(logo chimes) - [Falcon] Video games
often have unspoken rules, sensibilities that people develop
over years of playing lots of different types of games, and some of them just throw all of it out. Hi folks, it's Falcon,
and today on Gameranx, 10 times games broke all
the video games rules. Starting off with number 10, it's Hellblade, Senua's Sacrifice. If there's one ironclad rule when it comes to designing games, it's that if you tell the players
something in the tutorial, it has to be true. If every game came out and
said jump by pressing A, but you actually jump by pressing Y, then tutorials would be meaningless because nobody would trust them. That would basically be anarchy, right? The developers of Hellblade
realize this implicit trust, gave them an opportunity
to add a layer of tension to the game that otherwise
wouldn't be there. At the start of the game, after dying once in a scripted event, the game tells you more or less that if you died too many
times from this point forward, the game will delete your save and you'll have to start
over from the beginning. For a lot of people, just the warning was
enough to get them on edge. I know it spooked me and it made me play as cautiously as possible. I believe this for quite
a while to be frank, and so did a lot of others. A bunch of people even just gave up there. They saw the message and
thought, "Eh, that's too much." I'm not doing that. And this simple message totally changed how players experience the game. But here's the thing, it's just not true. In the same way Fargo says, "It's based on a true story," but the whole thing's actually made up. This message, total fabrication. There's no punishment for dying too much. The game would never delete your save, and it was a lie to make
the player paranoid, which is how the main character feels with players having more access to developers than ever before. We do know the games actually
lie to us all the time, like about how much damage we take or how far off a platform we are and a million other little things. But Hellblade took things a step further. They said there was a major game mechanic that could potentially
lose hours of gameplay that didn't exist. And number nine is Far Cry 4. Most games want you to experience their
content to the fullest. They want you to do everything possible and get the most out of the game. Developers put years of hard
work into games they make. They want a game that people like and spend a lot of time with. That's like, yeah, obvious. Yeah, it's a job. People get paid for it,
so they do want money, but most people don't
want to just make stuff that people hate either. One thing devs just
don't want is for players to turn their game on, play it for 15 minutes and
get a satisfying ending. That's what makes Far
Cry 4 very different. Even from games that do something similar like Far Cry 5 and 6. In those games, it's possible
to end the game early, but the ending isn't exactly satisfying. They both imply your
work is left unfinished. If Far Cry 4, the first game in the
series to pull this trick, it's presented differently. In many ways, the ending, which occurs if you just simply
sit and wait in the bad guy, Pagan Min's compound for about 15 minutes after he tells you he's got something and he'll be right back. - Now, please stay right
here. Enjoy the Crab Rangoon. Don't move. I will be right back. Yuma, we need to talk. - [Falcon] You get an ending. He does come back and alongside you, he takes you to where you need to go to spread your mother's ashes, which is the goal of the game. Normally it takes dozens of hours to do, but if you just wait, it's
over in less than an hour. What's wild about is, they just give you the
twist ending right there. It's a more or less the same
ending, you get normally, only with a lot less
violence and bloodshed. That's what's so rule
breaking about this sequence. It doesn't just drop a joke ending on you or cut to black with some snarky texts. The ending you get for
finishing the game early is as much a real ending as the
one you get after 30 hours. It goes against most game
designers' instincts too, but really the ending is triggered before any real gameplay even starts. If you dropped 60 bucks to
get this game on release day, you're not gonna take that ending, take the disc out of the
tray and snap it in half. You're probably gonna
play it again, right? I know, it's weird, but like, you don't get something
particularly different when you do. And number 8, it's Legend of
Zelda, Breath of the Wild. Been more than half a decade since Breath of the Wild came out. So it's easy to take its
innovations for granted, but even this far in the future, many of the things actually do seem kind of sacrilegious towards
normal game design principles. Most open world games
are highly tutorialized with a long series of missions that get the player
accustomed to the game play. Breath of the Wild has
something kind of like that, but you're free to ignore
it and a lot of players do. The game lets you climb almost anywhere. The only limits your stamina. And when this game came out, handholds were common in
most open world games, especially ones that
were focused on climbing like Assassin's Creed. Those were pretty minor compared to the fact the game just
gives you all the powers, right from the start too. Normally these things take time to acquire and you get 'em by completing dungeons, but you get 'em in the
