10 Annoying Narrative Video Game Clichés That Need To Die

9. Hold The Line!

Oh, how tiresome this one has become. It used to be standard operating procedure for real-time strategy games - whether you're up against notorious baldy Kane in Command & Conquer, or you're playing as the 101st Airborne Division potting Nazis behind enemy lines in Company Of Heroes, you knew it was coming. You can feel the story swinging in that direction before it even happens. "Reinforcements are inbound, but we have a column of tanks bearing down on us!"... and right there you know we're just around the corner from "Dig in, men! We need to hold this position!". Its something we see in war movies all the time, and its obviously something that has happened countless times in reality too, through centuries of war, but to have it so blatantly shoehorned into every war game storyline just feels like narrative-by-numbers game design. This survival-against-the-clock mechanic has bled into other genres too, specifically the first-person shooter, where it's usually accompanied by some bloody contrived orchestral theme music and serious looks on everyone's faces as the clock counts down, hordes of enemies throwing themselves at us in great numbers. Waiting for air support to arrive, waiting for the chopper to pick us up, waiting for the sun to rise... whatever the reason, there's a lot of waiting, a lot of shooting, and usually a lot of swearing. Again, its something we usually only have to sit through once per game, but that makes it feel even more forced, knowing that at some point the writers are going to squeeze it into the storyline just to check that box on the game design To-Do list.