6. Clichés & Bad Characters
The whole point of video game writers are to ensure that the story is fresh, unique and interesting. You don't want to be playing the same type of story over and over throughout different games do you? Sadly, a lot of developers are now pushing out terrible and over-used stories and hoping that the flashy graphics and hyped up press make gamers ignore the story. Aren't we all tired of the bad guy who sacrifices himself in the end for the greater good? Perhaps you're tired of defeating the final boss only to have him come back in another form and then another form after that? What about a story where an ancient evil has returned to the land and the only way to defeat it is a special magical spoon that's located in an ancient desert castle...oh and the ancient evil just killed your family and razed your village to the ground. I'm tired of all these clichéd stories and characters, I see them enough in films so I don't want them in my games. I mean who in their right mind thought giving us a character like Hope in FF13 was a good idea? Good god I wanted him to die so badly, his voice was annoying, he was a useless character and his entire part of the story could have been replaced with Snow explaining how he had indigestion. How about Lydia from Skyrim? I didn't think there was anything that could be the game worse but nope, they give me a follower who's at first enthusiastic but after the first dungeon crawl turns into a grumbling mess who's more of a hindrance than an asset. It's not just the characters that can be terrible though, some of the ideas that have been implemented into the story have me on the floor gasping for breath as I laugh that any writer thought it was a good idea to include it. What better way to explain the mess your character has to fix at the beginning of games than with the over-used "XXX years ago we had a few too many pints down the local and locked up this ancient evil but left the key in plain sight of this scheming uncle who's going to kidnap the princess and become king." Don't worry though, even though your character knows bugger all about combat there's always this guy in the village who has some armour you can borrow and will teach you everything you have to know about anything. It's not just the story that can be clichéd though, oh lordie lord no. It seems that whether you're a marine with 30 years battle experience, a simple village boy or an angsty teen with a sword the size of Hull City centre you will never be able to go through or destroy a simple wooden box. Can someone please try to explain to developers that if you've got a gun that can take out a giant planet destroying machine, you can probably destroy the little wooden box in front of the door rather than having to go around it.