Dungeon Bypass: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

 

 

Makes players of [[Role Playing Game|RPGs]], [[Action Adventure]], and other such games with dungeons wish they could do something as easy. Occasionally, they can, though it usually isn't intentional. This usually results in [[Sequence Breaking]].

** This is [[Foreshadowing|foreshadowed]] in the very first episode of Strikers, where Nanoha uses Divine Buster to break through the walls when rescuing Subaru from a fire.

*** Teana repeats the feat in ''[[Sound Stage X]]'', {{spoiler|having learned Starlight Breaker from Nanoha}}.

** One of the [[OAV|OAVs]] does this too, with an underground dungeon a demon generates. Lina just blasts downward through all the floors, and comments that it's kinda stupid that the monster is ''always'' at the bottom floor of these things.

** Gon also did this in a later story arc. He and his friend had been manipulated into a mansion by a tough enemy talented in anticipating their movements (and who knew where the doors were). The heroic duo started kicking through the walls...

* In ''[[Fate/Zero]]'', the [http://imageshack.us/f/338/0000000000000.jpg/ famed mage Kayneth el-Melloi finds the hotel he rented out and filled with traps and summoned monsters] according to accepted form for a conflict between Association mages to be a [http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/8726/kaynethtrolled.jpg waste of effort] when the [[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty|highly pragmatic]] (and collateral damage-insensitive) mage-assassin [[Combat Pragmatist|Emiya Kiritsugu]] {{spoiler|simply brings down the entire building with explosives}}.

** See the scene from the animated adaption [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdNN81bioHc here].

* Both subverted and played straight with the Maze Card in ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]''; trying to fly over the walls causes them to grow (or turns the maze into an Escher masterpiece), but the Moon Bell knocks down the walls in a straight line.

** Earlier, in the Alabasta arc, Sanji invokes this trope by realizing the easiest way to get to the clock tower in this maze of a city is to kick through the walls of every building in his way. This later comes back to bite him in the ass when he overhears townsfolk complaining about the repair work they'll have to do.

* In a short story of ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'', the SOS Brigade are stuck acting out a typical Medieval RPG in simulated space. Not only do they bypass a lot of dungeons and battles (by threatening an NPC, no less), but the biggest use of this trope is found when they reach the final dungeon, still at level one and probably lacking all the key items and skills they need to beat the last boss. The solution? Mikuru accidentally casts two doomsday level spells at once, completely demolishing the entire castle and the [[Big Bad]] with it. [[Fission Mailed|And the hostages they were supposed to rescue.]]

 

== Literature ==

* In ''[[Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire]]'', Harry takes a shortcut through a maze by blasting through the hedge in order to rescue Cedric. Yet it takes a spell and quite some fighting with the branches just to open a small hole.

** [[Fridge Logic|Why couldn't he just do a repeat of the first task, again?]]

* In one of the ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] novels, Han Solo remarks that he "never saw a maze that couldn't be greatly simplified with a good blaster".

** This was probably inspired by Leia's way of getting herself and her rescuers out of a very tight situation in ''A New Hope''. Granted, it landed them in a garbage masher, but it still counts for something.

* In ''[[Posleen War Series|When The Devil Dances]]'' and ''Hell's Faire'', the "Screaming Meemie" units accompanying the 7000 ton "Bun Bun", tend to take full advantage of the passage of the SheVa smashing everything in its path flat. The resultant path is still impassable for wheeled vehicles, but for the tanks<ref>* the MetalStorm turrets replace the regular turrets on [[Yanks With Tanks|M-1 Abrams tanks]], whose hulls are left unchanged save for the turret interface</ref> traveling through the impressions that each section of SheVa tread leaves isn't a problem.

* In [[Codex Alera]] the Vord bypass an impenetrable Canim fortification by tunneling underneath it to attack them from behind. It took the Canim completely off guard because the Vord had enough [[We Have Reserves|reserves]] to continuously attack the front while tunneling behind.

