Cliché

Lets face it, by now just about every videogame "cliché" has been done to death.

The young, brash hero in an RPG whose family/friends/hometown get smashed like 10 minutes in. You can practically grab a stopwatch when you start the game.

The grizzled space marine. Of any kind. With just about any background. Usually involves aliens.

The supersoldier project that backfired.

The previously friendly associate who turns out to be pure evil and has a problem with laughing too much (even when they have just been stabbed and are dying).

The servant of the antagonist who has been so heavily mistreated they then have a change of heart and help you, usually being the key to thier defeat in the first place.

And who can forget the Nazi angle...


So why do people keep doing it? Is it because they don't have a better idea? Is it because it's easy to write? It's like going back and watching Looney Tunes - after a while, you know what's going to happen long before it happens, more often than not. At that point the story loses a lot of punch. Even something as epic as Mass Effect has several of them. But the key with those games is they often branch out. The cliché sections aren't a main plot point, most of the time. There's one section in ME2 where one of your squad members asks for help moving her sister to a secure location while a bunch of mercenaries are hunting her.

And when you start, you hear about her most trusted friend. She's relying on him to help keep her sister safe from the mercenaries while you fight your way through to them. She's adamant that he's trustworthy. She grew up with him. If you've already worked out that he's betrayed her, you'd be right. So when you meet up with him and he's sitting pretty with the mercenary leaders, you're not the least bit surprised.

Things like that make the whole thing pointless. There's no huge surprise when you get to the end. But that's not a massive plot point that hinges on a basic cliche. The rest of the game is written well enough to outweigh these moments.

But i suppose the real problem is, how would you go about that scenario without making the ending obvious?... You can't really. And that's why we always run into these clichés. It's a pity that you simply need to hope the unpredictable sections outweigh the obvious ones enough to make a story really speak to you, more often than not. But i'm no story writer. I just like to shoot things.

First post, much?

This is my first post. And as it happens i'm not playing a game, but am about to be. Expect random updates as i play more games. They may not be recent games, either. I don't have the money, time or desire to purchase and play a game that i don't want to. Games are meant to entertain, and if i am not going to be, i won't be playing it. :)