equivalent of the tutorial and you're free to use them
anytime you want from there. Most open world games limit your progress or level gate certain areas, but Breath of the Wild
basically lets you do whatever. Certain areas are tougher, but there's nothing really locking you out from exploring the entire world. After the tutorial zone is done, the game lets players
make things as difficult or as easy as they want. The devs let players break the
game or get around puzzles, find ways to cheat the system. It is mostly completely allowed too. On the other hand, if you
wanna rush to the ending, the game allows that as well. The game offers a level of freedom that isn't just unusual
for a Legend of Zelda game, it's pretty out there for
open world Games, full stop. Even now, few games have managed to
capitalize on the opportunities and ideas this game presented. Like Tears of the Kingdom is kind of it, and it greatly expands it to
such a point where it's absurd to think that some other
developer will manage what they managed there. And in terms of power, it's on the least powerful
mainstream hardware. God, everything about Legend
of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, and tears of the Kingdom,
really, it's remarkable. The Zelda series was
ultimately really formulaic and now it's probably one
of the most innovative and experimental game series out there. And number 7 is Inscription. In the 2010s, we start to see more games that could be best described
as trickster games. Ones that intentionally
deceived the player. Inscription, not the first,
but definitely one of the best. What starts off as a pretty standard but pretty fun rogue-like card game becomes something much, much more. At first, it starts off with odd details
like cards talking to you. Then you notice that you
can actually stand up and walk around the spooky
cabin and solve puzzles. It seems like that's the whole game too. Just one smallest subversion
added in a meta narrative to a rogue-like, but it gets a lot more
complicated from there. This is act one. In the two other major acts,
the game completely changes. I'm not just talking about
the card game either. I'm talking about the visuals. The story takes a hard turn into something completely
different, it's a hell of a ride. Nothing in the game's steam page or pre-release information hinted that there was anything more to it. The developers sort of bucked the trend that most developers want a player to know what they're getting. These guys,
(Falcon chuckles) they did not want that. Most of Inscription is
hidden up the sleeve. I'm sure there's a lot of
people who played this game, maybe for multiple hours, without realizing there's more to it. Things really start getting
wild by the end too. The game pulls some creative tricks, like reading actual files on
your computer to taunt you. They even go so far as to threaten to delete files off your pc. That's something they'd never do, right? They wouldn't actually do
it, of course they wouldn't. But if they did, imagine they did, people would be really pissed off. That's why you don't run games that start throwing you
curve balls like that. In administrator mode, don't do that. I don't think that this would do it even with administrator mode, but still. Hey, big warning, right here. Phantom Liberty spoilers
for this upcoming point. So skip this point if you don't
want to be spoiled for that 'cause we going to talk specifics. And number 6 is Cyberpunk 2077's
Phantom Liberty expansion. You know how video games
are supposed to end, right? You attack the floating castle, dethrone the God, save the world. Not quite over the top in
that way in Cyberpunk's case, just barely though, the standard ending has
you assault Arasaka Tower and Daring Ray that cements your status as a night city legend
whether you live or die. With the Phantom Liberty expansion, there's a completely new ending that could be accessed after
finishing the expansion. I assumed it would be
like a different contract for the Arasaka Tower assault, but no, it's completely different. Instead of attacking the
company in a desperate attempt to cure what the relic
in your head is doing to slowly kill you, Solomon Reed offers a much
more mundane solution surgery. - [Reed] This hemisphere's
top surgeons are waiting to help you. It'll work, rest assured. - [Falcon] It seems like the
whole thing's just more bait, hanging in front of you that's gonna get pulled
away in the last minute. The game is kind of full
of attempts to find a cure that end in failure. So what's one more? But no, this actually happens. You get in a helicopter, you say goodbye to Johnny Silverhand and you wake up in a hospital. What makes this ending so unusual, so rule breaking is just how normal it is. Usually this kind of mundane
reality is glossed over in games and an ending of their RPG. An ending like this would, it'd be like a few slides
with some narration, but here it's kind of big, it's it's over an hour long and you get to see in precise detail. How basically nothing you did or even would've done
made a lot of difference and life goes on. It kind of seems like
a cruel joke at first, but it's really not, for a game is over the
top as Cyberpunk often is. This ending is really human and relatable. It's hard not to talk about it
without spoiling everything. In fact, I think we've
