(logo beeping) - [Falcon] Video games are
kind of an amazing thing. They're definitely not real, but we don't really consider them lies, at least until you take 'em apart. Hi folks, it's Falcon
and today on Gameranx, 10 of the biggest video
game lies of your childhood. Starting off at number 10, the Capitol and the Washington
Monument in "Fallout 3." One of the oldest video
game tricks in the book, but a good place to start, when you first exit the
vault in "Fallout 3," you get your first real view
of the Capital Wasteland, two of the most prominent
objects in the distance are the Capitol Building
in the Washington Monument. It gives the impression that
there's a huge open world there and in the case of pretty
much any other Bethesda RPG, that would be true. But "Fallout 3"'s open world
has a dirty little secret. See, to get the game running
properly on consoles, they had to split the Capital Wasteland into two different cells. You can never just walk
into the greater DC area. The only way to reach places
like the Washington Monument and the Capitol is to take a tedious trip through the Washington subway systems. (lasers blasting) So these two major landmarks
aren't actually there when you see them from the outskirts, They're actually just extremely
low poly cardboard cutouts meant to give the impression
of a seamless open world. It's easy to see for yourself, just turn on no clip and
fly towards the Capitol area to see it yourself. It's an Xbox 360 air of
Potemkin Village over there. Just remember, you can
actually visit these places, it's not a total fraud or anything, but what you're seeing in the
distance from most of the map isn't actually there, it's
just a background element meant to give the
impression that there is. Now a lot of video games
do pull tricks like this to hide loading zones, but when you're a kid you
just buy into the fantasy, you think everything in the game is real. Well, as real as it is in the game, but it often isn't even that real. The Capitol and the
Washington Monument are fake. At number nine in "Mass
Effect 1," sprinting is a lie. So, I even felt a little betrayed when I first heard about this one. "Mass Effect" was BioWare's first attempt at real time action. It is a classic game, of course, but the original version of
it could be pretty awkward. A lot of racing games pull this trick where they make it appear
you're going faster than you actually are by using effects to give the appearance a speed, but it doesn't actually match one to one what they're telling you. Like you're not actually going 200 miles per hour in the game world for technical reasons, but dammit, they're
gonna try and trick you into thinking you're
going that fast anyway. "Mass Effect 1" pulls a similar trick. When you start sprinting
outside of combat, the camera shakes and focus gets narrower to make players feel like
they're going faster, but they're actually not. When you're in a fight, sprinting actually does
make you move faster, but outside of combat, the game slows down your
general movement significantly, sprint included. I don't
know why they don't make it so you can't sprint outside of a fight if they don't want you to. Like it seems like it would
probably be extra effort to nerf it, like change the behavior rather than just disable
it outside of a fight, I don't know. The most likely culprit
is they don't want it so you can move through
environments too quickly with loading. Kinda like how in "Gears of War" the game would make you stop
and walk at certain times. It's the game giving itself enough time to load the next area. "Mass Effect" is bad
enough with the elevators, but at least it doesn't have a lot of forced walking segments. Some of the blame has to go to BioWare's inexperience with action
games at the time though, 'cause the other two "Mass
Effect" games came out on the 360 and had perfectly
functional sprints in 'em. So clearly they were able to learn from their mistakes in the first game. It's funny, if you're just
playing this game casually, you'll probably never even notice that sprinting is no
different from just running. It felt kind of slow, but
literally no different. That's a hell of a lie. And number eight is "Dante's
Inferno," the health bar lie. This is another one I never noticed. So many games give us health upgrades that increase our life bar and we just assume they're actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. And most of the time they are. Um, not with "Dante's Inferno" though. I never would've known this unless a developer just
came out and said it, but apparently in "Dante's Inferno" there was a bug where if
you died or quit the game, your health would reset
to back to the baseline but it wouldn't show. Like, your health bar would stay longer, but your actual health values just reset back to the starting number. (weapons clanging) It was basically a bug. And if that's where it ended,
it wouldn't really be a lie, but here's the thing,
they only noticed the bug very late into development. All the play tests had been
done with that bug in place, so the game was entirely balanced around your main guy never
getting any health upgrades. So instead of just dropping
the health upgrade system or rebalancing the entire
game at the last minute, they shipped the game with the
bug and just didn't fix it. I don't think I'll be able to trust health upgrades ever again. Thanks, Visceral Entertainment. At number seven, in "Half-Life 2" the sky box itself is a trick. Back when "Half-Life 2" came out, it had one of the most
impressive sky boxes of all time. If you don't know, the sky box uh, is exactly what it
sounds like, a giant box. that surrounds a map with
