Game plots that went insane

[Gennadios]

System Shock 2

Spoiler

The Big Bad's master plan was to use the ship's warp drive to somehow bring virtual reality into the real world so that she could possess people to do her bidding

The last roughly half hour of that game was all sorts of f*****, I almost wished I stopped playing before I got to it.

 

[lacktheknack]

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.

The start is excellent: Fleeing police after you appear to have killed your own mentor, wandering the slums trying to figure out who did what, raiding the Louvre...

...by the time I was fighting shark-plants in a biodome and a second character suddenly locks Lara in an elevator and continues on in her place for NO REASON AT ALL, I was beyond lost.

 

[StormTriarii]

While it was not the most popular or successful game, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified had an interesting ending where it was revealed that you the player where an actual character.
Interestingly enough I had finished Spec Ops: the Line a few days before that and that also had a good story and view on war games as a whole: You can only win by not playing the game.

 

[Saltyk]

Insert JRPG here.

No, while I love some JRPGs, they tend to go insane on the plots. Expect to go from some mere boy from a village no one ever heard of, to slaying God. Because why not? Also, for some reason, God, a super perfect being, has his spleen outside his body and on his shoulder. Because that's where it goes.

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.

Good times, man. Good times.

I would like to add Final Fantasy Tactics to the list because, even all these years later, I still cannot tell you what is going on, who is who, what is being fought over, and...oh look, there's Cloud. Because why not. Weeeeee!

It basically comes down to various people in power trying to use the Prince and Princess as pawns for political gain. Meanwhile the Church is trying to gather holy relics to undermine all this and become the major power in Ivalice. However, even the most ardent members of the Church think the Holy Stones are little more than colored stones, but the Templar Knights who were gathering the stones became possessed by the Lucavi who sought to resurrect their leader.

And in all the middle of this, we have Ramza and Delita. Ramza who tries to do what it right and refuses to commit evil in that goal. Delita, on the other hand, is willing to commit evil for the greater good and actively engages in the whole plotting and deception that even Ramza's brothers are a part of.

I didn't say it was simple.

They also added Luso and Balthier (the leading man of FFXII) to the party roster in War of the Lions.

 

[LetalisK]

Could be wrong, though. Currently playing it again, so we'll see.

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPmzA_cRMgM

7:15 - 8:40. They try to lead the player to infer that it is gambling debts the whole game, but it's his spiritual debt. Ever since he committed atrocities against Native Americans, Booker was drinking himself to death(and I think other stuff, it's basically PTSD). Then Robert Lutece shows up, from Comstock's "dimension" or whatever, and offers to erase his sins in exchange for giving Robert the baby. That right there is enough to crank my shaft as being fucking dumb. PTSD being used as the motivator puts salt in it for me, what with being a soldier. So stupid. >.<

Edit: I can't seem to fix the youtube video.

 

[Bbleds]

Ok, i got around to playing Indigo Prophecy(or Fahrenheit to others) to see why it has quite the reputation.
Goddamn it David Cage.

Yeah, pretty much describes how I feel. This "amazing game designer who is constantly breaking new emotional experience grounds with realistic graphics" seems to not exactly grasp how to write emotionally meaningful characters and good plot. While I quit prophecy after my 4th failed attempt to turn left to escape a ghost flea, I did play through heavy rain. Oh dear god...

Going "insane" with your plot can be fun, but seriously make sure it works in your fictional universe and at least appear to try to avoid plot holes. While I could go on forever about every other damned inconsistency that slapped me in the face, there is really just one that always urked me. The FBI agent's future technological Mcguffin VR headset,...why? Sure, FBI, advanced tech, but I call bull shit on this because a normal society would start making sure every law enforcer had this. It wasn't really the agent who found overlooked clues, it was that damn Oculus thing. It made everyone's several hours of normal detective work pointless in seconds flat, and not once did someone go "Gee, wonder if we should start finding a way to get one of those."

Yeah looked cool, provided an semi-interesting game mechanic, and was definitely "weird", but it made no sense in a universe that is supposedly like ours except for FBI agents with the Investigate-O-Spam google glasses....uhhh

Guess I'll just say it again, Goddamn it David Gage.

 

[J.V]

I'm going to count the whole Saints Row series. Starting from fairly sober beginnings with a quirky personality and the ending up with the super powered President fighting Aliens in a simulation. It was pretty awesome, really.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Well, there's Kingdom Hearts. Not so much the first one...it's relatively straight-forward (evil forces are kidnapping Princesses so as to access a realm of light and thus corrupt it with dark energy so as to rule everything). Then the sequels started happening...and...I have no idea what's going on with Kingdom Hearts at this point honestly...granted I've only beaten 3DS, the original and, Birth by Sleep...I knew I wouldn't be the first to mention Kingdom Hearts so I'll off-handedly mention how the end of Mass Effect 3 seems to have gone missing and was hastily re-written on several arms.

 

[Gustof26]

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.

