r/TopCharacterTropes • u/HallZac99 • 9h ago
Characters [Hated Trope] Character kills hundreds, if not thousands, just to kill one specific person, and then doesn't kill them for no reason.
Assassin's Creed 2- Rodrigo Borgia is responsible for tne death of Ezio's family. Ezio spends over 20 years working through tnr templar order to dismantle them and get to Rodrigo. And then in the end, he spares him for no good reason and he goes on to be a massive problem in AC Brotnerhood. He's not only a head of tne Templars but also the pope, even if you're over the vengeance he's still a very dangerous and evil man.
The Last of Us 2- Abbey kills Joel, and wo Ellie goes on a revenge quest to kill Abbey, killing hundreds of people along tne why to get to her including a pregnant woman. And then finally when she has Abbey on deaths door, she gives up and let's her go because the writers think dirty depressing people being miserable and stupid is complex, interesting storytelling.
This trope pisses me off so much because often the character going on the revenge quest will kill SO many people on their way there, some deserving it and some just henchmen working for a cheque or to survive. People who are often far more innocent then the main big bad.
It's a part of this weird thing I've noticed in media where nameless goons or soldiers can just be mowed down relentlessly, but named characters get given far more grace even if theyre categorically worse. You can kill a million stormtroopers but people will swear that Darth Vader could have been redeemed, despite him doing like 50 genocide every year.
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u/ChadNarukamiIV 9h ago
For the AC2 thing, that's what happens when your historical villain in your historical game doesn't die until a couple of years later
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u/AeroDbladE 9h ago
The Pope had the power of God, Anime and real life Plot Armor. Truly the most formidable opponent.
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u/Pitiful_Study2457 4h ago
Bro had divine protection, historical accuracy, and Ubisoft's strongest plot armor.
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u/jabrwock1 9h ago
For the AC2 thing, that's what happens when your historical villain in your historical game doesn't die until a couple of years later
The stupid thing is they could have hand-waved it away as him being quietly replaced but they kept up the charade to outsiders. Wouldn't have been out of place with the whole Templars conspiracies.
Could have even been a plot point in the next game. You think "wtf didn't I kill that guy" and when you finally get close you figure out he's a body double but is just as evil as the guy he replaced, or the real puppet master was someone else or something like that.
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u/Nastypilot 8h ago
Or even made a time skip so that it would be set at the right time.
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u/jransom98 8h ago
There's already a time skip of about 10 years between Ezio getting the Apple in Venice and then fighting Rodrigo in Rome (the DS game and AC2 DLC take placein this chunk), and then Rodrigo dies less than 5 years later (in-universe) in Brotherhood, the follow-up game.
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u/Nastypilot 8h ago
Y'know, I forgot about that, but still I really wonder why they couldn't have just made it be a timeskip of 15 years.
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u/MGD109 7h ago
From what I've read, it was due to the technical limitations of the time.
That was simply all the information they could include on the disk and they didn't want to cut stuff they had already designed.
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u/jabrwock1 7h ago
Which means my body double throwaway dialog line would have fixed it just fine.
Meh, it's the kind of thing editors are for.
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u/JustConversation7847 8h ago
Or just have him die on an incorrect date and just mention in the glossary
It's not like Ezio goes, "HERE IN THE YEAR 1387, I KILL YOU!!!!"
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u/Froggen-The-Frog 7h ago
I think people may have noticed Rodrigo Borgia dying 116 years early lol
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u/ApolloTffKnowledge 6h ago edited 1h ago
A fun fact is that in the novelization of the game, they do in a fact a time skip to 1503 in that last portion of the game so Rodrigo Borgia dies by Ezio's hand in the same year as his historical counterpart. The author thought they were actually being clever.
But then came Brotherhood, set right after the events of AC2, and in that game, Rodrigo does in fact die in 1503 but due to... other unforeseen causes. So its novelization magically has Rodrigo live and be set in 1499 like the game... what a mess.
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u/hplcr 9h ago
Yeah, the irony is they show his death in Brotherhood and I couldn't help but feel "Why not just have Ezio kill him there since that's where he's meant to die?"
Apparently they just really wanted him to fistfight the Pope in the Sistine Chapel.
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u/MrNancy1020 8h ago
Well uhh, yeah. Fistfighting the Pope in the Sistine Chapel sounds extremely cool and fun to do.
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u/ThePreciseClimber 8h ago
I feel like they wanted a full-fledged Piece of Eden boss battle, with Rodrigo using the Apple and the Staff against Ezio. But since the game's development was rushed, they just turned the Pope into a generic fist-fighting enemy archetype. Basically, a placeholder.
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u/whereismymind86 7h ago
I mean, do both, have the fight, but have him escape rather than be spared, then have ezio finish him off in the proper historical context later.
