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What's your 'unicorn?'


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It happens to everyone at some point.  The moment when your suspension of disbelief is shattered, and you put down the book, turn off the movie, close the game, whatever.  It could be anything at all, from a certain phrase out of place, to animations that don't match the situation, to the mention of unicorn's blood (hence the subject, bonus internets for you if you get the reference.)

 

I can go to great lengths to suspend my disbelief, especially in a video game.  I'll perform tasks for talking statues, I'll hang out with talking lizards that walk on two legs.  I'll forget that I'm not the hero of this story, only the true hero's errand girl.  I'll destroy countless armies singlehandedly without breaking a sweat, or a heel on my combat stilettos, or a nail, or mussing my perfectly sculpted hair...

 

...but gods protect me from moving a fork one pixel, or it's pay with your blood time.

 

So, what's your unicorn?  What breaks the game for you?  Anything at all goes ITT.

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I generally have a rough time losing that, but I can recall recent ones.

 

Movie: Legion. If you've seen it I only have to mention baby and car crash for you to understand. If it wasn't for the fact I was brought along by friends, I would've walked out that sodding theater.

 

Book: Leviathan. It was a polished turd I had to read my senior year of high school, my memories of it are tainted with men shooting dragons with enough M203 grenades to blow up Cuba. Thank God, for Game of Thrones or that year in reading would've sucked.

 

Game: WoW: Cata. Its a constant contradiction in story tone, largely depending on whether or not you flow your quests right. I'm all for comic relief, but sometimes too many pop culture references, Jersey Shore Goblins, and technology nonsense create a story that only the most die-hard fans will take seriously.

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I work hard in Oblivion to maintain my suspension of disbelief. Notably with my mod set up. And it's not the magic that really throws me, or the funny races. For Lovers, it was Joburg, RaperS and LandE, and I say that as someone who sees value in all three of those mods. But I had to pull LandE out of my install, and take the settings on Joburg and RaperS down to the lowest level possible. I know they're meant to be the "reality" of Hentai Anime, but the nonsensical situations they created really killed my ability to believe in my character's story. I can live with NPCs who do something bone stupid, or something that only makes sense because this is a story, but I hate characters taking actions that make no sense at all.

 

In books, anything meant to teach a Political or Moral Lesson tends to kill it for me. The third and fourth Phase/Proton books by Anthony, for instance. I was actually OK with economic systems that made no sense, and even with cosmology that was just dumb. But people letting their kids be enslaved because they can't break a promise? No. Just no.

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For me, I guess it was the farms and the farmers.  Solid, abusable, money making farms using alchemy.  Literally using alchemy to make gold, with grapes and apples.  You can buy a house by just going into a few farms.  And the caretakers? Couldn't care less about some random person picking up their hard grown crops or assaulting them, heck, how do they even earn money?  If I wanted to make a vegetable salad I would just go to the nearest farm and pick what I needed, screw the grocery store.  Some farms being in the middle of nowhere surrounded by bears or monsters.

 

 

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Guest Loogie

I'll pretty much go along with anything in Oblivion because with all the Lovers PK stuff, it's all over the top anyway.  In Fallout 3, I was impressed with the entire growing up and vault escape sequence, really felt I was part of the world... then all my immersion shattered once I got into Megaton and talked to Lucas Simms.  There was an immediate drop in the quality of writing and the logic of the place didn't add up, shattering the illusion.

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Most games in general hit a point where it's all too clear there's a 'unicorn' in my face; but some are worse than others.  The most blatent one I can recall is Devil May Cry.  I loved that game all the way through.  Amazing, really.  Then wham, a massive 12ft unicorn of an ending, with some rediculous end cutscene of using some old prototype plane to fly away?  Yeah...

 

A lot of online games quickly throw unicorns my way; but that's mostly due to the other people who play them.  I try to alway find the RP servers to limit that.  Some games it works fine (CoH/CoV was a blast for years) some work for awhile or in spurts (WoW, STO) and others just never get going (Matrix, SWG).

 

Legend of Dragoon, a rather old RPG for Playstation is still an all time favorite.  Others may find unicorns, but I find a lovely world and I can fall back into anytime.

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I'm not sure. I have a poor memory with trying to recall such things until the game is brought up then I remember. The only one that stands out was Fallout 3. Within 3 hours of first playing the game I found the father completely by accident skipping a sizeable portion of the plot, before I hardly even done any other quest (not even the Megaton one). Then the radio is blathering things that never happened and I'm meeting people who obviously knew me somehow.

 

I've still haven't gotten anywhere story-wise in that game. Couldn't do it. In part because of that and I couldn't get engaged with the plot that much. The side quests were neat, but even with a mod to reduce XP by a large factor (I think it was 10), my power level was ballooning much too quickly for the amount explored in relation to the whole area.

 

 

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Oh, Fallout I really liked, until I found out any kid NPC could take over the world if he wanted.  First time some kid came up to me for some help about his dad and ants, really liked that bit about the game, "can't let him get hit, nonononono, bad end quest", then you see a grenade, OH SHI-, you get both of your legs crippled and your arm, thinking about the kid, and the kid is right next to you standing up, perfectly fine.  I mean, I can understand why the would make it like that, but I don't think kids should be in a Fallout like game.  I mean, they are serious bussiness, on New Vegas a kid is holding a trigger for a satelite weapon.  Think New Vegas should have that additional ending "So the hero fixed the sun energy panels... and then a kid accidentally activated it and blew New Vegas skyhigh, the end.

