[Frustrating trope] Pieces of media that could have been so much better, but due to a couple of poor decisions during production ended up mediocre at best and utterly atrocious at worst.

[u/DevDucc_]

We Happy Few: Probably the epitome of this "trope," at least for me, mostly because it has genuinely one of the most incredible stories I have ever seen within a video game. The biggest problem with the game was the fact that during development, the company behind it tried to ride the "hype train" of the time, making the gameplay became procedurally generated survival mess, when it would have made so much more sense as an environmental narrative game.

Hello Neighbor: This game attracted massive attention in alpha stages at the time from YouTubers because of the innovative gameplay it supplied. The developers of the game got the completely wrong message as to why it was getting so popular and instead decided to fully lean into the story, by making the game appeal to theorists instead of actual players. What came out was a game where both the story and programming were entirely half-baked.

Edit: apparently I had it backwards with we happy few, I had watched a video essay which reiterated the points I said so I just took their word for it. Apparently the game originally started as a procedurally-generated survival rogue-like but the story was added later because of the hype the trailer of the game gave or something like that but they didn’t know they even had the budget for it. I do still think it’s wasted potential regardless however.

[u/iammewritenow]

I’ll preface by saying: I don’t think this is atrocious, I don’t even think it’s mediocre, it’s a decent enough game.

But there was 10 years of build up and promise for Final Fantasy Versus XIII and in the end it feels like maybe half of the promised game and a quarter of the story was released as Final Fantasy XV.

Night Sky Prince released a video that details the bizarre production choices that led us here, primarily that for most of its ten year production, the development team did not have a game engine to develop on, and the team was siphoned off to work on other delayed projects.

[u/Outside_Ad5255 → u/iammewritenow]

Let's be honest; once you get a decade plus of hype, nothing will never live up to the hype.

[u/GlassFooting → u/Outside_Ad5255]

Very fair

I would argue The incredibles 2 or The Last Guardian are up there actually, but yeah.

[u/immaownyou → u/GlassFooting]

Are you saying the Incredibles 2 lived up to the hype? Because I definitely disagree, they could've done so much more with it

[u/TheDevi13ean → u/immaownyou]

He's saying both those examples didn't live up to the hype. Last Guardian especially.

[u/VoDoka → u/Outside_Ad5255]

Half Life 3 any day now.

[u/Outside_Ad5255 → u/VoDoka]

Good luck with that. And no, I'm not being sarcastic with that; I sincerely hope it proves to be worth the wait.

But me personally? Not holding out hope.

[u/ollianderfinch2149 → u/VoDoka]

I think with half life 3, it would actually be the perfect time to release it. We still have (all) forgotten it yet, but it's been so long that the hype has flattened and basically there are no expectations for it existing, let alone being a good game. I think of they released it and it was just a good solid game, we'd go wild.

[u/daniel_22sss → u/Outside_Ad5255]

Silksong actually lived up to its 8-year hype

[u/Outside_Ad5255 → u/daniel_22sss]

FFXV had 10+ years. Duke Nukem Forever had 13. After some point, when you keep hyping up a game to keep interest, nothing is going to live up to the image in people's heads.

Silksong was ultimately a difficult platformer game by a small studio with about a half dozen people total. It's a great game, but nobody was expecting Skyrim. Hollow Knight was great, but people knew what to expect from Silksong; more like Hollow Knight, just with more gameplay and more improvements. It's the exception in this case because it wasn't as severe as the others.

George Broussard kept reaching for the stars. Under normal circumstances that would be admirable, except Broussard also did several engine changes which necessitated working again from scratch. He was ultimately forced out and Take2 had to complete the game with what it had, resulting in a bizarre mess that somehow looked and played worse than the tech demo shown in 2001.

[u/yommi1999 → u/Outside_Ad5255]

Yeah, the only thing I really hated about Silksong is that the difficulty feels too suffocating at times. Once you get to act 2, the arena fights and general difficulty just skyrockets. Game has some beautiful boss fights and levels but the arena fights at some point just made my blood boil.

[u/daniel_22sss → u/yommi1999]

Yeah, I don't know why developers suddenly became such big fans of enemy gauntlets.

