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Worst video game stories of this generation

I don't see Gears of War 2 and 3, so let me put those here.

Gears of War 2's last hour, and Gears of War 3's EVERYTHING.

Nothing made sense. It was just a bunch of events loosely connected because reasons.
 
Can people stop saying Final Fantasy XIII-2? Don't judge that just because XIII was shit.
Eojay said:
Diablo 3.
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This is the ultimate answer. The story was retarded, sure... but the story-telling is what made me want to throw my head at a wall (and I actually did it at one point).

Holy Jesus Deckard Cain Death Batman
 
ItIsOkBro said:
Uncharted 3.
So we have people who can pull of disappearing acts and shoot hallucinogenic darts and stuff, but they want...even more hallucinogenic agent. Too bad their plan gets ruined by a grenade launcher I found 5 seconds ago. Also, something about tarot cards. And a pirate takes me on his ship. That he sinks.
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The whole game feels like it was building to a third act reveal that Talbot was going to be an evil Djinn, but that Naughty Dog changed it last minute because of reactions to supernatural elements in the previous two games.
 
Kangi said:
I wouldn't say the story in Diablo III was bad (until the awful Act IV), but the dialogue was especially bad in a lot of parts.
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The way the story was told is a big part of the reason that I dislike it so much, but
I can't forgive the way they killed off Cain.
 
TatteredHat said:
The way the story was told is a big part of the reason that I dislike it so much, but
I can't forgive the way they killed off Cain.
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A
fairy killed him.
A fairy. Let that sink in for a while.
 
Nibiru said:
This should unanimously be the winner of this thread. All other titles are just vying for 2nd, 3rd and so on.
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Dude, no. Did you not see the summary for Third Birthday? (The other Toriyama written story from this generation) It is hot diarrhea. I can not believe that pile of feces was actually greenlit. It reads like a really really really bad 1st fan fiction from a kid.
 
There are many bad stories in videogames but the one that most disappoint me was Hitman Absolution.
Hey, I'm a badass assassin, I kill everybody and ... look, a cute girl, I'm going to protect you and have feelings even if i'm a clone
 
KoopaTheCasual said:
Dude, no. Did you not see the summary for Third Birthday? (The other Toriyama written story from this generation) It is hot diarrhea. I can not believe that pile of feces was actually greenlit. It reads like a really really really bad 1st fan fiction from a kid.
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Haha I totally did and the post illustrated a hilariously bad story but the editorializing really made that post. FF13 needs no editorializing or hyperbole it is just end to end nonsense.

I'll concede though that both could be in a tie for first.
 
TatteredHat said:
All of Blizzard's games, Diablo 3 in particular.
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I'd go as far as to say post-vanilla WoW, but yeah - this is pretty much it. Diablo III is, for me at least, the worst story of any big game I've ever played. The complete sheer lack of quality in everything from the narrative, structure and dialogue is mind blowing. They really need to fire their entire writing team; they're embarrassing.
 
Kangi said:
I wouldn't say the story in Diablo III was bad (until the awful Act IV), but the dialogue was especially bad in a lot of parts.
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The story was awful. When people can call the story the moment they saw the new Diablo, you know Blizzard's storytelling is fucking garbage. Zoltun Kulle was onto something and perhaps the only interesting character in Diablo 3 yet he doesn't stick around for long. Then there's the Starcraft 2 ending which was a meme on gamefaqs years before the game released.

The problem is all these senior people like Toriyma and Metzen were good in their early days when there was pressure on them to produce quality stuff and prove their value or get fired. Nowadays the fame has gotten to their head and they sink into mediocrity knowing their jobs are secured and they can shit out whatever they like while no one on their team has the balls to call them out on it.

I especially hate Blizzard for ruining all the characters I loved growing up. Kerrigan, Tyrael, Zeratul, Raynor, you name it they ruined it. I won't even mention Warcraft because that lore is fucking dead with WoW.
 
I think Heavy Rain qualifies as the worst story ever because it tries so hard to be this serious drama. Other games like FFXIII, or Gears of War, well thats fantastical fantasy shite so expecting a good story is probably a bit too much anyway.

But Heavy Rain, holy shit, what a fucking car crash. Lets see, theres all the supernatural stuff with the guy having the spooky dreams at the start, then that gets dropped for no actual reason and is never explained or mentioned ever again.

