Gaming disconnects, instances when reality destroys suspension of disbelief

[chikusho]

Nathan Drake is part charismatic goofball, part population ending mass murderer.
Ash Ketchum is part young ambitious trainer, part animal death match enthusiast.

The reason I started this thread is to discuss and point out disconnects between games, narratives and real life. Specifically noticed in the latest 7 minute gameplay of Watch_Dogs:
http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/e3-2013-over-seven-minutes-of-watch-dogs-gameplay/2300-7567/

At the end of the footage, Aidan Pierce gets held up by cops. His response is to _clearly_ bring out his cellphone while holding up his hands.
Now, I've read enough articles about people (or, specifically _black people_) being gunned down for holding their phones. In my opinion, Ubisoft could've at least made him cup his hand around the phone to hide it from the advancing law enforcement. Especially since he's supposed to be an anonymous expert in hiding from the government.

Please share similar observations from next, current or past gen.
And no, I'm not talking about "Wall/dumpster/enemy pocket chicken." More or less, games trying their darndest to be believable, yet step over some fundamentally ironic lines in their setting.

Captha knows what I'm talking about, because some of this is: beyond me

 

[TreuloseTomate]

The more realistic graphics become the more we expect the game world to behave in a realistic manner. When you play Wind Waker and see Link's cap clip through his shield, it doesn't bother you. You might not even notice it. But with a photorealistic soldier with authentic animations and facial expressions, clipping and other "minor" issues (like what you are describing) will ruin the immersion.

 

[MysticSlayer]

In a lot of first-person shooters, enemies will come out of a room, sometimes infinitely respawning out of the room, only for you to find that it was way to small to contain all of the (infinitely respawning) enemies, but it also had nothing of value that they could have been doing before the attack. It doesn't help when those enemies have an infinite number of grenades to throw your way.

In RPGs, you are often limited to the number of squadmates you can have in your party at one time. This is made worse when you consider that they sometimes are traveling with you and available in cutscenes, acting as if they were involved in the fighting, yet they are nowhere to be found in the gameplay.

Finally, any issue with the AI can cause serious problems with believing the game's world. Mass Effect (the first one) was notorious for this. The enemy AI did little more than "zombie rush" you while spamming any biotic or tech powers they may have had. In the meantime, your squad didn't even try to fight, and they often ignored your orders and stood right in your line of sight.

Now, I've read enough articles about people being gunned down for holding their phones.

To be fair to Watch Dogs, you've heard of multiple times when someone is gunned down because they were holding their cellphone or wallet, but how often do you hear of the times where the cops don't gun someone down? The former situation is incredibly newsworthy, especially if the person is a minority where the story can be used in the racial profiling debate; but the latter is just another day in the life of a cop, which isn't something that makes the news very often.

 

[chikusho]

In a lot of first-person shooters, enemies will come out of a room, sometimes infinitely respawning out of the room, only for you to find that it was way to small to contain all of the (infinitely respawning) enemies, but it also had nothing of value that they could have been doing before the attack. It doesn't help when those enemies have an infinite number of grenades to throw your way.

In RPGs, you are often limited to the number of squadmates you can have in your party at one time. This is made worse when you consider that they sometimes are traveling with you and available in cutscenes, acting as if they were involved in the fighting, yet they are nowhere to be found in the gameplay.

Finally, any issue with the AI can cause serious problems with believing the game's world. Mass Effect (the first one) was notorious for this. The enemy AI did little more than "zombie rush" you while spamming any biotic or tech powers they may have had. In the meantime, your squad didn't even try to fight, and they often ignored your orders and stood right in your line of sight.

Now, I've read enough articles about people being gunned down for holding their phones.

To be fair to Watch Dogs, you've heard of multiple times when someone is gunned down because they were holding their cellphone or wallet, but how often do you hear of the times where the cops don't gun someone down? The former situation is incredibly newsworthy, especially if the person is a minority where the story can be used in the racial profiling debate; but the latter is just another day in the life of a cop, which isn't something that makes the news very often.

Fully agreed on your second observation (because, even though soldiers aren't protecting something significant, they can still be sent to where trouble brewes).
However, logically, even the best defender of the law would react to a suspect pulling out a black object from his or her person while being arrested. Whether or not gunfire is justified, it still seems plenty unbelievable that no reaction occurs on part of the police.

 

[Jazoni89]

Looking at the environment in first/third person shooters, and knowing that there's going to be a firefight in this area either soon (when you backtrack), or as soon as you get in the area. ninety nine percent of the time this turns out to be true. With all the chest high boxes or walls scattered in convenient positions.

