Game plots that went insane

[KazeAizen]

Spoiler

It's a bit annoying though trying to maneuver god around the planets. Sometimes it goes off without a hitch, sometimes I crash into the planets after the asteroid belt a dozen times. Still, that's gotta be one of the best ways to end a game on I've ever seen. It's a bit like the climax to Saint's Row the Third in terms of sheer ridiculousness and that feeling of awesomeness mixed with laughter at sheer WTF factor. Wish more games would be like that.

Saint's Row the Third took the kinda dark and serious plot of the previous games and beat it to death with a dildo bat before you got 10 seconds into the introductory cut-scene. And then it got crazy. God I love that game so much.
It's also kinda funny how the dildo bat became the symbolic weapon of the game despite being completely optional and honestly kinda crappy. I never used it throughout my multiple playthroughs, but damn if mere mention of it doesn't capture the spirit of that game so perfectly.

As for other games... well I'm pretty easily entertained so I guess I tend not to notice things going completely bonkers unless it is in a particularly entertaining fashion, like saint's row 3.

Spoiler

I've never had trouble maneuvering Jubileus through the planets. The only time I crashed was when I intentionally did it just to see how it plays out. In that climax though I ask myself how they ended up that far away when it seemed like at most they made it to the moon maybe? I then chalk it up to "magic" because the rest of the game is so damn fun, funny, and entertaining I refused to let that bother me.

I like over the top endings. Bayonetta and Kingdom Hearts 2 are the gold standard for over the top fun and over the top serious climaxes. I mean I'm hitting buildings into a metallic dragon for christ's sake. I don't know why but that should be silly and stupid but whatever choices they made, be it music, design, or whatever it never becomes to silly and remains epic which after all the hell you went through it should be.

Also a game that was bonkers literally from start to finish. Lolipop Chainsaw. So many colors in such a violent game. Plus my crush Tara Strong as the main character. *heart melts*

 

[spartandude]

Spoilers for Gears of War 2

That totally stupid ending where they blow up the last human city. I just doesn't make sense.

Because if the Humans didnt blow it up, then The Locust would have blown it up and that would be bad... because aliens blowing it up is... worse some how.

Personally when they found out about the giant worm...

Spoiler: I think they should have just taken Jacinto, and pushed it somewhere else.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

As far as series go I'd like to nominate Kingdom Hearts for going from a nice little Disney-meets-Square adventure into full-fledged Square mode with an army of quietly snappy protagonists getting themselves killed and resurrected over and over.

 

[CelestDaer]

I have no idea where you get the "If you hadn't played the game, this wouldn't have happened." thing from. What other option you have? Don't play the game? By its very definition, if you hadn't played the game in accordance to the time loop, it would have led to a paradox. There is literally no alternative.

To be fair, Xenogears turned out as it did thanks to some insane budget issues. They practically decided to focus on the beginning of the game and the end of it and only provided a footnote version of the middle. As for the things you bring up, practically every single one of those are perfectly explained in-game, so I don't know what you are talking about. Sure, you can say they are not explained "well" thanks to said budget cuts, but they are there and far from incomprehensible.

If, at any point during FF8, Squall had just turned sideways from the plot and done nothing for a bit, the game wouldn't have actually happened. It says more for Edea, though... if she were to kill the party, she would break the time loop, and never actually end up where she did. And that's what I mean by 'if you didn't play the game'...
Okay, let me see if I can explain my problems with Xenogears a bit better...

Spoiler

Fei is life 7 (it's been a while... I'm probably wrong) but two of his previous lives are still out there in the world (Lacan and Graff, I think?) So, Fei shouldn't be there? Temporal causality? Reincarnation, fine, but your previous life has to end first.
Whenever Id showed up, did Fei just disappear, subsumed into the overriding personality? And no one noticed he was missing?
The Soylent Factory is more a niggling to me, cause I would've much preferred the time to grind, instead of thirty minutes of mediocre dialogue, with a sudden boss fight at the end.
Where did Miang come from when Deus landed on the planet? She was just, there?

