Gameplay and Story Segregation: Difference between revisions

This trope occurs whenever there is inconsistency in how things work or behave between the gameplay and storyline sections of the game, the latter of which consists of [[cutscene]]s and dialogue. While this trope is generally forgivable due to technological limitations, [[Egregious]] instances can result in the shattering of the player's [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]]. Typically, it's done to try and make a more interesting game, since simply hitting [[One Hit KO]] all the time like in that cutscene would be utterly boring, while having a person who actually ''can't'' open doors like in that last cutscene would make the game [[Fake Difficulty|needlessly frustrating]]. Accordingly, it's sometimes excused by [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]], but by ''no'' stretch does that justification cover all of the flat-out weird mismatches [[They Just Didn't Care|perpetrated]] by game makers over the years.

 

 

* [[Arbitrary Headcount Limit]] <br />Arbitrary requirement that stops you from having too many characters in a party or unit.

* [[Canon Shadow]] <br />A character or item that seems to be in the party, but other than giving stats, doesn't affect the plot at all.

* [[Commonplace Rare]] <br />When a seemingly common item takes an excessive amount of effort to acquire.

* [[Fight Like a Card Player]]<br />The story has almost nothing to do with cards, but a lot of the gameplay revolves around them.

* [[Follow the Plotted Line]] <br />You somehow always end up where the plot says you should be, no matter how little sense it makes that you should be there.

* [[Improbable Power Discrepancy]] <br />Enemies in RPGs are given statistics based on how powerful you are expected to be at that point, not how strong that enemy would be based on common sense.

* [[Irrelevant Sidequest]] <br />In RPGs, people have an alarming tendency to entrust powerful items to random strangers for doing the most mundane of things, and regardless of whether the stranger has any meaningful level of skill at the random thing in question.

** It's worth noting that while they're fairly weak from ''SFII'' onwards, in the first game, the special moves were ''very'' powerful, with a successful hit knocking a third of an opponent's health off. Each hit was also rated from one to three stars, and this acted as a damage multiplier; it was entirely possible to one-shot someone with ridiculous lucky.

** Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu attack only seems to kill opponents in the story.

** This may actually reflect a lot of developments from the Attitude Era and subsequent years, and the popularity of superstars such as Eddie Guerrero, who would "Lie, Cheat, and Steal" but still be a fan-favorite because he was amazing in the ring and could convince the crowd to eat out of the palm of his hand.

** Another, more pernicious thing WWE career modes like to do is every now and then have you beat an opponent, and then have them get back up and pin your wrestler in the following cutscene, or some such thing. It should be a normal part of kayfabe, except that you're then stuck with a ''real'' loss that goes on your wrestler's statistics record, even though you put in the effort of winning the friggin' match. Grr.

* You'd think ''[[Retro Game Challenge]]'' averts this, because the story IS gameplay. However, the in-game games have some in-game cheats that don't work in free play mode, even though it's supposedly the same game both times. Most likely this is because in the story mode, you unlock new games by beating their challenges, and the makers didn't want players to miss out on the later games if they can't beat the challenges; but in free-play, you're just challenging your best performance, so cheats would make the scores inaccurate.

 

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' is rife with this trope, but one of the more nonsensical examples is in the Caverns of Time dungeons, where PCs are sent back in time by the Bronze Dragonflight to various famous incidents in past ''[[Warcraft]]'' titles. In many cases, most of the current playable races could not have been present for various reasons (Horde characters in particular, but also Night Elves and Draenei). So in those dungeons, those characters get hit with a illusion buff that disguises them as a Human for the duration of the dungeon. You would think this would make it an inversion of the trope, except that it also applies to Blood Elves—who all would have been Alliance High Elves in those days, and so could have been present for all these events. Turning them Human is just odd, when a simple eye color change would suffice. It's especially nonsensical in the Culling of Stratholme instance, where you see a variety of Warcraft 3 units represented at the front gate of the city, one of which is a ''High Elf Priest''. It turns specially weird when you take into account that classes aren't disguised in any way, so you can have Warlocks and Death Knights helping Thrall escape from Durnholde, shapeshifted Druids running about, and Humans casting Shaman spells. But no High Elves.

