Video games have the unfortunate and unique ability to show what lies ahead in the game by showing empty spaces in the inventory screen or menus, from which you can deduce what will happen and how long game lasts.
What is your worst example, what did games ruin for you even when you did not get spoiled by them cursed Youtube thumbnails?
For me, way back in '96, in Super Mario 64, when at the start of the game I first started playing around in outskirts of Peach’s Castle and accidentally died
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Bowser’s laughing zoom-in spoiled that he was the villain!
Sorry for the esoteric joke, please post your more earnest examples!
In BG3 you can right click examine any item or character. This reveals their type, their special attributes and other information that makes disguises basically useless against the player. It also reveals their HP and resistances, so unlike actual D&D where you would need knowledge checks or special skills you just have perfect information. You can even scroll the map to see ambushes hidden in other rooms before you go in.
You can detect the Hag and Orin quite easily in their disguises, and just immediately attack them if you want without doing the in game work to “reveal” the plot. Huh why does this random blacksmith have legendary actions? Why is this random innkeeper a fey?
Also for some reason by default it displays failed perception and survival rolls so you know you missed something and can just go back and hover over everything or dig around in the ground when you fail a check.
Also was anyone actually buying Astarion’s “I’m not a vampire” shtick when he has fangs and his mouth is dripping with blood in the cover artwork?
This is why you just have to love the empty Triforce slot in Ocarina of Time
You actually can find it in OOT. Its underneath Zelda’s courtyard as young link.
But you need a gameshark and can’t interact with it at all, but it’s there
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
How about Zelda II being the inverse of this?
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You die and Gannon cackles ominously but the actual final boss is a bird thing!
Not a massive endgame spoiler but I hate all the ubisoft style awareness indicators and NPC outlines you can see through walls in semi stealth games.
It takes all the tension out of those games. They’re much more fun with them off and it removes the clutter.
Hitman: Absolution was particularly bad but you had to use it because 47 became less detectable with it on for some reason
A monster codex in the in-game, in-universe glossary of terms in FF16 spoils the identity of the True Big Bad a full story arc before the character is actually introduced.
‘In-universe’ as in the glossary is supposed to be something filled out by the protags themselves based on knowledge they would know through story events or research.
It’s even funnier when the game has been patched multiple times and the entry hasn’t been altered or pushed back to unlock after that point of story progression.
Must have been an overlooked localization fluke or something.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is pretty bad about this.
interface spoilers
Nenio is a kitsune that forgot she was a kitsune and thinks she is a human at the start. Her character still lists her as a kitsune when you mouse over her attribute bonuses.
Camellia is evil. Evil evil. A serial killer. When you meet her, you can’t see her alignment because she has an amulet that hides her alignment. Like, this is already a pretty obvious trope, but also the game has items that are locked to alignment, and if you try to equip her with something that evil people can’t, it won’t allow it and will tell you why.
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Don’t all of her voice lines being gleefully murderous also give it away? Lol
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ngl I was fairly certain she was evil after the first conversation with her and absolutely certain she was chaotic evil when I noticed the amulet that hides her alignment. If anything, “hiding” it only makes it more obvious.
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Famous sicko-elf enjoyer (and Delicious in Dungeon author) Ryoki Kui clocked her on first sight, so I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be super obvious. I do like that her quest has options for being totally oblivious lol
The first X-Wing game had something like this where one mission was described as a routine patrol on the briefing screen. Already pretty sus, but you can mouse over the mission map and see that TIE fighters are set to spawn in.
Tie Fighter also does this with a “routine cargo inspection”. They’re both dogfighting games, though, so of course shit goes down and you get to blast some ships!
empty spaces in the inventory screen or menus
This often feels more like foreshadowing to me, rather than spoiling
half way through the game your RDR2 stats show you as ill for no reason and you can’t cure it. this is hours before you find out. i googled it thinking it was a bug or i was stupid and found out the twist
I don’t know if it counts but you know how the UI in Disco Elysium reads FELD Playback Device on the sides of the tape? Despite the fact that the FELD company and its building is completely collapsed, with their mythical * FELD Device * missing?
yeah, i dunno either, but a now-deleted dev progress blog post mentions it being part of a big In-universe mystery…
i guess they were future-proofing or something, but uhhh, sad to see how that went and allat
More of an Easter egg, but in the silent hill 2 remake, transcriptions and subtitles
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The word ‘guilt’ never appears, even when it is present in the world
the elden ring dlc also added a bunch of new loading screens, each “spoiling” a location from the DLC
Dark Souls: “Can’t kindle further without the secret rite” not very secret there is it?
