Minor tropes that annoy you to no end.

Pressing a button to pick up cash. Of course I want more money.

or maybe i am the one hanging out with the wrong people D:

When someone says

"This is only the beginning."

I hate it more and more each time I hear it.

Colored/highlighted text bothers me to no end. It's probably not used enough to be considered a trope, but it still bothers me. No one actually talks like this. If something was important, they would speak about it in a way that's important.

Heck, I'm going there right now to check out that Endurance Run page. I'm hoping my prior experience with that place will let me limit the damage to a couple of hours.

Not specifically a video game thing but I'm disappointed with the proliferation video guides have seen the recent years. I can skim a FAQ much faster than I can scrub through your shitty YT video. #bringbackthefaq

YES! THIS!

YES! THIS!

Franchises where when you begin a new sequel, your character is always brought back to zero skills and being a total inexperienced noob, despite the fact that you saved the world in the previous game.

I'm a massive Witcher fan, but I already dread the way The Witcher 3 is gonna begin and go on for the first few hours.

It just doesn't make sense that after two games and a total of 85 gameplay hours, where I put together legendary pieces of armor and earned god-blessed swords and upgraded them to high heavens, as well as reading tens of books about the world, I'm gonna be an old man Geralt with a grey beard, a VETERAN, who once again needs to learn swordplay tricks and strengthen his magic signs, replace his 'weak and ineffective' gear with swords that can kill and armors that can protect, and read books about flowers because he forgot their names. Again. After having amnesia in the beginning, which he supposedly recovers from in the third game. What, does he only recover people's names and world events, yet forgets his experience once more?

The day video game developers learn to create two "difficulty experiences" in one game, one made for inexperienced new-comers and the other made for franchise veterans, I'm gonna be happy. "Easy, Medium and Hard" don't cut it, we're not talking about enemy strength, we're talking about your character's knowledge and experience. We're talking about importing that knowledge, not importing some coin and a couple of plot decisions.

I'd say they have their place, especially if the FAQ is lacking in something. Hell, video FAQs are what got me into YouTube.

I understand where you are coming from, but I also understand that it is a design decision. The Witcher 2 would not exactly be a whole lot of fun to begin the game as some sort of super powered badass that can just left click their way to victory in every encounter. A big part of the fun to be had in the combat is that you are on equal footing, or in most cases, severely outmatched, and you need to be quick with your attacks and plan out beforehand what you are going to do. Preparation, planning, reflexes, etc. It wouldn't be very exciting to siege that beginning castle if your Raven Armor was as strong as it was at the end of The Witcher 1 and your sword was meant to fight final bosses, not dorks in chainmail.

Exactly, nevermind that being flung into a wall by an often times superstrong thing isn't something you'll shrug off.

Weapons that don't quite properly attach to the back of a character. Does that count as a trope? Saving the world is pretty old as well, though there's a place for it still.

Heck it doesn't make sense in a lot of games in the FIRST iteration. In Mass Effect you are inches away from being accepted into the ranks of the Spectres. The people that don't have to follow Council law and have a license to kill. Being a level 1 noob doesn't really jive. In fact, an imported new game plus Shep is the only thing that makes sense.

Narratively, the only thing that might work is upping the hardship for the advanced hero. The plot excuse might be THIS villain had extra time to round up more evil baddies while the hero was off killing that first villain.

I don't think it counts as a trope per se but no one ever has to go to the bathroom in games. Even in games were you can eat, there's still no functioning bathrooms. Where the hell are the bathrooms on the Normandy? I can cook all manner of dishes in Skyrim but I don't remember seeing any bathrooms around. Hell, even an outhouse would have been something.

The slowly walking and getting fed exposition interactive *yet really non-interactive, because I'm doing nothing but walking, bastardized-cutscenes* - as seen in countless games eversince Half-Life. This stands out mostly if I am replaying a game for the enjoyment of its mechanics.

Why - because it's impossible to skip the exposition and get to the good bits in a timely fashion. Unskippable cutscene fall in the same category of course.

Pet peeve numero uno.

That's not even the worst part. These types of events are supposed to immerse you more in the story (no cutscenes!), but if anything, they immerse you less, because I'm just walking around while everybody recites their lines with dead eyes, willfully oblivious to my inane bullshit. I'm noticing it to some extent in BioShock Infinite.

