When going into a dangerous area to rescue hostages, one needn't worry about getting them out of the area. In many video games, a rescue consists of merely locating the distressed and yelling "Get out of here!" or "Get to safety!" after which they will promptly go run off and disappear. Sometimes it's even as easy as just walking into them and collecting them like an item. Don't ask how these people know the best route to escape or how they get past all the hostiles you missed, especially if they were wounded beforehand; they're "saved", so it isn't your problem anymore.
An Acceptable Break from Reality, as many gamers find Escort Missions frustrating, and having to do one for each individual hostage you find would turn the game into a boring slog, especially if Gotta Rescue Them All applies to the game.
Compare Boring Return Journey, where it's the player who doesn't need to worry about escaping.
Examples:
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Action Games
- The Grubs in Hollow Knight burrow through solid rock to get back to their nest, yet apparently couldn't burrow through the glass jars that the player can break with one hit.
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity: In the mission attacking the Yiga Clan base, a Gerudo soldier can be freed from a cell. She leads the players to a hidden passage then tells them she'll find her own way back home, but following her reveals she actually walks all the way back to her cell.
- Machine Hunter: You're required to rescue a minimal amount of hostage in each and every stage (50 - 100%, depending on difficulty), and getting them to safety is as easy as touching them, at which point they simply teleport away while the game announces "Hostage Found". Never mind they're in the middle of an alien base filled with enemy soldiers, robots, and giant insects.
- In the Metal Slug games, the prisoners you rescue will simply walk away invulnerably through the battle, even though they're only wearing Goofy Print Underwear. You do have to stay near them for a few seconds to give them time to give you your reward.
- Partially justified in Not a Hero, as Bunnylord has a teleporter he uses to pick up hostages the player saves during one of the second set of levels.
- In Shadow Dancer, Shinobi rescues some hostages by simply approaching them.
- Wild Blood has you regularly coming across Morgana's captives imprisoned in cages, and you release them by hacking their cages apart. They simply run off-screen after thanking you and you get points instantly for the rescue, despite plenty of enemies everywhere who could easily re-capture them.
- In the second and third levels of Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena must save civilians of a village subjected to pillaging by pirates. The pirates will use civilians as a Human Shield until Xena saves them via using her Chakram. Upon being rescued, the civilians simply run off while the game adds a point to Xena's rescue tally; sometimes fleeing civilians literally run into walls and vanish from plain sight!
Action Adventure
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has the four hostage carpenters in the Gerudo Fortress who escape back to their camp without getting re-captured by any of the guards.
- Shiro in the 3DS version of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask manages to escape the Gerudo Pirate Fortress by running right past several guards who don't react to him in any way. Note that this is after he gives away the mask that made him invisible.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
- When Gerudo soldier Barta is captured by the Yiga Clan, Link has to rescue her from their base. The player cannot free her from her cell, but sneaking past the guards and then defeating their chief Master Kohga causes all the Yiga to flee, with Barta escaping in the meantime.
- In the sidequest "The Sheep Rustlers", Link has to rescue sheep stolen by monsters from a nearby farm. To complete the quest, all Link has to do is kill the monsters at Hateno Beach. The sheep are just left at the beach, and when Link returns to speak to the farmers they'll thank him for returning their sheep.
Beat 'Em Up
- Shank 2: After dealing with all the enemies in a place, the player often has to rescue trapped hostages in order to move on to the next part of the level. All the player has to do to free a hostage from their restraints is hold a key while in front of them. The hostage then jumps out of the screen after a brief run.
First-Person Shooter
- The Chivalry 2 map "Escape from Falmire" has the Agathians breaking open prisoner cages, at which point the captives try to flee. It is completely irrelevant as to whether the escapees reach safety or get cut down by the Masons. Only the final prisoner, a mighty war hero who is controlled by a player, must be escorted safely to the escape point.
- Downplayed in Descent: Touching a hostage brings them aboard your ship instantly. If your ship is then destroyed before finishing the level, you respawn in a new ship, but the hostages are now dead.
- GoldenEye (1997) requires you to save several men held at gunpoint in the "Frigate" level. Since you're on a boat, there's really nowhere for them to go, so they end up running aimlessly across the entire map.
- Averted in Halo. Rescued troopers accompany the player the same as any other ally. Civilians in Halo: Reach cannot fight, but they'll generally follow a distance from combat or stay put until a evacuation dropship arrives.
- Medal of Honor: Frontline: In one mission to free a prisoner from the clutches of the Gestapo, the player only needs to push him in the car to free him.
- Overload, did it like Descent above, along with it however, is that you need to rescue all survivors in all stages whenever available to obtain the Golden Ending.
- Inverted in PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2, where the enemy cops act like this trope is in play, simply tapping cowering or tied-up hostages and sending them off on their own with no further regard to their well-being. PAYDAY 3 plays it straighter, with hostages becoming invincible upon rescue.
- Ready or Not, like its spiritual predecessor SWAT below, has you force unarmed civilians/hostages into compliance and then tie them on the spot once they surrender. For incapacitated civilians/hostages, all you need is to report the situation.
- SiN: In the bank missions, Blade tells the hostages to run to safety. They flee through a random door that leads into a dark room. In one of the cases, J.C. comments if Blade tries following one of the hostages into one of the doors.
- S.W.A.T. series only has you need to force unarmed civilians/hostages into compliance and then tie them on the spot once they surrender. For incapacitated civilians/hostages, all you need is to report the situation.
