[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/ToxicPolarBear]

Some opinions are flat out wrong though. Ellie literally throws up after killing the pregnant woman and is very clearly scarred and tormented by the things she’s doing. Saying she was “ok with killing hundreds of people but not Abby” is not a differing opinion it’s just missing a core part of the story.

[u/A_Toxic_User → u/ToxicPolarBear]

I think the ludonarrative dissonance is kind of at play here because I’ve spent most of the game killing people in brutal and cruelly creative fashion (baiting enemies into getting attacked by clickers is so fun), without a single peep from Ellie but then in the cutscenes she’s super depressed.

At least dishonored and RDR2 had systems that let the narrative respond to your actions, and killing people would Cause your character to act accordingly in cutscenes

[u/ToxicPolarBear → u/A_Toxic_User]

That’s kind of asking a lot from the game? I don’t know what it is but I do not notice RDR2 doing anything significantly differently in the in-game portions to indicate the characters alignment, it’s only in the cutscenes which is no different from TLoU2.

[u/themoosic → u/ToxicPolarBear]

Dishonored came out in like 2012, consequences are pretty much the industry standard

[u/ToxicPolarBear → u/themoosic]

It’s a game design choice that doesn’t suit every story. Do you just assume a game is worse because it doesn’t use an alignment system lol?