10 Tired Video Game Plots Everyone Is Sick Of Seeing

6. Ancient Weapons

Here€™s a useful tip for any readers with large, evil organisations as enemies €“ if they start investing heavily in excavation equipment or kidnapping prominent archaeologists, you€™ll want to get over to the dig site pretty quickly. It€™s basically certain that they€™ve uncovered an artefact from some ancient civilisation, and it€™s going to turn out to be a weapon capable of blowing up the world. Obviously, proper heroes aren€™t going to sit idly by and allow this to happen, so they end up locked in a race against the villains. This is a surprisingly common plot in all types of media €“ Raiders of the Lost Ark being a famous movie example €“ but games, being longer, tend to take this one step further. Often, the weapon will be fragmented, scattered around the game and requiring players to undertake an epic quest to find them all €“ even if, logically, you€™d only need one piece to scupper the baddies. This generally turns out to be a terrible idea. The wise ancients who created the weapon normally leave a ton of bizarre riddles and clues to protect it; tests to ensure that whoever finds the artefact will have the wisdom and compassion not to use it. It€™s a shame they weren€™t wise enough to predict the baddies ambushing the heroes immediately afterwards, capturing them and stealing the weapon anyway. At the very least, maybe the player could be allowed to keep the weapon for themselves once in a while. That would add some genuine interest back into this trope and save us from yet another lengthy fetch quest that, ultimately, serves no purpose whatsoever.