This is the internet, a digital dreamscape where fantasies are allowed to rage unbound. Frequently this power is used to multiply the number of penises on anthropomorphic foxes, but today let’s spin a yarn of only slightly less incredulity. Let’s say you’re on a blind date. You’re excited because your social graces, honed to precision through years of Doritos and Maury Povich, have long lain dormant from disuse. She arrives and boy... boy is she messed up. Her nose is skewed, her face scarred, she has an eyepatch, and her hair is cut very short and dyed green. As you mumble hi you timidly shake her hand.

Looks like you won’t be spending this evening at your desk, lovingly dubbed “The Op Center.”

As cut and calloused fingers close around your hand, a grip far stronger than yours opens your eyes wide with surprise. You exchange platitudes and inevitably discuss your vocations. She seems mildly impressed that you’ve made manager at the Cinnabon (it took two years, after all), but after hearing her occupation, suddenly all your fear and worry turns into fevered dreams about the boastful posts you’ll be making on 4chan the next day. Why?

Because you just landed a date with an ultra ninja rockstar commando assassin.

Suddenly this girl went from jacked up to downright hot. Things in this world are situational, and almost anything can be excused in the right circumstance. Even though I must use a transition that is far too abrupt and jarring, videogame developers can use this to their advantage as well. Limitations – technical or otherwise – can prevent studios from creating the sort of game they originally envision. Usually developers ram their heads against these limitations, struggling fruitlessly against them and hoping that players won’t terribly mind any resultant gameplay shortcomings. As anyone who has spent time with gamers will tell you, they aren’t accepting of much.