10 Modern Video Game Tropes Everyone Is Rejecting
2. Characters Acting Differently In Cutscenes/Ludonarrative Dissonance
The latter very much being an "academic" term, this trope is becoming increasingly more noticeable the more we've become made aware of it.
In short, this trope is when the actions a protagonist makes during gameplay don't match with how they're portrayed during cutscenes. One of the more blatant examples of this appeared in the Tomb Raider reboot in which Lara is shown to be deeply troubled with killing to survive within cutscenes, but effortlessly massacres dozens of enemies during the game.
Another and equally irksome example of this is when our over-powered and very competent hero becomes uncharacteristically foolish when it's time to move the plot forward and suffers a defeat or horrible injury that wouldn't have occurred had we still been in control.
Despite Ethan Winters of Resident Evil Village fending off hordes of infected alongside defeating powerful bosses, he nevertheless has a terrible habit of letting his guard down whenever there's a cutscene. It's these blunders which result in him getting in even worse situations.
Games like The Last Of Us Part II and Red Dead Redemption 2 have shown that it's possible for gameplay to feed into the narrative experience, so a future without this trope is possible.