It's understandable that given how long the video game medium has now been going, and how many video games are released every year, that we're going to be liable to experience a few repeated plots here and there. Still, like the world of film, developers often tend towards whatever appears to be selling best; after Half-Life hit it big, we had countless sci-fi FPS games trying to ape its success, and the same happened with console shooters once Halo made a splash on the Xbox. Trends are one thing, but when developers unimaginatively pilfer plots from hit games and movies, soullessly recycling them with slightly different visuals and settings, it leaves a sour, crass taste, and that's exactly why indie games like Journey and Fez have done so well; they're imaginative and have clearly had a lot of thought put into them despite the low-level design elements. The same cannot be said for games which utilise these narratives. Here are the 10 most overused video game plots. Ever.
10. You Are The One
Though this trope appears a lot throughout video games generally, no more prevalent is it than in the RPG genre, and specifically the Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game variant, which sees you dropped into a giant world, where you're faced with an enormous threat which you usually have to grind 60-or-so levels to reach, before realising that there's no end-game and you're going to have to wait until the next four expansions are released or the developer gives up on the property before you get any form of a resolution. Rather than air a general grievance about MMOs in general, though, the main issue with the narratives so often suggesting that we're the one singular force who can bring stability to this world is that we're experiencing the world with millions of other players, tens of thousands of whom are likely miles better at it than us. So, we're really supposed to believe that we're the be-all-and-end-all, despite the fact I just saw a guy run past with epic armour the kind of which I couldn't get in my wildest dreams. It's an inherently flawed part of the framework, but an unavoidable one really unless the game just has you play as a low-ranking foot soldier, but then who would dare level up to the cap with a character like that? Exactly. Doesn't change the fact it's so boring, though.