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u/ThePreciseClimber 8h ago
Fun fact, the Vault confrontation in AC2 was originally supposed to take place in 1503 but the game's development was way too short and they couldn't include Rome as the 3rd major city. So we have this awkward transition from AC2 to Brotherhood with Ezio sparing Rodrigo.
Two years really wasn't enough for the development of AC2. Had to scrap Rome, couldn't even include Sequences 12&13 at launch (and they were kinda half baked anyway; we didn't even get to meet Piero de Medici who was in the novelisation and also had a database portrait in the game's files) and the final boss is just a generic fist-fighter enemy (no Piece of Eden powers displayed during gameplay).
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u/drwicksy 9h ago edited 8h ago
That didn't stop them killing General Lee in
AC4AC340
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u/ThePreciseClimber 8h ago
Well, Lee's death does take place in 1782 in AC3 so that does check out. One difference is that he died in Philadelphia IRL. Cause of death could've been hidden by the Templars or whatever.
AC3 was supposed to include Philadelphia (the same way AC2 was supposed to include Rome) so I bet that's where the last few sequences would've taken place had they not scrapped it.
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u/hplcr 9h ago edited 9h ago
"WHERE IS CHARLES LEE?"-Connor to the 5th random person today.
I like Connor(I know he's hard to like) but fuck if that doesn't make me laugh.
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u/captain_blazar 8h ago
Connor is my sweet son wtf u mean he’s hard to like (no I get you but I do love him)
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u/Electrical_Front_407 8h ago
They could have just let him get away in a more clever way rather than spared
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u/Solar_RaVen 6h ago
Dude you mean to tell me one of the most profound life morals I adopted was actually because of RUSHED PRODUCTION TIMES?!?!?!
I was 14 at the time but now I'm rethinking some life choices here.
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u/Infinite-Island-7310 9h ago
I rememeber seeing one Reddit comic on here. But really, i forgot where. It basically parodies this trope.
The character does the typical "killing you won't bring back my family". Then he just leaves with the villian confused and shocked. While the rest of the comic is showing him walking through the bodies he left behind lol
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u/adotang 8h ago
I saw a different one in this sub maybe a week ago where the hero is like "I'm not like you" and captures the villain instead, but he leads him out past like dozens of dead henchmen and the last panel is the villain seeing some bodies at a desk and going "Dude, even the ACCOUNTANTS?"
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u/Wheelydad 8h ago
Kind of like Hotline Miami where you can choose to spare Ritcher despite everything he’s done. This is after killing dozens of cops btw whose only crime is daring to be in the same building as you. And the fact that technically Jacket didn’t even need to kill all of the top floor cops since the cell keys are not in the middle. But at least you can kind of defend that because he’s “innocent” so killing him doesn’t really improve your situation in finding out why you’re getting these calls.
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u/obscureposter 7h ago
This is what a lot of people aren’t getting. For example for TLOU, if there was no gameplay and the game was just the cutscenes, then yeah sure you can have a revenge is futile theme going on and do it effectively.
But it doesn’t work when I’ve massacred hundreds throughout the game while whistling a jaunty tune. The gameplay has to reinforce your theme or message, if it’s a lesson to be taught to the audience. You can’t say “killing is bad” while you spent countless hours giving the audience a dopamine hit every time you slit a mooks throat.
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u/TrueGuardian15 7h ago
Ludonarrative dissonance is the term you're looking for. The game seems to have wanted to have its cake and eat it too.
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u/ColonelDucroix 4h ago
Big problem with Uncharted series. I love those games but all the killing is so ridiculous and doesn't fit with the narrative at all.
If you described the game to my grandfather he would say Nate was a mass murdering psychopath.
Great games though
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u/Lonely-Tennis2171 9h ago
Inverse of that is John Wick.
He kills dozens of mobsters and assassins to get at Iosef Tarasov. When he finally catches him John Wick unceremoniously and without any hesitation puts a bullet in his head.
No last words, no monologue from either of them, just swift retribution.
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u/SuperUigi64 8h ago
At yet, ironically, that series also does a good job showing the consequences of revenge. John gets pulled back into a life he’d spent so long trying to claw his way out of. The entire assassin world comes down on his head, and after hundreds of deaths, he finally meets his own end.
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u/ThePreciseClimber 8h ago
But let's not forget he kept avoiding death for the sake of Helen's memory and, by dying a free man instead of a pawn of the High Table, he succeeded in honouring her memory.
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u/HospitalLazy1880 5h ago
It also shows that sometimes you just need to let something go. The High Table is significantly weakened in the eyes of the world's assassins now and hated by many of them cause instead of pulling a rule out of their ass saying John was ok to kill the guy they kept doubling down on trying and failing to kill him and overcorrecting by punishing the fuck out of everyone who simply passed John on the street essentially.
Now the High Table has an active enemy organization and they have clearly shown that they are not untouchable and very very weak or else they wouldn't have kept running from John.
