What characters have been RUINED by sequels? SPOILERS

[Mikeyfell]

Does "All of the characters in Mass Effect 3" count?

Liara, Mordin?

Spoiler

Liara was treated pretty roughly in the 2nd game for no reason. I felt like her character was supposed to be replaced by Miranda, but nobody liked her because she's made of plastic and feels even less real then a weird blue alien archaeologist chick. In 3 we at least see how her crusade to avenge the death of Shepard and becoming the information broker made her mature beyond the innocent little Asari scientist "girl" (!00 years old but still..). I'd say that's a step up from 2 where she was absent for no adequately explained reason which really pissed me off.

Mordin had a really powerful conclusion to his arc in 3. He could have been a minor character considering his role in 2 was just to "be the crew scientist" but his subplot of redemption actually became one of the highlights of the series.

Tali to a lesser extent I guess

Spoiler

Her development was believable (similar deal as with Liara tbh) and her involvement with the Quarian conflict was continued neatly from 2. The big problem is the retarded photoshop picture which ruins the purpose of the romance with Shepard* and to a lesser extend the fact that she falls for Garrus despite the fact that we never see them talk to each other much.
*I mean how they handle the sexual side of their relationship was pretty much the most interesting thing and I thought the bed scene in 2 was well done in that regard, but they throw all of it out the window in 3 by showing us her face and saying "it's ok I'm used to sex with you now". This of course fits with the theme of dumbing everything down in 3...

Are you defending Liara in Mass Effect 3? She was the blandest she ever was. Her portrayal in 2 was a huge step down from how she was in 1 but at least she was consumed by grief and rage. in 3 she's just vacant like she has this thousand yard stare the whole time. She never even acknowledges Shepard while she's on the Normandy (Which is especilly jarring if you romanced her in both previous games)
all of her dialog is extremely clinical and emotionless(Except for after the Thessia mission and only then if you have the Javik DLC) otherwise she's an emotionless brick.
I can't think of a single memorable thing she did and I played Mass Effect 3 9 times.
I even cheated on her with Traynor just to see if I could get a single reaction out of her (Actually I cheated on her with Traynor because she was the only remotely likeable character in that game) and she responds to it like I misfiled paperwork.
She's probably a method actress who was trying to stay in character for Lightning, so she had to deliver every line with cold dead emotionless monotone. but even her romantic brain-scape scene thing didn't have any life to it. Liara was the most heavily butchered character in 3 just because she had the farthest to fall.


And for what it's worth Mordin and Kaiden were the only characters who didn't get completely ruined by Mass Effect 3 (Until the Citadel DLC anyway but we're not talking about that)

 

[giles]

Are you defending Liara in Mass Effect 3? She was the blandest she ever was. Her portrayal in 2 was a huge step down from how she was in 1 but at least she was consumed by grief and rage. in 3 she's just vacant like she has this thousand yard stare the whole time. She never even acknowledges Shepard while she's on the Normandy (Which is especilly jarring if you romanced her in both previous games)
all of her dialog is extremely clinical and emotionless(Except for after the Thessia mission and only then if you have the Javik DLC) otherwise she's an emotionless brick.
I can't think of a single memorable thing she did and I played Mass Effect 3 9 times.
I even cheated on her with Traynor just to see if I could get a single reaction out of her (Actually I cheated on her with Traynor because she was the only remotely likeable character in that game) and she responds to it like I misfiled paperwork.
She's probably a method actress who was trying to stay in character for Lightning, so she had to deliver every line with cold dead emotionless monotone. but even her romantic brain-scape scene thing didn't have any life to it. Liara was the most heavily butchered character in 3 just because she had the farthest to fall.

Idk I guess I just thought having her bland self there was preferable to not being there at all for no reason.
Also she wasn't that fleshed out of a character to begin with, her dialogue outside of the story missions in ME1 is pretty lame. I thought becoming a powerful underground "gangster boss" was a step up from "otherwise uninteresting daughter of a Matriarch". You're right though, the voice acting was terrible and made her sound much more boring than she needed to be.
However, I for one really liked her weird Asari friendship mind-splosion thing at the end of 3 (I think the friendship option is way better than the romance though). Not sure why I liked it so much, guess it just finally gave the Asari some more depth beyond being space-strippers and made them feel actually alien, something only the Geth and Hanar had accomplished so far.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Homura From Madoka Magica. She went from indomitable badass, fighting for the girl she loves, to literally The devil. She chooses to turn evil for no reason instead of going to heaven. The people in charge couldn't make it clearer that they just didn't want the money train to stop.

