Empty Room Psych: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Perhaps the oldest example of this is the Atari 2600 game ''[[Adventure (1979 video game)|Adventure]]''. There is a dead-end section of three rooms where no items appear.

** Possibly subverted in that almost any room can contain items in Game variation 3 (where all objects are placed randomly), and two of rooms that appear in Game 2 and 3 as dead-ends instead appear as important locations in Game 1 (where the layout of the kingdom is smaller and simpler). It's only in Game 2 that those rooms are entirely unimportant.

* The "Adventure Fields" in ''[[Sonic Adventure]]'' were absolutely rife with these; one particularly strange example is aboard the crashed [[Airship|Egg Carrier]] as Knuckles, it's possible to gain access to an area often referred to as "Eggman's Fun Room", a strange room of bright colors, a bed, and what appeared to be toys. The place served no purpose and wasn't even accessible to most characters, and was quite perplexing to some players.

 

* Empty rooms are found painfully frequently in amateur [[Interactive Fiction]]. Many authors implement houses with bare-bones bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, and so on; smarter authors either make these locations more interesting, or omit them with a [[Hand Wave|hand-wave]] along the lines of "There's nothing you need in there."

* There is a 400-story skyscraper in ''[[Zork]] Zero,'' comprising nearly ''2,000 rooms,'' of which only three contain anything at all—and one of those three is an [[Easter Egg]]. The puzzle is working out which rooms you need to visit. (The clues are in the [[Feelies]]).

* ''[[The Secret of Monkey Island]]'' has the church on Melee Island - one of the first places you see...which is utterly empty for most of the game. Its only use is in the very final part where you are taken there automatically {{spoiler|1=to stop LeChuck and Elaine's wedding.}} You can therefore play through the game without choosing to go into it at all.

 

* ''[[Star Wars Galaxies]]'' has quite a few of these in every city in the game, including a theatre, the entire palace from Episode 1, a decorated beachfront with umbrellas, and a futuristic city-scape built on mountain tops with an impressive view. These do have a purpose in an MMORPG, as potential areas for chat, exploration, or deeper in-character roleplaying than normal games. Such empty rooms are expected and indirectly given a use as places that players can take their characters to get away from others or to immerse themselves further. ''[[EverQuest]]'', ''[[City of Heroes]]'', and ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' also do this.

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' initially suffered from this. The earlier games in the 'verse had established the existence of certain places, but the developers simply didn't have time to flesh out the entire world. Placeholders, [[Insurmountable Waist High Fence]]s or other obstacles were added to (unsuccessfully) keep players away. Many of these locations were fleshed out in subsequent patches or expansions. Notable examples include Silithus, Searing Gorge, Maraudon, Dire Maul, Naxxramas, Karazhan, Zul'Gurub, Ahn'Qiraj, Mount Hyjal, Forlorn Ridge, Outland, Northrend, Black Temple, Icecrown Citadel, Ulduar, Uldum, the Emerald Dream, Grim Batol, Quel'Thalas, Zul'Aman, Gilneas, Blackwing Lair, the Caverns of Time, Undermine, Kul Tiras, and Old Ironforge.

* In ''[[Gaia Online]]''' ''Zomg!'' game, there are a number of areas that are empty or have NPCs that just stand there and don't say or do anything. Usually, this is because of the fact that ''Zomg!'' is still in its beta testing stage and the gameplay (especially the earlier levels) are still being redone and altered. For example, the Barton Greens stage once had a golfing minigame, but that was scrapped and resulted in a screen with a Scottish NPC that doesn't say or do anything.

 

* There is exactly one intentionally empty dead-end in ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]''. It's called the Game Over Room, from the decoration that matches the message you get upon [[Everything Trying to Kill You|everything succeeding at killing you]]. It's the safest room in the game—in the Game Over Room, the only thing that can kill you is the suicide button. It even says so right there. {{spoiler|Except it's not actually empty in the full game. It has one of the secret items needed for [[100% Completion]].}}

** The {{spoiler|Ryu Hayabusa room}} has a fake error message box that falls and kills you.

* ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'' contains an inverted example of this, as the [[Game Shark]] 'moon jump' code revealed a large, empty room hidden under one of the toxic waste pits in Rusty Bucket Bay. Though this doesn't actually have a purpose in the final game, hackers have found leftover Stop 'n' Swop data that may hint to a former purpose of this room.

 

* ''Avencast: Rise of the Mage'' has an area in the academy of magic with three seminar rooms you can walk into... and one, apparently unremarkable, that you can't. Some players nearly drove themselves mad trying to get into that room.

* ''[[Baldur's Gate]] II'' averts this by allowing you to press a key when you're in a room. Surprise! All removable items are now [[Notice This|lit up in a nice shade of cyan]]. This is only possible with ''Throne of Bhaal'' installed, though.

* An all-too-common failing with beginning ''Neverwinter Nights'' mod designers. Sometimes you can even run across entire ''levels'' with not even the weeniest bit of flavor text.

 

* ''Pokémon'' Players have been searching the answer to the following question, ever since ''[[Pokémon Red and Blue]]'' versions came out: "What-the-hell IS in the inaccessible grass next to Pallet Town?!" The wildest theories have found their way to the internet, from wild Celebies (a Pokemon that didn't even exist in that game) over rare items to near invincible Pokemon on level 100...however, if you use a hacking device to cross the barrier in front of the grass, you'll find that inside there is just one thing: An Instant-Game-Over. Once you set foot in the grass your game crashes.