It's not surprising to me, and it breaks immersion. I would rather be surprised and have it not obvious that any enemy whatsoever is going to be there. Half Life 2 does this tremendously well for example.

One of these examples was in one part of The Last Of Us when i went through the plant in the story to be greeted with a lot of convenient place boxes scattered around for no reason, and i thought to myself "I can feel that there's going to be a lot of shooting here soon", and thus i was correct in that assumption.

 

[MysticSlayer]

In a lot of first-person shooters, enemies will come out of a room, sometimes infinitely respawning out of the room, only for you to find that it was way to small to contain all of the (infinitely respawning) enemies, but it also had nothing of value that they could have been doing before the attack. It doesn't help when those enemies have an infinite number of grenades to throw your way.

In RPGs, you are often limited to the number of squadmates you can have in your party at one time. This is made worse when you consider that they sometimes are traveling with you and available in cutscenes, acting as if they were involved in the fighting, yet they are nowhere to be found in the gameplay.

Finally, any issue with the AI can cause serious problems with believing the game's world. Mass Effect (the first one) was notorious for this. The enemy AI did little more than "zombie rush" you while spamming any biotic or tech powers they may have had. In the meantime, your squad didn't even try to fight, and they often ignored your orders and stood right in your line of sight.

Now, I've read enough articles about people being gunned down for holding their phones.

To be fair to Watch Dogs, you've heard of multiple times when someone is gunned down because they were holding their cellphone or wallet, but how often do you hear of the times where the cops don't gun someone down? The former situation is incredibly newsworthy, especially if the person is a minority where the story can be used in the racial profiling debate; but the latter is just another day in the life of a cop, which isn't something that makes the news very often.

Fully agreed on your second observation (because, even though soldiers aren't protecting something significant, they can still be sent to where trouble brewes).
However, logically, even the best defender of the law would react to a suspect pulling out a black object from his or her person while being arrested. Whether or not gunfire is justified, it still seems plenty unbelievable that no reaction occurs on part of the police.

Well, I did hear a story from a cop who nearly shot a guy when the man pulled out his wallet during a traffic stop (the man got out of his car beforehand). The thing is, the cop didn't shoot, and what made that an important part to his story is that he had been shot a few months earlier while in the same situation. He actually quit after that incident, believing he was too mentally unstable for the job anymore.

It's certainly a nerve racking experience, and sometimes it ends bad (as you pointed out), but there are those situations where cops are able to stop themselves, even those who are scarred by bad experiences.

 

[chikusho]

Well, I did hear a story from a cop who nearly shot a guy when the man pulled out his wallet during a traffic stop (the man got out of his car beforehand). The thing is, the cop didn't shoot, and what made that an important part to his story is that he had been shot a few months earlier while in the same situation. He actually quit after that incident, believing he was too mentally unstable for the job anymore.

It's certainly a nerve racking experience, and sometimes it ends bad (as you pointed out), but there are those situations where cops are able to stop themselves, even those who are scarred by bad experiences.

I'm of course not contesting the fact that stable and reasonable people eventually end up as police officers. Just that, there's a historical precedent to where you would make certain that fictional police won't see the black tool of local destruction in your hands.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Impending firefights being made painfully obvious by the telltale sign of chest high walls. This was esp. bad in Mass Effect 2 (haven't played 3) when the chest high walls seemed to be moulded out of the bulkheads.

 

[The]

In Far Cry 3, I began to believe Jason was made of titanium silly putty, because despite have broken his thumb 30 times now, he's still able to put it back together like nothing happened. Also, every time I crashed a car, the healing animation was to spit out a bullet in his arm, so basically, he eats bullets like sunflower seeds.

 

[II2]

Problem I had with both Metro 2033 and Crysis 1 was that the high fidelity presentation did not sit right with the damage modelling for the weapons. Metro Last Light fixed the issue, basically, though I can't speak to the Crysis sequels.

The human enemies in both of them were goddamn bullet sponges. I guess the justification is body armor, but even if that's the case, people are not going to be an active participant in further combat after getting drilled with an assault rifle or a blast and a half of shot.

The games pretty well demand all singularly lethal gunplay occur in headshots. It kinda turns encounters into prolonged grinds and really shows the seams in the game's "reality".

 

[scorptatious]

In RPGs, you are often limited to the number of squadmates you can have in your party at one time. This is made worse when you consider that they sometimes are traveling with you and available in cutscenes, acting as if they were involved in the fighting, yet they are nowhere to be found in the gameplay.

Normally, I'm okay with this kind of thing in RPG's. But yeah, I can agree in terms of reality, it doesn't make much sense.