Actually, I can see where that one came from. I mean, she had kept time looping over and over(according to the writer it was around 100 times, or 8 years and some change) with the sole purpose of saving Madoka, and ultimately... she failed. Oh sure, Madoka didn't become a witch, the world was saved, and all that, but that was the victory Madoka chose, not the one Homura wanted. Combine that failure with the fact that Rebellion takes place right as Homura is taking a swan dive off the Despair Event Horizon(unimpeded by Madoka thanks to the Incubators), and you've got a pretty solid setup for a Face Heel Turn. And then Homura sees a way to actually bring Madoka back into the world for real?

As bleak as PMMM was for most of its run, it ended in the triumph of selfless love. Rebellion ended with a win for its twin, a possessive, selfish love that you could imagine being born over 8 years of endlessly obsessing over one person.

Now granted, the whole devil speech itself was a bit heavy handed, but then again, she was in middle of turning into a witch when Madoka and friends saved her. It could be argued that she really wasn't herself at the time. Hopefully there will be one more movie to close things up, though it could be argued that the story has a bizarre sort of symmetry as it stands.

Oh don't get me wrong, it is a faintly plausible turn, but it still pisses me off. It's like we got the video game style "bad end". Like if she had just gone to yuri heaven with Madoka, there wouldn't be anyone going "What a terrible ending. She should have gone crazy and turned evil" Everyone would just be happy. Plausible ending or not, It's really clear that it was a decision born out of wanting the franchise to make more money.

Can't say I agree with that. I think that going with the happy(ish) ending again would be a clearer sign of a cash grab, as that is a formula they could just repeat as many times as they wanted, though it would become watered down as time went on. With this, there's a clear call for one more episode, and only one more. Given that this is Urobuchi we're talking about, I don't think that a solidly good ending was ever in the cards, so I wouldn't bet on "yuri heaven" being how things end when/if there is a sequel.

I guess it depends on what you're looking for. Honestly, I don't go watching stuff written by the guy who wrote Saya no Uta for happy endings. It's kind of why I'm enjoying Aldnoah.Zero right now(a mecha action show with the writer from Madoka Magica and music by the guy who scored Kill la Kill? Yes, please).

 

[Mikeyfell]

Does "All of the characters in Mass Effect 3" count?

I'll go with Elizabeth. She was pretty screwed over by Burial at Sea part 2.
Let's take a super powerful demigod and make her completely helpless and at the Mercy of the bad guy from the first game! YEAH! Let's also take away all her cognitive ability and give her a voice in her head that tells her exactly what to do at every step of the way!

It was just all around a bad idea.

Spoiler

I finished Burial at Sea part 2 today and pretty much came here to say this. Not only did it butcher a character that I really started to warm up to, but the entire DLC retroactively ruins the story and world for both Bioshock AND Bioshock Infinite! The story was of fanfiction level of writing quality, with the contrived mechanisations that tied both Infinite and the first game, and basically resorted to reducing Booker and Elizabeth as plot devices in order to pander to people who wanted to see them in Rapture. My head canon has officially erased the entire thing from mind and have resorted in believing that Infinite is its own stand alone reality completely separate from the events of Rapture.

And the fact that this is supposed to be Levine's swan song for the final chapter of the franchise leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. The amount of pandering and lack of distinctive vision that made this series stand out was so glaringly obvious.

There's a theory about that.
That they're trying to leave us with a bad impression just so we never long for more Bioshock content, or maybe so the next Bioshock game will look good by comparison to BAS part 2 even though it won't be developed by Irrational.

