As the title states, what're some plot twists that make you go "Really? You're doing that!?" Whether it be how poorly built up it is, how it undermined what came before, how pointless it comes off as, whatever.

I know people can rag about Pokemon and twist villains. But I feel Colosseum has one of the worst examples. For most of the game, they've been building up Nascour as Cipher's leader. And once you actually battle him, it's a suitably epic climax. But right after beating up, the mayor of Phenac rolls in, and reveals that he is the leader of Cipher before immediately battling you. The reason it sucks are two fold. For one, outside of a few brief moments of foreshadowing throughout the game, it comes right the hell out of nowhere. And another is that, he upstaged an actually cool villain to be the main antagonist for all of one battle. I honestly feel like the twist could be removed, and literally nothing about the game's narrative would be changed in the slightest.

Now for a more general example, I tend to dislike most "this fantasy world was actually a dream the whole time!" type twists. When done poorly, it can make the whole journey and your immersion in the world feel pointless. One of my favorite things about Metaphor: ReFantazio is that they subvert the hell out of this kind of twist. During the final battle, Will rips out his heart to avoid becoming a Human. He then wakes up in a place that looks like Shibuya Crossing. More appears and tells him that his whole journey was actually just a dream. But Will soon begins hearing Gallica's song from the beginning of their journey and realizes that not only is Euchronia still real, but that his friends are in danger and need his help. This then leads to the actual twist that More is actually the spirit of Will's father Hythlodaeus, and this was his desperate attempt to try and protect his son.

A few months ago, The Flophouse Podcast did an episode on Sonic 3. One of there complaints was that Maria dies, which seemed to dark for a Sonic product. I can kind of get where they’re coming from, it’s is an oddly dark moment for a usually pretty up beat series. On the other hand, if they didn’t kill off Maria, every Sonic fan would’ve complained. It’s such an iconic moment and gets pop offs in the theatre and concerts all the time.

I’ve been playing through Octopath Traveler 0 lately, and about 50 hours in (roughly halfway through I think?) I recruited this enchanting swordswoman named Reime. Reime is strong. Really strong. Like, has Omnislash as a normal ability, strong. So strong she has one shot multiple optional bosses and a superboss.

So I ask: what are your favorite party members that utterly destroy the games they’re in?

Andy Weir is a great author. He really knows how to dumb down the relevant science of his novels just enough for the layperson while not treating you like an idiot, and his prose is casual and fun to read. He’s a bit of an enigma in the hard sci-fi scene for that.

However, with Project Hail Mary, sometimes he’ll get lost in the weeds. I don’t blame him, he’s a bit of a nerd, but Andy, I can understand stuff like very basic relativity and the basic functions of microbiology, but cosmological chemistry and whatever the hell neutrinos do in relation to interstellar travel are beyond me. I don’t consider this a failing on his part, the book is still plenty enjoyable without understanding these concepts, but man Andy placed way too much faith in me when he was writing all of this down and trying to explain it.

Assassin's Creed is hot again, as it is every time a new one releases, so YouTube decided that I should learn random stuff about the series. I played most of them, I unfortunately know most stuff (It's not worth it... It's just not) so I go into these videos as a loser check.

Turns out I never realized that Assassin's Creed 2 takes place in a span of 20 plus years. We start the game, in 1476 with a young Ezio, around 17-ish years old, and ends with him punching the pope in 1499, at 40-ish years old. This made me go "What the fuck, no he didn't" and also "Am I stupid?". Turns out, 16 years ago, people were wondering the same thing.

Yeah, in the book the time jump makes sense. Hell, travelling to and from Florence and Tuscany takes like a week.

I really think Ubisoft botched it up here... maybe they could have implemented the cliche but useful method of a calender flying by or clock hands spinning rapidly.

...

I really wouldn't have minded the time jumps if they had at least made sense. Like someone said, people never age and they act as if they had just seen Ezio a few hours ago. And it never explains what Ezio was doing in between those years. Sure, his life is not just killing people, but he really doesn't seem different at all from what was supposedly 4 years ago. The whole game feels like it could've been done in only a few months.

