Complex vidya plots

TES has some pretty weird lore regarding temporal anomalies, CHIM, the Godhead and the dream ascension concept. Too bad each game only covers small event vaguely relevant to the overall TES universe.

But it's not a dream, you're reliving your cycles of guilt.

Dude, it's crossed over with Final Fucking Fantasy. The literal first game in that series involved a completely nonsensical time loop. On the fucking NES. Whatever elements of elegant simplicity are contributed by Disney are completely and utterly drowned out by the ridiculous messes of plot horseshit from Final Fantasy.

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

Xenogears has a pretty convoluted plot but it's, most of the time, presented well enough as to not be overwhelming. Now xenosaga, that is some bloated shit. Kind of has to be since it was a magnum opus type of deal that was supposed to be six games long.
Still, from the very beginning you get a biblical flood of awkward exposition to establish a setting spanning a galaxy and like five different factions, and half of it is totally mysterious and unexplained. Then it jumps between viewpoints and characters so that, ten hours into the game, you're technically still getting the premise established to you.
And that's not even touching on the nietzsche and religious references.

He said they're all clones of the same character, so he's probably talking about Xehanort. Or maybe Sora. Xehanort tricked a bunch of Nobodies into absorbing small fragments of his heart to use them as incubators, turning all of them into clones of his heart with different bodies. It's part of some plot he has that he needs a total of 13 people for, but he doesn't trust anyone at all, so he decided the best way to accomplish this was time travel, mind control, body snatching, and soul-cloning. Pic related, it's him. Sora had temporarily fused his heart with someone who's heart was split in two (Ventus), leading to their hearts being connected. It also impacted the other half of his heart, making it part-Sora too. Then once that person's two halves were rejoined, the whole combined with Sora again - that's three people now. Then Sora sacrificed himself to save one of his friends, creating a Nobody of himself (Roxas), making four. Then the villains tried using Roxas as a middleman in a scheme to transfer Sora's power into an empty puppet body, Xion, but both her and Roxas developed free will and grew their own fragmented hearts somehow. Then Xion merged with Roxas, and then Roxas merged with Sora, leading to Sora now being a single body who basically has five different hearts inside of him. And the best part is, he doesn't realize any of this and has almost no idea who any of these people are.
So, tl;dr, KH's main hero is five souls sharing a single body, and the main villain is a single soul split up among about 12 bodies currently, and he still needs one more.

Marathon

Oh wait, I misread it. He said "of other characters", I thought it was "of another character".

Isn't that four people though? Sora, Roxas, Xion, and Ventus

It's autistic edgelord trash.

I'd say any Final Fantasy after 9 has convoluted/unnecessary fanfiction-tier plot. And you could even argue before that.
And if we're talking autistic plots, let's not forget Sonic '06.

Kingdom hearts is complicated?

Try Shadow The Hedgehog, it has like a million endings.

...

I was going to mention that, but some of the endings are pretty straightforward compared to Sonic 06's clusterfuck. But that's not to say it's not autistic as fuck.
Aren't all of the endings considered canon? Like all of them? At the same fucking time?

Didn't Chain of Memories end up on the PS2 anyway?

The final ending when Shadow goes super to fight Black Doom cancels the others out

I mean, it's definitely cluttered but the actual story is really straight forward.

Time travel in plotlines is inherently paradoxal, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

There's a "true ending" if you play though and get all of the dark, neutral, and hero endings.

It did, but it's very much a port of the GBA game rather than a remake. There were no doubt a lot of people that were turned off to the game within the first few hours of playing because of the card combat mechanic (which isn't terrible, but it's nowhere near as good as the combat in 1 or 2). If the game had been a spinoff, the GBA release or an inferior combat design would have been fine. But the game was a direct sequel and a bridge between 1 and 2, so I have absolutely no idea why the idea got greenlit in the first place.

