The (Selected) List Of Console Role Playing Game Clichés. - by Jordana
Jordana on 30/11/2003 at 06:56
My apologies if you've all read this a hundred times before, but:
I tried to pick out the ones most relevant to Morrowind...
1.The Compulsories
There's always a fire dungeon, an ice dungeon, a sewer maze, a misty forest, a derelict ghost ship, a mine, a glowing crystal maze, an ancient temple full of traps, a magic floating castle, and a technological dungeon.
2. Garrett's Principle
Let's not mince words: you're a thief. You can walk into just about anybody's house like the door wasn't even locked. You just barge right in and start looking for stuff. Anything you can find that's not nailed down is yours to keep. You will often walk into perfect strangers' houses, lift their precious artifacts, and then chat with them like you were old neighbors as you head back out with their family heirlooms under your arm.
3. Just Nod Your Head And Smile
No matter how big that big-ass sword is, you won't stand out in a crowd. Nobody ever crosses the street to avoid you or seems to be especially shocked or alarmed when a heavily armed gang bursts into their house during dinner, rummages through their posessions, and demands to know if they've seen a black-caped man. People can get used to anything, apparently.
4. MacGyver Rule
Other than for the protagonists, your choice of weapons is not limited to the prosaic guns, clubs, or swords. Given appropriate skills, you can cut a bloody swath across the continent using gloves, combs, umbrellas, megaphones, dictionaries, sketching tablets -- you name it, you can kill with it. Even better, no matter how surreal your choice of armament, every store you pass will just happen to stock an even better model of it for a very reasonable price. Who else is running around the world killing people with an umbrella? (-or in MW's case, a severed Nord leg?)
5. Nostradamus Rule
All legends are 100% accurate. All rumors are entirely factual. All prophecies will come true, and not just someday but almost immediately.
6. Selective Paralysis
Your characters must always keep both feet on the ground and will be unable to climb over low rock ledges, railings, chairs, cats, slightly differently-colored ground, or any other trivial objects which may happen to be in their way. Note that this condition will not prevent your characters from jumping from railroad car to railroad car later in the game.
7. Bed Bed Bed
A good night's sleep will cure all wounds, diseases, and disabilities, up to and including death in battle.
8.Zelda's Axiom
Whenever somebody tells you about "the five ancient talismans" or "the nine legendary crystals" or whatever, you can be quite confident that Saving the World will require you to go out and find every last one of them.
9. ¿Quien Es Mas Macho? (Fargo Rule)
Every powerful character you attempt to seek aid from will first insist upon "testing your strength" in a battle to the death.
10. Thousand Year Rule
The Ancient Evil returns to savage the land every thousand years on the dot, and the last time it showed up was just about 999.9875 years ago. Despite their best efforts, heroes of the past were never able to do more than seal the Evil away again for the future to deal with (which brings up the question of just how exactly does this "sealing away" work anyway, but never mind.) The good news is that this time, the Evil will get destroyed permanently. The bad news is that you're the one who's going to have to do it.
11. If You Meet The Buddha In A Random Encounter, Kill Him!
When you're out wandering around the world, you must kill everything you meet. People, animals, plants, insects, fire hydrants, small cottages, anything and everything is just plain out to get you. It may be because of your rampant kleptomania (see Garrett's Principle.)
12. Magical Inequality Theorem
In the course of your travels you may find useful-sounding spells such as Petrify, Silence, and Instant Death. However, you will end up never using these spells in combat because a) all ordinary enemies can be killed with a few normal attacks, making fancy attacks unneccessary, b) all bosses and other stronger-than-average monsters are immune to those effects so there's no point in using them for long fights where they'd actually come in handy, and c) the spells usually don't work anyway.
13. Dungeon Design 101
When you are confronted by two doors, the closer one will be locked and its key will be hidden behind the farther-away one.
14. Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss!
Defeating a dungeon's boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes.
15. Supply and Demand Axiom
Killing a powerful enemy will usually yield an item or weapon that would've been extremely useful if you had gotten it before killing that enemy.
16. Guy in the Street Rule
No matter how fast you travel, rumors of world events always travel faster. When you get to anywhere, the people on the street are already talking about where you've been. The stories of your past experiences will spread even if no witnesses were around to see them.
17. Hey, I Know You!
You will also confront/be confronted by at least three of these obligatory antagonists:
The amazingly good-looking and amazingly evil long-haired prettyboy who may or may not be the ultimate villain.
The insane clown or jester who will turn out to be surprisingly difficult to subdue. Argh! Gaenor...
The mad scientist who likes creating mutated creatures and powerful weapons 'cause it's fun (and also handy if uninvited adventurers show up.)
18. Law of Reverse Evolution (Zeboim Principle)
Any ancient civilizations are inexplicably much more advanced than the current one.
19. You Always Travel In The Right Circles
Whenever you meet a villager or other such incidental character who promises to give you some great piece of needed knowledge or a required object in exchange for a seemingly simple item, such as a bar of soap or a nice straw mat, be prepared to spend at least an hour chasing around the world exchanging useless innocuous item after item with bizarre strangers until you can get that elusive first item you were asked for.
20. Key Item Rule
Never discard, sell, or otherwise remove permamently from your possession any items you begin the game with or acquire within the first town. This is especially true for items that seem to have no practical use, because of...
21. The Law of Inverse Practicality (Key Item Corollary)
Any item that you can acquire will have some sort of purpose. Those that seem to be useless and have no practical value at all, always tend to have great power later on. The earlier you get the item, the later in the game it will be used. The longer the span of time between acquisition and use, the more powerful the item is.
22. The Best-Laid Schemes
The final villain's grand scheme will have involved the deaths of thousands or even millions of innocent people, the clever manipulation of governments, armies, and entire populations, and will have taken anywhere from five to five thousand years to come to fruition. The hero will come up with a method of undoing this plan forever in less than five minutes.
23. Adam Smith's Revenge
By the end of the game you are renowned everywhere as the Legendary Hero, every surviving government and authority figure has rallied behind you, the fate of the world is obviously hanging in the balance, and out of nowhere random passers-by give you a pat on the back and heartfelt good luck wishes. However, shopkeepers won't even give you a discount, much less free supplies for the final battle with evil.
24. "So, Andross, you reveal your true form!"
You will have to kill the evil villain at least twice at the end of the game. First the villain will look like a person or some creature and be rather easy to kill. Then he will grow to about 50 times the hero's size and be much harder to kill.
Tuco on 30/11/2003 at 19:10
haha
RyushiBlade on 30/11/2003 at 20:39
Heh heh. I enjoyed reading that site. Nice job
SomeGuyNamedAl on 4/12/2003 at 01:24
Wait, There's a severed Nord leg as a weapon? Where?
BinaryEgo on 6/12/2003 at 00:12
Thats fantastic, ive not laughed like that for a while......
Thanks:thumb:
