Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[Rikka66]

Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age 2
Dragon Age: Inquisition

Make up your minds how you want to title your games!

I believe Dragon Age 2 was supposed to fit the subtitle naming scheme. But EA stepped in.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Season 5 Episode 10, Game of Thrones.

Stannis and his army walk up to Winterfell and get trounced.

There are no scouts, no piquets, no baggage train and camp followers. Just a bunch of blokes with swords plodding through the snow. The complete lack of planning is contrary to everything we know about Stannis; the absence of any logistical considerations within the filming and setting up of the scene robs it of any authenticity.

I was already losing interest in the show, but I think this was the point it really jumped the shark for me.

Are you surprised that's an event that has absolutely no connection to the novels? It's impressive how the showrunners could completely fail to understand the character (even the actor seems to have had a better understanding)

(In that: Stannis is not dead, he has elaborate plans for his assault on Winterfel, he does not bring Melisandre with him, he does not believe in the R'hllor etc).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I believe Dragon Age 2 was supposed to fit the subtitle naming scheme. But EA stepped in.

Yeah a lot of Bioware's later mistakes are largely on Bioware, but DA2 was definitely EA stepping in on two points - the name, and the fact that EA wanted Dragon Age to be come an "annual franchise" like Battlefield was at that time, which was obviously insane, but lead to DA2 being developed in under 18 months with the help of "Bioware magic" i.e. massive crunch and possibly being somehow better at avoiding bugs than most other companies.

Actually talking of nitpicks I can nitpick this latter bit re: another Bioware game - people referred to Mass Effect Andromeda as "buggy", but ackshully, Andromeda was, by pretty much all Western RPG standards, nearly bug-free, like literally 100x fewer bugs than most Western RPGs (whether CRPG or ARPG or whatever). What was actually a problem was that they'd outsourced the animation on a bunch of scenes to a new and largely contractor-based team in, I think, Singapore, who weren't very familiar or adept with the engine, and had produced er... poor results. But it was too late to not ship at that point, seemingly due to Aaryn Flynn's poor management of Bioware at the time (he'd repeatedly pulled people off Andromeda to go work on Anthem). They later got fixed, but it still has an undeserved reputation as "buggy". A more deserved reputation would be that it has one of the most "first draft" scripts in all of modern CRPGs. Countless scenes, if they'd just polished the writing with a couple more passes, could have gone from cringe-inducingly bad or just terribly boring to pretty good. There are places where it's as bad as a single missing word turning thing into farce - the infamous "My face is tired" should pretty obviously have been "Even my face is tired!" given the context, but nope.

 

[MarkB]

Actually talking of nitpicks I can nitpick this latter bit re: another Bioware game - people referred to Mass Effect Andromeda as "buggy", but ackshully, Andromeda was, by pretty much all Western RPG standards, nearly bug-free, like literally 100x fewer bugs than most Western RPGs (whether CRPG or ARPG or whatever). What was actually a problem was that they'd outsourced the animation on a bunch of scenes to a new and largely contractor-based team in, I think, Singapore, who weren't very familiar or adept with the engine, and had produced er... poor results. But it was too late to not ship at that point, seemingly due to Aaryn Flynn's poor management of Bioware at the time (he'd repeatedly pulled people off Andromeda to go work on Anthem). They later got fixed, but it still has an undeserved reputation as "buggy". A more deserved reputation would be that it has one of the most "first draft" scripts in all of modern CRPGs. Countless scenes, if they'd just polished the writing with a couple more passes, could have gone from cringe-inducingly bad or just terribly boring to pretty good. There are places where it's as bad as a single missing word turning thing into farce - the infamous "My face is tired" should pretty obviously have been "Even my face is tired!" given the context, but nope.

It had its fair share of visual bugs besides the animation. One of my favourites was on your ship's bridge there are two airlocks near the back, the left-hand one leading to the team locker room and docking port, the other opening into the escape pod that your Asari companion lives in. But if you move too far into the left-hand room, the escape pod on the right vanishes and the Asari NPC is just standing in empty space.

 

[Yora]

I believe Dragon Age 2 was supposed to fit the subtitle naming scheme. But EA stepped in.

And then stepped out again?

 

[Imaculata]

Oh, if we're nitpicking Game of Thrones, I have a very specific one that really grinds my gears. In the very episode that introduces Melisandre (this was probably episode 1 of season 3), there's a scene where Maester Cressen tries to poison Melisandre. But in a baffling choice, the creators changed a minor detail here that makes the scene weaker than the same scene in the book (Clash of Kings, at the end of the prologue, if you're curious).

So in the book, Maester Cressen offers poisoned wine to Melisandre. She 'knows' it is poisoned, but looks him dead in the eyes, drinks it, and hands it back to him. "...And now you." -she says. Cressen can't admit that he tried to poison her, and he can't really decline either or it would be very suspicious. So he has to drink, and dies while she looks down on him and the jewel around her neck glows red.

In the show, for whatever reason, they turned the order in which they drink around. Cressen drinks first, and then Melisandre. Why change it? It makes the scene nonsensical.

 

[Ryujin]

Oh, if we're nitpicking Game of Thrones, I have a very specific one that really grinds my gears. In the very episode that introduces Melisandre (this was probably episode 1 of season 3), there's a scene where Maester Cressen tries to poison Melisandre. But in a baffling choice, the creators changed a minor detail here that makes the scene weaker than the same scene in the book (Clash of Kings, at the end of the prologue, if you're curious).

So in the book, Maester Cressen offers poisoned wine to Melisandre. She 'knows' it is poisoned, but looks him dead in the eyes, drinks it, and hands it back to him. "...And now you." -she says. Cressen can't admit that he tried to poison her, and he can't really decline either or it would be very suspicious. So he has to drink, and dies while she looks down on him and the jewel around her neck glows red.

In the show, for whatever reason, they turned the order in which they drink around. Cressen drinks first, and then Melisandre. Why change it? It makes the scene nonsensical.

Perhaps he took years to make himself immune to iocane powder?

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Nit picking Game of Throne? We'll be here all year.

Mine is the second Battle of Winterfell. The dead are coming. So the humies start digging extra defences. Deep trenches filled with wood to burn. Sounds ok. Then the battle comes and they station the troops OUTSIDE the defences.

Now, I am not a military man but... aren't defences meant to go between you and the bad guys?

 

[Zaukrie]

Nit picking Game of Throne? We'll be here all year.

Mine is the second Battle of Winterfell. The dead are coming. So the humies start digging extra defences. Deep trenches filled with wood to burn. Sounds ok. Then the battle comes and they station the troops OUTSIDE the defences.

Now, I am not a military man but... aren't defences meant to go between you and the bad guys?

They also hid in the basement, with the dead, who could be raised....good plan!

 

[trappedslider]

It's like in the Dark Knight Rises when Bane's crew breaks into the Gotham stock exchange and suddenly Wayne Tech's stocks are all messed up. Like, duh, they wouldn't have fixed what was clearly criminal interference of some kind?

They did explain in one line of dialogue that it would take time to undo that