Summary
There are plenty of famous examples ofjailbreaks in video games. EachElder Scrollsadventure famously begins with the player being in captivity.Jak 2andDishonoreduse a prison break to ease the player into their game’s mechanics. Naughty Dog liked the trope so much that it later had the player do it twice inUncharted 4.
However, having to actually break into a place generally considered to be impenetrable and possibly the worst place to spend time in the world may sound insane, but it does present a daring, high-stakes challenge. The following special games give players what they want, whether it’s the ultimate heist bragging rights or literally a prison of their own making.
DuringMetal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, Snake is tasked with breaking intoMetal Gear Solid’s alternate historyversion of Guantanamo Bay, Camp Omega, to spring his former allies Paz and Chico. Along the way, the player can choose to liberate the other “inmates” who have been left to rot in cages without recourse, their heads covered by plastic sacks.
The surrounding area is fortified by a cliff face of natural rock on practically all sides. The camp itself is heavily guarded by armed sentries and locked up with a series of chain fences, concrete walls, and locked doors. Given the conditions and military situation of real-life Guantanamo, only someone like Big Boss would have the skills to pull a break-in like this off.
As the first face the player sees inOblivion, Valen Dreth is hardly welcoming. He mocks the would-be Hero of Kavarch for their imminent demise before quickly fading into the past as Emperor Uriel Septim and his entourage come by looking for their secret escape route, inadvertently allowing the player to escape the Imperial Prisons.
Should the player decide tojoin the Dark Brotherhoodonce they are free, Valen Dreth becomes a target for one of their assassinations in the quest, “Scheduled For Execution.” By this time, Dreth is still rotting in his cell. This means that the assassin player will need to find their way back to the dungeon they once awoke in. However, the passage back has been padded with guards since the emperor’s murder, but this should only serve to whet the player’s appetite for a serving of sweet revenge.
Not all prison walls need to be made of stone, and not all shackles need to be made of steel. For example, inGuild Wars Nightfall, the Fallen God of Magic And Secrets, Abaddon, doomed to the Realm of Torment by the other Gods of Tyria has a cell made ofexistential pain and terror, and his bindings were forged out of the unbreakable, metaphysical material born from a war god’s thirst for glorious war eternal.
Having been left there so long, Abaddon began gaining control over his prison dimension and began twisting it into a place where only heroes of exceptional skill and godly favor could survive. Despite his influence, the Realm of Torment still held him from Tyria, and the wardens were both hostile to him and any who would intrude. Unfortunately, the only way to end Abaddon’s threat is to leak into the realm and face him at the center, which means breaking through the material realm and into a magical prison made of nightmares and pain.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter
The Asteroid Prison Oovo IV
Bounty hunting inStar Wars' far, far away galaxy can be tough.Space is a big place, meaning that a hunter is required to build connections to their target. After being given a job to take down a dark Jedi inStar Wars: Bounty Hunter, Jango Fett discovers that a potential lead has put a bounty on one of his old employees, a Mordageen by the name of Bendix Fust. Hoping to lure him out, he sets off to capture him.
The only problem is that Fust had already been sent to serve a sentence in an asteroid prison, Oovo IV. Undeterred, Fett devised a plan to fish him out. Besides having to deal with the prison’s security, Fett faces off against a rival bounty hunter (and a future associate), gets captured, and has to escape. In the process, his ship is destroyed, but luckily, he finds another on Oovo IV (which just so happens to be one ofStar Wars' most iconic ships), dubbing it “Slave One” (a name that later gets revised to “Firespray.”
After successfully breaking into Lord Bafford’s Manor and filching his ostentatious scepter inThief’s first-ever mission, Garrett returns to his fence, Cutty, only to find that the guards had him thrown in prison. Motivated by the desire to see his hard graft rewarded, Garrett decides to break into the prison to free the fence.
Unfortunately, Cragscleft is more than just walls and cells. It is a mining complex, factory, and prison labor camp. Theconfusing, winding passagewaysof the partly flooded mines combined with the extra tight security of the upper levels make infiltrating and exfiltrating Cragscleft exclusively a job for a madman or a master thief.
