Gaming

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For me, its the two big ones almost every game has.

1st: Your mission is to go to this place a get this special item. Oh nevermind, its not there actually but luckily what was there was a clue to its actual location. And we repeat that for a couple of times until we finally get to the real resting place of said item. This is Uncharted in a nutshell even though I do like those games.

Second: Every game these days seems to have a betrayal of some kind and they all think they are so damn clever about it. All that's happened is I don't trust any character in games anymore.

Bonus 3rd: Silent protagonist who is actually the leader of the group/squad, but just takes orders from everyone else. If you're going to to do the silent protagonist, stopping telling the player they are the leader. Just make us the foot soldier at the bottom of the totem pole.

Prophecy.

Obviously the writer knows where the story is going, so he spoils it ahead of time to guide the character to that point.

Now you don't have to write motivations or reasons for characters, they all just follow that prophecy blindly.

Player: Why are you doing [insert horrible thing] NPC: It’s too complicated for you to understand.

Starfield; That text-box in the main story setup for the companion death is rhe laziest shitnive seen in a AAA game

Maybe not "lazy" per se, but my least favorite is finding reasons and excuses for the player character to always have to be alone even when they're part of a team or collective effort.

Obviously many games feature AI companions, but a lot of games also have you working with other characters, but in actual gameplay you are completely alone, maybe talking to other characters on comms or seeing them do something in a scripted event or cutscene.

These games are obviously designed to be single-player experiences and balance around you being alone and probably don't want to do the extra work to include AI companions for just one or a few sections, but the weird gymnastics they do to make sure that you never cross paths in combat with the people you're working with becomes really noticeable and distracting.

Examples include the new Wolfenstein games, Bioshock, Jedi Fallen Order, and tons of single-player action adventure games.

“I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain.”

Effective mass dispersal of aerosolized vaccines would actually be a massive advancement in medical science.

Not writing anything at all.

"Hey, go on this quest."

"Why?"

"Because."

looking at starfield intensely

"Here, it's all in this note."

"It's not what it looks like, I can explain!" other character runs away instead of hearing the explanation, becomes villain Seriously, does no one in stories ever stop and have a conversation? Everyone jumps to conclusions and then bases their entire life purpose on that assumption

Bosses.

I get that they are a big part in some games but in some games it’s just lazy writing.

"Talk to the guy about an issue I have that is literally standing one house or a few meters away from myself, then come back to me and hand him this and get a reward for, me too lazy to move or yell over."

Having vendors in your supposed "team" who will charge you for items? Like why are you guarding these items, I can fight the bad guys better if you just give me the better loot! You can't even use them!

Outriders did this, somehow a member of your team had access to all these advanced weapons, yet you had to trade supplies for them.

"I shouldn't go that way."

"I probably shouldn't do that."

"It would be wrong to do that."

"I'll just put that back."

Don't make it a fucking option if you're going to reverse my decision, especially in an RPG.

There's a path in Finally Fantasy X that you come up at one point in Besaid. You can't go back down that path ever again, with the character turning around on their own and running back the way they came. Seeing that path in Final Fantasy X-2 I headed toward it, only to hit an invisible wall. The path only exists as a usable entity for that one moment in one of the two games that feature that area. They could easily have made it a higher path that you jump down to the main area from, giving no way to go back, but they left a way to go back and refused to let you use it for the vast majority of two games.

Morally gray characters.

Only beaten by redemption arcs.

I’m replaying farcry 5 right now, the enemies using “bliss bullets” as a means to capture you and push the story forward is incredibly lazy imo. Hate when you’re this overpowered dude who can kill thousands of enemies without breaking a sweat so the enemy has to use some magical made up means to capture you. Hell even a poisoned bow and arrow would be infinitely less lazy than something like “bliss bullets”

Quest for a super item that.

Quest to collect multiple items.

When you are hailed as the "hero" (or various other terms that are basically the same) without actually having done anything so the game can throw cool shit at you without explaining any of it.

The worst offender I've played in recent years must have been this one Forza game that called me non-stop "superstar" despite me not actually having done anything. Seriously, stop this, it felt super awkward.

Walking through cracks in the wall

Evil villian : " finally we meet face to face".

MC: tell me, why summon the elder God and destroy the world?

Evil Villian: my goals are too intelligent for you to understand.

Fuck any game that has major plot points hand waved away as I'm too smart for you to understand. It's lazy writing

Main Character slaughters half a city but gets knocked out in a cutscene and has to recover his gear. I hate it so much.

Maybe not big picture but I really hate parroting in RPGs. I don't know if there is a better term but it is one that I always call it when one character will talk about something only to have another repeat the same exact thing back to them in a question typically. "We need to head to the port" "The port?" "There will be a boat there to get us to the next town" " A boat to the next town?"

This is fine every now and then but some of the psx jrpgs I've been playing have really been leaning heavily into it.

*A couple folks have mentioned this is a cultural thing, I did not know that! Thank you. It does not make me like it any more but at least now there is some reasoning behind it. Where I'm from, if you repeat something back to someone whilst adding nothing...it is common that you are not paying attention. When this is done by multiple people in the same event...it makes me feel like I am leading an adventure of people with the attention span of a gnat. This is something that is super easy to overlook when you are reading it in your head but when reading it out loud it is a bit jarring to repeat yourself.