A little too cluttered imo. Half the problem is the plot not being engaging enough to really pay attention to. I'm fine with long stories and cutscenes, I fucking loved them in MGS2 and MGS3, but I'm pretty sure I was trying to skip the cutscenes in KH2 because I didn't give a shit about a Disney X Final Fantasy friendship darkness keyblade warrior plotline.

feels bad man

So many vidya stories are so terrible that I've gotten into the bad habit of just skipping every cutscene and all dialogue. It sucks when a game with a decent story comes along, because half the time I find myself mashing A without even realizing it. I have to replay Automata again because I accidentally skipped so much.

All of the "cool lore" in those games is more or less directly lifted out of other things. Elder Scrolls is just Mircea Eliade's shit with the name changed and Halo is literally just Ringworld, down to the ancient neanderthal space architects.

While this isn't quite the thread for it, I'm still disappointed we didn't get the dark matter plot for Mass Effect. Having the ending force you to choose between saving the species of our galactic cycle or sacrificing ourselves to potentially save the entire galaxy would have made a much more memorable ending, and would have played hell with the Paragon/Renegade idea.

Part of the reason pic related's plot is so complex is because most of it doesn't apply to the main story or the main character

And Ventus's other half, Vanitas. Dream Drop Distance revealed that Vanitas still exists separate from Ventus despite their hearts rejoining, and is somewhere deep inside Sora, too. It makes sense. In KH, a piece of a heart will try to heal itself and regrow into a whole heart again. Ventus's broken heart tried to regrow itself, and Vanitas's probably did, too. They started out as two halves of a single whole, but each one grew separately and developed into its own unique heart, and both Ventus and Vanitas were their own individual people.

It's some of my favorite stuff from TES lore. Numidium is such a ridiculously over-powered super weapon that it seems almost comically absurd, yet it's completely justified within the setting and how it works ends up making some sense, in its own twisted and insane way.

Thanks for the clarification, I thought after the merger they went back to 1 entity, but they're still considered seperate.

I can't, I tend to over think things too much and need everything to have a clear reason and continuity. Things purposely being mysterious or ambiguous or even flat out contradicting each other because the writers suck are fine I can deal with that, but time paradoxes are just such confusing bullshit that they ruin any fun or interest I might have had with the story.

Xenosaga's not complicated, user.

Finding/visiting where the Dwarves scooted off to in a TES would be a treat, or would have been.

They didn't go anywhere. They're the Numidium's skin.

I went from KH to KH2 without ever playing CoM and had no trouble at all understanding what nobodies are and that Roxas was Sora's nobody. That is the easiest shit in the world to figure out if you're not an idiot.

The real dumb shit about HK2 is the goal of Organization 13. What were they attempting to do? I don't think the developers even know.

I love that a time raping superweapon continually fucks with time and space constantly just off in the background. Who cares, its just whatever the fuck.

And in all the games all we get is "Adurr, I hit da ting wid da sharp stick, I's da bes dwagonborn".

I feel cheated

It changes between each game, but now they've settled on "they were trying to revive Xehanort but didn't know it."

What's that?

Enderal, a total conversion for Skyrim which pretty much is its own game (on a shitty engine) has some pretty deep stuff - the underlying symbolism may be fairly simple ("Let go.") but you have villains which for all you know do not actually exist and simply are embodiments of man's foolishness, your player character technically does not exist (as what he thinks he is) either, and there is some fan speculation that nothing in the game happens at all because your player character miserably drowns right at the start of the game, all subsequent events being a stretched-out light at the end of the tunnel scenario which the character uses to make himself understand that, yes, he's going to die, and no, he can't change it

These charts are a beautiful display of the autism of Xenosaga's writing.
That being said I'm a sucker for all that techno-religious chuuni shit.

Those are official charts from the official design docs.

Time alteration seems to be the required tool for a complex plots.

Or releasing your stuff in an order that isn't intended to be played in a chronological order.

Actually wait no that's not complicated. It's just being fucking retarded.

I hate that because it isn't even amnesia
It is like reducing plot points to an inside joke.