Or maybe it was just a crap game? We'll never know.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Idk I guess I just thought having her bland self there was preferable to not being there at all for no reason.
Also she wasn't that fleshed out of a character to begin with, her dialogue outside of the story missions in ME1 is pretty lame. I thought becoming a powerful underground "gangster boss" was a step up from "otherwise uninteresting daughter of a Matriarch". You're right though, the voice acting was terrible and made her sound much more boring than she needed to be.
However, I for one really liked her weird Asari friendship mind-splosion thing at the end of 3 (I think the friendship option is way better than the romance though). Not sure why I liked it so much, guess it just finally gave the Asari some more depth beyond being space-strippers and made them feel actually alien, something only the Geth and Hanar had accomplished so far.

from my perspective the reason she wasn't there in 2 was so it would be impossible to get her killed during the suicide mission. Not that that would have mattered because she didn't do anything in 3.

I disagree, her romantic dialog in the first game was amazing and really the thing that elevated Mass Effect 1 for me.
If you think about how she's a kid by Asari standards and she's talking to an alien who is proportionally far older than her and more mature, and she's constantly dropping Freudian slips in to her conversations with Shepard.

Her being forced from academia to military and finding that that excites her was just handled outstandingly.

I don't know what memory Liara showed Shepard at the end of 3. It looked like a star going super-nova. I didn't get it though, But I tend to think more literalisticly than most. In my "main Shepard" play through I turned her down because it felt like a disingenuous olive branch after I cheated on her with Traynor.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

The Overmind: I seriously hope that Tassadar was lying when he said that The Overmind was just misunderstood. Before StarCraft II, we were to understand that he was originally a tool of the Xel Naga until he grew tired of taking their orders and freed himself. Now we're to understand that he was a victim all along. Lame.

Of all the ones mentioned, The Overmind is clearly the biggest kicker here. This is a retcon of monumental proportions, as not once in the original Starcraft did The Overmind ever express any remorse or grief over his actions. Honestly, I'd probably put most of the Starcraft II cast on this list, since at least half the time they seem to be holding the Idiot Ball.

"Tychus is stuck in a walking deathtrap you say? Let's not check to see if we can take it off of him! He always was kind of an ass."

 

[soren7550]

And for what it's worth Mordin and Kaiden were the only characters who didn't get completely ruined by Mass Effect 3 (Until the Citadel DLC anyway but we're not talking about that)

Care to elaborate a bit?

OT: Design wise, Ashley Williams. She was fine in ME 1 & 2 (aside from the whole 'she's the girl, so her armor is pink' thing), but dear god, in ME3 her default armor is a dress, makeup, and long well prepped hair. And it's been established in the previous games that she isn't into 'girly' things, but now they've made her up as Miranda 2.0.

 

[jhoroz]

Does "All of the characters in Mass Effect 3" count?

I'll go with Elizabeth. She was pretty screwed over by Burial at Sea part 2.
Let's take a super powerful demigod and make her completely helpless and at the Mercy of the bad guy from the first game! YEAH! Let's also take away all her cognitive ability and give her a voice in her head that tells her exactly what to do at every step of the way!

It was just all around a bad idea.

Spoiler

I finished Burial at Sea part 2 today and pretty much came here to say this. Not only did it butcher a character that I really started to warm up to, but the entire DLC retroactively ruins the story and world for both Bioshock AND Bioshock Infinite! The story was of fanfiction level of writing quality, with the contrived mechanisations that tied both Infinite and the first game, and basically resorted to reducing Booker and Elizabeth as plot devices in order to pander to people who wanted to see them in Rapture. My head canon has officially erased the entire thing from mind and have resorted in believing that Infinite is its own stand alone reality completely separate from the events of Rapture.

And the fact that this is supposed to be Levine's swan song for the final chapter of the franchise leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. The amount of pandering and lack of distinctive vision that made this series stand out was so glaringly obvious.

There's a theory about that.
That they're trying to leave us with a bad impression just so we never long for more Bioshock content, or maybe so the next Bioshock game will look good by comparison to BAS part 2 even though it won't be developed by Irrational.

Or maybe it was just a crap game? We'll never know.

If that was their goal all along, then mission fucking accomplished.

