10 Tired Video Game Plots Everyone Is Sick Of Seeing
3. A Brief Spell In Prison
Video game characters have a pretty cushy life. They can wander into peoples houses and poke around, leap across rooftops at night and generally act like the biggest jerks in town. Even if the local guards are alerted to your shenanigans, getting captured normally just means a small fine and the loss of whatever youve stolen. Prisons in games serve another important purpose that most dreaded of gameplay mechanics, the forced stealth section. More often than not, this happens because youve been captured by the lead villain and, in a momentary lapse of judgement, theyve decided to lock you up instead of killing you. Never mind that everyones been flat-out trying to murder you for the last six levels, suddenly youre going to get chucked in an easily-escapable cell right at the heart of the villains evil lair. Youll have your weapons taken away from you, of course, and be forced to rely on your stealth and melee attacks for a while. If its near the end of the game theres a chance youll never get them back and be given a super mega-laser with unlimited ammo as a consolation prize, but your Rambo-sized arsenal is probably just stashed in a chest somewhere. Getting captured works out so well for the good guys, its amazing its not standard procedure so they can cut down on travel expenses. As plot devices go, though, its a lazy way to speed things along to the confrontation and, worse still, well have to struggle with a stealth system in a game that mostly likely wasnt built with sneaking in mind. Cant we just use the front door once in a while?