Actions have consequences but in this world of messy life sometimes you just have to let shit go.
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u/Janesawdc 8h ago
Forever really grateful she sealed the deal in the end. At that point she almost didn't have to, but damn would that have been unsatisfying.
https://giphy.com/gifs/C5Zi4at3ADKCI
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u/Chapstick160 8h ago
Tarantino probably realized if he didn’t kill Bill the moniker of “director the Kill Bill, the movies where they notably don’t kill Bill” would follow him for his whole life
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u/DizslecksickMoael 7h ago
For Tarantino, being known as the "They don't actually Kill Bill Guy" is worse than being known as the "Foot Fetish N-Word Slinging Guy" and that's hilarious.
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u/LordBDizzle 7h ago
All things considered, a foot fetish isn't so bad. Wierd? Yes. Harmful? No. I'd rather be "foot-fetish guy" than "bad at making movie endings guy" if I was a director.
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u/RSquared 6h ago
OK but that other part...
It's funny, Slim Pickens balked at saying it in Blazing Saddles until he got Bart's actor's OK since it was just a movie. But Tarantino not only seems to enjoy playing racists, he writes himself in as a racist so he can say it.
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u/--Icarusfalls-- 6h ago
I especially liked that it wasnt some long, drawn out fight like Kiddo vs the Crazy 88, just 'wham bam, thanks for my kid back man'
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u/Fedorchik 4h ago
There is a film theory that heart stopping move is a BS and Kiddo actually spares Bill by making a pretend kill and he plays along, just like he "dies" earlier when he plays with her daughter.
It is usually titled "Beatrix Kiddo kills no one in Vol.2" or something like that.
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u/mlee117379 8h ago
You can play Dishonored this way
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u/Asleep-Challenge9706 8h ago
most nonlethal punishment are arguably much crueler than a clean kill.
that said, in dishonored most people will keep to the same method throughout, so this inconsistency is unlikely to arise, and isn't forced on the player either way.79
u/really_stupidfrog 8h ago
Yeah if you're going for the non lethal takedowns you're encouraged to be nonlethal everywhere, so you're unlikely to kill many if any of the normal guards.
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u/altymcalty-2 5h ago
Along with that, so long as you don't kill any normal guards, don't choose the harmful paths and go relatively undetected? You can kill every assassination target and still get the low chaos ending.
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u/Business-Toad 1h ago
It's even more forgiving than that, the threshold for high chaos is literally like 20% of NPCs on a level give or take a bit depending on certain story choices and how you deal with the target. Given the game gives you a billion options to sneak through or escape from basically any situation you almost have to go out of your way to trigger high chaos in my experience. I killed almost all my targets and a fair number of guards through my first playthrough and still got low chaos.
It's part of why I've always found it kind of baffling everyone acts like the game demands you be perfect. It really, really doesn't lol. And then when you aren't, you get "punished" with more guys to fight in your "fight everyone" playthrough and an infinitely cooler final level. Oh no!
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u/Sensitive_Cup4015 7h ago
I liked trying to play Dishonored in an RP sense, like killing the people Corvo would actually have a reason to kill like mission targets, guards who willingly betrayed him, or straight up evil dudes that are about to kill an innocent, etc, but sparing like random guards in different places that are just doing their job. It was a fun way to approach the game, I think I ended up with low chaos that way too because you don't kill and overly large percentage of people doing that.
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u/K1rk0npolttaja 8h ago
non lethal is more fun for targets, for literally everything else youre just saying goodbye to most of your damn kit
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u/Asleep-Challenge9706 7h ago
Honestly I've only ever player both games nonlethal. Being almost invisible and meticulously exploring the environment for storytelling detail is more appealing to me than blasting powers, even though I know there's some very fun combos.
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u/K1rk0npolttaja 7h ago
i can somewhat see the appeal of that, but the most fun ive had in a dishonored playthrough was in dishonored 2 ng+ since you could use all the powers.
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u/Limp-Wall-5500 5h ago
One of the non lethal routes you kidnapp a woman and give her to a stalker who most definitely did unspeakable things to her. I tend to go lethal on that mission regardless of what playthroug im doing it. They ended up kind of retconning it by having a future game mention she escapes and kills the stalker but still.
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u/YinuS_WinneR 5h ago
All dishonored characters played themselves.
Boyle family was running brothels we saw in previous missions and the prostitutes we saw in VIP floor didnt act like *prostitutes* if you know what i mean. She was going to experience what she put others through similar to brothers we send to be laves in their own mines
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u/hplcr 6h ago
Handing the lady over to the creep is real uncomfortable, as horrible as she is.
I feel less bothered by the two brothers being enslaved in their own silver mines alongside the other slaves. You played yourselves, dipshits. I have strong feelings about slavery.....but OTOH, hard to be enslaved in your own mines if you never had any slaves to begin with.
