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Games that let great backstories/setups go to waste.

O

Odoul

Member
Gears of War - I haven't played the third game yet. But I like everything about this world. I like the way the characters look. The world is fully realized. It feels retro futuristic and alien all at once. But it seems to only barely tap into it's history. A world where two superpowers have been at war for 70 years was an interesting idea. The second made allusions to there being concentration camps before the locust came but that's about it.

Resistance - Again I've only played the first and %80 of Retribution. This one is a little better about it. It's an alternate history already with the aliens. But from the trailers and folders you find the world was shaping up differently anyway. You kinda get a taste of it the way Grayson is such an asshole to the French. Would just like to see the concept taken further.

Darksiders*- This one has the potential to. The first game used it's concept to the fullest. There were some unanswered questions and some things didn't make sense, but that's forgivable. I hope the sequel is just bullshitting and we get to see at least a portion past the ending of part 1.
 
K

Kinyou

Member
Not really great but Modern Warfare 3 just completley forgot about the ending of Modern Warfare 2.
Actually you should have been fighting as rouge soldiers trying to stop America from destroying Russia since the whole War was started on false evidence.

Instead Russia just attacks everyone in the world.
 
M

MoonsaultSlayer

Member
Killzone for sure.

Devil May Cry? I mean, you got a half breed, demon killing badass and his demon slaying business... but we're stuck doing one off, personal quests. I get it but...

An open mission structure DMC with side jobs to rack up money for more weapons and souls for more powers to take on the main quests... I want it.

Wait, that DMC example doesn't work with the OP. Got a bit carried away. Dante's lineage is too badass to shift focus to another protag and then again to a reboot. Focus on that rich, gothicy history instead of trying to be hip and stylish according to twilight fans.
 
U

UFRA

Member
Uncharted 3.

I was really enjoying the game the first 50% or so. I loved the trip
back in time to see how Nate and Sully met. That was so cool.

Then the last half of the game felt thrown together, the boss battle was dumb and all general battles along the way were super repetitive and copy/paste.
 
V

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
Resonance of Fate: They give us great backstories to the cast and they have a insteresting story there ruined by convoluted messes
 
S

Solid Samus

Banned
the Halo games
Killzone for sure, I think the backstory on the website got me more excited for KZ2 than any of the trailers did
Crysis (2)
 
J

Jake Tower

Banned
animlboogy said:
Mass Effect. I honestly think its one of the best settings for a space adventure since Star Trek. Great lore, lots of influence from all over the place including obscure stuff like Star Control, just amazing.

And they insist on making this passable cover shooter the main focus of the game.
Click to expand...
Agreed. It's a cool synthesis* of Star Trek, Star Wars, Blade Runner, etc.
I hope after all this backlash when we return to that universe we get a more ambitious concept than that.
Click to expand...
Um, have you played the ending or read about it?

*heh
 
J

Jay Shadow

Member
Not that I'd consider it great, but Soulcalibur V's setup is baffling. They seemed to put effort into everyone's relationships and motivations, and mention a lot of it in their profiles. Yet in the actual game, not only do they ignore most of it, but they don't even include the profiles. You can only find them online or in the art book. Seems like a lot of wasted effort by whoever came up with this stuff in the first place.
 
K

KorrZ

Member
Homefront. The whole timeline/backstory they posted was really interesting and set up what could have been a great atmosphere/world but of course it just turned out to be a shitty game.
 
B

badcrumble

Member
The God of War and Kingdom Hearts franchises have an interesting spin on this idea, in the sense that the main games generally have extremely simple stories and motivations (basically just winding up the main character and letting them proceed to kick everyone's ass) and the side games do much, much more to flesh out the backstory and the world.
 
N

NeoUltima

Member
Final Fantasy XIII.

Starts out great, but once you get to Pulse it falls kind of flat. The main villain is hardly developed. And the plot at the end is wtf.
 
S

StealthGoblin

Banned
I'll echo many others. Killzone.

I love reading the backstory on their website. So much potential wasted.

Instead we get them desperately trying to redeem Rico.

Just kill the twat and be done with it.
 
T

TheFLYINGManga_Ka

Member
A lot of JRPGs I played (almost ALL of them) start out great with cool setups and interesting backstories that get me interested...and than goes off into a whole different path being about something completely different from what I was hoping for or expecting.
 
