Cliches?

[Darkfox]

1) Darkness = evil, Light = good, even though both are just tools with no real affiliation and in reality Darkness is alot kinder than light. Since if Darkness kills you, it's going to be the cold, and that's more like sleeping. While light can have you suffer a rather painful death from UV rays and heat

My key antagonists tend to have some weird element or be without elemental properties. Some of them are light, none are darkness.

3) The main cast is a bunch of stereotypes. We typically have a softspoken gal, a fiery gal and a motherly gal following up the Macho man, the hero and the mystery man.

Sorta have that, but sorta don't. The cast is reaaaaally varied and odd.

4) The role of oddballs is diminished to being a one time villain or just comic relief. Oddball characters in appearance or personality rarely step over these bounds. We never get to really have the oddball be important to the story or anything and that's disappointing

I have almost nothing BUT oddballs! =D

5) Non-Human races that are exactly like humans just with longer lifespans or use of magic or pointed ears and crap. I'm sorry to say but elves, gnomes, and the like are HUMAN. They only have differences so minor that emphasizing on them just to create an all new race is retarded. If they have the same red blood, the same five fingers, the same two eyes, the same anatomy but with minor differences, they are still human.

Amen. I have variety in races that are different from humans, they varie anatomically, and at times, chemically.

6) "Mysterious character" being an excuse to have an under developed character. Just by slapping this title on a character they are given the excuse for them to barely talk, emote, and do nothing but what the plot requires them to do. It gets annoying fast.

My mystery people are the comic reliefs. XD

White Asians. The typical RP characters look like a bunch of white people. Now, I'm guilty of this too, even though I'm black, but I've made a bunch of others from other races around the world too for my RPG/story.

I have many different racial characters with varied skin tones. Those who are white are either pale or European descent. My key character Ren is dark complected.

9) The cast is BORING to look at. Yes, the typical RPG cast is simply boring to look at to me. They are usually a bunch of humans (I'm counting those so called "non-humans" too from above) with MAYBE one real non-human there. But the non-human doesn't really do much so it doesn't matter (FF10 >_>). Although they may have silly hair and outfits that are so complex that they will never take them off from the weeks they travel, it doesn't really save this for me. Every once and a while we should have a more different cast and maybe give some of those abnormalities a real shot at being serious.

Oddballs, my heroes are freakin oddballs. XD

10) The female lead's abilities and role. Usually the role of the female lead is... standing there looking pretty so she can be kidnapped. Her abilities typically are... healing and support. Her abilities are the opposite of the males and her attack power is way below everyone elses. Let's be more original, shall we?

Some of my girls are stronger than many of the guys. XD

11) ANY STORY INVOLVING COLLECTION A BUNCH OF THE SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME MAGIC ITEM (plotdevice). Whether it's the ultimate sword or the ultimate slice of pizza, it's just going to be stolen by the villain and used for his final form anyway.

Don't recall having any of that. o.o

12) Angelic final boss forms. Now I'm going a bit into my faith here, but technically angels bow down to us. So to be technical here, they are on a lower level to us or were before the fall. So, any human turning into an angel is a considerable downgrade if you follow this logic. But even without it, it's overused anyway. Either they turn into an angel or some kind of devil.

Ren becomes a "Righteous Devil" temporarily during a big battle. But he's the hero, not the villain. XD

As for the extras:

13: I have "villains" who test the hero and intend good.

14: My heroes regret the bad that they have caused and admit their mistakes

15: I'm very kind with even the weird ones. Many do get spared, in realization that because of what one is does not make one evil.

16: I've had plans for this.

17: Ewww...

18: I have weapons that really... can't be classified. XD

19: Ewww again...

20: I've seen games where the main hero is blinded for a long time and has to be lead by the party, and is rendered really useless in battle.

21: I have villains who don't like to talk and prefer action, either because they lack communication skill or really don't care and are bored or annoyed by the heroes.

22: I have an assassin named Neth the Death Jester. O.O;; But others have odd named, like Morro and Jack.

23: I have a hard time with romances. Partially because the main character isn't very... romantic, sure he tried but now he's afraid that if he tries again that person will die too.

24: Neth wears purple, some wear white, and my main wears a business suit.

25: I focus less on power, and more on HOW to effectively use that power. Some are more speed based, others are more sluggish and rely on weight and durability.

26: Mine is... a zoanthrope with red on black eyes. o.o

[Bluhman]

ALRIGHTY. Time to test Alpha force against this.
[spoiler=HOLY **** THESE SPOILERS ARE HUGE.]
1) Darkness = evil, Light = good, even though both are just tools with no real affiliation and in reality Darkness is alot kinder than light. Since if Darkness kills you, it's going to be the cold, and that's more like sleeping. While light can have you suffer a rather painful death from UV rays and heat
Nope. Bluhman is plenty dark. Though, Prince Corpus is a dark contender; he hath control over the dead, and is of course a villain. Though, with certainly a noble cause. Even if he does use darkness, he's one of the least evil villains in actuality.

2) Villians just randomly decide one day that they want ultimate power. It's enough of a cliche that they typically want ultimate power, but usually there is no reason for it other than just to be god-like or something
Uuuummm... Nope. Everyone has an underlying reason for wanting to do terrible things.

3) The main cast is a bunch of stereotypes. We typically have a softspoken gal, a fiery gal and a motherly gal following up the Macho man, the hero and the mystery man.
Softspoken: Tri-Emerald
Fiery: Celesta Talon
Motherly: Artemis Sunset
Macho: Diamondgard?/Firestorm Viper
Hero: Chisoku
Mystery Man: Bluhman/Redemption
...
Goddammit.

4) The role of oddballs is diminished to being a one time villain or just comic relief. Oddball characters in appearance or personality rarely step over these bounds. We never get to really have the oddball be important to the story or anything and that's disappointing
Probably...? I'll probably want to make some of the new 1st villains a bit serious. Though, in old Alpha Force, B. Lobenstein and his brigade were DEFINITELY not comic relief.

5) Non-Human races that are exactly like humans just with longer lifespans or use of magic or pointed ears and crap. I'm sorry to say but elves, gnomes, and the like are HUMAN. They only have differences so minor that emphasizing on them just to create an all new race is retarded. If they have the same red blood, the same five fingers, the same two eyes, the same anatomy but with minor differences, they are still human.
Aw, shoot. Well, there's lots of mutants in Alpha Force, who are superpowered, sometimes malformed humans. Then there's the subterrestrials, who look like giant men. Of course, the reasoning I put behind this was that they were evolved from Neandrathals, but that still doesn't make much sense.

6) "Mysterious character" being an excuse to have an under developed character. Just by slapping this title on a character they are given the excuse for them to barely talk, emote, and do nothing but what the plot requires them to do. It gets annoying fast.
Hell no. The new Bluhman has an agenda to keep Chisoku (against his will) with the Alpha Force as long as possible (since he isn't too keen on the whole crime-fighting thing in the new story). When you first meet Demon's Redemption, you have no clue what the hell he wants, if he's insane, or really believes what he's doing, but the mysteries unfold.

7) Lack of real female villains. Female villains are usually given the wonderful job of being eye candy and spellcasters to the heroes. Rarely are they not just spell casters and can fight hand to hand. And... well, they seem to have less motive than the male ones half the time. They just run around like "MWHAHAHAHA! I'M EVIL!", leave and than come back as the final boss if they have been taken THAT seriously.
Coleoptera Venus; a giant, berserk beetle woman. She used to be a female supermodel but got mutated by geneticists in a lab experiment. Now she wants to destroy everything until she can find a way to get back to normal. How the actual events play out, though, I'm not quite sure yet.

White Asians. The typical RP characters look like a bunch of white people. Now, I'm guilty of this too, even though I'm black, but I've made a bunch of others from other races around the world too for my RPG/story.
First Alpha Force had no major characters that weren't asian or white. The new one has some moderately-major parts that are other races. It's probably not enough to warrant going against this cliche, though.

