The Worst/Dumbest Character Deaths

[Quazimofo]

<spoiler=Mass Effect>Ashley or Kaidan. It is a pretty silly scenario, not because of the story telling aspect, but because of the way that the conversation mechanic works in Mass Effect. You can literally wait for hours, standing on top of that building, deciding who lives and who dies, unable to attempt to save both characters, but the second that you select one, it instantly seals their fate.
<spoiler=Mass Effect 3>Thane Krios. When he was killed after Kai Leng stabbed him, despite Thane being presented to you as being one of the universe's best assassin's, yet he was stabbed and killed by a character that had never been in the series prior to Mass Effect 3. Sure, Thane was ill, but I would have expected Thane to have at least done something to Kai Leng, but instead Kai Leng got away without a scratch, and one squad member dead.

Spoiler: mass effect 3

well you must remember that Thane wasn't just ill, he could barely breathe and was out of practice somewhat too. Yeah 6 months isn't THAT much but when it's compounded by implicit significant physical deterioration, it counts for something.

I'll second Fallout 3. No real need to elaborate further, everyone who has gotten to that point knows what I'm talking about, especially if you have the ghoul companion.

 

[FPLOON]

I feel like most of those kind of deaths I would think about would make me chuckle a little... (Stupid contradicting context...)

OT: I was going to say this one death in Star Fox: Assault...

Spoiler: But...

But, then I remember how it was kind of a cop-out, anyway, after the credits stopped rolling and the epilogue kicked in...

Spoiler: Other than that... Sonic 06?

Other than that... Sonic's death in Sonic 06... and it only got worse when the game tried to rectify said death... both via cutscene and via stage level...

 

[Vault101]

<spoiler=Mass Effect>Ashley or Kaidan. It is a pretty silly scenario, not because of the story telling aspect, but because of the way that the conversation mechanic works in Mass Effect. You can literally wait for hours, standing on top of that building, deciding who lives and who dies, unable to attempt to save both characters, but the second that you select one, it instantly seals their fate.
<spoiler=Mass Effect 3>Thane Krios. When he was killed after Kai Leng stabbed him, despite Thane being presented to you as being one of the universe's best assassin's, yet he was stabbed and killed by a character that had never been in the series prior to Mass Effect 3. Sure, Thane was ill, but I would have expected Thane to have at least done something to Kai Leng, but instead Kai Leng got away without a scratch, and one squad member dead.

1. thats just gameplay/story dissonance...can't really be avoided and most people make their decision within 10 mnutes

2. [spoiler/]weather or not Leng was in the games before is beside the point (thats another issue...in which I say they should have had him in ME2 instead of Jacob) your expectations of Thane just because he's a more relevant charachter is also...arbirairy...he was sick...weather or not its still dumb is...debatable, I don't think the problem is with that death itself...it had impact as intended...I think the problem was with Kei Leng period [/spoiler]

to add to mass effect:

[spoiler/]Shepard...not that he/she DOES die for sure...because I know in some outcomes we know for sure he/she survives...but they may as well have died for all the closure we get[/spoiler]

 

[Worgen]

Kats death in Halo Reach, it was so stupid, she just gets shot in the head by a sniper. Everyone else got a "heroic" death, but she just gets shot in the head. Not even by a sniper rifle, it looks like a covenant carbine shot, which doesn't pierce shields in one hit.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Fargo Season 1 Finale Spoilers!

Spoiler

Lorne Malvo's death had all kinds of stupidity surrounding it.
First, the mailman just happens to stumble upon the guy's secret hideout because he gets stopped by a wolf in the exact right spot along a random road.
Second, Lester somehow manages to outsmart Malvo at his own predatory game.
Third and finally, Gus gets rewarded for breaking into a man's house (yes the man's a criminal but still...) and then murdering said man when he was unarmed.

I loved the show up until the final episode. Yes I know they were going for symbolism and imagery with the whole wolf thing but that doesn't mean they should just throw away any common sense that they were maintaining up until that point.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

The death of Joshua at the intro cutscene of Turok 3.


In the game before, (Turok 2) he was the main protagonist and this guy traveled to multiple galaxies taking the fight against an alien empire fighting against whole alien military camps all by himself and securing the whole f***ing universe, and in the intro of game 3 stupid alien opens a portal on the wall of his house while he sleeps and kills him with 2 shots.

"And thus the great T-Rex riding,nuke rifle shooting,jetpack flying hero who saved all the nations of our universe,exterminated the threats of the Dinoroids and Primagen Empires,the Redeemer of Civilizations of our Galaxy,died from a shot in the back,from some alien weakling that was smart enough to just teleport to his house when he was sleeping".

