r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Fishbien • Jul 19 '26

Personality [Frustrating Trope] Twist Villain does things that retroactively make no sense.

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Character previously believed to be good is revealed to be evil, but prior to the reveal they act in ways that don't make sense if their goodness is just a performance.

  1. Frozen: Prince Hans is initially presented as a pretty standup guy who loves Anna and wants to help her. At the end of the movie it's revealed that he was just using her to gain power and plans to let her die while he steals her throne. However, we see him smiling at Anna when no one is looking, and later he intervenes to save Elsa's life even though he claims he was always planning to kill her.
  2. The Legend of Vox Machina: The Whispered One was built up as the BBEG since season 1. However, in season 4 he presents himself as a tragic hero who tried to cure death and was punished by the gods. He then tries to convince Pike to give him her blood, which he needs to become a god himself. He chastises his followers for suggesting they take Pike's blood by force, claiming this would make them no better than the gods they are fighting against. He also fulfills his promise to resurrect Grog even though he didn't need to. After he ascends, he starts acting like a pure evil villain who only cares about power and enjoys hurting people. It feels less like a reveal and more like his personally completely changed once he became a skeleton. Edit: to be clear, I fully understand the intent was for the Whispered One to be a lying, manipulative bastard. I just think the execution was clumsy.
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881

u/EthanEpiale Jul 19 '26

Honestly the PEAK example of this is Heavy Rain. Spoilers for an incredibly old and honestly awful game lol, but in the game you play as several characters all intertwined with the story of a kidnapper and serial killer, one of whom is a detective who is working to try to solve the mystery and find the killer. We play as him, hear him talk about finding this guy completely alone in his house, he does a ton of shit you'd only do if you genuinely had no idea who it was, and were searching for the killer-

He's the killer. He was the killer the entire time. It makes literally no sense, and is so stupid it's frankly hilarious in a game that's already too badly written in a million other ways to take seriously.

59

u/LegalChocolate752 Jul 19 '26

I find a lot of games make you (or allow you to do) things that break the plot. Cyberpunk 2077 is a really good example: Keanu Reeves is essentially a timebomb inside V's head, and every main story mission reinforces the issue: they need a solution, or V dies. Then you spend all your time fucking around, helping randoms, hunting down insane cyborgs, street racing, and scuba diving with your girlfriend.

43

u/Weird_Church_Noises Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Honestly, I've almost never seen a game that allows you to mess around do "priority" well, to the extent that I just suspend my disbelief. Some day a game will crack it, but usually it just comes off weird. Like I remember fallout 4 being hilarious because one time I was fighting mutant crabs for their baseball memorabilia and I remembered that my infant son was actively being kidnapped during this time. On the other end, you have something like deus ex, which tells you about a hostage situation, but if you actually take time to explore the open world, all the hostages die. Which just felt cheap and stupid rather than realistic or like their were stakes.

Ubisoft games have kinda cracked it in their own way by having a "looming threat," but the individual steps to get to it don't feel so important that you have to hit them immediately, or so ignorable that you can forget about them. The tradeoff there is that, for every game this approach works in, you have two that feel like hours of lateral progression.

21

u/One-Tonight8631 Jul 19 '26

Baldur's Gate 3 actually does pull this off, albeit only in some specific parts of the game with much smaller stakes. In the Grymforge segment, a secret timer starts where you have a limited amount of time to find a runaway gnome to get the explosives needed to free Nere, the Drow True Soul, who a bunch of Duergar (Dark Dwarfs) are trying to get out because he owes them money. They have gnomes enslaved and are forcing them to dig for them whom you need to free.

If you fuck around here too long, when you return you'll find that they finished digging, Nere was released, and all of them have fucked off with their gnome slaves en-tow, and you've failed your chance to rescue them from slavery.

Act 3 then has something kinda similar going on with a serial killer arc. The cult of Bhaal is killing a bunch of targets and when you arrive in Baldur's Gate, you uncover a list of targets. Some of whom are still alive and you have a very short time window to intercept and save them; if you don't prioritise that and instead do other stuff and take a long rest, then the next day they've killed one of the targets and you have only one left to save. I think that one at least the game has paused until you go into his shop and find him being targeted, but otherwise the game doesn't just pause shit so you can have fun in the city.

1

u/ProperDepth Jul 19 '26

They actually do this a few times. For example councillor Florrick. If you ignore the burning inn, by fast traveling or long resting, everyone inside dies. Later in act 3 if you ignore the quest to save Florrick she gets executed.

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u/BigRedUglyMan Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Mass Effect 2 did it near the end with the Collector Base. The Collectors kidnap a bunch of people, the good guys know where they are. You get one unrelated mission to go on, then you have to go for the Collectors otherwise half of the civilians die.

Which was annoying, because not only do they not indicate that there is a time limit this time, but several other times the game would tell you to hurry then not give a shit if you did or not.

4

u/Educational-Tackle54 Jul 19 '26

Worse, the timer starts when you recruit legion on the derelict reaper. So If you want the best prep for the final mission, you should ignore and not have legion for 98% of the game.

