7 Video Games That Broke Their Own Rules

A lot of work goes into video game world-building. Some studios (usually the larger ones) have dedicated groups of people whose sole purpose is to ensure that the lore makes sense, and that it's free of contradictions and inconsistencies.

Most studios will also have mantras and rules that they want their gameplay to stick to, whether that's to ensure a fair and competitive environment in online titles, or to make a singleplayer experience as fun as it can possibly be.

But whether it's on the gameplay side of things or the story side of things, rules are made to be broken, and that's exactly what certain developers did.

Whether it's for an understandable reason (like wanting to increase a game's challenge), or a more nefarious reason (like conning players out of their money, which has become annoyingly common over the last few years), some games blatantly break the rules they've set up for themselves, often without even acknowledging that they've done so.

To be clear, we're not saying these games are bad - most of them are actually pretty great - but they did bend certain rules, often with frustrating consequences.

The vast majority of puzzles in the Portal series are wound to perfection, making it abundantly clear what the player can and can't do in each given situation.

For instance, throughout both of the core games, it's firmly established that your portals will disappear if you place them on a moving surface. This rule was obeyed all the way through 2007's Portal, and for most of 2011's Portal 2 - before it was ultimately broken in one infamous puzzle.

In the sequel's fifth chapter, there's a neurotoxin room that requires players to destroy a generator by using a laser to cut through some tubes.

This is accomplished by firing a portal onto a moving white platform, causing the laser to slice through each tube like a hot knife through butter.

As pointed out by fans of the series, this is the only time in both games where portals are capable of moving, and though some people go to ridiculous lengths to defend this rule-break ("well, the Earth is moving, so technically portals are always on a moving surface"), it quite obviously goes against the established limitations of portal movement, for no good reason.