And then they also time traveled

Not vidya but I actually watched all of this and effectively it was like waiting until the end to see the highly integral beginning where a plethora of characters are introduced to each other.

I only have the slightest of reservations to call the monogatari series the worst story ever written. I have more respect for full life consequences even discounting the ironic factor.

This is what I came for.
I really need to replay all 3 one of these days, it's been nearly a decade now.
It's such a shame we never got all 6 games.

Herein lies the problem with JRPG's in general. They spent all this time coming up with complicated convoluted plots, but the characters are all 1 dimensional.
It should be the other way around - simple plots but with complicated characters,

Inazuma fucking Eleven.
You start by being a kid who really fucking wants to play some goddamn Association Football and ends up having saving the world from aliens TWICE (at least once using Stands).
I can elaborate on the plot if you want me to, even though it's not really the main focus of the games (and it bloody well shouldn't or otherwise it'd get too predictable)

Not a fair criticism. A lot of jrpgs have young protagonists, so their stories are often about growth and self actualization. They are meant to start one-dimensional and progress. By the time of the final boss they often parley and spill thier guts out over everything they have learned. This is why you often get people who lionize the paragon characters who string along as mentors instead. They just dont get it. They would be better served watching action bero flicks in the end.

I've played my share of JRPGs, but what you're describing exists only in a tiny minority of them.
Tales of the Abyss and maybe Grandia come to mind.

You're more likely to find decent characters that get explored further as the game progresses than what you're talking about.
Also, the whole point of a young protag is so the kids can relate to him more easily.

If you're gonna hold a weapon don't be a fucking tease.

I can't decide if there's anything worthwhile in Blazblue as far as the world-building or narrative goes. There's so much worldbuilding and shit that's not even covered well enough in the main plot, so they frontload most of it into an optional theater-esque segment where a few of the characters just explain shit to you that doesn't matter in a fighting game. Personally, I thought the way they did it was cute and the sheer amount of world-building is cool, but I can't help but think it's wasted potential. They didn't need to build some big-ass world with some whole convoluted magitech war with supernatural doomsday beasts, nukes, soul-swapping puppets, ninjas, robots (and waifubots), vampires and loli vampires, three different loli/shota's inhabiting the body of a loli magical girl, powersuits, time-travel, living weapons, some amnesiac heroes/villains, MGS-tier BROTHER, AI overlords projecting some kind of holographic universe revealing that they are responsible for maintaining reality, villains(?) who want to destroy said AI overlords and varying degrees of cat waifus. Did they really need all that to set up a plot and motivation for characters in a fighting game? The whole storyline is only complex because you don't really have time to explore and understand it all.

Didn't the originally want to make an RPG out of it?

No idea, but that would make sense with as much writing that's put in the series. I couldn't find any concrete info on that though.

Don't forgot how the combat in both versions is absolutely fucking broken if you at any point stop to think about the mechanics.
Boss about to do his ultimate fuck-your-shit-up attack you're meant to dodge around? Pull a zero.
Boss pulled a zero? Pull literally any other card.
Boss keeps breaking your cards? Use Jafar.
Run out of cards? Use an Elixir.
Boss about to use one of their high-level sleights and you have no zeros left? Just pull a 27 lethal frame. Actually just pull lethal frame all the time, it's OP as shit and only requires really common cards.

Wait, wut. I always thought it was just over-exaggerated football with light RPG shit. Now I gotta play this.

Legacy of Kain timeline gets pretty messed up.

later games involve someone time traveling to destroy footy forever

most of the games are available on 3ds freeshop, including a remake of the first one

xenogears

So we need 2 more Soras to make 7 pieces of light to fight the 13 Xehanorts od darkness?

I remember a pic of some user explaining how progressively batshit crazy the plot of the games became.

I'm pretty sure the 5th Sora is going to end up being the 13th Xehanort, so we're probably going to need 3 more Soras. Or we could just let Riku handle it, because 1 Riku is still better than 5 Soras.