texture on it simulating a sky. Couple of different ways to make 'em work, depending on the game. Sometimes they literally
just surround the player. Other times they're more like projections. And if you cheat you can
find a little sky box somewhere in the corner of the map. Even other times, they're just giant boxes that surround a level. What made "Half-Life 2"'s Skybox standout was one specific feature, the Citadel. This gigantic alien structure that dominates the skyline of City 17. You can see this thing
from literally everywhere and even now it's still a
pretty impressive thing. What makes it unique is that it looks like it's part of the game's
world, not just a jpeg, like a 3D object, like there's actually
physically something there, but there isn't, it's a trick. If you fly out to see
it, you'll never reach it because the citadel in the distance is actually a projection. If you wanna find the real citadel, you have to look around
the corners of the map. It's actually a small 3D model that level design stash
somewhere you can't normally see. And using a camera, they
project this tiny little model onto the sky box and it
makes it look enormous. It's pretty clever, but
it gets even crazier when you start getting into stuff like "Half-Life 2: Episode One" where you're right next to the Citadel and they actually start modeling part of it in the game world while the upper half is a projection. It's a pretty brilliant optical illusion that is almost entirely seamless. At number six is "Bioshock," a smaller one, but it
always drove me crazy. So here's the thing, in "Bioshock" you can
only hold about 500 bucks. That's the limit of extra
cash you can have on hand. You try to pick up more and
the game's gonna stop you. That's not the problem here though. The problem is that for some reason the money counter clearly
has four digits on it, implying that you can hold
between 1000 and $9,999, but that is a lie, you can only hold 500. Maybe I'm being petty here,
but it's really unnecessary. Like, cut off one of those zeros and I'd have nothing to complain about. Sure, most people talking
about lies in "Bioshock" would probably talk about, you know, the whole, "Would you
kindly" thing that's, yeah, but that's a narrative
lie and it's a good one and kind of important to the story. Well, the extra zero completely pointless. I'm guessing the decision to limit the amount of cash on hand
was probably a late decision. So they didn't get around to changing the UI elements for the money. I'd wager it had a big impact
on the difficulty of the game and changing the amount of
money to something larger would probably make the game a lot easier, and therefore in a lot of
cases, probably less good because that game is, it's balanced, it's balanced really good. But that doesn't make
this not annoying to me, for whatever reason. At number five is Quad
Damage in "Quake III." The original "Quake" introduced the Quad Damage
power up into the world. It's been a mainstay of Id
software games ever since, these things started
showing up in "Doom" games, Even though the OG
Dooms did not have them. I'm happy to have them, of course, picking up one of these
suckers is very satisfying. Who wouldn't want to do four
times the amount of damage? (gun banging) The only problem is that in
at least one "Quake" game, the name of the item is a total lie. I'm talking about "Quake III"
and by extension "Quake Live," the still surprisingly
popular arena shooter. I remember wasting hours
playing this game as a kid. It was also an amazing multiplayer game. It's still fun to play today, but there's one black mark, the so-called Quad Damage power up doesn't actually do what it says, doesn't multiply your damage by four. It does it by three,
which makes you wonder why it's not just called tri
damage, which is, it's weird 'cause it's not great having
a downgraded power up, but if that's what we're doing,
why not call it what it is? It's probably one of the most
blatant lies in video games. It's an item that says in its name that it does four times the damage, but in "Quake III" it doesn't. It does three times the damage. It's one of those stupid
lies that doesn't matter and probably has a perfectly good reason for being in there, like the
balance of the game again. But, I mean, it's literally
like mathematically false information, it drives me nuts. (guns banging) At number four is the
improved shield in "Halo 2." Speaking of grudges from the past, let's talk about shields in "Halo 2." I'm not sure if enemy
weapons just got stronger or if the overall
balance has just changed, but after "Halo 1" it made
you feel like a walking tank. "Halo 2" goes in a different
direction, a more lethal one, which is fine if that's
what Bungee wanted to do. "Halo 2"'s is still a great game, but right at the start,
they hit you with one of the most spurious lies in all of gaming. During the prerequisite
calibrations opening sequence, the technician says; - Your new armor shields
are extremely resilient, very efficient. - [Falcon] Sure, I guess, fine. compared to like a plastic
bag, tissue paper, cotton? I don't know, actually cotton
can be pretty resilient, but a slight breeze can knock out the Chief's shields and "Halo 2," and yet somehow they
think they can get away with saying the shields
are new and improved. They're clearly not. Yeah, I know it's just a
stupid line of flavor dialogue, but it sets the expectation that your shields will
actually be stronger. And I know the real meat of
the game is in the multiplayer. Getting the balance right
was extremely important, but there's one "Halo" game where I really started to get sick of the beep, beep, beep warning sound whenever your shields