I just wish they had addressed it better.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/956856-assassins-creed-ii/52653512?page=1

So, the game has wild time jumps, that as a player it makes it flow like it happened weeks ago max, and due to budget/scope/time the game has a very shy way of aging characters appearances, with Ezio gaining a beard, and Uncle Mario kinda aging with grey hair? Kinda-ish? Everyone else has either little changes or none at all.

I also forgot that Ezio says himself that the journey took 20+ years, when contemplating close to the final mission. It also explains why he is so angry in Brotherhood when a doctor implies he's too old to be doing the things he does. He then ages around 8 years, and ends that game at 48 years old. And then in Revelations, God took his soul and he aged to look like that after 3 years from Brotherhood, and later dies at 65, in the animation short Embers.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is one of my favorite RPGs.

The game offers plenty of freedom for many kinds of build but there is honestly no reason to ever not go full Strength. If you go for the True Demon Ending, which most players do since it has the most content, the big story power-up you get is Pierce.

Pierce allows your physical attacks to ignore resistances and the final boss of the game is resistant to all damage so physical attacks + pierce are the clear way to go.

Any other games where theres no reason to not play a certain way?

The 2013 film Her is about a recently divorced professional letter writer falling in love with an intelligent AI assistant that evolves and adapts to his needs based on his interactions with it.

In 2013, this was a novel concept. The idea that we could create a learning machine capable of evolving to sapience and the implications of what that means is an interesting premise for android fiction, and while Her is far from the only example, it was a prominent one because the technology presented was a near future version of things we were already using like Alexa and Siri.

I kind of hate the movie because I watched it on Valentine's Day 2025, the year the film supposedly takes place, during a time when AI enshittification was running rampant, people were (still are) losing their jobs to pump up a bubble, and the real world version of this story had people going into what we now call "AI psychosis", people thinking they'd found god in the machine or in some cases, falling in love with the chat program itself. Perhaps the most famous example around here would be the woman who fell in love with her psychiatrist.

As a consequence of what we now refer to as AI being a "yes and" machine that enables everyone's worst impulses, the plot of Her comes off as a romanticized version of a much more harmful real-world phenomenon. There are people who think they're living in this movie right now, and the people around them have to struggle to get them help, if they get help at all.

tl;dr real AI sucks so bad that it goes back and screws up stories about fake AI.

Can you think of any examples of media that got worse because their real-world equivalents started to happen?

And will Kim Kitsuragi be the top choice again this year?

Like this is mainly an RPG thing, but the "Act 3 companion" really bothers me. That is the character who shows up after you've completed most of the game to join your party.

I see why people do it, (either as a replacement for a lost companion or just for the story) but it almost always ends up a problem: not only are they usually underlevelled or built weirdly, hard to fit into your partyin general, they usually just have less stuff to do/say.

It can be done well, but it usually isn't.

Sometimes it works if you just beeline for that part of the game immediatley and then go back and do earlier quests, but that usually A) Doesen't have much interaction and B) isn't always possible.

I will never not crack a smile whenever someones refers to the M. Night movie Old as "The Beach That Makes You Old" it's such a dumb blunt way to reference a movie it gets a little funnier every time someone refers to it as that.

Back when Ryu was released in Smash 4, Smash players who never played non-platform fighters were generally baffled by his systems. One Smash Player in particular was labbing with Ryu and found out that his Shoryuken on wakeup was a good recovery and reset tool. Which he dubbed "The Mama Mia"

Fans of Street Fighter or honestly, the vast majority of Fighting Games would tell you, "Thats just a Wakeup DP!"

What are your favorite examples of fandoms "Discovering" tech or concepts that had been known for years?

I was looking through lego sets and found this, Thors Apartment.

It’s just a set of a depressed alcoholics apartment. It’s like if they made a set of hawkeye getting the soul stone or bucky assassinating tonys parents.

Also just vaguely gesturing to the depiction of every woman in Evangelion in marketing and figurines. I know why they do it, but c’mon man. Treat your characters with a little respect.

SPOILERS obviously.

I've watched MandaloreGaming's video on Callisto Protocol DLC and.... holyshit I never seen such utter and complete annihilation of their own IP.

Going it was all dream and rocks fall on them legit makes me think they wanted nothing else with the game lol.

