Gaming What If's...

[Moonface]

This got made pretty close to the time of moving from the ZB board, so it didn't get much love as a result. Let's see if it can do better this time around!

What if...

• Konami didn't screw Kojima and send Silent Hills to an early grave?
  
• Amy Hennig didn't leave Naughty Dog and released her version of Uncharted 4?
  
• Yoshi didn't manage to protect Baby Mario?
  
• Spyro decided not to visit Dragon Shores at the same time the portal was redirected to Avalar, so he never turned up and thus nobody stopped Ripto?
  

I wonder if we'd have still ended up with the Spyro games we got and the Reignited Trilogy if Enter The Dragonfly hadn't been rushed out the door and tarnished the series name as a result? I think A Hero's Tail might have still happened in some form, but I don't think the series would've been dragged through the dirt as much to result in the reboot that was The Legend of Spyro series.

[lp0 on fire]

What if....
Star Wars Battlefront 3 came out
Star Wars Imperial Commando was released
Sim City 2013 didn't suck so bad
EA:SW:Battle Front 1 and 2 were good/decent/not a grab your money and run
Knights of the Old Republic 3 and not an MMO
EA wasn't the scum of the gaming world

I can't really speculate on these because I will just blame chaos theory and the grandfather paradox

[fantanoice]

What if Microsoft never bought Rareware

[Moonface]

The problem wasn't so much Microsoft buying Rare but more how they utilized them. It would have been interesting to see what Rare would make had their focus not been on Kinect titles for so many years.

[Nemomon]

Perhaps we would get another Battletoads game sooner. Recently (well, a few/several months ago) M$ announced a new BT game, but since then we never heard anything about it anymore. Though for now I don't care about it because some days ago Streets of Rage 4 was announced.

[queenzelda]

Mushroom Kingdom Hearts released on April 1st 2020 for Switch? :p

[King Atem]

Metal Gear Survive wasn't utter rubish & actually played decntly?

[Moonface]

Metal Gear Survive wasn't utter rubish & actually played decntly?

That relies on the "What if" of Konami not shitting over their IP's in favour of gacha games.

An amusing one for The Last of Us Part II would be this:

Notable Late Story Spoiler

If Jesse and Ellie's positions were swapped in the scene when they burst through the theater doors and Abby instantly shoots Jesse in the head without hesitation or even knowing who she was shooting until after the fact. Ellie would have died right there and well I guess that would be it since Jesse would never stand a chance against Abby and Tommy would still be badly injured. Dina would either enter the fray like she does originally and Lev would stop Abby killing her, or Abby just leaves and Dina eventually stumbles across the carnage but can't and won't probably do anything about it because she's pregnant.

Another fun one would be what if Cortex fell into an empty cave at the start of Cortex Strikes Back instead of finding the power crystal in there. I guess he could maybe find something else to continue his plans of world domination but I like to imagine him just sitting in a cave and thinking to himself "Well now what?".

[WR91]

Just imagine; what if Nintendo hadn't become popular and there was never a video game boom or era in general. Would we just continue to have arcade cabinets or would that have not even become popular? Crazy to think about.

[Moonface]

I was about to make a thread for this in Fun & Games but then realized this exists already. So here's what I was going to put in the thread I was making before coming here.

What if Sully didn't have the book in his chest pocket in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune?
Well, obviously he'd die right there, but then what happens for Roman and Navarro in the immediate aftermath? Would they have made as much progress on the island as they did without Sully's help, even though he was lying the whole time in the hopes of Nate coming to the island and finding the treasure first?

Most of the first games events might end up roughly the same since Sully doesn't really affect the story itself very much, but Uncharted 2 onwards would be utterly different. For starters, Nate would probably never get out of prison without serving his full sentence because Sully wouldn't be able to bail him out. Chloe might have managed something since she tracked Sully down to get Nate out but if not then would Lazarevic ever find Shambhala? He relies a lot on Nate because Flynn is utterly worthless.

Uncharted 3 would probably be impossible because Sully was a big part in finding Ubar such as the being able to read the star map from being in the navy.

There's a load of other elements that could change too but just the story beats with Sully alone are meaty enough and I don't fancy writing a full essay on this one change. XD

[Mr EliteL]

Since I've yet to play UCF and don't know the exact events, I can't say much about Sully dying, but yeah after that UC3 is basically screwed without Sully.

UC2 if Chloe couldn't bail him out, I guess Flynn and/or Lazarevic would eventually need Nate's help despite being very reluctant to do so. They'll bail him out either with money or through a more illegal way but that might give them too much trouble, so let's just get to they bail him out and force Nate to help them. Which will likely end up either Nate dying by the time the get into Shambahala because he's just a guide to get there, or Chloe gets him out of the situation somehow. Then again not accounting for Elena's appearance, er camera guy goes out normally, so she either helps get Nate out, gets killed along with...Jeff that's it , or GTFO's. Option A with Chloe and if successful, as they know what's going on they'd want to put a stop to Lazaervic's plan and....I come to a stop here because I can't think if it's possible for them to do that without Sully too. *goes to read plot to remember details* OK I'll try to imagine what happens.

My Take

Nate's bailed out by Flynn/Lazarevic (likely just Flynn as Lazarevic is the big boss so he doesn't do that kind of task), they take him to Borneo as that's the next stop. When she gets Nate alone Chloe tries to plan how to get him out but it's probably not yet (Nate's likely to be always at gun point by a mook/Flynn/Lazarevic though). They locate the tomb as kind of normal, just with the different situation, find the letter about Nepal, realise the lost fleet didn't have the Cintamani Stone. Since Sully leaves at this point in the original, his exclusion doesn't matter anymore.