** The game is full of big examples of Gameplay and Story Segregation, but one of the biggest is illness death. In the game, four playable classes can remove curses and/or cure poisons and cast resurrection spells that will restore to life any player character they are cast on. But in the storyline of both tie-ins in other media and in the stories of the game's own quests, curing each type of disease or poison requires multiple unique components, death is feared like in [[Real Life]], and resurrection (not counting [[Came Back Wrong]]) is almost unheard of. For example, there's one quest in Northrend where you find a poor poisoned goblin and have to run around killing giant spiders until one of them barfs up a poison sac. Never mind that at least three classes can easily cure poisons, as well as anyone with high enough first aid has the ability to make antivenom out of those self-same spiders, or (by the game mechanics) if he died, four classes could easily resurrect him, and any engineer would have the ability to at least try.

** For those who don't play, when your character is 5 or more levels higher than an enemy, its name turns grey and you don't get any experience for kiling it.

*** There is another layer of humor to this statement - Rikti summoned during the invasion events always con even-level to whoever is fighting them, regardless of level. Positron's statement is that he's +5, minimum, to even-level enemies.

** If you carry actual weapons on your avatar, none of them can be used. This is [[Justified|explained]] in the prologue "manga" to the game; regular weapons just plain ''don't work'' on the Animated. You have to use the rings and their powers to fight them. In the "manga" a powerful and popular knight tried to kill an Animated with "My '''''ANCIENT KATANA!'''''"... and got torn to pieces because it failed to harm it; and yet there's a Ring that creates a katana, which ''does'' work.

** Here's some [[Fridge Logic]]: It's called "Ancient" For a reason, you know...

** Not just the Space Marines, every faction has something like this. Daemons have Greater Daemons, which can often be overwhelmed by a few basic troop Hormagaunts, a basic Guard troop squad can kill a Carnifex with a little luck, and the Necron C'Tan (a [[Physical God]]) can fall to a couple shots from a Dark Eldar on a jetbike.

* The Saga Edition of the ''[[Star Wars]]'' RPG has far fewer guns on ships than has been previously established. However, this was made as a concession to the fact that if they did, rolling for each individual ship gun/battery would translate into hundreds of rolls, especially with bigger ships like the Super Star Destroyers. Besides, game mechanics are already of dubious canon.

 

=== [[Third-Person Shooter]] ===

=== [[Turn Based Tactics]] ===

* ''[[X-COM]]: Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense'' intro has Mutons appear as drop troops, apparently [[Screaming Warrior|like shouting]] when they attack and generally make a great "Space Orc" impression with those fangs and green suits, then leave by somehow being "beamed up" [[Star Trek]] style. They were led by a bossy Muton in red uniform. In the game? All action is contained in the map, there's no retreat except for X-Com troopers if they'll make it back to the transport. Mutons don't scream other than when dying. "Mr. Angry Red Suit", as ufopaedia.org calls him, does not appear - there are only Muton Soldier, Navigator and Engineer, but no Leaders or Commanders, because Mutons serve the Ethereals.

 

=== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ===

* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', the respawn system is canon (according to ''[[Poker Night At the Inventory]]'', Heavy recalls it as a series of nightmares). Also, each character's personality, weapons, tactics, and movement style are all closely related, and the relationships between characters in canon are related to how they interact in-game: gameplay nemeses [[Friendly Sniper|Sniper]] and [[French Jerk|Spy]] are bitter rivals (and [[Foe Yay]] targets) out-of-play, and popular in-game team-up Heavy and Medic are confirmed [[Heterosexual Life Partners]] and a [[Ship Tease|hinted]] [[Ho Yay|couple.]]

