Video Game Logic

[CJC]

One thing I've always waxed heavily on in games is the volatility of the dead, or thoroughly defeated. Being dead in games is like being a witch splashed with water: seconds later, there's nothing but a few puffs of steam. This makes sense purely from a game's standpoint since bodies add up, get taxing on the system, and generally are a little disturbing to all see laying around, but... if you were Mario, and you really were in the mushroom kingdom, would every flattened goomba's flesh start to rapidly evaporate in a matter of seconds?? Would there be tall wisps of steam everywhere you go from all the enemies you killed? Or are there just smeared corpses all over the place and some poor mushroom guy with a mop saying how much he hates his job?

Four possible explanations for Mario and one for Zelda games. As for others... well, I guess the player's weapons are actually a form of Zat'nik'tel. : P

Mario
1.) It's an early warning system
The rising smoke from the deceased troops warns Bowser to set up the traps in the next castle. I mean, who builds a castle with no floor?! That's definitely some sort of defense mode that gets activated on Mario's approach.

2.) The enemies are illusions/magically constructed
Goombas are actually mushroom kingdom residents that didn't have the good sense to turn themselves into blocks before Bowser cursed everybody (well, at least in the original). Perhaps their vanishing in a puff signals an end to the spell, and they wake up back in their homes back to normal. The Paper Mario series sort of contradicts this, but it's a thought.

3.) They're kicked into the foreground
When Mario dies he falls off the level. Where do all his extra bodies go? You know, the ones that died before the 1UpShroom cloned him? They're piled up under the screen, with all the goombas and koopa troopas he's been slaying the whole time. This theory actually gets MORE plausible when you consider the 3D titles. Have you ever noticed that EVERY area in the mushroom kingdom hovers over an abyss? That's where they put all of the bodies. (This option may have been inspired by a weird PS3 game called Catherine).

4.) They're teleported to the Underwhere
This is where you go when all your games be over. Super Paper Mario supports this, as the afterlife is a physical place that can be reached from Flipside.


Zelda
1.) GANNON-BANNED TO THE EVIL JAR
Enough said.



Something that's always bothered me about video games and particularly RPGs is the fact that the world is coming to an end, but all of the magic McGuffins you need to stop it are conveniently located within the same country or--if not--tucked tidily in the center of some ancient ruin. The magic nya-nya is never accidentally buried in somebody's backyard or dropped in the ocean or something.

[TheDarkOne]

Kid is actually a clone of Schala, if I remember correctly. That's another VGL scenario.

RESIDENT EVIL SPOILERS BELOW! READ AT OWN RISK!

Does anyone remember Resident Evil 2? Especially when you play the B game as Leon. Ada Wong clearly dies right in front of Leon's eyes (as opposed to his A game where she simply falls off the ledge). But, when fighting T-01, she appears and throws you a rocket launcher. How did she come back to life?

Not only that, but when the two of them meet again in Resident Evil 4, Leon never thinks to ask her what happened. He saw her die, yet here she is alive and well, and he doesn't even question it? Maybe there is some untold story about the two of them that takes place between RE2 and RE4 (and it's not RE3 because that game takes place just before the events of RE2 and focuses on Jill Valentine).

[mrz84]

As far as the Mario enemies thing and whatnot, I don't know of any in-game source up until now (I haven't played a lot of the newer Mario games except for the 1st Galaxy game, 3D Land, and New Super Mario Bros 2), but I can say that I know of one possible (non-canon/fanmade) explanation that not only kinda makes since, but is entertaining to say the least is this: http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/characters/reario/

I can't commit on RE2 as I never played it for more that a few minutes (I couldn't get used to the controls and died when I started the game the first time. sad, but true)

The Sonic games: Eggman/Robotnik thought it was a good idea to make machines that not only leave him mostly vulnerable to attack, but also are easily destroyed upon him taking a set amount of damage, but the machines themselves were never attacked. This is true for (almost) every boss fight he is in (among others)

[King Aquamentus]

On that note, Gradius. Several models of Big Core (and its cousins) all have a series of bars which act as weak shields protecting their inner core.



Other cores such as the Death series demonstrate that the Bacterion forces are not limited by this kind of easily-destroyed defense so... ...why do they still have craft which use it?