There's a difference between 'perfectly explained' and 'just kind of hinted at', for instance, while I find myself enjoying Dark Souls (both 1 and 2) I'm not really going out of my way to find the lore for it, it's more of a case of, here's the set up, now go kill things, because we say so, and that's fine. The answers to my questions might be in Xenogears, but they don't mesh with the game as it was presented. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the game, it just went kind of sideways around the middle and didn't clearly spell the rest out.

 

[RedDeadFred]

There's of course Assassin's creed. which everyone wanted to be about an assassin in ye olde times but turned out to be about future-man desmond. And then the plos goes bananas.

I have only completed the first two, but i can already now this series isn't for me, since the second is supposed to be the "good one", and the plot just goes completly bananas. Apparently hologram-exposition lady at the end explains that before everything there lived some kind of gods, and they left pwoerful artifacts, and then there's these templar dudes who control everything through-out history even though you kick their asses in everey single game, and seriously I couldn't give a fuck anymore.

Who honestly writes assassin's creed? Do they have any sence of sublety or decent storytelling? It just seems they want us to go "woah dude? these medieval dudes control everything? woaaahhhhh".

Black Flag takes a step in the right direction as far as having the modern day shit be less important. It's mostly just easter egg stuff although there are some forced "missions." On a whole, it places the focus a lot more heavily on simply being a pirate. I had only played the first two games as well and I have to say, I liked this game as much as the second one mainly because being a pirate is so damn fun that it overshadows the game's other shortcomings.

OT: I'm going to go away from the trend of plots going insane that have a negative impact on the game and pick one that had a positive impact. Saints Row 4 did this for me. Alien invasion where a super-powered president fights for freedom in a matrix type computer world while occasionally going back to the real world to rescue old friends and have casual sex with them.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Final fantasy 8 and 9. They both went batshit bonkers near the end. FF8 Arguably went bat shit bonkers near the middle, i'm still not completly sure what the fuck was going on in the game, but i still like it.

I never finished FF8, but I'd say the plot went off the rails around the time characters started bating around the phrase "time compression."

Didn't squall and rinoa go into space at some point? Or am i remembering that wrong?

Yes, but I think that was after they stated talking about how some ***** from the future wanted to compress time or some shit. I don't know.

 

[balladbird]

Well star ocean 3: till the end of time (one of the best fucking rpgs in the goddamn history of humanity) when you're near the end of the game, a FUCKING HUGE plot twist happens

Spoiler

You find out that the whole milky way galaxy is a computer program, and you're basically a game for the real people, but somehow humanity managed to break those boundaries so they sent some super strong monsters to destroy the galaxy, and you stop it by killing the master of all that shit. That is the best I can explain because it's simply a mindfuck, people hated that plot twist, but I thought it was fucking genius.

If it was handled well perhaps. I haven't played it, mind, but the way you described it makes it sound completely out of left field.

Dragon's Dogma did go bat shit insane by the end, but it did so with some degree of foreshadowing. Things like lines and actions from the Dragon not fitting with the "ultimate evil" image and the seemingly mis-named Everfall among them.

The biggest flaw with the twist in SO3 wasn't the twist itself, but the fact that they tried to squeeze it in too close to the end of the game, and rushed it out too quickly. Spending 50 hours playing the role of a star trek ensign trying not to break the prime directive, only to discover that

Spoiler

it was all just a game inside a game inside a game, and that all the characters, political intrigue, and throne-gaming you did had next to nothing to do with the main story at all

the twist in SO3 was actually really cool, I thought. Alas, it was too ambitious.

 

[William Fleming]

My personal favourite bat shit insane plot twist has to be Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. End game plot details in spoiler.

Spoiler

In basic terms, the character's universe is the matrix run by 4D beings for entertainment purposes. It get's weirder, some little kid pulls you out of the matrix after they hit the reset switch (no seriously, that's the best way to describe it). You then go BACK into the matrix to do something (I forget what though) then come back out to fight the higher ups of the corporation running the matrix (who all seemed kind of similar to the 10 Wisemen from the 2nd game). I gets even weirder, you climb up a high tower (like most JRPGs) to fight the head of the corporation who has a seriously god complex. After the fight, he destroys the matrix and kind of wiping the main characters from existence except they go on about how they perceive their universe to be real and wish their universe back where they live happily ever after.

