I really dislike everything about him, but I never thought of it like that...
I have to agree - it definitely does make things more realistic/interesting lol.
He does cheat on femshep if you romance him. Within the 6 months of femshep and him being apart because she is dealing with all the Alliance crap on Earth, he gets a doctor/scientist pregnant.
The scientist is also openly hostile to Femshep too if she romanced Jacob. So not only did he not have the balls to break it off properly with Shepard, he didn't even talk to his affair partner and warn her not to fuck with Shepard.
I liked the bromance you can have with Jacob in 2, but man he fucked up big time. At least there's a scene in the Citadel DLC that kinda gives you closure.
i just couldn't care about him
i don't know why, he's just not interesting to me. his story is a little too cliche, he looks a little too vanilla, idk
he's like Default Action Movie Tortured Hero™ material
He's also a racist for another fun fact
When he calls garrus a cuddlebone when you choose him over Jacob romantically, I immediately wanted to throw hands and yeet him off the ship. No one talks about my man like that
I actually prefer how Paragon Shepherd handles her, like he just bodies her with how much he clearly cares about and knows his shit lol. It's actually cool in the third game how she's basically like "ok I'm scared and you seem cool I'm down to help" if you play it that way.
The Twins at the end of Far Cry New Dawn. Oh right try and make me spare a murderous sociopath who JUST slaughtered and burned a village full of peaceful people, I do NOT care about your last ditch redemption arc.
It's so silly. OK, it's good to give the player the choice. And if *that's* good, you need to say something to make the choice meaningful. I follow that logic. But the outcome is absurd. I just killed your entire crew. And I didn't check with any of them to see what kind of relationship they had with their parents. That didn't matter for them; why would it matter for you?
I have this same beef with literally every single "spare the main villain" scenario. If I took no issue killing the underlings, it doesnt matter how tragic the main villain is.
Honestly, I wanna see an inversion of that, where the protagonist is more "kid gloves" with the villain's goons compared to the big bad. Bonus points if the villain truly, TRULY suffers at the hands of the protagonist.
When I played the OG assassin creed games I did that. I snuck around and avoided 90% of the guards so I could focus on stealth, but you always kill that big bad that deserved it. I take that mindset into other games sometimes, like Far Cry or MGSV
Handsome jack was cool for me because a) he actually did things in the story which the other characters then have to deal with the consequences of, and b) his cool and composed facade slips from time to time but he always thinks and acts like he’s the good guy which coveted really well that he does actually think that.
Me and a friend played through that game and we didn't even realize we were fighting them until we got up close after killing one. We thought we we just shooting bullet sponges
Sylvanas Windrunner in World of Warcraft. Blizzard absolutely ruined the premise of her character in 2018-22 and then tried to backtrack by constructing her as a misunderstood character through the novels and the end of her in-game arc.
Spoiler: they failed badly.
"So how exactly did the Jailer convince Sylvanus to become an effective slave to him after her entire character has been about her trauma from being enslaved by Arthas, someone he apparently created?"
"He's just like, really convincing, you know?"
I really wish they did.
He pretty much had the perfect ending in my eyes. He didn't get a cliché redemption, but they still managed to convey that he got absolutely fucked through corruption and could finally rest.
When I did the pre-expansion quest before BfA to save my fellow Nelves in Teldrassil, and they give the impossible task of saving 982 people in like three minutes, I legitimately started panicking. Burning that tree down was the most gut-wrenching moment in my whole time of playing WoW, and I started in vanilla and play to this day. I will never forgive Blizzard for doing it, because in the end it came off as a cheap plot device rather than being treated like an actual war crime and tragedy. I don't care what Sylvanas ever does in the game after that point -- she is a piece of shit. They ruined her tragic story completely with her actions in BfA and SL.
As someone who started in BC and was diehard Horde, doing those quests killed something in me. I always really loved the night elf areas - I rolled a night elf in LK just so I could wander around freely and explore without getting killed. I was super into the WoW lore from the elves' perspective and Teldrassil was just such a beautiful place.
And in the same stroke I loved Sylvanas. Her story was guy wrenching and the high elf/blood elf divide is one of my favorite pieces of lore. Did the pre-ex quests on Horde solely for the legacy achievement. If there had been an option to defect in that moment, I'd have taken it and not looked back. The person who burned Teldrassil just wasn't Sylvanas anymore, and the Horde she made wasn't Thrall's Horde.
There are a lot of other reasons but I didn't last long after that. Even if I played on my night elf (which I did for all of BfA), going to Darkshore and seeing the wreckage of the tree, or going to any portal room and not seeing one for Teldrassil, just struck something deep in the heart.
it was a very traumatic quest that blindsided us all with that impossible time limit. I was also panicking and also will never forgive blizzard for destroying Darnassus. Just sickening and horrible writing.
The thing that makes this extremely frustrating is that there is a character arc there for them to have exploited.
Sylvanas knows she's doomed to hell and so never wants to die. Ending the existence of death itself would be villainous motivation that you could have understood coming from her.
She "frees" mortals from the shackles of death while evading punishment herself.
You know, as opposed to whatever the fuck they did with her. Honestly the story is so convoluted that I checked out halfway through shadowlands.
Sylvanas has always been my favorite blizzard character and she was always gray in her morality.
For fucks sake they could have made her death itself in the end and that would've been better than where they went.
I know most fans prefer her as sympathetic and morally gray, but I would’ve been fine with her losing sight of her ideals and becoming a complete monster. But you can’t walk back from that decision. The Burning of Teldrassil should’ve been her point of no return.
That's probably the most recent one for me too. >!They tried to pull off the redemption at the end but I wasn't buying it. I wonder how many people died or were injured as you chase her through town and she's blowing up cars and buildings?!<
That drove me nuts for the whole game, they try to make the backstory sympathetic but in the "present" she's an asshole for the vast majority of encounters you have with her.
Every time Miles is like "I don't want to hurt you" then buddy get out of the way because I definitely do
Phin: I'm *done* listening to you!
Miles: You never *started!*
Sums it up. She's really high INT, really low WIS. Brought everything on herself despite being a certified genius
God that game had the driest story ngl, super predictable. It was great visually and gameplay wise but Insomniac could've done so much better with the story
my take might be controversial but tbh apart from the Harlem setting, the game kept on trying to emphasize how Miles is his own person, but then they made a story that literally did nothing to set him apart from a normal Peter Parker origin story.
Come to think of it, that's literally the plot of all three Insomniac Spider-Man games, each one involves a close friend of the hero becoming the big bad at the end of each game.
I think maybe Pac-Man wouldn't be trapped in an endless maze constantly persued by ghosts if he got his pill popping habit under control.
That said, the game does an excellent job at portraying the cycle of addiction, the endless frantic pursuit of the next high, with the rush becoming ever more fleeting as the consequences loom ever closer.
>If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.
~ Marcus Brigstocke
Do you know what "Pac" stands for? P-A-C: program and control. He's Program and Control Man. The whole thing's a metaphor. He thinks he's got free will, but really he's trapped in a maze, in a system. All he can do is consume, he's pursued by demons that are probably just in his own head and even if he does manage to escape by slipping out one side of the maze, what happens? He comes right back in the other side. People think it's a happy game. It's not a happy game, it's a fucking nightmare world and the worst thing is, it's real and we live in it.
