I removed the following from the Metroid: Other M entry:
- Midway through the game, Samus is asked by her former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, to go into an area that's superheated and filled with lava.
- You'd Expect: No problem. Considering the game notably averted Bag of Spilling and Samus still has all her upgrades from Super Metroid, all she has to do is turn on her Varia/Gravity Suit and walk through without fear of being injured by the heat. Better yet, while Adam has restricted her use of weapons, there should be nothing stopping her from employing her defensive suit capabilities, especially in cases where her life is in danger.
- Alternately, he could just say "By the way, Samus, Sector 3 is known for its extreme heat, which has taken its toll on my team's power suit systems. If you have anything that protects from environmental extremes, consider its use authorized." before she gets to the superhot stuff.
- Instead: Neither of them act on the pending situation, and Samus willingly runs through the superheated area taking damage for no discernible reason, until Adam finally tells her to activate her Varia Suit when she comes face to face with a boss and is forced into a protracted battle.
- Even Worse: Again, the sole in-game justification for the authorization system is that using power bombs - a whole one weapon out of the six or seven you have - wherever you want would vaporize your non-Power Suited allies. This apparently means Samus is not allowed to defend herself from hostile environments as best as she can simply because Adam didn't explicitly tell her to keep doing so at the beginning.
- There is also the fact that Adam told her if she used any power-ups without his say-so, she was off the mission with a one-way ticket to court martial town. That said, the stupidity comes in when everyone, especially Samus and even more so himself, realize she's the lynchpin of this mission's succeeding.
- You'd Expect: "Samus, turn on all non-combat abilities to ensure your survival." Alternatively, Samus to either give him the finger and activate the Varia function herself or at the very least ask his permission to do so the instant she realizes the area is superheated, because, again, protecting herself from extreme environments doesn't endanger other people.
- Instead: "I'm still mad you that you quit the Marines after I ordered my brother/your boyfriend to die. You don't get any power ups at all until I say so."
This is an incorrect interpretation of the events of the game. Adam only ordered Samus not to activate her heavy weapons arsenal, because of the potential damage they could cause to the station (even if this damage doesn't show up in-game, it's justified in-universe). Samus voluntarily deactivated the rest of her abilities as a self-imposed challenge. As for the Varia suit, the first super-heated area you encounter is extremely short, and Samus likely felt that she didn't need to pester her C.O. with a trivial request. Since Adam orders her to activate it later on, a much more likely explanation is that he was concerned for her well-being and didn't want her to suffer needless damage.
For a more in-depth analysis of Samus' and Adam's motivations, please follow this link:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/204-classic-gaming/76294902
- In Phantasmagoria a young couple moves into a house that was once owned by an evil sorceror. Your charecter Adrienne then opens the house's Sealed Evil in a Can, thus making a demon possess her husband. During the game's course she picks up a magic spell that can easily defeat the demon.
You'd Expect: Adrienne would use the spell right away to kill the demon, liberate her husband, and thus resulting in a Happy Ending.
Instead: She kills her husband first, thus liberating the demon from his body. The demon which can fly, turn into mist and, due to being about a hundred times stronger than her husband, peel her face off by jamming its thumbs in her eye sockets and giving a little tug. THEN she destroyed the demon, waiting until the last possible instant to do so. So ends the game as she leaves her now wrecked house, and with no husband. Nice job killing him hero.
The problem with this example is the "Instead" part, which forgets that Adrienne doesn't get to kill her possessed husband until he is just about to kill her with the same device. If she made a mistake, she made it well before that desperate moment. (Note that practically every trope potholed here is grossly misused.)
The One Who Fights Monsters
I think the Assassins Creed Franchise has a lot of examples, same with Ace Attorney. I was pondering the idea of maybe giving both their own subpage?
Edited by CleverCorvid Never forget before you've forgiven.
Brainiac0982
Should we index the pages for the various games with their own What An Idiot pages?
