Some incredible situations in single player games

(electronic jingling)

– [Falcon] There’s a lot of stuff

in single player games
that we completely rely on.

It’s never different in any games.

It always works the same way you expect

and then there’s stuff that
just is nothing like that.

That’s what I wanna talk about.

Hi folks, it’s Falcon,

and today I’m Gameranx,

10 things single player
gamers never trust.

Starting off with number
10, it’s auto saves.

Yeah.

Can you really trust auto saves?

I don’t know about you,

but it doesn’t really matter

how many times the
little icon spins around.

I do not trust it.

If I think I’m gonna die

or I wanna quit the game,

I’m gonna save it.

I’m gonna go into options.

I’m gonna hit manual save

and sometimes I’m gonna
do it more than once.

Did that first time count?

I don’t know.

Did I actually save it or not?

Only one way to be sure, do it again.

I’m exaggerating a little,

but we’ve all been in situations

where auto saves have let us down.

Like sometimes you get loaded

an hour or two back

and have to redo a ton of
crap that you already finished

and it maybe wasn’t even hard,

it’s just a lot of stuff.

Or maybe it was hard, I don’t know.

And then sometimes an auto save

loads you into an unwinnable situation.

I had this happen to me

the first time I played
A Plague Tale, Innocence.

The first time the rats were regrouping,

I moved backwards

and it auto saved it

and it kept loading me into a place

where I was just getting
eaten by rats automatically.

That’s probably the worst example of that

I can remember in recent memory.

Fortunately, I mean I only lost

maybe a half-hour of progress.

Sometimes auto save
just straight up fails,

like the saved file gets corrupted

and you have to start
the whole thing again.

That hasn’t happened
to me in quite a while

but it has happened to me.

I wanna say the last time
that actually happened

to me was in the Xbox 360 early days,

when I was just waiting
for the thing to red ring.

That eventually also happened.

Unrelated.

And just to be clear,

there’s plenty of times

where auto saves gonna work just fine,

but I consider the auto
save the backup option.

First thing I do

when I get into a game

is figure out how to save myself.

And you better believe I’m
doing it in every game.

Even games where it’s
ultimately pointless.

I just don’t trust an auto save alone.

I’ve been burned too many times.

And number nine is the golden path.

This one’s for all you digital hoarders

and achievement hunters out there.

Most games try to make
progression really obvious

but anyone who’s played a game

with some kind of optional paths,

you know what I mean?

You know you can’t trust a game

when it comes to this stuff.

There’s a reason so many of us waffle back

and forth when we come to a
fork in the road in the game.

‘Cause you just don’t know which way leads

to some optional treasure

and which way is the path to progression.

If you’re the type of person

who really likes to clear
out an area before moving on,

it’s probably the most annoying thing

about playing games, period.

All you wanna do is get all the treasures

and collectibles in an area,

but you go through a passage

that looks like it’s
an optional direction,

but it’s actually the main golden path.

Like golden meaning the real one, I guess.

So you turn around and head back,

ooh, guess you can’t,

there was a cave in or something

and now you can’t go back.

I just often want to explore,

but a lot of games turn this stuff

into a Russian roulette situation.

One wrong turn in, bam, you can’t go back.

Usually with these games,

you can eventually return

and get the stuff you missed

but most of the time
you’ve forgotten about it

or don’t eat it anymore.

So if you do,

you gotta clear out the whole area again

and that is seriously annoying.

Unless a game literally
draws a line on the ground

and is like, “This is
the story direction.”

Once you go this way,

you’re stuck this way.

Unless it does that,

you’re not able to really
trust this type of a branch.

And number eight, a single treasure chest

in an otherwise empty room.

Everybody’s like, “Oh yeah.”

You know what I’m talking about here.

You’re walking around
minding your own business,

you entered a strangely large room

and ho look at that.

A treasure test right in the middle.

Don’t mind if I do.

Oh no.

Oh look at that.

