RPG cliches

2005-12-22 03:33:30 pm

Pudding%

A few that I just came up with, after reading the GIA list:

Artisan's Law
Recent RPGs have instituted a "Crafting System" that allows the player to create items and equipment either by expending money or materials. Materials can be found in the normal course of the game, and will become increasingly more powerful as the game progresses. Anything extremely powerful will require vast amounts of "Rare Items" to make.

Artisan's Complex
Recent RPGs have a crafting system that is more complex than anything else in the game, up to and including the combat system.

Tub

Edit history:

Tub: 2005-12-22 04:38:55 pm

2005-12-22 04:38:39 pm

m00

How about this one?

Evil man's fetch quest
Whenever there is an ancient powerful rare item that must not fall into the hands of an evil guy and is therefore well sealed, it's your heroic duty to disarm all traps, solve all puzzles, defeat all guardians and destroy the seal. The evil guy will be thankful.

See: black materia, temple of time, and countless others...

VorpalEdge

2005-12-22 05:51:39 pm

welcome to the machine

Mysterious Artifact of Power clause
As a requirement to be a Mysterious Artifact of Power, each of these artifacts must be handed over to the main villian(s) of a game sometime within the plot, or these artifacts must be used by the hero in such a way as to coincide with the villian's wishes. If these artifacts can be used to destroy the world, the villian is *required* to hold the main character's love interest hostage and threaten her life unless he gets the artifacts he wants, at which point he'll kill everybody anyways (see: every rpg in existence). At no time in the game does anyone think to destroy these artifacts. Zelda cannot just smash the Ocarina of Time with a rock and save everyone the trouble.

Gorash

2005-12-22 06:12:51 pm

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How do you destroy the world with an ocarina?
Now destroying the Triforce would be funny...

VorpalEdge

2005-12-22 06:14:29 pm

welcome to the machine

Without the ocarina, you don't get into the sacred realm, and you don't get the triforce.

Enhasa

2005-12-22 07:11:02 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote:

"Grandmother of All Cliches, the. In absolutely every single RPG (except BOF3), you are trying to defeat a bad guy."
Uhh...what? Huh?

What's confusing you, the "every single RPG" or the "except BOF3"? Because it looks more or less correct to me.

Yoshi348

2005-12-22 08:10:41 pm

dinosaur from the past

I think he means it's sort of like calling items a cliche, or something.

Sir VG

2005-12-22 08:49:12 pm

Fucking Weeaboo

Quote:

The Law of Inverse Practicality (Key Item Corollary)
Any item that you can acquire will have some sort of purpose. Those that seem to be useless and have no practical value at all, always tend to have great power later on. The earlier you get the item, the later in the game it will be used. The longer the span of time between acquisition and use, the more powerful the item is.

FF1 - The Lute. Get it at the very beginning, use it at the very end.

Quote:

Evil man's fetch quest
Whenever there is an ancient powerful rare item that must not fall into the hands of an evil guy and is therefore well sealed, it's your heroic duty to disarm all traps, solve all puzzles, defeat all guardians and destroy the seal. The evil guy will be thankful.

FF4 - The Final Dark Crystal. Go into a sealed temple, fight a wall that can kill a member of your party in 1 hit, then OH LOOK STOLEN CRYSTAL. *bad guy takes over the world* Damnit.

spineshark

2005-12-22 09:07:45 pm

新世紀進歩的羽扇子音楽

Quote:

What's confusing you, the "every single RPG" or the "except BOF3"? Because it looks more or less correct to me.

It's the "except BOF3" part...what the hell do you do in that game?

But yeah, it's also true that that's the biggest no duh ever...more like an "every game with a half a real story" cliche.

Enhasa

2005-12-22 09:26:55 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote:

FF4 - The Final Dark Crystal. Go into a sealed temple, fight a wall that can kill a member of your party in 1 hit, then OH LOOK STOLEN CRYSTAL. *bad guy takes over the world* Damnit.

This is precisely why I don't bother with that bullshit. Wink

Cecil and friends eat a nice late lunch, go save the world, and make it back in time for dinner.

