Aang be like:

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.

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.

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.

This is why I liked the ending of The Watchmen.

I remember waiting for a twist when wonder woman was plowing through all those allied forces just to spare the nazi at the end??

This is why Hong Kong '97 is the greatest video game of all time.

Chin gives zero fucks when he blows up the head of Tong Shau Ping.

Caillou looking centrist loser 😶

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.

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.

It’s too close to murdering CEOs.

They don’t want peasants getting ideas.

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.

Well, the henchmen usually wears masks or helmets so we and the protagonist don't humanize them.

Aang doesn't kill anyone, though. It's an important part of his character for the entire series.

Related: Leaving the bad guy injured or "probably dead"

Cut the head off and make sure they're for-real dead.

Lets leave those friends of epstein alone. We are better than them 😔

You can kill each other, but you can’t kill the rich, deranged asshole in charge.

That tracks.

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/

MGS is also guilty of it

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.

Protags who do this would normally also spare henchmen who were incapacitated or surrendered, right? Those 7,455 henchmen who died all went down swinging. Accepting the villain's surrender is only notable because for some reason all of their underlings were fanatics who fought to the death.

Maybe I dont watch enough shitty action movies, but i dont think I've seen/read/played anything even vaguely resembling this since I was a child.

Just what are you consuming that falls into this trope, and why havent you stopped?

Or you know, check like a pulse.

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"

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.

Amazing how, as you got older, your opinions got more basic and animalistic.

Kids really are incredible.

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.

What measure is a mook?

Externalities are a hell of a drug.

Just watched the "Man of Steel" from 2013 yesterday, and at the end he only killed the General Zod because he was threatening to kill a bunch of civilians after Superman got him by the neck. This was after their battle already destroyed all New York

Cof cof last of us cof cof

It feels like they should be the same, but I'm also not an expert

Exactly!

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.

The protagonist and the villain are both top 1%ers with class consciousness.

So... a shitty action movie?

Off the top of my head, Wonder Woman and Vox Machina.

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

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.

Each of those 7,455 henchman approached the protagonist ONE AT A TIME as well. That is why there's only 21 seconds of dialog total in the 2 hr 28 minute movie.

[New Vegas] I know it's how Joshua Grahm heals in the end, but it always felt weird sparing that one guy at the end of Honest Hearts after actually genociding his whole tribe. (Joshua's words, not mine)

Have you ever cut off anyone's head? Without the proper equipment it is serious work.

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.

You say that like people rewatch movies they dislike and are surprised that they're still bad.

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.

Not just the henchmen, but the henchwomen, and the henchchildren.

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.

Wait, who let's who go in TLOU?

But if you kill him you'll be just like him.

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