# Features in video games that you've never understood **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [November 5, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538 "2010-11-05T02:22:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/41 "2010-11-05T21:00:13Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > I’ve never understood the tiny bits of pointless interactivity that sometimes gets sprinkled between cutscenes. Example: in **Dead Rising** , there’s a part where you and an NPC evade some zombies by ducking into another section of the mall. There’s a non-interactive cutscene that shows your escape, followed by the NPC raising the gate on the new mall section. > > Then, for no apparent reason, you are given control of your character again. At this point, there is literally nothing to do other than proceed under the newly-opened gate. And going into that gate causes the game to pause and go to loadscreen while it loads the new mall section. Every time I encounter something like this, I wonder: why is it necessary to have me do the pointless busywork of walking my character 10 feet? Just make “going through the gate” part of the cutscene and load the new section! The game should not require any input from me about this! Probably because they don’t want you getting up and getting a drink while the cut scene’s rambling on only to get back and find their dude dead. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/42 "2010-11-06T01:24:18Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > This I totally understand, especially in games with a limited inventory system - do you REALLY want each enemy to drop five pieces of equipment that are usually inferior to the stuff you already have so that you either (1) have to leave their stuff lying around or (2) have to run back to town to sell stuff every five minutes because your inventory’s full again? Yes. Yes I do. One of the reasons I love the _Fallout_ games so much. Look, here’s the thing: Let’s say you’ve got a knife as a weapon. You can see an Orc Guard up ahead who has a sword. You manage to sneak up behind in, score a sneak critical, and down he goes. But where’s his sword? The one he was holding a second ago? It’s vanished. Along with any useful keys or other items that may have been on his person (Orcson?). I know why they do it (to stop people fluke-defeating overpowered enemies for their level and acquiring the +5 Sword Of Smiting at Level 3, for example), but even in non-fantasy games it bothers me. Apparently Nazi soldiers don’t have ammunition in their rifles and none of those one-size-fits-all space crew uniforms fit your character, it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/43 "2010-11-06T03:01:57Z")
Or on the other side of the coin: In _Baldur’s Gate_, at one point you meet Drizz’t. He is, of course, wielding his two famous scimitars and wearing some really nice chainmail, all three better than any other item you can get in the game. If you’re staying on the straight and narrow, you help him fight off some monsters, exchange some dialog, and go on your way, but the game designers anticipated that you might want to try to take his loot. You can (with extreme difficulty) kill him and take all three, or you can (with a lot of luck) pickpocket him and steal the swords. But if you steal the swords and then try to fight him to get the armor, too, he’ll still attack with damage appropriate to the swords, even though you just stole them. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/44 "2010-11-06T03:12:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Or on the other side of the coin: In _Baldur’s Gate_, at one point you meet Drizz’t. He is, of course, wielding his two famous scimitars and wearing some really nice chainmail, all three better than any other item you can get in the game. [snip] Heh. This was mostly because they never expected anyone to actually kill the bastard (he is ludicrously tough). In fact, I believe that all characters in the game have their weaponry coded onto them. You can’t take their real weapon before fighting them. It’s a limitation of the relatively primitive code base. It could have been done without, but I doubt they realized anyone would be killing Drizz’t. And to be fair, you have to _really_ twist things to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/45 "2010-11-06T16:44:57Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Probably because they don’t want you getting up and getting a drink while the cut scene’s rambling on only to get back and find their dude dead. Yeah, that’s exactly it. They want to put a pause in there in case you want to save or get up and do something. They want the player to be the one to say ‘load the next area now’. ---
**Author:** ![Cubsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Cubsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cubsfan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/46 "2010-11-06T17:29:15Z")
The Dick Stick in Road Rash 3. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/47 "2010-11-06T17:48:52Z")