9) The cast is BORING to look at. Yes, the typical RPG cast is simply boring to look at to me. They are usually a bunch of humans (I'm counting those so called "non-humans" too from above) with MAYBE one real non-human there. But the non-human doesn't really do much so it doesn't matter (FF10 >_>). Although they may have silly hair and outfits that are so complex that they will never take them off from the weeks they travel, it doesn't really save this for me. Every once and a while we should have a more different cast and maybe give some of those abnormalities a real shot at being serious.
I don't know. I can't really judge this by myself, but I think there's some decent mix-up in the appearance of the cast.

10) The female lead's abilities and role. Usually the role of the female lead is... standing there looking pretty so she can be kidnapped. Her abilities typically are... healing and support. Her abilities are the opposite of the males and her attack power is way below everyone elses. Let's be more original, shall we?
Welp, Tri-emerald is the healer of the team. Her psychic attacks ignore defense, though, which is pretty useful, but she's not a pure attacker. In theory, the only person she's constantly being bested by is Bad Lobenstein (Now renamed Oppressor, since it was a not-so-subtle reference to a real-life person and place. That, and because of this, the original name sounds really goofy), due to the rape incident with him. She just feels completely powerless against him. Aside from him, though, she's pretty strong.

11) ANY STORY INVOLVING COLLECTION A BUNCH OF THE SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME MAGIC ITEM (plotdevice). Whether it's the ultimate sword or the ultimate slice of pizza, it's just going to be stolen by the villain and used for his final form anyway.
Only involved in the Prince Corpus story arc. And it's not to turn into his awesome final form, but to finally achieve his eternal death.

EDIT:

12) Angelic final boss forms. Now I'm going a bit into my faith here, but technically angels bow down to us. So to be technical here, they are on a lower level to us or were before the fall. So, any human turning into an angel is a considerable downgrade if you follow this logic. But even without it, it's overused anyway. Either they turn into an angel or some kind of devil.
If I implement randomly-generated final bosses (which choose the final boss based on the character cast), the Redemption one would probably an angel.. Or devil. Whatever. The only character whose general themes and relations would conjure angels and devils is Redemptions.

A few more

13) The villain is never testing the heroes or just using unusual methods to do good. They're just flat out evil
Ozymandias from The Watchmen will probably inspire me to somehow create a villain that entails the former.

14) The hero is never wrong! The hero never kills a good person or anything by accident. They are just never wrong on anything.
Oh, one of the first things Chisoku does, both in the old and new story, is accidentally kill someone.

15) Unless it's important to the main character, most non-humans (or atleast what they may call them) are unsavable. In KH2 Sora just kills Nobody by nobody, whether any of them could have been spared in or even saved. Namine and Roxas turned out to be the only savable ones because they come from the main character guys.
Welllllllll.... I don't exactly have a plot yet that uses this cliche device.

16) The softhearted gal is never a villain or fought against unless they are possessed or something. This somewhat goes back to 14. It's very rare that a good hearted person is even really fought against unless they are rough around the edges. It's been very rare in games where the quiet softspoken gal was a boss battle, except maybe for their introduction. If you end up doing so, their usually possessed by something
The only possibility is that Coleoptera Venus is actually softspoken at heart, and even if that was the case, we could argue that she is 'possessed' by her insanity.

17) The way possession is used. Now I do have quite a few problems with how the process has been used. Live an old person possessing a young person for a new body because apparently they are not powerful enough on their own. Other times it gets really creepy with a male possessing a woman or vise versa. Now that is just sick, man!
...Are you like literally reading my mind here? Let me explain this situation here; it's actually pretty complex, and I probably should now write it down. And yes, it is very sick: The older, villain psion, Oppressor, at one point, raped main character female psion, Tri-Emerald, and left her alone and trashed on the street, right after they had been expelled from their high school for trying to take complete vengeance on those who had been prejudiced towards Tri-Emerald due to the presence of her odd third eye (which Oppressor lacks...) Tri-Emerald is eventually found and invited into the Alpha Force by Bluhman (after a few misunderstandings on Bluhman's part, since Tri-Emerald, at that point, was still a criminal at large, technically, for massive property damage related to the school incident), and at some point, Tri-Emerald and Oppressor meet again on the battlefield on opposite sides. Up until this point, Oppressor had assumed that Tri-Emerald had been left for dead, so he pretty much forgot about her. When he sees her again, however, his lust for her rekindles, and after the battle is concluded, Oppressor now has established a 'wavelength' for Tri-Emerald's mind. As we know, Oppressor has a huge hard-on for Tri-Emerald, so periodically, he likes to manipulate Tri-Emerald's mind to stimulate sexual pleasure in her. So, it's not full-out possession, but it could probably be considered somewhere very near. Yep.

18) Swords are the common weapon. Yes swords are easy to use, but they shouldn't be the weapon for the main character all the time! What about axes? Lances? And the like? They end up being weaker than most swords in the games they are in despite being more effective in real life. Also, I want to see a MC with nunchucks! Yeah!
Unfortunately, the only main character who uses a melee weapon uses a sword. Fortunately, a lot of the enemies use different weapons, ranging from fireaxes, sledgehammers, crowbars, knives, and in one case, a lance.

19) Girly male villains in place of female ones. Now this again goes back to the female thing, well it deserves much comment. It's bad enough to have a guy look girly, but to have an effeminate name and female voice actor? Why not make it a damn woman then? Capcom is very guilty of this, but Square shares in with the guilt too
Nope. The male villains are never effeminate in AF.

20) The lack of any critical damage done to the main party. I've never seen a villain come in and break the main characters arm and such. The villain usually just does some slash that is apparently a serious injury but they recover from it in 4 seconds anyway
Will most likely happen. Though, the critical damage will probably be fixed up later on, depending on who it is; Chisoku might need some mechanic work to get an arm reattached, and there might be a situation where Redemption's regeneration ability is hampered. The rest aren't all that applicable; Diamondgard rarely ever takes critical damage because he's so sturdy, and the rest would have to get a prosthesis or something that would leave them visibly scarred for the rest of the time.

21) A villain that just talks **** all the time and runs away when they're about to do something. That's annoying, villains do it alot in these games, they should stop doing it
...Mmmmmmmprobably not going to happen.

22) Evil version of characters have "Dark" or "death" in some form in their name. Oooooh! Scary! >_>
Stopwatch could probably be considered an evil version of Chisoku. Hell, so could Dark Fox (now renamed Salamander), so... Um, yeah.

23) DRAWN OUT ROMANCES! OMG! I HATE THAT SO MUCH! I can understand developing one, but one that's just drawn out to hell is annoying
I'll try. It's hard to tell if this will happen or not..

24) Dress-code: Bad guy wears black, good guy wears black
Hmm, there's a few villains who wear lots of black in my game; Oppressor, Stopwatch, and Salamander. The only two heroes that wear black are Bluhman and Firestorm Viper... Hooray?

25) Power vs Technique. Technique is rarely seen in these games, but power takes its place. Even though fighting technique is all about creating an advantage over something regardless of power
Chisoku is all about technique. His perfect reflexes and martial art skills (along with a bit of power from his android body) allow him to best many enemies that would probably totally overrun him otherwise.

26) Not much weird looking things with the main character. The main character rarely has a really odd physical quality
Umm... In uniform, Chisoku is the only one that wears a mask? I don't know. He's pretty normal looking.

My next set

27) Wild colored hair. It’s no real issue with me, but I have to put in there, just for the sake of it.
Only character that really falls under that category is Bluhman, who's hair is purple. Everyone else on the main cast has naturally colored hair.

