Dartigan is a YouTube channel that follows the same premise as the popular channel, CinemaSins, however, with a theme of pointing out the sins of video games instead of movies. While created in 2013, Dartigan did not begin its Game Sins series (which now encompasses the entirety of the channel's video production) until 2014. Its creator, user, and narrator, Dartigan Jones, has openly acknowledged his channel's connection to CinemaSins. The channel can be found here.
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Video Games Sinned by Dartigan:
- Alan Wake
- Alien: Isolation
- Assassin's Creed
- Batman: Arkham Series
- Batman: The Telltale Series
- Battlefield
- Beyond: Two Souls
- Call Of Cthulhu The Offical Game
- Call of Duty
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
- Catherine
- Dead Rising 4
- Dead Space (Remake)
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
- Devil May Cry 5
- Dishonored 2
- DmC: Devil May Cry
- Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
- Dreamfall Chapters
- Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
- The Evil Within 2
- Fahrenheit
- Far Cry
- Final Fantasy
- Ghostwire: Tokyo
- God of War
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2021)
- Heavy Rain
- Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- inFAMOUS: Second Son
- Injustice 2
- Kingdom Hearts I-III
- L.A. Noire
- Life Is Strange
- Life Is Strange 2
- Mafia III
- Mass Effect: Andromeda
- Max Payne 3
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
- Metal Gear Solid 1-4
- Minecraft: Story Mode
- Episodes 1-4
- Episodes 5-8
- Mirror's Edge Catalyst
- Murdered: Soul Suspect
- Nie R Automata
- Nioh
- Outlast II
- A Plague Tale: Innocence
- Quantum Break
- Ratchet & Clank
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Remember Me
- Resident Evil
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Ryse: Son of Rome
- Sekiro Shadows Strike Twice
- Shadow of the Colossus
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Sleeping Dogs (2012)
- Sonic Frontiers
- Spec Ops: The Line
- Spider-Man (PS4)
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
- Tales from the Borderlands
- Titanfall 2
- The Callisto Protocol
- The Evil Within
- The Last of Us
- The Order: 1886
- Thief (2014)
- Titanfall 2
- Tomb Raider (2013)note
- Uncharted
- Until Dawn
- The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and The Final Season
- The Wolf Among Us
- Watch_Dogs
- Watch_Dogs
- Watch_Dogs 2
- Watch Dogs: Legion
- Wolfenstein
- Yakuza 0
Tropes Alluded to by the Game Sins series:
- Abusive Parents: Dartigan says that video game plot formulae have pretty much established that if a character has this or some other childhood trauma, then (s)he is guaranteed to survive the whole game.
- All Your Powers Combined: Points out that inFAMOUS: Second Son's Delsin has this power in a way that is pretty much directly lifted from the character of Rogue.
- Anachronism Stew:
- Ryse: Son of Rome suffers from this considerably due to its extensive use of Artistic License – History(see below).
- He points out how Assassin's Creed: Valhalla has a tendency to modernize things, like maps that looks strikingly modern in their accuracy, and punishing a Viking raider for killing women and children. note
- April Fools' Day: Sinned Shadow of the Colossus on this occasion. It only received 7 sins. The sentence? APRIL FOOLS'!
- Artistic License – Biology: To be expected in a game like Resident Evil 6, but a particular case is when Dartigan points out the sheer lack of realism when it comes to some infection victims(namely Jameson) suddenly developing unbelievable additional amounts of body mass to transform into ridiculously large monsters.
- Artistic License – History: Notes several cases within Ryse: Son of Rome's continuity, including, but not limited to, the misconceptions that the Celts laid siege to Rome during Nero's reign, Nero had two sons (one of them being Commodus, who was the son of an emperor; however, this emperor was Marcus Aurelius, not Nero), and the Colosseum had been completed before or during Nero's time as emperor. The final aforementioned mistake receives particular attention, when Dartigan says that it's the equivalent of "putting the Eiffel Tower in Assassin's Creed: Unity." This receives a Call-Back when Dartigan later has to give ACU's devs a sin for doing just that:Dartigan : Remember in my Ryse: Son of Rome review, when I said "The Roman Colosseum was not completed during Nero's reign. That's like Ubisoft putting the Eiffel Tower in Assassin's Creed: Unity?" Well, that was pretty fucking prophetic of me. *ding!*
- Artistic License – Medicine: In his sins video for Tomb Raider (2013), Dartigan points out that Lara taking a red-hot arrowhead to her recently-opened wound should not help her the way that it does: while extreme heat would cauterize the wound, it would in no way heal the internal damage, and Lara should actually be even more injured since she just stabbed herself with an arrow.