> [@](#): > > Yeah, that’s exactly it. They want to put a pause in there in case you want to save or get up and do something. They want the player to be the one to say ‘load the next area now’. The proper way to do that would be to either auto-pause as soon as a new area is loaded, or to make sure that there isn’t anything dangerous too close to the entrance area (where “too close” is defined as “close enough that a wandering party member could accidentally wake something up”). > [@](#): > > Heh. This was mostly because they never expected anyone to actually kill the bastard (he is ludicrously tough). In fact, I believe that all characters in the game have their weaponry coded onto them. You can’t take their real weapon before fighting them. It’s a limitation of the relatively primitive code base. It could have been done without, but I doubt they realized anyone would be killing Drizz’t. And to be fair, you have to really twist things to do it. Except that they obviously did anticipate that someone might kill him, because he has loot that can only be gained by killing him. If he were truly unkillable, then they wouldn’t have bothered giving him that chainmail. I will grant, though, that it _is_ impossible to kill him in a fair fight: You have to resort to extremely cheesy tactics that wouldn’t stand a chance of working if the game AI were better implemented. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/48 "2010-11-06T19:58:16Z")
I have to admit that in Fallout and FO2, if I was on speaking terms with people I planned to kill later on, I’d pick their pockets clean first. For one thing, ammo that they don’t have is ammo that isn’t going to inflict damage on me and my followers, and for another, stimpacks that they don’t have is stimpacks they can’t use when I’ve inflicted damage on them. AND I can use those stimpacks instead. ---
**Author:** ![fuzzypickles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@fuzzypickles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzypickles)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/49 "2010-11-06T22:25:03Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Doors you can’t ever open. The Silent Hill games are full of them. Fallout 3 is overloaded with whole buildings it is impossible to enter. I was surprised that FO3 wasn’t fully interactive like the Elder Scrolls games, since they’re made by the same company. The Vampire: Masquerade games were like that, too. _The Witcher_ has a swamp area with small lakes you can’t swim across, because they’re blocked by vegetation. Problem is, if you’re running the game on an old computer and need to use the lowest video settings, the blocking vegetation doesn’t render AT ALL…so you spend several hours trying to figure out WTF can’t I swim across this tiny little pond, until you finally figure out the boundaries are only visible on the minimap. ---
**Author:** ![Hoopy\_Frood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoopy_frood/32/8452_2.png) [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2010, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/50 "2010-11-06T23:55:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I will grant, though, that it _is_ impossible to kill him in a fair fight: You have to resort to extremely cheesy tactics that wouldn’t stand a chance of working if the game AI were better implemented. Heh, heh. Yeah. To start with, killing him hurts your reputation, but big deal, because positive reputation is easy to get back. And he’s actually pretty easy to kill with cheeseball tactics. What I found worked best was getting the female cleric who was turned to stone (I think you pick up a stone-to-flesh scroll somewhere, it’s been many years since I played it) recruited in your party. Then have her take nothing but summon undead spells for the appropriate spell slot. Then have her cast it near Drizz’t and arrange the skeletons so that they completely surround him multiple levels deep. Then have your entire party start launching their best ranged spells/attacks against him. He’ll most likely wipe out most if not all the skeletons, but he’ll never get to your party before you drop him. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/51 "2010-11-07T00:58:39Z")
I did something like that, too, except that I never even got close enough to use my party’s own attacks. I just stayed outside of his radius of awareness and cast the skeletons. He never stopped to think, hey, these skeletons are appearing out of nowhere, there’s probably someone nearby summoning them, I should find who it is and kill them. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn1767](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shawn1767](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shawn1767)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/52 "2010-11-07T03:07:09Z")
Lens flare. If the whole concept of a game is to be immersive and make it seem as if you are really in the situation/scene, then why do some games have lens flare? I never encounter lens flare as I walk about my day, unless I am looking through a manufactured lens! You have to purposely put that into a game and, to me, it makes it less realistic. I guess they do it because it looks cinematic, but then I’m playing a game where I am supposed to really be carrying out the actions, NOT pretending I’m in a movie carrying out the actions. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/53 "2010-11-07T05:20:13Z")
