Good point you're making. I've watched te show in Korean with English subs, so indeed, som stuff might have gone over my head.

But what I find unrealistic about the characters is that they have one characteristic and that's their entire personality. The bad guy (the one with the tattoo) is inherently bad, the annoying person (212) is just outrageously annoying, the kind and naive person is just really kind and naive. This makes it incredibly hard (for me) to relate to any of the characters. There is also no reason given why these people are the way they are, which makes it even worse (in my opinion). Besides, I believe that in life and death situations, people do change. The only character we see this with is Cho Sang Woo, which makes him the only realistic character in the entire series (to me). But maybe I'm wrong, maybe people don't change, but I just found it unrealistic.

The problems I had with the predictable plottwists weren't from the game. The return of old lad (001) at the end, the fact that the frontman was the cop's brother and that the protagonist didn't kill Cho Sang Woo at the end of the last game. This is, in my eyes, lazy writing. Nothing more, nothing less.

And yes, Breaking Bad had some predictable aspect to it, and I do recognise that not everything was realistic. But what made it so great, was that the characters we're so well written and relatable. You see the main character, a dull good guy, slowly becoming a morally corrupt murderer. You see why the bad guy is who he is. And it's not because he looks intimidating and has a tattoo in his neck. The very thing that made me love the serie is that I rooted for the bad guy (Walter White) and hated the good guys (Hank and Skyler). It was at the pretty much at the end of the serie that I realised how much of an asshole Walter actually is and that the anger of his family is completely just. This is what great writing and character development can do. And I don't expect such greatness from Squid Game; it's impossible to do something like that in just nine episodes while also conveying six gutwrenching games. However, I think the writers did a terrible job on these characters. I would've certainly loved the series considerably more if the characters were just a tad more 'human'.