probably spoiled a lot of it by saying the person is cured. But in the world of video games, it feels really subversive
to end your story in a way that takes away the player's agency, but somehow is still satisfying and wow, did they do that. Moving on to number 5, it's Shenmue. While we're on the topic of mundane things that seem out of place in video games, Shenmue, what makes this
game seem so odd compared to other open world games, is how totally fricking
obsessed with the mundane it is. This is an epic revenge story and it's not about running
around and kicking ass, it's actually about getting change to put into vending machines that give you a little toy in a little one of those little bubble
things and collecting them. (wheel squeaking)
(machine beeps) - [Ryo] Huh? - [Falcon] No, it's about
slowly investigating leads and getting money together for
a trip to follow the killer. It's the sort of stuff that
games don't usually bother with, partly because real life is
not the most exciting thing in the world. In this case, I'm not immediately saying, all the dull busy work makes
a game better or worse, I am just saying, I'm calling it unique. Nowhere is this more true
than near the end of the story where Ryo gets a job
as a forklift operator and I'm not saying like, this is a forklift mini
game that you do once and then maybe it's a side quest that you can do if you're bored and wanna make a little extra coin. No, you actually have to go there and operate a forklift daily
for about a week as a real job. And if you don't figure out how to progress the story from there, you have to keep doing
it because it's your job. For even the most hardcore
fans of the series, the whole segment gets very old, but it is part of the presentation. The sequel, Shenmue 2 finds a little
bit of a better balance between the dull realities of real life and the epic revenge story. But I think it's safe to say that Shenmue 1 did something
completely different than anything else out there. Maybe not for the sake of fun, but I didn't say that
breaking the rules always, was exciting and enjoyable. I just said it was breaking the rules. (forklift engine revving) (forklift beeps) And number 4 is Demon Souls. You know how final bosses
are supposed to go, right? They're the culmination of everything leading up to that point. The ultimate challenge. There's plenty of games that don't do that and end with disappointingly
lame and easy fights or worst of all the QTE boss battle, which reek of developers
running out of time and money and really just thoughts on
what a proper fight should be. I don't know. There's plenty of games that have unsatisfying final
bosses though, unintentionally, but there are some who
do it knowing exactly what they're doing and that's Demon Souls. Demon Souls is relentlessly odd. Many of the bosses are trick encounters that can be easily beaten if
you know their weaknesses. And a lot of them can't
almost barely be described as bosses. Even the giant soul bosses, you encounter at the end
of each arch stone area. But even after all that, I was still unprepared
for what I would find at the end of this game. The story of demon souls is that the kingdom is being tormented by this being called the Old One, an ancient demon that's woken up. In any other game, it's your job to put them back
to sleep by beating them up. But this game, yeah,
it's different than that. So you travel underneath the nexus and you find yourself in a strange void with this gigantic Old
One in front of you. You travel inside the creature
ready to face out the king. The guy who started this whole mess, the fake king you fought
earlier was tough as hell. So this real one, he's real king. Oh, that's gonna be bad, isn't it? So you enter the boss arena and there's the king, he's there, but he's kind of more of a blob now. He could barely move and his
attacks are really pitiful but there he is. That's the last boss.
There's no follow up. This is not a fake out,
it's not a first form, it's the final battle, a pile of puss. It doesn't even seem to
be entirely sentient, let alone dangerous. It doesn't mean you don't
still kill it, but yeah, a lot of people wonder what
the hell the developers were trying to say with this
damp squib of a final boss. And I don't pretend that I know for sure, but it's my opinion that the whole idea is that all of the bad crap that follows the initial real
problem can actually get worse and uphold all of the nonsense even as the thing that
started all of it kinda decays into nothing. As I look around society now, I can't help but think that might be what they
were trying to say. (Falcon laughs) - [Boss] You fool, don't you understand? No one wishes to go on. (water sloshing) - [Falcon] At number
three is Cruelty Squad. Most video games have their
economies based around buying and selling items of fixed value. Cruelty Squad ties its economy to an entirely volatile stock market where the stock prices swing pretty wildly as do the prices of organs
and fish, other commodities, all swings back and forth
in-between missions. The stocks are also influenced
by what happens on missions. Let's say you take on a
mission to assassinate the CEO of a company that's on the market. Well, sell your investments
before that mission 'cause ooh, you know what's gonna happen? At least you better. I mean, if you don't, spoiler