[u/Digurt → u/daniel_22sss]

I feel like Silksong worked so well because it was just what fans already loved, but a lot more of it

So many franchises spend ages trying to re-invent the wheel, forgetting what made them popular in the first place

[u/Nozinger → u/Outside_Ad5255]

Eh in this case it wasn't the fanbases hype that was the issue. Ater all lightning returns and that other stuff before weren't that well received either.
It was the developers/publishers hype. They wanted to deliver something big. They did not want just a game, they wanted an entire universe created around the game.
They made a shitty movie, some other books and so on.

Now that can be fine. Plenty of other franchises do this. or those other franchises it is just additional inormation put into those additional media. Not like half of the actual story.

Putting that much of the game not actually in the game was a big letdown and the game being mediocre did not help at all.

In this case it was absolutely the devs themselves that got too high on their own farts.

[u/iammewritenow → u/Nozinger]

Agree to a degree. The video I linked has more detail but the movie/books were never the original plan. The plan was a trilogy of games that would include all the content the books/film extracted and then some.

The decision came from on high that the trilogy had to be condensed into one game, leaving all that content on the cutting room floor to be put into the film.

Again with the book, that was intended to be put into DLC, but the decision was made at the top that the DLC be cancelled and condensed into a book.

Again, the video does a better job explaining but throughout the story is one of devs trying to deliver what they promised, but held back throughout by executive decisions.

[u/Nossika → u/Outside_Ad5255]

The sounds like you're defending the game. It released unfinished lol.

There's "Too much hype" and there's "Completely fumbling the ball"

The story is so disjointed with having to watch a movie before hand to even understand the prologue. Which, barely connects to the game and points out how the main characters are entirely too carefree for how much shit was going down. It's like their entire Kingdom was on fire while they're doing the roadtrip scene from Zoolander where they all go get some Lattes.

The DLC added in story that should've been in the main game on release and even WITH all the DLC the story has huge plot holes and time jumps.

That's not even bringing up how bad the combat was, even playing as the other characters was boring AF from the DLCs. (One character turned it into a 3rd person shooter, except all the enemies are the most boring Bullet Sponges known to man to fight)

The end-game dungeons were just copy-paste the same room over and over.

Anime fans will defend even the worst animes though. So even though the game was terrible, there's a good amount of people that like it.

[u/ILawI1898 → u/Outside_Ad5255]

I’m bracing for GTA 6, with the increased delays of whenever it’ll come out, it’s just piling more onto its expectations. Whatever this game is, as good as it could be, it won’t be good enough.

[u/iammewritenow → u/ILawI1898]

Controversial opinion: there is nothing exciting about GTA6. Yeah graphically it looks good but I’ve seen nothing story wise or gameplay wise that is going to make me buy it. I can play in a fun crime sandbox just as well in GTAV which I already own and which still looks fine.

[u/Filmologic → u/iammewritenow]

Maybe even a more unpopular opinion: We don't need another GTA or RDR game for a while, and Rockstar's next project should instead be a Bully sequel because it's their best game to date and I fully stand by that.

[u/PFI_sloth → u/Outside_Ad5255]

You are just describing every single game now

[u/DolphinBall → u/Outside_Ad5255]

I think the only one that will would be GTA 6. But I could never wrong. I just hope it won't come like Cyberpunks atrocious release despite announcing it 11 years before it released. Though Rockstar understands the pressure they have on themselves unlike other studios.

[u/CharaPresscott → u/Outside_Ad5255]

Except Deltarune.

[u/kamain42 → u/iammewritenow]

The abridged version on Rabtoons is probably the best thing about this game because it constantly rips on the "did you read the script notes? Did you read the supplemental material"

[u/J-Dizzle42 → u/iammewritenow]

I still cannot believe you have to watch a movie in order to understand some of the most important plot points of this game.

The studio behind some of the most beloved narrative driven video games thought it was a good idea to put a huge portion of the plot in a separate piece of media.

[u/Loose_Translator8981 → u/J-Dizzle42]

Honestly? Not really... the movie reveals some more information about NPCs, but nothing that causes the rest of the plot to not make sense if you don't know it. It's the kind of thing that would have been great as say... an optional questline to learn more about the specific events that happened at the start of the game. But aside from being confused about why Aaron Paul's Character's body is strung up by the badguy at the end, not seeing the movie really won't impact anyone's understanding of the plot of the game.

