10 Storytelling Clichés In Video Games That Need To Die
7. You Need To Backtrack To Move Forward
Prime Offender: Halo 3, Castlevania
This cliché is an example of both lazy storytelling and lazy level design – which is pretty much the double-whammy of cardinal gaming sins.
My cold heart sinks every time I realise that, having just fought my way through a level, the developers have contrived a situation where I have to go through the level backwards for story purposes: ‘We need to you stay here and protect the MacGuffin…’
From a gameplay point-of-view, it’s just tedious; from a narrative perspective, it’s wholly unbelievable. Because there’s never, ever, ever a good reason to double-back on yourself.
Most games don’t even have the good grace to modify the level, in order to show how the world altered due to the story. Would it kill ‘em to add a collapsed building, panicked civilians or a few cars on fire?
At least that would explain to us why we’re back-tracking, rather than just artificially inflating the runtime.