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Empty Room Psych: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|'''''Never''''' provide a dungeon without treasure. The longer they search and find nothing, the more your players will be ''convinced'' that the treasure is bountiful and exceptionally well-hidden. If left unchecked, they will eventually dismantle and excavate the entire site in their search for loot.|'''[[DM of the Rings]] XIX''', "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=713 A Pinata of Stone]", [[The Rant]].}}
Over decades of play, gamers have been conditioned with the notion that there is no such thing as an "empty" room -- [[The Law of Conservation of Detail]] demands that if a room is placed in a game, it must do ''something'' of value, be it a scripted plot event or NPC, [[Dungeon Shop]], [[Level Grinding|monsters to slay]], [[Inexplicable Treasure Chests]] containing [[Healing Potion|healing items]] or weapons/ammo, [[Plot Coupon|Plot Coupons]] to pick up, etc etc. After all, programmers and writers have limited time and money to do this, so they won't needlessly create a majestic cathedral and fill it with ... empty white space to distract the player from [[Notice This|more important stuff]]. Plus, why torture those players out for a [[Hundred-Percent Completion]] by adding loads of [[Copy and Paste Environments|copy-pasted rooms]] with [[Missing Secret|nothing in them]]?
The purpose of this trope is often to keep players on their toes, either by filling the room with enemies (essentially a trap room) or to get the above confused reaction. Players who run into enough consecutive Empty Room Psych's may overlook or ignore a new one, thinking there's {{color|white|[[Self-Demonstrating Article|nothing]]}} in it, which is of course the one that ''does'' have a goodie. Other times it is entirely unintentional, when the developers [[Dummied Out|forgot to remove a room]] that was part of greater expansion. Then again, it could be the designers really ''do'' just want to give us a [[Scenery Porn|pretty room]] for the sake of it.
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An [[Empty Room Until the Trap]] is a common cause of this. If not, you may be looking at a [[Sidetrack Bonus]], lucky you.
Not to be be confused with the psychological study of [[Go Mad From the Isolation|being left alone in an empty room]]. When played for terror, see [[Nothing Is Scarier]]. See [[Cow Tools]] for a non-video game sister trope.
{{examples}}
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* In [[Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors]]. The {{spoiler|"Sun"}} room is empty, apart from {{spoiler|a submarine,}} but said item is useless {{spoiler|the body of water it's lying in doesn't lead anywhere, due to the fact that building (not the Gigantic) you are in is in the middle of the Nevada desert, which aptly, is not well known for it's boating or swimming activities.}}
** Not to mention that {{spoiler|if you follow any of the storylines that lead to you entering that room, you are automatically killed before you can actually control the character to do anything in there.}}
* ''[[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.
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== MMORPG ==
* ''[[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. ''[[
* ''[[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|Insurmountable Waist High Fences]] 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.
** There is a ''truly'' empty room in Silvermoon City. It has pretty scenery that matches the rest of the city but no [[NPC|NPCs]], no items, no mobs, nothing. Several players have had their brains broken by the presence of this room that is simply ''there''. Even when new trainers for a new profession were added, they were put in an already occupied room rather than in the empty one. It draws large crowds of roleplayers who find the empty room cool. Perhaps this was actually its purpose - to act as a playground for RPers.
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** Newly opened zones of ''Cataclysm'' are more-or-less this to anyone who doesn't have the expansion. Uldum and Gilneas are accessible, there's just nothing there except a few mobs and critters.
** There are also a few bizarre areas that look like they would be important, but no quests send you there. There's too many examples to list them all but a couple of them are a strange island off the coast of Darkshore, which holds a demolished house, a wrecked boat and a few things like an Alliance shield, a burning campfire, and a lit lantern, but there's nobody there. Another is the seemingly abandoned campsite in northeastern Deadwind Pass, likely added just for an attempt at [[Nothing Is Scarier]].
