Invisible Wall: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

The most extreme and [[Egregious]] form of the [[Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence]], the Invisible Wall is, well, just that: a boundary that limits where the player can go, but there's simply nothing there. It's as if someone decided to build a glass wall. You try to walk past it but your character just stops or walks in place. You can't see the boundary, but it's there.

** 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.)

** 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.

* 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.

* The ''[[Gundam vs. Series]]'' added these in ''[[Gundam Seed]]: Alliance vs. ZAFT'', and for once it's actually a good thing. Past iterations of the series had the outer limits of the stage be a line that, if crossed, forced your [[Humongous Mecha]] to auto-pilot itself back into the stage, which was time-consuming, left you open to attack, and lead to a [[Most Annoying Sound]] ("You've left the mission area, please return!"). The use of [[Invisible Wall|Invisible Walls]] speeds up gameplay greatly, and they don't significantly reduce the size of the stages, so it ends up working out well in the end.

** And if you run into one, it briefly becomes a [[Beehive Barrier]].

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]: San Andreas'' had a unique way of confining the player to certain areas of the game. Certain parts of the state are closed off to traffic with the use of barriers, but if you manage to go past the barriers (swimming, use of a boat, or flying a plane for example), you'll instantly get a high warrant level. Even if you use a cheat or the Pay n' Spray in the restricted areas, the warrant levels never go away until you go back where you're supposed to be. The barriers will disappear as you make progress in the storyline.

* In ''[[Gothic]]'', the magical barrier that surrounds the prison colony is largely invisible until you walk into it, at which point you are surrounded by crackling blue lightning. Keep walking, and you'll start taking damage and quickly die. Unsurprisingly, there have been no recorded escapes from this colony.

** ''Gothic II'' avoids invisible barriers overland (it just has [[Gravity Barrier|unclimbable mountains]]); but if you swim too far into the ocean, you just get eaten by a [[Border Patrol|sea monster]].

** It's done for a reason though. Basically, the trigger for the cutscene is below, and if you get past the wall (easiest with lightning shield) the boss screws up and can't attack, and you can still damage him. Not to mention that killing off a machine before Robotnik has even went in is a bit silly.

*** It's possible to fly behind it with Tails while it's rising up, slip in behind him, and kill him there.

** In Carnival Night Zone, when Knuckles appears to turn off the lights. Sonic just ''stops'', inches away from the smirking echidna...held back by an [[Invisible Wall]]. Even worse, you can have all of the emeralds by this point, and so ''Super'' Sonic can be held at bay by it.

*** As has been pointed out on several fansites, the levels are actually one mass. They are then divided into "acts" with goal rings and invisible walls. Its possible to get beyond them in some areas and see parts of other acts or blank objects.

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

** There are also some invisible walls in the two main maps, but you really have to be exploring places you shouldn't be in at all in order to hit them.

** These were almost completely done away with in ''Cataclysm'', with flying mounts now allowed anywhere, the only invisible walls you'll ever hit are an invisible ceiling if you fly straight up, and if you fly too far out into the sea (where even if you do find the wall, you'll be garunteed to die of fatigue damage seconds later.) The invisible wall over the mountain range dividing the eastern plaguelands (Eastern kingdoms zone) with Ghostlands (Burning crusade zone) are still there, simply because it would take up too much data to make the entire mountain range into an instance portal to take you there.

* The ''[[Thief]]'' games have occasional invisible walls, but all in areas the player isn't supposed to reach (such as the roofs of buildings). However, these are notable in that they are apparently made of invisible wood, and as such the player can smash them aside with their sword and continue.

* Al of the [[Star Wars]] ''[[Rogue Squadron]]'' games will turn your ship around if you go too far outside the mission area. Sometimes it's explained (getting too far from the action), on others (like the infinite featureless plane of the Death Star endurance level) it feels a little limiting.

* ''[[Fallout]] 3'' has these in much the same way Assassin's creed does - try to walk off the map and a pop-up box will tell you something along the lines of "You cannot go any farther north."

** Lampshaded in the Operation: Anchorage expansion, which takes place in a computer simulation. There are semi-visible walls showing you where you can't go in the simulation.