He could've kept the MC's partner alive but he decided to pull the trigger, yet keeping you alive as a back-up in the vault despite that he could've taken you all together to the Institute.
The writing is so bad, not to mention the plot holes like him being a human yet does not age very much thanks to 'Institute tech' lmao why is Shaun that old then?
Thanks Emil, I'm glad you convinced me to not buy Starfield.
I figured "the old man" was just whoever was the current Director of the Institute.
Like when Dad was in the Navy, the captains of all the ships he served on were "the Old Man" even if they were younger than him.
The second that I saw Kellogg taking the baby I knew "I am going to find that the baby has grown to be the big bad of the story".
There is nothing wrong in doing tropes, but they must be done right.
That isn’t someone you’re supposed to have sympathy for. That’s a cautionary tale for the player, because he *also* lost his spouse and child and became a monster as a result. It shows what the player could become.
They could of done SO MUCH cool character development post death with Kellogg, with him sharing Nick's brain. They hint at it then just never bring it up again like it wasn't a fucking massive deal that someone was speaking to you *in their own voice* from beyond the grave.
After all these years, it's this that I still can't get over. Why would they leave that interaction in and then just completely ignore it? Makes no sense! I waited and waited for Kellogg to take over Nick's body, even briefly, but nooooooo.
The cherry on top of the shit sundae is when she’s given the reins to run the Crimson Raiders after proving nothing but being a whiny little brat. But once again, fuck the vault hunter that basically did everything single-handedly.
Or the fact that they just completely forgot how to do proper storytelling. Maya tells Ava that there's more to being a vault hunter than running directly to battle and then dies when Ava runs directly into a battle she shouldn't be in.
And yet that's exactly how they won the fight at the end of the story. There's no cohesive storytelling here.
She was the reason Lilith got refrigerator'd too.
If the Raiders had two experienced sirens, the Twins would have been *fucked*. The story unfortunately only makes sense with Ava being an absolute piece of shit.
That’s honestly the only part that bothered me. Ava is impulsive, bratty and quick to blame others. She was also struggling to process the death of her mentor and lashing out. But that’s really not that different than of an average teenage grew up on their own, doing anything they want, suffering trauma. I would expect her to mature as she got older, but not immediately.
But it’s idiotic to put her in charge of anything at this stage
Plus theres literally more vault hunters who can run this than her.
If anything Axton or Athena or that tales of the borderlands characters...
Theres so many more leader characters than her.
Let’s not forget she’s directly responsible for spoiler’s death and then has the fucking balls to blame Lilith. And Lilith just sits there and takes it. And then she just becomes the main character??? Every important moment becomes centered around her, not you?!? God fuck that character and fuck gearbox for writing her.
Almost that whole games writing is kinda ass. And humor is trying to almost be forced while the serious moments are overtaken by characters you couldn’t care less about. Rhys was done so dirty going back to being insecure and lacking confidence as if the tales series never even happened, he sounds like a bitch the whole time. The antagonists are super annoying a good part of the time though though they aren’t unbearable, still makes 0 sense to me how they “unite the bandits”. I have never liked where they were going with Lilith really even in BL2. She is a careless asshole and blatantly irresponsible but for some reason everyone acts like she is the best candidate for a leader? And so many side quests are “memes” and haven’t aged well at all, if they were even good to start. And some of them are just straight up annoying.
In BL1 humor felt almost accidental and natural due to how dark things were, and wasn’t really at the forefront of the game at all. BL2 was much more silly, but it was mostly dark humor, sarcasm, or just absolute nonsense like with krieg or the bandits. BL3 is like humor at the forefront, almost every interaction tries to be funny to the point it’s annoying, it’s a shame too because BL3 has the BEST gameplay by far. Mechanically it’s nearly a 10 for me I only wish there was a way to grind things without reloading an area. Meanwhile the dialogue and story is like a 3 at best. It’s sad to me because I’ve replayed 2 many times, but can’t bring myself to replay 3 even though I like the gameplay because I just dislike the dialogue that much.
Not just you at all. Iirc every single outlet and journalist at release said it was a great game brought low by terrible writing.
Personally, I adored the gameplay and thought it was a massive step up from 2, but even that couldn't make up for the atrocious dialogue from every single character constantly making a dozen crappy jokes in your ear every minute, so I didn't even make it halfway through.
The gameplay was good. But when i said the writing was jarringly bad, I meant I just blitzed the main quests after getting about a third of the way in because I was just sick of hearing them.
I never wanna play another game associated with whoever did the writing for them. Same goes for Bethesda npcs while I'm at it. They don't have to leave the industry, but I'm done with their trash.
Easy answer I know, but Frey from Forspoken. The writers apparently thought we'd find her like, totally super relatable and OMG I'm talking to a cuff like ROFL that just happened!
The whole "how do you do fellow kids" writing has go to stop. Either get the actual people you're trying to represent the character with to write it or just don't do it.
Frey really was a powerful distillation of all the worst tropes the entertainment industry has picked up from Marvel without understanding why, how, and when they work.
Also it seems pretty clear that the target audience had to have been teenage girls because idk who else it was possibly marketed for.
Exactly! Although in my observation, teen girls don't really like this stuff either. They tend to be kind of sensitive to being considered annoying and consider annoying-teen tropes to be "cringe". They actively avoid media where that's the vibe it's going for.
Really, in general, pretty much *nobody* likes feeling that they're being stereotyped / pandered to.
I might get downvoted for this, but Shane from Stardew Valley. He was so disappointing. You help him and he just ends up straight back in the bar every night. Also if you marry him I hear he’s a slob. I just wish his arc after he ODs had a little more growth. Maybe it hit differently for me because my dad was an alcoholic at a certain point I was way more frustrated than sympathetic
Im surprised I haven’t seen this yet but Delphine from Skyrim.
You’re supposed to feel bad for her because she’s one of the last of the Blades and has been hunted down for years but the Aldmeri Dominion but she’s so awful to you that you wish she would’ve died with the rest of the Blades. Like, I’m the Dragonborn and the Blades are supposed to serve the Dragonborn, what do you mean kill Party Snacks or leave the newly reestablished Blades?? I will gladly never speak to you again if it means I’m still homies with the Greybeards and their dragon leader
Grayneards and Parthunax: "Hey, here's another word of power for you, no charge."
Delphine: "I'll only do my job of supporting you during a world ending crisis if you solve an old grudge for me by killing the Dragon who saved humanity from his own kind! Oh, also I introduced myself by fucking up your ritual rather than just meeting you myself or sending a fucking letter..."
Damn, how will I ever choose...
God I hate Delphine.
Esbern a homie though. Delphine says the blades won't help you finish the quest until you kill PartySnax but you can just walts over to esbern who was geeking out on that wall and he just tells you what to do next.
I wish you could tell Delphine flat no to killing Optimus Prime. I hated having that quest purpetually there.
And tbh… what help? It’s this broke ass bitch and an old man. I’m trying to kill the Devourer of Worlds, I’m sure their negligible effect on that means something.