Spoiler: Major Guild Wars 1 Spoilers

The tutorial ends with the genocide of almost everyone you've spent the last couple of hours with. The next twenty hours is you mucking about the desecrated ruins of the tutorial zone walking among the ruins of the areas you used to farm as a level three. Its just so-out of no where and it never lets up. All the missions that make up the main story of the campaign are just you losing over and over again. First some lore to explain just how much this game pulls the rug from under you. Your a human, you worship the Old God who have protected humanity and created magic for all the races to use. Except the whole magic thing got out of hand so they seal it away in a volcano. Volcano erupted magic seal broke into pieces and magic came right back.

Through most of the first half of the game you are fighting the Charr. A race of feline-bull like creatures that commited the genocide of your people. They are generally all around horrible bastards. That is untill, WHAT A TWIST, its turns out that the geneocide was their last resort as the lands they just turned inhabitable were once their own before the humans forced them off with some help from the Old Gods. The Charr found their own Gods and through out the game are on the brink of pushing what remains of your people out of their kingdom. In fact the second half the game is you take a group of refuges across the dwarves lands. You lead them out and into the lands of Kyrta where you join up with the religion the white mantle who Worship the Unseen Ones. You do some fetch Quest for them and find out about a prophecy called the Flameseeker Prophecies. You round up some the chosen ones for the Prophecy and turn them over to the Mantle. TWIST-the mantle are evil and you join up with the resistance and find out the Mantle have been sacrificing the Chosen Ones to their Gods. TWIST- you are a chosen one. In order to defeat the Unseen ones you search out the Seers. An ancient race of beings in the mountains. They revel that-TWIST- you in fact not natural to this world. Humans were brought here by their Gods. In fact the Gods were once human who obtained Godhood and brought Humanity to this world to escape Eldrich Horrors called the Elder Dragons who now lay sleep under the world. You head out to fight the Unseen ones who are using the blood of the chosen to keep sealed a magic gate. You break the seals and unleash the Titans who are failed creations of your God. TWIST-You are the chosen one not to save the world but to end it. It just gets weirder from their.

 

[Dragonlayer]

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".

I don't mind the future aspects personally, it's the revelation that "Aliens did it" as the reason for humanity's existence and the artefacts the Templars and Assassins are fighting over that made me go "Wat". While I continue to enjoy the theme of an ancient secret war fought between two groups hidden among the masses and trying to direct humanity's future, I can't help but think of the xenos stupidity and roll my eyes whenever its brought up in the games. I mean, what is this: Ancient Aliens?

 

[cojo965]

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.

 

[FPLOON]

Don't even get me started on Dream Drop Distance and its...

Spoiler: Major Kingdom Hearts 3D spoilers

Dream within a dream bullshit near the end, where Riku was Sora's Dream Eater or something (despite them supposedly fighting alongside in the same world)

The Mark of the Reclusant was confusing (since it was never established it was anything other than just a design on Sora's clothes)

The old Organisation XIII being replaced by a new Organisation XIII but with some old members, but with Ansem and Xemnas (though they totally died) and not knowing what happened to the other members.

The Big Bad trying to copy himself via Time-Travel.

Sora in the dream world and his character model alternates between his 3D one and his KHII one...

It's a fucking mess.

Spoiler: (Opinionated) Kingdom Hearts 3D Spoiler Explanations

I thought Riku was Sora's "spiritual" Dream Eater (or half Dream Eater), making his power to fuse with other Dream Eaters plausible, in terms of combat... Otherwise, I would assume he would be teaming up with Dream Eaters the same way Sora was doing...

Considering this was the first KH game to feature characters from TWEWY, the "clothes" bit metaphorically makes sense... but only in this particular game... *sighs*

I find it funny that, given how the game perceives Time Travel, I'm more questioning why "original" Xehenort was "surprised" that his "original" true Organization XIII plan failed, given where the other copies came from in time...

More "dream within a dream bullshit" bullshit, I guess?

OT: Yeah... Kingdom Hearts... Right when Organization XIII became a thing is when things got "complicated", story-wise... with Dream Drop Distance [really] not helping at this point in the story...

Kingdom Hearts 3 better be worth the conclusion to this "particular arc" in the series...

 

[Trunkage]

Spoilers for Gears of War 2

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

 

[aozgolo]

XII is... probably the most tame, actually. Maybe because they went for a more political intrigue story rather than religious or fantastic, but the weirdest part of that is probably just the Great Crystal and then the final fight against Vayne.

As much as I loathed XII, it is by far the most sane. To the extent of being very color-by-numbers. >.<

How can ANYONE loath XII? It's my favorite one! D:

OT:

I could never bring myself to play the .Hack series due to just the premise making my brain hurt "You're playing someone else who is playing a game" ....augh!

 

[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."

 

[krazykidd]

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?

 

[Marik2]

Metal Gear Solid 2

Spoiler

When the game started to "crash" on you and there was a lot of fourth wall breaking. It was really fun and I can see why so many people like the series.