Here are some entires I cut for being wrong:
- Heavy Rain
- Madison was only investigating the doctor in relation to a room that the Origami Killer had set up, and got proof that he was merely renting them out to another business associate. So there is no logic in her assuming that he was teh Origami Killer since he lacked anything (in either his house or his MO) resembling the killer's MO, equipment etc.
- Scott letting Lauren kill him without a word fits with him being a deathseeker, combined with his geunine feelings both for her and guilt and pain over killing children.
- LA Noir, Cole investigating Elsyian fields despite being told not to fits him because:
- By that point he was a disgraced detective waiting for a trial to finish him off
- The aronist involved had already burned down many homes, and killed one whole family. Him turning a blind eye to this because the corruption in the police force told him so would be massively out of character
- Elsysian Fields was related to the conspiracy that orchistrated his fall from grace (although granted, he didn't know that at the time).
- Dragon Age, it bugged me that the author of that entry considered sending your only child off to a prison for the rest of his life where he could have his free will/higher thought process stripped away to be the smart thing to do. I ammended this one to make it clear that Isolde keeping her son out of the circle wasn't the stupid thing, it was trusting the first Apostate Mage that came along.
- Metal Gear Solid 4
- Not only did they get the order of events wrong (Ocelot was boarding the helicopter after triggering the nanomachine shutdown that incapacitated Snake), they also understanded the difficulty in that scenario: Snake was armed with a handgun and was a fair distance away (enough that if the scene took place in game, making that shot would be very difficult), against Ocelot who was also partially covered by a concerete railing. Him not taking the shot makes sense considering that he can't see most of his torso (which is where soldiers aim for because it's the easiest part of the body to hit) and if he missed a headshot (which is very likely) Ocelot could simply duck down and be protected while his entire army swarms Snake.
- I also cut the part about the FRO Gs not trying to use their advantages against Snake's allies in the final fight, because the whole point of that last sequence is Ocelot is letting you win, and it's even stated just before the final confrontation that your victory was precisely what he was aiming for. Considering that he controls the FRO Gs via nanomachines, it makes sense to manipulate them into drawing combat out so that Snake can deliever the virus to wipe out the Patriots.
Why are they wrong?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Err, I explained that; the first one I cut stated that Madison should have logically assumed that the doctor she killed was the Origami killer, ignoring the fact that Madison knows the Origami Killer had used a room that this guy rented out to someone else. So really she would be an idiot to assume he was the Origami Killer despite having enough evidence to the contrary.
For Scott not lifting a finger to prevent his murder, as stated he's a deathseeker who does feel guilt over his murders and genuine feelings for his killer. Him not trying to stop her killing his perfectly within the confines of his character.
For LA Noire, the deleted entry stated that Cole was an idiot for not listening to his superior's instructions to ignore the conspiracy that saw to his fall from grace, whilst he literally needed something like that to redeem his reputation/fulfill his need to be a hero.
For Dragon Age, there's plenty of downside's to sending someone to the Mage's Tower, so saying your an idiot for not sending a loved one there post-haste just irks me. But like I said, I edited it to reflect that the character was an idiot for how she avoided it, not because she avoided it.
For Metal Gear, the antagonist is intentionally pulling his punches so that you will suceed, because that accomplishes all of his goals.
And for the part why he didn't just shoot Liquid in the first act, the entry A) got the sequence of events mixed up and B) ignores the fact that Snake didn't have a good shot at him, and was in a position where he only had one shot.
Two more things I deleted:
- For the Ace Attorney example, it listed Pheonix as being an idiot for confronting the person he suspected to be the real murderer. At the time he had no other leads and had to produce an alternate suspect otherwise his client would be found guilty of the murderer, and he had no clue she would call the mafia in to try and deal with him.
For the Knights Of The Old Republic, Revan's actions are pretty vague in terms of his reasoning. All we have to go on is Kriea's word in the sequal, and she's notoriously unreliable on account of her manipulating you for half the game as well as not being Revan himself (whose personality is really defined by the player), so his true motives are somewhat undefined and are more interpretation than fact.
