I really don’t like it when there are characters who can teleport freely. Not because I think teleportation isn’t cool, but because now the writers have effectively shot themselves in both legs and their own head. It always leads to characters that for plot convenient reasons “forget” that they could teleport. Or their powers get negated somehow because the author doesn’t know how/want to take teleportation into account for a specific scene.
I guess this point is more about authors giving their characters powers they don’t take into account than anything else. But teleportation is almost never handled properly from what I’ve seen through the years.
I guess I’ll elaborate a bit on what I mean when I say “teleporting freely”. If a character can teleport from one city to another with little problems. Then chase sequences, and travelling sequences now become fairly contrived if they happen at all. Especially if the character can take passengers, and they usually can to some extent, otherwise they’d arrive naked.
Sometimes the character is limited in the sense that they need to see where they’re going, which is more managable, but has another issue I sometimes see. So, what happens in-universe if this person attempts to teleport into a space already occupied by something?
Does the object or the person give? Assuming that whichever is the densest is the thing that doesn’t give, now the most powerful thing the teleporter can do is to pick up an iron bar, hold their arm out, and teleport in such a way that the bar is now going through the head of their opponent. Or grabbing their opponents arm and teleport the two of them in such a way that the opponent is now getting cut in half by a wall.
Teleportation needs a lot of limits and a very clear set rules to not be this highly inconsistent thing that varies wildly from scene to scene.
In the Destiny games, Guardians (and Awoken, but I’ll just focus on Guardians because I’m more familiar with them) can teleport, and while it seems like just a handy excuse to have characters pop in and out during scripted cutscene moments, there is actually a bit of nuance to it:
Whole bunch of yammering about Guardian stuff
Guardians can only teleport with the assistance of a little buddy called a Ghost who bears the light of the Traveler (the big, light-focused deity figure of Destiny who happens to look like a Death Star painted white), and it’s not so much “teleporting” as it is transmatting, or in other words, their ghost breaks down, then reconstructs them wherever it is they’re trying to go. Ghosts are also a Guardian’s link to immortality, so this does no harm to the Guardian in question.
Guardians cannot hop across extreme long distances. If they’re trying to go even to just another country, they need to have transport - for ground-based travel, that’s their Sparrow (basically Star Wars speeders), for air and intergalactic travel, they need an operational jump ship.
In areas that are sufficiently choked by darkness, a Ghost’s powers of light are restricted, therefore barring a Guardian from teleporting, and with the added risk of their Ghost not being able to revive them if they die.
If a Guardian’s Ghost dies (enormously difficult to accomplish, Ghosts are nigh-indestructible without their attackers wielding a specific kind of power)(or that’s how it’s supposed to be but that bit of lore kinda flip-flops), a Guardian is rendered merely mortal again. No immortality. No teleporting. No revival. Can’t even use their powers anymore. At that point, a Guardian may as well already be dead, given the enemies they tend to face.
Ghosts can transmat other things as well, but it seems like the upper limit is anything about the size of their Guardian, because you don’t see Ghosts transmatting entire warships or anything like that. This comes in handy for acquiring mission-vital objects, since Ghosts can just stash their data away until needed so the Guardian isn’t weighed down lugging something around while also being expected to have ready access to their guns when a fight breaks out. If said mission-vital object is needed in the same mission, then obviously, the Guardian just picks it up and hoofs it their own damn self.
While a Ghost is typically powerful enough and fast enough to pull their Guardian out of some dire straits, they’re still not slick enough to dodge utter annihilation. If a Guardian gets caught in such a devastating scenario that they can’t possibly teleport out of its way (such as a ship’s core going nuclear and the Guardian is stuck in the bowels of the thing), that’s a done deal for them, and worse, there won’t even be a body for their Ghost to revive when it’s over.
Personally, there still feel like times in-game where the devs forget their own established rules (such as Ghosts being next to impossible to destroy, except when they’re not), so I would like to see the mechanics more firmly hammered out, but what we’ve got at present is actually pretty sturdy, as far as not making teleportation this stupidly busted ability relative to the universe it exists in.
Or the extremely worse option: someone’s getting telefragged.
They use it to gain advantage and often cutting their prey the road.