- Artistic License – Physics: Is quite frustrated by Resident Evil 6 and Battlefield Hardline's frequent usage of this.
- Artistic License – Religion: Says that DmC: Devil May Cry "respects the lore of the succubus the same way that Stephenie Meyer respected the lore of vampires." *ding!*
- Bad Liar: One of his biggest issues with Catherine, as an overwhelming majority of Vincent's lies were so ill-conceived that both Catherine and Katherine should have immediately figured out that he was with more than one woman.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Several examples in Batman: Arkham City. The biggest case is when Dartigan calls Hugo Strange out on displaying this when he threatens Bruce with knowledge of his secret identity, but never acts on it. He also calls out the Joker for refusing to discover said secret identity when able to do so early on so as not to "spoil the fun," and Ra's al Ghul for simply lecturing the dying Hugo Strange about their own plan while Batman is right there.
- Broken Aesop: Dartigan seems to believe that Spec Ops: The Line's moral that War Is Hell is broken by the fact that it's being conveyed through a shooter game and adds a sin every time that it tries to enforce the Aesop.
- Chekhov's News: Called the Exposition News Network by Dartigan (along with wondering how they stay on the air since their only audience is protagonists).
- Chewing the Scenery: Is briefly caught off guard when Patrick Stewart's character ends up pulling this full-stop near the end of Lords of Shadow.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Dartigan tries to invoke this while sinning Shadow of the Colossus: he has to painstakingly search to find even the smallest of sins, and ultimately is so desperate that he sins one of the game's boss fights, not for being bad, but for simply not being as good as the others.
- Darker and Edgier: Dartigan doesn't support DmC: Devil May Cry's use of this, seeing the reboot's cruder tone as simply missing the balance of serious combat and vocal levity that the original series managed to maintain. Best summed up by this quote:Dartigan: We're only a minute into the opening cutscene, and I can already tell that the developers have missed the point. The old Dante started games by eating pizza and telling people where the bathroom was, and it was still fucking awesome.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Is thoroughly frustrated at how blatantly straight this is played in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, to the point where the main characters' father never appears, even in a flashback, and is solely mentioned just to inspire the twins or keep them (read: Jacob) in line.
- Deus ex Machina:
- Zig-zagged in the Ryse: Son of Rome sins video: Dartigan points out that while the game constantly says that the gods cannot directly interfere in mortal affairs, the goddess named in the credits as "Summer" frequently bails Marius out of situations that would have had fatal repercussions otherwise and gives him all of the exposition required for him to prevail in one long Info Dump; it's even revealed that Summer's counterpart, Aquilon, the Roman god of the north winds, had actually deliberately calculated and caused all of the events leading up to the game's Cold Open. However, at the end of the game, when Marius is fatally wounded and Summer does not save him, Dartigan points out that it's the one time in the story that he would have felt a Deus ex Machina was justified, yet the game passes on the opportunity to simply do what it had been doing throughout the rest of the plot.
- Mentioned once again(although, not in the literal sense this time) in Batman: Arkham City, when Robin comes out of nowhere to save Batman from Talia al Ghul's bodyguards:
Dartigan: Batman and Robin were always marketed as those heroes without superpowers. But apparently, Robin has Deus ex Machina-locater sense. *ding!* - Digging Yourself Deeper: In the DmC: Devil May Cry sins video, when a mop randomly falls on Dante's head to make him somewhat resemble his original look (which is considered to be a particularly insulting Take That! by the part of the fanbase that disliked Dante's appearance change), Dartigan' only response is a resigned "You're only digging your hole deeper." *ding!*
- Disposable Woman: Discussed while sinning Ryse: Son of Rome, when Marius' mother and sister are killed offscreen after the former received less than a minute of screentime and the latter had none at all.
- Doom Magnet: Points out that Beyond: Two Souls' writers make Jodie one so that Aiden can cause more chaos and make her life more difficult.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: The plot of Catherine is discussed in this manner: when Vincent wakes up to find Catherine - a woman that he has never seen before - in his bed, Dartigan says that the game would never have been approved for release had the genders been reversed.
