When just playing the game bricks your save forever.
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00:00As fun as it is sometimes to watch speedruns strategically use game-breaking tricks to
00:05make a 50-odd hour game as short as a few hours long, it's not something that most
00:11people like to try and do the first time they play through a title.
00:15But that doesn't mean you can't still break the game outright, even when you're
00:20not trying to.
00:21So, with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 Ways Players Accidentally
00:25Broke Video Games.
00:2710.
00:28Pretending To Have A Bike – Pokemon Red Slash Blue
00:30While Pokemon isn't a game just for kids, it is a game with a huge young player base.
00:36And while it's unfair to say that kids are more likely to do dumb things, it is fair
00:40to say that they find perhaps a great sense of amusement in doing slightly impractical
00:46things, largely because they haven't got as used to the tropes of gaming as many older
00:50players have.
00:51With this in mind then, it's easy to imagine a kid repeatedly trying to get into Cycling
00:56Road, which takes up Routes 16, 17 and 18 without a bicycle in Pokemon Red and Blue.
01:02This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that at a certain point, the game just
01:06gives up and lets you on the road anyways, because god loves a trier I guess.
01:11So while you can happily trot around Cycling Road this one time, you're likely a level
01:16way too low if you don't have a bike for it.
01:19Similarly, the fact that you've messed with the game's script by walking into an area
01:23you shouldn't be in can cause all sorts of other issues along the way, which is maybe
01:27what you get for tempting fate and going against Arceus' intentions.
01:329. Killing Enemies Before Their Time – Deus Ex
01:36One of the most interesting parts of Deus Ex is that, for the most part, you can take
01:39out the bosses without even properly fighting them.
01:42How?
01:43Well, as ever, by doing something silly thinking it won't work, only for it to work all too
01:48well.
01:49This is because the boss battles are proximity triggered, meaning that it only properly starts
01:53when you get close to the enemy.
01:55So if you manage to hurt or kill them from a distance, you'll find that they carry
01:58this damage or death through, meaning a casual pot shot at a boss can accidentally skip your
02:03skirmish with them.
02:04This isn't always possible of course, as certain bosses, like Anandavari, have been
02:09designed seemingly to avoid this pitfall.
02:11But there's still a bunch of ways around them too, so if you've committed to the
02:15lovable rogue style of play, you'll likely still find a vaguely cop-out way to beat
02:20them.
02:21Now, it's interesting to think that with just one moment of wonder, you can discover
02:25something that makes huge sections of the game basically a cakewalk.
02:29Mercifully, this is a game that's easy to play more than once, so you can have a legit
02:33playthrough and a silly one as well.
02:368. Playing Around – The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
02:39Goofing about is a crucial part of any gaming experience.
02:43I mean, everyone has at least thought about putting a bucket over an NPC's head to
02:47steal something right in front of their now-covered eyeballs, or some other similarly stupid but
02:52entertaining shenanigans.
02:54Sometimes this isn't even really a matter of getting anything out of it, but the pure
02:58reward of getting to mess around.
03:00As such, it's easy to imagine a player innocently messing around in Breath of the Wild, learning
03:04the shield surf mechanics, only to then accidentally clip themselves straight through a wall.
03:09Now, while speedrun players often use this to skip huge areas of the game, they do so
03:13with clear intentions of which walls to go through and exactly where to go.
03:18Should you manage to pull this off accidentally, then, things can go very wrong very fast.
03:22Plenty of walls simply aren't meant to be walked through, that's why they're walls,
03:27leaving you either stuck outside the area you need to be in, or otherwise just stuck
03:31chilling out in the void.
03:32And yeah, it's easy to watch this and think, well, that would never happen to me, but that
03:37involves purposefully ignoring every silly thing you've ever done in a video game,
03:41and generally, there's always at least once that this happens.
03:457.
03:46Escaping Prison – Phantasy Star 3 While you're tasked with escaping from prison
03:50in Phantasy Star 3, many players likely had the same thought as to how to leave the area
03:55through less legit means.
03:57That's because before you get trapped, you're able to buy an item called the escape pipe,
04:01which allows you to escape from a dungeon upon use.
04:03For anyone struggling with figuring out how to escape the prison then, or just looking
04:07for an easier way to do so, this seemed like a surefire way to leave the prison early,
04:15and then continue the story a little quicker than otherwise.
04:18While the escape pipe does let you leave the prison early, it's not so helpful with the
04:23second part.
04:24Though you've escaped, the game can't quite figure out how, and thus the dialogue
04:28you need to have to continue the story isn't accessible after this method of escape.
04:32Instead, you can only mourn that this creative route is effectively useless, and go back
04:38to your previous save.
04:39This one is at least at the beginning of the game though, so if things go wrong, you haven't
04:42ruined hundreds of hours of your life.
04:456.
04:46Moving in a Cutscene – Half-Life Being given the ability to move in a cutscene
04:50is a strange little gift.
04:52You're stuck in the cutscene, obviously, so you can't just leave, but it's also
04:56surprisingly nice to just be able to jitter yourself around a little bit while someone
05:00talks to you, instead of being trapped in a total freeze frame.
05:04Well, it's nice until it accidentally breaks your game at least.
05:08In the original versions of Half-Life however, moving in some scenes could actually risk
05:12you breaking the game entirely.
05:14In particular, when you get caught by marines, moving can actually totally sabotage the game's
05:19script, leaving it unable to free you from your tiny, dark prison.
05:22Which is especially awkward if you don't realise, and instead just wait around hopelessly
05:27for whatever comes next.
05:28After all, when stuff goes wrong, it doesn't give you a heads up about it, and you wouldn't
05:32presume that the whole thing had just broken for you, so you could be there a long time.