** It is possible to get into the grass if you go all the way north to Viridian City, where the patches end, then use the walk-through-walls code to enter the patch of grass from the north, onto a panel of grass one tile beyond the east or west edge of the grass. Walking in it will encounter Route 1 Pokémon on Route 1, and (I think) nothing in Pallet. Walking far enough from Pallet will find...[[Wrap Around|a glitchy version of Pallet Town]]. Kick in the face or what?

* ''[[Sailor Moon: Another Story]]'' does this massively, and often in no-encounter settings. The hospital, elementary school and university in Tokyo have many repeated identical rooms with nothing but background objects. Later in the game you come across towns and ruins with whole buildings that contain nothing. Even worse, there are many barrels and similarly-inviting background objects, and only three of these in the whole game have items (necessary for [[100% Completion]] of course).

 

* This is one of the biggest complaints about ''[[Quest 64]]''. Don't expect most rooms to have anything, lest you be driven to madness; the ''whole gameworld'' is mostly empty. {{spoiler|Just don't get frustrated and ignore the conspicuously large patch of desert in the Barrens...}}

* Dungeons in ''[[Ys]]'' games tend to have many blank dead-end rooms that seem to have no other purpose than to make backtracking more of a pain.

 

* The Ramses Hed Docking Port level of ''[[Dark Forces Saga]]'' has a smuggler's ship docked with the space port. The goal is to find your way into the ship to plant a homing beacon, but when you enter it you have two choices of direction to follow. If you go left, you will navigate a seemingly endless series of corridors and rooms, blasting stormtroopers and aliens, until you arrive at ... an empty room. It's supposed to be the bridge on the front of the ship, but here's the rub: you're supposed to plant the homing beacon on the ''aft'' end of the ship. If you don't remember this tidbit, you're liable to spend hours searching for the switch, door, etc. that will end the level.

** There's also two ''incredibly'' hard to access rooms that don't give you anything (possibly something was intended to be there; [[Dummied Out]]?) First, there's the prison level. You're given a code that will open the door of the guy you're trying to rescue. However, there's a cell that opens with a code that isn't written ''anywhere.'' Should you stumble onto it by trying different combinations, the door will open, giving you... nothing! Later, on Jabba's ship, there's a chute you drop through with a switch on the wall. With inhuman split-second timing, you can trigger a door to open... in the lower area you end up in if you fall into a hole in a certain part of the room (it's filled Gamorrean guards, the pig guys from ''[[Return of the Jedi]].'' In this game, they're big-time [[Demonic Spiders]] material, very durable and their axes taking a lot of damage. Close quarters with a zillion of them? YOU WILL DIE.) Fight your way through what was intended to be ''certain death'' for the player, and you can get to a room... that has nothing.

* ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|F.E.A.R.]]'' pulls this off with aplomb when you first enter the Armacham office building. You survive an intense firefight on the roof, and then... spend around ten minutes walking through a dimly-lit office building with ''nothing happening'' and you very likely jumping at every little shadow or slight noise. Worse is that there are signs of a struggle everywhere: broken windows, blood, the occasional corpse... but no indication as to what caused any of it. It's almost a relief when the enemies start showing up again half a level later.

 

* ''[[Silent Hill]]'' may be the one series entirely ''built'' around this trope, because the games ([[Genre Shift|at least the early ones]]) involve psychological horror rather than full-fledged Gorn. Despite the fact that [[Nothing Is Scarier]], an empty room is probably vastly, vastly preferable to a room with [[Eldritch Abomination|something in it]].

** In ''[[Silent Hill 1]]'' there are several empty rooms in the game. No items, no monsters - nothing. Dissapointed, you turn to leave, when suddenly - [[Scare Chord|breaking glass]].

* ''[[Fatal Frame]]'' does this a lot. Granted, most of the rooms in the games will ''eventually'' have something in them, but it is often the case that the first time you go through them they will be totally empty. The games also make a point of having you backtrack through previously explored areas which will frequently be empty. [[Nothing Is Scarier|It is really, really creepy.]]

 

* Parodied by ''[[Homestar Runner]]'''s "Thy Dungeonman 3" game, where there really is a room that has nothing in it. It says so.

* Parodied in [[Infocom]]'s ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' text game. When you enter the engine room, the game tells you there's nothing there. When you use the look command it says, "I mean it, there's nothing to see!" Look a few more times and it finally relents: "Okay, maybe there are a FEW things to see..." And by few they mean about ''five''.

* Played incredibly straight in ''[[Glowgrass]]'' where a room is pretty much described as empty. {{spoiler|The cupboards are concealed by touch panels.}}

 

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto]] IV'' has several empty apartment blocks with rooms you can enter. Some of them are occupied during missions, but there are plenty that aren't. Can be especially unsettling if the building has a lot of floors (like the plus shaped tower blocks) - you get the feeling you are being followed or that something is around the corner. Luckily you can escape at the top of most buildings.

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' has caves that branch out into several paths which, most of the time, can lead deeper underground where diamonds and redstone ores can be found, lead to the surface, or even lead to underground structures like dungeons and mine shafts. However, some of the cave branches simply lead to a dead end with nothing in them other than the usual stone and dirt. Caves may also have an unnaturally large and circular-like room, but they serve no purpose.

* ''[[Skyrim]]'' suffers from this as much as any sandbox game would be expected to, but most notable is the Headless Horseman, a ghost NPC who randomly appears and patrols an area during the night. He has little dialogue that he only says in specific circumstances, cannot be harmed by the player, does not lead to anywhere specific (except a few undead monsters) and is not linked to any quest.

 

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