Who all agrees with me here?
Note: This is a listing of all plot lines that were baddass at one point, however, at this point in time they are nothing more than cheap cliches. This does not mean you should not use them, it simply means you should take consideration of orignality into account before going ahead with these forms of plotlines.
I (The Biggest of Them ALL)} Final Fantasy (Insert Numeral), Breath of Fire (Insert Numeral), Dragon Warrior (Insert Numeral), Disgaia I/II (including Makai Kingdom), Grandia (Insert Numeral), Suikoden (Insert Numeral), etc plot lines: Please don't mimic the classic awsomeness of other games.
II } Any kind of Badass longhaird prettyboy trying to destroy mankind/the planet (Reference: Final Fantasy VII)
III } The Sad Lived Empire taking over the Beautiful Prosperous Kingdom for any reason (Reference: Suikoden V)
IV } The Council/Royal Attendant of any kind or wizard, sorceror, jester, etc over-throwing the King/Emporer (Reference: Dragon Warrior VIII)
V } The King/Emporer's kin of any kind killing him for his throne (Reference: The Lion King)
VI } The ancient evil (insert title [god, diety, monster, etc]) reawakening or being reawakend to destroy the world (Reference: Dungeons & Dragons The Movie II: The Dark Dragon God)
VII } The new or previous hero becoming evil or evil's kin in any way (References: Diablo-Diablo II/Star Wars)
VIII } Main character is secretly the hope of the entire world as he is realy the decendant of some ancientness or diety and or turns into one (Reference: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask)
IX } The virtual reality simulator went out of control and your all trapped in it and must find a way out (Reference: Yu-Gi-Oh [the original series])
X } The badguy is a mysterious force that you eventualy find out is a virus to quell some of the over-populous of your universe because your actualy an intricate part of an advanced virtual reality world (Reference: Star Ocean: Till the End of Time)
Edit> Wow, lol, so many crittics in the crowds, and yes I admit I did forget about the whole non-human to human thing. And to answer the question of what a cliche is, it's quite simple: A cliche is an article of sorts that has already been used several times or by dictionary terms: A trite (trite: used commonly) article. And I'm not saying that these plots cannot be replicated any more in games for fear of commoness but rather am simply stating that since these specific plot-lines are in fact cliches that you should use them wisly, integrating originality into them for new twists rather than spent ones. And no this probably doesn't entirly qualify as a tutorial, however, this seemed like the most appropriate area of the forum to list it.