Gameplay and Story Segregation: Difference between revisions

* [[Cutscene Power to The Max]] <br />The character is incredibly powerful - but only in cutscenes; in gameplay, their stats are about average.

* [[Day Old Legend]] <br />Even though you just made that item using the crafting system, its flavor text gives it several hundred years' worth of backstory.

* [[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.

* [[Plot Coupon That Does Something]] <br />A form of aversion of this trope, where a story important item also influences the gameplay.

* [[Plotline Death]] <br />All cutscene deaths are final; your "revive" spells and items won't work here. Nor will you be revived if you have [[Video Game Lives|extra lives left]].

* [[Separate but Identical]] <br />In strategy games, some sub-factions are said to be different in composition, outlook etc., but ultimately only differ [[Palette Swap|in their color palette]].

* [[Simultaneous Warning and Action]] <br />Enemy [[NPC|NPCs]] will always attack you, even when they yell things that indicate they're going to arrest you.

** [[No Cutscene Inventory Inertia]] <br />No matter what weapon or armor you have equipped, you will be shown with specific (often default) equipment in [[Cutscene|cutscenes]].

** [[The Battle Didn't Count]] <br />After beating a boss, instead of dying, he pulls a [[Villain Exit Stage Left]]. Or worse....

* [[Take Your Time]] <br />You can take as long as you want to finish your sidequests, and that [[Final Fantasy VII (Video Game)|world-destroying meteor]] will just hang in the sky till you're done.

** [[Continue Your Mission Dammit]] <br />Even given the above, [[Stop Helping Me|Helpful]] NPCs will constantly remind you that you "need" to keep going.

* In ''[[LA Noire]]'', the huge twist of the level "Manifest Destiny" is that {{spoiler|Cole affair is splashed across the newspapers to distract the media from a LAPD corruption scandal, derailing his career and getting him demoted to arson.}} But the level itself is a completely chaotic bloodbath, with nearly Cole's entire Marine unit being massacred by the mafia in broad daylight with stolen US army guns, revealing a mob mole inside the LAPD. This makes the "twist" nonsensical, as those murders should have easily taken precedence.

 

* ''[[Streets of Rage]] 3'' starts with a [[Cutscene]] where the five characters decide to shake up the [[Mook|mooks]] for information. After a few levels of assaulting mooks by yourself, everyone else appears for another cutscene and says "This is useless. No-one told us anything." How could they? I just kicked the crap out of anyone who came close. And where the hell have you been, anyway?

* In the arcade version of ''Double Dragon 3'', there is a third Lee brother named Sonny, plus three different [[Sibling Team|sibling teams]] consisting of three brothers each (the Chin, Oyama, and Urquidez brothers). However, only Billy and Jimmy are shown in the opening and ending, and only a single member of each of the other sibling teams are shown in the ending.

* All fighting games fall under this trope to some degree. Due to balancing games, no character (except maybe a [[SNK Boss]]) is as powerful or weak as the storyline says he/she should be. Take [[Street Fighter]], for example. Dhalsim and Oro are very powerful according to the storyline. However, that power doesn't translate into gameplay unless a person REALLY knows how to control them.

 

* The 1998 PC game ''[[Sin]]'' has this in spades. A number of bizarre gameplay elements include: the main character (John Blade) being turned into a half-naked mutant late in the game, then being changed back to his original human self, weapons, armor and all; not being able to walk into a testing facility early on because you have police attire on, but the moment you switch into a work uniform, the few employees at the building won't recognize who you are; the opening two levels revolve around an unsuccessful heist to retrieve a document, but if the player finds the item wanted by the terrorist, it is simply an empty envelope that doesn't factor into the rest of the story; walking into a building and being captured, even if you have full health and enough ammunition to waste its entire group of occupants; falling into a trap door in a random room at a secret base that only serves to dump you into a meat cart for the final boss battle, and many other minor infractions.

* In ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3'', Samus must ultimately find at least 7 Galactic Federation energy batteries in order to activate enough doors on a wrecked cruiser to get a code that unlocks the last area of the game. However, she's ''working for'' the Galactic Federation. And at the end of the game, they're ''waiting on her'' to do this. Surely, she could just let them know that she needs a few batteries. No, she must scour the landscape of four worlds for batteries from Federation installations, crashed ships, and the like.

** The games insist on judging your power by number of badges, regardless of the level of your Pokémon. Mt. Silver should be no problem for a trainer with six Pokémon of levels 80-100, but you can't get to it unless you have 16 badges.

*** Of course, the same argument could be made at that point that getting those badges should be rather easy.

*** Then again, it has been speculated that at least a few of the Pokedex entries are either exaggerated or made up.

** Metapod are supposed to be immobile and only know Harden. And ones you fight in the wild do only know Harden. Where this trope comes into play is that a Caterpie you evolve yourself will still know the moves it did before. Pupitar, on the other hand, are flat out stated to be fully mobile Pokémon and Kakuna are mentioned to be near-immobile; their Yellow Pokédex entry hints that they knows Poison Sting.

* 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.