I barely touched upon it but the last 1/3 of the game goes bat shit insane and many fans despise the game for that twist. But yeah that's a simplistic summary of what happens.

 

[pspman45]

as one of the seemingly two people who have played Capcom's Dragons Dogma, I'm putting that up for judgement

Spoiler

The plot starts out as "oh no, a dragon stole your heart and going to destrooooyyyy the woorrrrllldd, you should stop him!" after killing the dragon however, half of the main city is lost in a huge collapse, the sun is perminantly blocked out by ashes, and brand new super powerful demon enemies show up. from there, you have to journey through the collapsed section of the city, which reveals that the city is above an infinitely looping chasm. after collecting 20 of these special stone things, you travel to heaven, kill god, take his place, and can only start NG+ by stabbing yourself in the chest with a special sword and starting the journey to kill the new god, YOU!

its kind of so ridiculous that it's awesome though

 

[Saint of M]

My money is on Final Fantasy X-2. it doesn't start to have a plot until about the second chapter, and meanders around it enough times that I have to wonder what is going on when the music wasn't making me insane.

 

[Nata-chan]

Well there's the original Guild Wars: Prophecies. It goes from fairly generic European Fantasy world to Lovecraft was right all along rather quickly. In the start of the game your just some lowly adventurer straight out of the academy In the tutorial area. You run around getting a few skills for your hotbar. Choose your secondary Profession. Get some basic loot. Then its gets weird. Like David Cage strange how this got into any game let alone a MMORPG.

Yeah I felt playing Guild Wars it was like 'oh what could go wrong now?'. I really liked Eye of the North for returning to the Ascalon stuff after running about in Asia and Africa.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Wait, 3 PAGES AND NO ONE HAS MENTIONED XENOBLADE?!

WHAT IIIISSSS THIIIIIIS?!

Below are MASSIVE MASSIVE SPOILERS.

I'm not kidding. Massive spoilers.

Spoiler

First of all, the world is made up of two gigantic titans that everyone lives on. Machines live on one, living beings live on the other. The plot begins with the hero seeking revenge for the machines killing his childhood friend/ implied potential love interest, and getting the reality bending sword from his mentor, and being able to control it effortlessly, which is a surprise to everyone.

Ok, after a great plot leading up about a war against machines, finding out that the whole war is actually due to a cycle of revenge and fear STARTED BY THE GOD OF YOUR OWN SIDE who tried to murder the entire machine race (he was the one who started the titan war in the intro), who was then sealed away, until you released him but he then died...Oh, and the sorta-girlfriend from the beginning is alive and is now a cyborg with the soul of the machine goddess in her.

It comes to a climax where you confront the leader of the machine guys, he hijacks the gigantic titan the machine people are living on to try to murder everyone living on your titan, and the hero has the perfect opportunity to finish him off for good.....and he doesn't. He instead chooses to extend the hand of friendship and end the cycle of revenge, even though that's what set him off on his journey to begin with, and it looks like this is going to be the end of our epic conclusion...

...and then everything goes batshit bonkers.

An ally you had from the start who seemed to know a bit too much KILLS the hero, releasing the God of the living titan that was sealed inside him, since he's a secret disciple of that god. See, the hero was basically a kid who had the God sealed into him as a child when his family of archeologists discovered the sword with the power to rewrite reality. The "god" that was killed earlier was only his original physical body, while his mind was sealed into the hero's body. So now the living-God comes out, announces he will now purge all life, machine and living, and restart his world to his liking. He and the machine goddess fight, she sacrifices herself to delay him, but he still blows up the entire machine titan, and reverting all the elf people on the living titan into their natural form of creepy, mindless psionic dragons (except the handful that had enough human DNA to overrride that, including your elf party member), and finally runs off with both YOUR reality bending God Sword, and the Machine Goddesses' God Sword, which basically allows him to do ANYTHING HE WANTS.