- TimeSplitters 2's "Notre Dame" level has you rescuing several maidens. They, along with the Hunchback that helps you save the last one, run off and despawn once they get far enough away from you, but if you follow them you'll find they get all the way to the first staircase and then just... stop. The same applies to Ramona and Venus in the "Wild West" level, and the scientists in "Atom Smasher".
- Vermintide II: The mission "Against the Grain" has you rescue caged civilians from a war zone before they can be shipped off as slaves. Your work is done when you've opened every cage door; the captives de-spawn, even if they're surrounded by enemies while the player characters escape.
Light Gun Games
- Frightfearland has a particularly ridiculous example where, barely seconds after two hostages run down a corridor in the opposite direction of the players and are marked "Rescued", the camera spins around to show a huge swarm of enemies coming from that exact direction
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Platform Games
- Banjo-Kazooie has the Jinjos who stand around crying for help until you touch them. Afterwards, they simply fly to safety. Why they can't just do that on their own is never explained.
- Bio Menace: Each stage contains a hostage with a key card you need to the exit. Upon rescue, they have a short conversation with Snake Logan, then simply vanish into thin air.
- Drawn to Life: In every stage, you're tasked with rescuing three raposa from shadow cages. When this happens, they'll disappear, and reappear with you when you complete the level. This is also true in the sequel, where rescued characters will simply show up on the new island after you find them.
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land: To save the hidden caged Waddle Dees, Kirby simply has to touch their cages. The two will spin around, and then the Waddle Dee vanishes in a puff of smoke as Kirby waves. The Waddle Dees rescued by completing other objectives are even easier to rescue: as soon as Kirby completes the objective, the Waddle Dee is saved. Downplayed with the end-of-level Waddle Dees, who presumably immediately hop on the warp star shown after each level to return to Waddle Dee Town (along with all the other rescued Waddle Dees, who somehow got to the end of the level as well), but how Kirby finds a spare warp star is anyone's guess.
- In the Genesis version of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, The first objective of each stage is to rescue a number of kidnapped children. All Michael has to do is get close enough to them, upon which they yell "Michael", and then leave the stage by riding a beam of light.
- In Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos, Sylvester and his henchmen have captured all of the mouse villagers of Mexico, except for Slowpoke Rodriguez and Speedy Gonzales, the former of whom informs the latter of the incident. When Speedy comes across a caged mouse, he rescues it, who says "Gracias!". These caged mice serve as checkpoints, meaning that when Speedy loses a life, he continues from the last mouse he rescued.
Role-Playing Games
- Fallout 4: While the Sole Survivor has to dispatch the hostiles before freeing kidnapped settlers, there's no need to protect them on the return travel.
- Guild Wars 2: Several heart quests and events call for the player to free enslaved NPCs. All you have to do is interact with those people for it to count toward your score.
- In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, you can complete a rescue mission by just finding the rescued Pokémon in the dungeon without having to escort them out, hand waved by your team's badges having the power to teleport Pokémon.
Stealth-Based Games
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution: In the first level of the game, the main protagonist Adam Jensen is sent by his boss David Sarif to rescue Sarif Industries employees being held hostage by members of Purity First, an anti-augmentation extremist group. When he locates the hostages and ensures their safety, Adam is able to continue with the other half of his mission to secure the typhoon prototype. Jensen does however ask that they remain where they are until the building is safe.
- Hitman: Contracts: The Beldingford Manor mission has 47 rescue a hostage who was being held there to be hunted by the lord and his friends. One way to rescue him without alerting the guards is to break the fuse box, and while the guards are busy trying to fix the fuse box, 47 tells the hostage he's there to rescue him. The hostage says he was a star athlete in his university and runs off to safety while passing by the guards who are still inspecting the fuse box.
Survival Horror
- The first three Dead Rising games averted this: finding survivors and getting them to a saferoom made up a large chunk of the gameplay. Dead Rising 4 however, plays it straight.
- Manhunt: The second mission that takes place in the abandoned zoo level, has Cash rescue his parents and siblings from the hunters that are using his family as bait as they track him down. After rescuing them, he tells them to make a run for it, and they run out of the building they're in, with the assumption that they don't worry about being recaptured since Cash killed the hunters on his way to them. However, it was All for Nothing as in the next mission, which takes place in an abandoned mall, once Cash has disposed of the hunters in that mission, he's shown a videotape of his recaptured relatives being murdered.
- Mercenaries Mode of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis sees rescuing civilians from zombies as one of the main objectives of the game. Players have a limited amount of time to rescue them and if they're successful in saving them from certain death, the civilians will flee the area while dropping useful items as a reward.
Turn-Based Tactics
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 have Terror Missions in which you have to rescue a certain number of civilians to succeed. You only need to move any of your soldiers to a tile within the small glowing circle around a civilian to rescue them, upon which the soldier urges the civvie to head to safety (the exact line is randomized, ranging from calm reassurance that they're safe to loudly shouting at them to GTFO of the area), which they promptly do while conveniently not triggering any reaction fire from nearby enemies, and in fact they simply vanish into thin air after reaching their max movement range.
Wide-Open Sandbox
- Terraria: Throughout the game and depending on whatever you've killed, NPCs might start showing up while you're exploring, either bound, asleep, unconscious, or in one case playing golf with himself. Simply interacting with any of these once will "free" them and allow them to move into any available housing you have- as in, literally move into their designated home via Offscreen Teleportation once night falls, no matter where they were beforehand.
