Glaring plot holes in games

[Dr. Paine]

What are the bizarre lapses in logic in a game's story that just leave you wondering 'Why'? For me, I was completely dumbfounded in Portal (Warning: mild spoilers ahead) as to why they'd even have a system for flooding the place with a neurotoxin, much less give control of it to a supercomputer of dubious sanity, or at the very minimum remove the capability after she tried it once.

So, your examples?

A bigger question concerning that same subject: If they imposed a morality core on GLaDOS to stop the flooding of the Aperture Science Research Center, then why is everyone dead?

Because it happened once before- if you read the history, you'll see that when she was first activated, she took complete control and killed off most people inside. Survivors put together the Morality core, attached it... but since the Combine had invaded, the facility was still in lockdown, and GLaDOS began a permanent cycle of testing the portal device. Most subjects are implied to have been the remaining staff. Portal takes place around 20 years or so after that event, and given the nature of the tests, it's easy to see why there would be next to no one left.

.....where did you read that? I played the game at least 5 times and skimmed the manual. I swear THAT is the type of thing that needs to be in the game.

aperturescience.com, but it's defunct now, just shows a looping holiday/security feed. There used to be a feature where you could, among other things, take an application test, see the history of Aperture Science, and shipping reports. The history/timeline has been preserved on the Combine Overwiki though. And how would they have put it in the game without making it look like anything other than infodumping? Yes, it's slightly annoying to have to get the backstory from another source, but this is normal for Valve games. You can either play it and never worry about the story, make up your own thoughts from what's presented in game, or go look it up.

And yes, the Combine Overwiki is extremely accurate. The Aperture timeline was also brought up on the GameInformer website during March in preparation for the Portal 2 article.

Thanks. It probably would be info-dumping, but it still kind of needed clarifying. For instance, they could have had it as one of the many wall scribblings that the scientists were subjects.

It could have started with "Oh the irony!" and I would have sat in the little safe room and read it.

The writing was extremely hard to read, though, imagine if there was a whole history lesson involved. And Doug (the Rat Man) was the only survivor... others probably didn't even make it past the 'the floor here will kill you' place, let alone escape to find a pen or something. So the knowledge would still be quite incomplete.

They did give a hint, anyway- the username/password combination in one of the dens was what you needed to access the history on aperturescience.com. Valve are great at using viral marketing/ARGs, so that was their way of including it for those who would, for a while, be the few people interested in the history. When you're making a game as risky and small as Portal, streamlining it is the best bet. They also didn't include many references to it being in the HL universe, even if the story was re-written so it'd fit. If Portal was a flop, it could easily be retconned and no major story shifts would be needed.

That's what I think, anyway.

(Also, I apologize if I am coming off as rude, snippy, rambly, or otherwise annoying... I've had a bad day, this is actually really helping my mood xD)

 

[Souplex]

And the best (or worst) one is

Spoiler: Metroid: Other M

The game totally dropping the subplot about the traitor in the team.

The last we see of the traitor they were going to attack MB. The traitor died.

 

[ZeroMachine]

*AHEM*

WHY DID SHEPHERD KILL ROACH AND GHOST?

To cover up the fact that the data they stole involved Shepard's hand in starting the war. Pretty easy.

How did the Pillar of Autumn find Halo if they made a 'blind' jump? Though i think it may have been explained somewhere...

Game explanation: luck.

Canonical explanation from the books: Cortana actually used coordinates she determined from data that the humans discovered from another Forerunner artifact. Basically, she lied- it wasn't a blind jump.

Oh yeah, also why do Ashley/Kaiden hate you even when you tell them that you died! There really wasnt much you could do and they saw you died?

Did you not pay attention? They don't hate you for hiding, they hate you for working with Cerberus, who was the antagonist in many missions in Mass Effect 1.

Now, I should probably name one, but I have to say the worst one I can think of has been stated here, the one from Heavy Rain.

Hm... Maybe "where the hell is Magus in Chrono Cross?" I understand why they ended up changing Guile into a separate character, but I still wish he had more of a presence, considering the boss of the game is the thing he set out to search for at the end of Trigger.

 

[OrokuSaki]

The writing was extremely hard to read, though, imagine if there was a whole history lesson involved. And Doug (the Rat Man) was the only survivor... others probably didn't even make it past the 'the floor here will kill you' place, let alone escape to find a pen or something. So the knowledge would still be quite incomplete.