- Fantastic Racism:
- One of the biggest reasons that Dartigan dislikes Battlefield Hardline is the number of times that it tosses out racist jokes, all while still trying to make the audience think that it's striving to be unprejudiced.
- Toyed with in the Catherine sins video, where Dartigan acknowledges that the woman from the game's opening is putting out a "strong '70s Black woman vibe'" with her manner of dress and speech, even though she is quite clearly not African-American, causing the narrator to be completely confused as to whether or not the character is a racial stereotype.
- Finger Wag: Dartigan gives one in response to Minecraft: Story Mode featuring prominent YouTube personalities in the game to pander to the audience.
- Follow the Leader: Notes multiple times with increasing resignation that many of the boss battles in Lords of Shadow take a lot from Shadow of the Colossus.
- Foreshadowing: Mocked mercilessly in his sins video of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, where he repeatedly expresses exasperation at the incredibly blatant hints that Gabriel killed his wife, and only becomes more annoyed when the game reveals this and expects him to be surprised.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: Name-dropped in the Rise of the Tomb Raider sins video.
- Good Parents: In his sins video for The Last of Us, he snarks that Joel's status as this is what guarantees Sarah's death.
- Historical In-Joke: Becomes quickly exasperated with Assassin's Creed's excessive use of this, especially when the historical phenomenon in question doesn't even belong in the era depicted - see Artistic License – History above.
- Hypocrite: Points out that while she's supposedly searching for historical artifacts for knowledge's sake, Lara Croft destroys said treasures more than anything else.
- Indy Ploy: Played with. When Battlefield Hardline drops the bomb that Dawes and Khai were both corrupt and just pretending to help Nick take down Stoddard once they realized that he wouldn't turn dirty, Dartigan outright says that he's not sure whether it was this or a Xanatos Gambit, and that he has to "double check TV Tropes for that one."
- Info Dump: Said by name in the sins video of Ryse: Son of Rome.
- It's Been Done: A Running Gag throughout the inFAMOUS: Second Son sins video is Dartigan' frequent acknowledgments of the fact that the game's plot of people with special powers that are outcasts and hunted by a government-funded black-ops organization was already made popular decades ago as the basic premise of X-Men.
- Zig-Zagged Trope in his Assassin's Creed Syndicate sins video: he notes that the investigative mechanics are highly reminiscent of Detective Mode in the Batman: Arkham Series and says that some of the other mechanics(most notably, the navigation from a high vantage point in the middle of the map) are outdated simply by virtue of being in every Assassin's Creed game with little to no variation; however, he also says that everyone's just waiting for at least one installment to take place in Japan, noting that while it has been done before, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag had pirates, which are just as Cliché in their own right.
- "London, England" Syndrome: Inverted. Dartigan gets on Resident Evil 6's case because it keeps being incredibly vague about its characters' locations, such as simply specifying as far as "Eastern Europe," which is not even a geopolitically stable concept in and of itself.
- Made of Iron:
- Notes that while definitely a badass Action Girl, Lara Croft should never have survived much of she went through in Tomb Raider (2013).
- A recurring sin in the Yakuza 0 video is people surviving all manner of gunshots, pipes, and (temporarily) sledgehammers to the point of someone actually dying is surprising.
- Mighty Whitey: Is quick to pick up on this trope showing up in Beyond: Two Souls, when Jodie supposedly has the insight to immediately solve a problem that the Navajo family hosting her has struggled with for years.Jodie: For God's sake, Paul, what is going on?Paul: Just stay inside...there's nothing you can do.Dartigan: Well, you might not be able to do anything about it, but Jodie is White. And as the White savior, she has the answer to all of your problems, no matter how culturally or spiritually ignorant of your people she may be. *ding!*
- Million to One Chance: While recording gameplay for his sins video of Until Dawn, Dartigan notices a tombstone with his name on it. No game mechanic, just random world generation. He sins it just for the creepiness factor.
- Mind Screw: Name-dropped during the Catherine review when Vincent has a particularly bad dream.
- Moving the Goalposts: Is particularly irritated by Helena Harper's utter refusal to give any sort of context or clarity for most of her and Leon's story segment in Resident Evil 6. Even when she finally stops ducking such an apparently important secret during a zombie apocalypse and reveals that she wrongly helped Jameson in causing the catastrophe in the first place, Dartigan sins: all of the buildup to a revelation that ultimately helps nothing; and once again, the fact that Helena felt that it was best to hide this information in the first place.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: Jokes that Robin gets this treatment in the Batman: Arkham Series.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: Acknowledges in the Tomb Raider (2013) sins video how foolish this is.