alert, you lose your ass. Everything about Cruelty Squad
is abrasive and uncomfortable from the eye searing color palette to the hideous environments. And frankly, look at this UI. What is this? This all seems like it
was made by a crazy man and it probably was, but the crazy man had a purpose. Almost everything about this game, gleefully subverts the rules
of game design in good taste. It's the economy, stupid. Was it Bill Clinton that said, I don't remember who said that. He called everybody who thought it wasn't the
economy a moron, though. You know how upgrades
work in any other game, you go to a store, everything's
always the same price. You got a Skyrim like barter system. You buy your equipment, your upgrades, you don't worry about
fluctuations in price. And the vendors in Bethesda
games don't have wild leave in prices based on what you're getting or where you are, mostly just the same. It's not like that in Cruelty Squad, instead of having everything have a price, like a set price, this upgrade costs this amount, this weapon costs that amount. Everything in the game is tied to this volatile stock
market that I mentioned. Seriously, everything will
shift in price between missions. Sometimes your missions will affect stocks in ways that are not understandable, like you get why the CEO thing clears out a company's stock price, right? You understand that. Sometimes there's not really
a great indicator like that. The intent is of course, a pointed take down of
late stage capitalism, one that is far less abstract than that blob boss at the end of Demon Souls. This one didn't take the kind of decoding that I think I gave you
there in that last point. But yeah, (gun bangs) (gun clatters) (gun bangs) At number two is Pizza Tower,
which is an anti-capitalist. No, I'm kidding.
(Falcon laughs) I don't know. Maybe it is. I haven't thought about Pizza Tower enough to give you that kind of a thing. But I will say this, one thing I like about
games is when they work, I don't want 'em just
shutting down outta nowhere. When I play a game, I
would rather it not crash. And I think that that's a
rule most developers agree on. I say most because there are
a few fiery rebels out there who intentionally trigger
crash dates in the game. I know Undertale pulls a trick like that, but it's pretty near the end of the game and only under certain circumstances. Pizza Tower is kind of Sonic
Cross with Renin Stimpy and the main guy is kind
of like an ugly Mario. It's one of those rebels, if you sit on the title
screen for about 40 seconds without doing anything, the man guy will jump at the screen, scream and crash the game. It just turns off instantly. That's it. It's one of those tricks
only possible in a PC game, if you tried to pull this
sort of thing on a console, people would be freaking out. And, that's probably why people
don't intentionally crash games on purpose. It's probably why it's frowned upon. But there are some weird outliers and Pizza Tower is, I mean,
this isn't the only way. It's a weird outlier, but probably one of the
more unique ways actually. And finally at number one Frog Fractions. There's Inscription, a game
that has multiple layers, but at least the top layer
actually looks like a real game. And then you've got Frog Fractions, a game that looks like nothing. The name, the store page, everything about this one, makes it look like a rudimentary math game for elementary school children. And even after playing it for a while, it takes some effort to
find the deeper level and that's the game. When you do finally breakthrough,
the joke reveals itself. It's kind of an a ridiculous
experiment to make a game that is as incoherent and
ridiculous as possible. That's absurd enough. But the sequel is even
more of a rule breaker. Instead of capitalizing on
the previous game's success, like you'd assume they
hit Frog Fractions 2 inside of another game and
didn't tell anybody what it was. Hundreds of shovel where
garbage games get uploaded on Steam every week. Hell, sometimes that much
can come out in a single day. Any other developer would love to have the name recognition
of a game like Frog Fractions. But they were deliberately avoiding that. It's, I mean, it is the internet. So people figured out
that it was the sequel. Pretty quick, the game is
called Glittermitten Grove. A weird 2D management sim with fairies, but it takes even longer from there to get into the real game. These games just threw out the rule book on how to market their
games and it's somehow work. I'll give you a quick bonus to Desert Bus. This game is intentionally
aggravating as humanly possible, created as part of the
compilation pen and teller's, smoke and mirrors, a
game that never came out. Desert Bus was literally
designed to be miserable. All you do, and I mean
all you do is drive a bus for eight hours between Tucson, Arizona and Las Vegas,
Nevada in real time. Yes, real time. Further, the bus, it
constantly lists to the right. If you go off the road, the engine stalls. You have to start the
whole thing all over again. If you complete the
journey, you get one point. That's it. You can't pause it. There's almost no scenery, there's no cars on the road, that's it. It's a game intentionally
made to be as bad as possible. And it succeeds with flying colors. And that's all for today.
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