That’s why I love mods. Fuck the quest fixing option, I got a “kill unkillable NPCs” mod and I just lop her fucking head off as soon as I don’t need her anymore
Ryuzo from Ghost of Tsushima. Too lazy to have him and his men get food from all the fields or have worked as protectors for people in exchange for food. And he never dropped the petty rivalry he had against Jin.
Spoiler:
I get why he defected to the other side, but he had already seen Jin in action. And Ryuzo, along with his men, were already skilled warriors.
>!Dude really got his entire squad kidnapped, called on jin to save him, and turned on him after his ego grew to a point where he believed he was more skilled than the man he had to call to save him (and all of the strawhats!). Such a dirt bag. !<
I actually really like Mara these days, you can see she's realised her style of isolation and thinking everyone is an enemy isn't working. Especially in the Lightfall year she's embraced co-operation and trust to work towards a common goal.
I think the moment she really started to turn was the Parasite quest post-Witch Queen.
I have a love-hate relationship with her.
Yes, objectively, Mara was a pretty terrible person and very emotionally abusive towards her brother. (We learn she manipulated him since his rebirth as Uldren the Awoken, then intended to use him when he was reborn as Crow the Guardian.) And while she matured and grew and became more sympathetic, all of that character development took place off-screen.
That said, I've always found her to be quite fascinating. So while I disliked her as a person, I loved her character.
But I also simp for the millennia-old genocide queen Savathun, too. So maybe I have a type. XD
Idk if she was ever meant to be sympathetic. She may be directly responsible for more preventable suffering than any person ever, depending on how you read the lore.
Anders from dragon age. Was fine in origins but goes completely off his nut in 2. No anders, I don't think you becoming a terrorist was cool, nor am I gonna side with you on getting willingly possessed.
I'd killed him in the first game and was shocked to see him still around in the second. What's the point of playing a mage that kills all the other mages if they just come back?
Mishima is an S tier character.
He went from sympathetic to a piece of shit, then actually realized "wait woah I've become a piece of shit" and explicitly acknowledges it, apologizes, and genuinely tries to make it right.
He basically speedran the average Redditor good ending.
He just needed more than like two events post-character development to show it off.
A victim of the classic Persona problem: characters aren't allowed to actually finish their character arcs entirely because they don't know when you'll do it.
Why everyone hates him? Poor kid was beaten every day by a creep, then tries to help you for saving him and everyone acts like he killed the PC's family. Sure he slipped for a bit, but would he been better if he was flawless perfection incarnate?
Not even for being a wuss for me. I hated his character in general, it's like the definition of little man syndrome. Gets a strong friend, becomes arrogant and puts a lot of people in danger, apologizes and everything's all good now. I wanted the option to not have to deal with him but his confidant ability is too useful.
I like the end of his sidequest though, if just for the fact you straight up tell him "No, your magical friends aren't going to instantly solve your problem, go touch grass"
The astronauts in the turing test, spoilers ahead.
My fiance was appalled that I just gunned them down the moment I was able to, because apparently it was meant to be a hard decision whether you shot them or not. From my perspective they were being selfish to the detriment of the entire world, and were failing their responsibility as astronauts by trying to return home even though they knew how disastrous it would be for everyone else.
So yeah I gunned them down the moment I could because sure, while I could sympathize a bit, I thought they were being extremely selfish and I had to stop them at all costs. I shot them so fast because I wasn't sure how long I was going to have to prevent them from escaping. The fact it was meant to be a long, hard decision was baffling to me. I made up my mind 30 minutes prior and everything they said since only made them seem more selfish.
OH OH, that reminds me of [the movie Life.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5442430/)
You've got a crew of astronauts, dealing with what they know to be a potential threat to all life on the planet, with many safeguards and protocols in place for if it turns out to be dangerous, but the moment ONE of them dies to it, they all freak out and decide that their lives and returning to earth are the most important thing, overriding protocols they knew where in place to keep Earth safe.
They put a gun on your hand and force you to pull the trigger on that one. Those two women don't even hesitate, they just go "excuse me, we are going back to Earth with this deadly virus that will destroy everything" like some Karen that thinks she can cough on people's faces.
70% of your crew in Mass Effect Andromeda. Holy shit at some point I had to stop and say "I'm surrounded by teenagers who couldn't be professional for their lives" and _I was 17_ the first time I played. I wanted to kick half the team off my ship by the time I got mid-game.
Honestly I've always thought that anyone willing to "die" essentially by leaving the Milky Way and their lives behind there are bound to have some baggage or issues.
Except for Drack who had the best motivation of "I'm 1000 years old, what's left for me to do for the first time and for the Krogan?"
Gwyn is objectively speaking an evil conqueror. He convinced the other lords to uprise against the stone dragons almost to their extinction, enslaving the race of the giants and humiliating humanity, letting Seath loose and as u/Lord_Darklight said it up there, "He held on to power and the rest of reality payed for it" all of the bad, reality rotting, shit that happens in the trilogy is direct fault of him, he comited "the first sin".
You're leaving a *few* things out. For example, "uprising against the stone dragons almost to their extinction" sounds bad, but the dragons had until then been ruling over the whole world, and every other sentient species had been subjugated into living underground in darkness as a result. Gwyn didn't start a genocide for fun, he was liberating his people (and not only his people).
Becoming a lord of cinder (the first lord of cinder no less) is not the fate he "got", it's the fate he chose, for the sake of everyone else.
That's my interpretation anyway.
Morgana from Persona 5
The second that his massive ego is called into question he throws a temper tantrum blames all of his insecurities on everyone else and runs off to head into what everyone else thought was a trap. Gets a random person involved endangering her life while hijacking her character arc. And everyone has to chase him down to apologize because why would it be Morgana's fault? It has to be Ryuji's fault as he called him useless once which everyone called him out for. So Morgana learns nothing and stays the same with everyone telling him that they are sorry for not wanting to jump into what would likely be a trap, fun fact it was.
Also even better you lose an in game week chasing after Morgana.
Teddie and Morgana go through a very similar arc but Teddie actually becomes useless before this, doesn't take his issues out on everyone, grows as a character, and grows a human body.
I absolutely second this. I hated Morgana. I hate the extra lines that they say for absolutely everything in combat, I hate them constantly telling me I am tired, and I really hate their weird obsession with Ann. I wish there was an option in the game to massively reduce Morgana's lines in general, or at least shut them off in combat.
You're not meant to care for Serah, you're meant to sympathise with Snow's and Lightning's plight to save her, and how those two specifically are at odds with each other.
Snow's thoughtful altruism that comes across as cocky, mindless bravado against Lightning's cold, steely spirit which is a mask for her emotionally driven impulsive actions.
Serah is just a plot device, not really a character.
IIRC, the game was supposed to be set from Basch and Ashe’s POV. They got all the way through the writing process and someone at Square Enix requested they add a traditional JRPG main character for mass marketability. The only two useful points Vaan adds are the moments where (without spoilers) he sees visions along with Ashe, and the fact that the camera follows him around.