28) Mental disorder equals psycho! This is in media in general; someone with a mental disorder is often depicted as someone who is maliciously unstable. That all they can do is do harm than good, in reality they aren’t as malicious or willing to kill as you’d think. Just because someones mind is broken, doesn’t mean that their heart is too.
Only person I could think applies to this is Dr. Rick Selphen, who has Aspergers, and becomes a minor villain at one point because he loses his job at the university. He used to be Bluhman's cohort, though, and deep down, wants to live up to his expectations. He learns that his period of madness following his job loss was a big mistake, and really wants to reconcile. The way he does this is a strange one, which turns him into the 8th playable character.

29) Northern Europe is everywhere. Typically just about everything is Euro inspired with one or two Asian inspired places, there are very rarely places inspired by other continents like Africa, South America, Pre-Columbian North America and so on.
Oh, yeah? My game actually takes place in North America, so suck it! Bwahahahaaaa!!!

30) No extras. Very rarely does a main character in the party tend to have anything like extra arms or an extra eye or something. The extra eye is more common, but rarely seen all together.
Extra eye on Tri-Emeral-wait, you made this one in response to her, didn't you?!

31) Perfect hair. No matter the humidity, no matter the weather conditions the main characters tend to have their hair look exactly the way it is no matter what.
Can't be helped. I'd rather not have to redraw the charset's hair for every different weather condition, k?

32) Transformations. Typically if any of the characters go through a transformation it’s usually something like demon wings or angel wings.
Nope. Typically, in this game, if someone goes through some transformation, it's into some terrible eldritch abomination. Also note that transformations, thus, rarely occur.

33) “Dark” or generally wild and/or malicious transformations that any of the party members go through just lets them go all out on the enemy and not the party themselves. This is especially true if it involves main characters
Don't really have a plan relating to this one, actually.

34) Halflings. Whether they’re half demon or half vampire this is fairly overused and for some reason they are discriminated against
Halflings are Hobbits. The term you're looking for is Tiefling. Anyways, this doesn't really apply for my game at all. Ha ha!

35) Humans are weaklings. Typically humans are the weak people and everything else is stronger. The human potential is not used to its fullest and the Halfling main character does the majority of the powerful moves along with the full blooded version of that race.
Only 1 or 2 of the cast of Alpha force are wholly non-human. Granted, they're some of the most powerful characters on the team, but you can't deny that Chisoku could kick your skull in with ease. Firestorm Viper could melt a block of steel.

36) Werewolves and such are apparently uncontrollable transformations in which they are put as either the enemy monster or one of the minor villains
Miiight have a werewolf character/villain? The transformation would be uncontrollable, but the character would still be able to control his actions alright...? I don't know.

37) Buff guys get buttchins, I dunno why but they always have huge buttchins
The proper term is a cleft chin. The only characters that might have a cleft chin are Bluhman (which you can't see due to the beard, so I don't know if I'm just making that up or not), and Firestorm Viper. Out of the male characters, those two have the absolute lowest physical strength.

38) Death is apathetic. Anything that resembles the personification of Death is usually apathetic to living sentient beings and will antagonize them more than help them.
Why wouldn't it? Prince Corpus, practically a sort of symbol for death (he's like dead on the inside, but cursed to stay 'awake) is so apathetic towards life because he's seen so much of it go away in his hundreds of years of operation. He couldn't give a damn that you're living, dead, or undead... Unless, of course, you knew where the artifacts he needs are!

39) YOU ARE THE WORLD’S GREATEST WARRIOR! The main character typically gains such a title in one way or another. Despite their age and experience, they are usually a master by the end of the game and apparently need not to learn anymore from a teacher or anything.
YOU'RE ROOSEVELT CITY'S GREATEST WARRIOR, that's for sure. An Arena function might be implemented later on that could prove or disprove your status as greatest warrior in history of world.

40) Prophesies, they tend to have one of the main characters as the hero to be born in some prophesy that someone made. Thus they are destined to be great from the start
Hell no.

41) FEED ME! Never do the heroes of our story ever really get hungry unless it is for the plot or it’s a character trait. Rarely do they get hungry just because they haven’t eaten… this applies to bathing too.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure it'd be tons of fun to try and be feeding your characters while they're busy trying to solve crimes.

42) The small animal type character tends to be the most annoying character, and this seems to be on purpose since rarely do they actually try.
There's no small animal type character. Yet.

43) The jealous rival person ends up betraying his friends in search of power to be better than the main character.
Whether this happens or not depends on what you tell your friends...

44) No ghosts! We rarely get ghosts in these stories. Which is unfortunate, I love ghosts!
Prince Corpus and one of the members of Redemption's Church can summon ghosts.

45) They can use powerful weapons or techniques without suffering physically. It’s pretty common that powerful techniques or massive weapons can be used like anything else and no character has a recoil from using such objects
Probably would only occur in cutscenes in my game.

46) DESTROY CHAOS, CREATE EVERYTHING! That is usually the goal of the main villain, to make everything in his image
Wut

47) The actual culture of the world isn’t too different than those in our previous history. That’s rather common, that the culture is not really all that different from ours in these fantasy worlds.
Well, the reason for this is that Alpha Force assumes a setting on earth. So how about that, huh?

48) The heroes parents, they never really do much in these stories because they’re either dead, not there, or secretly someone in the party.
Chisoku's parents are in California. Until supervillainy extends to affect the whole of the US, they aren't really concerned in the story.

49) How can all these people go in a desert area without overheating from their thick clothes or getting sun burns? I never see them change clothes to bare the heat
See 31

50) Lack of culture shock. They can go from one country to the next, one timeline to the next and one dimension to the next and experience little to no culture shock… and the culture seems to be exactly the same anyhow.
Diamondgard is practically built around culture shock.

51) SPHY IN THE MISTS! Usually the thief who joins you, the overly kind person you meet, the person who guides you, or the random person who offers to be engaged to one of the main characters is really a spy for the bad guys.
Pretty much every last character is completely on your side. None are really out to kill one another, really.

52) Never trust them priests! Any religion in a game with priests and the like is an evil one and all the priests are really evil men
Head bishop of Redemption's church is a bit of a conservative jerk, but the other priest and the nun are genuinely good-hearted people.

53) The word “Guard” is the last thing you would ever want to hear. You can never trust the law enforcement at all. They are either evil, corrupt or just incompetent.
Hey! They're not incompetent! Let's see your town's police force try to stop an army of shapeshifting robots!

54) The wanted men! Yes, somehow if your character is wanted in 50 countries and has posters all over towns with their pictures, no one citizen will ever recognize them.
Well, Chisoku and company are pretty much the law in Roosevelt City, so... Yeah. They're never even wanted in the first place.

55) Castle Greyskull has a new challenger! The evil HQ of the evil villain will be filled with grey bricks, human skulls on the ground, lava floors, and all that just to show how evil the evil villain is. And… well, the place usually seems rather hard for any guards or the main villain themselves to navigate.
The dungeons in Alpha Force are going to try their darned hardest to seem like actual buildings, but of course, with some circumstances that make them hard to navigate, such as furnishing blockades, broken elevators, and way too many locked doors. Oh, and the sewers were just stupidly concieved. Okay, yeah.... But there is practically no human skulls or lava to be found within the bank. Really.

56) The Good Master and the Bad Master. If the villain is the master of a certain art, there will be character that only exists to show how evil the fallen master has is. Usually the good one wears white and the bad one wears black
There really aren't any... Masters in my game. I guess the Good Master would be Bluhman, and he wears black, while there can't really be a bad master because there's so many different groups of villains.

57) The villain will have a name that emphasizes on their destructive and/or vicious nature by usually being named after an evil god or something. It’s something we’ve all done, but I got to add it anyway.
Not one of my villain concepts is named after an evil god. Unless, for some reason, you worship a god named Oppressor, Consigliere Mangione, or Noyau.

58) Characters named after snakes or with snake-like qualities are typically evil. Years of misunderstanding how the snake is has lead many fiction pieces to do such. Truth is… snakes are really more passive-aggressive than vicious (heck, I personally think they’re timid). They only tend to attack something when they feel threatened and give plenty of warning signs saying “DON’T TOUCH ME” before they get to bite anyone. Heck, a Cobra will let you hold it if you do it the right way. All in all, snakes have a bad rep.
There's no snake-based ally or enemy. Yet.

