It’s too close to murdering CEOs.
They don’t want peasants getting ideas.
Once you spot this it becomes impossible not to see it.
Ever notice how most environmentalists in comic book movies and TV are evil, misguided, or at best ineffectual?
Or how a corrupt official can leverage whole armies to chase down the protagonist, but the conclusion is that the system itself is great and should be protected and it was just that one bad egg?
Or the villain in every 80s movies wants to build medium-density housing.
But I really want a nerdy group of white kids and their one black friend to get into hijinks to save the community center!
It’ll become an abandoned mall.
You can kill each other, but you can’t kill the rich, deranged asshole in charge.
That tracks.
Lets leave those friends of epstein alone. We are better than them 😔
I mean, we most definitely are.
Like by a far margin.
So far you can’t see it with naked eye.
Exactly!
It’s even stupider when the game railroads you into it. If I left a trail of bodies in my wake then obviously I intend to kill the main baddie too.
Fuck games that make you let the baddie go.
If I left a trail of bodies in my wake then obviously I intend to kill the main baddie too.
Fuck games that make you let the baddie go.
I think one of the reasons people like FNV so much is kinda this. If you want to, you can tell the final boss to go away. Or you can kill them. I made a character that was speech focused. I didn’t want to reassure the end boss that “oh, logistics is hard, don’t worry, my faction will collapse eventually because of logistics” and I got to cave their head in.
Contrast Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where you’re railroaded into a conversation with the final bad guy, and the entire fucking time I’m just fixated on how I’m going to shoot him in the face the instant the dialog tree ends.
That’s kind of a lot of conversations with bosses in Deus Ex tbh. Notable exception being the terrorist leader in the first game where by the end of it you’re like wait actually he has a point
Cof cof last of us cof cof
The first game is one of the cases where it makes sense, cause you’re playing as a guy with a very lenient policy on murdering
The ending of the first one is just so terribly bad.
It makes the entire game worthless. They could have just stayed at home and the ending would have been exactly the same.
Nah, if they stayed at home a lot of people wouldn’t have been hard murdered
Wait, who let’s who go in TLOU?
Theyre talking about the second one
Oh, well that made perfect sense.
Yeah honestly the whole time I was like stoooop fightingggg
And like, literally one of the core themes of that game was the cycle of violence, how self-destructive it is, and breaking that cycle.
But if you kill him you’ll be just like him.
The protagonist and the villain are both top 1%ers with class consciousness.
This exactly lol. Like bombing thousands of civilians and then decrying “political violence”.
Or libs saying ‘but we cant punish fascists!’
The term I see used for this is “ludonarrative dissonance”. Basically, your experience playing the game doesn’t match what the story is trying to tell you.
The opposite would be “ludonarrative synchronicity”. Like in Doom the protagonist is an overpowered entity feared by all enemies, both in gameplay and in the story.
Edit: specifically applied to games, I’m not sure if there’s a term for movies or other media.
Im currently rewatching Smallville and there are so many random villains whose death are directly Clarks fault, and he never takes any responsibility, but still everyone acts like taking a life is a big thing.
He also calls them meteor freaks. Because coming up with cute slurs for people with conditions beyond their control is something Superman would do i guess.
Going a bit off on a tangent but are ludonarrative synchronicity, ludonarrative resonance, ludonarrative coherence, ludonarrative harmony and ludonarrative consistency all the same thing or are there some subtle differences? Over the years I’ve see all of them be used as the opposite to ludonarrative dissonance.
That’s wild, I’ve heard ludonarrative dissonance many times, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of ANY of those other terms. But yeah, they all sound like the same thing.
I would say yes, because there’s not a standardized term for the opposite of ludonarrative dissonance so people probably just coined terms of their own
I propose ludo=narrative and ludo≠narrative. This new term will solve the explosion of terms caused by everyone coming up with their own terms.
It feels like they should be the same, but I’m also not an expert
Yup i hate this stupid trope so fucking much. It’s just being so obnoxiously hypocritical in order to deliver that another over generalized stupid notion: revenge bad
But don’t you see? Just because the greedy capitalist killed millions doesn’t mean you can kill him.
👉👈 Pwease compwy.
Not just the henchmen, but the henchwomen, and the henchchildren.
Hench Lives Matter!
Won’t you think about the goons?
Take out the henchcats and henchdogs too. Don’t want them going feral.
Here’s to Smitty!
What about the henchboss?
Far cry 4 was unbelievably frustrating with this “mechanic” a rocket launcher of 50cal round to the face means you don’t get to fuck me in a cutscene… The game disagreed.
Yeah downscaling your power level for a cut scene is stupid too. Lotta times in games I’m just like “this is 6 mercs, I could have taken them easy”
MGS is also guilty of it
Kojima gets a pass from me because I want to go on whatever wild ride he feels like telling
Okay but have you considered something something Nanomachines something something Metal Gear something something Patriots something something Otacon pissing himself.
The color of this kid’s clothes makes me hear the text in Winnie the Pooh’s voice and I can’t stop laughing.
Someone has been watching CW’s Arrow.
Like, Oliver, those henchem you shot with arrows, and your sidekicks shot with bullets are dead. Your friends are actively begging you to kill their leader who has threatened the entire city like 6 times now. Just kill him too, no one cares, they will probably build you a statue.