There was a big one-eyed spider

or some crap on on the
ceiling waiting to pounce.

That treasure chest was bait.

How could I have known?

Or like a bunch of little
enemies come running in

and swarm me

or hey, the chest itself was alive,

it was just waiting for prey.

Whatever it is, you saw it coming

’cause nobody trusts the big empty room

in a single player game.

The whole thing gives itself away.

Why would there be that
much space in there?

It’s so a big enemy can drop on top of you

or so you can have a
bunch of room to maneuver.

Honestly, any overly spacious room

is immediately suspicious

but it’s doubly so when
there’s some treasure in it.

(loud crashing)

The Dark Souls games love this trick.

But there’s a ton of other games

that pull this same thing on you.

Gamers are pretty savvy to
this at this point though.

But even when you see it coming

and you try to prepare,

the game can get you pretty unaware.

If only because you’re not
ready for the type of ambush

the game is planning to throw at you.

Sometimes even when you
know something’s coming

it can still mess with your nerves

and that anticipation can even

cause you to make mistakes

when it does happen.

They’re the worst kind of traps

because you see them
coming from a mile away

and they still get you.

Like if I were making a game,

I would just start putting big rooms

with treasure chest that
are entirely legitimate

without a trap in them,

just to mess with the player.

And then after like five or six of them,

where it seems like the boss
thing isn’t gonna happen,

make it happen, that’d be great.

Maybe not for the player.

I’ll probably get pretty angry at myself.

I get why they do it.

It sounds like it’s fun, actually.

And number seven is dead
bodies in a horror game.

If you’ve played one horror game

at least relative to this,

you’ve played them all.

You know how it goes,

there’s room with some dead bodies in it

but it’s otherwise empty.

Guess it’s safe.

Better not expect the dead bodies

to actually be zombies or you know,

oh look at that.

Oh the dead body woke up

and he’s chomping on me.

I didn’t want this to happen at all.

Yeah, this is why everybody
just shoots corpses in games.

And it’s also why the dead space stomp

is so satisfying,

’cause you know they’re gonna stay down.

Like sometimes you do find a body that’s

actually literally dead,

but most of the time,

for whatever reason,

seems like you go in a room,

there’s some dead bodies,

they have something to them.

It can be worse too.

Like some games make it

so that shooting the dead doesn’t work,

they don’t react,

but when you come close

they still pop up

and try to nibble on you.

That’s the worst because
you know it’s coming.

You know that the game

is gonna throw the jump scare at you

and you really just don’t
want to deal with it,

but you have to.

It’s one of the oldest tricks
in the horror game book.

And number six is dialogue options.

You know the drill,

you hover over a dialogue option,

think is gonna make your
character say one thing

and then the thing that
comes out of their mouth

is completely different.

And don’t tell me you don’t
remember this happening

in Mass Effect.

You choose an option,

sounds like it’s gonna
diffuse the situation.

And then Shepherd’s like, “Ah, I hate you.

Remember that flaming bag of dog crap

on your doorstep last week?

That was me.

Ha ha.”

That was always, in my opinion,

the weirdest mission in Mass Effect,

the flaming bag of dog crap one.

Another pretty good example is LA Noir,

where you picked the doubt option

and instead of going
like, “Hmm, I don’t know.”

Cole is like, “You’re a liar

and I left a flaming bag of dog crap

on your doorstop last week.”

Yeah the only way you can avoid
this sort of thing in games

is when you know that every
single time you pick something,

it’s exactly what you’re gonna say,

like Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

There’s sometimes a little
confusion about tone,

but it’s way better than
the one word descriptions

you get in certain role playing games.

This is actually why people

tend to take the most boring
dialogue options in games,

’cause they’re afraid that your guy

is gonna have a mental breakdown

and say something he regrets.

At the end of the day,

it doesn’t really matter that much.

But if you’re the type of person

who really likes to role play

and make a character your own,

this is really annoying.