- Pietà Plagiarism: The use of this in the Cain and Abel painting in the beginning of Batman: Arkham City is given a sin for two reasons: first, the immediate use of heavy-handed religious imagery, and second, the obvious fact that this painting and its setting will be significant later. At the end of the game, when Batman carries the dead Joker in the same manner, Dartigan gives the game another sin for proving him right.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Frequently notes the overuse of this trope in Ryse: Son of Rome.
- Recurring Boss: In Yakuza 0, Kuze is fought a grand total of five times. By the end, each fight with him is given sins equivalent to the fight (so that the final fight with him earns five sins alone).
- Sequel Hook: Adds a sin whenever one of these shows up.
- Shout-Out: Discussed in Dartigan' sins video for DmC: Devil May Cry: when Dante's making his way through Mundus' factory to destroy the succubus and finds the brainwash signs, he says:Dartigan: I'm not sure whether I should sin this game for cribbing from John Carpenter's They Live!, or take one off for recognizing who could probably make a kickass Devil May Cry movie. Eh, I'll ding it." *ding!*
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Deconstructed Trope. When the villain of Fahrenheit quotes Tempest, this occurs:Villain: It's a shame how few people read Shakespeare nowadays.
Dartigan: Except for every high school and college student and aspiring stage actor. Hell, that wouldn't be a valid complaint even if it were true. Shakespeare wrote scripts, not novels, so it would make sense if no one wanted to sit down and read his works in that manner. *ding!* - Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Finds Chris's gentler and rare heroic use of this towards Jake in Resident Evil 6 to be ridiculous and confusing on both ends.Dartigan: Why would Jake be angry at Chris for killing Wesker? From what we've heard he was a terrible father and Jake hated him anyway. And since when did Chris have all this guilt about killing Wesker? Killing the bad guy isn't suddenly a bad thing just because he has a kid. *ding!*
- Stuff Blowing Up: Notes that this is a constant in ''RE6, at the expense of what little realism the game was still going for.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Points out that Ellie's physical resemblance to Elliot Page is so strong and clearly intentional that it fits this:Dartigan: This girl is not Ellen Page. However, she looks so much like Ellen Paige that I had to go to IMDB to make sure that she wasn't Ellen Page - which makes me wonder why they didn't just hire Ellen Page. If David Cage managed to convince her, I'm sure Sony would have no problem. *ding!*
- The Queen's Latin: Referenced by name in Dartigan' Ryse: Son of Rome sins video:Dartigan: I see once again Romans are speaking The Queen's Latin. This isn't just a sin for this game, but for all entertainment set in Ancient Rome. Why British accents? I'm not saying it's a bad choice, but why not ever something else, like Italian? Or hell, have them speak actual Latin. And don't tell me people don't read subtitles. You're reading these subtitles right now even though you understand English just fine. *ding!*
- Too Dumb to Live: Basically calls the B.S.A.A. this for wanting Chris to lead them, despite the fact that he's already gotten a S.T.A.R.S. team and a previous B.S.A.A. team killed.
- Tsundere: Calls Katherine one.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Develops this attitude in the first Resident Evil 6 story segment after Helena unnecessarily stalls one too many times:Helena: (to Leon for the umpteenth time) Let's just get to the church. Then I'll tell you everything.Dartigan: I would not judge Leon harshly if he just shot her right now. Anyone who keeps Moving the Goalposts like this when you're wanted for killing the president deserves what's coming to them. *ding!*
- Xanatos Gambit: As noted above, played with alongside Indy Ploy during the Battlefield Hardline sins video.
- Yandere: Calls the eponymous character in Catherine this.
- You Bastard!: Done as a joke in Red Dead Redemption 2 when Arthur's horse is shot on the final mission.Dartigan: NO! MY PRE-ORDERED HORSE! YOU BASTARDS!
Tropes That Apply to Dartigan:
- Berserk Button: Of all of the sins that he doles out, Dartigan seems to get the angriest and most willing to add on multiple sins simultaneously when pointing out constant uses of Artistic License – Physics.
- Deadpan Snarker: Just like the channel's inspiration.
- Follow the Leader: Follows CinemaSins' style of commentary.
- No Name Given: Subverted Trope. For a couple of years, the narrator's name never came up, until he sinned Until Dawn - because his name appears on a gravestone in the game.
