Minor Things in Games That Are Super Cool

[ducktales4gameboy]

Another wide-reaching class of things I love is when there's a little pointless reward for doing something that's technically possible but you'd have zero reason to do it otherwise. Most of these fall into the age before achievements when games started adding dumb nonsense to pad out their achievement lists, and to really count it needs to be something you stumble onto organically when bored.

Phantom Brave is an older (and in my heretic opinion, pretty bad) Nippon Ichi RPG, and as lets you wander around and jump on top of other characters on the little island that serves as the hub. Your entire party hangs out here as well as a bunch of NPCs that serve as access to the main quest, shops, etc. Uniquely though it allows you to pick up and throw NPCs so you can arrange your 'menu' any way you want (cool in itself) and the hitboxes are NES-style simple collision logic so that you only need half a foot on top of a character to be considered grounded. NPCs can also stand on top of other NPCs with no issue. Put all of this together and you might eventually get bored and try to throw every single NPC on the island into one gigantic stack, and if you do this and climb all the way to the top and jump off, the game instantly unlocks a character class you otherwise can't get access to until lategame. It's not a useful or overpowered class, but it's a great token reward for doing dumb nonsense and acknowledges the developers also did the same dumb nonsense.

 

[Rick The Stick]

Another one

In Dragon's Dogma, the final boss of the game is a character called The Seneschal. He's a character you briefly play as during the intro/tutorial/prologue when starting a fresh game. But on subsequent playthroughs/NG+ cycles, and depending on if youre playing on or offline, he changes.

So if you're offline when getting to him on NG+, you end up fighting your Arisen and Main Pawn that you beat him with previously. If you're online, you fight the Arisen and Main Pawn of a random player.

It's a little thing that really doesn't have any real impact on the fight, but ties in perfectly with the games story and theme. They could have just had him stay the same no matter what and it would still have tied into the theme of the game, but they didn't. Pretty neat.

 

[The Early 2000s]

Whenever the map screen is creative and/or super interactive

For example:

Far Cry 2's map also comes to mind

 

[Duiker]

I don't care what game it is, but I am a sucker for grid based inventory systems.

 

[Judge Dredd]

More from Metal Gear Solid. In MGS 2, the game starts on board a ship (it was also where the demo took place). Everything is highly interactive. Shoot the plasma TV, and it breaks realistically. Knock over the bucket of ice, and the ice cubes slowly melt. Shoot the bag of flower and it drains, and makes the room all foggy. There is a pipe leaning against a wall that will fall over if you peak around the corner, alerting the guard.

The oil rig, while less interactive, has some stuff like this too. Crawling around in the beetles will make them start eating your rations until you shake them off. One part of the game, you use a microphone and press a button to ask "You must be Ames?". If you spam this in the room with the parrot, he starts to repeat that line. You can even do a pull up to peek over a hanging ledge. Do enough and you can hang from ledges longer. You can even find an electric razor, give it to a specific character, and at the end of the game he's clean shaven.

 

[ProfDongs]

This is mostly in JRPGs but annoying NPCs by repeatedly talking to them. FF9 has this with the Moogle you can call in the field and if you keep sending it away without doing anything it will eventually threaten you by saying its sharpening its knife and then start freaking out at you. Inazuma Eleven has a kid that you can harass into joining your soccer team by chasing him down through the school and breaking his will with sheer soccer enthusiasm. One of the MGS games (2 or 4) also has this with calling Otacon on the codec repeatedly.

This is well known but its always been a favorite, in the PS2 versions of MGS3 after your torture session if you save in the prison and reload into the file you can play the Guy Savage minigame which is a really simple hack and slash game that's absent from the rereleases.

Last I got is messages from developers to players in game. FF4, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross have the developer rooms where there are NPCs of the dev teams you can talk to. GTA3 has a specific wall that you can climb by placing a car next to and hopping over, on the other side is a sign acknowledging you weren't supposed to go there, both versions of LCS have something different written in the same spot.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Downright common nowadays, but various factions that fight each other in an open world, particularly when the scale is more "battle" than "shootout." Whether it's scripted to a specific location (like Tunguska in Destroy All Humans 2 having a certain town that was a permanent raging battle) or resulting dynamically.

 

[Mayor Cody Travers]

I forget if other games had it, but Civilization 3 had special city names in the main game (not mods or scenarios): "Mingapulco" in the Aztec city list referenced a then-mod in Apolyton Civilization site, "Apolyton" in the Greek list was the site itself, "Thunderfall" in the Viking/Nordic list the admin of the Civfanatics site, "Not Constantinople" than a "New Istanbul" when you found enough cities as the Ottomans/Turks you repeat its city list, and "Neo-Tokyo" shouts out to the film Akira when Japan cycles back to Tokyo.

