but they can't just pick up a rifle?

The Plagas I think just left their host inrepairably damaged, and it doesn't appear the villegers can bring it out on will, only as a last resort defence mechanism in the case an infected's head is blasted off.

The lack of guns isn't that unrealistic. Remember, in Europe their are much, much more restrictive gun laws then here in the US (except Norway and Swizterland). The villagers are very simple peasents, and it might be argued that the castle guys were a presudo religious order and guns might be against their "religion." Of course that doesn't explain why the soldiers on the last island were still using crossbows, considering that the special ones in that area are carrying MINI-GUNS for christ sake.

 

[chimeracreator]

Spoiler: Mages

I go to Orsino (Mage leader) to help the Mages fight back against Meredith and he tells me to follow his students that sneak out at night. I go under the MAGE'S ORDERS and walk in on Templars and Mages working together to oust Meredith, and they claim that I am there under Meredith's orders to stop them EVEN THOUGH I DENOUNCED MEREDITH IN PUBLIC and they attacked, forcing me to kill all of them. Then I go the second meeting place and again, they attack except for the one Templar that I helped before. He then comes up to me and asks why I would work for Meredith.

I explain to him that I work for Orsino to HELP THE MAGES JUST LIKE I SAID IN PUBLIC!!! He points me to their hideout where they kidnapped my brother to prevent me from interfering with their plans, again, despite me calling out Meredith IN PUBLIC!

Whatever, I go to the hideout to get my brother and tell them that I came to help their cause. I get there and what do I find? The Templar that I helped in aiding some apostates escape the Circle and those same apostates, and he comes up to me and says, "You're a reasonable man, surely you can see Meredith is wrong? Why do you choose to help her?" Which, at this point I explain, yet again, that I OPPOSE MEREDITH AND WANT TO HELP THE MAGES!!! Then the Mages I helped before kill the Templar that helped them and want me dead because I killed their leader WHEN HE ATTACKED ME FIRST WITH NO QUESTIONS ASKED! And for some reason, they use Blood Magic to kill the Templar in charge there, and the rest of the Templars are on the Blood Mage's side and everyone is trying to kill me.

I kill everyone except for the one reasonable one and he frees my brother, who is now finally accepting my help and appreciating me saving him for the billionth time and for making him a Grey Warden instead of dying from the Blight. At least one plot hole is resolved... by making one the size of the Grand Canyon.

Yeah, I HATED that. They made it impossible to do right in the eyes of certain plot points despite the fact that you clearly should have been able to.

Spoiler

For example, even if you uncover and start to track down your mother's killer in the second act you still can't save her in the third.

I understand why you can't stop Anders, but why is it the mages will ALWAYS hate you. You can walk up as a mage who just goes around killing Templars and the mages will still think your working for Meredith. Plus once you stop the templar attack the arch-mage just decides. "Well we won the bulk of this fight, time to turn into an abomination and attack you" instead of just fighting our way out, which would be the smart thing to do.

I really enjoyed a lot of aspects of Dragon Age 2, but they railroaded certain parts of the story that they shouldn't have. There's nothing wrong with only having ONE boss fight per play through and letting players skip battles if they do things the smart way.

 

[Khenal Baroney]

Plot holes, eh?

Fallout:

Where did all the popular music from the alternate century between the bombs dropping in Japan and the bombs dropping in the USA -- go?

The culture of the Fallout world never got out of the 50s or so. All of the "old" music in the game is the "new releases" of the culture. Additionally, Fallout loves it some references. Why write some old style music when you can just use the good old stuff?

 

[Innegativeion]

Toad.

How the hell did he get in all those castles in the first place?!?!?!?

Like most creatures in mario,

There's a lot of them that look the same, and one that is named after his species. Another such example is Yoshie.

But really, who names their kid like that? What if your parents named you "Human"?

 

[Innegativeion]

Kingdom hearts 2 (As silly as this sounds)

The whole first game is about how the big dark things are bad and how Sora is the chosen of this keyblade, and cause of that he's awesome and the only one who can stop it...

KH2 rolls around: Lets see...who doesn't have a keyblade in this game? (not counting world-centric characters) um...uh...Donald and Goofy, thats about it. What really got me was how Riku somehow managed to get ANOTHER one even though Sora DESTROYED ONE HE HAD in the first game.

Lol its so silly, but if you're going to go through the trouble of writing a plot, at least make it click with what was being said in the first game, there were a bunch of other things there too...those holes organization XIII used? those are actually giant plot holes.

I get the impression that somewhere halfway through KH: CoM's development they decided to steer away from the "chosen one" cliche and veer towards the "jedi knights" cliche.

I still like the plot either way, and depending on how the 3ds game goes, see potential in the "jedi knights" order of keybearers thing.

 

[Coffinshaker]

There's a lot for Mario. But then again, for Mario to have plot holes, Mario needs a plot.

So instead, I'll just say this:
If Kessler caused Cole to get his powers in InFamous... how did Kessler get his powers? Time travel tends to leave tons of plotholes.

heh... my friends were cooping the mario game and on the last level, the one playing mario died but the one playing luigi beat the game! and yet... mario got the girl and flew off in a balloon... wth? they just abandoned luigi? the hero? not sure if that's a plot hole, but it's certainly something weird. (ps, hope that's not a spoiler... cause um... it's basically the ending of every mario game)

 

[Innegativeion]

heh... my friends were cooping the mario game and on the last level, the one playing mario died but the one playing luigi beat the game! and yet... mario got the girl and flew off in a balloon... wth? they just abandoned luigi? the hero? not sure if that's a plot hole, but it's certainly something weird. (ps, hope that's not a spoiler... cause um... it's basically the ending of every mario game)

Don't feel too bad for Luigi. He's dating royalty too, and she hasn't been kidnapped in YEARS!

 

[KiraTaureLor]

I just started playing POP sands of time (Older one..) and you get to a point very early on where a guy releases the sands of time, and it got me thinking, why doesn't the prince just use the dagger to reverse time until before that? It was only a minute ago...

That got me thinking about plot holes in other games, and I wanted to know the escapists opinion on what the most glaring plot hole is in any game.

The OP would do good to direct this question to Yatzee