Too Many Plot Holes (spoilers)

#1VeilosPosted 5/21/2013 6:15:49 AM
After completing the game, I couldn't get over the number of apparent plot holes which bombarded by mind about the game every time I thought about it. If anyone can clear some of these up, it would be helpful.

1) The alien machine is the size of a city and must have taken years to build. Are we to believe that they didn't have enough time to perform the last few minutes of configuration to destroy the moon rather than merely freezing it? If so, how did they find time to construct all of the enormous decorative statues that adorn it?

2) How did Ellie survive the gas in the Rosetta chamber? If you don't close the door fast enough you die, and even after that, the gas fills the hall outside if you don't run to the elevator. Given that there were no other doors to that room, I can't imagine any way that she could have survived.

3) Carver doesn't love Ellie, and is always hard-nosed about completing the mission and seeing the bigger picture whenever someone on the team dies. Yet, at the end, he gives away the codex to save a single human, effectively endangering all of humanity. I literally screamed as he did this, since it was so silly and out of character.

4) The level where you go inside the huge necromorph to trace the marker signal in order to find the machine makes no sense in retrospect. The machine isn't the source of the alien signal, as you find out later, the moon is. Shouldn't that experiment have led them to the moon?

5) The hive mind is supposed to help control the necromorphs according to DS1, even if it simply helps to relay the moon's signal. After you kill the hive mind in DS3, there is no apparent change in the behaviour of the necromorphs. What is the purpose of the hive mind then?

6) How to Isaac and Carver survive the moon's destruction? They even admit that then should be dead, but the only "explanation" given is that the machine somehow saved them from certain death. Are we to believe that the aliens that built this machine included a feature for it to save individual aliens in the future that might activate the machine from space?

7) How does the machine continue to work after it's been torn to pieces?

8) Why does Isaac need to turn on the machine at the end? All he does is rotate it, just like Danic did to turn it off. Why couldn't Carver do that?

9) Numerous times throughout the game Isaac takes huge falls that should kill him regardless of the padding in this suit, yet he isn't even seriously injured. It just gets to be a bit much after it happens so many times.

10) Danic has not one, not two, but three chances to kill Isaac point blank and fails to do so each time. Once I can forgive but by the third time this just gets ridiculous. Danic is the intelligent leader of a huge group of people, but keeps not killing Isaac every time he has the chance.

11) The moon is still sending the marker signal, despite being frozen, at least as far as Earth, which is quite some distance from the moon. Since being frozen doesn't impair it's telepathic abilities, why can't it contact the other moons for assistance until the machine is turned off?

12) If the moon can contact it's brothers almost instantly after being unfrozen, why didn't it do so before it was frozen originally? Are we to believe that it was frozen, by coincidence, at the precise moment before it could do this the first time?

These are just some of the worst, most important , and most obvious problems.
#2Fiz57Posted 5/21/2013 5:20:41 PM
1a) It is a game and most fictional story usually involve the last people/inhabitant/survivor didn't manage to activate the weapon/defense mechanism. It is the job of the hero or the player after how many years of failed activation to activate it in one day or while we eating pop-corn in a movie, one or two hours then credit roll.

1) Serious thought, it is possible the alien managed to build the machine but couldn't activate it properly possibly they were near extinction that barely finished the machine. As Isaac and Carver went back and forth to configure the machine, it probably the aliens station in each of those location were killed that the machine couldn't be fully activate so they set to freezing. Possibly the alien is a bit sentimental that they didn't want to destroy the moon which also made up part from their alien brethren so they froze it and hope a future alien (Isaac and Carver) would activate it thus killing them.

2) She climbed through the vent where the Rosetta parts was transported in.

3) Carver always regret and had nightmare of his family which were shown in the co-op mission. He didn't want Isaac suffered the same so he choose to save her even though Isaac and Ellie would refuse, maybe to clear his conscious of leaving his family behind and I think killed their necro counter-part. Beside, heroic image as usual in a fictional story.

4) The purpose was to find the machine, not the signal. They might think the signal would led to a Marker instead of the moon (who would guess?) so they just find a signal to the machine. They think the machine is a on/off switch for the marker, almost sound like a bigger marker or master of all marker before they realized it was an alien machine to destroy the moon.

5) I think the Hive mind is the captain of the local necromorph if the moon is the commander. They receive order and relay it to the lower rank as well as coordinate them. I think the Marker concept in DS1 evolve. Instead of sealing necromorph, it responsible for the necromorph outbreak. Looking at DS: Aftermath, shard of the marker was responsible of another necromorph outbreak therefore the marker is the spawn point of all necromorph thus creating the hive mind necromorph.

6) It is a dlc, not sure if it's canon or not. Visceral could write anything, they're dead so that was an alternative ending, they're necromorph thus future DS shown them arrive as necromorph since they thought they were still human or got save by a miracle passing-by ET.

