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Looking back at the YKTTW, that ambiguity was there from the start, but I believe that the heart of the trope is
"the Master Of Unlocking is a plot contrivance to explain why only certain doors can be opened, since only the master can correctly determine which doors are vulnerable to their awe-inspiring skills;"
However, it didn't get much of anything except examples while it was in YKTTW; there was no discussion about how to make the description clearer.
edited 28th Jul '11 11:57:59 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
The problem is that all three tropes are valid. "NPC who opens doors for you" happens often enough to be a trope (off the top of my head, Alyx from HL 2 and about a billion random soldiers in COD). A video game character or class that can open locked doors is extremely common, and is probably most faithful to the trope namer. "Character that unlocks things" is probably the weakest of the three, but does appear to have attracted some examples.
I don't really have any opinion on what should be done, only that something should be to clear things up.
The Other Troper
If all three are valid, we could split.
I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.
I got the sense, based on the trope namer, that this is a player character who spends an absurd amount of time hunting down keys, sometimes separate keys for two or more doors that are standing right next to each other. I.E. Link, Jill, Snake. Standing back, one could argue that most of these characters' time is spent looking for keys to repair various broken bridges. We could list the series, character, and most egregious example, for instance the hot key/cold key puzzle from Metal Gear Solid. I know that the Trope name is based on the meme, but considering the number of keys you hunt down in the Spencer mansion, and the fact that were all those doors just unlocked, you could continue straight to the Umbrella lab and destroy the Tyrant and save the day, Jill is herself an example of the trope.
If that's too broad, since it could easily apply to ALL video game protagonists given how ubiquitous keys are, I could definitely see the trope being characters like Alyx who unlock doors for you.
edited 9th Aug '11 7:18:00 AM by irishladdie727
The description right now keeps changing the scope of the trope. The first paragraph makes it sound like it's an NPC that opens doors for the player. The third expands that to any character, PC or NPC, that can open locked or otherwise unopenable doors. The fourth expands this to include any character, video game or not.
For the record, it looks like the broad "character who unlocks things" is the correct interpretation, which makes sense. I know that that's what I was thinking coming in, but the fact that this is masked with descriptions of other perfectly serviceable tropes was fairly confusing.