Glaring plot holes in games

[GodofCider]

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

Pure chance could easily answer that. But that's actually not the reason; even though it works. The coordinates used for the 'blind' jump were gathered previously and were likely to mark a location of significance involving the forerunners.

Odd thought: Seriously NONE of the forerunner survived? Obviously everyone on the ark did, as during the final fight the enemy vessels never made it there. Not to mention all the organisms gathered there and replanted to their home planets later from the ark did so, confirming that everything went fine there. Yet 'no' forerunner were on the ark? I can't let that slide.

 

[Defense]

I wouldn't call it a plot hole, but the ending makes so little sense in Final Fantasy XIII that the script doesn't know what's happening. The characters spend most of the game trying to save Cocoon and be the hero of the day, but in the end?well, YEAH. Did I miss something by skipping the datalogs? Because it makes no fucking sense.

Barthandelus: UR GUNNA DESTROY COCOON
Lightning: NO WERE GUNNA DESTROY YOU AND ORPHAN
Barthandelus: But if you kill Orphan you'll destroy Cocoon.
Lightning: NO WERE JUST GONNA DESTROY YOU AND ORPHAN
Barthandelus: ?Umm, okay.

 

[-Samurai-]

Metal Gear Solid 4. Microwaves...

Spoiler: Microwaves and the MKII

Why send Snake when the damned MKII made it through just fine? It could have stayed in stealth mode and finished the job without the need for Snake to get all crispy.

And make that sequence something like 8000% less epic? I'm glad Snake did what he did

Oh I agree. It was one of the single greatest gaming sequences I've every taken part in, only to be trumped by the last fight in the game(for me. And the entire act before it). But, from a plot perspective, it could have been avoided.

 

[Drummie666]

_> ....Why did I massacre civilians in a Russian airport in MW2? I mean, everyone knew that Makarov was a terrorist. If America could get someone close to him, surely they knew were he was and could just barge in there and arrest him... Or, just have you kill him right there. It wouldn't have been that hard.
Quite frankly I was one of the ones offended by this bit because there was no point to it and it was just IW seeing what they could get away with.

They didn't know what the plan was yet.

Or something mindless like that.

That doesn't answer why they didn't just arrest him or have you kill him. Makarov is a known terrorist. He committed terrorist acts before no Russian and then claimed responsibility. That's more than enough to arrest him and convict him.

 

[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 (Molotovs) 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 turned into 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 scratch.

It's a logical extension of the storyline - the whole game revolves around this idea of "redemption", and John's quest to rid himself of his past and start anew. Ultimately, we're being told that such a goal is unachievable - you simply can't leave all that behind, as it's going to catch up to you sooner or later. It's like what Dutch said to John on that cliff:

Spoiler

something like, "Our time has past, John"

Spoiler: Still spoilers, lul

Fair enough, but I'm pretty sure that a guy who was afraid of his son growing up without a male influence/father figure and who had just shot his way through hundreds of criminals to get a chance to see his wife would have a pretty convincing motive for wanting to stay alive. At the very least you'd think he'd want to get out of there just to make sure the family made it to safety and didn't get run down by more lawmen.
So considering that he had both the skill set and the personal motivation to get out of that situation alive, it doesn't make sense that he essentially committed suicide just to infuse the storyline with some laughably transparent metaphor for the death of the Old West and the figure of the noble cowboy.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

all the pokemon games. What mother would allow her twelve year old child to wander around the country side gambling over who is the best at animal abuse with complete strangers and career criminals. Where would such a sport be socially acceptable anyway. Also I find the possible motivations of a so-called professor in inviting the neighbor child over to give them a pet quite dubious. Also how can a country survive with absolutely no infrastructure or government. The list goes on...

Japan...nuff said

 

[Tdc2182]

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?

I could be wrong here, but I believe the character in the game was specially engineered to use the magical fireballs and shit. Like the same way he was able to use the Vita Chambers but no one else could.

 

[axis5]

In Heavy Rain, why did Ethan keep having those random blackouts and why did he have an origami figure?

Good one right there.

What was up with the black outs?

I thought it was supposed to be misleading to make you think the Ethan was actually the Origami Killer. I don't know for sure, that's just how I interpreted it.

 

[DaHero]

In CoD people thought it was fun...I'm still baffled at that plot hole...

Then there's BF2, where the anti-air never actually hits aircraft...I mean really?