7) Funny to see of all those grand structure, only that tiny part was sufficient to kill the moon. Let just say that the main generator of a small nuclear reactor.

8) Do you notice that most of the co-op cutscene the first/host player act the same? I think Visceral was too lazy to make more cutscene that 100% dedicated to Carver alone so they simple add him into the background of those single player cutscene and change some dialogue.

9) Well, the suit might reduced the impact of the fall. Beside, most fictional character survive the fall or they would be lame.

10) Most villains failed to kill the main character. Would you like a credit roll after 30 mins of gameplay saying I just beat DS because the main characters died?

11) The other moons might be sleeping or the moon had ego of going solo until they died and asked for revenge. Maybe the moon thinks all life-form in the universe is dead thus which is why earth is the only planet with life-form. Beside only that moon is frozen, not sleeping.

12) The Empire Strike Back! I mean the moons might felt threatened that one of them died so all of them awakened and hope to kill human before another fell or they now knew there is a life-form to feed or made into another moon.
South-east Asia PSN: Fiz57
When I said I have a bug problem, I don't mean I have a bug problem. I refer to my game and no, bug spray doesn't fix it. (x_x)
#3Veilos(Topic Creator)Posted 5/22/2013 6:06:17 AM
I commend you for your attempts, Fiz57, but none of your answers really clear up any of the plot holes that I listed:

1) Saying that it's just a game doesn't close non-sensical plot holes. The aliens were sentimental? They chose death for their race to stop the moon, so I hardly think they were sentimental about not killing it. Again, it must have taken years to build, making it ridiculous to believe that the configuration process which took a single human no more than hour couldn't have been completed.

2) The vent was already covered by the gas by the time Isaac and Carver got out of the room, and she was stuck in the middle of the room in any case.

3) It isn't heroic to doom your race to temporarily save one of its members. All of Carver's dialogue and actions in the game go against this absolute stupidity. This is simply poor plot construction; surely Danic could have ended up with the codex in a less idiotic manner.

4) You've missed the point entirely. The machine doesn't give off a marker signal, so tracing the market signal through the necromorph shouldn't lead them to the machine. They only think the signal will lead them to the machine because they think it's the source of the signal, but it isn't.

5) Again, not the point. If there is no change in necromorph behaviour before or after killing the hive mind, then why does the hive mind exist at all? Obviously it isn't required in order for the moon's signal to be relayed to the individual necormorphs.

6) Even before the DLC, you here Isaac's voice at the end of the main game calling out to Ellie, so he clearly survived. Still no logical explanation as to how though.

7) Why would they build the whole structure it only that tiny part at the top was actually doing anything? Is the power source powerful enough to crash the moon also built in to that bit at the top? No, Isaac has to reconfigure the power source to turn it fully on, so clearly the rest of the machine is also important.

8) You didn't actually address the problem here at all. Carver was standing on the platform with the codex the whole time, and could have rotated it just as easily as anyone else.

9) Again, no amount of padding could have protected him completely from all of those falls. The solution would have been to not keep having the main character take so many fatal falls in the first place.

10) I said I could forgive once, but not three times. As with #9 above, the solution to this problem is to not keep putting the ruthless and intelligent villain in the position where he can kill the hero easily so many times.

11) The moon had an ego of going solo while being frozen for thousands of years? The rest of your response doesn't deal with the problem of why the moon couldn't contact its brethren while frozen since its telepathic market signal abilities were clearly still functional.

12) Again, your response didn't deal with the problem. The moon should have been able to contact its brethren before being frozen the first time if it could do so immediately after being unfrozen.
#4Sol4688Posted 5/23/2013 1:42:52 PM
Welcome to DS3. Great gameplay, not so great story.
PSN: CrimeRoyal
#5Fiz57Posted 5/23/2013 11:37:44 PM
Honestly I blame the script writer and this game is 100% fictional. If you wanted to critize the story, you just wasting time because storytelling defies logic and doesn't always explained everything.

First of all, Ellie couldn't escape since the door malfunction and there is no window. I am not sure but I think she mentioned that she escaped through the duct when Danik reveals her survival. Truth to be told, I think she would die because the gas could entered the confined space and quickly killed her.

I always wonder why villains always gave a long speech before attempt to kill the hero which they usually failed because of clever trick or some kind of miracle. Danik should just shut up and pulled the trigger.

For the moon, I thought of them going solo because there was only one moon on Tau Volantis and never call for backup. They could communicate Isaac or taunting him show intelligence. Another theory of mine is the moon of Tau Volantis was a newborn or near completion but frozen by the machine which could explained why it couldn't call its brother except maybe gave a dying cried which alerted or awakened the other moon about human existence.
South-east Asia PSN: Fiz57