05:37Later editions of the game fixed this issue, but likely only because so many poor souls
05:41sat in a dark room for way, way longer than they deserved.
05:455.
05:46Killing Strangers – The Elder Scrolls III – Morrowind
05:49Now let it be known that this particular way of breaking Morrowind was more the game teaching
05:54you an important moral lesson.
05:56It's not a good idea to go out and kill people all willy nilly, because unlike later
06:01editions to the series, in Morrowind you can theoretically kill whoever you want.
06:06This sounds great in theory, as we've all had that one NPC we desperately wanted to
06:11see the back of, but in practice it had some pretty serious drawbacks.
06:15Should you be unfortunate enough to slay someone you needed for a quest, you'd be unable
06:19to finish it, since the person you needed to chat with to continue or end it was now
06:23sort of a little busy being dead.
06:26If you weren't lucky enough to have killed a person vital for the main quest, then this
06:29became infinitely, infinitely more worse.
06:33So if you made a habit of killing NPCs, or just happened to kill one by accident, this
06:36could mean that many, many hours later, you'd suddenly realise that they were secretly an
06:41important character, and you'd have to either go back to the point you killed them, or just
06:45deal with never properly finishing the game.
06:47Safe to say, nobody enjoys making that choice.
06:514.
06:52R.P.G.
06:53Stuff – Champions of Norrath
06:54RPGs have always been largely about organisation.
06:57Sorting all your characters to have abilities that fit with the rest of the team, making
07:01sure your equipment is tip-top, and just generally optimising everything you can, is basically
07:07RPG 101.
07:08As much as most players desperately hate it though, inventory management is also a big
07:13part of this.
07:14Making sure you have room for more drops, and remembering to sell what you don't want
07:17to keep, is vital for a whole lot of these games, not to mention the lion's share of
07:22most MMOs.
07:23And so it's especially cruel that Champions of Norrath punishes you for this, even if
07:28it does appear to be by total accident.
07:30See after killing the suitably unnerving Spider Queen Sheloth, players who've remembered
07:34their teleport can quickly pop back to sell all the gross spider goodies that she just
07:39dropped, likely feeling pretty good about themselves for being so prepared.
07:43Eventually when they try to return to the boss area, they'll soon realise the key
07:47issue with this.
07:48The boss room is locked.
07:50Since an NPC opens this area for you, you're unable to unlock the door yourself, meaning
07:55it's time to do another RPG classic manoeuvre of desperately looking through older save
07:59files to figure out which one you can use to restart.
08:023.
08:03Believing in the Green Lantern – LEGO Batman 2 DC Super Heroes
08:08When it comes to superheroes, Green Lantern is perhaps the most easily overlooked.
08:12His title, of course, used to belong to Aquaman, but since the DC film made the smart move
08:17of casting Jason Momoa as him, the fish puns have gently died down.
08:21As such it is instead the unfortunate Emerald Protectors of the Realm who now appear to
08:26many like dorks.
08:28But in LEGO Batman 2, Green Lantern can fly, which still serves to make him one of the
08:32more useful characters in the game.
08:34However, it turns out that relying on flying characters can have some major downsides,
08:40especially with Green Lantern, who the game seems to presume that you just won't want
08:43to play as at all.
08:45As such, in one particularly unwieldy section of the game, flying to the area's exit,
08:50which should allow you to go to the next area, will just instead get you stuck there.
08:54Now at this point you might be thinking, is the game just freaking out that you chose
08:58to optionally play as a character who historically was weak to wood and the colour yellow?
09:04Or is it so delighted it just couldn't go on?
09:07We'll simply never know.
09:092. Losing Your Duster Psychonauts
09:12If you were one of the unlucky players to be graced with a bug that meant you lost your
09:15cobweb duster in Psychonauts, you likely didn't consider it a big deal at the time.
09:20You won't be able to get all the collectibles, but not everyone wants to go around finding
09:24every pesky hidden item anyway, so it's easy to realise that it's gone and just
09:28kinda shrug it off.
09:29You'll get it next time.
09:30Only, as it turns out, this is the worst thing you can do, because the final level requires
09:35you to get rid of some cobwebs to get through the fun of the nightmarish meat circus, meaning
09:39that if you don't have the duster, you can't clear the level and finish the game.
09:44But the duster is sold in the shop at the hub world, so it's no biggie, right?
09:48You can just go on and buy another and carry on with your life, happy as a person who just
09:52narrowly avoided a game-based despair.
09:56Well unfortunately for you at this point you've gone beyond the time in the game where you
10:00can go to the shop, so unless you have a save file from before then, you're plum out
10:04of luck.
10:05NUMBER 1.
10:06FINISHING THE GAME.
10:07BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM
10:08The first installment of the Arkham series is just about the perfect length to 100% complete.
10:13You won't find everything on your first roam around, but it also won't take worlds
10:17of time to scout around afterwards and find all the extra riddler trophies after you've
10:22completed the game, and you can always just google the riddles when and if you get sick
10:25of trying to figure them out.
10:27But with all silver linings come clouds, and this is no exception.
10:32That's because Arkham Asylum can have a uniquely heartbreaking bug where all the saved
10:36data containing your adventures with the Spandex Crusader can become corrupted, forcing you
10:41to either restart the whole game from scratch or to quit in a fit of rage.
10:45Worse yet, the painful issue can be triggered by finishing the main story, meaning that
10:49you could finally experience the joy of finishing the game and it's weird as hell final boss
10:54only to find out that you've been blocked from getting that sweet 100% completion.
10:59And even if you bravely go back through all of it, you do so aware of an awful possibility
11:05that there's nothing to stop it happening again.
11:07So that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
11:10Did you ever encounter any of these game breaking glitches and are there any infuriating ones
11:15I missed off here?
11:16While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe and
11:18head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
11:22Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.