Questions you weren't supposed to ask about video games

When a Wiki dedicated to a gaming franchise says the reason for a mechanic is "unknown", you know looking for a better answer is a lost cause. Such is the case with Pokemon: even its most dedicated, encyclopedic fans can’t dig out a good reason for why your character blacks out (or "whites out", whatever that means) when all their Pokemon faint in the midst of battle.

Some players have tried to invent answers of their own with questionable success. Maybe the other trainer has their Pokemon beat you up because they're comically evil. Maybe you have a psychic link to your Pokemon that causes you to feel their injuries, which makes one wonder if fantasy dog-fighting is really for you. There's no precedent for it in the Pokemon anime either--barring trainers and Pokemon getting attacked by the same flock of Spearows, humans turn out no worse for wear when they lose a battle. Sure, you can just admit the game needs an excuse to zap the trainer out of there, but where's the overly-analytical fun in that?

The events of the Halo series have intensified exponentially with every passing installment. Even the standing conflict between humans and Covenant has sharpened, since later entries reveal that humans have been fighting for survival against the alien scourge for 30 years. In that time the humans have been horribly outclassed, with settlements falling left and right to the Covenant's superior military. It seems humans just don't have the resources necessary to put up a strong front.

Only, wait. Master Chief can get his hands on Covenant weaponry within the first hour of Halo, and loads of other alien technologies are well within his reach. If Covenant military resources are so great, how are humans not taking advantage of it where they can? And not just by borrowing an occasional gun--XCOM: Enemy Unknown focuses on a similar alien menace problem, and part of the human response is to research enemy tech to build up a stronger defense. That makes sense, right? That's the right response. If that happens in the Halo universe we never see it, and human military failures keep being blamed on inferior technology.

Kratos is the best killing machine the gods could have asked for, like a Swiss army knife of death, and he hits max level when he opens Pandora's box and absorbs the god-killer powers contained within. He uses these on Ares, then resolves to kill Zeus. That in mind, he seeks out the key to open Pandora's box and... wait. Hold on a second.

Effectively, in God of War III, Kratos goes on a quest to retrieve an incredible power that he already has. While Athena insists the power in Pandora's box now is stronger, she skimps on the how, claiming Kratos merely “drew” from it the first time. Except Kratos has been swimming in deity blood for three games now and can already best Zeus, so what’s the point? That becomes an even better question when he opens the box and finds it empty, then finds out the power he was missing was hope. Sure, that makes sense within the lore of Pandora's Box, but in the game it doesn't really work. So Kratos just needed to... believe in himself? When did God of War turn into an after school special?

Alright, you know the drill--pick a few characters out of your larger band of heroes and use them to take on your enemies. You can switch out members as you like, and some games spring surprise encounters to make you use every character at least once (yes, even the annoying one), but the formula is pretty well laid out: you get a portion of your party to work with and have use them strategically.

But then... where'd everyone else go? No matter how big your party gets, this few-on-baddy configuration still trumps even when having an extra hand would be pretty useful right about now. It isn’t like the sidelined folks are busy or anything either--in games like Tales of Vesperia, characters will actually complain if they’re kept out of the active party too long. That begs the question, what exactly are they doing? Crossword puzzles? Bird-watching? Sitting there taking bets on who's gonna drop first? That's not really in the spirit of teamwork, guys.

Rapture is the sort of place mad scientists dream about, a city that thrives on fascinating and ethically dubious technologies. One example is the genetic key, which allows Rapture’s security systems to recognize the DNA of founder Andrew Ryan and his relatives. It’s what keeps the protagonist Jack from being obliterated by guard bots (he and Ryan are third cousins or something, don’t worry about it), until things go horribly wrong and someone else takes over, turning the city’s technology against him.

That is, except vita chambers: devices that revive Jack whenever he’s brutally killed. They're also coded to Ryan’s DNA, so you would expect they were controlled by the genetic key too. However, even after the key switch, the chambers still revive Jack, and for a neurotic like Ryan that seems like a lax setup. This makes even less sense in the sequel, where a teenage girl adjusts a chamber to recognize blatantly not-Ryan DNA and revive a guy who died years before it was configured to him. We are talking about the same paranoid, despotic Andrew Ryan here, right?

That's our thoughts on these gaping gaming plot holes, the kind we struggle to figure out long after the credits roll. Still, one gamer's obvious discrepancy is another's clearly defined answer, and you may be able to fashion a better explanation for these than we ever could. How do you explain away these plot holes? What are some other franchise-spanning snags that should have made the list? Tell us in the comments below, and remember that "because the devs said so" is as boring as it is true.

And if you're looking for more, check out top 7 silliest weapons in serious games and questions we've always had about Gears of War.