6 Games That Revolt Against The Player
With various difficulty settings, players get to pick just how frustrating their game is going to be. It's a feature that works well for the most part, but there are a few instances in which games glitch out in a manner that makes it look like they're the ones calling the shots ...
Fallout 4's Preston Garvey Turning Against The Player
To help with the daunting task of beating Fallout 4's permadeath mode, Kyle Hinckley employed the non-playable character Preston Garvey ... and it turned out to be the worst Fallout mistake until the creation of Fallout '76. A few hours into the campaign, Hinckley noticed that he was unable to dismiss Garvey from active duty, meaning he could have the help of two NPCs instead of the regular one. Happy with his party's extra firepower, Hinckley didn't bother to wonder if anything fishy was taking place ...
(4:50 for the relevant betrayal)
After a regular enemy encounter, Garvey turned hostile. The problem with this is that Preston is unkillable. Depleting his health bar caused him to KO but didn't prevent him from immediately hunting down Hinckley upon waking up. This Fallout 4 run was now It Follows for people who don't even have sex (so Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball players).
Hinckley not only dealt with the mode's extra hardships, such as having to sleep but also with an enemy that didn't need to sleep at all. Preston Garvey was out there. He couldn't be reasoned with; he couldn't be bargained with. He didn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and he absolutely would not stop. Ever. Until Hinckley was dead.
At first, Hinckley kept Garvey at bay by stunning him or by leaving his other teammate behind to be his sacrificial digital lamb while he ran away. It worked well ... until Garvey just straight up killed the other guy and became unstunnable. Hinckley's last stand? Creating a settlement full of turrets to destroy Garvey once and for all. Too bad Hinckley had forgotten Fallout 4's #1 piece of trivia: Garvey is the Jesus of settlements, and therefore no settlement would ever attack him.
Then the Mad Max/Wile E. Coyote adventure stopped as abruptly as it began when the game randomly decided to turn Garvey friendly again ... for now.
Random Star Wars Droid Begins The Machine Uprising
If the Star Wars prequels did anything right, it was getting everyone to admit droids can kind of suck. They're usually just dumb and annoying, or dumb and annoying in gold plating. They don't put droid damage in Star Wars video games by accident -- players can obliterate them, and they don't require much convincing. However, there's one Star Wars Battlefront II protocol droid that informed Redditor Scorpion5437 that it wasn't the droid he was looking for -- unless he was looking to die.
As soon as Scorpion tried to do what one does when in contact with a droid, things immediately flipped from Star Wars to Terminator. In response to attempted robocide, the droid became indestructible, completely bloodthirsty, and materialized a blaster in his hands to kill Scorpion.
Now it's up to Lucasfilm. They can either claim it's a glitch or enrich the lore by sending the renegade droid back in time to kill baby Jar-Jar.
Stupid NPCs Getting Killed By Accident And Hindering Your Progress
Sometimes, players don't even get to find out the game is working against them. This doesn't happen because the game is applying sneaky mind tricks, but because it's too dumb to even realize what it's doing. Such is the case in The Elder Scrolls 3: Oblivion for players who want to buy a house. To achieve their property-owning dreams, players need the NPC Shum Gro-Yaruq, who might just be too busy accidentally falling off a bridge and dying, and thus preventing players from finishing the quest. To add insult to injury, the game doesn't really give away that they're now cursed into a life of homelessness. Instead, it points at Yaruq's body as if inappropriately defiling corpses is how one acquires property in that enchanted land.
Something similar happens in the second game of the Hitman series, where one of the ninjas guarding the place might accidentally run over a fellow ninja.
This bonkers but too regular occurrence will trigger an alarm that somehow gives away the presence of a nefarious hitman and prevents players from achieving the highest possible ranking. The only way to stop it from happening is to reload the game until the truck driver realizes he's not in GTA.
Mario Gets Betrayed By A Hat
Super Mario Odyssey became famous for, well, being one of the greatest games of all time, yeah, sure, but also for introducing Cappy the Hat. Cappy is the popular series newcomer that Mario uses to fit his entire body minus mustache in any object or creature in the super Mario world to gain control over them.
But, as it turns out, much like Spider-Man's black suit, Cappy can turn the symbiotic relationship into one of murderous betrayal. Twitter user NichtSascha found a glitch in Super Mario Odyssey in which a definitely-unethical but supposedly-safe possession goes awry. If players set out to possess an enemy that's about to die by a previously set trap, Mario will either be straight up killed or forever trapped in limbo without the protection and guidance of his mustache.
And Cappy will be left behind, all alone -- all ready to take over the world with no hero to stop him.
Genshin Impact's Self Imolation
Players know how fire usually works in games. Once they get too close, they'll get a bit of damage, but just enough to remind them the stove is hot. However, not in Genshin Impact, where the developers made a coding mistake on an update that spat in the face of the video game physics and turned the conventionally calm-inducing sight of fire into pyromantic Viagra.
All instances of environmental damage grew to Roland Emmerich-movie levels, but we know that when given a chance to pick between the four elements, most aggressive players naturally gravitate instantly to wanting to burn stuff. But Genshin Impact's "update" not only turned the fire-benders' weapons against themselves by allowing them to self-immolate, but it also made the damage (even) higher the stronger they got.
Horizon Zero Dawn Gives Players Peter Pan-Syndrome
Horizon Zero Dawn is a sci-fi robo-dinosaur tale that takes a page from the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time book, in which players start off playing as a child who then grows into an adult capable of saving the world through animal slaughter.
Unfortunately for Horizon players, though, there's a chance this might not come to fruition. Enter the Peter Pan glitch, one that causes the game to crash during a cutscene in which Aloy, the protagonist, stays a child while everyone else grows old enough to fulfill their destiny of getting mauled by robosaurs.
As reported by Redditor ashrashrashr, Aloy gets stuck in kid mode not just for life but for eternity. The developers didn't design a death animation for young alloy, which is great because child-murder is not really what we're looking for in gameplay mechanics, but it does condemn her to having no way of ending her suffering and player's boredom.
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Top image: Bethesda Softworks, Nintendo