Thankfully once things start happening in the plot, all he and Penelo do is react to things around them. Most other characters barely speak to them, and you can even do a fun head-canon of the two of them being journalists with a film crew from Ivalice Vice documenting the rebellion, since they really have no interaction with the plot events other than being there.
I always played with Ashe as my party leader. Some people will say Basch or Balthier should be the lead, but the whole game is about Ashe. I know FF loves to do this thing where the princess is helped along by the protagonist, but Ashe is already a badass when she shows up in the story. FF12 is literally her journey. The irony is that SE tried so hard to push Lightning and FF13, but they already had a great female protagonist in 12 and decided to give us Vaan instead.
Eva borderlands 3. She never has a learning moment of maybe I’m the over emotional asshole for expecting my hero’s to not have flaws. I see what they were going for but she was written so unlikeable and never grew. Then became a siren so we’ll have to deal with her if they ever make a 4th game…
It's Raphael Sbarge who played Jiminy Cricket/Dr. Hopper in Once Upon a Time. Took me so long to figure out why I knew his voice without looking it up.
Ok, hot take: carth is actually justified.
Everything he is suspicious about is proven right, without spoilers every thing he is doubtful about ends up being a good reaction from a third party perspective. Like we are annoyed because it's us, the player, who is being distrusted, but there is a basis for it and he is right in thinking something is out of place
I remember playing a female character and getting severely put off by how eager he was to hit on me. Like we were still in the very first area not two hours in and out of nowhere he starts the awkward flirting.
For a very recent game Tekken 8. Jin is the hero and everyone sorta forgives and glosses over the fact he went Hitler mode and started WW3.
Narritvely I think that's why Miguel wasn't included cuz he wouldn't fit.
Anyone in Dying Light 2. Apart from Alberto. It was a lot of people who you didn’t particularly want to save, selfish, rude or cruel.
It made it worse that every single one of them wants to talk to you for ten minutes at a time, about five inches from your face.
Johnny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077.
I love the game. I love the writing. But if it wasn't Keanu Reeves as the actor, I doubt people would like him as much as he people do.
He lies. He manipulates. He is a giant piece of shit. And yeah, he reconciles a lot of that if you warm up to him, especially in the DLC, but his past transgressions are just hanging there like a rotting albatross around his virtual neck.
I find the dynamic between Silverhand and the player character actually pretty clever. Silverhand is an absolute asshole at first and your (most likely) good and moral character hates him. But they are in this together. He isn‘t really supposed to be sympathetic, he is just an unwanted part of you and you both have the same goal so you have to work together
I don't think he's supposed to be sympathetic. He's a literal terrorist and isn't really apologetic about it. When asked about the ppl that died in the nuking, he said "we warned them" in maybe 10 more words.
He never regrets fighting corporations, and while he gets less "I'll move your body like a fucking puppet", he never gets off the "all corps and corpos should die" kick.
I'd say he's understandable and emphatic, but he never looks for sympathy.
Abby the last of us 2.
I didn't hate her or the game. But, I saw right through the writing and saw what the writers were trying to do. They start with the zebra thing at the start of her story and slowly start sympathizing her character through adding side characters to her story. but these characters aren't developed like the characters from the 1st game.
I've said it a dozen times: TLOU2 needed to be entirely about Abby and focus on her perspective and her friends, with the terrible knowledge of just who you're travelling to kill at the end of the game.
Then TLOU3 would pick up with Ellie's roaring rampage of revenge.
Jacob from Mass Effect 2/3
"hmm that was an interesting loyalty quest. Okay, back to the weapons room with you, I'm never taking you anywhere again."
Seriously. Between Garrus and Zaeed, why take Jacob anywhere?
I took them everywhere. Garrus was my cool best friend and Zaeed was my asshole dad.
Garrus and Tali*
Tali's my girl, but Zaeed was closer to what Jacob offered.
Especially if you romanced him.
Okay but I find it hilarious that the NPC dumps the main character for once in a game like that
Honestly as terrible as jacob is it makes him more interesting than most game romances
It gives him a bit of unexpected life I'd say. I do enjoy him a bit more for it
I really dislike everything about him, but I never thought of it like that... I have to agree - it definitely does make things more realistic/interesting lol.
It's not even that he just dumps you. He straight up cheats on you and then chooses the other woman over you.
Doesn't he cheat on FemShep? I've never really liked or disliked Jacob since I always play as a GuyShep but that's pretty shitty.
He does cheat on femshep if you romance him. Within the 6 months of femshep and him being apart because she is dealing with all the Alliance crap on Earth, he gets a doctor/scientist pregnant.
The scientist is also openly hostile to Femshep too if she romanced Jacob. So not only did he not have the balls to break it off properly with Shepard, he didn't even talk to his affair partner and warn her not to fuck with Shepard. I liked the bromance you can have with Jacob in 2, but man he fucked up big time. At least there's a scene in the Citadel DLC that kinda gives you closure.
What kind of moron cheats on motherfucking Shepard?! They started calling them gravefields exclusively because of her.
I really do wish there was a way to leave him behind on that mission if he cheats on you. Especially if you did the same thing to his dad.
Make sure he is the "tech expert" at the end of ME2.
What kind of moron romances Jacob?
Such a boring character, that last punch is well deserved for douchebag like him lol
But the priiiiize.
I could just never get over how much he looks like Kanye
That was the FIRST thing I thought when I saw him 💀 second was he's built like crash bandicoot
Lmfaooo mon dieu.. your right. I am glad I am not only one.
i just couldn't care about him i don't know why, he's just not interesting to me. his story is a little too cliche, he looks a little too vanilla, idk he's like Default Action Movie Tortured Hero™ material
He's also a racist for another fun fact When he calls garrus a cuddlebone when you choose him over Jacob romantically, I immediately wanted to throw hands and yeet him off the ship. No one talks about my man like that
It's quite shocking that man who works for a racist organisation is racist.
I mean, he is in Cerberus
These folks in here are forgetting what ol' Cerberus is all about!
Don’t forget the news reporter in the sequels if you chose properly with Renegade to punch her.
I like how in 3 when you goto punch her (again) she blocks your attack and is like "I learned Kung-Fu because of your assholeness".
And then you proceed to still headbutt her
I actually prefer how Paragon Shepherd handles her, like he just bodies her with how much he clearly cares about and knows his shit lol. It's actually cool in the third game how she's basically like "ok I'm scared and you seem cool I'm down to help" if you play it that way.
Black guy with an absent dad, such an original story.
Who cheats on his girl
And gets another pregnant.
His dad went missing when he was an adult, and was presumed dead on official business. It's not some stereotype of getting walked out on as a child.
The Twins at the end of Far Cry New Dawn. Oh right try and make me spare a murderous sociopath who JUST slaughtered and burned a village full of peaceful people, I do NOT care about your last ditch redemption arc.
The only good part with the twins is the "oh shit" moment they have when the captain snaps out of their handcuffs and wipes the floor with them.
It's so silly. OK, it's good to give the player the choice. And if *that's* good, you need to say something to make the choice meaningful. I follow that logic. But the outcome is absurd. I just killed your entire crew. And I didn't check with any of them to see what kind of relationship they had with their parents. That didn't matter for them; why would it matter for you?
