Know When You Need A Plot Please

            Hello! How long has it been since I’ve complained about Tom Clancy games? I feel like it’s been a while since a real proper whining. Blame @NEETproxy, he brought it up, maybe. I don’t quite remember how we got on the topic. We were talking about Splinter Cell Blacklist and I mentioned how at the end Briggs kills the Vice President or something. Someone of importance and he was like “What?” and I was like “Yeah, you don’t remember?” and he was like “I never finished it.” Oi! So here I am! You’re welcome.

            So yes, to refresh, at the end of Blacklist the terrorist group you’ve been going after has taken overrr the Pentagon? The White House? I think the White House (correction, it's a secret bunker in Denver) and they’ve captured a high ranking person, whom I’m thinking is the Vice President (other correction, it's the Secretary of Defense), and are trying to get him to give up the nuclear launch codes (correction, it's uh, unclear? "Information" main bad guy says). So you sneaky sneak around and finally get to the room and after some cutting-off-of-fingers-torture the VP is going to give up the codes and you, as Briggs, drops in and grab the VP. The antagonists says something along the lines off “What is your plan here?” cause really, what CAN Briggs do and he says “I’m sorry” as he snaps the VPs neck or slits his throat, something, he kills the man and it’s like “God damn!” Briggs made the hard choice, the terrorist cannot do a thing without this man so you take him off the board. That’s what being a splinter cell is, that’s what having fifth freedom looks like.

            Then you go over to Avengers Infinity War. Vision has the mind stone in his head and if they would just destroy it, killing Vision in the process, then Thanos wouldn’t be able to get it. Unless he just rewinds time again, I would think it would be a little harder for him to do it if they did it when they first thought of it. Could be that they wouldn’t of even been able to defeat Thanos if he had the other five stones and couldn’t just “snap” him away, though Wanda was pretty darn close to beating him herself. But no matter what Vision was going to die. The very small percentage of a chance that they could defeat Thanos and keep Vision alive that Steve was betting on was so minute.

            I remember when Godzilla vs Kong was being shown off and you had people on either side being like “Godzilla’s going to win!” and “Kong’s going to win!” I was just thinking “Hollywood doesn’t have the balls to kill off either one of these characters, shut up.” And sure enough there’s a third party that they team up together to defeat. I’m all for that, don’t get me wrong, it’s cool as hell but like, it wasn’t unexpected. That’s why it’s hard to get excited for the Marvel movies now, they typically follow the same path, the same formula and reach the same conclusion.

            That’s why it’s so frustrating that we aren’t getting good stories from Tom Clancy any more. Rainbow Six Vegas and Vegas 2 had betrayals and higher ups making shitty calls costing innocents to die and you, the player, the main character are getting blamed for it. Ghost Recon Future Soldier, and Wildlands did this too, you fight and fight and fight to get to the people at the top, the person(s) responsible for your teammates deaths only to be told once you get to them that they cut a deal with the US government and you can’t lay a finger on them. Blacklist, Briggs killing the Vice President, which I imagine was extremely difficult for a military man such as Briggs to do who, I assume, views the government as some sort of holier than holy organization, to save the world from whatever this madman is going to do with nuclear missiles. These stories aren’t always nice, they might have a “good ending” but there’s an edge to it. It doesn’t exactly feel good at the end of the day which I’m sure it doesn’t for a lot of people who are in the military.

            Now team Rainbow is just training all the God damn time and competing in some pseudo-sport. Like, if you want to watch like “pro” airsoft or paintball then great but team Rainbow, fucking do something. There is a branching timeline where they’re fighting some alien bullshit but like, that’s not really what they were trained for and honestly it probably wouldn’t turn out very well. Sam Fisher can’t get his own game for who knows why so he has to be shoehorned into everything else, even The Division 2, kind of, I think. As far as I understand Division doesn’t take place in the typical Tom Clancy sphere and the Sam Fisher that was shown in a more recent trailer I’m pretty certain is just a persons “avatar” for this, AR, VR training thing that’s being added to the game soon. That’s my head canon anyway.

            Every time I play some Blue Archive I’m like “damn, this would be a really cool third person shooter” then I think about playing Division and then it’s like “whoo man, this is NOTHING like what I want.” And then it goes the other way too like some games try to force some shit story down your throat and it’s like “Bro! Just let me play the fucking game!” The Ascent for example, or any co-op based game, save your time, take the story and cram it up your ass. Like I just want to goof off with my friends right now, please get rid of this cutscene. Deep Rock Galactic does a great job with this, it knows exactly what it is and doesn’t bog you down with meaningless plot. Here’s a gun, there’s the pod, go kill the bugs and mine some crap. You got it!

So that’s my little distraction from Tears of the Kingdom. What do you think? Do you miss when Tom Clancy games had storylines? Would you want to see more mainstream movies make more uncomfortable moves? Or do you enjoy everything being fluffy? Let me know down below, OH! Speaking of all of this I almost forgot, Fast X. Ouu boy, talk about Hollywood having no balls, I won’t say anymore, it’s still too new. Bye bye!

@AztecSauce