by Malfeasinator » Tue Aug 25, 2015 7:56 pm
There are some decent mods that take care of what I think are pretty dumb things to begin with, like people casually milling about when there are dragon and vampire attacks (GO INDOORS, DUMMY!), but I guess the more I play, the more the little things drive me nuts.
I don't see why you can't bust locks, or break chests and boxes wide open. Especially in a game like Fallout 3. There's nobody left in the world to try to impress, and no reason to live like anything other than a Raider, so why be delicate? Why not smash things? Sure, it might alert everyone to my presence, but that's a risk I'm willing to take sometimes.
Or, I don't know, if it's a small enough chest or box, just take the darn thing with me. Oh but we can't violate the infinite storage container programming! Which is another thing. Containers should have size and weight limits. Seriously, games have been pulling that off since games have been a thing. Download "Castle of the Winds" if you don't believe me.
It doesn't make sense to fit a fully inflated basketball and non-retracting pair of crutches in someone's mailbox, but hey, there's nothing stopping you. Might as well put a missile launcher in there for good measure.
I also feel like if you have to follow the yellow brick road just to get anywhere, then that's just poor planning.
I hate dragons in Skyrim. They're just there to interfere while you're doing more important business. They don't even have much variation. They don't even do half the stuff promised in demos. They don't fling giants into the sky. They don't fling you into the sky! They could do a mean spinning tail whip on you but won't. Nope, they just keep going for the front bite. And another front bite. And another front bite. Another bite. More biting. Bite again. Maybe a finisher bite and shake if your health is low. The "climb on top of their head and give them a really close shave with my War Axe" thing you can do doesn't feel like it makes any sense. "I've got it almost dead, so I'd better show off and waste more of the magic charge on my enchanted weapon by doing unnecesary hits."
A lot of games are guilty of crimes like these. I mean you need a special key for some chest that has some really good stuff in it, conveniently forgetting that you have superhuman strength, giant weapons, and no love for anonymous and probably long-dead chest craftsmen.
The Fable series alone drove me so crazy. There's a bridge with a sign telling you the bridge is out in the first game. The bridge never gets fixed throughout the entire game. Oh, bandits can get to the other side somehow and shoot at you from all the way over there, though.
"Fable 2: Let's Add Guns and Take Away The Fable Part" had so many contrived, forced storyline elements that really grated on me because they made zero sense. The game acts like the only way you can beat some bad guy that shot your sister is to gather these other heroes and do some special magic thing, you make terrible sacrifices to keep an even worse guy alive when all you really want to do is let him die, and in the end all you have to do is shoot the bad guy like one time and he plummets to his death.
That's some bullshit.
I didn't even need the other heroes for that. I didn't need them at all. In the main battles at the end, I had enchantments that let me heal with the damage I was dealing to enemies (in MTG terms, I had lifelink), which effectively meant that I could fight forever. I was dealing out more damage than they could deal to me, so winning was just a waiting game. The other heroes had to bend a knee or recharge their Highlander powers every now and then or whatever, but my guy never stopped hacking away. They were totally useless. I kept trying to kill Reaver but the game wasn't about to let him just die.
That's the other thing I hate in games, especially the Elder Scrolls series. Stop protecting assholes. In fact, stop marking people as "essential." Let me wipe out the stupid Black Briar clan. All of them. Let me just burn down Riften for that matter. Let me cave in Little Lamplight in Fallout 3. Stupid kids with their unprotected sex and teen pregnancy. (Think about it - they kick everyone out at 16, but there have been kids there for 200 years.)