* Since ''[[City of Heroes]]'' makes heavy use of Instanced Missions and [[Copy and Paste Environments]], there are quite a few examples of empty room psyche in the game. Most this takes the form of random offices and meeting rooms you may encounter on mission maps. There are certain places on the world map that really are empty and don't serve any purpose at all, like an outdoor Tiki Bar in St. Martial, the numerous floating islands in Ouroboros, and the "Emo Gazebo" in the Ski Chalet.
** Also interesting are cases of empty door psych. Most missions are accessed through doors, and on occasion you may encounter a door that looks like it should lead you to a mission, but never actually ''does''. Examples appear in the Midnighter's Club, the Ski Chalet, and even the Studio B room in the Architect Entertainment Buildings. It's possible these doors exist only to serve as "spawn points" for players logging in. (A player logging in will emerge from the nearest spawn point, such as a door or Hospital Teleporter). This doesn't stop people from wondering what the hell is behind those doors though...
* 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.
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*** It greatly depends of the definition of emptiness. If you want absolute emptiness, there is none in the whole universe. If you don't count elementary particles, energy fields and not too dense gases, then there are vacuum chambers, vacuum flasks etc. When you discard gases in general, then even a typical empty room is, well, empty.
**** If you want to get technical about it, atoms consist of electrons (an other subatomic particles) which orbit at relatively astronomical distances from the nuclei. Since such vast gaps exist between the nuclei and electrons of atoms, most of the universe is empty space.
***** Electrons do not orbit. They exist in a standing wave over the entire atom, and to an astronomically small extent, the entire universe. If you want to get really technical, according to the Many Worlds Interpretation, the universe (multiverse?) is a configuration space with three dimensions for each particle, and the only thing in it is an amplitude, which somehow corresponds to the amplitude of that universe. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, there are sets of entangled particles, each working this way, that combine and separate according to unknown laws. The closest there is to an empty space is something with zero amplitude, but these are infinitely small, and zero is still a number.
**** To put it into perspective, see if you can comprehend the distance between the earth and the sun. The distance between the Nucleus and Electrons are much farther than that, with the particles being far smaller in scale. To say that most of the atoms in existence being made up of only 99.99% empty void is actually an ''Understatement''.
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* Players of other ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games will find the rooms in ''[[Final Fantasy II]]'''s dungeons strange -- most of them are red herrings, not just empty but rigged with very high encounter rates. You almost always have to fight to leave the room. ''[[Final Fantasy I]]'' also has lots of empty rooms, but doesn't rig them this way.
** Savvy players will abuse these rooms to do the game's equivalent of [[Level Grinding]]. In the remakes, where stat increases are much harder to come by, these rooms take on a whole new meaning as ''training'' rooms instead of ''trap'' rooms.
** ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' throws some of these at you in the Sealed Cave. There aren't that many, but getting into one requires that you defeat a Trapdoor monster, which is very powerful and uses an instant death move which is almost impossible to avoid entirely.
** In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' there's a manhole in Corel Prision which only has an empty chest inside and that's it. No random encounters, no other secrets, nothing. Many, many person-years have been spent trying to find out why ([[Urban Legend of Zelda|especially given all the other rumors about the game]]).
** ''[[Final Fantasy Mystic Quest]]'': All of the cavernous "temples" on the southern continent. Absolutely nothing useful in them besides restorative items and one brief, optional encounter with the Old Man.
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== Shooters ==
* 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.
* Many rooms in the ''[[Descent]]'' games contain no useful items (or items you already have), and worse, are rigged with [[Monster Closet]] or [[Teleporting Keycard Squad]] booby traps.
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** Rooms like this abound throughout the series, containing nothing at all, a worthless item, or an enemy ambush. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOLiohZMzf4 The music] in ''RE 3'''s empty rooms [[Nothing Is Scarier|is one of the creepiest]].
* ''[[Clive Barker's Jericho]]'' has so many featureless dead ends that the psych factor is worn off by the first third of the game.
* ''[[Clock Tower (series)|Clock Tower]]: The First Fear'' has a few rooms like this, such as the mannequin room (Which contains nothing but [[Captain Obvious|mannequins]], {{spoiler|one of which has Bobby hiding behind it}}) and the trophy room.
* ''[[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.]]
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