How Do Video Game Characters Hold All Those Items?!
Video games aren’t mean to be taken seriously, that’s an obvious fact, but fuck it, I take them seriously and so do you! Even though gaming is not real life, it should still make some kind of sense right? With that said, I can’t help but wonder how do video game characters in RPG’s and Action Adventure games carry all those weapons, armor and items that would normally take an entire army to carry.
Sit down, find a comfy chair and think it about. Think real hard…does it make any kind of logical sense? Even if the characters in your favorite video games were strong enough to carry a dozen different weapons, where would they possibly fit them? Eventually you’d run out of room in your bags, scabbard and armor to hold the items. Look at the Final Fantasy characters! All of them are barely wearing clothing, yet they some how manage to fit a cache of weapons and item somewhere close by so they can switch to them within seconds. No where in the entire game does it explain why a 14 year kid wearing a bikini is strong enough to carry a dozen knives at a time.
Take The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim as an example. With a high Stamina you can carry 100’s of pounds worth of items. From Dragon Bones, Ore’s, various armor pieces and weapons, how the fuck can one man still fight with all that shit on his back. Game developers should come up with a solution…AKA a magic bag! Yeah it’s lame but at least that magic bag can explain why the weight is reduced, or why a normal person can still swing a sword with an armory on his back! Imagine going into combat with 400 pounds of supplies on your back. Every time that happened you’d be like, “Hold on a second bro, need to put down my bags.” Five minutes later once you’ve killed the enemy, it’s time to pick everything back up! Life just doesn’t work that way.
Bethesda Studio’s is notorious for creating games with similar weight fundamentals as Skryim. In Fallout you’re character can carry dozens of guns at the same time. You try carrying a shotgun, a pistol, a magnum and a machine gun at once in real life…you’d be lucky to survive your own stupidity.
Look at Link from the Legend of Zelda. The poor scrawny kid runs around with an arsenal of weapons that he has no choice but to carry! Put down that grappling hook for just a moment and BAM Link can’t continue dungeon crawling. Leave you’re Red and Blue tunic at home and all of a sudden you’re vulnerable to fire and ice! Poor Link doesn’t have a choice but to carry everything he owns with him. You’d think he’d be built as fuck after the game is over!
Not all games follow this trend though. Battlefield and the Call of Duty series depict an accurate reality of what a solider could carry. A knife, a smaller gun and a bigger gun that makes logical sense doesn’t it?
The only game I can remember that went out of its way to explain why your character can carry so much was the Everquest series. You barely had enough room to fit you’re bags, and the bags themselves were considered magical! They explained that the bags were enchanted and reduced you’re items size and weight…AKA THE MAGIC BAG! I can live with that…
And what about the character models in the games? Notice games never show any of their characters carrying weapons other than what’s equipped. I know I would be lame to see a nicely designed character walking around with dozens of bags on his or her back, but it’s the reality of the situation.
Anyone out there every thought about this as well?
I know we're supposed to suspend the disbelief – but in terms of how much you can carry it just makes no fucking sense. Especially when you consider there's still a weight limit – you can apparently carry shitloads of stuff in any rpg you can think of (I've recently played Skyrim and the witcher 2) but suddenly you get weighed down by one tiny item more and then you need to waste time sorting through the mountains of crap you're carrying to decide what you're going to drop.
We can all handle the fantasy figures, magic, special abilities etc … but stupid things like the huge numbers of objects and weapons are irritating. It's like the fact that any item you pick up fits you perfectly – doesn't matter if it's from a dwarf or an elf – or when you wander around on a quest you can't just ask someone a simple question like – where's this fucking well I'm supposed to be looking for?, or the fact that you often find yourself alone with no support whatsoever even though you're helping entire towns full of people with weapons, or that you have to run everywhere (witcher 2) because no-one could be arsed to add horses or even just a fast travel system … etc. etc. How come RPGs these days seem to think that these things are what you have to do no matter what the location is or what the story is about? So many of them feel the same just with different skins on top and varying problems with combat.
When will they finally deal with these problems and make a game that doesn't fail so stupidly with this lack of logic?
Very well said