59) Attack on the village! The main character or someone in the main character’s party will have had their village attacked by the villain’s forces and will want revenge.
You can't deny that it's a good way to give an initially apathetic protagonist a new meaning, but I guess there's also more than one way to skin a cat... You sick bastard, but ANYWAY, The only character that might fall to this terrible cliche is Diamondgard, but that wouldn't make too much sense, since it's from his village that he draws power.

60) Flower Power! Girls are typically named or have some theme after a flower. No, let me rephrase that. Soft, physically weak and high class (in the sense of either they are royalty or just bratty) females are named after flowers and not much meaning to this other than to make them seem ever more like a powderpuff.
Tri-Emerald is named after one of the most precious gemstones, and gemstones usually aren't that flimsy. Artemis Sunset is named after the greek huntress god. Celesta Talon brings to mind a bird of prey, and Coleoptera Venus shares her name with the beetle genus. There's scarcely anything flowery to be seen here.

61) Weather tells all! Whenever it rains heavily with thunder and lightning, some life changing event is going to happen.
I swear, I WILL have a day take place in Alpha Force where it just rains and nothing that out of the ordinary happens.

62) Long silver haired main villain. I don’t mean this to any of the villains you have, just the main one.
Dr. Selphen's original sprite had silver hair, but that's probably going to change, especially since I now find it 1000X easier to recolor sprites.

63) Evil builds from the bottom up! Usually the tallest building in all the land is where the headquarters of the main villain is. Because nothing says “evil” like skyscrapers
SPOILER: New York City is actually completely evil and trying to destroy Roosevelt City. The empire state building is the epicenter of all diabolical plans.

Granted, B. Lobenstein's original base in old Alpha Force was based in an abandoned skyscraper, but it was far from THE tallest building in a city of steel.

64) That’s just mean. The villain will kill someone who has either given him a message he does not like, made a simple mistake, missed the speck of dust in their drink or had accidentally given them soup when they ordered salad. This is, of course, to show how evil the villain is.
Probably will only happen with one villain. Promise.

65) Pushovers. There are villains who are just the opposite. Who run around announcing how powerful they are and how they will dominate the world, only to push people over and cause some collateral damage.
The first villains you face are robbing a bank and take a knife to Bluhman's face. Real pushovers.

66) Horror Movie Villain Syndrome. This I give to the villains who keep freaking dying and we see it happen or atleast we think he does because he falls off a cliff, but comes back… constantly.
Would only happen if it had an explanation. For example, with Prince Corpus... Well, he's freaking immortal. And with him, he considers that a problem.

67) Language Barrier Down! In most games, going into a different country, world, universe, etc does not call for them to have their own language. Everyone, no matter what speaks in English, with no hint of an accent. Now I can understand that having them write gibberish would be annoying to write and such.  And I can understand if they know English, but perhaps an accent could be used to distinguish them? But all in all, I’m guilty of this too. I just added it for the sake that it is a cliché
I really wanted to implement something that had Diamondgard speak all his dialog in Old English, but it was a bit hard to understand. Still, I try my hardest to give him a dialect. Hell, a lot of the characters in this game are going to speak with nonstandard dialects.

68) The Traveling Merchant… who the hell is he? We typically are given a traveling merchant who beats the group to every location, seems to be tracking them down, is armed with many weapons and potions… and we never know who the heck he is. I think someone with that power over me, I would like to know who he was
Never happens; the whole game takes place in Roosevelt City. Why would there be a merchant travelling to... Well, different parts of the city?

69) The dying plotdevice. We are usually greeted by the creator of a device, virus, item or something that is important to the plot or just someone who is there just to establish something. And then they die… and that’s that. They’re… just there to be met and die… yeah.
Dr. Tom Barsad creates hundreds of awesome gadgets for Chisoku throughout the game. He never dies.. Er, yet. And even then, it's highly unlikely I'll write that in.

70) THE EXTREME COLD IS NOT THAT COLD! This is related to the desert thing, but in reverse. A group of half dressed people, most likely with a girl who has 30% of her body covered and her buttcheeks hanging out and someone in a suit of metal armor will not be bothered by the cold in a really fatal way. They will comment that it’s cold… and that’s it for that.
See 31.

71) Archers don’t do much. This is one where I talk about gameplay, but archers never seem to do much damage.
Artemis Sunset and Bluhman are, technically, both ranged fighters. For not having any superpowers, they both kick sizable amounts of ***. In fact, Artemis Sunset can snipe mobs so that they don't have to be fought later on.

72) It’s been done. The great evil that is storming the land has been fought by a group of heroes in the past before who are actually more capable and more experienced than the group of newbies we get. And even with that said, they still manage to defeat the evil and maybe even banish it for good
Roosevelt City was established in 2009. Villains moved in soon after, then the AUB was set up. The AUB and their superheroes were able to contain the issue of supervillainy, but the actual fight back against villains never began until Bluhman formed the Alpha Force.

73) Selective romancing. The hero’s love interest is never the mature one, the one who can do anything or is not over -exaggerated in their personality traits. It’s either the annoying one, the helpless one or “spunky” one (which in most cases is the annoying one anyhow).
I don't even know who Chisoku's love interest is going to end up being... Hrrrrmmm....

74) The villain who studied under the same master as the hero has the same techniques, but just hit harder, are recolored and sound evil
Stopwatch did not train under Bluhman. That would be very weird.

75) Unintentional Suicide. I don’t know why, but for some reason people sacrificing their lives when they don’t really need to are popular in these games. Someone will just stand there and let themselves be killed by the overloaded machine for no reason and they never come back (unlike the villain).
The main cast does not die. At least, not without VERY good reason.

76) Retarded Guard beasts. For some reason, the only way to test yourself as the one who is chosen to use some item or is trying to do it to save the world or something, you must fight with the boss trying to kill you. It’s done completely by strength so… they determine if you’re good just by defeating them. Well how does THAT work? The villain could just do it themselves.
The goal of seriously saving the world doesn't come into play until the very last moments of the game. The 'guard beasts' in place are less actual beasts in place to test you, rather than apparitions created by crazy dimension bending crap. I don't know. It's really weird.

77) Dirty Jobs. The villain always manages to have you all doing his or her dirty work that they have postponed for 10 years or so to wait and see who would do it for them… even if they could themselves.
Did I mention the main villain was Mike Rowe? Mike Rowe fused with CTHULU!!
The closest actual villain that comes to fulfilling this trite trope is Prince Corpus, and it's highly likely he actually can't do or get what the heroes can.

78) Who ever joins the party and is super powerful is either going to die or betray the party.
Ah, I have to admit, I fall victim to this, but only because it probably wouldn't be too fun just having characters that constantly kick enemy *** for you. Diamondgard and Redemption are both very powerful fighters, and both have rather tenuous ties with the Alpha Force organization (Diamondgard is confused and apathetic about humans on whole, while Redemption believes that the Alpha Force is run in an satanic and murderous way. He's actually not too far off with the latter.)

79) The badass, tough boss who joins your party ends up being a total pushover as a member now that he has player stats
Only because his initial body gets wrecked up and needs to be rebuilt.

80) Whenever something is supposed to look divine or holy, it’s bright, white and has angel wings.
Redemption wears the cross of the templar, and gold and silver armor in spots... Along with a dark brown leather jumpsuit and perhaps black backing to his cape.
[/spoiler]

[Drakiyth]

Drak, you were THIS close to making a reasonable post about reality.

LOL! Chuck Norris would like a word with you. I don't know, I think chi energy can be real from what I've seen from monk demonstrations.  Though, a steel toe boot to the noggin would do the trick too. Or better yet a steel toe with a knife coming out of it.. Okay, you're right.. just forget the kicking thing as a comparison to guns and swords. When it comes to reality.