[TheDarkOne]

Going back for a moment to Chrono Trigger: when exploring Guardia Castle in 600 AD, I have noticed that going up the stairs on the left side of the throne room leads to the top of a tower where you'll find the King's bedroom. However, going up the stairs on the right side of the throne room leads to the top of a tower containing the Queen's bedroom. Why would the King and Queen have bedrooms that are not only separate, but on opposite sides of the castle?

[King Aquamentus]

This might have something to do with medieval norms and standards. Back in the day, I believe the King and Queen would usually only consumate to produce heirs (especially as they rarely had any real attraction to each other.) If the King really wanted some fine booty he could pretty much get it wherever he wanted. Aside from that, even a married couple sleeping together regularly may have been frowned upon back then. I'm not totally sure.

Alternatively, its possible that the room we see is not actually the Queen's. Marle just goes there because she knows it as her room. Multiple servants note that the queen is acting odd, after all.

[TheDarkOne]

Alternatively, its possible that the room we see is not actually the Queen's. Marle just goes there because she knows it as her room. Multiple servants note that the queen is acting odd, after all.

Someone does tell Crono that "The Queen is waiting for you in her room" so that indicates that it is in fact her room. But it is my understanding that in medieval times it was considering acceptable for married couples to sleep in the same bed. And the King and Queen of Guardia in 600 AD did clearly love one another.

There are probably way too many VGL scenarios in Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross to discuss them all here. That kind of thing could have its own thread.

So how about Final Fantasy in general? Ever notice that the towns you visit always have better equipment (weapons, armor, accessories) than the towns before it? And if an upcoming boss has a specific weakness, a weapon that can exploit that weakness is available to either find or purchase before you fight said boss. You might as well just have the boss hand you a weapon and say "this is the weapon that is most effective against me."

[King Aquamentus]

Final Fantasy brings me back to the volatility thing. You know for sure someone has died when their body blinks out of existence (and I'm not talking about in battles: even the early 2D games make it clear that an enemy fading away in a battle literally only indicates that they lost that fight. They could reappear on the overhead mode two seconds later, saying something like "damn you guys are good ok you beat me I'll let you through." I'm talking about when people die on that overhead mode.) However, the 2D games sometimes play this like their bodies really are mysteriously destroyed, right before their eyes. When a mortally wounded character first starts to blink, everyone in the room reacts with great shock as if they're seeing it happen before their eyes. Plus, you cannot recover any effects that were on their person, and sometimes the fact that they had something that would have been useful becomes a plot point in the fact that because they are dead, it cannot be recovered.

Counterpoint: Locke keeps a corpse in his basement. Then again I don't think anyone mysteriously dissolves when they die in FF6.

[rock_nog]

Doom - or really a lot of early FPS games - the levels just tended to be a bunch of random mazes, done up to look like they're actual places. Doom in particular, though, because it was advanced enough that the level designers could add quite a bit of detail. In earlier games like Wolfenstein, yeah, you could only design levels on a square grid, which severely limited the kinds of levels you could design. However, Doom allowed for the possibility of archways, stairs, windows, walls jutting at any angle, skylights, etc. However, when you get down to it, while the levels look nice, they're just mazes, even though they're supposed to be representations of real-world places. Why does a base on Mars have all these random corridors, walls at random angles, passageways that lead nowhere, etc.? Doom 2 really takes the cake, because the second act takes places in a city, and while it certainly has a city-type aesthetic to it, it doesn't look like a real city - buildings are haphazardly strewn about at random and make no sense, there are no streets, there are all kinds of randomly placed stairs and lifts, the interiors are mazes... It's like, if this is how people were designing cities, they were doomed well before any demon invasion ever took place. Again, I know part of that was the limitations of the engine, I just find it funny, especially because when I design my own Doom levels, I always take into account, "Okay, this is a real place, I have a certain layout in mind for gameplay purposes, but how do I logically make the level fit the layout so that it looks like this could be a real place?" So for instance, I'll add fake doors to indicate there are other places you could go to if they weren't locked, I build it so that if you look out the window, you can see other parts of the base that aren't part of the map, if I have a cargo area, I make the doors big enough that the crates inside could actually fit there, etc.

[ShadowTiger]

To be honest, I'm still too hung-up on wall turkeys to be able to form anything resembling a coherent thought related to the topic.

Wall turkeys. Honestly.


EDIT: Oh, and this. There's got to be some explanation for that.