What’s worst is when they put in artificial lens flare that couldn’t even be produced by a real lens. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/54 "2010-11-07T06:21:18Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > Lens flare. > > If the whole concept of a game is to be immersive and make it seem as if you are really in the situation/scene, then why do some games have lens flare? I never encounter lens flare as I walk about my day, unless I am looking through a manufactured lens! You have to purposely put that into a game and, to me, it makes it less realistic. I guess they do it because it looks cinematic, but then I’m playing a game where I am supposed to really be carrying out the actions, NOT pretending I’m in a movie carrying out the actions. Thing is, there’s realistic and then there’s cinematic realistic. We’re more used to cinematic tropes than we think. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/55 "2010-11-07T07:28:06Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Thing is, there’s realistic and then there’s cinematic realistic. We’re more used to cinematic tropes than we think. I don’t mind lens flares all that much since they can add atmosphere, but the raindrops on the camera effect shoves me straight out of the game or movie and back into the real world again. Thankfully that fad seems to have mostly disappeared, however. ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/56 "2010-11-07T15:56:51Z")
> [@fuzzypickles](#): > > I was surprised that FO3 wasn’t fully interactive like the Elder Scrolls games, since they’re made by the same company. The Vampire: Masquerade games were like that, too. > > _The Witcher_ has a swamp area with small lakes you can’t swim across, because they’re blocked by vegetation. Problem is, if you’re running the game on an old computer and need to use the lowest video settings, the blocking vegetation doesn’t render AT ALL…so you spend several hours trying to figure out WTF can’t I swim across this tiny little pond, until you finally figure out the boundaries are only visible on the minimap. Gah! There’s a quest in World of Warcraft like that. You’re supposed to use a harpoon launcher to destroy some buildings. The problem is, the buildings are across a lake and if you don’t have your draw distance far enough, _all you see is mist forever_. I spent half an hour hitting everything I could see around me before I had to look it up. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn1767](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shawn1767](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shawn1767)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/57 "2010-11-07T16:36:41Z")
Regarding lens flare, lets say we move toward a more “Matrix”-like virtual reality, seriously, are programmers going to program in random lens flares as you are walking around? I am not that accustomed to cinematic tropes. I want immersive virtual reality, not constant cues that I am in a game. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/58 "2010-11-07T18:08:06Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > Regarding lens flare, lets say we move toward a more “Matrix”-like virtual reality, seriously, are programmers going to program in random lens flares as you are walking around? I am not that accustomed to cinematic tropes. I want immersive virtual reality, not constant cues that I am in a game. The point I was vaguely waving my hand at was that we expect to see certain different cues on a flat screen or photo than we do in reality. I suppose not everyone does, but the majority do, enough that if you try to make something on a flat screen look and feel ‘real’, it actually feels off and the cinematographer gets complaints. We see lens flares in live action recordings, so we became conditioned to see them on a screen, so a game actually needs to add them (judiciously) to gain authenticity. See [The Coconut Effect](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect) and [Reality is Unrealistic](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic). When entertainment becomes more Matrix-like, I would guess that these elements will fade away, or at least the ones that are needed because we expect them on a flat screen. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/59 "2010-11-07T18:48:36Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > This I totally understand, especially in games with a limited inventory system - do you REALLY want each enemy to drop five pieces of equipment that are usually inferior to the stuff you already have so that you either (1) have to leave their stuff lying around or (2) have to run back to town to sell stuff every five minutes because your inventory’s full again? > > Puts me in mind of the piles of fifty small iron caps you end up with in Nethack. > > ETA: Also, I think cooking is a sport and therefore cooking threads ought to be moved to the Game Room where I’d actually read them. > [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Yes. Yes I do. One of the reasons I love the _Fallout_ games so much. Well, fine. But I find that kind of gameplay really irritating and am glad that most games abstract away from it. (Nethack being an exception on both points because the irritation is part of the Fun (tm Dwarf Fortress).) If I were building a traditional-ish RPG I’d probably go with you-can-loot-everything, an infinite inventory, and some one-click method of selling off all of your stuff at The General Fantasy Store, but that’s got its own problems with realism. The alternative, I guess, is to make every fight a boss fight so you don’t have an occasion to carry around 30 mooks’ worth of full body armor et cetera. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/60 "2010-11-07T20:35:26Z")
I think the proper solution to the loot problem is to let the players loot everything, and just make sure that the equipment that mooks carry is worth much less than the important equipment, so most people won’t find it worthwhile. But yeah, when you’re just starting out, or after you’ve just been through the Obligatory Lose All your Equipment cutscene, it’d make sense to steal a guard’s weapons and uniform if you manage to kill one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538.md?page=4)