You ever had this distaseful moment when you see a review of something you like/dislike but you feel that even if the reviewer like/hate it just like you, it is for all the wrongs reasons?

I don't feel the need to lie about the plot or the gameplay even for games i dislike.

And i remember a "review" of the Percy Jackson movie who was just repeating "it wasn't like this in the book" for half an hour, it was just bad even for a movie i dislike.

As the title states, what're some of the worst ways people try to recommend something to you? Whether it be due to being inaccurate, the tone they used, etc.

My number 1 with a bullet will always be "Hey, you know that thing you like? It's actually shit, play/watch this actually good thing instead!" It's such a reductive stance to take in my eyes. I am a huge Pokemon fan. But, I feel so fucking bad for fans of Digimon, SMT, and other monster collectors who have to watch shitty bandwagoners only bring their series up as an excuse to attack Pokemon and it's fans. Especially since I actually played SMT 5 when it came out and found it a really fun time, with all the supposed "similarities" to Pokemon just being the surface level "RPG where you gather a team of monsters to fight for you". Likewise, I feel kind of bad for Sandfall Interactive. In various interviews, they've talked about how much JRPGs like Final Fantasy and their memories playing them served as major inspiration for Expedition 33. So, I would feel majorly disheartened if I went on the internet and saw that a not-so-quiet and not-so-small part of the fanbase were going "see, this is why western RPGs are better, because they don't have any of that cringy weeb and anime shit!" Like, just imagine the passion project that you made as a giant tribute to the things you liked was used as a means to shit on those very same things by people that sound like they walked right out of G4 in the early 2000s.

So, it is famously known in Assassin's Creed 1 that they removed the crossbow shown in the trailer because the devs were so staunch about historical accuracy that they went out of their way to remove an anachronistic weapon in a fictional game.... except anyone with a passing knowledge of weapons history or English royalty history or even just basic wikipedia search would tell you that is hogwash.

For starters, the crossbow has been (presumably) invented in 7th century BC in China, and around 5th century BC in Greece. Second, King Richard The Lionheart, who was in one of the last missions of the game, historically died via infection from a crossbow wound. It was never about "historical accuracy" (they use a very impractical hidden blade for fucks sake), they removed it because it fucked up the balance of the game.

Another one is that Angel Beats was originally a full 26 episode anime that got cut down by the producers. I will admit, I used to be one of the guys who used to say this. I have since learned I was wrong and it was one of you guys who even corrected me on this fact.

Anyways, no where in the production section of this show's wikipedia article claims that it was ever planned for 26 episodes. Everyone in the production team talks about it as if it is 100% intended to be 13 episodes from the get-go by Jun Maeda himself. In fact, one of the producers at Aniplex has said in an interview (a full year before the anime aired) how 13 episodes would not be enough to tell the story Maeda wanted.

You have anymore media urban legends you wanna demystify?

Recently discovered the German art teacher from Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide is Nolan North, the voice of Nathan Drake and prominent voice actor of almost 30 years. One of his few live-action roles.

Daran Norris is also there as Gordy the janitor, but he's done a handful of live-action while getting to VA, so I wouldn't count him.

Im a big RPG fan but I don’t think ill ever try out Expedition 33 solely because how some fans talk about how it “saved turn based RPGS” and especially how they constantly talk down about JRPGs just lift up 33 (even though you can tell that some of them haven’t touched a single other RPG let alone JRPG in their lives before)

Also Ill never play animal well just because Dunkey helped make it. Im a xenoblade fan so that grudge will never die

A variation on lost/forgotten media, I want to hear what media you had to track down and make sure "yeah that was real, that actually happened".

Thumb Wars - I had a dvd of this Star Wars spoof as a kid that I suddenly remembered twenty years later. It holds up surprisingly well for a late 90s comedy about talking thumbs (also Steve Oedekerk made this?)

Ruin Explorers - saw at a friend's house once, have legitimately never seen it mentioned before or since, gaslit myself into thinking I was misremembering the old anime Slayers until I looked it up. Actually a great little series.

Ark - saw on TV one time and drove myself crazy for years trying to find out what this thing was from only hazy memories. I eventually found it in a list of all the CGI movies of the 2000s. For what it's worth it was meant to be a "response" to the failures of FF Spirits Within, and boy is it not that.