I also enjoy throughout the entire Civilization series they always have a reference to Elvis: IE in Civ 2's manual you see portraits of all the great leaders of history you can play as with their name in the portrait's caption, but a portrait of Elvis near the end of it simply captioned as "The King".

 

[gmax alcremie]

I would go a step further and say that a certain life sim elements can really enhance certain types of games. I liked how RDR2 handled this, with eating, smoking and drinking.

I was weirdly excited by how drinking in gtav actually made the screen all wobbly. I haven't played the other games so idk if they include it too but it was a nice touch to have what in many games is just a generic consumable have an effect on the overworld.

This is mostly in JRPGs but annoying NPCs by repeatedly talking to them.

Fallout New Vegas has this with Caesar! In one of your interactions he gets a migraine and goes to lie down. You can keep trying to interact with him, with him finally warning that he's going to kill you if you talk to him one more time... And well, he's not joking, the whole camp opens fire and I believe you become permanently hostile to Caesar at that point.

Fallout 3 also does this with one of the Brotherhood chicks but not to such a violent extent. She just gets really pissy if you keep talking to her and choosing the "rude" options that you lose the ability to interact with her for awhile.

 

[Weltraumfürst]

GTA3 has a specific wall that you can climb by placing a car next to and hopping over, on the other side is a sign acknowledging you weren't supposed to go there, both versions of LCS have something different written in the same spot.

That reminds me of this little gem from Gothic.

Speaking of which, in Gothic there is an in-game gig by the band In Extremo performing their rendition of the song Herr Mannelig. It's not really an Easter egg since the game explicitly draws attention to it when you enter the old camp at the beginning of chapter 2, just a fun little oddity. To this day, I associate the Gothic series with that band.

https://youtu.be/1Ebgjk0vtzY?si=vbBVaCv9d0m4V4fo

 

[Judge Dredd]

Last I got is messages from developers to players in game. FF4, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross have the developer rooms where there are NPCs of the dev teams you can talk to. GTA3 has a specific wall that you can climb by placing a car next to and hopping over, on the other side is a sign acknowledging you weren't supposed to go there, both versions of LCS have something different written in the same spot.

There is one in Half-Life Opposing Force. If you no-clip out of the helicopter during the intro. Another famous no-clip is Doom where if you no clip into the final boss, it's actually John Romero's head on a stick.

Quake 2 has a developer room where each dev has an easter egg associated with them. eg. Going up to John Carmack's picture causes him to hide (he was apparently shy in real life).

Xcom EU had an interesting one. I forget the details, but if you entered Sid Meier's name, you got a super soldier and a custom model that looked like him. Xcom 2 allowed you to make custom characters, and the game comes with presets of the entire dev team.

This is well known but its always been a favorite, in the PS2 versions of MGS3 after your torture session if you save in the prison and reload into the file you can play the Guy Savage minigame which is a really simple hack and slash game that's absent from the rereleases.

Wasn't that supposed to be it's own game, but got cancelled?

I vaguely remember some versions of MGS 2 had a skate boarding mini game set on Big Shell that was a demo for Konami's Tony Hawk clone.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Speaking of dev messages, one thing I always thought was a really neat addition was the secret Insomniac Museums in the old Ratchet and Clank games. They were secret areas that you could access that included a bunch of cut and unused content, along with developer commentary and explanations, giving a really neat behind the scenes look at things. I always wished more games included stuff like that. It was like having those DVD extras with special features for your game.

 

[Book Thief]

I was recently playing through the original Phantasy Star using the wonderful ROM hack by SMS Power that greatly improves the translation and allows you to play with that glorious Japan-exclusive FM soundtrack, and I was reminded that it does something I absolutely love that very few JRPGs do. Hell, not even its own sequels do it.

Think to yourself of the musical soundscape in your typical JRPG. You're wandering through the overworld, vibing to the game's adventurous tunes, when suddenly, you're trapped by a random encounter. Battle swoosh, then the fighting music. You beat it, victory tune, then back to the overworld. What happens next? Well, you're back to the overworld, with the music starting over from the beginning, obviously.

In Phantasy Star, however, instead of restarting the overworld music from the beginning, it fades it back in from the point that it ended off from. The result is overworld/dungeon music that's a lot less repetitive to listen to because you're not stuck listening to the first section over and over during your grinding sessions. Instead, you get to listen to the entirety of the music tracks, which is a good thing because Phantasy Star's FM sound track is an absolute treat.