Chrono Trigger at least tried to make an excuse for why you can't have more than three people at a time, the gates will send people who are each from different time lines back to the End of Time if there is more than three people.

Of course, that whole thing kinda falls apart in this spoof of the game.


"What are you trying to do? Break the mechanics of the RPG?"

Of course, at the end of the day, that kind of thing doesn't ruin those kinds of games for me. I guess I'm just used to how stuff works in RPG's.

 

[Dirty Apple]

Playing DayZ, we all watched as a hostage situation and subsequent negotiation happened over sidechat. Apparently, a bandit was trapped in a building by another player. The bandit's clan were circled outside demanding his release. They went back and forth for awhile. The fellow inside demanding rare weapons and loot in return for his captive. They were in the process of asking for a middle man to act as go between when the trapped player logged out and ghosted out of the building. Besides shattering the illusion, there was a raucous round of catcalling and raspberries. Even the guy's clan mates were a little disappointed with the outcome.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Ash Ketchum is part young ambitious trainer, part animal death match enthusiast.

Except Pokemon fights are not to the death, and they're not really animals. They're basically like boxing (I see the HP thing as a willingness to figth, not actual health).

In RPGs, you are often limited to the number of squadmates you can have in your party at one time. This is made worse when you consider that they sometimes are traveling with you and available in cutscenes, acting as if they were involved in the fighting, yet they are nowhere to be found in the gameplay.

Made worse in FFX when you can switch to the other party members at any time when it's your turn, showing that the others are literally 3 feet away, but if the three members on screen die, Game Over.

How about almost EVERY RPG in existence where if you talk to the same person more than once, they treat you as the first time they have ever talked to you, and re say the same thing over and over again... of course its unreasonable to expect something different EVERYTIME, but its just an example

Well in Grandia NPCs usually have 3-4 things to say if you talk to them multiple times, and more depending on if you've advanced the story since the last time you talked to them.

 

[Rickin10]

Any game where the character's abilities are not consistent, and are unrealistically restricted by linear and lazy game design.

The biggest example in recent times is Drake in Uncharted. He's a guy with incredible athletism ....sometimes. One moment I can make ludicrous leaps and dramatically grab onto ledges or even jump to get a simple hand-hold on a protruding brick in a wall, the next I'll attempt to make an identical jump or grab onto an identical brick and Drake will stubbornly refuse and plummet to his doom (which I rather enjoy because he's a moron).

Similar cases abound, in most games where some characters can't even step over a knee-high fence, or in the case of the recent Hitman Absolution even drop down off a bloody step.

All of which are real immersion killers.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

=
Similar cases abound, in most games where some characters can't even step over a knee-high fence, or in the case of the recent Hitman Absolution even drop down off a bloody step.

All of which are real immersion killers.

This. These problems are especially notorious in games where you cannot jump or climb.

 

[Wyvern65]

Deliberately breaking the fourth wall, though I'm not sure if this 'counts' in regards to the topic since it's deliberate on the Dev's part. Specifically thinking of Dragon Age II here, which shoehorns in a lot of pop culture references.

"I like big boats, and I cannot lie" - Really, Isabela?

Not to mention the constant 'funny' comments by the Talkative Man in the bar about how he's in a story and wishes whoever was telling it had made him more handsome.

Hey, BioWare, this is a RPG. One of the most important things in RPGs is allowing the player to get lost in their character and the world. Don't keep reminding me it's a farking game just to be funny. I know your writers can do real humor (Isabela and Aveline's interactions for example) so lay off the cheap and easy gags that belong in a self-conscious and ironic FPS.

 

[Dominic Crossman]

Cutscenes where they are obviously walking into a trap and you can do nothing but sit there thinking "you complete moron

 

[The Wykydtron]

Oh people taking multiple point blank shotgun shells to the face in Fallout: New Vegas and just not giving a fuck.

Seriously, there was a Powder Ganger who was not even wearing a shirt tanking at least 3 shots from a shotgun at minimum range. It's fine when you have the Deathclaws and that tank everything because they're natural predators that you should be scared of but random ass human enemies?

Don't even get me started on the melee brawl I had in the White Glove casino... There's a bit where two guys with batons ambush you in a room, they can own me because you can have no weapons in a casino and the one I did have was on fuck all ammo. I was running though the whole main floor with these two jokers after me and the AI of all the others in the casino went apeshit. Some were panicking, some continued with their poker games, I could even talk to some people... They don't chase you outside but if you go back in you have to surrender your weapons and they're still fucking there

Weren't you guys meant to be stealthily killing me to stop an investigation or something?