Then the game goes from hard hitting drama to sci fi when NAHMEN JAYDEN comes along with his crime solving sunglasses. The man has a pair of shades that for no real reason whatsoever, turn his office into a beach resort, or a waterfall. And also find clues and shit at crime scenes. I mean you could just let the sunglasses go to work and solve the fucking case there and then.

But then the story takes yet another tonal shift and decides its not a supernatural thriller, drama, or sci fi, but its a Saw-esque torture porn, and forces the main dude to go driving against traffic, and then crawl through a furnace that is inexplicably about 500 meters long and filled with glass.

How David Cage was ever let near another game is beyond me. Im not touching Two Souls with a fucking bargepole after this and Fahrenheit.
 
Bronetta said:
The problem is all these senior people like Toriyma and Metzen were good in their early days when there was pressure on them to produce quality stuff and prove their value or get fired. Nowadays the fame has gotten to their head and they sink into mediocrity knowing their jobs are secured and they can shit out whatever they like while no one on their team has the balls to call them out on it.
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Toriyama was always bad when it comes to story.
 
Brerlappin said:
How David Cage was ever let near another game is beyond me. Im not touching Two Souls with a fucking bargepole after this and Fahrenheit.
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I'm going to watch someone that I like stream it on Twitch, like I did for Heavy Rain.

It's much more entertaining that way. The streamer's personality made Heavy Rain enjoyable and hilarious. Also the stream chat was hilarious, reacting to every little thing that happened with hysterics.

It's the only way to properly experience Heavy Rain, as far as I'm concerned. Ironically.
 
Crysis 2. I have no idea what the hell even happened.

Starcraft 2: HoTS. Not because the story was incomprehensible, but rather it was amazingly one-dimensional and predictable while trying so hard to be deep and dramatic at the same time.
 
Lost Planet

It's like they put 5 writers in different rooms, gave them some names and said "It takes place on an ice planet and there are mechs - have at it"

Then they just mixed the 5 stories together.
 
SentryDown said:
There are many bad stories in videogames but the one that most disappoint me was Hitman Absolution.
Hey, I'm a badass assassin, I kill everybody and ... look, a cute girl, I'm going to protect you and have feelings even if i'm a clone
Click to expand...

To their credit, he wasn't completely heartless, as seen in the other games, and he had a few people he grew an emotional attachment to. If you can call it that, since he's kinda loose.

Edit: DmC is incredible, especially when you mix in the side materials. Hell I had more fun watching DMC4 even if it didn't clear up stuff.
 
Alan Wake.

It's the Lost of video games. Interesting set-up, then just piles on questions with no answers, and bails at the end. I'm almost entirely certain Remedy did not know how they were going to end that story. So, they throw in some bullshit Stephen King quote at the beginning as a get-out-of-jail-free card. "See? King says you don't have to provide answers, so, there you go!"

Horseshit.
 
Crysis 2 and 3, finished both games and the first thing i said was "What that hell happened?" I mean Crysis 1 had a decent story but after the first few hours of crysis 2, i just continued playing the game for the gameplay and graphics and did the same for crysis 3.
 
Assassin's Creed III. The ending was absolutely abysmal and Ubi should be ashamed of themselves for it. Not to mention that they forgot to create a likeable protagonist or meaningful side characters who the player get attached to. Haytham and slightly Achilles were the only good characters in that game in my opinion. On the other hand, I liked that they really explored the Templar's side of the argument and often showed a human side to it. But clearly not enough to stop Connor running around killing literally everybody. Just a really poor game compared to the impeccable Ezio trilogy.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist is definitely up there. The entire plot is nothing more than jingoistic American chest beating and it's twice as frustrating because they actually create "villains" who have a clear motivation for what they are doing, and whose motivations I think actually a lot of people agree with. They demand that America withdraw its troops from the 100 or w/e different countries around the world. Am I the only one who really has zero problem with this view? They act as a destabilising presence in much of the middle east and they aren't needed or wanted in Europe. And yet the way they approach it is to create an intelligent set of villains but then to create protagonists who do nothing but run around killing everyone who dares to disagree with the US' international military presence. The game presents the viewpoint in a well articulated way but then creates protagonists who don't seem to understand that maybe they're right to demand it. They even send Fisher to Guantanamo Bay, but the developers clearly lacked the bravery to actually tackle Guantanamo.