Eh

I never understood what the fuck is going on in any Guilty Gear game. Same for BlazBlue.

...

That picture was saved as a gif before being turned into a PNG.
Give me the name of the retard who did it so I can bully him.

Stay in school

>in the third game it follows an alternate timeline after the end of the second game where the alien slavers get BTFO and pull back by nuking the entire homeworld you were on which inadvertently frees a cosmic horror and fucks up the universe, however you happen to be implanted with ancient alien technology including a chip which induces time travel when shit hits the cosmic fan, so you find yourself randomly zipping between timelines through vague dream sequences, though you're never told you're actually time traveling and have to gauge it by the weird settings you're in such as working for the alien slavers and killing the AI for whom you involuntarily worked for in the first two games, and killing your fellow humans, until you can find the right time line in order to contain the cosmic horrors

Someone tried (emphasis on 'tried') to explain it, and it was… Well.

Take your meds.

Link for that pl0x

archive.is/PTShP

Thanks

What the fuck are you on about?

They horribly fucked up with remaking this so hard.

Alright, you asked for it, though it's gonna be long and hard to comprehend

if that wasn't enough, (((Teikoku))) academy really wants to beat a Z-league bunch of high schoolers
Before I go on, this is kind of a trend in all games: the officials only come into play during offsides or minor fouls, but are otherwise too scared to issue any card whatsoever or to calm down murderous children
>Surprisingly, the head coach of Teikoku, (((Kageyama Reiji))) forfeits the match, despite winning 10 - 1

>(((Kageyama))) is apprehended, but Endou graciously requests that Kidou's team gets to actually play the match
>Turns out that (((Kageyama))) somehow got out of jail thanks to (((outside help))) was able to manage another team all along, Zeus FC

With the school grounds destroyed, half your team hospitalized (but it was just the weakest lil shits not the good players) and your mortal enemy (((Kageyama))) still on the lam, you embark on a journey, venturing through all of Japan to create the strongest team a thirteen-years-old Zyzz can
>(((Kageyama))) also appears and challenges you on top of a submarine, where he brainwashed two of Kidou's former teammates and a skinhead into being edgy members of the self-harm community, and submerges with his U-Boat as quickly as he had appeared, vowing to build an even stronger team
>An (((arms dealer))) had to see his son's death go unpunished, as he was LIMOUSINED.COM by a member of parliament
>So the next logical thing he did was to buy up orphanages, find a kid that looked almost exactly like his son, prep him into becoming the ultimate being by imbuing him with radiation from a fallen meteorite that he just happened to come by during his negotiations, reach up (((Kageyama))) to experiment it on the Koreans and use his immense wealth and technology to build Star Trek equipment to terrorize Japan

I forgot to mention that there's a plot point where Gouenji gets blackmailed into stopping playing or they'll pull the plug on his sister, but it's probably the least interesting thing about the story
(((Kageyama))) gets to manage the Italian team using a very unconvincing disguise and confirms that IT WAS HIM, KIDOU, IT WAS HIM ALL ALONG, EVEN HIS IMMEDIATE STAFF BOUGHT IT
>A (((Brazilian entrepreneur))) was actually the one funding the arms dealer from 2 to research the effects of an indoctrination therapy to build up a massive army of super soldiers who can also dance the samba
>Finally, the day of the finals arrives: it's none other than against Congo Zaire Cotarl, which sports replacement goldfish versions of Endou's original team members, including a clone of himself who is him but somehow stronger and blacker

I once called KH the greatest shounen ever. It's asspulls: the franchise.

It really is insane how Kingdom Hearts even exists. It's LITERALLY a Final Fantasy X Disney fanfic with Original Character MC and then amps it up to 1000 with the Nobodies and Organization XIII, which is the most fanfic-y thing I have ever seen in a video game. Mickey even wars the Original OC clown shoe zipper design clothing and gets his own OC weapon for crying out loud. If you told someone who never heard about it that it's a 15 year long franchise with like 10 games across 5 or 6 platforms, they would not believe you for a second.