[SaiKar]

Okay okay, applying CoD2 to the Deathreaper complaints

[spoiler]1) Darkness = evil, Light = good, even though both are just tools with no real affiliation and in reality Darkness is alot kinder than light. Since if Darkness kills you, it's going to be the cold, and that's more like sleeping. While light can have you suffer a rather painful death from UV rays and heat
Weird physics aside, the conflict between darkness and light is one of the major CoD2 plot points, but it's nowhere near as simplistic as good and evil. In fact, several evil characters join because they see the threat of their way of life being exterminated.

2) Villians just randomly decide one day that they want ultimate power. It's enough of a cliche that they typically want ultimate power, but usually there is no reason for it other than just to be god-like or something
Not my main villain's goal.

3) The main cast is a bunch of stereotypes. We typically have a softspoken gal, a fiery gal and a motherly gal following up the Macho man, the hero and the mystery man.
Erika definately falls into fiery and Jason is sometimes the martyred hero, but I can't fit the other categories. Sai is anything but softspoken or motherly.

4) The role of oddballs is diminished to being a one time villain or just comic relief. Oddball characters in appearance or personality rarely step over these bounds. We never get to really have the oddball be important to the story or anything and that's disappointing
Errr, isn't it a good thing that really stupid random stuff is just for comic relief? In any event, I can't think of any instance this is true in my game.

5) Non-Human races that are exactly like humans just with longer lifespans or use of magic or pointed ears and crap. I'm sorry to say but elves, gnomes, and the like are HUMAN. They only have differences so minor that emphasizing on them just to create an all new race is retarded. If they have the same red blood, the same five fingers, the same two eyes, the same anatomy but with minor differences, they are still human.
Okay, Sai fails hard at this one. Her fer physical differences don't really cut it.

6) "Mysterious character" being an excuse to have an under developed character. Just by slapping this title on a character they are given the excuse for them to barely talk, emote, and do nothing but what the plot requires them to do. It gets annoying fast.
Dodged this one entirely. There are some complicated characters, but not the chiche tight-lipped mystery guy.

7) Lack of real female villains. Female villains are usually given the wonderful job of being eye candy and spellcasters to the heroes. Rarely are they not just spell casters and can fight hand to hand. And... well, they seem to have less motive than the male ones half the time. They just run around like "MWHAHAHAHA! I'M EVIL!", leave and than come back as the final boss if they have been taken THAT seriously.
I cannot answer this one without major spoilers, but I will just say "no."

Cool White Asians. The typical RP characters look like a bunch of white people. Now, I'm guilty of this too, even though I'm black, but I've made a bunch of others from other races around the world too for my RPG/story.
I fail hard. In my defense, a lot of the cast is real people and they're a bunch of white guys. Matt used to be black but real-life Matt complained enough that I changed hs sprite.

9) The cast is BORING to look at. Yes, the typical RPG cast is simply boring to look at to me. They are usually a bunch of humans (I'm counting those so called "non-humans" too from above) with MAYBE one real non-human there. But the non-human doesn't really do much so it doesn't matter (FF10 >_>). Although they may have silly hair and outfits that are so complex that they will never take them off from the weeks they travel, it doesn't really save this for me. Every once and a while we should have a more different cast and maybe give some of those abnormalities a real shot at being serious.
Well, I have two robots, a demon lord, and a dolphin, but most of the cast probably doesn't impress you. Again, I claim real people constraining me. At times I've told people that their sprites are sorta boring but they don't want me to change them. Ah well.

10) The female lead's abilities and role. Usually the role of the female lead is... standing there looking pretty so she can be kidnapped. Her abilities typically are... healing and support. Her abilities are the opposite of the males and her attack power is way below everyone elses. Let's be more original, shall we?
Erika, the game's female lead, is a sword mage on the front lines. My beta testers have told me that her combination of speed and attack power makes her both their favorite character and probably the strongest overall fighter out of all of them. Plotwise, she never gets captured except when the entire party does, and in fact saves Jason in an early scene. Originality, check?

11) ANY STORY INVOLVING COLLECTION A BUNCH OF THE SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME MAGIC ITEM (plotdevice). Whether it's the ultimate sword or the ultimate slice of pizza, it's just going to be stolen by the villain and used for his final form anyway.
A game without collection quests entirely would be rare. You're collecting things in CoD2, but no, they don't get stolen.

12) Angelic final boss forms. Now I'm going a bit into my faith here, but technically angels bow down to us. So to be technical here, they are on a lower level to us or were before the fall. So, any human turning into an angel is a considerable downgrade if you follow this logic. But even without it, it's overused anyway. Either they turn into an angel or some kind of devil.
Nope. Actually, it's sort of the reverse of this, but I can't elaborate again without mucking up the plot.

13) The villain is never testing the heroes or just using unusual methods to do good. They're just flat out evil
There are some irredeemably awful people, sure, but the main villain is not one of them.

14) The hero is never wrong! The hero never kills a good person or anything by accident. They are just never wrong on anything.
Actually this happens a lot. In CoD2 you occasionally fight good people or soldiers because they think you're bad guys and they'd rather try to kill you than talk. It eats away at the team's morals.

15) Unless it's important to the main character, most non-humans (or atleast what they may call them) are unsavable. In KH2 Sora just kills Nobody by nobody, whether any of them could have been spared in or even saved. Namine and Roxas turned out to be the only savable ones because they come from the main character guys.
My game largely has human adversaries, but there are a couple nonhumans. I don't really understand your example so I'm not sure I can comment more.

16) The softhearted gal is never a villain or fought against unless they are possessed or something. This somewhat goes back to 14. It's very rare that a good hearted person is even really fought against unless they are rough around the edges. It's been very rare in games where the quiet softspoken gal was a boss battle, except maybe for their introduction. If you end up doing so, their usually possessed by something
Probably the MOST softspoken is Amy, and you do fight her when she's under dark control, but it's the entire country that's under that control, not just her. Regarding fighting against good people, let's just say the game has a somewhat difficult party vs. Sai battle.

17) The way possession is used. Now I do have quite a few problems with how the process has been used. Live an old person possessing a young person for a new body because apparently they are not powerful enough on their own. Other times it gets really creepy with a male possessing a woman or vise versa. Now that is just sick, man!
Doesn't happen.

18) Swords are the common weapon. Yes swords are easy to use, but they shouldn't be the weapon for the main character all the time! What about axes? Lances? And the like? They end up being weaker than most swords in the games they are in despite being more effective in real life. Also, I want to see a MC with nunchucks! Yeah!
There's something like 12 types of weapons in my game. There's a few characters that use swords, but really there's a whole spectrum of medieval, modern, magical, and sci-fi weirdness.

19) Girly male villains in place of female ones. Now this again goes back to the female thing, well it deserves much comment. It's bad enough to have a guy look girly, but to have an effeminate name and female voice actor? Why not make it a damn woman then? Capcom is very guilty of this, but Square shares in with the guilt too
Jason is weak in the sense that he's not macho, but I don't think he's girly or effeminate. Think this doesn't apply to me.

20) The lack of any critical damage done to the main party. I've never seen a villain come in and break the main characters arm and such. The villain usually just does some slash that is apparently a serious injury but they recover from it in 4 seconds anyway
At one point Erika gets hurt to the point where she can barely fight (you can still use her in combat if you're just cruel, but she sucks) but yeah, this is mostly true.

21) A villain that just talks **** all the time and runs away when they're about to do something. That's annoying, villains do it alot in these games, they should stop doing it
Hehehe, guilty.

22) Evil version of characters have "Dark" or "death" in some form in their name. Oooooh! Scary! >_>
"Corrupt" actually! There's a corrupt version of everyone. And it ties, albeit loosely, into the plot. Look, fighting against party members is cool, okay?