 

[Fox12]

I'll second Keira from jak 2. Keira's relationship with jak is well done, and she's a strong willed and independent. Her reaction to jaks personality change really captured the mood of the audience, I think. All the arcs in 2 ended perfectly, it should have ended there.

 

[Mikeyfell]

And for what it's worth Mordin and Kaiden were the only characters who didn't get completely ruined by Mass Effect 3 (Until the Citadel DLC anyway but we're not talking about that)

Care to elaborate a bit?

OT: Design wise, Ashley Williams. She was fine in ME 1 & 2 (aside from the whole 'she's the girl, so her armor is pink' thing), but dear god, in ME3 her default armor is a dress, makeup, and long well prepped hair. And it's been established in the previous games that she isn't into 'girly' things, but now they've made her up as Miranda 2.0.

Mordin had a really solid arc during the Tuchanka section of the game, which everyone will tell you is the best part of ME3.
Even though his development does seem really sudden there's that line in ME2 about how Salarians process emotions extremely rapidly, so a slight catalyst would provoke an almost immediate dramatic change in Mordin's outlooko. So it makes sense.

And the fact that Kaiden didn't change all that much between the 3 games subtly reinforces that he has a really Zen outlook on life, and lets the more dramatic things roll off his back. which plays in nicely to his stark appreciation for the little things in life like a stake dinner, a fine wine and a nice view.
It makes him come off like a fully matured man who understands how fleeting life really is and that you shouldn't let yourself get bogged down in the drama of it all.


And Citadel was... shit. If a character ever did anything even remotely funny that became 100% of their personality for the duration of that DLC
Citadel was a text book case of Flanderization of the entire cast. And the worst part was that it wasn't even gradual. It's like someone flipped a switch that turned Kaiden in to the generic strait man for all of the more "Zaney" characters to make fun of.

No one survived the Citadel DLC Even Samantha Traynor the best character in the Mass Effect series got reduced to having a robot fetish because she had that one line about EDI's voice being attractive.

And yeah Ashley got screwed over by the design team. She got a boob job! Fucking breast implants. She was so concerned about being taken seriously in the military for the whole of the first two games and when she shows up in 3 her boobs are a cup size bigger. Who's retarded idea was that?

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I've never played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 because the fact that it exists as a direct sequel, staring Starkiller as the player-character, is a slap in the face of the canonical ending of the first game. Of course at this point nothing having to do with The Force Unleashed is canon...as far as I know...but at the time, the canon ending for Force Unleashed is,

Spoiler

Starkiller chooses to leave Darth Vader alone after beating the heck out of him, instead rushing to attack The Emperor so as to give Leia and the other founders of the Rebel Alliance time to escape. Starkiller puts up a great fight but despite the fact that he is a walking sharknado, he is killed by Palpatine. While he had to die it was a noble sacrifice that ensured the Rebel Alliance would be formed and go on to take down The First Galactic Empire. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 begins with Darth Vader working on another batch of fresh Starkiller clones...plural...

It isn't so much that the character's personality changed from one game to the next...it's just...well THAT (in the above spoiler bubble that probably doesn't need to be there)

 

[Halla Burrica]

I second DrunkenElfMage. Srsly, what happened to Ellie? She was a really awesome character in DS2, and then she got really reduced for some reason.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Anders in Dragon Age. The first game he was this really funny charismatic Han Solo/ Malcolm Renalds like character. In Dragon Age 2 was whinny, never shut up about being oppressed by the templars (in the first he loved making fools of the Templars), and i usally never call characters whinny as i find its often over used to describe any male character who shows emotion other than rage but dear god did I have Anders in Dragon Age 2.

I remembered Anders fondly from DA:A as well, and decided relatively early on to romance him with my female Hawke when it became apparent Varric wasn't available. God, what a sorry, whiny, aggravating drip he was. I remember when the romance progressed to the point where he moved in with me, and feeling this sinking feeling in my stomach when I saw him sulking around the mansion.

Frankly it came as something as a relief when he went out and provided me with an excuse to kill him. If he'd been less insufferable I'd probably have let him scarper off, but he'd annoyed me so thoroughly by that point it would've been out of character to forgive him.