Then, the main character eventually wakes back up, the machine people give him a replica reality bending sword that functions a lot like the old one. You then kill off each of his disciples, enter his little dimension, which looks like our solar system, with the same planets and names for them, you fight him, the hero suddenly through force of his own will, gains his OWN God Sword, earning the right to be a God, and kills the Living God.

Then, you find out that the whole plot started with Earth as we know it, with a pair of scientists and an AI, who were worried that space travel would be bad for humanity, and one of the scientists basically forcibly rebooted the entire universe with an experiment. Then, he and the scientist that was trying to stop him become the living god and machine god, respectively, and the AI becomes a neutral god that was just observing everything, and was in fact a secondary character who was following you around knowing too much the entire time and being a bit suspicious. The living god then got a god complex and decided to keep wiping out all life to prevent space travel from happening. 0_o.

Hero then chooses to give up his God Sword and let the world expand. BAM, suddenly, the world is a lot larger, with continents and stuff, and the girlfriend is now human again, and the AI guy tells him to be ready to meet new species and stuff.

0_o I was staring at the screen weirded out for a while. I mean, a lot of that came out of nowhere.

Still a fantastic game, though. If they hadn't dragged out the ending with overly strong monsters, not enough properly levelled side quests to level up if you were too weak, and too many arbitrary roadblocks in the last 2 dungeons, then it would have been my favourite RPG of all time.

And there's also System Shock 2, which I JUST finished because Extra Credits was telling my I HAD TO PLAY IT.

Spoiler

Yay, I killed all the xenomorphs! now wha-

REALLY, Shodan? You're using the warp drive of the ship to bend reality and turn it into cyberspace so you can rule the entire universe as you please?!

Oh come on! Y U BETRAY ME?! I did nothing but help you! ;_;

 

[Wolf In A Bear Suit]

The Assassins creed modern day storyline.
It was a kind of good premise in the first two games. Brotherhood on however, it goes NOWHERE. Like in Black Flag virtually nothing happens in this regard. It seems like something actually big happens in AC3 BUT IT'S MEANINGLESS in the next game. Desmond was as interesting as dry toast, and sassy English guy was the only character I liked. If they do another one just please end the modern story instead of dragging it out further because it's so stale, and lost all legitimacy when they went down the Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull road.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Rule of Rose.

Spoiler

Ok, so, pretty standard horror stuff; a university student on her way home on a bus meets a young child who gives her a storybook, and she follows him after he runs off. She finds herself wandering around an orphanage, full of creepy young children, dogs howling, and various other ones. ...Then she gets BURIED with her dog and best friend who she's never met and ends up in an airship and there's these creepy imp children, right, and a society run by kids, right, ok, you're following me, and then, like, she's got to give the society an offering every month or she'll get molested with a rat on the end of a stick or something. And there's this creepy fat girl and a ton of lesbians.

Um, oh, yeah, and someone hits the maid so hard in the crotch with a crocket stick that she dies, and the owner f the airship turns into a BDSM fetishist and tries to murder you with a riding crop and... but, like, why doesn't she just beat the little fuckers up with that knife she's been carrying through the entire game? Why wouldn't she? Just.. beat 'em up a little. Then take their food... goddamnit, Jennifer, why can't you do this one thing?

...uggghhh... my head hurts so freakin' much.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Final Fantasy series is the epitome of "if you can't convince them, confuse them". I really can't see why it's so popular, they got pretty bad stories both on the dialog side and a setting that people can't relate to.

Maybe I'm just getting old and prefer something more realistic and less fantastical.

 

[Ishal]

As far as series go I'd like to nominate Kingdom Hearts for going from a nice little Disney-meets-Square adventure into full-fledged Square mode with an army of quietly snappy protagonists getting themselves killed and resurrected over and over.

I feel like any and all JRPG's fall into this sort of thing. It just such a leap for me to get invested in anything that is happening. These are kids walking around in ridiculous outfits with shoes as big as their heads. Then they start going into tirades of watered down existentialism like they're Kierkegaard. It's just too much.