The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Clichés

The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Clichés

Sleepyhead Rule
Typically, the teenaged male lead will begin the first day of the game by oversleeping, being woken up by his mother, and being reminded that he's slept in so late he missed meeting his girlfriend.
"No! My beloved peasant village!"
The hero's home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.
Carl Macek's Revenge
The English voice acting is always embarrassingly bad, and the more VA there is in the game, the worse it gets.
Silent Movie Rule
Nobody ever talks during an full-motion-video sequence... thankfully, given Carl Macek's Revenge.
Thinking With The Wrong Head (Hiro Rule)
No matter what she's accused of doing or how mysterious her origins are, the hero will always be ready to fight to the death for any girl he met three seconds ago.
Cubic Zirconium Corollary
The aforementioned mysterious girl will be wearing a pendant that will ultimately prove to be the key to either saving the world or destroying it.
Logan's Run Rule
RPG characters are young. Very young. The average age seems to be 15, unless the character is a decorated and battle-hardened soldier, in which case he might even be as old as 18. Such teenagers often have skills with multiple weapons and magic, years of experience, and never ever worry about their parents telling them to come home from adventuring before bedtime. By contrast, characters more than twenty-two years old will cheerfully refer to themselves as washed-up old fogies and be eager to make room for the younger generation.
Single Parent Rule
RPG characters with two living parents are almost unheard of. As a general rule, male characters will only have a mother, and female characters will only have a father. The missing parent either vanished mysteriously and traumatically several years ago or is never referred to at all. Frequently the main character's surviving parent will also meet an awkward end just after the story begins, thus freeing him of inconvenient filial obligations.
Some Call Me... Tim?
Good guys will only have first names, and bad guys will only have last names. Any bad guy who only has a first name will become a good guy at some point in the game. Good guys' last names may be mentioned in the manual but they will never be referred to in the story.
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.
Luddite Rule (or, George Lucas Rule)
Speaking of which, technology is inherently evil and is the exclusive province of the Bad Guys. They're the ones with the robots, factories, cyberpunk megalopolises and floating battle stations, while the Good Guys live in small villages in peaceful harmony with nature. (Although somehow your guns and/or heavily armed airships are exempted from this.)
Let's Start From The Very Beginning (Megaman Rule)
Whenever there is a sequel to an RPG that features the same main character as the previous game, that character will always start with beginner skills. Everything that they learned in the previous game will be gone, as will all their ultra-powerful weapons and equipment.
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. Unfortunately, this never works in stores.
Hey, I Know You!
You will accumulate at least three of these obligatory party members:
The spunky princess who is rebelling against her (single) royal parent and is in love with the hero.
The demure, soft-spoken female mage and healing magic specialist who is not only in love with the hero, but is also the last survivor of an ancient race.
The tough-as-nails female warrior who is not in love with the hero (note that this is the only female character in the game who is not in love with the hero and will therefore be indicated as such by having a spectacular scar, a missing eye, cyborg limbs or some other physical deformity -- see The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Rule.)
The achingly beautiful gothy swordsman who is riven by inner tragedy.
The big, tough, angry guy who, deep down, is a total softy.
The grim, selfish mercenary who over the course of the game learns what it means to really care about other people.
The weird bonus character who requires a bizarre series of side quests to make them effective (with the ultimate result that no player ever uses this character if it can be avoided.)
The nauseatingly cute mascot who is useless in all battles.
Hey, I Know You, Too!
You will also confront/be confronted by at least three of these obligatory foes:
The amazingly good-looking and amazingly evil bishounen (Japanese for "long-haired prettyboy") who may or may not be the ultimate villain.
The villain's loyal right-hand man, who comes in two versions: humorously incompetent or annoyingly persistent.
The villain's attractive female henchman, who is the strongest and most competent soldier in the army but always lets the party escape because she's, yes, fallen in love with the hero.
The irritatingly honorable foe whom you never get to kill because, upon discovering the true nature of his superiors, he either nobly sacrifices himself or joins your party.
The mad scientist who likes creating mutated creatures and powerful weapons 'cause it's fun (and also handy if uninvited adventurers show up.)
The adorably cute li'l creature or six year old child who fights you and, inexplicably, kicks your butt time after time.
"Silly Squall, bringing a sword to a gunfight..."
No matter what timeframe the game is set in -- past, present, or future -- the main hero and his antagonist will both use a sword for a weapon. (Therefore, you can identify your antagonist pretty easily right from the start of the game just by looking for the other guy who uses a sword.) These swords will be far more powerful than any gun and often capable of distance attacks.
Just Nod Your Head And Smile
And 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.
Aeris's Corollary
Just as the main male character will always use a sword or a variant of a sword, the main female character will always use a rod or a staff of some sort.
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?
Qui Es Muy 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.
Everyday Object Rule
When an everyday object is useful, it will be fantastically expensive and difficult to find. For instance, if vitamins are used to heal, they'll cost $500.00 each and never ever be in bottles of fifty at the drugstore.
We Had To Destroy The Village In Order To, Well, You Know The Rest (Selene Rule)
No matter what happens, never call on the government, the church, or any other massive controlling authority for help. They'll just send a brigade of soldiers to burn your entire village to the ground.
Zidane's Curse (or, Dirty Pair Rule)
An unlucky condition in which every major city in the game will coincidentally wind up being destroyed just after the hero arrives.
