10 Video Game Deaths EVERYONE Saw Coming
They may as well have had targets painted on their foreheads.
Is there anything worse than a plot twist so excruciatingly predictable that, when it finally comes around, all you can do is roll your eyes and say, "...Yup"?
With AAA and Indie developers alike focusing more on story than ever, games are often far more complex than the tried and tested formula of 'go here, kill the bad guy'. And even when they do fall back on this formula, there's nothing surprising about the bad guy's downfall, because that's the whole point of the game, right?
Most of the time, you go into a game knowing that, so it's hardly fair to single out those endgame deaths here. But what of the people your character meets along the way? Are you meant to be surprised when an NPC who helps you from the very start of the game is suddenly snatched away from you?
Some characters seem to exist just to get a reaction out of you, and if they had backwards-ticking clocks above their heads, it wouldn't have made their deaths any less inevitable. Although the event shakes up your character for the rest of the game, it's rather hard to empathise when you'd already called that person's demise many hours earlier.
10. Ra's Al Ghul - Batman: Arkham City (2011)
As far as Batman's rogues gallery is concerned, Ra's al Ghul is kind of the writers' get-out-of-jail-free card when they need a character to meet their gruesome end - mainly because his followers can basically bring him back to life any time they like.
Ra's is the leader of the League of Assassins, and, crossing paths with Batman in Arkham City, puts him through all manner of surreal trials, submerging himself in the Lazarus Pit halfway through and regaining his centuries-old strength.
After Batman obtains the blood sample he needs from him, Ra's al Ghul is later revealed to be the mastermind behind the plan to destroy Arkham City. Betrayed, Hugo Strange detonates an explosive inside the Wonder Tower observatory, killing him and sending Batman and Ra's plummeting to the ground.
Batman, of course, is able to glide to safety. But Ra's, after driving his own sword through his chest, is then impaled on a particularly pointy letter 'A' atop the Arkham City gate.
It's a good death, but as he's been revived already right before our eyes, it should have pretty obvious that he'd die again before his time in the series was over.