This might seem like a weird (or confusing) article topic, so allow me to briefly explain it in a bit more detail.
Have you ever had a moment where you’re playing a video game, and then suddenly you conscious recognize some sort of little detail or gameplay mechanic that you hadn’t actively been paying attention to? And you think to yourself that that little thing is really cool, and also, usually, pretty unnecessary. As in, the developers didn’t have to include it, but the fact that they did makes it that much cooler. Those sorts of things is what this article is about.
This isn’t meant to be about hidden trivia, or secrets, or cheat codes. These are active, intentional little parts of games that feel like the developers went the extra mile to implement, and that makes it really cool.
10) Carrying the Dogs ~ Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
This is an exceptionally silly one to start this list off, but I love that you can pick up and carry cute dogs in Twilight Princess. There’s no benefit to doing so. The dogs don’t do anything. You can’t do anything while carrying them, like climb or draw your sword. You can’t even carry them between rooms or loading zones. There’s also not that many dogs in the game at all, with only about three locations that have dogs. But by golly you can pick them up and carry them around in each of those areas, and that’s pretty neat!
9) Befriending Djura ~ Bloodborne
99% of Bloodborne players will enter the area of Old Yharnam and have to deal with a certain disgruntled hunter peppering them with machine gun bullets for the entire area, before finally confronting the dude and defeating him in a duel to the death. 1% of players, on the other hand, will accidentally stumble into Old Yharnam through the back entrance much later in the game, and if you follow this extremely unlikely route, you can actually befriend Djura instead of fighting him. Aside from a bit of dialogue, nothing much changes, and it’s highly unlikely anyone will do this. But it’s neat that you can!
8) Specific Animal Bonuses ~ Fire Emblem Engage
In Fire Emblem Fates, you can build a few structures around your castle that automatically produce resources for you. In Fire Emblem Engage, the developers decided to implement a similar mechanic, but make it much more cute and fluffy. After every story chapter, you’re able to roam around the map as an explorable 3D environment, talking to your fellow units. You can also find and adopt various animals, ranging from dogs, to bunnies, to camels! And then you can display your animals back at your base, and the animals you choose to display will lead to different resources being accrued post-battle (like food for cooking, or materials for crafting). It’s such an odd-yet-neat little bit of strategy!
7) Randomized Solider Recruitment ~ Valkyria Chronicles Series
In a game like Fire Emblem, you always recruit the same units during the same chapters the same way, every time you play the game. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. Valkyria Chronicles, however, circumvents this in every installment in the franchise, making it random who joins you at the end of each chapter (until you eventually have everybody in your army). While I do sometimes get sad when Marina (the best character) takes a while to show up in a new playthrough because of this random feature, the randomness also means that I’m constantly trying out new units and new strategies, making each playthrough fresh. And hey, sometimes Marina is my first recruit, which is awesome!
6) Forsaking the Outsider ~ Dishonored 2
Dishonored 2 is a game that presents you with an almost unlimited number of options for how you want to tackle the game’s stealth-focused (or guns-blazing) missions. Interestingly, however, you can also completely shun the dark deity who grants you your magic powers at the start of the game, opting to play the entire game as a flesh-and-blood human with only mechanical tools at your disposal. This is a very cool, and very unrecommended way to play the game, but I have to give the developers props for even putting it in. It has zero impact on the characters or story, and it exclusively makes the game harder…but it’s still a fun addition that presents yet another unique way to experience this gem of a game.
5) Phasing Into Your Vehicle ~ Agents of Mayhem
There are a lot of open world games that give you some sort of vehicle or mount to help make traversing the huge map easier and more efficient. However, this often comes with drawbacks. For instance, I found myself spending more time on-foot than riding my horse in The Witcher 3 because of how cumbersome getting on and off the horse was (to say nothing of how badly he controls). Agents of Mayhem sidesteps this issue in the most energetic and stylish of ways by making it so that you can spawn your car wherever you are, and your character will automatically leap into the air and phase into the car (striking a pose at the same time), letting you near-instantly blast off without any downtime!