23) DRAWN OUT ROMANCES! OMG! I HATE THAT SO MUCH! I can understand developing one, but one that's just drawn out to hell is annoying
Moderately guilty. The game didn't originally have a love story but eventually I added one under peer pressure. It's somewhat drawn out.

24) Dress-code: Bad guy wears black, good guy wears black
What? No.

25) Power vs Technique. Technique is rarely seen in these games, but power takes its place. Even though fighting technique is all about creating an advantage over something regardless of power
I'm not really sure what you want out of a battle system that has commands like "press enter to attack." There are lots of moves in my game that don't do damage but help weaken enemies or enhance the party... is what what you're talking about?

26) Not much weird looking things with the main character. The main character rarely has a really odd physical quality
He's psychic and his normally black eyes flash bright blue when he's doing psychic stuff, but that probably doesn't count. You were really vague with some of these.[/spoiler]

Overall, I think I did okay. I got hit on a few of them but they were sort of complaints about the genre rather than bad storytelling.

[fruckert]

Hey look, Myrdia plot!
Kinda!
[spoiler=BANDWAGON ]
1) Darkness = evil, Light = good, even though both are just tools with no real affiliation and in reality Darkness is alot kinder than light. Since if Darkness kills you, it's going to be the cold, and that's more like sleeping. While light can have you suffer a rather painful death from UV rays and heat
Completely not true in Myrdia. Evil is actually the grey area, which I've deemed "chaos".
White is life, and black is death, but while white is good, death really doesn't care. It's truly neutral.

2) Villians just randomly decide one day that they want ultimate power. It's enough of a cliche that they typically want ultimate power, but usually there is no reason for it other than just to be god-like or something
Gerrin conquered the world to make it perfect. He's obsessed with order in absolutely every way, and kind of went insanely overzealous about it.
Overzealous meaning murdering a god and stealing it's powers, but whatever.

3) The main cast is a bunch of stereotypes. We typically have a softspoken gal, a fiery gal and a motherly gal following up the Macho man, the hero and the mystery man.
So far, I do have mysterious gal, the "hero", and softspoken, but the last one isn't technically in your party. She's a support character.
The Mysterious Gal is Audrey Sybil, who I can't really say anything about without giving up her plotline (yay mystery).
The Hero is Christopher Zarrick, the first White Knight you meet, who is an eager soldier.
And the Softspoken Gal is Raven Erim, who I just realized I haven't written much exposition besides her backstory as a poet.

4) The role of oddballs is diminished to being a one time villain or just comic relief. Oddball characters in appearance or personality rarely step over these bounds. We never get to really have the oddball be important to the story or anything and that's disappointing
I haven't done that much in detail writing besides the beginning, but the game does aim for a kind of goofy feel.

5) Non-Human races that are exactly like humans just with longer lifespans or use of magic or pointed ears and crap. I'm sorry to say but elves, gnomes, and the like are HUMAN. They only have differences so minor that emphasizing on them just to create an all new race is retarded. If they have the same red blood, the same five fingers, the same two eyes, the same anatomy but with minor differences, they are still human.
I'm not really understanding this one, but I do have like...3 "alien" races.
Dragons are dragons.
Slyth are salamander people. You need to see one of my headshots in order to understand what they look like.
And then...Wemic...
Alright, I fail at this.
Even my non "human" races are basically Argonians and Khajiit.

6) "Mysterious character" being an excuse to have an under developed character. Just by slapping this title on a character they are given the excuse for them to barely talk, emote, and do nothing but what the plot requires them to do. It gets annoying fast.
My definition of mysterious is rather different then, because I actually think that mystery is provoked by giving just enough details to where you have an idea of what the character is about, but not really.

7) Lack of real female villains. Female villains are usually given the wonderful job of being eye candy and spellcasters to the heroes. Rarely are they not just spell casters and can fight hand to hand. And... well, they seem to have less motive than the male ones half the time. They just run around like "MWHAHAHAHA! I'M EVIL!", leave and than come back as the final boss if they have been taken THAT seriously.
The bad thing about Myrdia so far is that I don't really have a strongly written antagonistic force to drive the story along, just a string of concepts.
As such, no real villains yet besides the obvious.

White Asians. The typical RP characters look like a bunch of white people. Now, I'm guilty of this too, even though I'm black, but I've made a bunch of others from other races around the world too for my RPG/story.
I don't have graphics, Myrdia is heavily and possibly indefinitely in concept stage.

9) The cast is BORING to look at. Yes, the typical RPG cast is simply boring to look at to me. They are usually a bunch of humans (I'm counting those so called "non-humans" too from above) with MAYBE one real non-human there. But the non-human doesn't really do much so it doesn't matter (FF10 >_>). Although they may have silly hair and outfits that are so complex that they will never take them off from the weeks they travel, it doesn't really save this for me. Every once and a while we should have a more different cast and maybe give some of those abnormalities a real shot at being serious.
Well...the lead is.
I don't think that the giant steampunk golem made out of brass, soldier with an electric weasel, woman who always dresses in black and keeps an umbrella, borderline insane dwarf with a fairly sizable gun, necromancer whose subjects are damned souls in machines that are given a second chance at redemption, and rotting clown demon are very boring, however.

10) The female lead's abilities and role. Usually the role of the female lead is... standing there looking pretty so she can be kidnapped. Her abilities typically are... healing and support. Her abilities are the opposite of the males and her attack power is way below everyone elses. Let's be more original, shall we?
Again, not much plot besides the core arc fully written.

11) ANY STORY INVOLVING COLLECTION A BUNCH OF THE SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME MAGIC ITEM (plotdevice). Whether it's the ultimate sword or the ultimate slice of pizza, it's just going to be stolen by the villain and used for his final form anyway.
Well...it's not exactly collecting anything, but you do have to go and consult all of the gods to move the plot along.
You have no idea who you are, and the God of Ice tells you that one of the other gods has locked your memories.

12) Angelic final boss forms. Now I'm going a bit into my faith here, but technically angels bow down to us. So to be technical here, they are on a lower level to us or were before the fall. So, any human turning into an angel is a considerable downgrade if you follow this logic. But even without it, it's overused anyway. Either they turn into an angel or some kind of devil.
Nooope, no spoiler for you.

13) The villain is never testing the heroes or just using unusual methods to do good. They're just flat out evil
The main villain is trapped in a giant block of diamond and a metal that absorbs magic, and by extension gods. He can't do much.
But he's not really flat out evil. Just heavily, heavily misdirected.

14) The hero is never wrong! The hero never kills a good person or anything by accident. They are just never wrong on anything.
Oh yes he is.
No spoiler for you, but the little demon that keeps following you around shouldn't really be a good sign.

15) Unless it's important to the main character, most non-humans (or atleast what they may call them) are unsavable. In KH2 Sora just kills Nobody by nobody, whether any of them could have been spared in or even saved. Namine and Roxas turned out to be the only savable ones because they come from the main character guys.
Most of the "monsters" in Myrdia come from these energy constructs called Glyphs, almost all the others are wild animals.
Glyphs are what happens when there is excess mana left in the energy pool for a spell.
The excess energy starts hunting out other energy (such as body heat, or souls) to keep itself from fizzling out.
This leads it to either taking on other forms (spirits) or possessing objects that are laying around (golems).
They really shouldn't exist in the first place, so it's better off to kill them anyways.

16) The softhearted gal is never a villain or fought against unless they are possessed or something. This somewhat goes back to 14. It's very rare that a good hearted person is even really fought against unless they are rough around the edges. It's been very rare in games where the quiet softspoken gal was a boss battle, except maybe for their introduction. If you end up doing so, their usually possessed by something
I need to write more.

17) The way possession is used. Now I do have quite a few problems with how the process has been used. Live an old person possessing a young person for a new body because apparently they are not powerful enough on their own. Other times it gets really creepy with a male possessing a woman or vise versa. Now that is just sick, man!
Nope, no possession here.
Except for in the above example.

