cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/46035991
Good Day good people.
I am looking for some more examples of Video Games where there is a plot, but for one reason or another, the result of the plot is that nothing happens. My criteria for this is fairly lax on the “how” but in some sense, by some definition by the end of the game, absolutely nothing has happened. I’m hoping some of you fine people may be able to identify some instances of such a thing.
Examples (I've chosen to spoiler tag everything as just being listed gives away certain plot elements. All examples given here are niche titles from over 15 years ago).:
- Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (specifically the Japanese release): Huge inter-corporate conflict with several different factions and paths you can follow. One you go through all the different endings, the game reveals that it’s just a simulation made by one guy to make sure no matter what happens in an upcoming conflict; your character, an AI, will kill the dude who cucked him.
- Persona 2: Innocent Sin: You spend the whole game fighting Nyarlathotep to prevent him and the Nazis from destroying the world. At the end of the game, you fail and choose to abort the timeline and erase everyone else’s memories, leaving the main character stranded in the doomed timeline.
- Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter: This is the most boring way for this to play out IMO as it’s just a straight coma twist
So please. Let me know any and all games you can think of where the end result of the plot is that nothing happens. The more ridiculous, the better!
(Sorry, for repost. I didn’t know about the crosspost feature)
I guess the assassin’s creed games mostly fit your criteria. The plot largely takes place in the past so has already happened and is effectively fixed. The current day plot moves at a glacial pace for most of the first 3 games but does have some development gradually to something bigger.
Can’t really speak for the meta/ modern day plot of the later games as I stopped playing them.
There is at least 1 metal gear game where the premise is it’s a training simulation. I don’t remember the title, I think it’s a spin off of MGS2.
The Witness just starts right back off at the beginning unless you figure out the secret ending.
Returnal does this with several of its “endings”, but I haven’t been spoiled on all endings so I can’t say if it strictly fits.
One of Bastion’s two endings is a global reset.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist plays with this in some interesting ways.
Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 both have maintain the status quo endings.
Well, technically (old game with recent remake):
Spoiler
Link’s Awakening
Everything happens in a dream, and when you finish, the MC wakes up. I’m sure there are plenty of others with that format.
But I think that’s a copout, so here are a few where either the world resets or plot progression is basically “good job, do it again”:
Spoiler
- Slay the Spire - yeah, there’s a separate ending if get to Act 4, but no real closure; many roguelikes/deck builders count here
- Minecraft - you slay the end dragon, but that doesn’t really change anything
I would say Dwarf Fortress, but when you replay in a world, the world’s stats remain.
And the cop-outs:
- most city builders (and tycoon games, etc) - cities generally don’t interact and there’s no end goal
- “board” games - Civ, EU4, etc, there’s no plot beyond what you create as you go
- games like Smash Brothers, Tetris, etc
- Mount and Blade and other sandbox-y games
- many puzzle games
spoiler
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (fantastic visual novel with an insanely complex story until you find out…)
The game’s time-traveling events, all the locations you can go to, and the biomechanical enemy kaiju and your giant sentinel mecha fighting them don’t exist; all the high-school staff and students have simulated bodies in a virtual world and are actually continually, rapidly rebuilt DNA goop in a cryoship whose computer got infected by a virus that involves an invasion of Japan by colossal, unmanned Martian terraforming machines-gone-rogue from a fictional, in-game manga, whose victories against the kids keep causing the computer to go haywire and resetting the simulation, repeatedly melting down the protagonists’ half-formed bodies and restarting their bodybuilding cycle hundreds of times—until the start of the game, which is when you together finally break the loop in this last iteration, land on the new planet, and restart humanity post-Earth (which has been environmentally annihilated by ourselves, obviously).
Talk about a run-on sentence! And I don’t know if “bodybuilding” is normally used in this literal way, lol.
Shelter & Shelter 2
You play as a wild lynx, and go through the whole life cycle, ending with having kittens and eventually dying.
Then you play as one of your kittens, and the cycle continues.
Bioshock Infinite
Nothing happens anywhere in that game. It’s a walking simulator without the fun parts.
Hah! Did I ever tell about the time I played Bioshock Infinite on my Xbox 360 in Chinese? Talk about getting nowhere. I had to gather stuff from cut scenes, something something something a woman’s finger was cut.
Firewatch has some interesting twists, but the ending left fans wanting more
