10 Shocking Ways Gamers Have Been Lied To

3. Decisions vs. Consequences

This is the last heading under the RPG section. It deals with another over hyped aspect of RPG€™s that make the developers guilty of false advertising. Think back to the end of the last decade. A game called Mass Effect by developer BioWare was starting to get a considerable buzz around the industry. One of the early short trailers featured the crew on its way to a mission when a panicked message bursts on their radio. The voice is shouting amidst chaos, begging for salvation from what could only be universal Amway salesmen. But the crew had a mission, and sad as it was, they ignored it. Wow! The expectations were set, tough choices and realistic results. So, how often does this dilemma present itself in the game? How about never? Not once in the entire experience is the player forced to choose one pressing emergency over the other. That Senator who is being held captive by insane biotics aboard a derelict ship, who only has hours to live tops? Oh, he€™ll wait a few weeks while we go shopping for a rare blend of Brandy. There is, of course the obligatory point of (finish all your side quests) no return threshold where you can€™t go back and complete old quests. But the option to hold off saving the universe from destruction while the player gets their ducks in a row stands indefinitely! This idea that time stands still wherever the player isn€™t is an embarrassing trend that plagues most RPG€™s. To prove it€™s a lie, look at the exceptions, Oblivion offered a far more realistic idea of the game world, where NPC€™s had schedules they followed requiring the player to time their visits to the town in order to be in the right place at the right time. The missions themselves still had a primarily infinite life expectancy but at least they were trying. The slap in the face was that the sequel Skyrim did away with the living world idea almost entirely, sending the game overall in the opposite direction back to static NPC€™s that were pretty much always in the same location, they even reduced the things the NPC€™s said, unless the player is supposed to believe that archers in Skyrim are all trained to shoot for the knee. The idea that the player has all the time in the world takes all the drama out of the game and the genre, a genre which boasts a more compelling story than the average action game. LIES!!!