BibiMaghoo

BibiMaghoo

Member
Space Marine.

They had the entire 40K universe to pull stories from, and instead they made 'generic SPaCe MaRinezzz!!!' garbage plot with no depth.

The 40k universe is one of the richest and most detailed in existance. I could have made a better story for the game from the material.
 
R

Retro_

Unconfirmed Member
MoonsaultSlayer said:
Devil May Cry? I mean, you got a half breed, demon killing badass and his demon slaying business... but we're stuck doing one off, personal quests. I get it but...
.
Click to expand...

I agree with this part. I think Bayonetta falls victim to this as well.

I think some of the concept and lore of Umbra Witches is really cool.(with them making pacts with different demons for abilities) It'd be awesome to play a game where you encounter different ones with different demon pacts, but they're all dead.

Even besides that I think an underworld where people like Bayonetta and Rodin get work is pretty interesting as well, but again you're put on a personal one-off story that ends up not being very good in the end.

If Bayonetta 2 really does exist, I hope the story is just Bayonetta and Jeanne taking underworld demon slaying jobs with no personal strings attached to them. Just them fighting meeting a bunch of crazy personalities and fighting a bunch cool looking monsters with no heavy drama strings attached.
 
T

topramen

Member
Zelda


Timeline and all of that, so many cool characters, races, legends that really deserve a more fleshed out backstory. I would play a mass effect style wRPG (at least in conversation with NPR terms) based around Zelda gameplay
 
K

KevinCow

Banned
F-Zero.

Yes, I'm serious.

Reading the character bios in GX is like reading the wiki for a long running superhero comic. Every racer has some story about who they are, where they're from, why they're racing, their relationships to other characters, and so on, and not a single one is just, "He is an F-Zero racer, and he is racing in the F-Zero GP because that is what F-Zero racers do."

But we've never really actually seen any of that in the games.
 
S

Superblatt

Member
rising.jpg


Poor framerate and below par visuals killed it. Great concept though.
 
K

kasavin

Member
This is dating myself but the most memorable example of this for me is Dark Reign, the 1997 RTS. The backstory in the manual was like 20 pages of great science fiction. Amazing backstory that established a fascinating world, but there was very little evidence of it in the game itself (though the game itself was very good anyway).
 
S

Snaku

Banned
Resistance by far. The website, timeline, videos, etc. were criminally more interesting than the games.
 
R

Retro_

Unconfirmed Member
Adam Prime said:
lol did you not play the first three games before it... and Peace Walker? They setup the story BEFORE MGS4 perfectly.
Click to expand...

Yeah and then MGS4 does a disservice to them by completely discarding the aspect of world building those games all contained for the sake of more personal character drama between familiar faces in familiar places.

A common theme of the previous games was that something bigger than you was controlling everything in your mission behind the scenes in pursuit of some hidden agenda. It just gave the impression that Snake's mission and what he knows in it is just a small part of a bigger world picture.

MGS4 it's like no one on the planet besides the main characters existed and they could just do whatever they wanted.(Fully functional Rex and a nuke just left in abandoned shadow moses facility? It's not controlled by the Patriots for some reason? Shit let's go get it snake.)

So it's a good example for this thread I think
 
R

rybrad

Member
Odoul said:
Darksiders*- This one has the potential to. The first game used it's concept to the fullest. There were some unanswered questions and some things didn't make sense, but that's forgivable. I hope the sequel is just bullshitting and we get to see at least a portion past the ending of part 1.
Click to expand...
I loved the ending to Darksiders and it was the first game that popped into my mind when I saw the thread title. I was bummed to see they weren't picking up from the end, it has so much potential for awesomeness.
 
H

heliosRAzi

Banned
KevinCow said:
F-Zero.

Yes, I'm serious.

Reading the character bios in GX is like reading the wiki for a long running superhero comic. Every racer has some story about who they are, where they're from, why they're racing, their relationships to other characters, and so on, and not a single one is just, "He is an F-Zero racer, and he is racing in the F-Zero GP because that is what F-Zero racers do."

But we've never really actually seen any of that in the games.
Click to expand...

You should watch REDLINE
 
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