It's clear you have no idea what a plot hole is.

Or you are a very, very pathetic troll. Please enlighten me to which it is?

It's called having a deep and glaring hatred for every FPS in the world...when life hands you as much crap as I've taken from 7 years of losses then you'll feel about like me. Believe me, if I was trolling, I could do MUCH better than that.

I have to go with the Brutal Legend part where Eddie turns into a demon...first time everyone freaks out but the second? Not really...just regular day at work.

 

[duchaked]

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

Captain Keyes told Cortana to make a blind jump due to Cole Protocol...Cortana used coordinates she had just managed to decipher from an ancient Forerunner artifact instead of a completely random blind jump...

something like that hahaha

 

[WanderingFool]

snip

Pretty much all of Borderlands.

Well, okay, it was just a shit 'story' to begin with. But the biggest plot hole I felt was the fact that they gave all four characters a backstory as to why they came to Pandora in the first place. Then the second that weird blue AI lady starts telling them they should find the vault, they completely give up on their personal reasons for being here and go on this stupid treasure hunt.

The backstory for each character kinda establishes that they have personal reasons to be here, not the Vault, but that becomes irrelevant at the very start and they immediately become drone-like Vault hunters for literally no reason beyond some weird lady telling them they should.

Hell, that was my main problem with Borderlands, and actually the only real problem. When I used to troll about on the Borderlands Wiki site, one of the main conversations was why there were no back story missions.

 

[SonicKoala]

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 (Molotovs) 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 turned into 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 scratch.

It's a logical extension of the storyline - the whole game revolves around this idea of "redemption", and John's quest to rid himself of his past and start anew. Ultimately, we're being told that such a goal is unachievable - you simply can't leave all that behind, as it's going to catch up to you sooner or later. It's like what Dutch said to John on that cliff:

Spoiler

something like, "Our time has past, John"

Spoiler: Still spoilers, lul

Fair enough, but I'm pretty sure that a guy who was afraid of his son growing up without a male influence/father figure and who had just shot his way through hundreds of criminals to get a chance to see his wife would have a pretty convincing motive for wanting to stay alive. At the very least you'd think he'd want to get out of there just to make sure the family made it to safety and didn't get run down by more lawmen.
So considering that he had both the skill set and the personal motivation to get out of that situation alive, it doesn't make sense that he essentially committed suicide just to infuse the storyline with some laughably transparent metaphor for the death of the Old West and the figure of the noble cowboy.

Spoiler: Spoilers are fun

I thought about that too. After he'd worked so hard to see his family again, it does seem incredibly unnecessary that he would give all that up just to go down in the clichéd "blaze of glory".

Perhaps another interpretation is in order - I was thinking about this just after I posted my last comment, and it occurred to me that perhaps John had reached the conclusion that, even if he were to take down this group of lawmen, more would eventually come. After all, there simply is no erasing his past, regardless of the things he did throughout the game to redeem himself. The FBI is never going to stop hounding him (and by extension, his family), and thus he came to the conclusion that the only way to end this and protect his family (which seemed to be his key motivating factor throughout the game) was to let the men take him down.

Naturally, being the badass he is, he was inclined to take a few of the men with him, but taking them all down would be a fruitless endeavor, as they would just hit him harder the next time they tried to kill him, and possibly harm his family in the process.

 

[jakefongloo]

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.

[/quote

It could all be Isaac's dementia maybe the door was unlocked and the necromorphs he was shooting at didn't exist...seems like a reach though. I always thought the marker made a female looking necro look like nicole to isaac until the 2nd game. And that doesn't explain why the necros were after nicole in the first place.

 

[Finebrew]

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

Thought about that one myself. I agree its a very minor thing but something that sticks out. Only thing I can think of is that they came out with them right before he got himself BLOWED UP!

 

[Wylade]

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

Pure chance could easily answer that. But that's actually not the reason; even though it works. The coordinates used for the 'blind' jump were gathered previously and were likely to mark a location of significance involving the forerunners.

Odd thought: Seriously NONE of the forerunner survived? Obviously everyone on the ark did, as during the final fight the enemy vessels never made it there. Not to mention all the organisms gathered there and replanted to their home planets later from the ark did so, confirming that everything went fine there. Yet 'no' forerunner were on the ark? I can't let that slide.[/quote/]

Somebody (I think it was Cortana or guilty spark) says flat out "you ARE forerunner", and all the humans, and no one else. can activate the forerunner tech. All this pionts to the fact that humans are decendantys of the forerunner.