Is it just some cheap plot device, though? Now the big bad can escape from prison or whatever and find new plebs for Arrowman to kill and we’ll all have a big ol’ happy happy
This is just another instance of the class morality. The lower classes are not really people for the upper classes.
Exactly. Also, there a chance the minions are black and the villain is white in this scenario.
Related: Leaving the bad guy injured or “probably dead”
Cut the head off and make sure they’re for-real dead.
Or you know, check like a pulse.
Too many “aha but i secretly can slow my heart rate!” tricks. Cut off the head. Granted, the plot could still pull some “it was a clone” nonsense.
Have you ever cut off anyone’s head? Without the proper equipment it is serious work.
Wolfenstein new order. Chick gets her head caved in by a mech, still comes back just as agile and obnoxious as ever, with no apparent effects other than being slightly uglier.
Followed by TNC wherein Blaszco
Spoiler
is beheaded
and continues to be a supersoldier thereafter.
I love these games
TBF she’s a Nazi so her head was empty to start with
What do you define as the proper equipment? Can do it with pocket knife if you’re dedicated.
Yeah, maybe just slit their neck WIDE open. Or, if you’ve got the ammo, unload a magazine into their skull.
Partial credit goes a long way toward the general goal.
Fr, I was always thinking, " NO, MC You DUMBASS, HE’S THE EVIL ONE." No but the one henchmen, yah Fuck him an all his hommies. That’s what y’all get for not being ‘important’ I guess, smh
I don’t think it’s as common as the meme makes it seem, but I’m probably wrong. Does anyone have any examples??
First thing that comes to mind is the OG Avatar the last Airbender. Aang has that dilemma at the end of the show but throughout the series he does plenty of damage to kill people. It’s just never shown on screen since it’s a kids show.
The big battle at the end of Season 1 has him turn into a water Kaiju and destroy an entire fleet of ships in Arctic waters.
Aang has literally never killed anyone. Not a single fight he has had in the entire series has left anyone dead. Injured. Hurt. Dead? No.
The closest he has ever gotten to using lethal force was against the Sand Benders after Appa got abducted.
Well he sort of killed Zhao but maybe not intentionally.
Zhao was killed by The Ocean Spirit.
Yes, Aang summoned it, but the Spirit still has a mind of its own, and was rather wrathful towards Zhao for killing The Moon Spirit.
Aang be like:
Aang doesn’t kill anyone, though. It’s an important part of his character for the entire series.
Yeah. In universe his personal human body count is zero. Out of universe, there’s no way the water spirit merging didn’t kill hundreds of fire nation sailors, but as far as the story itself is concerned, aang didn’t actually kill anyone.
https://screenrant.com/avatar-last-airbender-aang-killed-people-pacifist/
I think it’s pretty well established that he doesn’t personally have control of his actions in the avatar state, at least at that point in the story. He doesn’t even know how it works. Thats a pretty major plot point. Combine that with him also being merged with the twin spirit of the one that was just killed, and justifying an argument of “but what about all those soldiers” really just falls flat.
I’d say the closest he came to killing of his own volition was when the sandbenders stole Appa… and he still didn’t pull the trigger.
That was the moon spirit channeling through him. Different situation.
Externalities are a hell of a drug.
When I was young I thought the ending was the coolest thing ever because taking a person’s elemental bending away is like ripping your entire being away. Like stripping a billionaire of all of their assets and cash. Horrible blow to their ego, lifetime of suffering, etc.
But now that I’m older, Aang should have just killed the bastard. The fight was hella cool tho.
Amazing how, as you got older, your opinions got more basic and animalistic.
Kids really are incredible.
There are good reasons to not leaving Ozai alive that a child wouldn’t factor in but an adult would. Namely a revanchistic coup against Zuko to reinstate either Ozai or Azula and restore the Fire Nation empire, while Azula was redeemable in theory Ozai wasn’t, my source for that last bit being that he is voiced by Mark Hamill.
Point is that leaving him alive while idealistic and honestly pretty gnarly also leaves loose ends.
Caillou looking centrist loser 😶
Meanwhile Sokka and Toph do a dozen hindenbergs and no one cares
It makes sense for him as he is the equivalent of a Buddhist monk. They follow the virtue of no harm. Same way he is vegetarian in the story.
Well, the henchmen usually wears masks or helmets so we and the protagonist don’t humanize them.
Exactly, the random goons in games are designed to be without humanity and to fade into the background as much as possible.
Imagine if instead of dying quick and going immediately still and silent, random goons crawled around on the floor for two minutes in absolute agony after you shoot them like “Oh God there’s so much blood! I don’t want to die!”
Would totally change the tone of the game.
“I have 4 kids and my wife has cancer! This was the only available job in this economy! I had 3 PHDs! Would you at least go to my house and give this letter to my #coughing blood# wife?”
[Sure, buddy] [I’ll do everything I can to make sure they’re safe] [How do you think I got this address, mate?]
I would absolutely play this game. Lol
Hey now sometimes they also wear masks to save on game resources. Like with Fallout NV where the Legion has so masked guys is because the game would shit itself if it didn’t.
Also I want that second one, best im probably gonna get is watching a dementia patient crawl around with a blown off leg in Rimworld.