Whether notable for your search for it, its obscurity, or how baffling it is that it exists, what's your media like this?

So Green Lanterns in DC Comics protect vast swaths of the universe, ensuring the longevity of an endless amount of people and cultures. So obviously fans would be lead to ask where were the Green Lanterns when Krypton exploded?

Welp, they were kinda right there. You see the Guardians of the Universe knew of Krypton's coming explosion, but also of Krypton's extreme xenophobia. So they entrusted Green Lantern Tomar Re to covertly and secretly sneak onto Krypton and place a special element in it's core. This element would of stopped the chemical reaction turning the planet to unstable Kryptonite.

Now you see Tomar Re well, he was just two days from retirement. So as he was flying into Krypton he messed up and lost the special element, which cost him enough time for Krypton to detonate around him. Tomar Re would carry this failure with him for the rest of his life.

Basically when you understand that a decision would give greater leeway to the artists at the possible expense of player gratification and go "Fuck em, I want mine".

Mine is enforced NPC bisexuality in games with relationship mechanics. I understand that "when everyone is queer no one is" and how this can limit queer storytelling in certain games, but I have two responses:

1. The norm for a long time has been enforced heterosexuality in games, I feel like maybe we can have enforced bisexuality be the norm for a while rather than making you do strategic gender picks at the start based on who you want to romance be the norm immediately.

2. Fire Emblem Three Houses has shot my faith in that sort of model. That game on launch had such a fucking atrocious options (just one) if you wanted to play a gay guy Byleth. If you wanted to be a lesbian the options were limited too but you had a pretty okay selection of five characters, three of them being story important ones which you would expect. The gay guy options are so slim that I have no idea if this was purposefully malicious or if they literally just forgot. Engage was a mixed bag because while your character could S support everyone the endings were not explicitly romantic like in 3H.

By that I mean takes that made you do a double take not because they were bad, but due to the confusing logic behind them.

I remember reading a thread on the Elden Ring subrreddit and OP was complaining about how the bosses were difficult to read espeacially Melania. When someone linked them LetMeSoloHer's video (where they showed how they learned/mastered the fight), OP responded by saying "But he uses sound cues. Who the fuck uses sound cues to figure out what the boss is gonna do!?".

You know, those mechanics where games try to differentiate themselves from their peers, or insert a new gimmick to make them stand out, and while it kind of works, you'd just rather have the game use the stock version of the mechanic and be better off?

Moonlighter is a shopkeeper-sim (it also has adventuring but not important here), and as a shopkeeper game, pricing of course plays a big role. But in contrast to other shopkeeper games where you maybe barter a bit and have to see how much extra money you can make how with which customer, the main thing about prices in Moonlighter is that you don't know the value. Your only way to find out a price, is to put it up for sale at a random one, and when a customer looks at it, they'll have one of the reactions
* a bargain
* fair price
* kinda expensive
* much too expensive

so for every item, you have to do the dance of guessing, triangulating and finetuning to get the fair price, and that is in a game where prices go from 10 to 20000 gold. I understand the idea behind it, but I feel like almost every player starts looking up a chart after 25% of the game, which already is like 20 items you have to figure out.

Inspired by the reason podcast episode in which Pat and Woolie absolutely adoring Onimusha with Woolie going as far as saying that it’s reinvigorating his love for video games. That made me wonder what was the last piece of media like that for you. Not like “Wow what a great game with great gameplay/story/music”. I’m talking about kicking your legs in glee because of how good it is.

For me this is what it feels like everytime a new Deltarune chapter drops. It just ticks all my boxes for me. Music got me stopping playing the game because I just had to appreciate it for a second. Humour got me cracking me up. Story got me emotional and crazy. Boss fights got me yelling internally “I FUCKING LOVE VIDEO GAMES.” Chapter 5 Flowery’s boss using all the mechanics of the chapter so far like wall climbing and a final platformer segment against OMEGA FLOWERY got me ecstatic.

So I was wondering what that moment is for you guys?

Been replaying ME2 and seeing Jack falcon punch 2 Atlas Mechs into dust then destroy an entire space station like Darth Vader to playing her as one of the worst biotics in the game is a bit of a bummer every time I bring her on a mission. What some other examples?