I’m playing Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time but also watching a playthrough of it on YouTube (making sure that I’m always ahead of the playthrough in my own story progression though). It’s really cool how much foreshadowing that game has!
Not a surprise, motherfucka!
What you’re saying is lies, motherfucka!
Lots of discussion here but I’m surprised that I haven’t seen mention of Andrew Ryan from Bioshock! I think that experience fits the meme here pretty well. Maybe I was just younger and more naive but I remember being pretty stunned that I missed all of the “would you kindly”'s peppered throughout the entire first playthrough 😅
Okay this is probably very niche, but Life Is Strange:
“I can frame any of you in a dark corner and capture you in a moment of desparation” 💀 (iykyk)
It’s not exactly a replayable game since it’s story based, but still, you go through the time travel plot thing, going back in time and then hear that the second time around and you’re like: “oh you little shit”
And the game is really proud of it since they cut back in time to it immediately after the foreshadowed thing just in case you forgot.
DUDE this came to mind too!! So creepy.
Such an awesome game series. Just finished 2.
i have rewatched true detective season 1 many many many times. good stores are meant to be re-experienced. The best ones are designed to be re-experienced over and over
What bugs me is that when you realize how incredibly reluctant game writers are to have a character just flat out lie to you, you can see this coming really early on the first run. They’ll omit information or sidestep questions, but they won’t just fucking lie when it would make sense for them to do so.
I broke a player’s brain in college playing DND where an NPC just lied to her.
She’d asked where so-and-so was. NPC didn’t like her or her faction, so he just lied and said he’d taken up boxing. This isn’t an especially credible lie because so-and-so was a lightweight nerd. But she says okay and goes tearing up the local boxing clubs, and can’t find the guy.
She’s like “where is he?”
Me: “you don’t see him, and no one’s even heard of him.”
Her: “but the guy said he was here”
Me: “he did”
Her: “so where is he”
Me: “doesn’t look like he’s here”
Her: “but he said he was”
Me: “he did say that”
Her: “so why isn’t he here?”
This went on for a while until one of the other players got impatient and said “the guy who doesn’t like you maybe lied to you! Or was wrong! Can we move on please??”
Because it is hard to convey a lie through story, unless blatantly saying it was a lie afterwards.
Can’t you just find out it was a lie by noticing that what they said wasn’t true? Of course it could be that they were wrong but also if it turns out they were the baddie…
They also tend to spell out the way the character deceived you without lying anyway, so just flat out having a character tell you that another character lied wouldn’t be weird.
“For those who come after”?


that’s what i miss about suspense movies. it’s like music. it’s the communal “guess where this is going if you don’t already know it” game
In the last Ace Attorney game, they do this in a tricky way.
“Yes, all of you could see this villain coming right in front of your eyes. But did you see the tapdancing bear?”
You all thought it was the dancing bear >!bit it was me, Dio!<
King Dragon sends his regards…
For I am a master of deceptio-
I fucking loved Doakes, he was the best character in that show.
The most heartbreaking video game betrayal for me was Harle in Chrono Cross. She just left. It destroyed me. I could fix her…
The whole ending was the worst betrayal.
!It was all a dream!<
This was not a spoiler though, use format of
::: spoiler title Content :::It wasn’t a dream, they freed Schala from the core of Lavos and uncreated the time devourer and the fractured timeline. Some of it was technically a dream, but that “dream” manifested into reality because of Serge’s accident and them interacting at the time the experiment in the Sea of Eden split the timeline and creates real people (Lynx and Harle, and kind of Kidd, but she’s a projection of Schala that manifested by reaching out from the end of time and interacting with the consciousness of Serge during the splitting of the timeline/him dying/not dying in the Sea of Eden when he was a kid.) from Serge’s fears and memories.
I have no idea where you’re getting it was all a dream from, unless you didn’t use the Chrono Cross and got the bad ending, but that’s still not a dream.
Idk iif I did. It’s been 25 years.
You go back to the beach at the beginning where everyone only says 1 boring like of dialogue on repeat. All your friends, everything you did is gone. None of it really happened or it was all erased idk. And Kidd(the love interest) spends her life looking for you but never finds you.
I was wholey convinced it would’ve been better to die to the final boss, or just stop playing right at the end.
The whole game was super confusing to me as a child compared to Chrono Trigger and even Legend of Dragoon.
But I was also color blind so shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, that’s the bad ending where nothing was fixed and the fractured timeline continues and the time devourer still lives at the end of time and will eventually devour all of time and space. Not a dream, it’s another fractured timeline created by the time devourer in the final battle outside of time that separates Kidd from Serge so that Lavos/The Time Devourer can accomplish its goal. If you use the Chrono Cross in the final fight then Schala will be on the beach reaching out to Serge at the end, letting you know Schala is free meaning the timeline is fixed and Lavos was fully destroyed and never evolved to be the time devourer.