They did give a hint, anyway- the username/password combination in one of the dens was what you needed to access the history on aperturescience.com. Valve are great at using viral marketing/ARGs, so that was their way of including it for those who would, for a while, be the few people interested in the history. When you're making a game as risky and small as Portal, streamlining it is the best bet. They also didn't include many references to it being in the HL universe, even if the story was re-written so it'd fit. If Portal was a flop, it could easily be retconned and no major story shifts would be needed.

That's what I think, anyway.

(Also, I apologize if I am coming off as rude, snippy, rambly, or otherwise annoying... I've had a bad day, this is actually really helping my mood xD)

I don't mind at all, I enjoy a good argumentative conversation. And I'm certain you're right, Valve actually admitted to that in their Game Informer interview about Portal 2. You're probably right about the streamlining thing too, but I was a fan and had no clue they made a website as a tie-in to the game. So at the very least they could have put the website next to the username/password to make it more easily...... found I guess is the right word.

 

[JCMarksman]

http://www.mobygames.com/game/ps3/heavy-rain

scroll down to trivia to find out why he had black outs

 

[twistedmic]

Also a fave- Bioshock 1 or 2, if Adam is so horribly bad because excessive use of it warps people into crazy freako "sploicers", why do you use it willy-nilly all game with no ill effects?

We don't know that Jack didn't suffer any ill effects from using Adam. By the end of Bio-Shock 1 he could be anywhere from slightly unhinged to full on bat-shit crazy.
And by the end of 2, subject Delta definitely suffered ill effects (both from Adam usage and heavy combat).

 

[chromewarriorXIII]

anc[is]How Shepard knows about thermal clips after being dead for 2 years. They were invented while s/he was dead. Tiny one, but still there

Simple, the loading screen told him about it.

How hell is Jak Mar in Jak 3, when Mar is the long-dead builder of the city? I suppose it's possible that Damos just named Jak after Mar, but the game implies that Jak is Mar, the builder of the very city he's in. It might also be possible that he went back in time to build the city. But for a game with an otherwise awesome plot, it sure did fall with that one revelation.

I believe that it's implying that he's the descendant of Mar. It was probably a coincidence that Damos named him after Mar though.

Heavy Rain had a huge one that I complained about at one point in time, but I'd have to replay it to remember what it was.

 

[Littlee300]

*AHEM*

WHY DID SHEPHERD KILL ROACH AND GHOST?

Oh wait nevermind
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[Dr. Paine]

I don't mind at all, I enjoy a good argumentative conversation. And I'm certain you're right, Valve actually admitted to that in their Game Informer interview about Portal 2. You're probably right about the streamlining thing too, but I was a fan and had no clue they made a website as a tie-in to the game. So at the very least they could have put the website next to the username/password to make it more easily...... found I guess is the right word.

Actually, that does surprise me... I never would have known about the website unless I'd read the Overwiki (or was it TV Tropes?) But word's gotten around either way, so there you go xD

... without the Overwiki, I also wouldn't have known that one of the best game ever takes place in my home state. New York may get movies and stuff, BUT OHIO HAS PORTAL! (Also explains the Cleveland river fire. It was Aperture! Somehow!)

But yeah, reading up on the wiki/GI articles can help explain a lot of loose ends/'plot holes' of the HL/Portal series. Same for Left 4 Dead.

 

[megamanenm]

Too many to name, my brain hurts trying to remember them all.

The one that comes to mind is the one in

Spoiler: Dead Space

We'll let slip for now why Isaac didn't watch the video transmission until the end the first time he got it, but HOW THE FUCK DID YOUR DEAD GIRLFRIEND ACTIVATE A SWITCH TO OPEN A DOOR FOR YOU, and why were monsters after her if she didn't actually exist?

Well the locked door could've been open, he just hallucinated and thought it was closed, same for the monsters.

 

[Worgen]

Most of MW2. Rushed campaign, tacked on, etc.

How did the Pillar of Autumn find Halo if they made a 'blind' jump? Though i think it may have been explained somewhere...

