10 Irritating Video Game Tropes That Refuse To Die
2. Unwinnable Boss Battles
Your potion reserves have dwindled to critical levels; the end-of-stage boss you've been trading blows with for the better part of an hour has lost but a fraction of its health bar. You're resigned to your deathly fate, frustrated but confident in the fact that, after a session of dreary grinding to replenish supplies, you'll be back to finish the job.
Psych! You were never supposed to - or be able to - win, this was just to show you how horribly ill-prepared you were for the challenge. Death was the only possible outcome, so you just wasted all of those valuable consumables for nothing. In such cases, there's no way for the player to discern that their actions are futile. With that being the case, why even bother offering control to the player in the first place?
If only there existed another scripted medium that allowed developers to impart important information to the player without any room for poorly-communicated gameplay.
Oh, that's right, they're called cutscenes.