What breaks your suspension of disbelief?
Remember those
apparently simple springy things on Chell's legs in Portal? Those were knee replacements added by the game designers after playtesters thought the character could never survive the drops and jumps. So a gun that shoots portals is reasonable, but people falling and flying several dozen feet and being fine is outrageous?
I actually agree with that position. I find it's easy to accept technology and magic doing outrageous things, but there are limits to what flesh can do. That may be partially because I think characters should have flaws. It's also because I know what a human is, and altering the universe to make a human into something it's not breaks my suspension of disbelief. If you want a human who can survive a three hundred foot jump and keep going as if there were no impact force, make him a cyborg or a robot instead. Or make it happen in the Matrix, where things aren't real in the first place. Now he's not just a human; he has been modified by the magic of technology.
I'm not sure where the line is, exactly. A little exaggeration of real-world ability is good. That makes things exciting and heroic. Something that completely disregards the physics of a body isn't going to go over so well, though. I think that's where my point was leaning [post=1313692]here[/post]. "There's a point where combat power goes from cool to ridiculous," basically.
So, one thing that breaks my suspension of disbelief is over-extension of the abilities and limits of human (and human-like) bodies. Pretty broad one, huh? Lot of stuff fits in there.
What suspends your suspension of disbelief?
