Problems with the RPG capture trope

written 2025-09-21

A common trope in RPGs is the hero getting captured and having to escape. This often involves a prison level, which you have to play without most of your gear until you find it. I usually hate this trope, for 3 reasons.

Story

It makes the villain look incompetent. If you were in a postion of total control over the hero and still managed to let them get away, how am I supposed to take you seriously as a threat in the future? Double if the villain has no good reason for not just killing the hero.

Sometimes the player's even forced to surrender when it doesn't make narrative sense for them to do so, like in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2.

Linearity

In games part of whose appeal is nonlinearity, like metroidvanias, being suddenly forced into the prison level and having to complete it before you can access the rest of the game again can be annoying. This is a problem in Hollow Knight: Silksong, for example.

Shallowness

Because prison levels often involve not having most of your equipment or abilities, they are much shallower than the rest of the game. If I'm used to a game with a dash and double jump and 3 different weapons I switch between during combat and I think those mechanics make the game fun, I probably won't enjoy a level where most of those mechanics are disabled.