Glaring plot holes in games

[BRex21]

Biggest one to piss me off was Fallout 3: The Pitt DLC. So the only way to restore the steel mill is to use slave labour, then they put in a sub plot about how all the workers in this place were getting replaced by robots.
and yes the robots were operational, but you can only use them as cannon fodder for the trogs. In case you wanted to say, Well maybe these people wouldn't know, the leader of the pitt is ex Brotherhood of Steel, those guys tasked with recovering pre-war tech.
it just upset me that there was a perfect everyone wins scenario and you have to ignore it because the developers didn't think about things.

 

[Dr. Paine]

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?

... you (appear) to be working for a group that is notorious for... well, being terrorists? And you're back from the dead? Doesn't take a lot of thought to work that one out.

Though the lack of an ability to explain the situation is a tad annoying...

Still trying to think of a gaping plot hole in any of the games I've played, but most of them have some kind of explanation. ... I guess the only one I can really think of is how Dark Samus gets to different planets, I don't think she had a ship between Prime 1 and 2, and she only took over the Space Pirates in 3. Then again, she is made of pure phazon and evil... but it still doesn't make a ton of sense.

 

[kuyo]

The Hitman stealth system. I'm pretty sure people are going to notice if one of the doctors of a clinic suddenly became a bald albino. Really, if anyone suddenly became an albino cause that's the sort of thing you notice.

 

[Souplex]

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?

... you (appear) to be working for a group that is notorious for... well, being terrorists? And you're back from the dead? Doesn't take a lot of thought to work that one out.

Though the lack of an ability to explain the situation is a tad annoying...

Still trying to think of a gaping plot hole in any of the games I've played, but most of them have some kind of explanation. ... I guess the only one I can really think of is how Dark Samus gets to different planets, I don't think she had a ship between Prime 1 and 2, and she only took over the Space Pirates in 3. Then again, she is made of pure phazon and evil... but it still doesn't make a ton of sense.

She hitched a ride on a retreating space pirate vessel at the end of two. You can find all sorts of scan logs detailing it.

 

[twistedmic]

*AHEM*

WHY DID SHEPHERD KILL ROACH AND GHOST?

Because they knew that he(Shepherd) was behind the entire conflict with Russia. Roach and Ghost ( and the rest of TF-141 were loose ends, and he needed to be sure that there were No Loose Ends.

 

[Saintcole]

ME2 and here is some1 very boring to explain the plot of mass effect 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR558wTjOUU

 

[Dr. Paine]

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?

... you (appear) to be working for a group that is notorious for... well, being terrorists? And you're back from the dead? Doesn't take a lot of thought to work that one out.

Though the lack of an ability to explain the situation is a tad annoying...

Still trying to think of a gaping plot hole in any of the games I've played, but most of them have some kind of explanation. ... I guess the only one I can really think of is how Dark Samus gets to different planets, I don't think she had a ship between Prime 1 and 2, and she only took over the Space Pirates in 3. Then again, she is made of pure phazon and evil... but it still doesn't make a ton of sense.

She hitched a ride on a retreating space pirate vessel at the end of two. You can find all sorts of scan logs detailing it.

Ah, really? I must have missed those... that, or it's just been too long since I've played the games xD

Well, I must now try to find another plot hole in one of the games I've played.

 

[OrokuSaki]

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.

It reminds me of how I played Soul Calibur 2, beat all the stories, watched the endings, then Soul Calibur 3 came out as a "Direct sequel" to Soul Calibur 2, and they started off in Loonyville. Where one character was a VAMPIRE, another was split into 2 halves one good and one evil, and everyone was MILES away from where you left them.

It turns out that in order to actually get the backstory you have to wikipedia the game.

 

[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.

ETA: Links for the curious.

http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Aperture_Science
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/03/24/aperture-science_3a00_-a-history.aspx

 

[kuyo]

Tenpenny Towers: Ray gives you a ghoul mask for quest completion. It's useful, but it's like if Malcolm X painted you in black face for helping out with the civil rights movement. Not to mention how disgusting sticking your head inside that rotting flesh sack must be even by wasteland standards.