 

* ''[[EVE Online]]'''s completely player driven nature averts and/or outright deconstructs many of the things mentioned in the MMORPG examples above.

*** To put it shortly, it's pretty much the most effective, in depth, and descriptive [[Hand Wave]] ever.

* ''[[Mabinogi]]''. Player characters, aka ''Milletians'', are presented as spirits from outside the game world, who are temporarily incarnated within it. Because they are not normally part of the world, they do not "die", but simply lose the body they were using, which can be restored by a particular [[NPC]]. [[NPC]]s are aware of your status, and will casually mention it from time to time. This is actually made a significant story point for Elf and Giant characters.

* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] III: [[Morrowind]]'', Dagoth Ur's rising power doubles as [[Anti-Grinding]], with stronger ash creatures and blighted fauna appearing more and more as you keep leveling up.

** And likewise, at the start of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] V: [[Skyrim]]'', you can't understand dragons...but later on, they start speaking to you in English. This is actually because as the Dovahkiin, you start learning words of the Draconic language.

* Setting aside the scene where it cleaves a cliff face in two, never to display that kind of power again, there are two battles in ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' where the Masamune displays power that it was said to have in cutscenes and dialogue. In the battle against Magus, the sword, which was said to be one of the few weapons that would allow them to defeat Magus, bypasses Magus's [[Barrier Shift Boss|Barrier Shift]] trick ''and'' drops his magic defense stat. Later on, the team uses a red knife to drain Lavos' power out of the Mammon Machine. The red knife then turns into the Masamune. If you use the Masamune on the Mammon Machine when you fight it later, the sword bypasses its defense boost trick ''and'' heals Frog, by way of draining the energy from it, just like it did before.

* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' as a whole is an interesting example: even though Travis imagines his life as an assassin to be awesome and glamorous, nearly every portion of gameplay outside of the ranked battles shows just how much of a loser he is. Some examples: Santa Destroy is a frustratingly boring place with nearly nothing to do; Travis has to drive everywhere himself; he barely bothers people he runs over on his motorcycle and goes flying if it even so much as touches any solid object; he has to do repetitive, boring and irrelevant jobs in order to earn money; he saves the game on the ''toilet''; he rummages through dumpsters for collectables (including clothes!); and at the end of the day he ends up right back at the same stinking motel he's always lived at.

* In the ''[[Touhou]]'' fangame ''[[Touhou Mother]]'', Yuuka is described as hating high speeds. During a cutscene, you have to fly very fast to reach a certain location, and during the trip, Yuuka is described to have taken "mortal damage." Sure enough, if you check your stats after the cutscene ends, Yuuka will have just 1 HP remaining.

* ''[[Black Sigil]]'' actually lets you use white magic to heal all the fallen soldiers during a siege. It costs you MP, of course, but saving them all gets you a reward.

 

=== [[Shoot'Em Up]] ===

=== Other games ===

* In ''Demonophobia'', a game with [[The Many Deaths of You|a lot of]] [[Gorn|interesting ways]] [[Trial and Error Gameplay|to die]], {{spoiler|you don't 'die and respawn' in the usual way; instead, the protagonist is revived some time later, with no memories of her deaths. This becomes important at the end of the game, where these memories are [[Despair Event Horizon|returned to her]].}}

* In most ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games, enemies that are said to be wearing armor just have their health super high so you need to put in a ton of bullets in them (this is usually on boss characters). In ''[[Grand Theft Auto Sand Andreas]]'', {{spoiler|Big Smoke}} is shown to be wearing body armor in the cut scene before the fight (yet the armor never physically appears on CJ's model if he has armor on). Like with real life body armor, the boss' torso is protected so shooting it does less damage, but shooting him in the head or anywhere else that is not protected will damage him a lot faster.

 

 

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[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]

[[Category:Consistency]]

[[Category:Index]]

[[Category:Show, Don't Tell]]