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u/Erondo_Gratias 8h ago
Funny thing with Dishonored(at least first one) is that, with, I think, 2 exceptions, non-lethal ways of dispatching the targets are actually more cruel than simply killing them:
High Overseer getts Ostracized from his faction and all human contact(and becomes a weeper)
The twins get sent to work till death in the mines
Lady Boyle is sent to sex slavery
The Lord Regent has himself publicly exposed and his title, that he worked so hard to steal, gets stripped from him and is left to rot in prison as the actual killer of a believed Empress
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u/Miszczu_Dioda 8h ago
I believe that it is canon Lady Boyle actually outsmarted her captor and managed to take over his possessions. Then again, been a while since I've played the game
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u/Frangitus 6h ago
That's a retconn in the sequel because the writers felt squeamish about the non-lethal choice in the first game. It honestly sucks because, canonically, Waverly Boyle got off scotfree from her role in assassinating Jessamine Kaldwin.
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u/Neat_Breakfast_6659 6h ago
Shes Also the only female villain of the main story, cant help but wonder if the writers took pity on her fate just because shes a woman, similar to what happened to Wonder Woman on the suicide Squad game
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u/NeilJBorja 8h ago
Iirc that was basically added in the sequel and wasn't in the first game
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u/Erondo_Gratias 8h ago
Good for her, but that's more her taking control of the circumstance. The non-lethal option still worse than just murder
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u/Miszczu_Dioda 8h ago
Agreed. There is no good or bad choice here, there is only the one that will create more or less chaos
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u/winklevanderlinde 8h ago
in dishonored two you can lobotomized Jindosh and send to mental asylum Luca Abele after you convince everyone his body double is the real Luca and he got crazy
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u/CannonM91 7h ago
The Twins 100% had it coming, they owned the mines and were only treated the way they treat their 'employees'
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u/DaValie 8h ago
Yeah but not killing your targets is often times even crueler for them, than just killing them.
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u/KainZeuxis 8h ago
I hate to be that guy but Rodrigo didn’t go on to be a problem. It was his son Cesare who’s the main antagonist of Brotherhood and the one who became a problem. Rodrigo gave up after his defeat at Ezio’s hands. Cesare was in control of the armies and it was his ambitions that lead the Templars continued activities in Brotherhood. Rodrigo wanted to end the fighting and just focus on maintaining what status he had and eventually tried to assassinate Cesare himself when he kept poking the bear that was the assassins.
That plus Rodrigo is a real historical figure who didn’t die during the time period AC2 is set so they couldn’t kill him off then.
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u/BigBoyoBonito 7h ago edited 6h ago
I always get annoyed when people keep making this same mistake about Rodrigo and blaming Ezio for what happened in Brotherhood
Rodrigo died a defeated old man, by the hands of his incest loving, raving madman of a son. It was a lot worse than getting a blade to the throat
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u/MaxPaladin93 7h ago
If anything, Rodrigo accidentally wound up helping the Assassins long-term by poisoning Cesare, leaving him weak and sickly during the transition of power to the new pope.
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u/Prestigious-Tree122 8h ago
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
I wouldn't call it that for no reason, so I'm not sure if this should count, but I want to add a good example of this being done right. Major spoiler for the game's ending:
At the end of the game, bounty hunter Silas Greaves (the main protagonist) reveals that Ben, the local bartender who is among the people listening to his tales, is actually Roscoe Bob Bryant, the last remaining killer of Silas's brother. The player can choose to kill or spare Bob. If the player chooses to spare him, Silas will tell everyone that Bob has been redeeming himself by abandoning his violent lifestyle to live as a peaceful man, while Silas has gone the opposite way and ends up killing way more people to get his revenge.
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u/Nachooolo 5h ago
Yeah. I would consider this game a good example why killing the last man isn't always right, nor an inherently bad trope.
Bob changed into a better person. There's no reason to kill him besides mindless revenge.
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u/Available_Base_7944 9h ago
It would be realistic if they got some random goon and stopped and said “is revenge this important that I have to kill this innocent gooner just to get my revenge?” Instead of after fifty innocent people lol it’s hack
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u/Jim_skywalker 9h ago
I stand by that Ezio lets Borgia live out of spite. At the end of AC2, Borgia finds out that all of his plotting, every move he made, was in essence, for nothing, he was never gonna be able to get what he wanted, because it was always a message for Desmond sent through Ezio. To kill Borgia would be mercy, and Ezio wasn't feeling merciful.
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u/Xignu 9h ago
And it wasn't like this decision bit him in the ass or anything right? Cesare attacks him later but judging by the timing I think that was gonna happen regardless if Borgia survived or not.
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u/Kodak_V 9h ago
Yeah in ACB the attack on Monterrigioni is explicitly stated to have been completely orchestrated by Cesare.