18) Swords are the common weapon. Yes swords are easy to use, but they shouldn't be the weapon for the main character all the time! What about axes? Lances? And the like? They end up being weaker than most swords in the games they are in despite being more effective in real life. Also, I want to see a MC with nunchucks! Yeah!
You can pick up any weapon of any class in this game.
This is something that bugs me as well, so I decided early on that you should be able to equip whatever.

No nunchucks though.

19) Girly male villains in place of female ones. Now this again goes back to the female thing, well it deserves much comment. It's bad enough to have a guy look girly, but to have an effeminate name and female voice actor? Why not make it a damn woman then? Capcom is very guilty of this, but Square shares in with the guilt too
No, no, no, no, no.
Just...no.

20) The lack of any critical damage done to the main party. I've never seen a villain come in and break the main characters arm and such. The villain usually just does some slash that is apparently a serious injury but they recover from it in 4 seconds anyway
Now, if I ever get the engine as complex as I want it to be, I would totally do this, because having your character, say, tortured and left for dead with you coming back would be just awesome for helping the player get involved.

21) A villain that just talks **** all the time and runs away when they're about to do something. That's annoying, villains do it alot in these games, they should stop doing it
Oh god.
I hate these guys.

DO SOMETHING DAMMIT.

22) Evil version of characters have "Dark" or "death" in some form in their name. Oooooh! Scary! >_>
Yeah, no.

23) DRAWN OUT ROMANCES! OMG! I HATE THAT SO MUCH! I can understand developing one, but one that's just drawn out to hell is annoying
Not sure how I'd do this in a game, because it's a fine line between romance and date simulator.

24) Dress-code: Bad guy wears black, good guy wears black
See number one.

25) Power vs Technique. Technique is rarely seen in these games, but power takes its place. Even though fighting technique is all about creating an advantage over something regardless of power
BEHOLD, THE S.I.S.C. SYSTEM, WHERE YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO LEVEL UP YOUR INDIVIDUAL SKILLS TO BE USEFUL!

26) Not much weird looking things with the main character. The main character rarely has a really odd physical quality
This is rather related to number 9.
I'm not going to repeat myself though.
[/spoiler]

My lack of concrete plot is starting to dawn on me.

[Valiere]

Drak, you were THIS close to making a reasonable post about reality.

Yeah, I kind of raised my eyebrow a little at that too.

[Prpl_Mage]

My most hated cliché is when you find out that one of your characters where created/is in fact a reborn god or godess or something similar.

[_JeT_]

Now for what only 4 other people here would know or care about! =D

[spoiler]1) Nah, I don’t have any definite light characters, closest thing would be a fallen angel who can still use blessed mumbo jumbo

2) Only my one joke villain, the rest have reasons

3) I have some stereotypes, but not many I’d say. Most of which started as jokes, but I had turned into serious characters later on.

4) Working on that

5) I’m good on this

6) My mysteries have personalities and emotions, which I set up during their creation but don’t really reveal until necessary

7) I’m good on this

Well, I have four Asians, three Russian and one who is a third Japanese, so they don’t really look typical asian

9) I’m good on this

10) I don’t have a female lead exactly

11) I’m good on this

12) I’m good on this, since my angel knows its place and faults, and isn’t a final boss or anything anyway

13) Well, had a hero betray and join up with some villains, who were actually testing the heroes. Also have a few others who are somewhat villains but arent at the same time who do

14) Parenticide? Genocide? Having to live with knowing that they did that? Yeah! Fun times! =D

15) They may often be jerks, but they aren’t heartless bastards

16) None of my girls are softhearted really

17) I hardly use it, except for one gel character who entered bodies, and took them out from within in time. Even shooting off their host’s fingers and legs as an attack =D

18) Lessee… Machete… Handgun… Ray gun… Spear… Quarterstaff… knives… arm blades… flamberge… grieves… a flower… their arm… their whole self… their voice… a wrist device... I think I am good here

19) All mah men be manly men!

20) Almost blew an arm off… Severe mental damage… Near death countless times… Having to spend forever to recover, both physically and emotionally… All this happening numerous times... I am good

21) Only that one joke villain who is a plot convenience by nature! =D

22) Got none

23) They develop rather naturally

24) Besides a few, they all dress how they please

25) Mine like to strategize and coordinate attacks rather than going in like Rambo

26) One character with most of an ear missing… One with a robotic arm and a brain injury… Another who gets claws and crap… One who loses both arms… One who constantly morphs as they get hurt… So good here too?
[/spoiler]

My most hated cliché is when you find out that one of your characters where created/is in fact a reborn god or godess or something similar.

Ugh, that always bugs me, since it hardly ever makes sense when used, at least from what I have seen of it.

[HackersTotalMassLaser]

Oh I want to play! I'll do this based on my Mirror game. Which is like a survival/mystery/puzzle rpg

[spoiler]
1) Darkness = evil, Light = good, even though both are just tools with no real affiliation and in reality Darkness is alot kinder than light. Since if Darkness kills you, it's going to be the cold, and that's more like sleeping. While light can have you suffer a rather painful death from UV rays and heat
It will look like that, but after you get through the first 2-3 hours of the game, you start to find out that evil might be your only way out.

2) Villians just randomly decide one day that they want ultimate power. It's enough of a cliche that they typically want ultimate power, but usually there is no reason for it other than just to be god-like or something
I'll take Sai's answer on this; Not my main villain's goal.

3) The main cast is a bunch of stereotypes. We typically have a softspoken gal, a fiery gal and a motherly gal following up the Macho man, the hero and the mystery man.
My main cast is only about three people at the end of it all. I tried to be as unstereotyping as I could. And seeing how it's a heavy female factor, none of them are either girly or motherly.

4) The role of oddballs is diminished to being a one time villain or just comic relief. Oddball characters in appearance or personality rarely step over these bounds. We never get to really have the oddball be important to the story or anything and that's disappointing
Hahar my oddball characters have a plot!

5) Non-Human races that are exactly like humans just with longer lifespans or use of magic or pointed ears and crap. I'm sorry to say but elves, gnomes, and the like are HUMAN. They only have differences so minor that emphasizing on them just to create an all new race is retarded. If they have the same red blood, the same five fingers, the same two eyes, the same anatomy but with minor differences, they are still human.
I don't think I got other races in my game. I got like spiritual beings though that are human like.

6) "Mysterious character" being an excuse to have an under developed character. Just by slapping this title on a character they are given the excuse for them to barely talk, emote, and do nothing but what the plot requires them to do. It gets annoying fast.
I do have a "mysterious" labeled character, but like every character in the game, you get to know everything bout him, or at least have the option to.

7) Lack of real female villains. Female villains are usually given the wonderful job of being eye candy and spellcasters to the heroes. Rarely are they not just spell casters and can fight hand to hand. And... well, they seem to have less motive than the male ones half the time. They just run around like "MWHAHAHAHA! I'M EVIL!", leave and than come back as the final boss if they have been taken THAT seriously.
I got a female entity as a strong villain. So without going further into it, I don't think this applies.

Cool White Asians. The typical RP characters look like a bunch of white people. Now, I'm guilty of this too, even though I'm black, but I've made a bunch of others from other races around the world too for my RPG/story.
I have a tanned recurring character! But yeah, all of them are either white, or pale >.>

9) The cast is BORING to look at. Yes, the typical RPG cast is simply boring to look at to me. They are usually a bunch of humans (I'm counting those so called "non-humans" too from above) with MAYBE one real non-human there. But the non-human doesn't really do much so it doesn't matter (FF10 >_>). Although they may have silly hair and outfits that are so complex that they will never take them off from the weeks they travel, it doesn't really save this for me. Every once and a while we should have a more different cast and maybe give some of those abnormalities a real shot at being serious.
Being my main playable cast is consisted of 1 female lead through MOST of the game, and she's the weirdest character ever, I think I get the N/A label on this one.