* In [[Esther Friesner]]'s ''Elf Defense'', our heroes are stuck in a [[Mobile Maze|magical semi-sentient hedgemaze]], which has just separated the college professor being pursued by a dragon from the elven prince who actually knows how to ''fight'' a dragon. No problem: the Welsh au pair calmly picks up a sword and proceeds to chop her way through the first hedge in the way. The maze, not being stupid, immediately opens a clear path for her.

* In Robert Asprin's ''[[Phule's Company]]'' series, the Omega Mob tends towards solutions like this. The key example comes in the first book, where Phule's troops (a gang of misfits that were already considered too irregular for the Space Legion, which is already an irregular military force) are going up against one of the finest military units in the galaxy in a series of competitions. The second event is the challenge course, which is to be run "under combat conditions" with full military gear. The regular Army unit runs the course perfectly, setting a spectacular time as they do so. Phule's company literally ''destroys'' the course, blowing down walls, cutting away barbed wire, and in general ''using'' their full military gear to wreck everything that gets in their way, and get away with it through [[Loophole Abuse]] and because the rival commander was too damned impressed to push the point.

* In [[Percy Jackson and The Olympians|Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth]], both the heroes and the villains are searching for [[MacGuffin|Ariadne's String]], which allows a [[Dungeon Bypass]] of the famous Labyrinth of [[Classical Mythology]], which is now much larger, and beneath all of the United States of America. {{spoiler|Luke finds it, but Percy works out another Dungeon Bypass, a "clear-sighted" mortal, who always know the way through the Labyrinth}}.

 

== Live Action TV ==

{{quote|'''Bra'tac:''' The shield generators are far below, there -- in the very bowels of the ship. We must climb down several decks, through the length of the ship. Then, taking our weapons, we must--

'''O'Neill:''' ''(shrugs and tosses grenades down the shaft; the generators explode; he looks back at Bra'tac)'' Grenades. }}

*** Obdurium appears in some supplemental materials and has a hardness of 30, which is really just obscene.

*** However, in fourth edition D&D, items and walls no longer have a hardness rating, which means that a weak but determined character can ''punch through them''.

*** So much that the remake of ''[[Tomb of Horrors]]'' has replaced all of its Adamantine Doors with "Spell-Hardened Steel as Hard as Adamant, but loses its magic if you dismantled them."

** In [[Tomb of Horrors]] At least one group of adventurers has made it through without a single casualty by having a team of dwarves dig around the traps and obstacles with non-magical mining equipment over the course of several weeks. The writers planned for ethereal travel, melding into stone, magical defenses, teleportation, etc. but never expected an ordinary pickaxe and a group of patient, careful adventurers.

* Several games have [[Sequence Breaking|shortcuts that lets you cut through large sections of the dungeon]]. In World 1-2 of the original ''[[Super Mario Brothers]]'', for example, you could smash through the ceiling and run over the entire level all the way to the end... and then keep going and skip half of the ''game''.

** And world 4-2 has another warp zone (better hidden, but still accessible) to let you skip to the last world, cutting out roughly 80% of the whole game.

** Playing as Luigi or Toadstool in ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' allowed you to easily bypass large chunks of several stages.

** The Lakitu's Cloud item in ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' lets you skip entire levels. Then there are the [[Warp Whistle|Warp Whistles]].

** In ''[[Sonic Unleashed]]'', [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H9Dw9CgYqA there's one stage that can be won in under five seconds by Sonic turning around and railjumping to the exit.]

*** ''Sonic Unleashed'' itself has gained a bit of a following for people who know level layouts and special tricks, allowing speedruns of certain levels. The Air Boost in this game alone can turn a platforming segment/puzzle into a two-second solution of [[Cutting the Knot|"Just jump and boost over it,"]] among a ton of other small tricks to speed up levels. Specifically, a couple levels in particular with the description of "Complete X Laps!" can be sequence broke by turning around at specific points, tricking the game into thinking you've reached a certain lap early.

