We’ve all seen this type of movie – the whole thing could be sorted with a phone call, with an honest conversation between partners, or by characters simply acting like actual human beings. Well, the same applies to some video games. Sure, wars don’t fight themselves, and princesses rarely rescue themselves so there’s plenty actual problems for us to solve…but let’s be honest, we’ve all played that game – the one with the completely pointless plot that felt more like being asked to do a chore by a parent. Well, we collected a few of those.
1. Spyro: Seasons of Ice
Spyro’s games are adorable, aren’t they? They don’t feature explicit violence and instead focus on less villainous villains…in this particular game, Grendor interrupts Spyro’s holiday by kidnapping fairies. Arguably not a good thing, but also not quite on par with some of the crimes we’ve seen from more mature games.
Spyro returns home to stop him – he trifled with magic and instead turned himself into a two-headed rhynoc…with 4 headaches. If nothing else, we feel for the guy. Having children is not unlike having several headaches after all.
Anyway, at the end of the game we free the fairies, and one of them…goes and turns him back to normal. Why would she do this? Well as it turns out all he needed to do was ask the fairies for help. Instead, he went and kidnapped them…so had he just asked for help, Spyro could have continued his holiday.
The real crime here is how inconsiderate this guy was!
2. Super Mario Bros.
What’s the issue with this beloved classic? Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? That one sentence… Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle! And no, we don’t mean the fact that they started a sentence with a but – no, it’s the fact that the little guy clearly knew beforehand that she wasn’t there…meaning he could have simply told us so and saved us a ton of stress.
Well, let’s say he really didn’t know and wasn’t doing it to keep Mario busy. There is another problem here: The plot of these games has stayed the same over many years – it always comes down to rescuing the princess. It’s a clichee, yes, but as far as motivations go, it’s not the worst one. It does however raise a question: Why is Princess Peach/Toadstool so easy to abduct?
Surely there would be better security after the first few times right? So then the logical conclusion would be that she’s not being abducted at all, and that she wants to go with Bowser. If that’s the case, Mario is just an annoying third wheel that keeps interrupting their love-holidays. Either way, this whole thing is absurdly preventable.
Well, stranger things have happened.
3. Kirby’s Adventure
In this game, Kirby has a dream-less nap – a great concern for him, a perfect afternoon for us – and goes to investigate. Long story short, he goes off to collect pieces of a broken Star Rod. As we play the game, we beat several bosses each of which has a piece of said rod.
Well… if you pay close attention you may actually get the impression that Kirby is the bad guy here. Most of the bosses are not at all interested in fighting and one actively tries to flee as Kirby beats him up. By the end of it, we have gathered all the pieces to put the rod back together…
And we promptly discover that the reason it was destroyed by King Dedede in the first place was to protect the Fountain of Dreams from Nightmare. Kirby repairing it summons him and it takes the two of them to actually defeat him – in other words, we undid the work of someone who was protecting the fountain.
That sure sounds like something we could have prevented by having a good chat with the king huh?
4. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
In this game the issue is pretty much with one specific person. Niccoló Machiavelli. He apparently gets a kick out of being secretive and mysterious, and while we can see that working for the love interest in an otome dating game, it’s far less cute in an assassin’s organisations that kind of depends on exchanging information.
In his quest to be a broody main character he alienates all of his allies, even makes us suspicious and were it not for a lucky coincidence, the circumstantial evidence would have been enough to have him removed from, well, life. It nearly came to that too – after all there was an actual plan to get rid of him.
Despite his horrendous attitude and terrible inability to cooperate with information, he is revealed to be on our side after all. In case you thought of this: No, the whole thing is not part of some grand plan to find a traitor – by the end of it, Machiavelli agrees it would have been totally better if they all shared better.
For a man renowned for his wit and intelligence, that is some remarkable insights he couldn’t manage without nearly being murdered. There’s plenty cool historical cameos in the series – his is not one of them. He’s just lucky Ezio came by when he did, or the game makers would have had a tough time explaining certain proceedings.
Ah, Italians…