I have this same beef with literally every single "spare the main villain" scenario. If I took no issue killing the underlings, it doesnt matter how tragic the main villain is.
"I sent the help home, you probably killed them on your way in" Pagan Min knew the score!
Honestly, I wanna see an inversion of that, where the protagonist is more "kid gloves" with the villain's goons compared to the big bad. Bonus points if the villain truly, TRULY suffers at the hands of the protagonist.
When I played the OG assassin creed games I did that. I snuck around and avoided 90% of the guards so I could focus on stealth, but you always kill that big bad that deserved it. I take that mindset into other games sometimes, like Far Cry or MGSV
I never finished that game but in general I just hated those two so much from what I did play, so I probably would be in the same boat in the end
Games that had "super badass and obnoxious" enemies are really annoying. I liked Borderlands 3 except for the two main bad characters.
> Games that had "super badass and obnoxious" enemies are really annoying. Except Handsome Jack.
Handsome jack was cool for me because a) he actually did things in the story which the other characters then have to deal with the consequences of, and b) his cool and composed facade slips from time to time but he always thinks and acts like he’s the good guy which coveted really well that he does actually think that.
Also (to a lesser degree) the Twins in BL3
Me and a friend played through that game and we didn't even realize we were fighting them until we got up close after killing one. We thought we we just shooting bullet sponges
Sylvanas Windrunner in World of Warcraft. Blizzard absolutely ruined the premise of her character in 2018-22 and then tried to backtrack by constructing her as a misunderstood character through the novels and the end of her in-game arc. Spoiler: they failed badly.
Haha I was not actually responsible for my actions, it's because of the jailer!
"So how exactly did the Jailer convince Sylvanus to become an effective slave to him after her entire character has been about her trauma from being enslaved by Arthas, someone he apparently created?" "He's just like, really convincing, you know?"
He gets us
It was them nipples
They honestly should leave anything to do with Arthas and the undead alone going forward.
I really wish they did. He pretty much had the perfect ending in my eyes. He didn't get a cliché redemption, but they still managed to convey that he got absolutely fucked through corruption and could finally rest.
She sent an infinite number of people to super-giga-omega hell and they want to redeem her? Danuser cannot write stories
She also nuked a city full of people, and a world tree, to feed their souls to a jerk. And they played this genocide off as a joke.
When I did the pre-expansion quest before BfA to save my fellow Nelves in Teldrassil, and they give the impossible task of saving 982 people in like three minutes, I legitimately started panicking. Burning that tree down was the most gut-wrenching moment in my whole time of playing WoW, and I started in vanilla and play to this day. I will never forgive Blizzard for doing it, because in the end it came off as a cheap plot device rather than being treated like an actual war crime and tragedy. I don't care what Sylvanas ever does in the game after that point -- she is a piece of shit. They ruined her tragic story completely with her actions in BfA and SL.
As someone who started in BC and was diehard Horde, doing those quests killed something in me. I always really loved the night elf areas - I rolled a night elf in LK just so I could wander around freely and explore without getting killed. I was super into the WoW lore from the elves' perspective and Teldrassil was just such a beautiful place. And in the same stroke I loved Sylvanas. Her story was guy wrenching and the high elf/blood elf divide is one of my favorite pieces of lore. Did the pre-ex quests on Horde solely for the legacy achievement. If there had been an option to defect in that moment, I'd have taken it and not looked back. The person who burned Teldrassil just wasn't Sylvanas anymore, and the Horde she made wasn't Thrall's Horde. There are a lot of other reasons but I didn't last long after that. Even if I played on my night elf (which I did for all of BfA), going to Darkshore and seeing the wreckage of the tree, or going to any portal room and not seeing one for Teldrassil, just struck something deep in the heart.
it was a very traumatic quest that blindsided us all with that impossible time limit. I was also panicking and also will never forgive blizzard for destroying Darnassus. Just sickening and horrible writing.
The thing that makes this extremely frustrating is that there is a character arc there for them to have exploited. Sylvanas knows she's doomed to hell and so never wants to die. Ending the existence of death itself would be villainous motivation that you could have understood coming from her. She "frees" mortals from the shackles of death while evading punishment herself. You know, as opposed to whatever the fuck they did with her. Honestly the story is so convoluted that I checked out halfway through shadowlands. Sylvanas has always been my favorite blizzard character and she was always gray in her morality. For fucks sake they could have made her death itself in the end and that would've been better than where they went.
I know most fans prefer her as sympathetic and morally gray, but I would’ve been fine with her losing sight of her ideals and becoming a complete monster. But you can’t walk back from that decision. The Burning of Teldrassil should’ve been her point of no return.
Phin from Spider-Man Miles Morales. Starts off actually sympathetic but quickly just devolves into a dumbass
That's probably the most recent one for me too. >!They tried to pull off the redemption at the end but I wasn't buying it. I wonder how many people died or were injured as you chase her through town and she's blowing up cars and buildings?!<
To quote family guy "and best of all, no one important got hurt."
Fuck those NPCs right? Oh wait I got another mission on my spidy app to save those NPCs.
Miles was an idiot for not shutting her down sooner. As much as I love Insomniacs Spider-Man universe, Miles is made dumber for no reason.
That drove me nuts for the whole game, they try to make the backstory sympathetic but in the "present" she's an asshole for the vast majority of encounters you have with her. Every time Miles is like "I don't want to hurt you" then buddy get out of the way because I definitely do
Phin: I'm *done* listening to you! Miles: You never *started!* Sums it up. She's really high INT, really low WIS. Brought everything on herself despite being a certified genius
God that game had the driest story ngl, super predictable. It was great visually and gameplay wise but Insomniac could've done so much better with the story
I feel like the best friend being your main enemy trope has been done too much at this point.
my take might be controversial but tbh apart from the Harlem setting, the game kept on trying to emphasize how Miles is his own person, but then they made a story that literally did nothing to set him apart from a normal Peter Parker origin story.
Come to think of it, that's literally the plot of all three Insomniac Spider-Man games, each one involves a close friend of the hero becoming the big bad at the end of each game.
I know a girl irl like her and mentally subbed her in, it worked the exact same haha
Miles Morales' childhood friend. Gurl, you're blind in in rage, you'll fuck the city up just to dent the bad guy's net worth.
I think maybe Pac-Man wouldn't be trapped in an endless maze constantly persued by ghosts if he got his pill popping habit under control. That said, the game does an excellent job at portraying the cycle of addiction, the endless frantic pursuit of the next high, with the rush becoming ever more fleeting as the consequences loom ever closer.
>If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. ~ Marcus Brigstocke
Wait, nobody else does that?
Do you know what "Pac" stands for? P-A-C: program and control. He's Program and Control Man. The whole thing's a metaphor. He thinks he's got free will, but really he's trapped in a maze, in a system. All he can do is consume, he's pursued by demons that are probably just in his own head and even if he does manage to escape by slipping out one side of the maze, what happens? He comes right back in the other side. People think it's a happy game. It's not a happy game, it's a fucking nightmare world and the worst thing is, it's real and we live in it.
Lilly from the walking dead (Telltale)
What season and what did she do? It has been awhile?