Three things that piss me off anytime it happens in games:

"They must have left in a hurry because the food is still warm". We get it, you're trying to set up some suspicious spooky things, but fucking hell like where did they go? If it was so sudden how come we never see anything huh? WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS ATTACKED IN THE MIDDLE OF DINNER

When a dialogue is happening and a character walks into it unannounced, offering some sassy idea. Like Mass Effect does this ALL THE TIME and once you notice it it's fucking obnoxious. It's like a live play and the actors are just waiting for their dialogue cues to enter the scene.

Skeletons absolutely everywhere for ambience, even though 99% of the time it's an abandoned tunnel or some bullshit. Fallout and Tomb Raider are pretty guilty, but at least Fallout makes little stories with the bodies. Tomb Raider just has gratuitous skulls in like the most random places that are supposedly secreted away for thousands of years, and you're telling me this whole hallway is just lined in haphazard skulls please HOW DID THEY GET THERE.

Letters that you have to read. It's an audiovisual experience with gameplay involved, dammit.

"I can't become you" trope. The revenge one specifically. Like, THIS BITCH RUINED YOUR WHOLE LIFE, GASLIGHTED YOU ONTO A LIFE-LONG CRUSADE, IS THE REASON OF ALL YOUR FRIENS' AND LOVE INTEREST'S DEATH, AND YOU LET HER LIVE?? DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND SHE'LL JUST COME BACK AT.MURDER YOU TIMES AND TIMES AGAIN BECAUSE ONLY DEATH WILL STOP THE GASLIGHTING HAG???? Yeah I wasn't satisfied with Canto V's ending.

Amnesia.

When the player character just goes along with everything and becomes everyone's servant for no reason. Give some motivation at least.

Kill Hundreds of enemies to get to final boss. Don't kill final boss because it would be "wrong"

You start out with full power in the first ten minutes something happens that strips you from all power, and you spend the rest of the game to get back to the power level of the beginning.

"The evil organization threatens the entire world. They're thousands strong, well supplied and armed. So our plan is to send one guy to handle it all. Maybe 2-3 for backup. That should do it.

Main villain after you busted into their stronghold, dispatched 50 of their guys, thwarted their plans, and trashed their lieutenant (boss) after saying how badass they were: "You pitiful wretch, I don't have time to waste on feeble weaklings like you. Laterz."

Yeah this character and dialog makes no f****** sense. It doesn't make the villain seem badass to insult the obviously capable hero and dash away. It makes them seem stupid and weak. A really strong villain would waste no time killing you or die trying. If you want to make a villain seem strong, a) don't have them meet you and run away to avoid a fight and b) have them do legit badass things.

"Your princess is in another castle" trope. It works for Mario I guess but with other games it just feels frustrating because you're supposed to actually have some kind of attachment to this character or thing to want to go through all this effort to rescue them but they're just out of reach the whole time. Honestly it's just difficult to be motivated to find a character your hardly knew in the first place.

The whole plot is to save the world.

1. Cutscene / gameplay divide. I know it's necessary but having the ability to resurrect or cure illness in game but in a cutscene once someone dies they're dead feels bad. Right, Aerith?

2. Having the previous protagonist die or get overpowered / surpassed / outclassed at the start of the sequel.

Quests that are just going back and forth talking to assholes about cheese or farms or something LOOKING AT YOU BETHESDA.

Win the fight, but lose the cutscene.

No justification for weapon technology. You go from a butter knife to a plasma sword that shoots OMG cosmic particles across the map in a world where people are still riding horses.

And if it's justified sometimes the justification is just "Magic". If they call it "old" or "ancient" magic, then the fans will call it lore.

I have mostly given up on trying to find good writing in games.

"Haha isn't this annoying things in videogames funny? Haha. Anyways, go do the annoying videogame thing it's ok because we acknowledge it.

Silent Protagonists

It's not solely limited to games, but "You never asked" is one of the laziest and most annoying writing devices. Why are games writers incapable of setting up a plot twist without having their characters avoid talking to each other about important things in a really unrealistic way?

I see it in a lot of game genres, but visual novels seem to be especially guilty of it. Uchikoshi, I'm looking at you.

Called me a narcissist, but I hate when NPC's treat me like some common mook, after i've proven several times how capable i am.

Wound me right up that after successfully seiging Orgirimmer, almost single handed fighting to the most inner sanctum, killing captains, and saving heroes along the way, and finally defeating a fully asscended Garosh (who at this point was basically Orc Saruman), the first thing an NPC says to you to kick off the next expansion is along the lines of "who tf are you, get in line, we need to go fight some dudes and you can be one of my mooks."

Bitch. The only reason you're here is because i saved you at the end of the last expansion. Don't give me that "who tf are you" nonsense

"i need you to gather these rare materials/herbs to save the village/town/castle, but no one has seen them in a millennia"

And then you walk 50 metres and find them immediately

"Thank you for retrieving our stolen sacred artifact! As a reward, we give you our sacred artifact!"

Characters experiencing memory loss, the Final Fantasy games in particular are bad for this. Off the top of my head Final Fantasy 4,5,6,7,8,9,14 and 15 all have story lines that revolve around someones forgotten past.

it is by far the laziest but also I like it. You start the game with memory loss.

The zero point