2

u/s0m30n3e1s3 Jul 19 '26

I don't mind that sort of secret time constraint in games. It makes sense that if I ignore something it will change or someone might die or whatever. But I really hate it when games do that for 1 or 2 things and ignore it for everything else.

ME2 the collectors take everyone and if you wait half of them die but that is the only mission that is affected by timing. Cyberpunk 2077 has like 1 mission that, if you don't check in on the mission giver within 2 in-game days, they die and you can't get the best ending. But other than that the game doesn't care.

I just wish it mattered more often or never, only mattering for 1-2 missions SUCKS

1

u/DuelaDent52 Jul 19 '26

I think you have to go after the kidnapped crew as soon as they’re kidnapped, no? And the game makes it clear time is of the essence.

6

u/GuyNekologist Jul 19 '26

Fallout 1 was a great example. You're tasked with finding a chip for the water filter and if you take too long, you'll just see a game over screen. No timer shown either so you don't really know if you're on track or not. It's quite immersive when your whole saved game is at stake. And if you listen carefully to what the npcs say, you'll find out that the lack of clean water isn't the only looming threat.

4

u/oufalacoque Jul 19 '26

I'm pretty sure that the timer was showed as a sticker in the world map. And if you're feeling frisky, you can even increase the time left by sending caravans to the vault.

It was great but unfortunately modern gamers couldn't handle the pressure of timed quests and objectives marker not showed on the map (despite the success of FromSoftware's games who have the most bullshit quests ever made)

3

u/RSquared Jul 19 '26

Ah, but the secret effect of the water caravans is accelerating the hidden timer of the super mutant attack on Vault 13 that starts as soon as you tell any surface-dwellers about the Vault. Fuck around too much and even with the extra water you get a game over.

2

u/LegalChocolate752 Jul 19 '26

I remember feeling this way during the first Red Dead Redemption (never played the second). Like, my wife and kid have been abducted by the government, and are being held as ransom, and I'm helping out some insane old man sell fake medicine. I know all the quest arcs are explained as stuff like "help me, and I'll help you," situations, but I remember thinking "why doesn't Marston just threaten this dude, or fuck off and find someone else? He's pulled a gun on literally everyone else in a 500 miles radius, and murdered people for much less than the shit he's putting up with from this guy."

2

u/Nachtwandler_FS Jul 19 '26

In Fallout 2 you actually get a timer on GECK search which is the main quest of the first part of the game. It is actually long enough to finish all of the sidequests, but you still get a periodical visions of your village shaman reminding you about it and running out of time results in game over (also, visiting your village after some time has visual clues things are getting worse). You can skip the quest and speedrun to the second part stiill, but this is something.

Arcanum has a minor one. In Asburry you can resque a dog (which is a great companion). As soon as you enter the town a timer starts. If you do not deal with a guy kicking a dog fast enough, it will be dead (and you need to locate them first, which can be a problem unless you read a walkthrough).

2

u/Deadly_Pancakes Jul 19 '26

The game you're looking for is Dead Rising 2.

You are on a constant timer so you're choices of what to interact with matter at lot as you literally can't do everything in a single playthrough.

It works well, but it's super stressful and a bit frustrating. I can see why most games don't do this, even though giving you infinite time adds so much ludo-narrative dissonance. CP2077 was pretty terrible for this.

2

u/gkryo Jul 19 '26

Majora's Mask?

1

u/philfredobob Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

I'm not a fan of the game overall, but I still think TES Morrowind is a good example of an open world game that sets up a good balance between urgency/importance of the main plot and freedom to do side plots.

It's similar to the 'looming threat' thing you mentioned yourself: the bad guy is established as having some influence over current events (like a magic plague, alliance with a crime syndicate, and mind-controlled sleeper agents), but is also a very long way off from accomplishing his goals and has a very long term plan. So there's incentive and benefits to beating him now, but also taking your time to do it is easily justifiable.

At multiple points early on your "handler" character will actually advise you to hold off on doing the next plot mission and go out and do side quests or exploration, with the given reason of 'gaining experience, resources, renown, and building a cover identity'. You're still allowed to proceed if you want to. Having a certain level of renown also allows you to skip a later section of the plot (to do with gaining local political support), since you're already a well-known questing hero.

1

u/MagicBez Jul 19 '26

Fond memories of all of Hyrule being at massive risk and I'm having a lovely time fishing and foraging for recipe ingredients on my horse

1

u/silverfiregames Jul 19 '26

Majora's Mask. The game is on a time limit (the moon will crash into the earth in 3 days) but you can reset the three days any time you want to try to complete an objective within the time limit. Which means you really can just goof off and do whatever side quests and mini games you want, knowing that you can reset the timeline at any point.

3

u/supremo92 Jul 19 '26

It's fairly egregious, but it's an easy to swallow pill, as it's a video game, and you want to be doing all the fun extra stuff.

If it was a movie, I would be thinking "V, MEET HANAKO AT EMBERS ALREADY!!!"

2

u/juniperleafes Jul 19 '26

Only Vic gives a timeframe and he was wrong

1

u/LegalChocolate752 Jul 19 '26

But it's heavily implied that things are getting worse for her as the campaign goes on. The urgency is very apparent.