It was. In The Fall of Reach. Wasn't blind. They decided to plug in coords from a Forerunner artifact they had because they knew it would take them far, far away from Human Space.

in halo reach it sounds more like cortana is actualy a forerunner ai that we just found cause humans are too stupid to be able to do shit (sounds like the spartan armor was also based on forerunner tech)

 

[Netrigan]

I'm pretty sure that the neurotoxin flooder mechanism was a total black comedy joke (i.e. it's not really a plot hole because it's not supposed to make sense.)

Okay, perhaps that was a bad example. But here's another: In Half-Life 2 (or pretty much any game where rag-tag rebels overthrow an evil government) what are they going to do after overthrowing the regime? Do they have any alternative lined up? After all, evil order is better than no order at all (and yes, that is highly debatable, but this thread isn't the place for that).

There's always a few people involved in revolutions that have ideas about what to do next. If a leader can organize an army, they can organize a government. They're already organizing supply and protection. It's not a huge leap to take that into peace time.

Mind you, that often involves more than a bit of in-fighting after the revolution, such as the Red Vs. White Civil War after the Russian Revolution. The Chinese fought a civil war immediately after WWII, which led to the establishment of Taiwan.

 

[MasterChief892039]

Spoiler: Red Dead Spoiler

John Marston steps out of a barn to meet his death at the hands of a bunch of lawmen at the end of the game, despite having multiple fire bottles and sticks of dynamite in his possession. With the building/roof climbing skills he displayed in previous quests, he could have easily just climbed up to the hay loft of the barn and taken out all of his attackers with a single throw. Then maybe we wouldn't feel totally gypped at having spent the entire game trying to reunite with the family and getting all of five minutes with them before being shot to a bloody pulp.

Or, Hell, he could have just shot them all. It's not like he's never faced uneven odds before... his whole character is built around his ability to take out ridiculously large hordes of armed men without a suffering scratch.

 

[garlicncow]

sc2, why doesn't karrigan unburrow in your base on the last mission and kill everyone, or use stronger units in the last mission, or just send in 50 broodlords with a shitton of mutas as back up?

 

[UnmotivatedSlacker]

this one's just kinda minor, but why is a plumber saving the princess from turtles instead of say the army? if you have to be told the game then i feel bad for you

To be fair her army consists of toads and lets be honest here, they kinda suck.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

Also a fave- Bioshock 1 or 2, if Adam is so horribly bad because excessive use of it warps people into crazy freako "sploicers", why do you use it willy-nilly all game with no ill effects?

We don't know that Jack didn't suffer any ill effects from using Adam. By the end of Bio-Shock 1 he could be anywhere from slightly unhinged to full on bat-shit crazy.
And by the end of 2, subject Delta definitely suffered ill effects (both from Adam usage and heavy combat).

You might be correct as in extending the story outside of the game, but as far as in-game effects go, no, Jack didn't suffer a thing. He played perfectly the same start to finish, though he got a mess of fancy super-powers. Odd, as the other splicers I wasted all game had none, except for the 'Houdini' variety. I always wondered what they got out of the whole deal, besides being all fugly.

As for Delta, (I never mentioned combat, only Adam usage) what effects do you refer to? I really enjoyed Bioshock 2. I beat the whole game twice, am playing it a third time, and I've never seen a single adverse issue from Adam. If you refer to his bodily troubles, yes, he had many inherit problems from the manner of his transformation into a Big Daddy, the linking with Eleanor, and so on, but nothing ever came purely from the player's use of Adam in the entire game beside advanced physical abilities and super-human powers.

 

[Dr. Paine]

this one's just kinda minor, but why is a plumber saving the princess from turtles instead of say the army? if you have to be told the game then i feel bad for you

To be fair her army consists of toads and lets be honest here, they kinda suck.

My question is, WHY ARE THEY MUSHROOM... oh, wait, I think I just answered my own question.

 

[bak00777]

For CoDMW2, why didnt anyway say anything to Price after he launched the Nuke? Why didnt the SAS help Price and Soap during the final when the US army and the Russians are after them. Couldn't the SAS vowge for them? Oh and during the finale where after crashing your raft, getting shot, and stabbed in the chest, you are able to crawl on you stomach(which still has a knife in it) pull the knife out, and nail shepard in the head with it...

 

[MetaMop]

Alan Wake. All throughout the game, the enemies are trying to kill you. Later on however, we find out that villain wants to capture Alan, not kill him. So why are the evil minions trying to butcher him with logging equipment?