Despite this, I absolutely love it in the most guilty pleasure way possible. It's like Nomura set out to make the greatest fanfic, except it's funded by actual fucking Disney and Square, you know, two of the most recognizable, richest corporations in the entire world. It's something that would exist in an alternate timeline or that you'd make a joke to a friend about but it's REAL. And the combat is actually really good and the boss fights are great, and the character interactions are really charming. It's colorful and the worlds are fun to go to. I first played it when I was 8 (24 now) and IT'S STILL GOING. It has still outlasted me getting a girlfriend, that's how fucking long this retarded series has been alive. And somehow I'm still looking forward to 3 and will probably buy it day 1, assuming I'm caught up by then. They had to release like 3 package games that have 3 games on the disc to some capacity (usually 2 actual games and 1 long ass cinematic summarizing a piece of shit mobile game that actually matters to the plot and characters). And one of them is titled 2.8. In its own massively autistic way, it's one of the most unique, baffling things to grace (?) video games.

wears* not wars

They horribly fucked up with the original to begin with.
It's repetitive and tedious. The remake only makes its core flaws more obvious.

To anybody who wants to get into Kingdom Hearts: skip Chain of Memories and watch embed related after beating the first game. It'll save you about 18 hours.

If you don't mind (((gaming analysis))), Clemps summarizes Chain of Memories (the remake) pretty well in about a half an hour.

Oh, one last thing.
That embed isn't out of sync or glitched, they just didn't bother to lipsync the English version of the game so they plastered English audio over the Japanese animations.

The CoM cutscenes are entertaining, though. You might as well try to enjoy the story instead of watching a summary that makes it feel like you're studying for an exam.

I'm certain that Sora is already Xehanort in some way knowing Nomura's ass burger. The obvious answer to Sora's other two hearts would be Terracand Aqua. As for Vanitas, I see him as half of Ventus's heart. Plus the tease of Kairi and Lea being keyblade users means they have potential to fill those slots as well.

I hope KHIII breaks Sora's heart. The poor kid is too overburdened. The seven need to return Sora's light back to him so Sora can heal and become keyblade Jesus.

Hahaha. Good point, and they are entertaining. KH has always had good presentation.

I mean, no one really cares about the Halo rings. The cool lore is the humans vs forerunners, the Covenant, the flood etc.

Ripped from Ringworld. Humans vs. Neanderthals

It wasn't as good, though.
The Forerunner/Human War is much better in practice than what Ringworld depicted. Ringworld was very lacking in a lot of areas and never really showed it off.

Hot damn, why have I never heard this absolute mess of a story before. That is legitimately impressive with how ridiculous it gets.

It was still solid and a uniquely enjoyable handheld game in its own right. It just fucked up fatally with how excruciatingly bad grinding is topped off with no kind of New Game+ whatsoever. Sleights are fun and the presentation is nothing short of satisfying on top of the unique experimental blend of having to manage an action/beat-'em-up and a card game simultaneously with both being crucial and the amusing cutscenes that come with.

In Re:CoM, they had the opportunity to basically KH2 up the card system and chain together Attack and Magic Cards for all kinds of crazy combos and customization with all the space and power of a console backing it up. That's what I meant. Chain of Memories worked because they needed to make something similar to Kingdom Hearts with the less powerful GBA and its control scheme and they found a creative way to tie it in with the entire game from the ground up and even its plot.

There were some people who wanted to play it on a console and that's what they gave them with as little actual change as possible just because it was a side dish with II Final Mix and we were unlucky enough to get it as scraps.

I didn't even get to the best parts, fam, my splitting headache prevented me from doing just that.

I should also mention that the anime OVA does something even more retarded, where Team Ogre travels slightly more back in time to defeat Endou at the regional league finals, but rather than destroying his chances early on they just enter as a legit team from Totally Ordinary High School, destroy the Korean LARPers (ensuring that everyone would be even more focused on winning and that (((Kageyama))) gets to make his escape even earlier) and then just proceed to win fairly until the finals, where Endou Kanon has had enough time to assemble half a team of future allies of Endou's who are just technically and physically stronger than Team Ogre. I don't know which continuity Team Ogre manages to fuck the worst.