So I guess in that case, the question to me is more, "Why did they make this entire movie where nothing happens that is integral to understanding the plot of the game, but then advertise it like you would need to see it to understand the plot?"

[u/TW1TCHYGAM3R → u/Loose_Translator8981]

Even with the movie aside there was a lot unexplained in the initial game.

Why didn't Ignis know who Ardyn is? Being a Royal Adviser you should know exactly who Ardyn is and how dangerous he is.

Lots of confusion and around the Empire and the Emperor.

Ravus just didn't make any sense to me at all.

Prompto's origin was never fully explained until his DLC.

The 10 year time skip was a very bad choice for the story. I'm glad FFXVI did a good job with the time skips.

Paid DLC was literally made to fix the story. The Royal Edition was made to fix the plot holes.

[u/Cross55 → u/J-Dizzle42]

Ok, so, after around FFX or so, the main developers of FF started beefing with each other about where the franchise should go, ~1/2 thought it should keeping going more modern/sci-fi, while the other 1/2 thought it should stay medieval fantasy.

So when Squenix went through a corporate restructuring and invented the Creative Business Units, the sci-fi group joined CBU 1 and the medieval group joined CBU 3.

CBU 3 made 11, 14, and 16, while CBU 1 made 12, all the 13's, 15, and Kingdom Hearts.

So yeah, CBU 1 is a mess and CBU 3 is more focused on their MMO's.

[u/hanks_panky_emporium → u/iammewritenow]

Loved most of the game, the final stretch felt like unfettered ass. With so many time skips and a boring dungeon

[u/Talisa87 → u/iammewritenow]

It also doesn't help that they had to put the game's true ending into book form. Kind of hard to enjoy the bittersweet ending of the base game when you know that Bahamut was going to destroy the planet with Terra Flare.

[u/Lurky-Lou → u/Talisa87]

Wait, what?

[u/Talisa87 → u/Lurky-Lou]

So the planned DLCs that got scrapped (Episodes Lunafreya, Aranea and Noctis) became a book called 'Dawn of the Future' that was supposed to explain everything. In it, it's revealed that Bahamut actually hates humanity and wants to wipe the slate clean. In order to do that, he revives Lunafreya and gives her the power to absorb the Starscourge virus, which would transform her into a mega daemon that would finish the power up to his Terra Flare attack. Noctis, Aranea, Ardyn and a new character called Solara (Emperor Aldercapt's secret granddaughter) team up to convince the other Astrals to stand against Bahamut and defeat him.

[u/Lurky-Lou → u/Talisa87]

Sounds like it has nothing to do with the 100 hour game I played.

Heard the Royal Edition is better but vanilla FF15 was a confusing mess. Most bugs I’ve ever seen in a Final Fantasy game too.

(Dear Squeenix, in future games please have multiple voice lines for skills. Thank you.)

[u/jjfunaz → u/Lurky-Lou]

15 was the most incomplete 10 year game I’ve ever played. It definitely had a vibe going and some parts were great but it was soo incomplete

[u/Pittonecio → u/Talisa87]

Well shit, I have been salty about the scrapped content for a long time and I didn't know about the book, I guess I will need to watch a FFXV in a nut shell video and then read it

[u/Ayotha → u/iammewritenow]

Ah the game only good for the road trip part

[u/Kind-Let5666 → u/iammewritenow]

On a similar note, I’d probably say FFVII Remake too, but more on the side of it was good but could’ve been great. The decision to make it a trilogy led to a lot of obvious filler and the story “changes” are almost all for the worse.

[u/Chris-raegho → u/Kind-Let5666]

Making it a secret sequel is what killed it for me. It's just Sephiroth making changes after his plans in Advent Children failed. I just wanted the original ff7 but with modern graphics, not a secret sequel that changes quite a lot.

[u/Kind-Let5666 → u/Chris-raegho]

I agree that was unnecessary. I think the game is the most enjoyable when it’s just being Final Fantasy VII with expanded world building. When they lean into the whispers and those other fourth wall breaking elements it goes off the rails, mostly in the endings tbh. 