I just flat out don’t trust
vague dialogue choices.

For whatever reason,

it seems like they put people

who don’t understand social cues

in charge of making those things.

And number five, the “Start” of a level.

All right, this one’s
a little more specific

but if you’re playing a platform a game,

like nine times out of 10,

you’re missing a secret in a stage,

specifically because it’s
behind the start of the level.

You know the drill level starts,

but instead of going right

you do the daring thing and go left.

The screen scrolls a little bit.

There’s an extra life or
perhaps an energy tank

or perhaps a collectible

that you couldn’t have gotten
anywhere else in the game,

unless you had the incredible foresight

to go left.

Mission the starts just can’t be trusted

because a lot of the time

you’re not at the literal
beginning of the stage

there’s actually more just off screen.

From a logical standpoint it
makes no sense whatsoever,

but as a game mechanic,
sure, I guess it’s fine.

It kind of played out
as a hiding spot, right?

Once you realize that game developers

love to hide stuff back there,

you start to see it everywhere.

It’s not like a trick games
will pull in every level,

but you better believe that
when I play a game with levels,

I turn around right at the start

and try to figure out if anything’s there.

The level start sign cannot be trusted.

And number four is the
final boss’s health bar.

That’s it.

I don’t need to say anything else.

I mean I will because it’d probably

not really actually be
that satisfying of a video

if I just said, “The final
boss’s health bar, that’s it.

Moving on, three, walls.”

You know what I mean?

Moving on.

No.

So I guess there’s plenty of bosses

that have health bars you can’t trust,

but you don’t always see them coming.

That being said with
the last boss, you know.

It’s really rare the final
boss has only one form.

And even when the game goes
out of its way to tell you,

no there’s only one final boss fight here.

We promise you.

You know they’re lying,

there’s always more.

The first fight isn’t the only one.

There’s gonna be a cut scene

and a transformation

and then there will be a second form,

possibly even a third one.

And sometimes that’s not so bad.

It’s fun to fight the
final boss in phases.

It creates a great crescendo

to an otherwise long journey.

But sometimes it can really suck

because the boss is just
tough for no good reason.

When you barely manage to scrape by

and that health bar goes
all the way down to zero,

the back of your mind
breathes a sigh of relief

even though, intellectually,

you know it’s not over.

But we’re all sort of just like,

“It’s a down at zero.

That means it’s done.”, internally.

Now what’s nice is sometimes
the game throws you a bone

or restores your health,

but most of the time

you’re stuck with the resources you got

and you know it doesn’t even matter

if the boss is hard or
easy or completely fair.

No one trusts the first health bar.

There’s gonna be more.

It’s guaranteed.

And number three is walls.

Is there anything more untrustworthy

in video games than the humble wall?

If a developer wants to
hide a secret somewhere,

the wall is the go-to option.

You can whip them, you can bomb them.

Sometimes you can just push them,

but everybody knows

there’s stuff hidden behind walls in games

and that is why I attack
every single wall I see,

slam my face in,

use the use button or key.

I bomb everything.

I probably look like a
total psycho to all NPCs.

But you know what?

This is a weirdly empty room.

I find it hard to believe

that this is just a dead end.

I’m gonna figure this out.

Of course, those are
just obvious fake walls.

Games love to hide secrets

and totally innocuous random walls too.

So really no wall is safe.

In video games walls are everywhere.

They surround you at all times

and they can never be trusted

because they’re the easiest thing

to hide secrets behind.

And number two is the
mysterious new bad guy.

This is more of a story thing

than a gameplay thing,

but it’s a single player gamer thing

that nobody trusts.

Like sometimes a long running series

likes to mix things up

and introduce a shocking new bad guy.

Their face is covered.

Sometimes they look nothing
like you would expect.

But it doesn’t matter,

the developers can swear up

and down interviews this
bad guy’s completely new,

something totally different

that you’ve never seen before.

I guarantee it.