* In ''[[Nethack]]'', a game which very much prides itself on its flexibility, you can begin the game with a pickaxe or acquire one very early on. A pickaxe can break down every wall, including the ones that separate one level from another. By diligent digging, you can literally bypass the entire dungeon, stopping only to bushwhack a few mandatory bosses before ascending to ultimate victory. This means playing with a very [[Low-Level Run|underlevelled character]], but is quite exciting. The technique is known as [http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Digging_for_victory digging for victory].

** And also has the nickname "Die for Victory" as the tactic generally kills characters very quickly. The benefit is largely that you'll go through so many characters that eventually you'll get lucky and end up with a somewhat stable setup.

* The old ''Ragnarok'' RPG had potions of phasing, which allowed you to walk through walls (except in the shop level) and even between planes, letting you skip the tedious process of looking for portals. If you walked off the map, however, you'd fall to Niflheim and take a lot of damage, usually dying.

* The RTS game ''Dungeon Keeper 2'' has a campaign level that has racing against the clock while your mission is the destroy the enemy Dungeon Heart where the Macguffin is stored in the far North, having to go through another enemy camp in the middle to get there and having overwhelming numbers against you with few resources while you're stuck in the far South. The obvious solution hinted by the mission briefing is to find the bypass. This can be done by building a bridge on the west side over the water and then tunneling past both bases straight to the enemy's Dungeon Heart. Another level gives you the choice of a frontal assault to be able to assassinate the enemy leader or to tunnel east and attack him in his own headquarters bypassing all his defenses.

* In the ''[[Disgaea]]'' series, units with flight like the Mothman and Masked Hero can move through enemy units, and disregard the height of terrain, making them extremely useful for any map where you need to get a certain point to complete it, as both of those things will frequently pose problems for normal units.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' one can bypass much of the Shinra Building and its guards by simply taking the stairs as opposed to fighting your way floor by floor. This is, however, incredibly boring, time consuming, ''and'' you have to put up with your characters complaining the entire way. There are a few bits of nice loot on the stairs, however.

** It is also possible to go past most of the Undercity plot by simply bribing the guards at the entrance (exit) and most other dungeons can be severely shortened through use of the transformation-teleport bug.

** And unofficially, one of the most popular [[Game Mod|mods]] for ''Shadows of Amn'' is an NPC that justs teleports you and your party to the end of the opening dungeon with any worthwhile items, quest hooks, and the equivalent gold roughly equal to the market value of all the [[Vendor Trash|junk that you could have picked off each damned corpse]] as well as a bunch of experience points. Because in a game with very high replay value, after a few times through, [[Scrappy Level|that dungeon really is that boring.]]

* In ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'', the supposed [[Door to Before]] in the Temple of Seasons can be opened from the "wrong" side by any decent rogue, skipping the entire dungeon.

** It is possible to do this in the Golem Dungeon in ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'', as there is a door right at the entrance that leads straight to the final room of the dungeon. It takes a ''lot'' of lockpicking skill to open it, however.

* Possible in many ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' dungeons if you use an all-stealth group. Having all druids is most effective, as they can occupy any slot in a group (tank, healer, DPS). Though Blizzard got a bit crafty recently and allowed some of the enemies to detect stealth.

** Rogues (and anyone with the Engineering or Blacksmithing professions) can pick the locks of some doors that ordinarily require keys found on bosses in that dungeon. Others can't be picked, however, and there's no way to tell except by trying.

** An interesting example happened in the past, when one of the players (called Angwe) set camp in a narrow passage (that had to be passed through to reach an important location) and killed every character he could. Other players had to be very creative to pass this place.

* In [[Dawn of War]] Dark Crusade, during the Space Marine stronghold mission an early optional objective allows you to direct [[Earthshattering Kaboom|orbital bombardments]] from the ''Litany of Fury'' by co-opting the Blood Ravens' communications. The Imperial Guard stronghold has a scanner that gives you line of sight to one point anywhere on the map temporarily. Orbital bombardment can one-shot an enemy stronghold building.