 

[crudus]

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

Thought about that one myself. I agree its a very minor thing but something that sticks out. Only thing I can think of is that they came out with them right before he got himself BLOWED UP!

Well, things don't go from "not invented" to "standard issue" in just two years. As a specter it is possible she knew about them before they became public knowledge. Hell, she may have help test them.

 

[Porecomesis]

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?

That's fair enough. We have a spoiler tag by the way, but I'm not gonna hang that on you.

Let's not forget that Aperture Science is run by idiots. They made the Heimlich Counter-Manoeuvre and the Take-A-Wish foundation, and their first working product, the Portal gun, was originally meant to function like a shower curtain.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope takes the cake in plot holes for me. Early in the game, railguns prove useless against some bug creatures, and Tosser Maverick is only able to kill them with a sword. This is explained later by a random NPC: the railguns emit a burst of energy upon firing, which the bugs sense and therefore guard against reflexively. This could make sense, but then Tosser is able to kill them with a sword and An arse (thank you, Yahtzee, for the naming inspiration) can use a bow. A railgun can fire bullets that break the speed of sound, so why can't the creatures block against swords or bows, which move much slower?

 

[MasterChief892039]

Spoiler: Spoilers are fun

I thought about that too. After he'd worked so hard to see his family again, it does seem incredibly unnecessary that he would give all that up just to go down in the clichéd "blaze of glory".

Perhaps another interpretation is in order - I was thinking about this just after I posted my last comment, and it occurred to me that perhaps John had reached the conclusion that, even if he were to take down this group of lawmen, more would eventually come. After all, there simply is no erasing his past, regardless of the things he did throughout the game to redeem himself. The FBI is never going to stop hounding him (and by extension, his family), and thus he came to the conclusion that the only way to end this and protect his family (which seemed to be his key motivating factor throughout the game) was to let the men take him down.

Naturally, being the badass he is, he was inclined to take a few of the men with him, but taking them all down would be a fruitless endeavor, as they would just hit him harder the next time they tried to kill him, and possibly harm his family in the process.

Spoiler: moar spoilers

I also considered that he may have just let himself be killed so that the family would be free of the law - but do you really think that Marton's death would mean the family could escape unchallenged? I'm fairly certainly that because Abigail and the kid had witnessed the thorough corruption of the law, they would have been killed without a second thought, if not because they were an actual threat then because they were a loose end that needed tying up. That they got away and managed to return to the ranch without running into anyone and getting cut down is pure luck (or another plot hole) in my opinion.

 

[Drummie666]

_> ....Why did I massacre civilians in a Russian airport in MW2? I mean, everyone knew that Makarov was a terrorist. If America could get someone close to him, surely they knew were he was and could just barge in there and arrest him... Or, just have you kill him right there. It wouldn't have been that hard.
Quite frankly I was one of the ones offended by this bit because there was no point to it and it was just IW seeing what they could get away with.

If they killed or arrested him right there, they can pat themselves on the back and feel like they did something important when the rest of his organization declares him a martyr and launch a few biological weapons on major US cities. If they gain his trust and are fully accepted into his organization, they can take down the entire organization and prevent countless deaths. Right choice or not, there was legitimate logic behind it. Listen to the introduction to "No Russian".

Ok. I just re-watched that cutscene. Yeah, rumours of nuclear-grade weapons.

Bull-fucking-shit. There is still SO much wrong here. If the government raided Makarov's base, they would have been able to secure the weapons and neutralise any threat, or prevent any launch and if they had the weapons somewhere else, it wouldn't be that hard for the US to find out where from the stuff at Makarov's base. Probably the worst part is that by having Allen tattle on Makarov is that, due to legal system stuff, the whole world would know that the US government had one of their agents purposely take part in a massacre of Russian civilians. Russia invading America would have been a definite possibility after that little bit of info got out. Why would the US risk another World War here? Roughly the same, if not more, people would have died.

 

[Tdc2182]

In Heavy Rain, why did Ethan keep having those random blackouts and why did he have an origami figure?

Good one right there.

What was up with the black outs?

I thought it was supposed to be misleading to make you think the Ethan was actually the Origami Killer. I don't know for sure, that's just how I interpreted it.

Well yeah that is most likely it, but they never really explain why its happening.