 

[Spartan448]

The Black Knight in Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn. In Path of Radiance, the Black Knight had to have been one of the single greatest video game villains of all time. Everything is going normally for FE, and the the Black Knight shows up and kills your father. Just kills him and leaves. The Black Knight was exactly what he was supposed to be: unstoppable. The player dreads the moment they will run into the Black Knight again, not just because of plot making the Black Knight scary, but because literally no-one can damage him. At all. The Black Knight was a literal walking tank that slugged off everything, and then retaliated in kind. His battle animation was even more imposing - a huge hulking black figure wielding a who-handed sword in one hand, simply walking over to his target, taking a swing - and that's all she wrote. It's not until the very end of the game are you finally able to put an end to the Black Knight... or are you? The one thing we didn't get with the Black Knight was the 1v1 duel we were all looking for. Mist and some random soldiers just HAD to interfere.

Then Radiant Dawn happened, and at the beginning, the Black Knight was done well. This time you play as Daein, so the Black Knight is an ally. And he has the best possible entrance he could have had. The general of the enemy army catches your Lord out alone at night, and before the battle starts, the Black Knight warps in - literally comes out of nowhere - and proceeds to stride across the battlefield, leveling everything in his path. By the end of the game, he is still just as much the force to be feared as he was in the previous game. Except now you know you're going to get your 1 on 1 fight against your greatest foe, your most fearsome rival, your father's killer, the mysterious... General Zelgius?

Giving the Black Knight a name and a face was the worst thing they could have done. He went from being a fierce and intimidating foe to being something familiar and easily dealt with. It's like if the xenomorphs in Aliens were all done in chibi. Yes they're still fearsome, but they aren't anywhere near as frightening, and it doesn't require as much mettle to deal with them.

 

[ObserverStatus]

"Tychus is stuck in a walking deathtrap you say? Let's not check to see if we can take it off of him! He always was kind of an ass."

I really liked the part when the Dominion didn't use the surveillance equipment inside Findlay's suit to stop him from rampaging across Augustgrad in the Odin.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Most characters from Bioware games. Whatever made them interesting concepts in their original form gets diluted down into base characteristics for the second game. I feel like they usually drop what made them unique in favor of using boring archetypes.

I think they usually go from "believably varied character" to "same basic ideas, but taken to unbelievable extremes to make them stand out".
Mass Effect wasn't all bad going from 1 to 2; many misses but some hits in there aswell like Tali who was just exposition-girl for Quarians in ME1 and became a person for the 2nd game.
Not even gonna talk about ME3 because it's basically the dumb-action-movie version of the Mass Effect universe. Just thinking about fucking Vega or that reporter chick brings my piss to a boil.


Baldur's Gate characters pretty much all improved going from 1 to 2, Imoen and Jaheira became a lot more interesting and that trend only continued in Throne of Bhaal. Makes you wonder what went wrong with Bioware since then.

Well, going from KOTOR 1 (Bioware) to KOTOR 2(Obsidian), we saw some really cool character development for the returning characters, as well as offering more insight on other characters from the first game. HK-47 went from a psychotic droid with an unhealthy murder obsession, to a psychotic droid with an unhealthy murder obsession who had grown fed up with obeying idiot masters. Canderous regains a purpose in life after donning Mandalore's mask. And Revan becomes a potential mastermind who balanced light and darkness to prepare the Galaxy for an impending invasion.

And then The Old Republic happened.

HK-47 is back to being a henchman, his HK-51 personal army become knockoffs for players to have their own HK-47 (thus completely negating their purpose as individuals), Canderous's noble Mandalorian clan gets overturned by the status quo of Mandos being the bad guys, and Revan gets reduced from chess master to a pawn of the super duper most evilest badass Sith lord ever totally guys he's really cool Emperor Vitiate.

Still not happy about that.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

"Tychus is stuck in a walking deathtrap you say? Let's not check to see if we can take it off of him! He always was kind of an ass."

I really liked the part when the Dominion didn't use the surveillance equipment inside Findlay's suit to stop him from rampaging across Augustgrad in the Odin.

Etc, etc. You really need three games to tell this story, huh Blizzard? Because as much as I enjoy the Single Player, it ain't for the story and characters.