 

* In ''[[Oddworld]]: Stranger's Wrath'' you play a bounty hunter saving up for a life saving operation. The surgery bid given to you by Doc in the first town says the price is roughly 20,000 moolah (the games currency). You collect this money by exchanging outlaws at the bounty store. However, gameplay wise Moolah is only used to purchase ammo and upgrades. You can collect hundreds of thousands of moolah, or use cheatcodes for infinte moolah, yet Stranger won't be able to afford his operation until he finishes the New Yolk City missions and take the ferry to Doc's Retreat. {{spoiler|Of course, you find out the [[Big Bad]]'s mooks have killed Doc, and you are overtaken by previously easily defeated outlaws. Your equipment is stolen, all of your moolah is taken away, you're hit with a [[Tomato Surprise]], and then Moolah isn't used or mentioned for the rest of the game.}}

* In the [[Dead Space Downfall (Film)|animated prequel]] to ''[[Dead Space (Video Game)|Dead Space]]'', the zombies cannot go near the [[Artifact of Doom]] that was dug up. But when it comes to be your turn to escort the thing, all manner of baddies can come right up to the thing with no issue. And by extension, you.

 

== [[Action Game]] ==

** Of course, {{spoiler|Batman's explosive gel-powered punch does break his arm, so it's not an ability you'd expect to be able to use multiple times..}}

* ''[[Brutal Legend (Video Game)|Brutal Legend]]''. Everything gets an in-universe explanation, from why Eddie is an expert with a battle axe despite never touching one before, why he is able to fly around the battlefield issuing orders, why he is able to build a functioning car from parts dug up out of the ground, to why said car has a radio in it.

* ''[[Iji (Video Game)|Iji]]'' almost entirely averts this. Nearly ''everything'' the player does, from how many enemies they kill to which logbooks are read, has at least some influence on how the story unfolds, how dialogues proceed, and even how characters react to Iji's presence. Indeed, the ending of one subplot (which can only be followed by reading a series of seemingly unrelated logbooks) relies entirely on how the player treats a single specific enemy they have no way of knowing is at all significant at that point in the game.

 

* The ''[[Half-Life (Video Game)|Half-Life]]'' series and its long love affair with [[No Sidepaths No Exploration No Freedom]] is a major element of the plot, representing Gordon's complete lack of control, whether it's because of the GMan, the Vortigaunts, or the player.

** ''[[Half-Life 2 (Video Game)|Half-Life 2]]'' and its Episodes begin with Gordon not at full health, due to him being injured from a scene in the previous game.

** If Farah dies, he says that she didn't die. {{spoiler|She eventually does, but he reverses time. Oddly, he doesn't acknowledge that he's telling this story to Farah herself.}}

** If it makes you feel better, {{spoiler|interpret it as Farah interrupting with a "bad end" every time you die. She certainly isn't all that helpful during your story, anyway.}}

* In the opening of the [[Video Game Remake|GBA version]] of ''[[Donkey Kong Country]]'', Diddy Kong is able to defend the Banana Hoard from Kremlings until a Krusha shows up. In-game, Krushas can only be defeated by Donkey Kong.

* In ''[[Psychonauts (Video Game)|Psychonauts]]'', Raz's [[Super Drowning Skills]] are the result of a curse on his family which is an important part of the game's backstory.

** However, all situations where you can gain/lose influence do not take that into the considerance - so, during such checkpoint, good party member turned evil by the high influence of the evil player is still going to be displeased when said player commits an evil act.

** Similarly, the XP system, where you grow more powerful by killing enemies, is revealed to be the result of {{spoiler|the main character's "rift in the force" growing more powerful by feeding on the destruction she causes. Pretty rough revelation, for a light-sider.}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy IX (Video Game)|Final Fantasy IX]]'' opens with a play: the fight scenes are done using the battle system, and the characters have the battle command "SFX" with the help menu description of "uses powerful, deadly magic", a damage output of zero and no mana point cost. Of course the party leader gets to cause the biggest blast.

** Further averted with all of the character's classes being highly integrated into the plot. Vivi's ability to shoot stuff with fireballs with black magic becomes very important, the hidden Summons inside Garnet are a [[MacGuffin]] unto themselves, and Freya, a dragoon, is able to leap to the tops of roofs effortlessly in cutscenes as easily as she can leap into the sky to use her "Jump" ability. Sometimes even their ''personality traits'' become gameplay mechanics; Zidane, the [[Chivalrous Pervert]], has a "Protect Girls" skill that lets him jump in front of a female party member to protect her.

* ''[[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.

 

* ''[[Seihou]]'' has an interesting example: In the Comiket 67 version of ''Banshiryuu'' bosses would occasionally pull of a special attack which they were invincible for the duration of. These are SE attacks, and they're also the player's bombs, which work the same way. In the C74 remake, boss SE attacks are closer to ''[[Touhou]]'' style spellcards, generally not conferring invincibility... but the player versions don't make them invincible either. Though neither game explains why player SE attacks clear enemy bullets.

 

 

== Back-and-forth Examples ==

* In the NES version of ''[[Double Dragon|Double Dragon II: The Revenge]]'', almost all the cut-scenes shows Billy Lee, regardless if there's two people playing instead of one or if the player is using Jimmy instead. The sole exception to this is the cut-scene before the final boss battle: if only Billy is present, then it will show him as usual; but if both Lee brothers are present, then Jimmy will be shown as well; and if Billy died before the final stage, then Jimmy will appear in his brother's place. However, the ending is still the same regardless of who you beat the game with.

** In ''Double Dragon Advance'', most of the dialogue will be spoken by Jimmy if you're using him instead of Billy, but the art in the cut-scenes will remain the same. Alternate art showing Jimmy instead of Billy were drawn for all the cut-scenes, but they were not inserted into the game.

 

== [[Platform Game]] ==

 

== [[Role Playing Game]] ==