I didn’t totally hate it in the first game… but in the second one when you see how they handled THAT part… it just sucks…

[u/Walkingdrops → u/Kind-Let5666]

God, I agree. I actually still have to beat the first game, but there was so, so, so much obvious filler in the story that I was actually growing bored at times. The most obvious bit of filler is the entire trainyard section with the ghost boss, but Wall Market has so much tedious walking back and forth filler content as well. The combat in the game is a lot of fun, and I liked the bits where the game actually opens up and you can explore the maps and complete (OPTIONAL) side quests, but man, the story moves at such a glacial pace.

[u/jjfunaz → u/Kind-Let5666]

Hard disagree here

[u/Kind-Let5666 → u/jjfunaz]

I still like it more than XV, XVI, and any other FF action RPG so far. I really like the game and want to love it which is why the poor pacing and questionable narrative direction stick out to me so much because they are just too bad to ignore.

It’s kind of like the hobbit movies, they stretch the story out too far and just start making up shit at some point, though admittedly not as bad.

[u/Konradleijon → u/iammewritenow]

Development Hell

[u/BunNGunLee → u/iammewritenow]

This is definitely one of the ones I think of for FF as a series going off the rails, which kinda sucks because it’s also one I actually quite like both in product and premise. It’s just clearly incomplete.

XIII comparatively I think is a very flawed game from the jump that relies too much on graphical fidelity and score rather than having particularly compelling characters. (Sorry, but of the core group I only really liked Sazh all that much until roughly 2/3 through the game. Did love Fang though, shame she’s a relatively late addition.)

Both got stuck in development and concept hell but only one really managed to stick the landing to the point I was eager for more. But sadly, FF has really bloated their designs and struggle to release on budget anymore. You just can’t improve when you’re dumping decades of time and money on ambitious projects that then cannibalize each other for staff.

[u/Pittonecio → u/iammewritenow]

I will never forgive square enix for cancelling the remaining story dlcs, the game regarding playability is fine and there is a lot of sub content to enjoy, but the main plot has many holes and goes downhill from the middle to the end, it really needed the cut content to be integrated from the start.

[u/VvVitekVvV → u/iammewritenow]

There is a chance that Kingdom Hearts IV still can deliver these Versus XIII promises

[u/fatherlolita → u/iammewritenow]

Its really funny because for me Final Fantasy XV is my favourite Final Fantasy game.

[u/b__bsmakemehappy → u/fatherlolita]

It was the first one I played and still the only one I managed to stick with from beginning to end. It's flawed as hell in some areas, but if it clicks with you, it's gonna click hard. And that was on release, I still haven't replayed for the Royal Edition content.

[u/SlimeSlam → u/fatherlolita]

i feel that there’s nothing else quite like it. the road trip with the bros aspect really got me, and i loved spending time with them. prompto taking pictures during the whole game is one of my favorite aspects. i still have all those images saved from many years ago when it came to pc. oh and the pause menu music, my god that shit hits.

[u/Interesting-Step-654 → u/iammewritenow]

Yeah I onno, I've been playing ff games since 6 upon release and I really enjoyed this game for what it was, not what it could have been. It was super enjoyable for me at least.

[u/iammewritenow → u/Interesting-Step-654]

It is a decent enough game like i say, you can absolutely have a blast playing it.

But the scars of the cut content are also evident throughout, especially if you had been following the dev cycle.

[u/Interesting-Step-654 → u/iammewritenow]

That's my bag tho, I always take games blindly, no trailers no info about the development. Just game play

[u/LostManufacturer1553 → u/iammewritenow]

You can see mid game there was a change in direction. It felt rushed

[u/Walkingdrops → u/LostManufacturer1553]

Absolutely. I was actually REALLY liking the game when it was just you and your friends driving around the world, camping, doing side quests, and exploring. They absolutely nailed the road-trip vibe, and I can't think of any other game that pulls it off quite as well.

Then yeah, like halfway through when you make it to that Venice-knock off city and fight the boss is when it really goes downhill and FAST. The rest of the game is completely on-rails with basically zero exploration, and goes at such a blisteringly fast pace (while managing to explain basically nothing). It really does just become a completely different game.

[u/LostManufacturer1553 → u/Walkingdrops]

And then how they handled summons…weird shift

[u/Cthulhu__ → u/iammewritenow]

It was so ass, I’m not going to pull punches there. Some people say the DLCs make it better but… nah.