 

Then again, I kinda like when games sometimes go outta their way.  And sometimes I try to fix it, the farmer thing, got a mod to make picking up their crops illegal (you get a bounty if someone is watching you).  And sometimes I DON'T FIX IT, seriously, one thing is having immortal kids on Fallout, but having a mod where you can kill 'em and dismember them like any other enemy is just too much.

 

But what about Fallout New Vegas Holy hand grenade?  http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Holy_Frag_Grenade

Actually found these by accident the first time, and also died the first time I used them.

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Guest Loogie

So you're talking about Fallout 3, not Fallout - Fallout and Fallout 2 didn't pull punches and children could be killed.  The big deterrent to that was child killing was the only bad thing everyone in the wasteland agreed was a crime, so if you did it you'd have bounty hunters several levels higher than you attacking you randomly throughout the rest of the game.

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Fallout 3, little lamplight.

 

No Bethesda, I will not bow down to children. I will not listen to them in order for my power-armored ass to get through their cardboard gate.

 

Another game, I didn't outright leave, but my suspension of disbelief(what little there was) in Mass Effect 2 was absolutely shattered at the end. Spoilers follow.

 

"human reaper"

 

It made be break out in laughter. And now I can't take the Mass Effect series seriously anymore.

 

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Fallout 3' date=' little lamplight.

 

No Bethesda, I will not bow down to children. I will not listen to them in order for my power-armored ass to get through their cardboard gate.

 

Another game, I didn't outright leave, but my suspension of disbelief(what little there was) in Mass Effect 2 was absolutely shattered at the end. Spoilers follow.

 

\"human reaper\"

 

Really? The whole ancient outer space eldritch horror thing you buy, but when it turns out they basically rape a species to reproduce you find that too much? I thought that was a perfect and horrifying explanation for why the Reapers do what they do.

 

It made be break out in laughter. And now I can't take the Mass Effect series seriously anymore.

[/quote']

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Really? The whole ancient outer space eldritch horror thing you buy, but when it turns out they basically rape a species to reproduce you find that too much? I thought that was a perfect and horrifying explanation for why the Reapers do what they do.

 

It was a "straw that broke the camel's back" sort of thing.

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Generally it's bad story.  I can suspend my disbelief of a lot of stuff.  Hell I read stuff by Neal Stephenson for fun, so that's kinda pressing the real world envelope as it is(speculative fiction).  But a bad story will break a game, or book or anything faster than you can blink.  Probably the finest example of a bad story shattering my gaming experience would be Dragon Age 2.  Ugh.  The writers should have been outright dipped in shit for that one, preferably some fine cattle shit from Calgary.  ;D

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Heh.

 

@Lovers mods not being realistic - When the Duchess of Mania strolls into the Market District ripped out of her gourd on felldew and greenmote, there ought to be orgies in the street.  Bliss is used to being a haven of debauchery, the Imperial City not so much.  (The Demented side of that is darker and uglier, more rape, less joy.) Inhibitions (read: settings turned way down or off) should be firmly in place pre-SI, though... there's a crisis after all, everyone's already on edge.  My opinion, anyway.

 

@MMOs in general - I thought DDO would be a good one to RP, alas I could not be more mistaken.  Flavor-of-the-month builds and powergaming completionists made it short lived for me.  Also, MxO after the cheat codes arc... no, just no.  I miss MxO, though.

 

@Fallout 3 - "No, Lyons, I'm very evil (or so I'm told CONSTANTLY over the radio by some coward in his ivory tower) and not at all interested in joining your group.  What, you're DRAFTING me?  Enjoy your smoking crater, I'll be in Point Lookout."  Also, aliens.

 

@Neal Stephenson - I thought the main complaint with him was his density.  I'll admit it took me a year to slog through the Baroque Cycle.

 

@DA2 - I've read enough bad press to go ahead and ignore that this game ever happened.  AFAIK my Warden is still trying to make little Grey Warden babies with her husband, the King.  With occasional threesomes with a certain not-so-innocent Orlesian bard.

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So you're talking about Fallout 3' date=' not Fallout - Fallout and Fallout 2 didn't pull punches and children could be killed.  The big deterrent to that was child killing was the only bad thing everyone in the wasteland agreed was a crime, so if you did it you'd have bounty hunters several levels higher than you attacking you randomly throughout the rest of the game.

[/quote']

 

Sorry about that, yeah, Fallout 3.  I did try to play the first fallout game, but it kept saying my hard drive only had 4GB of space and it was full...

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The first thing that comes to mind for me was Oblivion's Shadow Over Hackdirt quest. When I first went there, I was thinking that it was going to either be an investigation, an epic battle, or a mad dash to run once you found the argonian, but no it just points you to a door 10 feet from her cage. Not really much of a rescue.

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NPCs who have no idea what you're doing, who you are, or how you've interacted with them in the immediate past. Every CRPG is guilty of that on some level, but the good games and mods try to give characters some memory of and reaction to what your characters do. I play along by not intentionally trashing my immersion by, say, wandering around at all times without pants or raping each NPC before beginning a conversation. Still, even the best CRPG quest have moments when you're forcefully reminded that the NPC you're dealing with is a pixel.

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