go down, it's this one. (lasers blasting) Am I hyper focusing on
something that doesn't matter? Absolutely, but that's what we're here for on this one, right? That's what this list is for. Don't tell me you don't agree. There is no reason to say
that these shields are better. At number three, the "Fear" AI. Yeah, the original "Fear" is often praised for its reactive and
intelligent enemy soldiers, they do honestly seem pretty smart when you're playing the game. But in reality, it's all just
a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The thing that made the enemies feel like living, breathing things is how they would call out and
communicate with each other. They'd call out if they were flanking or if they're gonna throw a grenade, they'd seemingly respond to your movements and formulate a plan to take you on. As a player it seemed
like you were up against calculating and dangerous enemies, but in actuality, it's just
a lot of clever scripting. All that enemy communication that seems like they're
planning and working together, it's not group intelligence. Instead, each individual
enemy can perform an action. Sometimes they'll come straight at you, sometimes they'll go in
a different direction, which makes it seem like
they're trying to surround you. But really it's just one
of the few possible actions an enemy can take and they
mostly select at random. The clever trick comes from the fact the game keeps track of
what action the NPC chooses and when they do, it tells a different NPC to yell out what they're doing. So when combat starts, one
enemy decides to attack directly and another goes down a random hallway, then that signals the
first guy to shout out, "Get around him," or something like that, giving the impression that
there's somebody giving orders. They do this thing all the
time and it makes it seem like the enemy's talking to each
other and working together. It's just a series of
NPCs acting independently. The game just has someone
say what they're doing, which makes it seem like
they're talking to each other. Now, AI in games is almost
all just smoke and mirrors, it's almost impossible to make
a truly intelligent enemy. And even when you do, they end up more frustrating
than fun to fight. It's just more fun to fight enemies that seem smart rather
than ones that are smart, 'cause it kind of lets you know
how smart you actually are. And I'm not here for that. I'm here to blow away a bunch
of bad guys and feel awesome. At number two, is the helicopter lie from "Left 4 Dead 2." It's probably one of the
most benign lies on the list. But I always think it's interesting when a game presents a situation where it seems to be
really tense, but it isn't. In the final mission of the
Parish in "Left 4 Dead 2" the game tells you need
to hurry across the bridge because your escape helicopter's
gonna leave in 10 minutes. You feel like you gotta rush to the end as quickly as possible, but the helicopter doesn't ever leave. It just doesn't leave,
it stays there, it waits. You can hang out on that bridge
for the rest of your days and it will never leave. The time limit is just
there to make you think it's a mad dash to the escape when in reality you can
take as long as you want. That doesn't make it like easy, of course, you can still get killed
by swarms of zombies. They're attacking you pretty much nonstop, so it's not like you're
gonna wanna sit in place and not do anything but that time limit, it's totally meaningless. It's just a thing to
make the final stretch of this campaign a little more exciting. (guns banging) And at number one, mirrors
in "Duke Nukem 3D." we've probably talked about this before, but I love the way old games would use pretty rudimentary tricks to make their worlds
appear more realistic. Take for example, "Duke
Nukem 3D" and its mirrors, they appear to be exactly what
you'd think, a reflection, but the build engine was not
capable of reflective surfaces. In fact, a lot of games still
struggle with reflections. It's getting better with
ray tracing and all of that, but we're not even going to pretend that there is ray tracing
in the build engine. So Duke 3D wanted to do something in contrast to "Doom" or "Quake," which was make things
that are at least somewhat recognizable as a real place. So something like a bathroom
would have stalls, sinks, and of course, a big mirror
where you can see yourself. How do they do that? Simple, it's not a mirror, it's a window. It's not a loop, it's a spiral. No. They just copied and pasted
the room in the reflection and they put in a copy of Duke that follows your inputs but mirrored. It's honestly a little
creepy when you realize there's just another Duke over there, copying everything you do. But it's also like a
solution for a problem. It works and it looks good. In fact, I remember the
first time I saw a mirror in "Duke Nukem 3D" and I was like, what? How are they doing this? (tense music) I do have a quick bonus for you too. Not anything from the actual game, but Project Natal, E3 2009, Milo. Like, look up the presentation from E3 if you wanna see just a totally
shameless nonsense thing. You've never seen
anything as obviously fake as this demo of the game Milo from the bullshit master
himself, Peter Molyneux. It's not even trying to look
like something that's real. And Peter Molyneux has like the gal to say "What you're seeing is
not acted or scripted." Like, off the charts
on the bullshit meter. One of the most obviously
fake E3 demos of all time. - Goggles? - Put 'em on like this. - Notice what she did, this wasn't acted. She felt the need to reach
down for those goggles. - [Falcon] And that's all for today. Leave us a comment, let
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