Conspicuously Selective Perception: Difference between revisions

 

The worst examples of this are when you can shoot an enemy from a distance and they do not react; you're outside their designated sight/hearing range so they just keep taking hits until they die...then a few minutes later another guard comes by, takes one look at the corpse, and suddenly alarms are screaming and every guard in the level is shooting you on sight, because they just ''know'' it was you.

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== Curiously unaware ==

* The game ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' is practically based around this trope. Anti-hero Altair goes everywhere wearing his distinctive white robe with red ribbons and various weapons prominently displayed. In spite of this, he can fool people into thinking he is a harmless monk merely by adopting their typical posture. Even if guards are alerted to him, as long as he manages to break line of sight and hide for a bit they will completely forget what he looks like. If he walks his horse very slowly past guards they will never realise he is an assassin, yet if he takes his mount into a trot or gallop, they will immediately realise he is a bad guy. On the flip side, the streets are filled with idiots who for some reason are eager to shove Altair about (and only him, never NPCs) and absurdly persistent beggar women who for some reason ''run'' after Altair even if he goes around pretending he is a monk.

** Some of this is kind of justified within the plot, seeing as the [[Player Character]] is actually immersed in a computer simulation that allows him to explore his [[Genetic Memory]]. For example, the guards never learn what Altair looks like because ''the real Altair'' didn't get caught.

*** In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, the soldiers pretty much ALWAYS find cardboard boxes you're hiding in suspicious, and they check if someone's inside ''by shooting them'', which renders the trick pretty useless. Also, they sometimes walk right on them, which hurts you, but somehow they still don't notice there's someone inside.

** In Metal Gear Solid 4, much of the early game takes place in a various warzones. It is possible to disguise yourself as a rebel fighter during these sequences. However, if a PMC soldier notices Snake, they will immediately go full alert and ignore the other dozen or so rebels attacking them to hunt you down.

* In ''[[GoldenEye 007 (1997 video game)|Golden Eye 1997]]'', guards will not react to the "[[Hollywood Silencer|pew-pew]]" of a silenced gun even if it originates from inches away from them. They will also not notice you shooting their helmets off their heads.

** Also, in missions where you have to shoot out all the security cameras, nobody notices all the screens fill with static, one by one.

*** Still, the passenger airliner with the high-pitched whine of it's engines coming to a metal-on-pavement scraping crash is pretty high pitched.

*** Perhaps the Survivors had cleared all the zombies in, say, a two-thousand-foot radius, but the plane crash attracted the attention of a lot of zombies that were beyond it. The crash ended before any of those zombies detected the Survivors so they go back to ambling around, but they are now close enough (say, one thousand feet) to hear the electric motor run and close the distance.

** They can't. The entire country is in the midst of a complete breakdown. It's not that they always know it's you, they will shoot anyone who comes close.

* In ''Final Fantasy VII'', the room in the Shinra building where Cloud, Barret, and Tifa must hide behind golden statues while guards patrol on the other side of them. The guards sure seem diligent with their work, too bad they apparently have about 10 degrees of sight. For bonus points, getting caught summons a slap-on-the-wrist battle with the guards, and then for some reason after the battle a new set of guards comes to take over where the previous ones died and the whole thing can be repeated indefinitely.

* [[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]: The soldiers reactions to Mercer "Hey there's a guy running up a building, beating up monsters with his bare hands and flying by firing blood out of his wrists, ah, doesn't matter he's wearing a military uniform. Wait, there's a guy in a hooded top! KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!KILL IT!KILL IT!"

** It's worse than even that; running up a wall attracts no attention, but hand-over-hand climbing the same wall will get you caught in no time. That's right - scaling a wall in a manner that might be humanly feasible is a dead giveaway, but scaling it in a way that's physically impossible without superpowers isn't even worth a second glance.

* Variant on ignoring sounds not made by the protagonist: in an episode of ''[[Batman Beyond]]'', villain Shriek has a suit whose abilities include nullifying sound in the surrounding area. When Batman turns on the machines in a factory in order to mask his own movements, Shriek uses his suit to block out the sounds, followed by another adjustment so that he can still hear Batman moving around.

 

* So, ''Dexter'' has made a friend. Good for you, Dex. But perhaps you would prefer not to talk about murdering people in a crowded area in broad daylight? Just a thought.

* [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]] has the entire student body of Sunnydale High to be extremely ignorant to what Buffy, Willow, Xander, Glies and Oz talk about. Though, this also applies to most of the people in Sunnydale about anything supernatural.

 

== Blatant lack of awareness ==

* [[Ground Control]] 2: You meant to be sneaking past the guards but one of the guys you are controlling (Rho) keeps shooting at people, unless you get in range of their weapons nobody notices their comrades dying.

** You can also shoot infantry with scout drones without them noticing.

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'', and presumably other MMORPGs, will sometimes have an NPC you are attacking break and run, generally toward a nearby group of oblivious NPCs. You can continue attacking the runner with ranged attacks, and can defeat the runner so that they fall down right in the middle of the other group, and they pay no attention to the body lying at their feet. NPCs will also ignore things like eye-searing bolts of fire passing through their group to hit targets beyond them.

* [[Laura Bow|Laura Bow: The Daggar of Amon Ra]] has a minor but interesting case. In the armory room there is a large tapestry in the far left of the screen. To collect evidence, Laura can use this tapestry to hide behind it to surprise or remain undetected while other NPCs are dropping important clues [[Guide Dang It|at particular time intervals]]. You can use it from listening to a conversation to leaping out and scaring the hell out of another suspicious party, nobody will suspect anything (although one conversation with Wolf and Olympia lampshades this). However, in Act 5 when Laura is chased by the killer {{spoiler|a character, I might add, you could NOT use this trick against prior}}, hiding behind the tapestry regardless of how well it worked before (or the fact you blocked off all possible ways or indication the killer could've seen her hide there during the chase) will cause the killer to instantly know she's there and smack her with their spiked club of doom through the tapestry.

* While sneaking into the Gerudo fortress in [[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]], the guards pay no mind to seeing one of their fellow guards lying on the ground unconscious, with an arrow sticking out of their skull. They also can't be bothered to look up at the ceiling, no matter how much noise Link is making with his hookshot.