Grand Theft Auto IV. It's not so much that the story itself is bad, it's the ludonarrative dissonance. "Hey guys look at this deep and complex protagonist we've created who's just trying to make his way in the world" - game cuts to the player beating strippers with baseball bats and gunning down police officers for shits and giggles. It doesn't make sense.
 
For those few of you who played Too Human all the way through, how did the story turn out? Going in I thought it had some great ideas, but when I played the demo I seem to remember it seeming like a poorly directed incomprehensible mess. It's probably the absolute worst bit of storytelling I'd come across in a game that was supposed to have a strong focus on story. But I only plated the demo.

Final Fantasy 13 gets a lot of hate, and I'm going to add to it some. I didn't find the overall story, dialogue, or characters to be much less comprehensible or nonsensical than most jrpgs when taken on its own. I think 13 is an example though of its perception of story being directly hurt by gameplay. My favorite rpgs do a great job of world building through lots of little touches that aren't necessarily present in dialogue and plot. Having a nice town to go around and characters to talk to who are just going about their business, or reasonably enjoyable diversionary activities that make you connect with the game world make a lot of difference in how I perceive the story. FF13 just strips out all distraction and focuses a pretty harsh light on what has always been questionable story telling in a lot of videogame rpgs. With straight line dungeons, no exploration for the vast majority of the game, no open towns, and no decision making, you have 50 hours or so being carried by nothing except the lackluster main plot and battle system.

I liked Final Fantasy 13-2 a lot more because the world and side characters are more fleshed out. The main plot thread is still a load of bullshit, but what's around that thread is a lot more interesting to me.

We could also add just about every fighting game in existence to the list of games with terrible nonsensical storytelling, but at this point I find a lot of it self-parodying and part of the fun. It's great looking at the story mode in Fatal Fury 13 and exploring the ridiculous reasons the designers have given for all these lunatics still fighting each other after all the sequels, lol. So fighting games have horrible stories, but I still personally find them fantastic. They're the Sharknado's of the video game world to me :-P
 
antitrop said:
It's the only way to properly experience Heavy Rain, as far as I'm concerned. Ironically.
Click to expand...
I watched a bit of Heavy Rain in Spanish with English subtitles.
It turned what was supposed to be a dramatic game into a Mexican telenovela.

It was HILARIOUS.
 
TheSpoiler said:
To their credit, he wasn't completely heartless, as seen in the other games, and he had a few people he grew an emotional attachment to. If you can call it that, since he's kinda loose.
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What? He wasn't heartless in the previous games.
Hitman 2's plot dealt with Agent 47 trying to rescue a priest that he had befriended.
 
Sarah: "I don't wanna be a leCee! LeCee, LeCee, LeCee!" *crying*

Hope: "I'm mad cause I think you let my mom die and I talk with a bunch of slobber in my mouth." *crying*

Snow: "Cowabunga dudes! Sarah, like your totally gonna be OK and stuff!"

Vanelle: "Ugh wahahaha!!" *anoying high pitched noises* *crying*

Lightning: "I'm an emotionless robot who is just mad at stuff." *bitch face initiated* *Assault team members mode=ON* *Method of assault on allies=slap and punch* *Secretion extracted from largest facial orifice on impact of allied assault=dog piss*

*crying*
 
MGS4. Not because it was actually the worst but because it was fluffed so much that it was the only PS3 game I was compelled to play and beat. I liked the gameplay but ended up skipping most of the cutscenes.

Too long.
 
Far Cry 3 story is pretty crap. A bunch of kids (Americans) get kidnapped on island but are left on their own while one survivor goes about tuning his hunting skills and fixing radio towers instead of trying to get help from the outside world? Yeah right....
 
What the hell, diablo 3.
How could they DARE. I mean...
Okay, you killed DECKARD FUCKING CAIN. That's be okay i guess... If atleast there was SOMETHING to make us actually notice the killing. But nooo, let's have him dead like it's some shoddy no-one.
 
Brerlappin said:
I think Heavy Rain qualifies as the worst story ever because it tries so hard to be this serious drama. Other games like FFXIII, or Gears of War, well thats fantastical fantasy shite so expecting a good story is probably a bit too much anyway.

