I usually don't curse too often in my posts, but this is something that's really eaten at me for a while.
Something I've always hated is when you're given no option in a game but to walk right into a trap that you and your characters already know is coming. If you know it's coming because you've played it before, that's different.
But come on, people. I've played games a long time now. I can tell even a good trap when I see it. But a lot of times, there just isn't even the slightest bit of effort to try and make it clever or surprising. What's even more insulting than telling you in no uncertain terms beforehand it's a trap- which game developers must think is really goddamn clever considering how often they do it- is when you can just see it coming ten miles away and you still have no choice but to just blunder into it. Bastards.
There have been way, way too many instances of this over the years, but a recent and remorseless offender is Dragon Age. If you're headed across the map and you get randomly stopped in a field with only one exit at the other end of the damn map, you already know you have to fight, because there isn't a single fucking reason they'd stop you otherwise. So you, as a gamer, already know the trap is set. But there isn't anything you can do about it. You can't be clever and get the drop on your would-be assailants. No circumventing it with a timely detour. The game refuses to let you get on with your life until you walk into the spike pit surrounded by high ground on both sides and wave your bare ass in the air so a horde of enemies can spawn in and squeal at you for being so incredibly stupid.
Now, I can see this working for a random encounter. You as a player know it's coming, but the character's group may not, eh? It's still a dick move, but at least it's not 'quit hitting yourself'-level dickery. Until they start pulling it at mandatory story events, setting up traps so gratingly obvious that I felt the game's phantom slap on my jaw, the coarse cawing of 'you'll do it cuz we say you'll do it' heavy in the air. Zevrahn's battle, anyone? Yeah, I killed that over-acting whore first, because she had it coming for thinking me or my party actually ate any of that bullshit hoagie the game makes her feed you. They're lucky the rocket launcher hadn't been invented yet, is all I'm saying.
Dragon Age pulled this bullshit at least ten times, random encounters and storyline events put together, which is about ten times too many. And then they actually have the- the cheek to add insult to injury. Eventually I came upon a random encounter in which you end up on a hill watching some unaware bandits arguing among themselves. And the game gives you the option of "springing a trap of your own for once." As in, the developers were entirely aware of the inordinate number of bullshit traps they foist upon you.
Hey Bioware, if you know an element of your game is time-wasting, aggravating, pointless, overused, and insulting, you know what's a better idea than pointing out that you knew it the whole time? Ripping it out of your game entirely and letting the player do fun things that don't make them feel like you want them to eat shit.
And now I'll go back to being the calm, affable Rocketeer whose posts no one reads cuz they're too long.