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Generally speaking every character death in a videogame is dumb. They usually happen during cutscenes that restrain you from being as awesome as you usually are during gameplay.

What do you think of RPG's with Permadeath

Never played one.

 

[Pinstar]

So Beast Wars... my favorite incarnation of the Transformers universe. Groundbreaking 3D animation for its time. End of the first season in the last episode...two characters who...while not as plot-important as Megatron and Optimus, are killed in 6 seconds of screen time. They got a LOT more than 6 seconds of screen time during the season proper. Hell, Terrorsaur got his own episode that focused on him earlier in the season. And they just... "oop, they fall in the lava, game over, make room for new characters."


That said, the writers did acknowledge the hasty manner in which they died, and as a result, put a LOT of work into making Dinobot's death worthy of his character.

 

[DementedSheep]

I remember in GW1 one of the Shinning Blade leaders doing one the "I'll hold them off so you can escape" thing...but she gives her bow to another NPC because she "won't need it where she's going", runs straight into the middle of a group of mursaat and instantly dies.

Well it was a brave thought I guess? I would have expected a ranger would be a bit smarter about it than doing deadhead charge without their primary weapon.

 

[AuronFtw]

I remember in GW1 one of the Shinning Blade leaders doing one the "I'll hold them off so you can escape" thing...but she gives her bow to another NPC because she "won't need it where she's going", runs straight into the middle of a group of mursaat and instantly dies.

Well it was a brave thought I guess? I would have expected a ranger would be a bit smarter about it than doing deadhead charge without their primary weapon.

GW1 also had rurik, which was pretty high up on the dumb deaths list. Then again, GW1 was made as a pvp game with pve attached as an afterthought, so I don't really blame it for having dumb plot/characters/etc.

 

[renegade7]

Handsome Jack and Roland's Death in borderlands. Since I thought everything respwaned because of the Hypreion New you system which explain all of the enemies re spawning

I kind of found Handsome Jack's death a little odd. He literally owns every single respawn device on Pandora, and it's well established they can save people from the brink of any form of death, period. Unless they work by some kind of quantum subjective immortality thing where your consciousness is just moved to an alternate universe in which you don't die, but everyone else sees you die.

For me...this one time in Dwarf Fortress (so you know this is going to be awful) where one of my dorfs decided to take a nap right next to a powered stack of magma pumps the second after they lost power and a torrent of magma was flooding down through the pump rooms back the caverns.

Oh, and this one event in FTL where a crewman dies, but apparently even though the clone bay can save crewmen from event deaths in every other case, in this particular one you, apparently, decide not to bring him back because "You don't want him to live with the memory of his death". WTF?

 

[scorptatious]

im going to just assume nobody will care about this spoiler, since the finale was such a pile of garbage. Deb's death at the end of Dexter was absolutely moronic.

Goddammit man,you spoiled it for me.

Oh well. I kinda hate Deb anyway. I just started Season 5 right now and she's fucked four different guys over the course of the show. First couple of times, it was fine, but by the time she got to the third guy, I realized that this shit was probably going to happen every season. I thought she would grow out of it after

Spoiler

Lundy died

but it appears I was wrong.

Fuck Deborah. In fact, fuck everyone who isn't Dexter, Rita, or their kids. From what I've seen so far, the show has gone out of it's way to make nearly everyone an unlikable asshole. Particularly Masuka.

Spoiler

That comment he made about Rita at the beginning of season 5 made me want to punch him in the throat.

...

Sorry, what were we talking about?

 

[K-lusive]

Is this still needed? Let's:

Spoiler: Fable Lost Chapters

Choosing to kill the Guildmaster who can 'Break you, so leave it!'

 

[RJ 17]

Generally speaking every character death in a videogame is dumb. They usually happen during cutscenes that restrain you from being as awesome as you usually are during gameplay.

Case in point:

Spoiler: The ending to Dead Island

Where-in the four protagonists who - by this time - are armed to the teeth with electrified katanas, flaming fire-axes, and loads of guns...and yet they just kinda stand there on the helipad and let the big bad military dude with a single pistol do whatever the hell he wants...like just straight up shoot the mechanic's daughter. I mean back in the city you launch an assault on a supermarket that's loaded with pissed off jackasses with automatic weapons. But standing three feet in front of some dingus with a pistol and all of a sudden the protagonists become a bunch of piss-pants sissies.

Edit: fixed spoiler box.

 

[Gankytim]

an innocent woman sacrifice herself. God damn it, Bethesda...

I take an issue here. Not because "HURR FEMINISM BAAAAD" bullshit because of straight up ignorance of Fallout lore.