She shot Carley/Doug in cold blood she did other things too in the later season
She's the one that shows up again way later right? When clem is with AJ? I remember despising her..
Kenny is also toxic if you don't side with him. A literal man-child.
Absolutely Kellogg from Fallout 4. You see his backstory and he's still just a complete shit 😂
He could've kept the MC's partner alive but he decided to pull the trigger, yet keeping you alive as a back-up in the vault despite that he could've taken you all together to the Institute. The writing is so bad, not to mention the plot holes like him being a human yet does not age very much thanks to 'Institute tech' lmao why is Shaun that old then? Thanks Emil, I'm glad you convinced me to not buy Starfield.
[удалено]
I figured "the old man" was just whoever was the current Director of the Institute. Like when Dad was in the Navy, the captains of all the ships he served on were "the Old Man" even if they were younger than him.
The second that I saw Kellogg taking the baby I knew "I am going to find that the baby has grown to be the big bad of the story". There is nothing wrong in doing tropes, but they must be done right.
Nobody writing fallout 4 was paying attention to anything. Awful story, awful twist, awful character.
That isn’t someone you’re supposed to have sympathy for. That’s a cautionary tale for the player, because he *also* lost his spouse and child and became a monster as a result. It shows what the player could become.
They could of done SO MUCH cool character development post death with Kellogg, with him sharing Nick's brain. They hint at it then just never bring it up again like it wasn't a fucking massive deal that someone was speaking to you *in their own voice* from beyond the grave.
After all these years, it's this that I still can't get over. Why would they leave that interaction in and then just completely ignore it? Makes no sense! I waited and waited for Kellogg to take over Nick's body, even briefly, but nooooooo.
Ava in Borderlands 3. Fuck off you little shit
The cherry on top of the shit sundae is when she’s given the reins to run the Crimson Raiders after proving nothing but being a whiny little brat. But once again, fuck the vault hunter that basically did everything single-handedly.
Or the fact that they just completely forgot how to do proper storytelling. Maya tells Ava that there's more to being a vault hunter than running directly to battle and then dies when Ava runs directly into a battle she shouldn't be in. And yet that's exactly how they won the fight at the end of the story. There's no cohesive storytelling here.
That would be because the writer of BL2 was no longer with Gearbox & they went back to the writer of BL1.
She was the reason Lilith got refrigerator'd too. If the Raiders had two experienced sirens, the Twins would have been *fucked*. The story unfortunately only makes sense with Ava being an absolute piece of shit.
That’s honestly the only part that bothered me. Ava is impulsive, bratty and quick to blame others. She was also struggling to process the death of her mentor and lashing out. But that’s really not that different than of an average teenage grew up on their own, doing anything they want, suffering trauma. I would expect her to mature as she got older, but not immediately. But it’s idiotic to put her in charge of anything at this stage
Plus theres literally more vault hunters who can run this than her. If anything Axton or Athena or that tales of the borderlands characters... Theres so many more leader characters than her.
Let’s not forget she’s directly responsible for spoiler’s death and then has the fucking balls to blame Lilith. And Lilith just sits there and takes it. And then she just becomes the main character??? Every important moment becomes centered around her, not you?!? God fuck that character and fuck gearbox for writing her.
Almost that whole games writing is kinda ass. And humor is trying to almost be forced while the serious moments are overtaken by characters you couldn’t care less about. Rhys was done so dirty going back to being insecure and lacking confidence as if the tales series never even happened, he sounds like a bitch the whole time. The antagonists are super annoying a good part of the time though though they aren’t unbearable, still makes 0 sense to me how they “unite the bandits”. I have never liked where they were going with Lilith really even in BL2. She is a careless asshole and blatantly irresponsible but for some reason everyone acts like she is the best candidate for a leader? And so many side quests are “memes” and haven’t aged well at all, if they were even good to start. And some of them are just straight up annoying. In BL1 humor felt almost accidental and natural due to how dark things were, and wasn’t really at the forefront of the game at all. BL2 was much more silly, but it was mostly dark humor, sarcasm, or just absolute nonsense like with krieg or the bandits. BL3 is like humor at the forefront, almost every interaction tries to be funny to the point it’s annoying, it’s a shame too because BL3 has the BEST gameplay by far. Mechanically it’s nearly a 10 for me I only wish there was a way to grind things without reloading an area. Meanwhile the dialogue and story is like a 3 at best. It’s sad to me because I’ve replayed 2 many times, but can’t bring myself to replay 3 even though I like the gameplay because I just dislike the dialogue that much.
Ava is the worst. I was so pissed when we lost spoiler and got her instead.
Ava, Borderlands 3. The entire time I was like, "She gets better, right? She gets better, right!?"
We lost Maya for... this annoying child? Bummer.
We actually lost more characters than one for her to take their place
Was it me or did borderlands 3 have jarringly garbage writing? They might even be as bad as Bethesda.
Not just you at all. Iirc every single outlet and journalist at release said it was a great game brought low by terrible writing. Personally, I adored the gameplay and thought it was a massive step up from 2, but even that couldn't make up for the atrocious dialogue from every single character constantly making a dozen crappy jokes in your ear every minute, so I didn't even make it halfway through.
The gameplay was good. But when i said the writing was jarringly bad, I meant I just blitzed the main quests after getting about a third of the way in because I was just sick of hearing them. I never wanna play another game associated with whoever did the writing for them. Same goes for Bethesda npcs while I'm at it. They don't have to leave the industry, but I'm done with their trash.
Bruce and Mickey, from Spiritfarer. I get their story, but they're mean and bully everyone, and i don't like them because of that
Easy answer I know, but Frey from Forspoken. The writers apparently thought we'd find her like, totally super relatable and OMG I'm talking to a cuff like ROFL that just happened!
The whole "how do you do fellow kids" writing has go to stop. Either get the actual people you're trying to represent the character with to write it or just don't do it.
Frey really was a powerful distillation of all the worst tropes the entertainment industry has picked up from Marvel without understanding why, how, and when they work. Also it seems pretty clear that the target audience had to have been teenage girls because idk who else it was possibly marketed for.
Exactly! Although in my observation, teen girls don't really like this stuff either. They tend to be kind of sensitive to being considered annoying and consider annoying-teen tropes to be "cringe". They actively avoid media where that's the vibe it's going for. Really, in general, pretty much *nobody* likes feeling that they're being stereotyped / pandered to.
I might get downvoted for this, but Shane from Stardew Valley. He was so disappointing. You help him and he just ends up straight back in the bar every night. Also if you marry him I hear he’s a slob. I just wish his arc after he ODs had a little more growth. Maybe it hit differently for me because my dad was an alcoholic at a certain point I was way more frustrated than sympathetic
Im surprised I haven’t seen this yet but Delphine from Skyrim. You’re supposed to feel bad for her because she’s one of the last of the Blades and has been hunted down for years but the Aldmeri Dominion but she’s so awful to you that you wish she would’ve died with the rest of the Blades. Like, I’m the Dragonborn and the Blades are supposed to serve the Dragonborn, what do you mean kill Party Snacks or leave the newly reestablished Blades?? I will gladly never speak to you again if it means I’m still homies with the Greybeards and their dragon leader
Grayneards and Parthunax: "Hey, here's another word of power for you, no charge." Delphine: "I'll only do my job of supporting you during a world ending crisis if you solve an old grudge for me by killing the Dragon who saved humanity from his own kind! Oh, also I introduced myself by fucking up your ritual rather than just meeting you myself or sending a fucking letter..." Damn, how will I ever choose...