- Running Gag: A few:
- When a particularly frustrating level/segment/boss fight comes along: "I speak for everyone who's played this game when I say 'Fuck this part. Fuck this part in particular.'"
- When a particularly obnoxious phrase or sound is uttered: "Uaghh!" *Adds 5 more sins*.
- When Dartigan easily identifies an incoming Cliché from a mile away, he may later respond to the "revelation" with: "Fucking called it."
- Resident Evil 6 has its own gag: "Missile/Rocket that should kill Chris and Piers doesn't. Stick with me, I'm building a theme here."
- A borrowed one: whenever a character in a movie pulls a Lampshade Hanging concerning a particularly ridiculous part of the story or brings up Fridge Logic, CinemaSins says that (s)he "would be good at CinemaSins." Dartigan has its own version of this for Game Sins.
- Ryse: Son Of Rome has its own gag where Dartigan says Punctuated! For! Emphasis! every time the aforementioned trope appears, so much so that the 5th and final time that it happens, he just acknowledges it as an Overly Long Gag and tosses out 3 extra sins.
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow also has its own throughout its boss battles(see Follow the Leader above), where Dartigan says that someone on the developer team must have "REALLY liked Shadow of the Colossus." There are also Dartigan' repeated expressions of annoyance at the obvious hints that Gabriel was his wife's killer.
- Whenever a Sequel Hook appears, Dartigan will simply say "Sequel baiting" and add a sin.
- inFAMOUS: Second Son has one where Dartigan points out each of the many, many points where the game rips off X-Men.
- The Batman: Arkham Series has one where Dartigan basically says some variant of "No one wants Robin to be in this game."
- Shout-Out: Not incredibly often, but sometimes the temptation's just too much to resist. One particular example is when Dartigan is looking through the camera of a drone in Assassin's Creed Syndicate:Dartigan: This camera is like looking through a power scouter. I don't care if this[a display in the top-left corner] is a battery level. I'll never have the chance to say this again, so screw it.Vegeta: His power level...IT'S OVER NINE-THOUUUUUSAAAAAAANNNNND!!!
- Self-Deprecation: Occurs at the start of his Titanfall 2 sins video. He jokes that starting a Titanfall 2 centric channel would be a bad idea... before showing his channel's video list and revealing that his channel started as a Titanfall centric channel. He even used his old channel name and intro as the sentence.
- Take That!:
- When the final villain of Catherine ( who bears a resemblance to a particularly popular comic book writer) appears, Dartigan remarks "Man, Stan Lee cameos are getting way out of hand."
- When sinning Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Dartigan says that some of the dialogue is so bad, it's like George Lucas wrote it.
- He pokes at Battlefield Hardline's removal of the levolution immersion mechanic that Battlefield is known for when a building blows up in Story Mode:
(Main characters are knocked back by explosion)Dartigan: This must be that levolution stuff I've heard so much about. *ding!*- During the sins video for inFAMOUS: Second Son, Reggie tells Delsin that his ideas of using his powers to be a hero are unrealistic due to Conduits being seen as "freaks:"
Delsin: See, that's preprogrammed bullsh-Dartigan: Yeah, it's totally preprogrammed bullsh*t that you should be afraid of other people that can shoot fire from their hands. I hear Fox News is doing a special on it next week.*ding!*- In his sins video for Fahrenheit, Dartigan calls David Cage the "M. Night Shyamalan of video games."
- Gives a small one to Resident Evil 5 in his RE6 video when Jake confronts Chris over killing Wesker:
Jake: Tell me, were you Just Following Orders... or was it personal?Chris!Dartigan: very stupid, and I'd rather not talk about it. *ding!*Look, there was a volcano, I punched a boulder, it was all- Gives one to American law enforcement in his Beyond: Two Souls sins video, where Jodie is limping out in the open, and the SWAT force ostensibly sent to take her in dead or alive, by any and all means necessary, starts taking formation instead of moving in for a successful capture or just shooting her:
Dartigan: Just... shoot her. She's right out in the open. Why are you taking formation? You're American cops, you're good at shooting unarmed people! The sniper even has a clear shot! *ding!*- While sinning Until Dawn, Dartigan comes to the realization that the Psycho is pretty much doing Saw early on, proceeding to use this parallel as a vehicle for ridiculing not just the game at hand, but also the Saw movies themselves:
Psycho: Chris has already made one fatal choice tonight. Now... he must make another.