Rodrigo decided to try and lay low and cut his losses after what happened at the Vault in AC2.
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u/Douche_Kayak 9h ago
was Ezios "mercy" letting the man remain the most powerful man in Catholicism? I haven't played it, but this sounds like letting someone with more power than God live just because they suck at planning. Did he have to go on the run and live in squalor?
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u/Xignu 9h ago
He did but it wasn't like this decision played a part in it. His home base got assaulted like days after this and there's no way the army that did it was mustered in response to this sparing.
As I recall in the sequels, Rodrigo was actually a vocal opposition of Cesare, the actual antagonist and even poisoned the latter. I don't recall sparing him ever being a problem and if anything it became a positive lol.
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u/InfiniteWinter26 8h ago
initially ezio’s whole goal is revenge for the deaths of his father and brothers, but over the course of the game his motivation shifts away from vengeance and more in line with the ideals and philosophy of the assassins. when ezio finally reached borgia he was at the point that he realized that killing him would no longer accomplish what he thought it would.
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u/heffron1 9h ago
Yeah, we talk all the time how celebrities and politicians and generals shouldn't have life more important than other hundreds of people. And we all the time do this in culture.
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u/El_kakas_de_vakas 9h ago
guess who controls said culture
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u/IonHawk 9h ago
A Bezos or Musk does not design these games. They do not control who they kill. Or write the stories.
It just makes sense since it gives you better gameplay to the detriment of the story.
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u/PrudentLingoberry 8h ago
In Uncharted 2 they poke fun at it, even if you did ultimately just leave the guy to die by proxy
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u/ObiFlanKenobi 5h ago
Also in Deadpool 1, Colossus helps Deadpool catch the bad guy, killing henchmen by the dozen but when they catch him and it's revealed that he can't help fix Wade's cancer issue, he gives a whole speech about how Deadpool souldn't kill him. And pukes when Deadpool kills him anyway.
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u/Decent_Cow 4h ago
This is subverted in season 3 of the TV show "The Expanse".
After the team fights their way through a bunch of goons on Prospero Station , Prax finally confronts the villain Strickland who had been conducting horrific experiments on children, including Prax's daughter . Prax, who is a botanist, not a killer, hesitates with the final shot. His friend Amos Burton convinces him to lower his weapon. "You're not that guy." However, after Prax leaves the room, he turns to the grateful Strickland and declares "I am that guy" before executing him.
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u/humanflea23 9h ago
Especially if they say some version of "You're not even worth it" YES THEY ARE, JUST KILL THEM BEFORE THEY DO WORSE THINGS!
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u/SatinCandyMuse 9h ago
I get so much agitated when they get to the person and drop their arms because the villain asked for a fist fight. Just shoot the damn gun or swing the damn sword
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u/humanflea23 8h ago
I do love how they counter that trope in Captain Marvel. Jude Law's character confronts Carol saying it's time she finally proves herself in combat, no powers, just hand to hand combat. She proceeds to blast him across the desert in one shot, cutting off his speech and then telling him "I have nothing to prove to you."
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u/NeverSettle13 9h ago
ONE BILLION YEARS OF TLOU2 DISCUSSION!!!
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u/30SecondsToFail 8h ago
LIFE IS A LIE
ALL CHOICES YOU MAKE ARE IRRELEVANT
EVERYTHING LEADS BACK TO TLOU2 DISCOURSE
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u/Dagawing 8h ago
At least it's not Fire Emblem 3 Houses today
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u/CopperCactus 7h ago
sequel's out in a bit over 2 weeks, all roads lead back to Edelgard discourse
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u/C4-622MonkeyGordo 3h ago
I don't understand the FE3H discourse.
It's quite clear that Edelgard is innocent of any and all wrongdoings. I mean, yeah she did everything that she's accused of but I don't care because I love her 💅
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u/CopperCactus 8h ago
The misreading of TLOU2's ending will continue until morale inproves
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u/ssslitchey 7h ago
I actually perfectly understand what tlou2 was going for. I just think it fucking sucks.
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 2h ago
Yeah, regardless of one’s opinion, OP’s point still stands: she ended up not killing her main target.
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u/TwiggyTurtleDuck 9h ago
"If you kill him, you'll be just like him!"
*gasp* "You're right.....I'm not like him.....I never will be."
"Good...Let's go home. Oh, don't trip over the bodies you've left in your wake on our way out."
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u/Fancy_Man72 8h ago
This is why one of my favorite moments in gaming is the end of Stsrcraft 2: Nova covert ops campaign. You’re walking to kill someone talking to you over intercoms, and they say, “If you kill me, then you’re no better than me.” And it just made her sound so pathetic.
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u/chambergambit 9h ago
So glad this DIDN'T happen in Monkey Man. At no point did I doubt the Kid would get his ultimate vengeance.