10) The female lead's abilities and role. Usually the role of the female lead is... standing there looking pretty so she can be kidnapped. Her abilities typically are... healing and support. Her abilities are the opposite of the males and her attack power is way below everyone elses. Let's be more original, shall we?
She has no magic abilities, she can't heal herself or others through magic, but she can defend herself on an attempt of being kidnapped.

11) ANY STORY INVOLVING COLLECTION A BUNCH OF THE SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME MAGIC ITEM (plotdevice). Whether it's the ultimate sword or the ultimate slice of pizza, it's just going to be stolen by the villain and used for his final form anyway.
I am also going with Sai on this saying I love this kind of stuff. However in the game you can choose not to get them, due to different ending plots!

12) Angelic final boss forms. Now I'm going a bit into my faith here, but technically angels bow down to us. So to be technical here, they are on a lower level to us or were before the fall. So, any human turning into an angel is a considerable downgrade if you follow this logic. But even without it, it's overused anyway. Either they turn into an angel or some kind of devil.
I might be guilty. ALthough it isn't anything angelic, I guess it could be seen this way.

13) The villain is never testing the heroes or just using unusual methods to do good. They're just flat out evil
Hahaha! This is the point I most exploited the other way around. But that's all I can say. So no.

14) The hero is never wrong! The hero never kills a good person or anything by accident. They are just never wrong on anything.
Eh, well I do have some tragic events scripted for near the end. But since my game happens to be an "isolated from everyone" else kind of game, it's hard to not do this.

15) Unless it's important to the main character, most non-humans (or atleast what they may call them) are unsavable. In KH2 Sora just kills Nobody by nobody, whether any of them could have been spared in or even saved. Namine and Roxas turned out to be the only savable ones because they come from the main character guys.
Hmm... I am not sure if I am guilty of this. But I'll give you the benefit of doubt and say I am guilty.

16) The softhearted gal is never a villain or fought against unless they are possessed or something. This somewhat goes back to 14. It's very rare that a good hearted person is even really fought against unless they are rough around the edges. It's been very rare in games where the quiet softspoken gal was a boss battle, except maybe for their introduction. If you end up doing so, their usually possessed by something
XD Guilty. But you never see it that way, at least I hope not. Mainly because the only softhearted gal is dead from the beginning so...

17) The way possession is used. Now I do have quite a few problems with how the process has been used. Live an old person possessing a young person for a new body because apparently they are not powerful enough on their own. Other times it gets really creepy with a male possessing a woman or vise versa. Now that is just sick, man!
Doesn't happen. At least not by how it's described here.

18) Swords are the common weapon. Yes swords are easy to use, but they shouldn't be the weapon for the main character all the time! What about axes? Lances? And the like? They end up being weaker than most swords in the games they are in despite being more effective in real life. Also, I want to see a MC with nunchucks! Yeah!
The first weapon you get in my game is a hand item that can't cut, and it's your savor through the game so I am not guilty. Although I do have a sword in there.

19) Girly male villains in place of female ones. Now this again goes back to the female thing, well it deserves much comment. It's bad enough to have a guy look girly, but to have an effeminate name and female voice actor? Why not make it a damn woman then? Capcom is very guilty of this, but Square shares in with the guilt too
I also evaded this.

20) The lack of any critical damage done to the main party. I've never seen a villain come in and break the main characters arm and such. The villain usually just does some slash that is apparently a serious injury but they recover from it in 4 seconds anyway
The main character gets blinded for sometime (more than 4 seconds). Does that count?

21) A villain that just talks **** all the time and runs away when they're about to do something. That's annoying, villains do it alot in these games, they should stop doing it
You fight my villain whenever it shows ups, although you do hear it through out the game , not like talking crap, but thats how I have it layed out.

22) Evil version of characters have "Dark" or "death" in some form in their name. Oooooh! Scary! >_>
Har har. I wouldn't say an evil version or have that prefix, but my game is called "Mirror"; Come on, it's like unavoidable!

23) DRAWN OUT ROMANCES! OMG! I HATE THAT SO MUCH! I can understand developing one, but one that's just drawn out to hell is annoying
There is romance but not on the main cast.

24) Dress-code: Bad guy wears black, good guy wears black
Actually, i think I might be guilty. My protagonist wears black. And my villain changes color but I designed it to have a dark pale blue hue as it's base.

25) Power vs Technique. Technique is rarely seen in these games, but power takes its place. Even though fighting technique is all about creating an advantage over something regardless of power
ABS, so I think it's all about technique.

26) Not much weird looking things with the main character. The main character rarely has a really odd physical quality
Reverie's (my protagonist) had an accident that left her handicapped physically and psychologically. So think I am good with this. [/spoiler]

Dammit I thought I would pass this without touching one. Oh well.

[zuhane]

Why does the main character always have to be so goddamn young. Let's take a damn look here:
Lloyd Irving: 17
Link: Probably no older than 20 in any of his appearances, and at his youngest, 7.
Tidus: 17
Zidane: 16
Squall: 17
Terra: 18
Ness: 14
Chaz Ashley: 16
Crono: 17
Justin (Grandia): 14
Vyse: 17
Rudy Roughnight: 15
Fei Fong Wong: 18

DAMN 17 is freaking popular. In fact, all the characters in FFVIII are 17. What the christ.

You're right. We need some cool OAPs! They guy from Up, the trainer from Kill Bill 2, Harry Brown.

[fruckert]

I've noticed this slowly going away in games.
Not really Up or Kill Bill old, but not in the late teens-early 20's.

Like Coach from L4D2, Commander Shepard...that's all I can think of...

I'm guessing any Elder Scrolls game does not count, because your character can be as old as you damn well please.

edit: lolcouch

[HackersTotalMassLaser]

You mean coach  >> I hope you intended a pun there. ot that I'll do anything about it, just pointing out. But yes I think you're right.

[fruckert]

woah wtf
Couch?

[Cerebus]

Bluhman,
Red is 11.
He gets a weak pokemon from a crazy old man.
He travels across the land, searches far and wide.
In 2 days, he becomes the most powerful trainer in the world, defeats criminals, and makes the most powerful mob boss in the pokemon world get so ashamed that he disappears and never returns.
He's pretty damn awesome, huh.

Yeah but Pokémon is a different kind of game. And even Gym Leaders look young (well, some of them) so it's like pretty normal to see children who haven't hit puberty become Pokémon master.
It's a weird world.

[Deathreaper]

Darkfox - You're good

Bluhman - Good, you're on the right track. You're story sounds rather interesting from what I'm hearing.

fruckert - Well, you seem to be doing okay.

_Jet_ - ... You're GERMAN!

SaiKar - You're on the right track. I believe you could pull out the execution right to turn some possible cliches into something unique so I don't think you should worry about it. It's not so much how an idea that has been used alot is a problem, it's ultimately execution. To be exact just about every idea in the world has been used, but it's the execution that gives originality . From what you tell me, you have good execution so far. So give yourself a pat on the back you... mysterious... ughhhh... confusing person! Also on the "technique" versus "power" thing, that's story related, not gameplay related. But like I said, I don't think you have anything to really worry about, your style seems true to yourself and that's all that is really required of any game designer. Oh and sorry for being vague. I was tired and just rolling with it last night, I'll be more descriptive on my next ones.

HackersTotalMassLaser - My mortal enemy! I haven't seen you since our death match that was interrupted by that pesky Ren! I am so sorry to say... you pass with flying colors. You seem like the guy I think should be in the game design buisness so far. You seem to be doing things from a less common perspective but not go overboard on the edginess. I like that. BUT YOU SHALL NOT SURVIVE THE NEXT PART OF MY TEST, I BET!

You all get my seal of approval



I am not home right now, I am at school. But when I get home... I'll be sure to up the challenge! I shall go to 50 cliches! So prepare for your doom, you cursed fools!