Local Control Principle
Although the boss monster terrorizing the first city in the game is less powerful than the non-boss monsters that are only casual nuisances to cities later in the game, nobody from the first city ever thinks of hiring a few mercenaries from the later cities to kill the monster.
IDKFA
The basic ammunition for any firearms your characters have is either unlimited or very, very easy to obtain. This will apply even if firearms are extremely rare.
Indestructible Weapon Rule
No matter how many times you use that sword to strike armored targets or fire that gun on full auto mode it will never break, jam or need any form of maintenance unless it is critical to the story that the weapon breaks, jams or needs maintenance.
Painted-On Equipment Rule
Enemy equipment doesn't exist. Even if your enemy is a knight in armor wielding a sword, chances are next to nothing that you'll get his armor or sword by the end of the battle. Instead, you'll get some object that (even if it is a gigantic weapon or accessory) was completely invisible during the fight.
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.
You Can't Kill Me, I Quit (Seifer Rule)
The good guys never seem to get the hang of actually arresting or killing the bad guys. Minor villains are always permitted to go free so they can rest up and menace you again later -- sometimes five minutes later. Knowing this rule, you can deduce that if you do manage to kill (or force the surrender of) a bad guy, you must be getting near the end of the game.
And Now You Die, Mr. Bond! (Beatrix Rule)
Fortunately for you, the previous rule also applies in reverse. Rather than kill you when they have you at their mercy, the villains will settle for merely blasting you down to 1 hit point and leaving you in a crumpled heap while they stroll off, laughing. (This is, of course, because they're already planning ahead how they'll manipulate you into doing their bidding later in the game -- see Way To Go, Serge.)
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Grahf Rule)
It doesn't matter that you won the fight with the boss monster; the evil task he was trying to carry out will still get accomplished somehow. Really, you might as well not have bothered.
Fake Ending
There will be a sequence which pretends to be the end of the game but obviously isn't -- if for no other reason than because you're still on Disk 1 of 4.
You Die, And We All Move Up In Rank
During that fake ending, the true villain of the story will kill the guy you'd thought was the villain, just to demonstrate what a badass he (the true villain) really is. You never get to kill the fake villain yourself.
"What are we going to do tonight, Vinsfeld?"
The goal of every game (as revealed during the Fake Ending) is to Save the World from an evil figure who's trying to take it over or destroy it. There is no way to escape from this formidable task. No matter whether the protagonist's goal in life is to pay off a debt, to explore distant lands, or just to make time with that cute girl in the blue dress, it will be necessary for him to Save the World in order to accomplish it. Take heart, though -- once the world gets sorted out, everything else will fall into place almost immediately.
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.
George W. Bush Geography Simplification Initiative
Every country in the world will have exactly one town in it, except for the country you start out in, which will have three.
Short Attention Span Principle
All bookshelves contain exactly one book, which only has enough text on it to fill up half a page.
Invisible Bureaucracy Rule
Other than the royal family, its shifty advisor, and the odd mad scientist, the only government employees you will ever encounter in the course of your adventure are either guards or kitchen staff.
The Miracle Of Automation
Similarily, any factory, power plant, or other facility that you visit during the course of the game will be devoid of any human life except for the occasional guards. There will not be a single line worker or maintenance person in sight.
Principle of Archaeological Convenience
Every ancient machine you find will work perfectly the first time you try to use it and every time thereafter. Even if its city got blasted into ruins and the machine was then sunk to the bottom of the sea and buried in mud for ten thousand years, it'll still work fine. The unfortunate corollary to this rule is that ancient guardian creatures will also turn out to be working perfectly when you try to filch their stuff.
Kefka's Conclusion
The loopiest guy in the game will become either your strongest character or your worst enemy.
I Don't Like Gears Or Fighting
There are always giant robots. Always.
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Rule
a. Any male character who is ugly, malformed, or misshapen is either evil or so moral, spiritual, and/or wise that it's a wonder no one's proposed him for sainthood yet.
b. Any male character who has a physical disfiguration that doesn't seem to impede him (i.e. a prominent scar across the face or a bad eye) is evil, unless he is the male lead, since scars are cool and no other good guy can be as cool as the hero. An exception is made for characters who are clearly ancient, and therefore automatically not as cool as the young hero.
c. Any female character who is ugly, malformed, mishapen, or physically disfigured is evil, since all good female characters are there to be potentially seduced by the male lead -- see Know Your Audience.
Henchman Quota (Nana, Saki, and Mio Rule)
One of your antagonists will have three lovably incompetent stooges whom you fight over and over again. Although they're trusted with their boss's most important plans and equipment, they will screw up repeatedly, argue incessantly among themselves, blab secret information, and generally only come out victorious when their job was to be a diversion or a delaying tactic. A high point of the game will come when the True Villain reveals himself and you're able to convince the stooges you're all on the same side. They won't help you out any more successfully than they helped the antagonist, but at least you won't have to fight them any more.
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.
Ayn Rand's Revenge
Outside the major cities, there is no government whatsoever. Of course, perhaps that explains why it's so difficult and dangerous to get anywhere outside the major cities.
Law of Productive Gullibility (Ruby Rule)
Whenever anybody comes up to you with a patently ludicrous claim (such as, "I'm not a cat, I'm really an ancient Red Dragon") there's an at least two-thirds chance they're telling the truth. Therefore, it pays to humor everyone you meet; odds are you'll be glad you did later on.
Perversity Principle