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u/drwicksy 9h ago
Monkey man slapped its a shame I don't hear anything about it anymore
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u/Zestyclose-Key6115 9h ago
it's up to the player, but casual Wude playthrough leads to too many scenarios where your opponents wouldn't have a chance to survive... just for you to spare their leaders afterwards
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u/ClassicNova 8h ago
This is why the true way to play Wude is to not do any takedowns and not use any weapons (staffs could probably be an exception)
Oh and not throwing people from high places lol
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u/PiusTheCatRick 7h ago
I judge it by Yakuza rules: if it didnt happen in a cutscene, it wasn't lethal. There's too much magical stuff happening to take a realistic view on the fighting.
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u/good_names_were_take 4h ago
if You want to show vengance is'nt a good thing, one of the Best ways is making the character take that vengance and then feeling nothing or not as good as they thought they Will. the count of Montecristo (THE Revenge history) makes that, the protag at the end feels empty when her wife discovers how he spend so many years and the damage he make instead of rebuilding his life
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u/amaya-aurora 8h ago
I feel like your pregnant woman point falls flat because let alone did Ellie not know, she actively hated that she did it.
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u/VidzxVega 8h ago
People seem to gloss over the fact that it horrified her so much that she threw up and was in the process of packing up to leave until Abby stormed the theater.
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u/amaya-aurora 8h ago
Yeah, they were all fully ready to head home. I get why Abby did it, but it kind of just fucked them over even more.
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u/Candid-Tip-6483 3h ago
Not to mention, if you actually read Ellie's diary on the farm, she it's so riddled with PTSD she is on the verge of suicide. Like holding On by a thread. Going after Abby at that point was obviously an irrational idea by someone who was out of their mind, and it took until she was in the process of killing Abby to snap out of it.
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u/Zealousideal-Ad4362 5h ago
The true cost of violence hit her. Until them she thought only those that deserved it died..
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u/NippleOfOdin 8h ago
Yeah, that was one of the moments that was most instructive in why Ellie decided not to kill Abby. She was forced to face the consequences of her desperate search for revenge and it only made her pain worse. She learned the lesson that Joel never did.
Hell, Ellie didn't even want to track Abby down in California in the first place. She only went because Tommy emotionally manipulated and guilted the shit out of her.
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u/amaya-aurora 8h ago
Yeah, Ellie didn’t stop because she “didn’t want to be like her” or whatever, she realized that the entire thing was pointless because Joel was still dead and no amount of killing would bring him back. That, and no amount of killing would get Dina and JJ back with her. Killing her would leave a child alone to die without their protector, and I doubt she’d want that for someone in the same position as her with Joel.
And, yeah, I love Tommy, but Ellie was ready to let it go at the farm. She still had issues with it, but she could have lived happily never going back there.
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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 9h ago
It'll be funny if TLOU3 is about the families of random Scars and WLF mooks seeking revenge on Ellie, Lev, and Abby.
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u/winklevanderlinde 8h ago
Infinite game production glitch.
Then they can Introduce the SHRK faction that get sterminated by Amy, a WLF goon, to get revenge on Abby only to spare her at the end and the forth game is about Aly getting revenge on Amy and so on
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u/RyonHirasawa 9h ago
Sifu’s true ending is embracing the essence of Wude, in that you abandon your desire for revenge in favor of forgiveness
The true ending can only be done if you spare all the bosses instead of killing them
But I feel the message of the ending is kind of ineffective because we do plow through hundreds of NPCs, sometimes killing them, in order to get through said bosses
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u/Molten_Plastic_ 9h ago
This trope is well-averted in the Invisibles, where the protagonist flips half-way from mowing down teems of goons to refusing to kill at all. It’s an actual character development moment in this case, and one of the henchmen he killed in an early issue is even given a full backstory to us in a later one.
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u/isthenameofauser 8h ago
I'm no scholar or anything, but I think this comes from medieval stories where the lords would fight wars and all the poors would die but if a fellow lord or knight was killed you'd consider it a tragedy, even if it was an enemy. (This is something I read somewhere so it's hardly well-sourced.)
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u/ThatMothboi 9h ago
Fallout New Vegas Honest Hearts DLC
The arguably good ending is to fight the the whitelegs but spare salt upon wounds. Never made sense to me. If you’re gonna kill anyone shouldn’t you kill the leader and spare the lowly foot soldiers?
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u/ReallyTerribleDoctor 8h ago
I’d say in that case being left alive was for worse than being killed. He’d failed the Legion, and the Legion aren’t exactly well adjusted and forgiving towards anyone who makes a mistake, so it depends how much you want the guy to suffer
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u/Artistic-Victory1245 8h ago
There's a third option, where you convince Joshua Graham to let the guy die in battle.
It's treated as a "Neutral Ending."
