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Line 1: {{trope}} [[File:~~bioshock19592_7019~~bioshock19592 7019.jpg\|frame]] Standard video game set-up, particularly for the [[Survival Horror]] and [[Adventure Game]] genres. Something bad has happened in the setting. Something very bad. The player arrives some time ~~later -- days~~later—days, perhaps, but possibly years, even centuries afterward. His "official" goal is just to make it out of there with life, limb, and sanity intact, possibly liberating a treasure or two along the way. But in the course of achieving his own goal, he is going to find out a lot about the something that has happened, and the people it happened to. As part of the set-up, the player might have been [[Send in the Search Team\|sent]] or [[Distress Call\|called]] specifically in response to the [[Tragedy]] ~~-- to~~—to find out what happened, or rescue some one or some thing. Alternatively, he may begin not knowing even that the tragedy has occurred, just happening upon it through bad ~~luck -- the~~luck—the classic [[Closed Circle\|"Our car broke down so we'll take shelter in this abandoned castle"]] set-up. Typically, often as a direct result of the player's investigation, he will find himself needing to learn from what he can piece together of the past to stop this bad something from happening ~~again -- to~~again—to him. In games with a supernatural angle, there will often be some component of "freeing the ghosts" of those involved in the past tragedy by resolving the situation. Expect to find at least [[Apocalyptic Log\|one diary]] (Scavenger hunts for journal pages are very common), a video tape or two, psychic visions of the past, and, very likely, notes on the wall in human blood. This setup is not uncommon outside of video games, but the focus on discovering these fragments of the past is typically much stronger in the ~~game -- the~~game—the interactive medium is particularly well-suited to this kind of storytelling, as it lets the player control the pace and order at which the story is told, but the story itself needs not account for the player's pesky free will getting in the way. It also allows all the storytelling and character interactions to happen non-interactively (often in [[~~Cutscene\|cutscenes~~cutscene]]s), which actually increases realism, as these sorts of scenes are nigh-impossible to do well interactively. There are some parallels with [[Ontological Mystery]], although typically the characters know how ''they'' got there. [[Super-Trope]] to [[Slept Through the Apocalypse]]. Line 30: * ''[[Dead Rising]]''. Frank West enters Willamette to investigate a story...which turns out to be a zombie outbreak. Somewhat of an oddball example, as Frank's mission from the start is to uncover the story. * In ''Nosferatu: Wrath of the Malachi'' the protagonist is late for the wedding of his sister. He arrives the castle at 10 PM, and has time until midnight to find out what happened. * ''[[Half Life]] 2'' has an overarching plotline of the player being [[Late to the Party]] for the subjugation of earth. There's a nested trope in the Ravenholm portion of the game, where the player is [[Late to the Party]] for the much more recent slaughter of an entire town. ** Averted, however, in the first game, in that the player character causes the resonance cascade, and all the expansions except ''Opposing Force'' put the player as other Black Mesa employees present as everything goes to <s>hell</s> Xen. * Very common in [[Interactive Fiction]], where it forms a subset of the situations described by "Adam Cadre's Theorem" (i.e. That in games, mysteriously abandoned places are common since they inherently have mystery and lack any difficult to program Non Player Characters). Examples include ''[[Planetfall]]'', ''Babel'', ''Glowgrass'', ''Theatre'', etc. * ''[[The Neverhood]]'', a claymation game that starts off with the protagonist sleeping on the floor of a locked room with no explanation as to who he is or how he got there. The story is told bit-by-bit through little discs recorded by another character. * Partially subverted in the ''[[Silent Hill]]'' ~~series -- although~~series—although fitting most of the criteria, right down to the scattered journal pages and the notes written in human blood, you never ''really'' find out what's going on. The most you can hope for is some personal closure, a rescued survivor, or maybe a long-lost wife brought back from the dead. (!) ** The games do drop hints as to why the town is the way it is, and the nature of Silent Hill is explored in detailed in the expanded book "The Book of Lost Memories". * In ''[[God of War (series)\|God of War]]'', Kratos can find several journal passages from the architect who constructed Pandora's Temple. They don't serve to forward the plot at all, but it's very interesting nonetheless. Line 49: * ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' (from the makers of the ''[[System Shock]]'' games) takes place in an abandoned undersea utopia-gone-wrong, which the player character stumbles across, discovering more about what went wrong as they explore. Quite literally late to the party in this case, since everything went down on New Years Eve. This trope is lampshaded, perhaps inadvertently, in Bioshock's Alternate Reality Game. In Quain's "Utropolis" manuscript, it details his arrival at Rapture and discovery of the aforementioned New Year's ~~celebration -- at~~celebration—at which point he muses that he was "Late for the party." Averted in [[BioShock Infinite]], however. Both factions are still fighting, and Columbia hasn't been reduced to the horrific crumbling state of Rapture where everything seems to be hanging by a thread and ready to flood at the slightest provocation. It's still going to be very dangerous though. In Bioshock 2, there's a subplot of a busisnessman who stumbled upon Rapture looking for his missing daughter {{spoiler\|who was turned into a Little Sister}} told through audio logs. {{spoiler\|Right before you enter one area of the game, you hear - in the actual world and not an audio log - the man screaming to "get away from her." When you go inside, you can find a suitcase full of surprisingly-normal possessions and an audio log. The audio log ends with the businessman screaming the same desperate pleas you had just heard from outside the room. It turns out that you'd been mere minutes behind him for most of the way.