* Can be done on any mission in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' that does not require every foe on the map to be defeated as long as the players have Stealth or at least one has Stealth and the ability to teleport their teammates to their location. Stealth can be taken by any character by level 6, and the Stalker archetype has it as a required power at level 1. However, some enemies later in the game have + perception powers that allow them to see through stealth as well as some maps featuring obstacles that will suppress stealth if the player gets too close to them.

** The most impressive example of this is the final mission of the Katie Hannon task force. Players are expected to beat their way through hordes of [[The Fair Folk|Red Caps]], find a captured witch, and get her out through wave after wave of ambushes. This happens on an outdoor map, though, and the witch is capable of flying. As a result, it's become standard practice to fly to the witch, blow away her captors, and fly her out.

** Metroid: Zero Mission on the GBA let you use a morph-ball shinespark to acquire super missiles early, bypassing a few minibosses. It was a tricky technique, and probably more time-consuming than just killing the boss. Worryingly, the skipped bosses register as dead if you come back later, down to scenery-alterations caused by their death throes. If you didn't kill it, then what did...

* In the original ''[[X-COM]]'', most walls can be shot through with a powerful enough weapon. Eventually, units can be outfitted with flying armour and weapons powerful enough to punch through the hull of a U.F.O - making it possible to simply blast your way into the bridge.

** There's another spot where a door is meant to close before you can get to it. The intention is that you are entering on foot - with a warthog, you won't be slowed down by the enemies between you and the door, and with good timing and driving skills, you can wedge the warthog in the doorway, forcing the door to stay open. If you're also lucky, it's far enough through for you to hop out on the other side, bypassing having to fight your way to and through the back door.

** There are in fact many more examples which can be found throughout the game, like hugging the wall down a huge valley, allowing you to take a ride in the Pelican dropship, straight to the Scorpion tank in the 5th level.

* Some games with randomly generated dungeons, such as ''[[Persona 3]]'' and ''[[Baroque (video game)|Baroque]]'', will occasionally end up generating a floor's exit right next to its entrance. You can't bypass the entire dungeon this way, but you pretty much end up bypassing that floor.

** [[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]] has the Pure Seed item, which teleports you to the stairs down instantly. [[Awesome but Impractical]] in that, while not very expensive, you'd have to bring one for each of the up to 50-70 floors of the dungeon, can only find them as random drops or in the randomly restocked shops, and they would take up a lot of space in your bag...

** Several dungeons (the one that comes to mind the most is the Antagonizer's Lair) have a hidden back door that you can use to skip all the monsters and traps and go straight to the boss/Macguffin item/mission objective.

* ''[[Avernum]]'' sets these up intentionally in the first three games. Learn the Priest spell "Move Mountains" and look for cracked walls, and you can sometimes get around the baddies (or at least find sealed-off rooms.) Sadly, as of the fourth this is no longer possible.

* ''The Adventures of Rad Gravity'''s [[Very Definitely Final Dungeon|very definitely final planet]] has a nerve-wracking maze of [[Magical Mystery Doors|Magical Mystery Teleporters]], but it can by bypassed by glitching through the walls with the Teleport Beacon.

* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' differs from many RPGs in that instead of having to assemble the whole party in the transition zone in order to move to the next location, you just need bring one character there. If you have an experienced thief with well developed stealth ability in your party, you can bypass most of the heavily infested locations. Of course, sometimes the exit is behind a locked door but guess what? The experienced thief can steal the key!

* In ''[[King's Quest: Mask of Eternity|King's Quest Mask of Eternity]]'' it is possible to take a shortcut through the [[The Underworld|Dimension of Death]].

* In ''[[Little Busters!|Little Busters]]'', one of the routes in Ecstasy feature a dungeon. You have to pass through it three times during the story, but you only have to navigate through it twice, because on your third pass you are given a heavy machine gun which is used to simply blast a hole on the ground on every floor as a shortcut to the next one.

* The Ratchet & Clank series have had a couple of these, thanks to many platforms that the player should probably never reach still being made solid.

