I was wondering... How many of you people have encountered a moment in a game that absolutely, completely and totally broke your suspension of disbelief?

I had this experience when playing the second level of Shadow Warrior. All was well and dandy until I came across the forklift. A forklift with TANK THREADS AND A MACHINE GUN. This sight left me puzzled, and I started pondering the reasons behind this oddity for a vehicle.
"Why does it have a machine gun?" Turns out that the whole purose of the forklift was to make an upcoming enemy ambush easier to deal with.
"Why does it have tank threads?" The designers needed a way to justify its ability to turn in place. Otherwise it wouldn't be very helpful in the fight.
"Why is the engine in the front and not in the back?" This left the back end open, thus making the controls easier to access in a hurry.

Then I realised that this little vehicle had completely distracted me from the game. Instead of thinking about the demons, the Zilla corporation and Lo Wang's one liners, I was trying to understand the mindset of the designers.
And that's how Shadow Warrior managed to competely wreck my suspension of disbelief like no game before.

So, have you guys had a similar experience with a game? I'd love to hear some stories!

Achievements.

My personal pet peeves are the coffee thermos' in Alan Wake. The atmosphere in this game is great, but each time I'm really immersed in it and feel like I _am_ Alan Wake, there's another freaking coffee thermos, lying around in some place where it's not making any sense whatsoever, with completely inexplicable gloss/shiny effect, screaming at me: "Hey, this is just a game, and I'm an achievement, collect me, it's a cool thing to boast about".

Harrrgnnn ...

Shadow Warrior?

Young developers aiming for 'fun' and not realistically accurate.

This is obvious the second you hit start and the protagonist shouts out "Want some Wang?!"

Any game where the protagonist receives a mission from someone who can, by all accounts, teleport anywhere anytime. You finish the task, and poof, there he is to congratulate you. It's like, "Why didn't you just teleport and take care of it yourself?"

Exactly my thoughts. Over-analyzing a game that doesn't take itself seriously and isn't even remotely realistic from the word "go" seems like a very silly thing to do.

There was this moment in KOTOR.

I had to get into a Sith base or something by convincing a guard to let me in. I was given 4 or 5 different dialogue options, including one that basically went "I'm a Jedi and want to bring you all down". As it turned out, only one of them worked, all the others looped the conversation. It was such a silly moment, I walked up to the guy and told him 4 different excuses he didn't believe, until I hit upon the right one, and bingo, in I went. What was the damned point of that?

There was also this bit in Mass Effect 2, where you were on a space station. You could earn money (I think) and paragon points by publically endorsing 3 different stores as "your favourite store on the station" simultaneously. Since doing this was the paragon option in the conversation tree, I had to stop and wonder about the morals of the developers.

money = good... capitalism = good... join the dark side.... muwahahaha

Hehe, this episode of Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic is quite appropriate to this discussion: http://www.yafgc.net/?id=2347

This one could be explained. The blob most likely consumed an commoner at one point or another, who just happened to have 150gp in his coin purse. The body, bones, and coin purse were eaten away, but the gold pieces couldn't be digested. Unfortunately for the slime, it eventually encountered some adventurers and died shortly after.

Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit.

The entire second half of the game is an exercise in multiple-shark-jumping, but I think the moment that finally made me throw up my hands and say "What the [EXPLETIVE]?" was the "I love you" scene.

Not only is there no buildup to those two characters being romantically involved, it isn't even hinted at until that moment. It isn't even remotely appropriate either, given their backgrounds. It's as though those two characters got suddenly replaced by body-snatchers who look like them, but have completely different personalities and motivations. And they keep their new body-double personalities right through to the end credits.

My God that game was a disaster.

Yes, but now extrapolate it to all the mobs you've ever killed in a hack'n'slash. How exactly does a wolf come into possession of 15 gold pieces, 20 arrows and a breastplate of +2 Strength? And where does it keep them?

You're in a dungeon, full of enemies. Your character can knock down a Minotaur with one hit. He has a double handed axe +5. You get to the wooden door, and all your character can say is... "it's locked, we can not pass".

Or he's a mage who can throw fireballs ;-)

You still need tinder and flint (or matches) to start a fire.

btw. you could destroy locked doors in NWN unless they were magically locked.