Would I lie?

And everybody’s like, “Yes, you would lie.

You have lied, you’ve done it before.”

So let’s talk about some
real obvious twist here.

Like Devil May Cry 5 or Mega Man6.

Both Capcom games,

both not really
particularly hidden twists.

Second, that first trailer from DMC 5,

people assumed the bad
guy was actually Virgil

and it was.

Mega Man 6 had the laughably obvious

Mister X is the bad guy,

but Mister X was Dr Wiley the whole time.

Probably one of the most infamous examples

of this was Batman Arkham Knight

where Rock Steady was like,

“Yeah we made a completely new character.

Bask in the mystery that
is the Arkham Knight.

You’ll never, ever know who it is

because every guest will be wrong

because it’s a new person.

Don’t even try it

because it is not a person
from before, at all.”

And then it was Jason Todd, The Red Hood,

who everybody who knows
even a tiny bit about Batman

assumed he would be.

It was such an obvious choice

a lot of people assumed it wouldn’t be,

because they wouldn’t make
a mysterious new bad guy

that would be that obvious, right?

Except they did.

These are just some of
the more obvious examples.

But games do this all the time.

I guess certain developers
just really like

putting twists in their games

no matter how visible
they are from a mile away.

If a game developer
ever gives an interview

saying that the bad guy is totally new,

you will never believe who it is,

you’ve never seen
anything like this before,

it’s 100% the truth.

Don’t believe them.

It’s pretty much fake.

And number one,

random number generators,

or RNGs, as many call them.

They’re however game handles randomness,

but if you want to get rare loot

or you want to get a hit
or a win in roulette,

critical hits, et cetera,

it’s up to the RNG.

So how come I’ve got a
50/50 chance to hit here

but it took me 12 tries?

What’s deal with that,
random number generator?

Anyone who’s played XCOM
has been in this scenario,

you got a 95% chance to hit.

Somehow you miss three times in a row.

And it’s like, “What?”

Then it tells you the enemy’s
got a 5% chance to hit

and they hit you every time.

Or like try to go for rare loot in a game,

like Destiny 2 or Monster Hunter

and you know the pain of an RNG.

The odds don’t sound that bad,

but for some reason you
had to grind for hours

to get something that after
some small calculations

you figured it would take like 20,

maybe 40 minutes to get.

That is the evil power of
the random number generator.

And it’s not necessarily lying to you,

except for you know when it is.

Like, here’s the fun part about it.

These games don’t actually
have true randomness.

They tie the RNG system with
something else internally.

That’s the reason why speed runners

are able to make seemingly
random things happen,

’cause those things affect the outcome

of the game’s random number generated.

If you know how to manipulate it,

it’s pretty great.

But for most of us who
can’t see the Matrix,

it just means a lot of the time

the randomness is actually worse

and makes the game sound horrible.

Of course, XCOM and games like that

actually do go out of their way

to help you on lower difficulty levels

by secretly increasing your chances to hit

if you miss a shot and stuff like that.

But it can still feel like
the RNG’s working against you

if you miss enough.

And it might be, to be frank.

Sometimes their distrust of
RNG’s maybe personal bias

and maybe there’s nothing
actually wrong with the game

and it’s being completely honest with you,

but that doesn’t matter.

We’ve all had to deal with RNG

in some form of games

and I think it’s safe to say

that basically everybody’s
been burnt by it somehow.

If you’re a gamer, you’re
not gonna trust RNGs.

Doesn’t matter how good your chances are

because when the chips are down,

you really need that perfect shot.

That’s the time you gotta remember

you can’t beat the house.

And if you know the house is cheating,

it’s very unlikely you can prove it.

Also, good luck with the legal battle

if you think that that’s a good idea.

Suing the casino because you think you won

a few grand on blackjack

ain’t gonna work out your way.

I promise you.

And that’s all for today.

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I’m Falcon, you can follow
me on Twitter @falconthehero

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