4) Unlockable Mahjong Minigame ~ Freedom Planet
I’ve mentioned this once before, but the original Freedom Planet included a really quirky little side mode, seemingly for no reason. By beating every single time trial challenge stage as a single character, you unlock a mahjong minigame. There are no strings attached, no strange gimmicks. It’s just your standard game of mahjong solitaire. Match the tiles, earn a score, and kick up your feet and relax to a unique song that only plays in this minigame. Does mahjong have anything to do with Freedom Planet? Nope! Does completing this minigame earn you anything? Nope! It’s just a fun little bonus that I imagine quite a few players never knew existed, and I’m a bit of a sucker for mahjong solitaire, so I’m not going to complain!
3) Bond Units ~ Fire Emblem Fates
I’ve talked about Bond Units before, but I couldn’t pass up another opportunity to gush about how cool of a system this is, and how crazy it is that it even exists and so few people talk about it. The developers of Fire Emblem Fates already go so far above-and-beyond with including fun features and neat mechanics, and Bond Units take the cake. Simply by visiting the same friend from your friend list multiple times (and giving them a gift when you visit their castle), you’ll deepen your bond with that friend. Do this enough times, and your army will gain a brand-new unit who is a fusion of the unique skills possessed by both you and your friend, creating a wholly unique character that is truly one-of-a-kind. There’s limitless potential in this system, so the sky is really the limit for what you can create here!
Or, uh, well, the sky was the limit. Then the 3DS online servers were shut down. RIP.
2) Writing Your Own Signs and Books ~ Minecraft
This is a pretty simple one to rank so highly on this list, but it’s one that is really important to me on a personal level. See, I don’t play Minecraft like a majority of people do. I play exclusively in the full-freedom Creative Mode, and I spend my dozens of hours crafting big castles, labyrinthine fortresses, fearsome pirate ships, and spooky mazes. I like making worlds that feel like an adventure, and to spice things up even further, I fill my worlds with custom signs and lore-building books for the friends and family who explore my worlds to discover.
And I can’t help but think about how Minecraft didn’t have to add books and signs to a game that is, ostensibly, about putting blocks together to make houses and such. But the developers knew how creative and passionate their community was, and so they implemented the features that help push that creativity to the max. And I’m very grateful for it!
1) Unique NPC Schedules ~ Xenoblade Chronicles
There are an almost infinite number of reasons to love the original Xenoblade Chronicles, a masterpiece of a game that I considered to be my favorite video game of all time. Out of all of the reasons to love it, however, is a specific gameplay mechanic that I’ve yet to ever see replicated in a JRPG, and it’s exceptionally rare even outside of the genre (a game like Skyrim is one of the few to have a feature like this too).
Every single named NPC in Xenoblade Chronicles follows their own daily routine and pattern, based upon the in-game clock (which covers an entire 24-hour day, with each real-world minute being an in-game hour).
There’s just something so impeccably immersive about being able to see an NPC (like the one pictured below) leave her house at 6:00am, work in her garden from 8:00am to 4:00pm (shifting between various plants at set intervals), and then take the scenic route home on a different walking path at 5:00pm, before going to bed for the night. And until morning comes, you can’t see her or interact with her, because she’s obviously asleep. No, instead, that’s the perfect time to hang out with the night-owl NPCs who only come out of their houses when the sun has gone down!
Xenoblade Chronicles‘ NPCs are already a huge cut above nearly any other video game, thanks to the presence of things like the Affinity Chart, how addicting the side quests are, and optional mechanics like trading. Giving them schedules like this helps them to feel even more alive, and every time I replay this game it’s such a gut-punch of nostalgia to wander around and talk to all of my NPC friends, testing my memory to see if I still recall their schedules, routines, and favorite hangout spots!
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 