I honestly wish every JRPG did this, because they like to create these epic, sweeping overworld themes that you never get to listen to in the actual game, unless you decide to just sit there to soak it in. During the actual game, however, you're stuck with the first few seconds of the overworld music on loop, forever, because they always restart those themes from the beginning. It annoys me so much to know that Phantasy Star got it right so early in the game, yet it never really caught on.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Newspapers for death/failure screens. Destroy All Humans and We Happy Few both do this.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Speaking of dev messages, one thing I always thought was a really neat addition was the secret Insomniac Museums in the old Ratchet and Clank games. They were secret areas that you could access that included a bunch of cut and unused content, along with developer commentary and explanations, giving a really neat behind the scenes look at things. I always wished more games included stuff like that. It was like having those DVD extras with special features for your game.

The original liminal space. I remember the music for Going Commando's museum being very eerie.

MGS3 was already mentioned but I shall mention it again because it's packed with cool little things. I loved how there was usually a radio guard in each area, if you incapacitate him or destroy his radio then they can't call reinforcements. Guards would carry pistols instead of rifles if you blew up the area's munitions storage. They would also be weaker, complain of hunger and eat poisonous food you leave out for them if you destroyed the area's pantry in the same way.

You come upon a grounded Hind chopper early in the game that you later meet again patrolling a mountain, unless of course you blew it up on that first encounter, then it will be replaced by much weaker hover platform guards instead. The game never gives any indication you can do this, yet rewards you for trying it.

I'll leave it at that, though you could write a fucking book about all the neat little "wow i cant believe they put that in" things in MGS3

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

MGS3 was already mentioned but I shall mention it again because it's packed with cool little things. I loved how there was usually a radio guard in each area, if you incapacitate him or destroy his radio then they can't call reinforcements. Guards would carry pistols instead of rifles if you blew up the area's munitions storage. They would also be weaker, complain of hunger and eat poisonous food you leave out for them if you destroyed the area's pantry in the same way.

I've also been told that Snake's opinions on food changes the more he eats them. He gradually enjoys stuff he disliked (like the Russian rations) and grows sick of the stuff he used to like.

 

[Scarthew]

Knock over the bucket of ice, and the ice cubes slowly melt

You are vastly underselling this. Those ice cubes all melt at different rates depending on how hard they landed, how large they are and how close they are to other ice cubes.

 

[Backpack Knight]

Shadow of War has the Nemisis system where a random generated enemy character captain (Uruk) gets random traits. At some point the game will send a tailored captain that has traits that will be immune to your favorite tactics. The new captain will hunt you down and in my case a few levels higher than what I could control before the end game.

Use stealth to take down captains, new captain cannot be stealth killed or backstabbed.

Use animals and poison to kill captains? New captain is immune to both and arrows also.

The meme where the enemy uruk captain has traits that are almost immune to your entire arsenal are true. The best way to avoid this is to have bodyguards imbedded in the captain's retinue or have a legendary on hand.

Dominions from Illwinter
Some undead and golems cannot be mind controlled because they are usually mindless.

Amphibians races tend to be slow on land but great in water.

Middle Age Ermor (Necromancer Romans) barely have any units as the premier necromancer nation they summon undead units and passively kill the population around their area of influence. As more people die the easier it is to summon more undead from graveyards and battlefields anywhere. So Ermor is the first (or last) to be killed by other players ganging up on the Ermor player (especially if the Ermor player used Burden of Time).

Your heroes or commanders can become armless or eyeless. Then you can implant magical artifacts to bring them back in action. If your really lucky you can implant another arm!

Blood magic requires the easiest resource of the game: blood slaves. Blood slaves are little girls who just started puberty. Gathering blood slaves pisses of everyone in your nation but you can always get a more than decent amount depending on the Blood mages level. You have to balance out gathering blood mages without pissing off too much of your native population and trashing birth rates.

But the more powerful the blood mage gets they attract demons that will attack them and only them as blood magic attracts the demons from anywhere in the map.

Starsector
It is common for players to raid poor planets until they cannot supply themselves then sell them food and supplies for over 5 times their usual value.

If you destroy the capitals of the fractions, you can find illegal Alpha plus AI cores within the wreckage. Where the other fractions are more than happy to attack you fraction for "suspected AI ownership".

Every fraction that is destroyed, the sector market loses value from that entire fraction.

Every fraction gets angry when you kill their ships or if you take their Pristine nanoforges. But if you have your transponder off... then they cannot find out.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

When you can mousehole as a tactic.

To me the ability to blow a hole as a new route of entry is more important than being able to just delete a building.

 

[SIMIΔN]

I love it when ironman one save games give you a way to earn rerolls.
Take BG3, you can earn unlimited versal rerolls by acting in-character and you can spend ingame gold buying extra chances (kits) at disarming traps or opening locks.

Alpha Protocol is a game made up of these. There's so many minor choices that the game acknowledges,

This, it's a pity their level designs didn't allow backtracking as it was so easy to miss stuff.

When you can mousehole as a tactic.

I'd strongly recommend Red Faction Guerilla then