Halo 2: The arbiter was sent into the Threshold gas mine not only to kill the heretics, but also to recover 343 Guilty Spark, whom they had stashed there.
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Was he? I can only remember that he was sent to kill the heretic leader, with no mention made of reclaiming any objects. If that's true, feel free to delete it.
Knights of the Old Republic:
It's implied that Revan never wanted to take over the Republic, just prepare it for the upcoming war with the True Sith. You'd expect: Revan to convince the Republic of the coming threat, using his/her status as a war hero to gain respect and trust and then offer the ridiculously large fleet, created by the Star Forge, to them and spend the next few years helping to train their soldiers in combat and instruct them in how to use the technology created by the Star Forge, or striking at the True Sith in their galaxy, meaning there would be no collateral damage to the Republic itself, while they are still preparing to attack. Instead: Revan wages war against the Republic, supposedly to gain control even though as explained, Revan should really have enough respect to get the Republic to work with him/her. Revan then up and leaves to go and fight the True Sith, who have now had plenty of time to prepare for war, while the Republic is now bankrupt and on the verge of collapse having spent so much resources on the war against Revan. And this guy is meant to be a master tactician...
Historically, Republics and Democracies don't fight wars (ESPECIALLY Wars of Attrition, which that ended up being) very well. There are traitors (or at least people who agree with the enemy), cowardly pacifists (who won't fight even if that's the only option), and people who no attention span whatsoever. That's why Hitler attacked the Western Allies rather than the Soviet Union during the Battle of the Bulge. IF his forces could split the Americans/British, then they'd surrender. Vietnam was the same way. Revan was planning on making it a dictatorship (in the Roman version, not the Nazi Version)
I readded this entry because the justifications for its removal look too much like "I don't agree". If it's indeed wrong, please discuss it here before removing it:
- By far one of the most egregious examples of Genre Blindness is the Reaper's actions regarding the Mass Relays and the Citadel.
Overview: The Reapers designed the Citadel as not only a Mass Relay by itself, but also as a control hub for ALL the other Mass Relays. Needless to say, the Citadel is quite important in this regard.
You'd Expect: The Reapers would at least make the Citadel one of their earliest targets. If they can't invade in full force, they could at least send a few of themselves or try to get sleeper agents onto the Citadel. They should surely recognize the threats Shepard and the unity of the galactic races pose to their plans. After taking control of the Citadel, they seal it from the outside (thus making it impenetrable), and start cutting off star systems from one another to at least begin to weaken the resistance. They might also move it to a secure area, making it pretty much impossible for the resistance to travel effectively.
Instead: The Reapers may or may not play a role in Cerberus's invasion of the Citadel, which fails pretty badly. Regardless, the Reapers wait for THE ILLUSIVE MAN to tell them that the Citadel is the Catalyst needed to activate the Crucible before actually moving to take it over and succeeding. Once captured, do they move it to throughly conquered territory like, say, Thessia (which is quite close to the Citadel's original location)? No, they move it to EARTH, knowing that is where the resistance is going and therefore bringing the Crucible along. Furthermore, they close off all the Mass Relays... except the Charon Relay, allowing the resistance fleets to challenge them and thus begin the process of defeating them.
- By far one of the most egregious examples of Genre Blindness is the Reaper's actions regarding the Mass Relays and the Citadel.
Several problems here. For starters, the child in question was a dirt-poor orphan, age 12. Why would he consider such a complete zero a potential threat? There is also a pragmatic aspect of the situation. If he isn't going to let the kid go, then there is no reason for the child to continue the experiment(something that is pointed out in-universe), and the experiment was testing TELEPATHIC abilities, meaning lying to the kid would be at the very least risky. What's more, the child's brother was already out and if she didn't make it then there is also a reason for him to get revenge, even stronger motive than just the kidnappings. Finally, there is also Free The Soul aspect. Since the guy was backed up by FTS they have something to say here, and later games imply that they wouldn't be happy with the outcome.