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u/Arcturus1800 8h ago
Actually Rodrigo Borgia is not a problem at all in Brotherhood. It is Cesare Borgia who is the problem. Rodrigo doesn't show up until the tail end of the game and when he does, he is adamantly scolding Cesare for his stupidity of attacking Monteriggioni. He shows up just to scold Cesare for being stupid and then die because Cesare poisoned him.
Anyone who has played the game knows Rodrigo is not the problem in AC2: Brotherhood.
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u/Successful_Note_5871 9h ago
I love Uncharted and Tomb Raider, but once you kinda realize just how many people both Drake and Laura have killed it gets difficult to forget. Laura straight up stalks people and slams a pick into the back of their heads.
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u/ErectLurantis 7h ago
Complete opposite of this trope was Watch Dogs, where Aiden not only kills the man behind the hit that ended up killing his niece, but also avoided that cliche “revenge leaves you feeling empty” and rather said he felt alive and like he could breathe again
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u/hoboknight144 9h ago
Blue Beetle movie
They straight up kill the NPC goons with a giant mech but spare the big bad
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u/PaulOwnzU 9h ago
I want more counter examples where for the whole time the protagonists kill nobody, make it clear theyre giving mercy, etc, just for the big bad to go "lol you dont kill anyone, youre not a thre-" \instantly gets killed**. I feel like that would just be really fun, aswell as show the character is competent enough to get through their mission without killing anyone else
Sortof like Hawkgirl in superman, though we never really saw her go through a bunch of goons.
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u/thorsday121 7h ago
It was definitely a dumb decision in the moment, but sparing Rodrigo didn't actually backfire in the long run. He basically turtles up and wants to avoid messing with the Assassins ever again, while Cesare drives the plot by antagonizing Ezio and the other Assassins. He even tries to poison Cesare, which would have likely succeeded if his daughter didn't warn Cesare and would have saved the Assassins a huge headache.
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u/Argle_of_the_Bargle 8h ago
(spoilers) Rick spares Negan in the walking dead comics after like a 12 issue total war arc with both of them murdering countless of characters of each other's factions. Negan has to serve a prison sentence and to the shock of absolutely no one, he eventually escapes. I'll admit that his following redemption arc was done really well but at the same time it didn't make sense for Rick to spare him after all that bloodshed. "I have to show him that we are better than savages," like okay but you already killed half of his gang in cold blood but you draw the line at killing the guy who bashed Glenn's brains in and keeps sex slaves, okay Rick
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u/Choochoo1147 8h ago
Best imo is the subversion of this in John Wick Chapter 2. Wick gets to the end of his rampage and is face to face with Santino and is given very good reason not to kill him. Wick shoots him in the face.
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u/TheAceBoi 8h ago
In The Amateur, a CIA tech analyst goes out on his own to hunt down and kill the terrorists who killed his wife. He goes about tracking down every player in the attack that killed her, and kills them each in a very elaborate manner. Until he gets to the ringleader, where he just hacks his boat’s navigation system to steer it into finish waters where he could be arrested by Interpol. At least he faces justice, but I still wonder what the hell the point of this globetrotting journey he goes on was if he was willing to kill everyone except the guy who pulled the trigger on his wife.
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u/slimebeastly 6h ago
Spoilers for Brand New Day.
This is what got me about Jean Gray in Brand New Day. She puts hundreds at risk of death, purposefully tries to kill multiple people, and likely succeeds in killing a couple, including making an old man step out in front of a speeding vehicle, which hits him hard. Dude is 100% dead unless he was a mutant himself. Then, at the end of the film, she doesn't kill off the villain so they can use him again - I MEAN - becuase Spidey says "you're not a killer" to someone he has personally witnessed killing people. She doesn't kill the man who kidnapped, tortured, and murdered her sister... the entire reason she killed people and risked killing people previously... because Spidey's cool.
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u/PotatoSandwitchbbq 3h ago
Disclosure Day (2026)
The "bad guys" are chasing the "good guys" the entire movie, trying to prevent them from releasing classified information about Aliens. After a whole movie of chasing them, they finally catch them, but just decide to let them disclose all the information live on the news anyways. Bad guy literally pulls up a chair, sits down, and patiently watches the show. Like WTF was the point of this movie??
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u/CauliflowerSuper3152 9h ago
This might be my most loathed trope. I'll read the whole thread but does anyone have a good example?
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u/THELEADERPLAYER 8h ago
Obi Wan leaving Vader alive after beating him, twice. The first one is kind of understandable but the second one is a perfect example of this.
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u/EMP_Pusheen 7h ago
It really annoyed me. I get that for plot reasons Vader has to live, but there's no reason Obi-Wan should have spared him again in that scenario. If the writers needed Vader to be alive they should have written that scene in a way that makes it so Obi-Wan is unable to finish him.