}} You'd think that'd be the end of that plotline, but right before the finale {{spoiler\|you're late to the party again, because apparently the businessman didn't die there, and was instead dragged off to become a Big Daddy who would serve his own daughter as a little sister. You find an audio log telling you this directly after you encounter (and let's be honest, probably killed) a Big Daddy with a name matching the businessman from the audio logs, right next to an operating table for the creation of Big Daddies.}} * In Bungie Software's ''[[Pathways into Darkness]]'' the player is part of an elite special forces team sent with only hours to stop the [[Sealed Evil in a Can]] at the bottom of a nightmarish jungle pyramid dungeon from waking up. But your parachute malfunctions before you can land, and your team leaves you for dead. Since [[It's Up to You]], you awaken hours later (also finding that the barrel of the awesome M16 in your [[Bag of Spilling]] was bent in the landing, rendering all of your ammo useless) to discover that your team has failed. * This occurs a number of times in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', usually involving a previous bloody massacre by Sephiroth or the shady dealings of the Shinra organization. * This gets ludicrous throughout the middle of ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', wherein nearly every city the protagonist comes across is {{spoiler\|obliterated}} literally moments before he arrives. The [http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html list of console RPG cliches] actually names this "curse" after the main ~~character -- who~~character—who, granted, was created to {{spoiler\|bring destruction}}, but not by arriving five minutes ''after'' every plot-related catastrophe. * In the Lucasarts video game ''[[The Dig]]'', the human protagonists are "kidnapped" by an advanced spaceship and arrive at an alien world whose civilization has [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence\|apparently]] become extinct. At first they care only about survival and possibly finding a way to return Earth, but over the course of the game they discover clues as to the cause of the alien disappearance and end up {{spoiler\|bringing them back}}. * A similar setting appeared in [[Stanislaw Lem]]'s novel ''Eden''. Line 64: * In ''[[Portal 2]]'', considering Chell's been in stasis for years (estimates range from two decades to three centuries), she's ''really'' late to the party as far as the fate of mankind goes. She's also late to the party she herself set up by destroying GLaDOS in the previous game. * [http://armorgames.com/play/751/shift Shift], a game which evokes much of the spirit of Portal, uses this trope in [http://armorgames.com/play/1846/shift-3 Shift 3]. * ''Uncharted: Drake's Fortune'' does it a few times over - not only the hero and the villainous enemy mercs but also Nazis and Sir Francis Drake were [[Late to the Party]] of a group of Spanish explorers who found El Dorado - and grew to wish they hadn't. In the present, the hero finds himself trawling through the wreckage of these multiple doomed expeditions. * ''[[Blaster Series\|Reading Blaster: Ages 9 - 12]]'' does this, frequently incorporating the information about what happened into its [[Alphabet Soup Cans\|language arts activities]]. * ''Bonesaw: The Game'' has one of these to help form its premise. The player character took a bit too long gathering some pulled pork sandwiches, and just happened to miss ''Ref M sucking the rest of his team into an interdimensional penalty box!'' Line 79: ** ''[[Dead Space 2]]'' on the other hand has you present as the 'party' is starting, although things have been building up for weeks or months beforehand. * In [[Super Smash Bros Brawl]]: The Subspace Emissary, this occurs right before the final boss fight, when {{spoiler\|Sonic}}, the ''fastest playable character in the game,'' {{spoiler\|shows up out of nowhere with [[Deus Ex Machina\|no notice whatsoever]] and damages [[Big Bad\|Tabuu's]] butterfly wings, weakening his [[Fantastic Nuke\|'Off Waves']] ability and allowing a battle with him ''without'' [[Hopeless Boss Fight\|dying by default.]]}} * In ''Starflight'' (So old the Sega Genesis version was a re-release) you find yourself centuries [[Late to the Party]]. {{spoiler\|You're from Planet Arth, whose star is about to collapse, on a mission to find a hospitable planet to which the populace can relocate. Along the way, adrift in deep space, you find a sleeper ship from Planet Earth...rendered inhospitable [[Apocalypse How\|(see Apocalypse How, Class 5)]] long ago. So long ago, in fact, that your culture lost all knowledge that your civilization originally came from Earth. Eventually you find Earth itself, and on its surface locate 'artifacts' in the form of [[Apocalyptic Log\|newspapers]] vaguely describing its downfall. Eventually you have to use three [[Power Crystal\|artifacts]] together to stop a [[Desolation Shot\|crystalline entity]] that was the cause of both Earth's downfall and the near destruction of your solar system.}} ** ... How? {{spoiler\|Smack its nose with the rolled up artifacts}}? * The entire world of ''[[Fallout]]'' is based around this trope, having been destroyed by a nuclear war a few hundred years before the game begins.

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