You say fantasy games should be "internally consistent", praise (such as) LOTR for being "fantastical but internally consistent" and then express your own disatisfaction with ToN for failing to follow your rules.
Your rules that a games should be "internally consistent with it's own rules".
Can you point out amywhere where ToN has rules that says water makes clothes wet?
Or you just applying the rules that you experience in the real world to a game you yourself describe as fantasy?
The last sentence in your post is really silly because it's like saying if I can't prove that God doesn't exist he must exist, as if the alternatives offered were mutually exclusive and one or other had to be true which is nonsense. Look: Janet got wet in her shower; MC and Clare got wet in the river after getting muddy; Janet washed Henry's clothes in her washing machine; nobody got wet after being sucked under water by a subterranean whirlpool and swept into Sofia's mansion.
That is the very definition of game inconsistency because it implies that in ToN liquid water can wet people in some locations and not wet them in other locations without signaling that such a thing is possible in that game world beforehand to players! Not one of the characters swept into Sofia's mansion commented on their dryness after leaving the torrent nor was any other influence natural, magical or supernatural, cited to explain why none of them were soaked as had always been the case in ToN for
all characters drenched before.
When I say consistency I don't me consistency to the physics of the real world as far as fiction is concerned I mean consistency as far as what happens in the fiction goes. An example of consistency in ToN is crafting:
four things offered at the cave shrine can combine and morph into
one other thing, always combining to produce the same result, e.g., two broken keys, a pirate talisman and a grand medallion
always give you a pirate key nothing else which might well not be the case without crafting recipes and rules!
Let me switch this around and paraphrase your question: Can you point out
anywhere where ToN says that water
doesn't make clothes wet? And if not then why anybody would have any conceivable reason not to consider it inconsistent when all characters dunked in water in the game got wet before? Thing is if you don't have consistency and coherence in a story literally anything can happen, at any time, for no reason at all; all structure would be lost, everything would turn to jelly, and the story would effectively no longer exist... which, come to think about it, does kind of describe the last chapter of ToN pretty well: Duncan killing Henry with a knife (and as a practiced murderer presumably checking to make sure that Henry was deceased before disposing of his body in a way ensuring it would never be found); Henry then having post-death sex with Evie (a non-corporeal being who became corporeal enough to couple with Henry physically, in limbo, despite the fact that he was then non-corporeal himself, his body decomposing back on Earth); Henry meeting his dead father who had messages for Clare, Diana and Albert, but not a word to pass on to poor Janet or Kaley, supposedly Idaho's ex-wife/lover and daughter as well as mother and sister to Henry, respectively, according to f95zone's incest freaks anyway; and then Henry waking, restored to life and fully healed, in the cave system of the park with Madalyn there to greet him! Now that's a pretty good trick on Henry's part since the only other person I can think of, who came back to life like that after being put to death, was... let me think... non other than Jesus Christ himself! Shoot me down in flames but as much as I like the little shit in some ways I really don't think that Henry Johnson is a son of God! Although I suppose in a imaginary reality where rules and laws don't matter there's no reason to suppose that Henry isn't another Messiah, or, and here's a thought, the Almighty in human form! Or sculpted from papier mâché made from pulped beer mats stolen from the Full Mast Bar! Or crafted from four thimbles full of fetid goat's urine taken to the cave shrine of the Tikpak as an offering ! Without rules, laws and consistency, in a game word where water isn't always wet, there's no reason to think that any of these things or even madder things are impossible or even unlikey.
No more time, over and out.