But Heavy Rain, holy shit, what a fucking car crash. Lets see, theres all the supernatural stuff with the guy having the spooky dreams at the start, then that gets dropped for no actual reason and is never explained or mentioned ever again.

Then the game goes from hard hitting drama to sci fi when NAHMEN JAYDEN comes along with his crime solving sunglasses. The man has a pair of shades that for no real reason whatsoever, turn his office into a beach resort, or a waterfall. And also find clues and shit at crime scenes. I mean you could just let the sunglasses go to work and solve the fucking case there and then.

But then the story takes yet another tonal shift and decides its not a supernatural thriller, drama, or sci fi, but its a Saw-esque torture porn, and forces the main dude to go driving against traffic, and then crawl through a furnace that is inexplicably about 500 meters long and filled with glass.

How David Cage was ever let near another game is beyond me. Im not touching Two Souls with a fucking bargepole after this and Fahrenheit.
Click to expand...

I still enjoyed Heavy Rain a lot, it worked on a character level for me, the story was a confusing mess for the most part, but somehow it worked for me and in comparison to Fahrenheit it's sensible.......... Heavy Rain seemed to have some supernatural ideas, I think it was good that this was dropped, see Fahrenheits last third.

I'm honestly a bit afraid of Beyond because they went back to the supernatural stuff.
 
forfrosne said:
Grand Theft Auto IV. It's not so much that the story itself is bad, it's the ludonarrative dissonance. "Hey guys look at this deep and complex protagonist we've created who's just trying to make his way in the world" - game cuts to the player beating strippers with baseball bats and gunning down police officers for shits and giggles. It doesn't make sense.
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that's on you, not the story. that particular example.
 
Sayter said:
Vanquish. One of the best games with one of the worst stories.
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There's no reason to watch Vanquish's cutscenes. They shouldn't have even been in the game.

If all the reviewers would have skipped the cutscenes, I bet Vanquish would have a higher Metacritic average.
 
I was just reminded of how completely bad Fallout 3's story was. And then you have Three Dog (aaaaooowww).
 
forfrosne said:
Grand Theft Auto IV. It's not so much that the story itself is bad, it's the ludonarrative dissonance. "Hey guys look at this deep and complex protagonist we've created who's just trying to make his way in the world" - game cuts to the player beating strippers with baseball bats and gunning down police officers for shits and giggles. It doesn't make sense.
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This

Miss Riot said:
that's on you, not the story. that particular example.
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You cannot finish the game without killing more than 100 people. It's a ridiculous plot.
 
Miss Riot said:
that's on you, not the story. that particular example.
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Agreed. Nobody ever claims that Zelda has a weak story because after the sages proclaim you as the hero of time, you can go beat up chickens with hammers and cut up road signs for shits and giggles.

Like, what, do you want the game to prevent you from attacking civilians Assassin's Creed style, or would you rather every GTA protagonist be the same psychopath?
 
mattiewheels said:
I was just reminded of how completely bad Fallout 3's story was. And then you have Three Dog (aaaaooowww).
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It's offensively bad, because they got fucking LIAM NEESON to do voice acting in a video game, and then they do nothing good with it.

He's a major, major character, but he's barely even in the game and then just randomly shows up at the end. The ending is nonsensical, contrived, and ridiculous, too. Both of them.

Maybe the game shouldn't have even tried to have an overarching plot, maybe they should have just dumped you out into the Wasteland after you escape the Vault and say... "there's nothing you're "supposed to do", just go survive".

That probably would have been better.
 
pax217 said:
You cannot finish the game without killing more than 100 people. It's a ridiculous plot.
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I mentioned that example. you can finish the game without beating hookers with a bat. you can finish it without killing cops for shits and giggles. there's a story that's being told. the examples given were of the players' choice which is troublesome.
 
Atraveller said:
A glimpse at my library, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Crysis 2, and I'm surprised nobody mentioned Modern Warfare 3.

I know CoD never had good writing, but MW3 has reached a new level of bad. Russians got pushed back by the Americans, and suddenly they decided to attack all of Europe(just because Makarov said "Europe must burn!"), and European forces are so horrible that they need the Americans to come and save the day. And who controls the Russian army? I thought the president is en route for a peace treaty? Did I mention the dialogs are terrible?
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If you've ever spent much time around Western European soldiers, you wouldn't doubt why America would have to come save them.
 
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