Way to pour that aspect down the toilet.

 

[Olas]

I'd go with The Illusive Man going from well intentioned extremist in Mass Effect 2 to moustache twirling villain in Mass Effect 3.

that's what indoctrination does to you though. and i dont think he was ever that well intentioned.

in a weird way Artyom from metro. in 2033 i finished it as a good guy spared the dark ones. but then in last light he was a mass murderer regardless.

That's what happens when you give a game with multiple endings a sequel, either your decision ends up not actually mattering much (Mass Effect) or the writers decide to make it non-canonical. I'm not sure which is a bigger slap to the face.

 

[GodzillaGuy92]

"Ruined" is a bit too harsh a word to use for what continued to be a very entertaining characterization in the sequel, but compared to the first game... GLaDOS in Portal 2 really doesn't hold a candle to her Portal 1 counterpart.

In addition to all the insightful things Yahtzee pointed out upon the former game's release [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/8857-Building-Sequels-Badly.2], another very important thing to keep in mind is the loss of GLaDOS's primary characteristic from the original game: her passive-aggressiveness. One of the main reasons Portal is funnier in general than its sequel is the more narrow, clever style of humor compared to Portal 2's exaggerated wackiness, and in GLaDOS this manifests as insults subtle enough that it often takes a few moments to mentally sort through what she's really telling you behind the facade of being a helpful Enrichment Center guide - in fact, if the player doesn't start the game knowing that the mysterious computer voice is actually antagonistic, a lot of the jokes will just fly over their head and only click on subsequent playthroughs. Half the humor of passive-aggressiveness comes from the "passive" part, and Portal nailed that aspect. Portal 2, on the other hand, took her from passive-aggressive to merely aggressive, baldly insulting you at every turn, and though the writers remain skilled enough to keep that funny, it's still a simplification of her character that still is never quite as funny as the one we originally fell in love with.

Even setting aside the humor aspect, GLaDOS's relationship with the player was far more intriguing in the first game, in large part because it's multifaceted. In the test chambers, she sees you as a disposable object yet still finds time to treat you with a mixture of derision, cruelty, and loosely-grasped emotional appeals (motivating you with the promise of cake, confidently attempting to deceive you with the most obvious of lies, and so on) that parodies the ways standard video game narratives attempt to tell themselves. When you escape, this morphs into abrupt, psychotic shifts between desperate fear of your retribution, venom directed at you for everything going wrong for her, and a few moments of wistful resignation. And when all's said and done, she sings a song at once celebrating the achievements you two built together and taunting you for being unable to truly defeat her. A perfect send-off for the game's wonderfully low-key appraisal of the relationship between the game and its player, and of the Batman-Joker-esque relationship the game built up from the moment it began to the moment it ended.

Of course, from there, Portal 2 had nowhere to go. GLaDOS's antagonism was thoroughly unmasked by the end of the previous game, so attempting to make her manipulative and covert in her dislike of you would have made no sense even though those were the funny and interesting aspects of the first game. So instead, Portal 2 excises those elements but, in order to justify her continued presence and status as a villain, haphazardly brings her back to life and retcons her lack of hard feelings toward you as expressed in "Still Alive." So now her relationship with you is simply that she's mad at you for killing her, with little to nothing else going on. And when the game tries to complicate the relationship, it does so simply by virtue of giving GLaDOS a backstory that's entirely removed from her relationship with the player, which pulls the rug out from the potential impact of her changing feelings toward you. Again, not to say that there's nothing of merit in there ("Want You Gone" is chock-full of fun alternative interpretations to draw from), but it still ultimately loses sight of what made her character so compelling in Portal 1 and lacks the first game's flawless execution of that story and, more tragically still, its meta-analysis of video game storytelling in favor of Portal 2's over-emphasis on plot hung upon a framework of the Prometheus legend (which is cool, but doesn't have much point beyond that).

Ah well. Still a fun characterization, still a good game, despite their inability to measure up to their predecessors. Now, if you're looking for a character who was genuinely ruined, I'm both gratified and completely unsurprised to see that people in the thread have already brought up Samus as she appears in Metroid: Other M. The horror... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrwN5jS4bt4]