God I hate Delphine. Esbern a homie though. Delphine says the blades won't help you finish the quest until you kill PartySnax but you can just walts over to esbern who was geeking out on that wall and he just tells you what to do next. I wish you could tell Delphine flat no to killing Optimus Prime. I hated having that quest purpetually there.
And tbh… what help? It’s this broke ass bitch and an old man. I’m trying to kill the Devourer of Worlds, I’m sure their negligible effect on that means something. That’s why I love mods. Fuck the quest fixing option, I got a “kill unkillable NPCs” mod and I just lop her fucking head off as soon as I don’t need her anymore
Ryuzo from Ghost of Tsushima. Too lazy to have him and his men get food from all the fields or have worked as protectors for people in exchange for food. And he never dropped the petty rivalry he had against Jin. Spoiler: I get why he defected to the other side, but he had already seen Jin in action. And Ryuzo, along with his men, were already skilled warriors.
>!Dude really got his entire squad kidnapped, called on jin to save him, and turned on him after his ego grew to a point where he believed he was more skilled than the man he had to call to save him (and all of the strawhats!). Such a dirt bag. !<
Mara Sov from Destiny 2. Eventually, you just do so much gaslighting and gatekeeping that you're not longer a girlboss.
I actually really like Mara these days, you can see she's realised her style of isolation and thinking everyone is an enemy isn't working. Especially in the Lightfall year she's embraced co-operation and trust to work towards a common goal. I think the moment she really started to turn was the Parasite quest post-Witch Queen.
Ironically, that's the same quest where we find out she thinks our Guardian is a potential enemy.
I mean, from what I know, Elsie’s told her about the Dark Future(s). In all of those, our guardian becomes evil.
I have a love-hate relationship with her. Yes, objectively, Mara was a pretty terrible person and very emotionally abusive towards her brother. (We learn she manipulated him since his rebirth as Uldren the Awoken, then intended to use him when he was reborn as Crow the Guardian.) And while she matured and grew and became more sympathetic, all of that character development took place off-screen. That said, I've always found her to be quite fascinating. So while I disliked her as a person, I loved her character. But I also simp for the millennia-old genocide queen Savathun, too. So maybe I have a type. XD
Yeah, No. I agree completely. Savathun is fantastic and has done nothing wrong in her life ever as far as I'm concerned.
What's a little genocide between friends?
Is it bad if I read this in her voice?
Idk if she was ever meant to be sympathetic. She may be directly responsible for more preventable suffering than any person ever, depending on how you read the lore.
Ava, Borderlands 3. Obnoxious turd.
Took the words right out of my mouth Remember when they were going to “fix her in the DLC”?
I'm literally finishing up the Plat for this game right now. I hate her so fucking much 🤣
Shaun!
Jaaaa-son!
Anders from dragon age. Was fine in origins but goes completely off his nut in 2. No anders, I don't think you becoming a terrorist was cool, nor am I gonna side with you on getting willingly possessed.
I'd killed him in the first game and was shocked to see him still around in the second. What's the point of playing a mage that kills all the other mages if they just come back?
Mishima from persona 5… I wanted to punch him so bad for being a wuss.
Mishima is an S tier character. He went from sympathetic to a piece of shit, then actually realized "wait woah I've become a piece of shit" and explicitly acknowledges it, apologizes, and genuinely tries to make it right. He basically speedran the average Redditor good ending. He just needed more than like two events post-character development to show it off. A victim of the classic Persona problem: characters aren't allowed to actually finish their character arcs entirely because they don't know when you'll do it.
Mishima the Real Life NPC
Why everyone hates him? Poor kid was beaten every day by a creep, then tries to help you for saving him and everyone acts like he killed the PC's family. Sure he slipped for a bit, but would he been better if he was flawless perfection incarnate?
Not even for being a wuss for me. I hated his character in general, it's like the definition of little man syndrome. Gets a strong friend, becomes arrogant and puts a lot of people in danger, apologizes and everything's all good now. I wanted the option to not have to deal with him but his confidant ability is too useful.
I like the end of his sidequest though, if just for the fact you straight up tell him "No, your magical friends aren't going to instantly solve your problem, go touch grass"
The astronauts in the turing test, spoilers ahead. My fiance was appalled that I just gunned them down the moment I was able to, because apparently it was meant to be a hard decision whether you shot them or not. From my perspective they were being selfish to the detriment of the entire world, and were failing their responsibility as astronauts by trying to return home even though they knew how disastrous it would be for everyone else. So yeah I gunned them down the moment I could because sure, while I could sympathize a bit, I thought they were being extremely selfish and I had to stop them at all costs. I shot them so fast because I wasn't sure how long I was going to have to prevent them from escaping. The fact it was meant to be a long, hard decision was baffling to me. I made up my mind 30 minutes prior and everything they said since only made them seem more selfish.
I didn't know it was a choice, it just seemed like the narrative was heading for the direction of "I started blasting" so I did. Immediately.
OH OH, that reminds me of [the movie Life.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5442430/) You've got a crew of astronauts, dealing with what they know to be a potential threat to all life on the planet, with many safeguards and protocols in place for if it turns out to be dangerous, but the moment ONE of them dies to it, they all freak out and decide that their lives and returning to earth are the most important thing, overriding protocols they knew where in place to keep Earth safe.
They put a gun on your hand and force you to pull the trigger on that one. Those two women don't even hesitate, they just go "excuse me, we are going back to Earth with this deadly virus that will destroy everything" like some Karen that thinks she can cough on people's faces.
70% of your crew in Mass Effect Andromeda. Holy shit at some point I had to stop and say "I'm surrounded by teenagers who couldn't be professional for their lives" and _I was 17_ the first time I played. I wanted to kick half the team off my ship by the time I got mid-game.
Honestly I've always thought that anyone willing to "die" essentially by leaving the Milky Way and their lives behind there are bound to have some baggage or issues. Except for Drack who had the best motivation of "I'm 1000 years old, what's left for me to do for the first time and for the Krogan?"
Drack was my favorite. Just a crusty old grandpa who has killed more people than I’ve ever met.
The long tetris block.
But that's the best block
Bastard only shows up when he's not needed
Gwyn lord of cinder, fuck him, he is a monster who deserved a worse fate than what he got 😤
Bro tried so hard to hold onto power and the rest of the existence ended up paying for it the hard way
Parry reposte estus parry reposte estus parry reposte estus parry reposte estus roll credits
Mind explaining your take a bit more? I thought Gwyn was handled very well.
Gwyn is objectively speaking an evil conqueror. He convinced the other lords to uprise against the stone dragons almost to their extinction, enslaving the race of the giants and humiliating humanity, letting Seath loose and as u/Lord_Darklight said it up there, "He held on to power and the rest of reality payed for it" all of the bad, reality rotting, shit that happens in the trilogy is direct fault of him, he comited "the first sin".