Nepal next, with Lazarevic's men causing a ruckus, it could be possible for Nate and Chloe to escape here, find the temple through original means (via rooftop), come across Elena and Jeff, with the original sequence happening along with Jeff death happening as usual. Afterwards the story continues as normal until the epilogue with Sully just absent. If Nate can't get away here, they find the temple through Lazarevic's methods hopefully Elena has is out of the way and not in the path of their search, if not she is sadly executed along with Jeff before they (Nate & Lazareivc's men) go into the temple. Don't want to go into variables so I'll stay with Elena dying here...(possibility of her seeing Nate and wanting to get him out if she survived). Ah I should go into if Nate's witnesses this, he'd definitely try to fight but held back, then refuses to help further but he is in no predicament to do not so he's forced once again to continue, and upset at the loss.

As Nate's the only intelligent one to do puzzles, he does the stuff in the temple albeit at gun point, and probably getting Flynn to help him along with Chloe as if I remember correctly she and Elena helped him in the original with the puzzles. They discover the Stone and Shambhala are in the Himalaya's, so it's on the train! Which....Nate could get away if left with just mooks but he's probably on a tight leash with Flynn or Lazarevic, oh and Draza present. If it's just Draza entrusted with Nate then he can get away, an argument with Chloe wouldn't happen because they didn't spend time with Elena earlier but Flynn can turn up as normal and shoot Nate as he does usually as punishment for killing Draza, Nate could get away again if Chloe stalls Flynn and the story moves on, the crash happens and Nate ends up with Tenzin, yadda yadda. I'll leave it there, because I keep ending up going back to how UC2's original plot goes on once Nate escapes in my version.

OK, if Nate doesn't get away, and if the train journey goes as planned for Lazarevic's men, they end up at Tenzin's village, attack it, which could kill Tenzin and/or Karl if Schafer is even there. So with both of those out, it'll take them even longer to find the caves as they have no local guide and Nate's less useful for that, but he's better than the men. Then again they won't know about the caves so everything takes a heck of a lot longer than it could, eventually finding the entrance to Shambhala. At this point Nate is killed, or perhaps he could get away again if they let him live until they are attacked by the Guardians, so Nate attempts to stop Lazarevic if he's able to escape, I mean he may as well after all the crap he went through.

Yeah there's not much to this game when there's no action in this version apart from maybe the end.

If you read the spoiler, Sully doesn't have much effect if he's gone from the beginning really. UC3's the biggest trouble, but if my bad outcome within the version I just imagined happened, Nate could've stopped treasure hunting after losing two people from both. Or perhaps he carries on, then loses a third in UC3, then UC4...well let's make it four so he....oh I'll leave poor Nate alone now.

[Moonface]

I'm going to try and summarize Sully's role in Drake's Fortune as simply as possible to not spoil the game overall, just to give you some context if you want it. Obviously you know he can't actually die so I'm not going to worry about spoiling the "twist" his character presents.

Sully's Role in Drake's Fortune

Basically, Nate hands Sully his journal to hold while he swims to the wreckage of a German U-boat (this was shown in the UC4 opening credits) so that it doesn't get wet (despite Drake happily swimming in later games with the journal on him but we won't worry about that). After exploring it and leaving, Drake finds the villains have tracked them down and is forced to share what he found; however, Sully owes the villains money and to teach him a lesson, they threaten to shoot Drake but at the last moment shoot Sully instead, and Drake believes he's dead. Obviously you know this is bullshit because you played the later games where Sully is fine, but it's only because the bullet got blocked by the journal. No journal = Sully's dead.

I didn't consider Flynn bailing Drake out, although I doubt Drake would've agreed to it since he's in there because of Flynn in the first place. I don't even know how they would force it because Sully wouldn't be alive to use as bait like he is in UC3, and Lazarevic is aware of Elena but not to a point of her knowing Drake at all so she isn't going to be of any use to him. I guess maybe they could use Chloe but Flynn wouldn't actually go through with that at all. At best maybe Chloe is given the means by them to get Drake out, and she lies to him and uses what he knows to uphold her double agent angle that she has in UC2 anyway. Her doing that and letting Nate off the leash could keep things relatively the same for the rest of the game, Borneo would just require her and Nate to be able to go alone to the temple they find with Sully and then it would be fine. Flynn would jump in the temple still after, tells Chloe to march Nate back to camp, and then everything stays the same.

[Mr EliteL]

I should've mentioned I was considering that Lazarevic would've ordered Flynn, or perhaps even Draza just to give the latter some more screen time, to bail Nate out because maybe Chloe would've off-handed mention how better Nate would be at finding stuff than Flynn who would've probably gloated about putting him in jail in front of Lazarevic so he goes "Get this Drake here NOW!" Or something.
Ah yeah, I was wondering when the time could've been in Borneo for Nate and Chloe to be able to be alone for the temple but just didn't know and just went with them not getting the chance. That would be the earliest point things would remain the same with Nate back on his own again.

[Moonface]

I suspect that Lazarevic would order Flynn and Chloe would intervene to say that would be a bad idea because Flynn got Nate in jail to begin with and so she should get him. She wins him over in the first place by telling him she wasn't involved and they found the ships, so it works for her to do it. She would probably just tell Nate to play along until they can bounce.

[WR91]

The only what if I can currently think of is what if EA Sports didn't get the exclusive rights back in 2004 and 2K was still allowed to create NFL games. I honestly think the NFL 2K series would have taken over and the "Madden" series might have folded or at least been more creative and inventive with their titles.