Empty Room Psych: Difference between revisions

[[File:00000_238400000 2384.jpg|frame|{{color|white|Move along, nothing to see here. No, really, we mean it. Move along!}}]]

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]]s 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 [[100% Completion]] by adding loads of [[Copy and Paste Environments|copy-pasted rooms]] with [[Missing Secret|nothing in them]]?

** When you get the X-Ray Scanner, you can finally be sure -- asure—a quick sweep with the scanning beam will reveal any false or breakable walls and any hidden items.

* ''[[The Goonies (video game)|The Goonies]] II'' has many useless rooms (most with various people giving useless advice, like an old lady who's lost her glasses, or someone saying that it's fun to play the game) and one completely empty room. Lampshaded at one point by an Eskimo in the ice cave. "I'm Eskimo. There's nothing here." The empty-room dilemma manages to combine with another one -- theone—the hidden-object/passageway dilemma -- todilemma—to make the game a ''nightmare'' for first-time players who are completionists. Mikey has three tools he can use during the "3D" portions (fist, hammer and glasses) to either make items appear or to make a doorway in a wall/floor/ceiling. Also, in the side-scrolling portions, Mikey has very short-range bombs he can use to locate doorways. All of these factors come together into making quite possibly the most frustrating Metroidvania ever.

* There is a 400-story skyscraper in ''[[Zork]] Zero,'' comprising nearly ''2,000 rooms,'' of which only three contain anything at all -- andall—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]]).

* Played to the hilt in ''[[Yume Nikki]]''. This being a game loaded with [[Nightmare Sequence|Nightmare Sequences]]s, you can guess [[Nothing Is Scarier|what they're intended to do to the player]].

* ''[[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]]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.

** There is a ''truly'' empty room in Silvermoon City. It has pretty scenery that matches the rest of the city but no [[NPC|NPCs]]s, 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.

** There are an unlistable number of [[Easter Egg|Easter Eggs]]s in this game that take the form of a useless but curious room or place. Some notable example would be Cut-Throat Alley, a small, named alleyway in Stormwind's Dwarven District with absolutely nothing in it, Challe's Home For Little Tykes, a random orphanage in the hills of Nagrand where a troll woman takes care of a few children and is rumored to secretly eat them, the crypt in Karazhan, a long expanse of tunnels under the tower with the nightmarish area called Pool of Forgotten Sinners (or something like that) which is a huge pool with dead bodies hanging upside-down from chains, and the Cleft in Teldrassil, a random cave southwest of Shadowglen which apparently only serves as a shortcut for attackers to enter the night elf starting area. There's also the abandoned Tauren village on the outer shores of Silithus, the random and useless Dwarf farm on the eastern shore of Arathi Highlands, and Newman's Landing on the western shore of Dun Morogh. The last is explained as where all Alliance players briefly appear before actually starting in the game. If you stand around there you can see new players flashing in and out like ghosts. They also put a merchant from Booty Bay with two guards here.

* 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-- ingame—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]].}}

* Similarly, one of the World 3 fortresses in ''[[Super Mario Brothers]] 3'' consists of a few very large, empty rooms (though there is a boss at the end). There is, however, a time limit--andlimit—and no obvious way out.

** There were many [[Urban Legend of Zelda|weird theories]] about Dark Caves and what happens if you walk through them without using Flash. As with many similar [[Image Board]] [[Creepypasta|creepypastascreepypasta]]s, they were made up from start to finish.