As for TV show tropes, it's the unnessary piling on of evermore random drama. Shows like Prison Break and Sons of Anarchy are prime examples of this shit. There's like 10 different, yet somehow intertwined dramas in the making, and just because that ain't enough - this character gets a brain tumor nobody has seen coming. Or let's have a random car accident.

Unneeded random unearned drama lacking any sort of proper build-up, just for the sake of even more drama? To the point of drama drowning in drama, until all drama is meaningless. That's just shit writing right there. That's usually when I tune out. Most recently seen in the little shit-gem called "The Following". The drama and bullshit pile-on went overboard with episode 2, and it just kept on trucking ahead with it, until I couldn't take it anymore. Shame, because I liked the cast.

This isn't a minor trope at all, but I HATE having people nearly fall off a cliff yet get pulled up by their hand by someone. The upper body strength alone to do that would be incredible, not to mention the grip you would have to have. I don't understand why it's in nearly every action movie and video game. It's not exciting at all because 99% of the time they pull the person up, what a surprise.

The problem with FAQ's is that many of them are poorly or confusingly written. I think if you're gonna write an FAQ, you should have someone proofread and go over it first with you, saying "yeah, this is grammatically incorrect, you left out a period here, this is really vaguely worded" before publishing. Knowing something well =/= being able to explain it well. Videos can be better for certain types of games, but the downside to those is accidentally scrubbing through a video walkthrough and spoiling a scene you haven't seen yet.

I don't mind pull quotes, because people who skim an article before reading may use those to decide whether to read the whole article or not.

I hate bloom because it bothers my eyes, and I hate amnesia (although I understand why a sequel wouldn't start you off overpowered like you were at the end of the last game).

Hanging off cliff/ledge/some rope or structure just about to fall. Maybe being helped up by a friend. Maybe having fingers stepped on by an enemy.

Most action movies have multiple instances of this. And it's every movie that ever had any inclination towards any sort of action scene whatsoever. All movies. All the time.

edit --- 'Trope' largely gained internet popularity as a term with the popularity surge of tvtropes website.

When the JRPG love-interest pink girl loves your dude, and he kinda loves her in his befuddled way, and then nothing of note ever comes of it at all.

Unnecessary deaths to create an unearned sense of gravity and importance and tragedy. Often seen at the end of "trilogies". Remember the end of Halo 3?

Super-loud gunshots in movies. I hate this with a passion. I can usually see it coming a mile off. "Uh oh, this is gonna sound like a nuclear bomb." KCCCOOOOOM! *character falls really slow, blood starts flowing like, 30 seconds later* I get it, you want gunfire to seem horrifying. But you're romanticizing it. Remember in Total Recall (the 80s one) how bullets just went through people and carved them up? That makes me not want to shoot people. Dramatic music, slow motion, delayed bleeding, and an atom-bomb noise makes guns seem like they should be eligible for Oscars or something.

"Look over here to calibrate your vision sensors, cyber-commando, now look over here. Now press A to calibrate your jump-o-matic servos."

When has this ever popped up outside Halo 3?

The Final Speech.Not Quite Dead.

Not Quite Dead really gets to me in both movies and video games. Usually in horror movies where the protagonist ends up shooting the killer, dropping the gun, and going to check on a friend or something. The killer has been hounding you this entire time, killing people close to you, and you don't make sure they're dead? It's just aggravating to me. If you're dealing with a person, you go Collateral-style: double tap to the heart and one shot in the head to make sure. If you're dealing with a monster, you cut that fucker's head off.

This is why I really appreciated the final battle in the original Mass Effect. You defeat Saren and Shepard tells one of the crew to make sure he's dead. The crew member then climbs down there and shoots him in the head to be sure. It didn't work out in that particular example, but I LOVED that. It's just the sensible thing to do.

Also, characters getting developed just before they die. It's become such a blatant death flag at this point, I don't know why writers bother doing it anymore.

My number one most annoying thing I see on a regular basis is: When an antagonist has a great advantage in a fight with a protagonist, and the antagonist talks and talks and talks and talks about his plans after (s)he kills the protagonist and eventually throwing the advantage out the window.

No it will destroy your enjoyment of games. Everything can be put into tropes. Absolute everything. Story telling exsit since people can speak and since then we developed a certain way of telling a story and telling about characters itself. There is not one character in video games or even movies that can not put into such a trope. But this should not matter. Who cares about a weak woman? Who cares about a muscular ero, who cares about a guy saving the world. The thing that should matter is how the story is told and not which tropes did they use.