...

Post your address so I can break your shit.

Came here to post this.

Doesn't that guy make videos about sex toys now? Not the ones you stick your dick into, the ones you stick up your ass.

What?
L-links?

Nah, you got it wrong. The guy you are looking for is sexbad (he also did a review on E.Y.E and also a pretentious one on Pathologic). This guy is mandalore.

That's actually kinda awesome.

ironically* :^)

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiJvtJLsUShQImlNiVRbByDpqS4VupVQT

SRW OGs has a pretty ridiculous plot, since it tries to tie the original stories of all the games into one series
>eventually a part of the aliens come to earth except that they are mostly humans who were abducted after a certain incident and one alien who turns out to be a clone from a higher up
oh and one of the good guys was part of the Shadow Mirror world except that he originally was from OTHER different world
oh and they saved two of the main characters before the first game and made a loli clone of one of them and vaguely say something about the origins of the balmar and the humans
And there are obviously character subplots and all of that but i just wanted to talk about the villains from the first two games since that is the most convoluted part

You need to read the Library archives and find the three hidden female metastreumonics and listen to their story. EYE is a very real organization, and its members were augmented with DNA by the first metastreumonic, who is the serial murderer. The murderer's DNA memories are resurfacing in EYE members and making them trip increasingly violent balls. The PC frees himself from the murderer's influence, but there are still 900+ EYE members exactly like him just waiting to fuck up the solar system. Which is the perfect setup for a sequel, but it will NEVER EVER happen.

bumperino so that I don't forget to finish the list

Especially now that they're moving into Alpha 3 and setting shit up to bring the Z shit in. I NEED POWAAAAAAAA

Agreed, also all the timeskips and shit was odd

I used to be someone who said KH was retarded and it's plot was a convoluted impossible to understand mess. Then, I played the games, and everything made perfect sense and was pretty simple and easy to understand. It's one of those things that seems more complicated than it actually is because you are going through other people's impressions, summaries and what-not that will ALWAYS be missing details and sometimes even have wrong information.

they try to make sense in a nonsensical setting

bump

Part of the problem. In most JRPGs that try to be "epic", there comes a point where your suspension of disbelief shatters and you go "yeah, well, this is just bullshit." The fact most (albeit not all) things that come out of Japan have dogshit writing that's rife with deus ex machinas and similar bullshit doesn't help either.

>except the tribal dude tells you "no, you little faggot. Use the power of your hips if you wanna save your waifu!"
>by using the power of your hips, you revive her from stone in a G rated sex scene

The sequel is not as complex but no less batshit.

calm down tough guy

The best part is there is still a universe where numidium is still rampaging and fighting the almderi. The Tribunal didn't actually beat him, just banished him iirc, since he is in effect a god.

The dwarves accidentally became the skin(armor) of numidium when they tried to ascend to godhood with kagrenacs tools. The only dwarf left is the one in morrowind.

its retarded and the only reason most of the "deep lore" exists is to make up for the fact that they cant even respect their old established lore. They make up obfuscated yoda quotes to try and play intelligent so they can rape the pre-established lore in any way they want.

to be fair, maybe a third or a half of the tes lore is interesting enough, but the other bits are just copy-pasta ancient irl civilizations (Nords are Not-Vikings and Sovngard is Not-Valhalla!!) or things thrown in to try and appear deep.

You have to play every game in release order to understand what's going on I think. I played CoM before Kingdom Hearts 2 and outside the intro cinematic which told you nothing, there is very little that explains what happened in CoM and they assumed you played that first. Namine and the Organisation, etc are literally just thrown right into KH2.

I've not played every KH game, so maybe it gets worse later on. That's just my experience of the franchise anyway.