* ''[[Kirby]] Air Ride'' has one around every course, a well as the city in City Trial mode.

** The City Trail mode has an odd one, though. Though there are the normal invisible walls around the sides of the map, if you go at them from a high altitude you'll go through them. However, all you can do outside of the invisible walls is ride around on water, and if you continue going away from the city you'll reach another set of invisible walls which can't be bypassed. What's odd about the invisible wall system, though, is that in some places there are small ramps outside of the first invisible wall which will bring you back into the map instead of getting stuck at a wall, meaning the developers [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|anticipated]] people bypassing the walls.

* ''[[Magical Battle Arena]]'' marks the boundaries of the battlefield with a literal invisible wall: a pink grid-like magical barrier that only becomes visible when you touch it (or try to blow it up), and only that specific spot that you touch. It's visible on the HUD minimap, though.

** There's also a flashback segment where you're recalling what happened before the quarantine came into effect. If you try to leave the island, no military air strike happens, but the invisible wall still keeps you from leaving. Way to tax [[Suspension of Disbelief]], guys!

* ''[[Donkey Kong 64]]'' is very guilty of this in its hub area, set in the ocean. Trying to swim past the limits of the world just end up with your monkey wading at the same spot over and over.

* ''[[Ni GHTS]] Into Dreams'' includes a variation of the Invisible Wall combined with an invisible cannon, ala ''Motocross Madness''. The edge of a Dream World is marked by a change in the floor to a strange purple surface, and trying to go on it or over it results in Claris or Elliot being flung back a large distance.

** Annoyingly, ''[[Ni GHTS]]: Journey of Dreams'' plays this normally. Quite annoying, since in the original, at least you could temporarily stop the Egg Timer...Here, the Awakers can't be stopped, so if you come up against an Invisible Wall, you're pretty much screwed.

** Although maps generally make good use of the [[Insurmountable Waist High Fence]], the Demoman and Soldier are able to send themselves flying all over the place, easily clearing most all of these. As a result, the invisible walls are called in. Can be particularly annoying not having an indication of which rooftops you can access and which are behind unseen barriers.

* In the early ''[[Spyro the Dragon]]'' games, some kind of invisible force field keeps you from wandering off the map in some levels.

* Justified in ''[[Space Station Silicon Valley]]'', as the invisible walls are the glass walls of the station.

* ''[[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 ''[[American McGee's Alice]]'', there are several invisible walls. But they also use giant slimy tentacles as walls. You can jump on just about anything, but you can't jump on those tentacles - you have to find a way around them.

* 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.

* ''[[Ever Quest]]'' had this as the way to keep players from passing beyond the borders of a zone at any place other than a designated zone transition. Most zones in the game were basically large square or rectangular maps with a wall-like hill around the edge with an invisible wall about halfway up it, and early on, when the game had no maps for navigation it was common for players to navigate by following the zone walls.

* In ''[[Fable]] II'' whenever you try to swim too far away from the land mass, the game gives you an [[Invisible Wall]] and says something along the lines of "There is no reason for you to go any farther." Still kills [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]] a bit, but at least it's the truth...

* ''[[The Force Unleashed]]'' had lazy invisible walls during the whole prologue Level. You try to go over a cliff or jump? Nonono, young Padawan! You are allowed to do this first in level 2...it probably has something to do with you being unable to die in this level, even when your lifebar is nonexistent but they could have just taken the level deeper into the forest, where there are no descents.

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

* Averted in [[Big Rigs Over the Road Racing]], one can climb over the slopes (no matter how steep) where the walls would be and continue to drive into the white void.

* [[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.

* ''[[Serious Sam]] II'' has a lot of invisible walls to prevent the player from escaping the stage or falling off. ''Serious Sam I'' uses teleport triggers instead and jump pads for those who still manage to get out.

* Most racing games have these when you get your car airbourne and attempt to jump over a wall or barrier of some sort.

** ''Forza Motorsport 4'' rather pointlessly has on on the ''Top Gear'' test track. If you go backwards over the hump on Gambon corner fast enough, you hit an Invisible Wall coming up from a wall that seems to be about a foot high.

 

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