10 Gaming Boss Fight Tropes That Need To Die

8. Not Really The Big Boss After All

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Ninth Sister Boss Fight
Nintendo

Turns out he wasn't really the big boss after all!

Oh, you tricked us you little scamp, you... Joke's on us, to which the egg on our chagrined faces will undoubtedly attest.

Taking The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess' Zant as one example from a vast pool of potentials, gamers have arguably been conditioned to expect these big, M.Night Shyamalan-style twists, completely robbing away the shock factor the developers were so obviously going for.

Of course Zant was only a servant of Ganondorf, in much the same way that Scarecrow was obviously working for Ra's Al-Ghul in Batman Begins (bit of a weird comparison, but there you go).

No genre is safe from this bait-and-switch, either, as a gamer could easily select a random game from their shelf (one would assume gamers have shelves) and they would likely encounter the old bluff.

Kuja in Final Fantasy IX is a good example, as is Orochi in the beautiful Okami, not to mention Edward Kelley in Nioh; gaming is saturated with "I'm not actually the real boss, mwuhaha!"

Could you imagine if the new Star Wars trilogy focused entirely on Kylo Ren and Snoke, then randomly whipped Emperor Palpatine out from nowhere for the last act?!

Madness...

Contributor
Contributor

Jedi Knight, last son of Krypton, backwards-compatible gaming nerd, Dark Knight of Teesside...