Mine is when 85% of a horror game's voice lines are the protagonist going SHIT or FUCK slightly under their breath every time something mildly spooky or intimidating happens, or when they discover some new obstacle

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I hate when characters use gameplay vocabulary unless the whole game leans on it. The colonel in Metal Gear telling me I need to press the action button is fine. That one guy in the antlion tunnel in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 who tells me there's a corner of the room full of "health and ammo" just sounds lazy.

    The thing I probably hate the most is characters leaving notes behind unless there's a very specific, good reason for it. Something like:

    "Hey, I just found this cabin in the woods. There's a bunch of monsters outside and I'm scared. Anyway the code for the safe is 0451. I left some shotgun ammo in there."

    Just terrible. Hate it so much. Pulls me out of any game where it's present. What's even worse is audio logs. The only games I can think of off-hand that had a clear explanation of why the audio logs exist are Soma and Dead Space, where in both instances they're like an airplane's black box built into cyborgs and you listen to the last thing it recorded. Yeah that's reasonable.

    Also yes I know they exist for expository reasons. I just want the exposition to not seem so game-like. Notes that exist where they don't make sense might as well be a popup from the game dev saying "Hey player, I'm the dev. This is the story stuff that happened."

    • 5bicycles [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The only games I can think of off-hand that had a clear explanation of why the audio logs exist are Soma and Dead Space

      I think Bioshock counts at least for some characters as they are generally grandstanding assholes who totally would just monolog onto an audio log.

      That then falls apart at the question of why the hell they're all strewn around the city

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There's that one part in the geothermal plant where a bunch of Andrew Ryan's enemies have been killed and speared to the walls like a trophy room. A few of them have audio logs on them where they talk about how they're gonna overthrow Ryan.

        I thought that was pretty effective.