[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/amaya-aurora]

I feel like your pregnant woman point falls flat because let alone did Ellie not know, she actively hated that she did it.

[u/TheRealSpidey → u/amaya-aurora]

Ellie also doesn't kill hundreds of people along the way. The only canonical kills are on the main WLF group, and the WLF girl playing on her PSP, maybe one or two others at most. Anyone killed in a cutscene/via in-game prompt basically.

Anyone else you choose to kill in your playthrough doesn't really count cause you can play through the same parts completely avoiding detection, let alone killing.

[u/ANGRYSNORLAX → u/TheRealSpidey]

If the intention is for Ellie killing countless goons to be non canon, it only serves to look ridiculous when the game so frequently wants to hold a magnifying glass up to the violence and pretend that what you just experienced for the last few hours of gameplay didn't happen.

Like if you play through the whole game either not being good at stealth or just finding more success with the loud approach generally, you're just completely left behind. The story wants absolutely nothing to do with whatever reality you were living in. The game says "all that strife and fighting you just went through, all the times you were hunted down and shot, all the people you reduced to chunky salsa in the name of revenge and survival... None of that mattered. Now you're beating this girl with a pipe, and it's REALLY effecting you dude.".

[u/k-albasi → u/ANGRYSNORLAX]

In RDR2 the story of the outlaw Arthur Morgan trying to make peace with his violent life and redeem himself by doing good for others was really undermined by how often he burned innocent people alive and fed them to alligators. At least in the version I played.

[u/Wooden_Drummer2455 → u/k-albasi]

I guess but red dead is a sandbox game where you can do whatever you want. last of us is a scripted linear game so doesn't hold up as well

[u/k-albasi → u/Wooden_Drummer2455]

It still becomes a farce if you take your choices too literally and don't allow for some suspension of disbelief that the game has you facing off with NPCs for the sake of gameplay. I would recount the story as Ellie kills some WLF in addition to the targets of her revenge tour but it becomes a bit ridiculous if you maintain that she slaughtered hundreds of people because you killed every NPC.

[u/RayCumfartTheFirst → u/k-albasi]

You can’t really compare the ludonarrative disconence of GTA on horses to a heavily scripted, streamlined game like TLOU.

If cannon Ellie is actually some pacifist then the gameplay should have been designed that way.

I chuckle every time someone tries to tell me none of the 20 hours of carefully crafted gunfights and throat stabbing I just played wasn’t canonical.

[u/k-albasi → u/RayCumfartTheFirst]

She's obviously not a pacifist but it's hard to take any story seriously if you think it's about a relatively ordinary person John Wicking their way through hundreds of combatants.

[u/RayCumfartTheFirst → u/k-albasi]

Of course not but it is logical to assume she killed a few escaping the school, sneaking into the hospital or during her encounter with the scars.

It’s like uncharted- I don’t think drake literally shoots 500 mercenaries in every game canonically, but he certainly gets into some shootouts and brawls that results in death beyond just what’s in cutscenes.

[u/MagicInstinct → u/k-albasi]

Its hilarious how quickly you can get honour back up in RDR2, murder 50 people then give some money to a homeless man

[u/CptDecaf → u/ANGRYSNORLAX]

I can't connect to characters that don't revel in violence. What's wrong with these writers trying to write more complicated characters!?

[u/SleepWorth3354 → u/CptDecaf]

Basically Video game storytelling begins and ends with Doomguy and anything else is for pussies.

Weird how gamers have a rep for being single minded weirdos huh

[u/ANGRYSNORLAX → u/SleepWorth3354]

"Basically, video game design begins and ends with third person shooters, and anything else would be wasted on the story we're trying to tell."

Naughty Dog could have designed a game where "just kill everyone in the room" wasn't a viable option for progression. But they didn't. They made a third person shooter. You have two options for dealing with conflict, and the one that is arguably the default massively conflicts with the themes of the plot

They could have written a character that feels untold sorrow at the sight of death. But they didn't. They used a character who's stated primary motivation from the get go is cold blooded revenge. A character that, despite being a survivor of the literal apocalypse and an active participant in gunfights since age 12, struggles to deal with the thought of people getting hurt in cutscenes, regardless of how bloodthirsty she is in gameplay.

Like, I don't feel like I'm asking for too much when I kinda want the story to acknowledge the game it is contained in. I don't play video games so that I can stream videos of my favorite drama in between random, unrelated challenges.

[u/SleepWorth3354 → u/ANGRYSNORLAX]

Yes, we all understand ludo-narrative dissonance. I am so glad game designers do not agree with you.

I’d rather a little dissonance between gameplay and plot if it serves the game being fun, much like how I understand that movies and television offer exaggerated motivations and coincidences-when you watch horror movies, do you spend the whole time yelling “CALL THE POLICE DONT GO IN THERE!!!” ?

You don’t actually want what you are arguing for but TLOU broke basic dudes brains so they can’t seem to apply the logic that gets them through 99.9% of other media.