What are the most absurd game rules that we take for granted?
These are the kind of things that we just accept without noticing them anymore. Carrying an arsenal but needing a key for a wooden door, wooden barriers that can only be broken by destroying exploding pots in God of War, and similar issues in games like Jedi Fallen Order and Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s not just the fantasy and sci-fi games that have silly things like this either, as games like Metro, Batman Arkham, and even the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 all have their own issues.
We’ve all played the games with immersion-breaking puzzles and path blocking.
Games like God of War, for example, have flimsy wooden gates that just stop Kratos in his tracks. The frustration! But then you remember that you can throw NPCs and party members through doors, and you can break them with a bow, or throw explosive barrels through them, and everything balances out.
Here are 11 of the most ridiculous game rules that we just accept as normal.
Instead of breaking a door in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can attack it and damage it until it breaks. I appreciate this. I appreciate that it’s not just something you can do in Divinity Original Sin, but in this classic. Divinity Original Sin 2 goes a bit crazy with it though, and allows you to damage weapons to break through doors, but it’s nice to see it in a classic game.
I also love how you can throw NPCs and party members through doors. It’s so satisfying.
“Let’s see how far we can throw that skeleton,” I say before throwing a skeleton through a door to see if it gets stuck, or if it manages to find its way through.
Red barrels, gas cans, and explosive barrels are the norm in so many games. In most cases, it’s because you can throw them at enemies, but then there’s the humor of guarding explosive barrels. If they blow up, you don’t die, but you’ll have to restart from your last checkpoint. Funny, but also a bit stressful.
There’s something even funnier about colored barrels, though. As you can see in the screenshot above, they’re not labeled… but we all know what they’re for. In real life, we do need to label them though, don’t we?
How many games have you gone through where you’ve just assumed that jumping into water is safe? I used to believe that too. Then I started playing Minecraft and realized that jumping into water is actually quite dangerous. If you fall from a high enough place, your health decreases fast, and it’s instant death. But in games like Metro, you can just walk into the water and be fine (even if it’s raining).
In games like Skyrim, you can just jump in, but you’ll get wet. Guards just forget about murdered partners, and they don’t do anything about it. You can actually see the guard go through the motions of being on alert when they notice the body, and then they just go back to their normal patrol route. In the Metro series, however, the guards are permanently on alert, whether or not there’s a body there. I know which one I prefer.
“Guess it was… the wind,” is the usual reaction of guards in games when they find a dead body. I love this. It’s such a simple joke, but it’s a nice touch.
The panic mechanics in Batman Arkham are very realistic, and the way the guards’ reactions work is very funny. If you’re standing still and one of the guards spots you, they’ll go into alert mode, and you have a few seconds to hide. If they realize you’re gone, they’ll go back to their normal patrol, but if they spot you again, they’ll go into panic mode and start shooting.
I love it, but I think that’s just because I’m a bit sadistic. I prefer games where I have to hide, as opposed to games where I can just kill everyone, but I like the fact that the guards panic when they realize they’re in trouble.
When I was younger and was playing more of these stealth games, I used to find it really boring waiting an hour after a body was noticed (in real life, of course, it’s about 20 minutes) before saying “guess it was nothing” about the body and continuing on with my mission.
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s funny to imagine all the backup and paranoia mechanics that games don’t need because of the nature of being in a safe space. There’s no need for backup if you’re playing in your own home, is there?
Same thing with paranoia, there’s no reason to be paranoid in the safety of your own home.