* The first ''[[Elder Scrolls]]'' game, ''Arena'', included the spell "Passwall". It allowed players to permanently destroy dungeon walls, letting them bypass tough enemies and other obstacles. They didn't include it in the next game, ''Daggerfall'', but enterprising players can make use of the wonky level geometry to move through the walls into a black space known as [[Fan Nickname|The Void]], allowing you to run along on top of the dungeon paths. Be aware, though, that while it's relatively easy to pass into the Void, it's rather more complex to get back out of it. These "features" live on in later Bethesda games, with the "tcl" (toggle clipping) console command.

** Though if you are going to use cheats you may as well mention one of Daggerfall's cheat-commands: jumping to a dungeon's quest locations<ref>That is, the points in a dungeon where the game tells the code 'you can place the thing(s) the quest is about here'</ref>, one after one. Combine with the Recall spell, and most dungeons becomes a breeze... well, so long as you aren't unlucky enough to arrive inside a monster or in a location that pops you into the Void, anyway.

* The [[Jet Pack]] item from ''[[Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg]]'' allows you to float indefinitely, but only at the initial hight you start floating from. Naturally, this means that if you can jump off from a high enough point, you can go over just about anything and go to pretty much anywhere in a level. At least one level in [[Slippy-Slidey Ice World|Blizzard Castle]] seems to encourage this to get around a particularly vicious slide.

* The 6th Terran mission in ''[[Starcraft]]'' has you rescuing a downed ship in the center of the map, surrounded by a ring of mountains. The game expects you, with your base in the east, to circle around clockwise to the west, taking you through the enemy bases on the way before you ascend the mountains around the ship and fight your way down to it. But if you put some units along the cliffs to the west and get sight up there with an air unit or a comsat sweep, they can kill a couple of anti-air turrets to create a safe landing zone for you to ferry them up there and fight a much shorter, much easier way to the ship. Alternatively, the downed ship has two worker units, some mechs and two bunkers defending it--destroying one of the bunkers gives you room to build a barracks, and you can fight your way out from the inside.

** The 7th Protoss mission is a terrible pain, pitching you against three strategically positioned enemy bases, but you only have to destroy a single building to win. Instead of building up your base and taking out theirs as is expected, you can simply utilize their invisibility and go kill the objective in about five minutes, as long as you take the right way in that lets you bypass most of their defenses.

** In the expansion pack, a mission has you escorting a leader unit to a beacon in the middle of the enemy base. If you take along an escort unit or two to clear the anti-air turrets on the way, you can use a Shuttle to fly her to the beacon, bypassing the enemy base entirely.

* This was the main reason the Teleportation Plasmid was removed from the original ''[[Bioshock]]'' game, as using it in the right situations could have skipped major plots in the game

* In ''[[Ragnarok Online]]'' the teleport skill and flywings would make bypassing dungeons possible if you got lucky enough. One dungeon in particular made this NECESSARY to access as it was in the middle of a lake on an island. Some quests, such as the fox quest in Amatsu which is necessary to access the dungeon are nearly impossible without getting around the hordes of hydras guarding the shrine. Seeing as how this dungeon was the best way to gain levels for a new acolyte becoming a priest it made poor acolytes spend half an afternoon trying to get lucky enough with their teleport skill to bypass the hydras.

 

== Web Comics ==

* The titular order in ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' skips two levels of a dungeon by taking the service stairwell.

** In comic [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0651.html #651], {{spoiler|Vaarsuvius teleports directly into Xykon's throne room!}}

* Duv in ''[[Goblins]]: Life Through Their Eyes'' attempts this (using slave labour to dig a hole into the [[Dungeon Crawl]]) in order to gain an [[Artifact of Doom]] which will restore her lost power. However, she only manages to bypass the hundred-foot-high gates, rather than the whole dungeon.

** [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] [[Averted Trope|unsuccessfully]] much later in the comic. Upon arrival at the [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|Temple of Fiends]], Black Mage suggests that the Light Warriors land their airship at the top of the temple, crushing a few floors in the process and "killing their way" downwards, as he put it. Red Mage disagrees, mainly because the airship's autopilot (designed by omnipotent [[Jerkass]] elder Mage Sarda) had been pre-programmed to land them at the entrance and their previous attempts to manually control the airships given them were [[Hilarity Ensues|uniformly disastrous]].

