Invisible Wall: Difference between revisions

** In ''[[Rise of Nations]]'', the edge of the map is ''literally'' the edge of a map.

** ''[[Europa Universalis]]'' has a variation of this: The map is spherical (but you can't travel to the poles) but certain areas are designated as "Permanent Terra Incognita" and cannot be explored (includes the interiors of Africa, Australia and the Americas.)

* ''[[Super Mario 64]]'' tells you about them with a sign, saying that's where the paintings end. Seeing as all of Mario 64's worlds are in paintings, it ....kind of works.

** Still, [http://speeddemosarchive.com/Mario64.html#SS100p some gamers] have encountered invisible walls in random, unexplained places not related to the edge of a world.

* ''[[Diddy Kong Racing]]'' for the Nintendo 64 had a very noticeable example where you could barely get off the beach into the ocean before you hit it.

* ''[[Family Guy]]: The Game'' lampshades this, with an unobstructed street where a mime is moving back and forth along an invisible wall. Trying to go around the mime prompts Peter to say "Stupid mimes and their invisible walls..."

* The action scenes in ''[[Metal Gear]] Solid 2'' often have these to prevent you from running past the enemies you're supposed to shoot, or punching out an [[Immune to Bullets]] boss.

* In the first ''[[Return Fire]]'' game you could pilot the helicopter off the main play area (always an island) and away in the distance. However, if you overdid it, a sub would surface right under you and shoot you with a homing missile that was absolutely impossible to evade and would kill you in one hit.

** When you're taken into the past by a lens flare in ''[[Sonic Adventure]]'', you may see these little structures that are basically a roof and four supports at the corners. You can't go under them. Perhaps this is because it's easier to define an object as being simply this high, that wide, and that long rather than defining all the details of the shape of that object, especially when there's no reason to do so. It's still a little strange.

** ''[[Sonic Colors]]'' uses Invisible Walls in spades. They get annoying in 2D as they prohibit backtracking in some areas, but in 3D, they're really for the best: they line the stage so that the player doesn't fall into the [[Bottomless Pits]] unfairly.

* ''[[Parasite Eve]]'' has these for battles. You are confined to a small portion of the room you are in for fights.

* Parodied in an ad for ''[[Tony Hawks American Wasteland]]'', in which the titular skater runs into one of these. In live action.

** It is quite possible to encounter invisible walls while playing as the survivors, but you would rarely find them. They are a bit more common in Left 4 Dead 2 and are in places such as over a fence or on top of a wrecked bus. This is to prevent players from exploiting the maps by being tossed in the air when knocked over by a Charger.

* ''[[Motorcross Madness]]'' had a [[Gravity Barrier]]...that could be scaled with enough effort. If you try to drive off into the distance, you'll face the ''second'' safeguard - the Invisible ''Cannon''. No, seriously. You and your bike will be sent flying back onto the field and crashing to the ground. It's practically a reward for getting past the first safeguard, though, because it's ''awesome''.

* In ''[[Black and White]]'', land 1, before you build the temple or get your Creature, if you try going near the Aztec village or beyond the gates, you get blocked by an invisible wall. It lights up white if you crash into it, but if you don't it's invisible.

* ''ATV Offroad Fury 2'' has an extreme case of this. In Freestyle mode, if you go too far, you not only crash into an invisible wall, but also fly a bajillion times farther than you would upon hitting a normal obstacle.

* One of the most egregious examples was ''Vampire Rain'' for the X-Box 360. You're a stealth operative on the street trying to sneak around the city and avoid all detection, because most of the people in the city are vampires who will rip you in half the moment they see you. Most of the city is rendered at any given time but there are invisible walls all over the place to keep you focused on your next objective, and you likely won't even realize it until you try to cross a street to avoid a vampire and BZZT! "Mission Boundary!" So annoying.

* ''[[Super Mario Sunshine]]'' has one in the middle of the ocean which not only keeps you from going out too far, but also from sequence breaking by selecting a mission in one area and then swimming directly to another.

* Quite gratuitously used in ''[[Painkiller]]'', though for the most part they're in context.

* [[Greg Egan]] uses this in a rare non-video game example in [[Permutation City]]. The simulated city introduced right at the beginning contains a 3D model of a single apartment and enough of the rest of the city to accurately reproduce what you can see out of the window. However, get out of the apartment and the many limitations of the simulation become apparent very quickly, including that a couple of blocks out an invisible wall prevents you from proceeding further. Egan even wrote this specifically as an "edge of the universe" where any attempt to move outward is simply cancelled, rather than mere wall with a surface.

* ''[[An Untitled Story]]'' has these on the edges of game world, [[Metroidvania|in a genre]] where world borders are usually closed with walls. They also appear during several boss fights as well as in the form of invisible ceiling in CloudRun and MountSide.