Locked door, I hate you.
I hate the way you are resistant to knives, to guns, to sledgehammers, to rocket-propelled grenades, to weapons that rewrite the very laws of physics, to dark unearthly magic, to punches that can knock a man’s head clean off.
I hate the way I could kick or smash you down in real life, with this puny human body of mine. But I cannot in the grand, escapist fantasy of a videogame.
I hate the way you are so often an easy shortcut for developers unable or unwilling to devise more satisfying obstacles and challenges.
I hate the way you so often lead to nowhere, how you are nothing more than decoration for a wall.
I hate the way I’m expected to give up trying to open you when I see the words “this door has been locked from the other side” or “this door opens elsewhere”, as though they’re a command from God himself.
I hate the way you always make that click-click, or clunk or uh-uh noise when I try to open you: the very sound of failure.
I hate the way your key or switch is always so far away.
I hate the way the fate of the world so often hinges upon opening you.
I hate the way the letter ‘E’ has worn off my keyboard because I’ve tried to open you so many times, in so many games.
I hate the way you’ve added hundreds, perhaps thousands of unnecessary extra hours to my lifetime of gaming.
I hate the way you’ve annoyed me so much that I’ve just written 200 words whining pathetically about you.
If you didn’t exist, locked door, videogames as we know them would be radically different.
Locked door, I hate you.
Related Stories:
@Serondal Good comparison with D&D there. Rule X of DMing being don’t put something there if you don’t want your players to prod it/set it on fire/use it as a sledge or stash it for later use as an impromptu shield :D
I know it’s terribly un-PC of me (pun?) but the greatest ever (temporarily) locked door is the stairs that can’t be climbed in Mario 64.
Some of those ultra-never open ever doors would make an awesome shield if you could find a way to get it off the hinges or maybe just break the wall around it and carry the whole thing.
If I made video games I’d make a giant with an unopenable door as a shield just as gag ;) 90% of the people playing would read the description of the shiled and go “uh. . ” and 10 % would be like LMGDAO”
Don’t look now, but I think Amanda’s a real level designer…
Andrew: “plot” doors are for always and forever bad design.*
(*Unless there’s and in-game reason why your normal skills won’t work, like its magiced shut for example)
@fenderflip: And one that doesn’t need shooting, either. I’m impressed.
OMGEDITBUTTON! [arm]o/
Even magic locked doors get old quick, i’d say one magic locked door for an entire series should be the limit and it should have awesome effects showing blue sparkles all over it and when you touch it you get shocked or something.
Doors like that could be blown up in Fallout 2. Why must they mess with the formula so much.
Locked door I love you! Thank you for not letting strangers into my house.
Some day, Locked Door, some day. Your comeuppance is inevitable. Yes, feed the hate. It will only make your certain opening all the more delicious.
I think not being able to ram doors with anything is a good tradeoff for being able to punch heads off with your bare fists.
That was truly inspirational
Perhaps some therapy could be gained by watching a clip from The Italian Job looped with one from Butch Cassidy, both of which have explosive retribution on locked doors.
“TFGH”
Goddamn, and here I thought I was special. (Mind, this is a result of my a/d-keys being in their death throes from failing miserably at GTA:SA’s driving tests. Sfskhfj donuts.
Possibly even sadder, my s-key has been replaced by the k-button, because the original no longer works with it. WAKD, anyone?)
Edit function swoops in with an end bracket! Huzzah!
I hate the way you so often lead to nowhere, how you are nothing more than decoration for a wall.
Oh yes. Especially when they look EXACTLY THE SAME AS EVERY OTHER DOOR, so the designers are effectively asking you to walk up to every freaking one and hit “use” just in case it’s one of the 10% that actually function.
edit: Heh, I love that this post has elicited more than a hundred comments already, and that most of us seem to be united in a sort of cheerful rage.
Ah, in return, they should make a game (probably cheap flash online) to vent your frustration by blowing up every BAM! door you find.
Moderation is always the key. (Ha, key.) Locked doors are necessary for structured gameplay, but pointless doors you don’t know are pointless aren’t… quite… fair.
Locked Doors, Crafting, Fetch-the-thing, Oddly Ignorant NPC, et cetera.
The crutches of mediocre game designers unable to craft compelling mechanics or of a studio unable to locate a decent writer.
They are resistant to hax as well.
I love everything about Video games…even indestructible doors….i love you,door.
I love the door, as far as there is way to open it, and also if inside that there is a macguffin worth it.
I love lamp.
I hate door.
Drink!
i love you!
Mr Meer:
If nobody’s said this already, go play SWAT 4. A game that revolves almost entirely around opening doors, going through doors, throwing thing through doors, lockpicking, C4, and getting shot on thresholds. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Dan: you forgot Oddly Knowledgeable/omnipresent NPC. “Player, you must fetch (A), craft(B), and use it to kill (C). Only thus can the world be saved.” The OKONPC is often also the voiceover narrator. And a boring prick.
