10 Outdated Video Game Design Tropes That Must Die

5. Story Choices That Ultimately Mean Nothing

If you're playing a game for the story, there's nothing more infuriating than realising that the supposed narrative choices you're making throughout the game have little-to-no bearing on the overall outcome of the plot.

This was most famously the case in Mass Effect 3, which took the choices you made over the course of the three games and effectively cast them aside in favour of a lame "pick a colour ending." This wasn't what fans were promised, and they duly revolted.

Hell, FIFA's new The Journey story mode is even guilty of this, promising a narrative that will evolve tailored to your footballing success, only for the game to force the player into contrived, canned dramatic scenarios that don't reflect your actual performance (such as being loaned out even when you're scoring goals left and right).

Then there are games which seem to give the player impactful choices, only for it to amount to nothing.

The prime offender might be Telltale Games, whose episodic adventure titles, though fun, present an hilariously transparent illusion of choice at best, because developing enough permutations to give a true impression of "freedom" presumably isn't financially viable.