Super psychotic villians who want to destroy the world, or are just hyper cruel to the point of killing their own men off for minor annoyances having legions and legions of extremely loyal goons working for them.

Like as much as I love The Joker. Who the hell would work for him? Even if i'm a criminal i wouldn't wanna work with that guy. He's more likely to kill me than anything else.

EDIT- Also, whenever a main badguy's plan is motivated like "I hate that there's cruelty and sadness in the world, so I'm going to destroy the world so there can't be any more sadness!" Or "I hate war so I'm going to start a war so awful that no one will ever fight again after it!"

It's honestly like half the plots of JRPGs. It's nuts. The fuck kinda logic is that anyways?

Almost every video game main character looking pretty much like the same generic dude tires me out.

What dude would that be?

Probably the ubiquitous brunette white guy in his twenties to mid-thirties.

Is this thread safe? ;.;

Yeah, the only reason that Sarkeesian even says it as much as she does is because she seems to do a lot of...uh, research (?) at tvtropes.org.

*Bowing the fuck out before this turns into another Sarkeesian thread.*

@

tutorials disguised as diagnostics

This is what I mean. Also, I just added Splinter Cell to the list.

When games ask you something along the lines of "Are you willing, brave warrior, to save this world?

YES/NO"

I get some games make fun of this by having a game over screen if you don't accept. I just think that theres no real point to this kind of a screen when you need to say yes to keep moving on in the story.

I really hate the magical holsters that every video game character with multiple weapons seems to have on their backs. Some games try to put actual holsters there, but most just say "fuck it" and have it float on there.

I also hate how they can carry all of these weapons in the first place. Same with bags and inventory space.

This is literally a criminal offense (figuratevely, of course):

i hate magical naive anime nymphet who's innocent view of the world warms the heart of our jaded protagonist...also she is secretly the key to restoring the mana tree and saving gaia.

@jouseldelka: To be fair, you do import your crazy powerful items from the first game into The Witcher 2... though I imagine Raven's Armor will be replaced by the time I finish act 1. I do find it annoying, even if I understand why it has to exist. You have to start a weakling and end up a badass and sequels can't let you do that unless things start creeping into epic levels. Really, this is why Baldur's Gate is so great, because it perfectly emulates the feeling and style of low to mid level D&D. You start off killing Kobolds and Bandits and fetching some guy's dagger... and by the end you're fighting Doppelgangers and Skeleton Warriors and raiding trap-filled dungeons. You don't get to kill a bunch of demons and dragons and visit other planes until Baldur's Gate 2.

So because you never heard of it before her means it wasn't in common use? Gotcha.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

One off of Metro: Last Light ; your eyes won't focus on something that close to your face so why are the cracks always in sharp focus? drives me insane.

When the good guy gets captured by the villain and then the villain explains his/her plan in detail to the good guy and then leaves without killing him because how else could the good guy escape and also we need a boss fight at the end of the movie/game.

Why do you even capture him in the first place? Just kill him on the spot so there's no way he can stop your evil plan later.

@kishinfoulux: Uh no? Read the other people's comments I've replied to in this very thread instead of solely focusing on the ones directed to you and you'll find that I was replying to your stupid "Uh no?" in kind regardless of whether the word is indeed common or not.

Uh ok?

I'm surprised it didn't myself, it looks like that whole thing has calmed down for now.

That would be the one.

Only if you become obsessive about finding tropes when playing / watching something. I read the site mostly because I find something interesting, or something funny. Hasn't hampered my enjoyment of anything that I can think of.

Also, more on-topic, I also dislike starting out again as weak or low level in Sequels. I understand why that happens and I can work with it, but it's still annoying. I like how Mass Effect handled that with character importing. Or something like Mercenaries 2, where the only "abilities" you had in 1 were calling in strikes or packages due to all the factions employing you (which they aren't at the start of 2, since the situation in NK was resolved), and money, which I can just assume was simply spent.

And now to lose a few hours reading the Endurance Run trope page.

Obsession with tasty food.

Like who cares. If it stops that hunger pain I'm happy.

Unless it's like weird food, like chicken feet here in HK.

Oh, I thought you meant this guy.

It does happen though. A little while back everyone started saying "privileged" a whole lot and then I remember the term "narrative dissonance" being chucked around quite a bit.

Am I allowed to say TVTropes in general annoys the fuck out of me, especially when a bunch of pedophiles and creepers infiltrated over the site?

Jesus, really? I've never had any interaction with the community there, so I have no idea what they're like.