Is that the door on Sherif what’s-his-name’s house? I got past that by stacking found shit on the other side of his house to get on his roof, to get to the roof entrance.
the locked door. any locked door, be it for a quest or what have you. he/she hats them/loves them they a r the quest he hates them like i hate mana. there is either to much of too little. but with out it magic would sux.
Dear Alec Meer.
Tell it to the guys who were singing the same song back in 1989. Your post is sooooo last century.
:-)
You know theres a mod that lets you blow open doors right?
This made my day, I feel the same way.
Three games have great examples of the various ways to handle doors. HL2 is simple and effective; oh, it’s locked. Kay. We haven’t tried shooting a door since the first half life, so that’s fine. It doesn’t open.
Fallout 3 is an ugly, unfair way of doing it; it lets you open many doors. It lets you unlock other doors with keys. Then it lets you actually break into certain doors with a lockpick. When you see a door, you think, “okay, I may be weak and inaccurate, stupid, unlikable, and unlucky, but shit, I can definately get through doors. It’s mah thing.” And then you can’t, and you have a right to be frustrated.
Then there’s Killer 7, where you can’t even go down most hallways, in some sort of bold statement about the illusion of world in games.
Obviously, you can’t just have the game world go on forever, procedurally generated by a fantastically complex algorhythm forever churning in the background, maybe using templates and varied factors based on the area you’re in, perhaps generating npcs to…. nghh…
Oh, and @jonfitt, many doors are locked but totally keyless. They don’t exist anywhere in the entire universe, but are locked. You don’t lock something you never intend to open again; that’s what concrete is for.
Also, I do have keys outside my house in a flowerpot. I figure, you make it past the Urvores, you’re weak enough to face the Coathooks That Hunger.
Photoshopped!
Incidentally, despite the screenshot this post wasn’t inspired by Fallout 3 particularly – I just needed a picture of a door in a hurry.
“and don’t you hate how bishops can only move diagonally?”
Are they meant to be mincing?
Oh my god, chess is homophobic.
P.
No_clip no problem as far as I’m concerned.
132 (er, 133) and counting replies about locked doors. I love RPS.
<3
Unbreakable glass windows next to locked doors are my pet hate!
Sooooo true!
@ AbyssUK: I got a little too excited in L4D the first time somebody showed me that you can break windows just by jumping at them.
Why is this one of the more commented on articles. WHY.
Fucking locked door, getting lots of replies.
“Why is this one of the more commented on articles. WHY.”
Because this article is currently at the top of the frontpage on reddit’s gaming subreddit ;)
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/8eakr/locked_door_i_hate_you/
I hate Locked Door, Locked Gate (or worse, PADLocked Gate), Foot-High Wall, and their annoying, in-bred, retarded cousin Invisible Wall.
Only Thing I’d change in this ‘Ode to’ is this: “I hate the way your key or switch is always on the other side of the map, over a pit that drops to the endless abyss, with at least two mini-bosses on the only bridge to and from.”
[OMGEDIT! :D]
Pretty cool story bro
Haha. The front page of RPS at this moment contains several very interesting bits. However, the entry with the most comments (by far) is a about friggin’ locked doors.
That’s why I like RPS. Also, they sometimes give me a free game.
note: I didn’t read the last few comments before starting mine. Guess everyone is surprised by how commentable locked doors are.
What about impassable invisible walls? They forgo any sort of illusion about passage and just do not allow you to cross a certain line, even if there is a large open field with roads, rivers, mountains, etc. The one I’m thinking of is in Drakensang about 1 second into the game.
LLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLAWLL3RSK8EZ
1337H4XZ0RZ2T3HM4XZ0RZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZH4XH4XZED
Shenmue 3 should end with Ryo approaching the room in which his father’s killer is waiting for him, but — what’s this?
A child’s tricycle has been placed in front of the door!
Ryo falls to his knees and screams in rage, but there is nothing he can do. Reluctantly he turns and heads for home, Lan Di’s laughter ringing in his ears. Downer endings are liek so deep!
It’s because there’s a Grue behind each and every one. FACT.
Locked doors. And to the guy who put a comment about having no doors. Imagine the crime rates…
In Oblivion or Fallout 3
Hit “~” to bring up the console.
Click the door. Make sure it says ‘door’ of some sort.
Type “unlock” , hit return, then “~” again.
Fire a fatman down the hall at it to feel like you’re not a damned dirty cheater.
This has always pissed me off. Don’t add a door if I can’t go into it.
I’m assuming we’re talking about doors that serve no function, not doors that need a key. Cause if you’re talking about doors that need a key then that’s kinda sad =(.
Why do i read the comments for these things? They ALWAYS ruin any good feelings i’ve had reading the post! You people that over analyze everything and spew your crap on these pages! OH MY GODs, STOP IT! Just enjoy what you just read and MOVE ON!
I found this little poem to be really cute, and witty. most importantly, I found it funny, and now i’m going to hit my Stumble! button and be GONE from here! ARG!