She was BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL, the brotherhood are fanatics and this particular Brotherhood group are fanatics ith a hero complex, she'd be feeling fucking pride knowing she sacrificed herself for the good of the wastes. Seriously, Batman's a hero, Batman's a good guy, but would you under any circumstances call him innocent? Secondly, Knight of the Brotherhood, Paladin of the Brotherhood, you don't advance that far in a group like the Brotherhood without killing enough people to make calling you "innocent" an insult to the personal river of blood you've spilled.

 

[Meinos Kaen]

an innocent woman sacrifice herself. God damn it, Bethesda...

I take an issue here. Not because "HURR FEMINISM BAAAAD" bullshit because of straight up ignorance of Fallout lore.

She was BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL, the brotherhood are fanatics and this particular Brotherhood group are fanatics ith a hero complex, she'd be feeling fucking pride knowing she sacrificed herself for the good of the wastes. Seriously, Batman's a hero, Batman's a good guy, but would you under any circumstances call him innocent? Secondly, Knight of the Brotherhood, Paladin of the Brotherhood, you don't advance that far in a group like the Brotherhood without killing enough people to make calling you "innocent" an insult to the personal river of blood you've spilled.

Okay, she's not innocent. Does everything else I said fly?

 

[Adultism]

Spoiler

When the protagonist in Persona 3 passes away at the end of the game, I really was upset, as well as Sninjiro. How the hell does such a badass die like that?! Also Rurik in the original guild wars pissed me off so bad

GW and Persona

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Fallout 3

The braindead vanilla ending.

Fallout 3 is a horrifically cretinous game. The main storyline is total and utter sh*te.

But among the most cretinous parts of it is the vanilla version ending that has you kill yourself because your retardedly stupid father trashed his own machine for no reason at all.

I am so glad I got the GOTY version, with all the dlc.

President John Henry Eden

There is no reason why you can't side with the enclave. But, as said, the story of FO3 is total and utter sh*te.
And the idiots and bethesda were too stupid to let you join them.

The most you can do is help President John Henry Eden.
And then, once you've helped him, and taken the modified F.E.V, he dies. He dies in every option.
Which is stupid, especially since he's a sentient computer.

If they'd kept him alive, it would have been awesome. But no, too sensible.
If they'd kept the entire enclave alive and let you join them, it'd have been awesome.
But no, too sensible.

I understood that the father was desperate to prevent the Enclave from gaining access to the water source. My problem is that even if you have Fawkes there, you can't tell him to go in and fix it because reasons. I realized as soon as the father pulled that move that someone would be going in there so I kept Fawkes around for that specific reason.

It was altered in DLC because they realized just how stupid it was. I don't doubt they got a lot of complaints.

I think Bethesda had to make someone the villain so they basically removed autonomy from the player. It does come across as weird that you don't really have a choice in that matter, though.

Vaas from Far Cry 3. Surprised no one's brought this up. He dies in a drug-induced stupor that occurs during a battle (quick-time events! Yay!) and once he's gone the investment in the story drops off considerably. It was an all-around dumb decision to kill him off when they did in the manner they did, though it was the best battle.

EDIT
I also realized it goes against his character. All this time he was willing to put his life on the line for you and your friends but suddenly that has to change to either make you die or be a complete dick. Through his inaction, he is condemning either you or your friends to death when he could resolve it with no ill effects. The reason he won't intervene? Because it's your fate, not his. In other words; "It's not my problem." No one has to die unless Fawkes decides so. He was the real villain in my eyes in that last scene.

I realize why they made the choice to make you decide on being a hero or not as it serves the core story, but in this context it is rather nonsensical.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Spoiler

When the protagonist in Persona 3 passes away at the end of the game, I really was upset, as well as Sninjiro. How the hell does such a badass die like that?! Also Rurik in the original guild wars pissed me off so bad

GW and Persona

Just because you were upset doesn't mean that death was dumb. Shinjiro was terminally ill and even then he managed to take TWO magnum bullets and stand up and walk afterwards. Self sacrifice doesn't get more badass than that. As for Protagonist, he was without his soul by that point and yet he managed to survive for weeks with the sheer force of will because of the promise he made with his friends.

 

[MRMIdAS2k]

Handsome Jack and Roland's Death in borderlands. Since I thought everything respwaned because of the Hypreion New you system which explain all of the enemies re spawning

I kind of found Handsome Jack's death a little odd. He literally owns every single respawn device on Pandora, and it's well established they can save people from the brink of any form of death, period. Unless they work by some kind of quantum subjective immortality thing where your consciousness is just moved to an alternate universe in which you don't die, but everyone else sees you die.

Handsome Jack isn't entered into any of the "New U" systems, probably so you couldn't hack said system to respawn in his body, and get into his stronghold that way.

Or because of vanity, one or the other.