Quote:

It's the "except BOF3" part...what the hell do you do in that game?

MASSIVE SPOILERS

Well in a nutshell, you want to go see God to see why she ordered the death of all dragons. There is no real insinuation that she's evil, despite the tones of ethnic cleansing; in fact, one of your PCs is a disciple. When you finally reach her, you find out that she is just too damn strict and like an overprotective mother to the world, keeping the desert from spreading over the world but also getting rid of those dangerous dragons that destroyed the world in BoF1. In BoF tradition, you have an ultimate choice of what to do at the end. If you don't fight her, the game ends and it shows you chillin' in her garden, but it seems very unfulfilling, like you are not living up to your dragon destiny and all that. If you do fight her, that's the boss of the game. The ending shows the party walking around lost in the desert. One of your PCs is um, an anthropomorphic onion, but you find out near the end that he is actually the incarnation of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. The "fin" shot is of an onion sprout shooting up from the desert sand, signifying that while you just messed up the world real good and probably ended civilization as we know it, life will eventually begin anew. Incidentally, I think this is my favorite video game ending.

And in case you are wondering, BoF3 is a happy, upbeat kind of game... more like Tales instead of Final Fantasy.

[quote]FF4 - The Final Dark Crystal.  Go into a sealed temple, fight a wall that can kill a member of your party in 1 hit, then OH LOOK STOLEN CRYSTAL.  *bad guy takes over the world*  Damnit.[/quote]
This is precisely why I don't bother with that bullshit. ;) Cecil and friends eat a nice late lunch, go save the world, and make it back in time for dinner.

[quote]
It's the "except BOF3" part...what the hell do you do in that game?[/quote]
MASSIVE SPOILERS

Well in a nutshell, you want to go see God to see why she ordered the death of all dragons. There is no real insinuation that she's evil, despite the tones of ethnic cleansing; in fact, one of your PCs is a disciple. When you finally reach her, you find out that she is just too damn strict and like an overprotective mother to the world, keeping the desert from spreading over the world but also getting rid of those dangerous dragons that destroyed the world in BoF1. In BoF tradition, you have an ultimate choice of what to do at the end. If you don't fight her, the game ends and it shows you chillin' in her garden, but it seems very unfulfilling, like you are not living up to your dragon destiny and all that. If you do fight her, that's the boss of the game. The ending shows the party walking around lost in the desert. One of your PCs is um, an anthropomorphic onion, but you find out near the end that he is actually the incarnation of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. The "fin" shot is of an onion sprout shooting up from the desert sand, signifying that while you just messed up the world real good and probably ended civilization as we know it, life will eventually begin anew. Incidentally, I think this is my favorite video game ending.

And in case you are wondering, BoF3 is a happy, upbeat kind of game... more like Tales instead of Final Fantasy.

Dragondarch

2005-12-23 01:10:56 am

Pudding%

Wouldn't BoF 4 fall under the same category as BoF 3? I never really perceived Fou-Lu as evil or anything...

Gorash

Edit history:

Gorash: 2005-12-23 07:45:54 am

2005-12-23 07:44:56 am

${$uid.$user}{' usertext'}

And in BoF5 your objective is to escape, not to fight someone.

Enhasa

Edit history:

Enhasa: 2005-12-23 05:06:17 pm

2005-12-23 04:56:08 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

I think this shows that BoF is a superior series. Anyway, only BoF3 is on the GIA list because at the time, 4 and 5 were yet to exist. BoF5 is also noteworthy in that you are not saving the world or anything like that, just one person.

Edit: MORE SPOILERS

For BoF4, your goal for most of the game is just to rescue Elina. When that, um, doesn't work out, your goal then switches to facing Fou-Lu to get him to not destroy the world in his divine wrath. So while I agree that Fou-Lu is not a bad guy, on a continuum, at least the end of BoF4 is closer to "defeat the bad guy" than BoF3.

And in BoF5, while you are never "trying to defeat a bad guy," the bad guy in question keeps on trying to defeat you, and you do defeat him just because he gets in your damn way. Speaking of which, if said bad guy didn't fight you the last time, I would have a BoF5 run on SDA by now...