More like said person/object would be pushed/punched/kicked at very, very high speed; unless it’s Laila: she teleports through portals, so the victim would just be sucked.
If it’s a wall, then they just instinctly slow down to avoid smashing themselves in the impact; T. and Lian could use the momentum to redirect themselves with another teleport, Lian could also use her claws to “wall walking”.
Same thing as colliding.
More… Splatted against a wall
Sorry, they don’t do that. Ok, Laila does.
PS: Sorry if I used this answer to talk only about my character
Also another thing I rarely ever see teleporters in fiction take advantage of, if they can take passengers. Is to teleport with their opponent as high up in the air as possible, and then teleport alone back down before they gain too much momentum themselves.
Falling from great heights is deadly for humans, and if it doesn’t outright kill someone, it will probably break their legs.
True, but if they’re already in melee range, this is pretty much a one-hit kill/incapacitation. Of course, a better less risky battle strategy for the teleporter itself is probably to stay at range and fuck around as “multiple” snipers. They got them surrounded. Would probably also be devastating for enemy morale.
Or just find a nearby heavy object and Looney Tunes everybody. “Mike drops? Hah, I do piano drops.”
But more than teleportation, the superpower I see more stupidly (not) used is super-speed, aka the “lol no” superpower. If you move faster than people can see you, then there’s really nothing they can do about anything you want to do, and you should capitalise on that.
True, but my dislike for teleportation isn’t because of the teleportation itself. But more that it often just turns into an inconsistent mess, where the characters actively avoid doing smart things like teleporting objects into people, teleporting with passengers up high etc. Or actively do nothing so that some monologue, or other plot contrivance can happen.
Teleporter: I’m not going to teleport my worst enemy right above a volcano and then leaving them to fall into it!
Their sane ally: Why?
Teleporter: So that the plot can happen, of course!.
Again, my dislike for teleportation isn’t that they can teleport, but that authors rarely let teleporters fight smart. Teleportation is insanely powerful, and it’s like the authors balance encounters by not letting them do the obvious smart things.
Ah yeah, ye olde self-regulating teleporter. How fortunate for the story that someone willing to kill, or fight smart did not get the power of teleportation, would be very inconvenient for the plot if that happened. By virtue of the sheer versatility of this power, one creative / good teleport is enough to end almost all combat encounters imaginable. Even if you don’t want to kill your opponent, it’s still basically a “one-hit kill” power to end encounters.
I just want to repeat myself again, that my dislike for teleportation is not teleportation itself. It’s that they are almost never allowed to fight smart, or things happen within their range that they could put a stop to in about one second, but they don’t so that the plot can happen.
Also I think I’ve said everything I have to say on the subject, I feel like I’m both repeating myself and derailing the thread.
You can play as an empathetic anarchist who wants to expose the crimes of the government and goes out of his way to save innocents that got caught in the crossfire. I wouldn’t say you can be a hero though, but you can definitely toe the line between the antivillain and antihero territory.
I’m unsure if this next thing I’m about to mention fits better in this thread, or the thread about disliked ROs. But since it’s only when compared to the other available romances in the game that I dislike this trope, I will mention it here.
So, let’s say you have a game with multiple romances, some only for straight characters, some for lesbian/gay characters, and some open for both. Now let’s say that you are able to marry some of these romance options, and that in this setting, same sex marriage is all good and legal.
But then you look at which ones of these romance options you are able to marry and you see that you can’t marry any of the options open to a m/m relationship.
Just going to use dragon age inquisition as an example, you can’t marry Dorian, the m/m only option, and the relationship becomes long distance anyway. And you can’t marry Iron Bull, the bi option, and it seemed like he didn’t like the idea of a marriage either way.
Now I like both of these romances on their own, but when compared to the other romance options in the game. I can’t help but feel that it’s kinda scummy that both of the m/m options seem to offer less commitment to the relationship than the m/f and f/f options in the game.
Not all m/f romances in DAI get the marriage option. Cassandra doesn’t get married. Blackwall doesn’t get married. Josephine doesn’t get married. Cullen and Sera are the only one who can get married. I suppose they decided to go with their personality or something?
You didn’t miss anything though lol the Marriage scene is like 2sec of awkward Smooching.
