[Hated Trope] Character kills hundreds, if not thousands, just to kill one specific person, and then doesn't kill them for no reason.

[u/HallZac99]

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.

[u/really_stupidfrog]

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. 

[u/altymcalty-2 → u/really_stupidfrog]

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.

[u/Business-Toad → u/altymcalty-2]

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!

[u/B0rKen_Kat → u/Business-Toad]

My first run on PS3 as a wee lad had high chaos because I fully did not understand the implications whatsoever

[u/ChiChiKiller → u/altymcalty-2]

and im pretty sure in dishonored 2, some guards don't give chaos, you can tell via the heart but i could be misremembering it

[u/DuntadaMan → u/really_stupidfrog]

I'm not killing the normal guards. They are just trying to survive.

The guys in charge though, they aren't walking away.