* ''[[Bob and George]]'' has this happen with the Wily Castle in almost every game retelling. Some of the Robot Master stages, too.

* Faced with a deathtrap maze of The Riddler's design and time running out, Batman commandeers one of the maze's flying robots (the Hand of Fate) to bring him to the Riddler's would-be victim in ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]''. Needless to say, The Riddler calls him out for "grand scale cheating."

** Another episode had Batman clear Mad Hatter's maze made of giant cards by climbing up and [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|running along the top]].

{{quote|'''Bart:''' Hey, I found a shortcut through your maze.}}

** Barely in the scope of this trope, but in another episode Mr. Burns and Smithers use their security clearance to advance through thick steel doors and other obstacles that can only be opened through retinal scanners and the like, only to see a stray dog at the destination who entered through the back door. The back SCREEN DOOR.

** And in another episode, when Marge was doing the tests to join to the Springfield Police Force, in one of them, she tried to climb a wall, but she has problems with it. Chief Wiggum notices that all the women had the same problem, that they don't use the door to cross the wall.

* Subverted in ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]''. Faced with a maze inside Raven's mind, Cyborg and Beast Boy try the usual tricks -- blasting the walls and flying over them -- but are thwarted and forced to go through.

* The opening scene of the ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy|Ed, Edd n Eddy]]'' episode "They Call Him Mister Ed" had Edd setting up a massive cardboard maze and placing Chunky Puffs (Ed's favorite cereal) at the exit. It was supposed to be an experiment of sorts, with Ed being the guinea pig (Edd even timed it), but Ed, simple-minded oaf that he is, simply runs through all the walls in a straight line to get to the cereal. Edd even complains "That ''isn't'' how you go "through" a maze!"

* In ''[[Superman: Doomsday]]'', when Lex Luthor's clone of Superman turns on him, Luthor retreats to an armored panic room that is lit by red lights (Superman needs yellow sunlight to retain his powers) and holds a pair of kryptonite encrusted gauntlets. Luthor attempts to lure the clone Superman in, but he merely locks the door, ''rips the entire panic room out of the building'', and casually drops it to the ground a hundred stories below.

* In an episode of the 1967 version of ''[[Fantastic Four (animation)|Fantastic Four]]'', Diablo learns the hard way that a panic room is no match for The Thing:

 

== Real Life ==

* The Israeli army has developed tactics for urban warfare that probably count as an example of this trope. Instead of going through booby-trapped streets and narrow alleys in which troops may be exposed to sniper fire, Israeli soldiers literally ''walk through walls'', using explosives to create passageways through houses and other buildings.

** This sounds not dissimilar to an event on the Green Line in Nicosia (the divided capital of Cyprus). Reputedly, the local Turkish contingent were suspected of discreetly expanding a blockhouse so it extended into the UN secure zone. The local UN commander responded by going on patrol one morning... driving a bulldozer.

*** Notably this happened during the Siege of Petersburg during the [[American Civil War]]. Union troops dug a mineshaft underneath the Confederate lines and set off a sizable stash of explosives. Death From Below, pretty much. The resulting fight was dubbed the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Battle of the Crater]].

**** The Battle of the Crater was ''supposed'' to have been a Dungeon Bypass, and it would have worked if General Burnside had been allowed to stick with his original plan: big explosion, specially-trained troops from the United States Colored Troops go around the crater (as opposed to ''into'' it), bypass the remaining defenses, and open the road to Petersburg. And then Meade [[Executive Meddling|stepped in]], replaced the well-trained USCT regiments with others that had no idea what would happen, denied Burnside the use of an electrical detonator so that his engineers had to use an umpty-thousand-foot-long ''rope'' as fuse, and...[[Downer Ending|yeah]]. Oh, and Meade [[Kick the Dog|managed to deflect all of the blame onto Burnside, too]].