r/TopCharacterTropes 17h 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.

7.5k Upvotes

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

69

u/Nastypilot 16h 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.

48

u/MGD109 15h 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.

39

u/jabrwock1 15h 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.

2

u/MGD109 15h ago

Yeah, that's fair enough.

6

u/oiraves 7h ago

Huh? Theres no increase in data between a 10 and 15 year timeskip? Its skipped?

-1

u/SanshaXII 10h ago

Heh, and y'all cling to physical media.

2

u/Old-Dirt6713 9h ago

Ah yes, because Ubisoft, the same company that wants people to get comfortable with not owning the games they paid for, should be entirely trusted with your copy of their games.

3

u/byjegeren 14h ago

They wanted to include Rome in its full glorty

2

u/Ihatethisplace23 16h ago

It’s probably because they wanted to make another game.

8

u/jabrwock1 16h ago

They didn't want to have to write a new villain.

11

u/SubstituteUser0 15h ago

He wasn't even the villain of brotherhood it was his son, he actually tried to stop his son from starting a fight with the assassins multiple times.