10 Irritating Video Game Tropes That Refuse To Die
8. Stripped Of Power
This is amazing. The disc has only been nestled in its tray for five minutes, and already, your avatar feels like a God among men, hurling an endless fan of knives at trespassers and treating them to a sharp pat on the back with slyly-hidden kitchen utensils.
Oh, but you've overstepped your boundaries as a world-renowned assassin, so actually, all of that cutting-edge gear you've been swaggering down the street with needs to be reclaimed. If you want it back, you'll have to spend the next 20-odd hours retrieving all that was lost.
We get it, scriptwriters, the tired trope is supposed to provide the player with a taster of what's to come over the course of any particular adventure, but it only serves to elicit the exact opposite. You've given us a preview of all that's possible in your world and stripped away any surprise that would otherwise have accompanied upgrades to our arsenal. With prior knowledge of that fact, we're left to feel limp and flaccid in comparison.
Don't try and woo us with short-lived power trips. Let the sense of satisfaction from progression speak for itself.