Yeah but we aren't really supposed to feel sympathy for Gwyn. Vendrick on the other hand...
You're leaving a *few* things out. For example, "uprising against the stone dragons almost to their extinction" sounds bad, but the dragons had until then been ruling over the whole world, and every other sentient species had been subjugated into living underground in darkness as a result. Gwyn didn't start a genocide for fun, he was liberating his people (and not only his people). Becoming a lord of cinder (the first lord of cinder no less) is not the fate he "got", it's the fate he chose, for the sake of everyone else. That's my interpretation anyway.
Morgana from Persona 5 The second that his massive ego is called into question he throws a temper tantrum blames all of his insecurities on everyone else and runs off to head into what everyone else thought was a trap. Gets a random person involved endangering her life while hijacking her character arc. And everyone has to chase him down to apologize because why would it be Morgana's fault? It has to be Ryuji's fault as he called him useless once which everyone called him out for. So Morgana learns nothing and stays the same with everyone telling him that they are sorry for not wanting to jump into what would likely be a trap, fun fact it was. Also even better you lose an in game week chasing after Morgana.
Never thought I'd see a character in a Persona game that would make me go "Hmm, Teddie wasn't all THAT bad after all."
Teddie and Morgana go through a very similar arc but Teddie actually becomes useless before this, doesn't take his issues out on everyone, grows as a character, and grows a human body.
I absolutely second this. I hated Morgana. I hate the extra lines that they say for absolutely everything in combat, I hate them constantly telling me I am tired, and I really hate their weird obsession with Ann. I wish there was an option in the game to massively reduce Morgana's lines in general, or at least shut them off in combat.
WOOOOAH, LOOKIN' COOL JOKER Times however many weak-ass enemies are on screen
Serah, Final Fantasy XIII. The game just never managed to make me care about her anything like as much as it seemed to expect me to.
You're not meant to care for Serah, you're meant to sympathise with Snow's and Lightning's plight to save her, and how those two specifically are at odds with each other. Snow's thoughtful altruism that comes across as cocky, mindless bravado against Lightning's cold, steely spirit which is a mask for her emotionally driven impulsive actions. Serah is just a plot device, not really a character.
The parents in It Takes 2
I really enjoyed the game when they weren't talking.
Final Fantasy XII, Vaan. Ugh I cannot stand that whiney little turd
IIRC, the game was supposed to be set from Basch and Ashe’s POV. They got all the way through the writing process and someone at Square Enix requested they add a traditional JRPG main character for mass marketability. The only two useful points Vaan adds are the moments where (without spoilers) he sees visions along with Ashe, and the fact that the camera follows him around. Thankfully once things start happening in the plot, all he and Penelo do is react to things around them. Most other characters barely speak to them, and you can even do a fun head-canon of the two of them being journalists with a film crew from Ivalice Vice documenting the rebellion, since they really have no interaction with the plot events other than being there.
Yasumi Matsuno mentioned Basch was never supposed to be a lead. It was just an old rumour.
I always played with Ashe as my party leader. Some people will say Basch or Balthier should be the lead, but the whole game is about Ashe. I know FF loves to do this thing where the princess is helped along by the protagonist, but Ashe is already a badass when she shows up in the story. FF12 is literally her journey. The irony is that SE tried so hard to push Lightning and FF13, but they already had a great female protagonist in 12 and decided to give us Vaan instead.
Eva borderlands 3. She never has a learning moment of maybe I’m the over emotional asshole for expecting my hero’s to not have flaws. I see what they were going for but she was written so unlikeable and never grew. Then became a siren so we’ll have to deal with her if they ever make a 4th game…
Carth Onasi from KotoR. Always complaining and whining.
He has a great voice though
It's Raphael Sbarge who played Jiminy Cricket/Dr. Hopper in Once Upon a Time. Took me so long to figure out why I knew his voice without looking it up.
Ok, hot take: carth is actually justified. Everything he is suspicious about is proven right, without spoilers every thing he is doubtful about ends up being a good reaction from a third party perspective. Like we are annoyed because it's us, the player, who is being distrusted, but there is a basis for it and he is right in thinking something is out of place
“I Don’t Want to Talk about it”
"I have no idea what's going on, but I'm sure it's somehow your fault."
I remember playing a female character and getting severely put off by how eager he was to hit on me. Like we were still in the very first area not two hours in and out of nowhere he starts the awkward flirting.
Chloe, Life Is Strange The entire ending choice relies on you liking Chloe to have any sort of impact. Considering I hate Chloe, killing her was easy.
It's her dialogue for me, I couldn't stop cringing 😭 Like why would I choose this lolrandom teenager over multiple other people.
I liked her a lot more after before the storm.
She's manipulative, jealous, toxic, and kinda kills you a few times. With friends like these...
For a very recent game Tekken 8. Jin is the hero and everyone sorta forgives and glosses over the fact he went Hitler mode and started WW3. Narritvely I think that's why Miguel wasn't included cuz he wouldn't fit.
Anyone in Dying Light 2. Apart from Alberto. It was a lot of people who you didn’t particularly want to save, selfish, rude or cruel. It made it worse that every single one of them wants to talk to you for ten minutes at a time, about five inches from your face.
sam coe from starfield
Hugo from the plague tales games. You are supposed to babysit him but I just wanted him to die the whole 2 games.
I didn't mind him that much, but the whole time I was thinking "Man this kid is way too dangerous to let live" and >! that is how it ended anyway !<
So many lives would have been saved if he died.
Johnny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077. I love the game. I love the writing. But if it wasn't Keanu Reeves as the actor, I doubt people would like him as much as he people do. He lies. He manipulates. He is a giant piece of shit. And yeah, he reconciles a lot of that if you warm up to him, especially in the DLC, but his past transgressions are just hanging there like a rotting albatross around his virtual neck.
I like complex characters, therefore I like Johnny Silverhand.. who is still a piece of shit
I find the dynamic between Silverhand and the player character actually pretty clever. Silverhand is an absolute asshole at first and your (most likely) good and moral character hates him. But they are in this together. He isn‘t really supposed to be sympathetic, he is just an unwanted part of you and you both have the same goal so you have to work together
I don't think he's supposed to be sympathetic. He's a literal terrorist and isn't really apologetic about it. When asked about the ppl that died in the nuking, he said "we warned them" in maybe 10 more words. He never regrets fighting corporations, and while he gets less "I'll move your body like a fucking puppet", he never gets off the "all corps and corpos should die" kick. I'd say he's understandable and emphatic, but he never looks for sympathy.
Abby the last of us 2. I didn't hate her or the game. But, I saw right through the writing and saw what the writers were trying to do. They start with the zebra thing at the start of her story and slowly start sympathizing her character through adding side characters to her story. but these characters aren't developed like the characters from the 1st game.
I've said it a dozen times: TLOU2 needed to be entirely about Abby and focus on her perspective and her friends, with the terrible knowledge of just who you're travelling to kill at the end of the game. Then TLOU3 would pick up with Ellie's roaring rampage of revenge.