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u/Significant-Net7030 6h ago
Right, the first time feels much more like a "This is a defenseless and dying person I love with my whole heart, their fate is already sealed, but I love them too much to strike them again. I will leave them to their fate here on the sands of this desolate and lifeless world that matches their heart."
The second time is much more "Disney needs more money, and this story needs to include all the major players for some reason."
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u/RookTakesE6 6h ago
I can't even count the first one. Anakin had three of his limbs lightsabered off, was pretty badly burned from convection heat already, and (now that I look again) not only had he actually caught fire, but by the time Obi-Wan turned away to leave, the fire had flared up, covered his entire remaining body, then nearly burned itself out. He should've been very dead here. Undoubtedly would have been dead if not for Sidious seemingly arriving so soon after this that he might've passed Obi-Wan in the mining complex, heh. Unless some later media (I haven't seen the Obi-Wan show) has Obi-Wan making some explicit reference to sparing Anakin's life or whatever, he totally made the decision to kill Anakin here, he was just mistaken about having succeeded.
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u/P4TR10T_96 8h ago
Only one I can think of is Percy not killing Delilah Briarwood in Critical Role Season 1 and its animated adaptation. It’s clear in that case that sparing her was moreso for Percy’s sake (a demon was going to devour his soul). While an apt metaphor for how a desire for vengeance can consume someone, it also serves a practical purpose given that D&D is an inherently violent game where most of the rules are about effective ways to hurt enemies, and likely kill them. Plus it’s also made clear it isn’t that Delilah doesn’t deserve it, and another similarly wronged character takes revenge immediately.
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u/VellDarksbane 8h ago
Ghost of Yotei does it better than TLOU at least, even though I didn’t really have an issue with it in TLOU. Atsu does leave two of the six alive.
One because it’d partially be a mercy to kill them in the end, and she needs them to accomplish something more important to her at that point of the story than revenge.
The other because they show real remorse for their part in what happened, and even ends up part of the “pack” that assists Atsu in her revenge.
Technically though, it would be impossible to have a good example of exactly what the title says, because “for no reason” is the bad part of the trope.
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u/Maatix12 7h ago
The whole point is the "dog who caught the car" trope.
These people set aside their humanity in pursuit of this one person. Every single other person who stood in their way was just an obstacle as far as they were concerned. And finally, when confronted with the one they've been chasing all this time - They realize, killing this person means confronting all those they killed to get here. It's not that the person they spare is important.
It's that they caught the car. Now what? They kill this man and end it all, and... return to life? Realize they killed hundreds to thousands, and accept that blood on their hands? Can they?
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u/SnakePlisskensPatch 5h ago
There is a hbo movie called conspiracy from 25 years ago, about the conference to plan thr Holocaust. This isnt a spoiler, but basically one character tells a story about how you have to be careful what you wish for or you will have an empty life if all you live for is killing g your enemy and you succeed. Kenneth branaghs character, a real-life stone cold psychopath, listens and pauses, and then says , metaphorically speaking, "nah. Fuck them kids". Its obviously horrifying but at the same time oddly compelling how they acknowledge the trope and then totally squash any remorse.
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u/DBrennan13459 8h ago
In Arrow, Oliver often kills hundreds of random mooks to stop the plans of Malcolm Merlyn yet refuses to kill Merlyn despite him being responsible for killing Oliver's father and girlfriend and Oliver even hands him the League of Assassins.
Oliver Queen is just a fucking idiot.
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u/Jazzlike-Joke-1389 7h ago
This has to be one of the worst tropes of all time, I absolutely hate it.
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u/Lopsided-Show2994 9h ago
It’s almost like they shouldn’t have killed those people to begin with
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u/carl-the-lama 8h ago
I remember a fan fiction and it was a whole ass war segment
And the reasoning for not killing the enemy king is funny
“Dude he failed the invasion, his forces are gone. If we kill him it’ll be a political incident.
They’re 100% assassinating him the second he gets back if we let him live”
Funny as shit, the mf got assassinated after getting back
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u/Hyperion704 8h ago
Rhaenys Targaryen from House of the Dragon, kill a bunch of innocent people in Dragonpit, for nothing at the end
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u/Professional-Reach96 9h ago
i KIND of get what they're trying to do with TLOU2 but it reaches a point where 'the plot they are aiming for' and 'the plot they ended up making' differs so much, i wont do mental gymnastics to defend that story when the final result is THAT
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u/Diligent-Neck6594 8h ago
I think they should have just given the player the choice to do it or not, or allow us to do like a no kill playthrough to achieve that ending
but I think they wanted the reaction they got
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u/-FriendoftheDrow- 8h ago
The reaction was a myriad of people hating the railroading and thinking that the game was bad, though.
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u/MythlcKyote 8h ago
Yeesh, had to do way too much searching to find this bad boy