Informed Equipment: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Wonder Boy III the Dragons Trap]]'', Wonder Boy's sprites show the same sword, armor, and shield no matter what he has equipped... except in his [[Lizard Folk|Lizard-Man]] form, when he had no visible equipment and his inability to use or sword or shield was relevant to gameplay, but he could still equip them normally and still got stat boosts from them.

 

* Goes all the way back to ''[[Dragon Quest I]]''. The first armor in the game? "Clothing". And you can go into battle without it. Despite this quite literal fighting in the nude, the sprite nonetheless showed the hero wearing a full suit of armor.

* Taken to an extreme in ''[[Lufia and The Fortress of Doom]]'' and ''[[Lufia 2 Rise of the Sinistrals]]''. While even the most basic games in the NES era made at least slight changes to weapons so that someone with an axe would attack with an axe, the characters in ''Lufia II'' would be still be holding a sword as they attack with a bow, or a whip as they attack with a sword.

** Back to straight in ''[[Tales of Hearts]]''. Each character just has one evolving [[Empathic Weapon]], but despite the shape of the weapon changing as it goes up in tiers, the battle sprite remains the same until you reach one of the final postgame forms.

** ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' displays the character's weapon and special equipment (Rita's spellbook, Karol's bag, etc) but still no armor, headgear or accessories.

* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' plays this straight with two characters and averts it for one. If you put a robe on the Nameless One (who normally wears what seems to be a combination loincloth-toolbelt-backpack and a pair of boots), or get him made up to look like a zombie, it will show up on his in-game model. However, if you put different outfits on either Annah or Fall-From-Grace their appearance will not change; even though the only difference between their various outfits is a palette swap you will not see a change in the color of their rendering.

* While you can equip armor and equipment in ''[[Sonic Chronicles]]: The Dark Brotherhood'', none of it actually shows up on the model. This gets somewhat ridiculous when you equip a hammer, but it still doesn't show up. Only equipped Chao can be seen in battle, where they float behind the characters in your party.

 

=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===

** In fact, this is largely a given if you're using miniatures for any RPG. Players strapped for cash might even resort to using whatever's on hand in place of minis, sometimes leading to cries of "Don't eat the army!" as a player absent-mindedly reaches for a candy.

** Though at least in Warhammer (Fantasy and 40k) the tournament often has rules that says that the models must have the equipment that you have upgraded them with (the rule is most often called WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get), you can get away with some exceptions to the rule but not a whole lot. The most notorious being the rule that [[Law of Chromatic Superiority|red Ork vehicles go faster]] - there's a point cost to it, but the real cost is that, in order to invoke this rule, your models must ''actually'' be red.

 

* And averted again in the [[PlayStation 2]] roguelike ''[[Baroque (video game)|Baroque]]''. A full set of equipment consists of a coat, a pair of artificial wings, and a sword (or the Angelic Rifle), all of which show up over the [[No Name Given|nameless protagonist's]] normal clothing and are carried over into cutscenes.

 

* ''[[Neptunia]]'' won't show your armor (as they're just bracelets and other rings), but any changes to your weapon, accessories, outfits or processor parts for the CPUs will appear in battle.

* ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' had most of its [[cutscene]]s rendered via the in-game engine, and thus changes to weaponry were acknowledged; armor, meanwhile, was handled entirely via shields and other small items. Weapons rarely ever appeared in the prerendered sequences.

 

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

** Oddly averted in ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]''. When Niko {{spoiler|confronts Dimitri in the Revenge ending, the weapon he holds in the pre-execution cutscene is the same one you used to get the last hit. What makes this weird is that many players used the rocket launcher for its area-effecting ability to get around cover, so in the cutscene, Niko walks up to ''point blank range'' and waves the launcher in Dimitri's face like it's a pistol.}} Aside from that, the game works the same as its predecessor.

*** Similarly, when facing {{spoiler|Pegerino 2 missions later (in the Revenge ending), no matter what weapon you were using in the preceding firefight Niko will have an AK-47 in the scene (even if you had the Carbine Rifle, which takes up the same weapon slot as the AK)}}.

[[Category:Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]

[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]

[[Category:CRPG Tropes]]