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{{trope}}
{{Video Game Examples Need Sorting}}
{{quote|"And that, as they say, is that."|'''Maechen, master of the [[Rambling Old Man Monologue]]''', ''[[
Unlike other visual media, games are interactive. That makes the contrast between interactive and non-interactive periods very stark. An Exposition Break is a specific break in gameplay that exists to provide [[Exposition]] to the player. Sometimes the breaks are short, entertaining, or unobtrusive, in which case the player will generally forgive or even enjoy them. [[Info Dump|Sometimes they're not.]]
They often have valuable game or plot information, so it's best not to skip the Exposition Break during the first playthrough if you want to beat the game. That said, [[Shall I Repeat That?|many games will ask if you'd like to hear it again]] just to be sure you ''truly'' understood all of it, sometimes [[Stop Helping Me!|too much]].
There is often nothing ''visually'' interesting happening during a Exposition Break. In fact, most of them consist only of text or (in more modern games with voice acting) dialogue. If the period is too long, the player will be itching to get control back or else tune it out, valuable info be darned.
They can be especially annoying if they can never be skipped or if an important part of the gameplay is inextricably tied to one that is somewhat less than entertaining. This kind sometimes overlap with [[Forced Tutorial]].
Exposition Breaks often precede a [[Climax Boss]]. This is fine for purposes of drama but annoying from a gaming standpoint, since losing means you have to sit through it all over again.
See also [[Exposition]] and [[Intro Dump]].
{{examples}}
* [[Assassin's Creed]] is particularly bad with this. Even though you can move around (and occasionally change the camera position), the cutscenes are very long-winded and don't add much to the plot.
* Played for laughs in ''[[
* Used to great and disturbing effect in ''[[
** There are also plenty of cases where you are trapped in a tiny featureless room with an indestructible window while something happens on the other side.
* ''[[
* The [[Sarcasm Mode|scary]] [[Pipe Shooter]] ''[[Clive
* ''[[
* In ''[[Doom]] 3'', among its many [[What Were You Thinking?|"What were they thinking?"]] moments id Software inexplicably chose to use cutscenes, which yank the control/camera away from the player in a FPS.
* ''[[Eternal Sonata]]'' has a 10-minute narration sequence recounting the love life of Frederick Chopin that consists entirely of words on the screen sloooooowly appearing while you see background pictures of...well, honestly, they're pictures of things that have NOTHING to do with Frederick Chopin or his girlfriend.
** You can skip these cutscenes and read them in the menu at your own pace though.
* ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' had the character Maechen, whose sole purpose was to provide these. Fortunately, they were all optional. ''X-2'' continues the pattern, but hangs a giant lampshade on it - during his conversation breaks, ''multiple'' boxes pop up giving you the chance to shut him up ({{spoiler|but if you do, you miss out on a scene later that counts towards [[One Hundred Percent Completion]]}}), the camera pulls out during each one to the point your party can no longer be seen, and it's finally revealed {{spoiler|Maechen is an Unsent who just wants to pass on what he knows before he goes to the Farplane}}.
* The ''[[
* ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' twice locks the player in a warehouse to watch the rest of the cast [[Mr. Exposition|infodump]] at one another for over ten minutes. Towards the end of the game, the plot abandons subtlety and locks the player character in a restraint chair for the same purpose.
** The original game did the same. It was billed and hyped as having no cutscenes because you are always in control of the player, but there are several spots in the game where you have to wait for an NPC to say his/her piece before the door behind will magically open.
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* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' hangs a lampshade on this with an optional subquest where you can get the Sand People's storyteller to tell you their oral history (including a gratuitous bit about Tatooine being the original human homeworld). HK-47 gets increasingly fed up of translating it all, but you can force him to stay there for hours (of in-game time, not play time, thankfully) if you want.
** To paraphrase "This is hours of repetition of meaningless tribal data. Please let me skip this, master." "No." "I hate you, master."
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2
* The ''[[Monkey Island]]'' series spiced these up by continuing to update the context-sensitive [[Action Bar]] during the sequence, often displaying silly possible actions.
** The first game was the undisputed champion of this - the scene where Guybrush steals the Idol Of Many Hands went haywire.
*** [[Rule of Funny]] preserves that scene in many memories, however, particularly ''because'' you can't see what's going on, just the commands being used.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Odium]]''. Only at the very end of the game, when you finally defeat the final boss, a NPC provides a long explanation of what exactly happened in the monster-infested city, before dying.
* ''[[Okami]]'' has a few of these, perhaps most notably from the period around when you gain access to the Dragon Palace to when you {{spoiler|reach Oni Island}}, when there are 4 or 5 ''very'' long cutscenes for gameplay that amounts to one dungeon and a boss fight.
* ''[[Paper Mario:
* In ''Saw'' (the video game that is a sequel to Saw and a prequel to Saw II), this occurs numerous times through the game. Very often the door you need to go through is locked tight until you pick up a tape and listen to Jigsaw's exposition, or watch a piece of exposition between Jigsaw and one of his test subjects.
* There's somewhat of an example in ''[[Suikoden V]]'' with the character of Egbert, a rather eccentric man prone to long, rambling outbursts about people who have wronged him in the past. The thing is, to recruit him you need to sit through one of his speeches at the lowest text-reveal speed. If you press a single button during it (which would usually advance the text) then he refuses to join you, and you have to walk all the way out of the dungeon and come back in order to try again. A particularly annoying example of why ''[[Suikoden V]]'' is a [[Guide Dang It]] game.
* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' (and its spin-offs) tend to devote a significant portion of early conversations to explaining the unique concepts of the constituent anime series for those who came in late. In some cases (such as series based in outer space or far future times) it's justified, but other times it's kind of a [[Voodoo Shark]]; in all but one or two rare cases, ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' uses a [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]] world where all these characters exist side by side, and always have. It would be like someone in [[Real Life]] never having heard of the [[Gulf War]] despite living through it.
* Anime cutscenes in ''[[Tail Concerto]]''.
* ''[[
** And then there was its [[Spiritual Successor]], ''[[
* ''[[Amea]]'' has three main ones, right before fighting {{spoiler|Mish, Valde, and the Master}}. The last case is actually very useful, as you can use your autoheal spell to recover from the fight immediately before while you wait.
* The ''[[Baten Kaitos]]'' games often have these before boss fights, but they do try to avoid annoying you with them; if you die to a boss, the game gives you [[Anti
* ''[[
* In ''[[Thwaite]]'', Before a 1- or 2-player game begins, a short, skippable [[cutscene]] is shown explaining the game's object. During the game, each five waves represent one early morning, and after them, there's a short dialogue during the day.
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[[Mario
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Exposition]]
[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Exposition Break]]
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