The story for Chrono Cross is convoluted as fuck, rivaled only by Kingdom Hearts. Chrono Trigger was a lot more straightforward and didn’t lather itself in poetry and philosophy, and it’s confusing time bullshittery doesn’t really come into play until new game+.
Legend of Dragoon is the dog’s bollocks, I love that game so much.
Okay yeah so I looked it up and no I never would’ve managed to do what it wanted without a guide. I’m colorblind af - I literally just grinded my way through any elemental weakness.
But don’t even get me started on Legend Of Dragoon. Been chasing that high for decades.
Expedition 33 scratched that itch. So did Chained Echoes. But not much else so far
Shout out to Vanguard Bandits.
Oh, fo shizzle, I had the guide book when I was a kid playing, otherwise that game would have frustrated the hell out of me instead of becoming a lifelong obsession. I 100% understand where you’re coming from, that game fucking hates coherent concepts.
I’ve never played Vanguard Bandits, but if it’s being brought up in the context of Chrono Cross and Legend of Dragoon then it’s going to have a home on my Miyoo Flip. Thanks!
literally this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN9DW4rrEjY
Nah, the Lysandreoth archetype is more like “Me on my first playthrough and realizing most of his lines are hints” territory. I genuinely thought Pokémon X and Y would have a twist that Lysandre isn’t the villain because his dialogue is so agonizingly unsubtle. I was trying to parse it for subtle hints that he was secretly good.
Edit: Apparently TV Tropes calls this trope “obvious Judas” (which is much more immediately understood but way less funny than “Lysandreoth”).
but what about Archibald, he’s like the best.
King Dragon sends his regards.
That’s so nice of him! Tell him I appreciate it.
Actually more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmQWH7P0gIE
“Relevant ProZD” is the new “relevant xkcd” but for gaming instead of general internet
True, well I’m off gathering some Pinecones.
I love the kuja theme in the background.
“You heard that right, Gafgarion. I want you to show up to this next fight naked and unarmed for no particular reason.”
Username checks out.
I already hated doing the jobs for Micah in RDR2. They were the most frustrating quests. When the twist came later on, I was ready to fight against him.
This was intentional. Micah is antagonistic towards you from the get-go, Dutch begins to turn on you while you start to agree with Arthur (Dutch sounds less reasonable etc) . By the time you get to the island you are meant to be frustrated, tired from trying to “just finish the damn game” and you’re stranded with the 4 people you (the player) like the least - right after at least 2 of them bungled the heist in Saint Denis that got you in this mess. All the levels are just shooting gallery type beats to vent your frustration. There was a video on YouTube about emotional manipulation of the player that was a great write-up about this phenomena in RDR2, and why the ending mission American Venom feels so cathartic.
Edit: I actually found it! “Should Games Be Frustrating”. The first 8-9 minutes are largely Red Dead 2 and trails.off with that theme of using frustration to funnel player emotion, so I dont think you need to watch the whole thing.
Oh wow, that all makes sense. What a masterful game.
Found the video Should Games Be Frustrating
First 8 minutes or so are red dead 2, and explain using frustration to funnel the player places or to do things. I found it some years after I played it, but even then he basically called out how I did my playthrough, which was spooky. Means the manipulation worked lol
Them: “You just wait for my heel turn and act three. I’m going to get you.”
Me: “I wonder what they meant by that?” 🤔
good ole Patches.
My first couple of re-runs, I was annoyed with him and would kill him on sight.
After a while (and in other games), I began to embrace the betrayal. Like, “Sure thing, bud. I’ll go stand right over there by the cliff… Oh, you rascal, you.” I realized it’s more fun to go along for the ride.
Patches is like the reverse of this. He betrays you immediately but once he realizes you’re not a greedy fool who’ll go hollow at the first sign of failure he’s chill.
By chill you mean betrays you again, finds out you’re so gullible you can be betrayed repeatedly, and goes on to do this? Then yeah
Still, it’s fun
In Ds1 he only betrays you twice (once really if you’re on quickroll weight, you can just run over the bridge faster than it falls). And if you call him out on it he gives you humanity, which is probably the most valuable resource for undead. Then he sells you stuff and gossips about other characters.
Don’t remember what all he does in DS3
Wow, I meant Elden Ring, there it’s at least four times. Also, looks to be the same character to me
goddam micah
I knew that fucker was going to be a problem even on my first play through. The fact that I couldn’t murder him was really annoying.
I wanted to let him rot in that fucking prison. The fact I had to loose so much karma made me all the more ready to kill him.
Micah isn’t even an informant until after Guarma. Early in the game in chapter 2 it’s clearly Sean who is informing to the local law. That’s why the train robbery was so sus and a trap.












