10 Video Game Clichés Everyone Is Sick Of

6. Crappy Portrayal Of Mental Illnesses

For the most part these cliches are little irritations and annoying mechanics that we see way too often but they’re mostly harmless. Not this one, this one really needs to go and it’s in way too many games. Far too often video game villains are portrayed as having wildly exaggerated and violent forms of schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, or bipolar disorder.

Painting these characters as caricature villains would be fine if it wasn’t offensively misrepresenting a whole bunch of people and continuing the total myth that people who have mental illnesses are dangerous.

This is already not great to put it lightly but there’s also a weird trend in games like Mass Effect of portraying people who have autism as geniuses or magic or the key to a great mystery and it’s all pretty offensive. This is one that’s definitely getting better with time but it’s pretty lazy and uninformed when it does crop up so more Hellblade, less Amy.