 

[soren7550]

*AHEM*

WHY DID SHEPHERD KILL ROACH AND GHOST?

As Shepherd said himself "That's one less loose end to finish off"

Task Force 141 did what he wanted them to do, so he no longer required their services. Also, over at the Airplane Boneyard in Afghanistan, Price and Soap found out he was a traitor and were relaying the information to Roach & Ghost (although they were too late). Shepherd didn't want to risk the chance of them either finding out his role in the shooting at Zakahav International Airport and he believed that they learned something about his involvement while they were at the Safe House.

Now, for me, it's two words: Black Ops.
Need I say more?

 

[OrokuSaki]

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.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

Biggest one to piss me off was Fallout 3: The Pitt DLC. So the only way to restore the steel mill is to use slave labour, then they put in a sub plot about how all the workers in this place were getting replaced by robots.
and yes the robots were operational, but you can only use them as cannon fodder for the trogs. In case you wanted to say, Well maybe these people wouldn't know, the leader of the pitt is ex Brotherhood of Steel, those guys tasked with recovering pre-war tech.
it just upset me that there was a perfect everyone wins scenario and you have to ignore it because the developers didn't think about things.

BINGO! Fallout 3 had some doozies. They finally fixed the biggie at the end though, with the option of having your helper start the device. I always wondered why I couldn't send Fawkes, a highly irradiated Super-Mutant or the radiation-proof robot RL-3 into the danger zone, thus risking no one's life and making everybody happy... And why the Enclave could target the Brotherhood's robot Liberty Prime with a pinpoint missile attack to take him out the battle, but not a much larger stationary target like, oh say the Brotherhood home base at the Pentagon?

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?

And one more classic- FF7, all game they whine about MAKO being so horrible, destroying the planet etc etc, but we kept on using it, abusing the hell out of some of it in every fight, through the entire game...

 

[Platinum117]

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

 

[maninahat]

In Call of Juarez: Bond in Blood, how on earth did Col. Barnsby manage to find you down in the super secret aztec tomb?

Also, how come Thomas and Ray somehow overlook the fact that Merissa was happy to let either one of the brother's die just because it suits her? Wouldn't they be a little jaded? It would be hard to marry a woman who would be so callous about you or your brother.

Why did they seem so okay with Merissa having a baby, even going so far as to bestow their sainted brother's name William on the boy, when in the original game Thomas treated William like total shit.

How come Juarez doesn't recognise Ray in the original? Last time they met (20 years before), Ray had destroyed his villa, killed his army, stole his wife and gold, and left him for dead.

Finally, why won't Juarez just die already? You kill him, like, seven times (no exaggeration). Body armour won't stop repeated gunfire to the face.

 

[drisky]

Baten Kaitos, the female lead turns out to be the ocean, and needs to return to being the ocean, but she as gets to still be a person because you can hear the ocean in a sea shell. That game is weird.

 

[maninahat]

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?

Well, I suspect it is prolongued use that causes the side-effects. If a new chemical would cause insanity and horrific mutations within an hour of using it, I doubt Adam would have sold very well in the first place. Adam has addictive properties as well, so presumably splicers keep upping the dosage until it causes some really serious issues. Finally, you never see the face of your protagonist, so for all we know, he might be crazy and deformed (after all, he has no problem killing little girls, does he?).

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

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.

 

[The Seldom Seen Kid]

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?

And the best (or worst) one is

Spoiler: Metroid: Other M

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

 

[Fenra]

Not sure how much of a plot hole it is and maybe im missing something but, the visions and demntia in dead space occur after exposure to the marker, and yet in the first dead space, isaac is having wierd visions before he even has contact with the red marker the first time, seeing visions of nicole on the ship saying "make us whole" but only comes into contact with the marker when he gets down to the colony for the first time... i dunno, if someone could clear that up for me that'd be great.

Also speaking of dead space, I died a few times in dead space 2 to the bloody doors slamming on me when I blow out a window, 2 things here, one, why have a switch that you have to shoot to close the door, 2 when they close on you and you die... the freaking thing closes automatically! why doesnt it do that instantly itself!