No-Gear Level: Difference between revisions

A level where the player is stripped of all weapons and equipment. It most often is [[Justified Trope|justified]] by having the character arrested/captured/imprisoned, but there are other means of losing your stuff, such as an airplane crash or shipwreck. They may be able to acquire new weapons and equipment, rebuilding their inventory as they go along, or may just have to complete a segment of the game by using abilities which are not so easily removed, such as [[Stealth -Based Mission|stealth]], [[Good Old Fisticuffs|unarmed combat]], or [[Functional Magic|innate powers or magical abilities]].

==== Non-VideoGamebooks Game examples ====

==== VideoAction GameAdventure examples ====

* During the final boss fight in ''[[Okami]]'', all of your brush powers, the ones that you spent the whole game acquiring, are stripped away. In order to get them back, you must damage the boss the old-fashioned way -- pummelingway—pummeling the crap out of it with melee attacks until you get them all back.

** Also occurs during normal gameplay if you are careless enough to run out of ink -- yourink—your weapon vanishes as well, leaving you to fight with tooth and claw. Horrible during boss fights. Luckily, ink replenishes.

* ''[[Harry The Handsome Executive]]'' makes this slightly more bearable than some other examples -- theexamples—the same challenges that cost you your weapons gain you magical powers.

* ''[[Avalon Code]]'' has a particularly vicious form of this. The protagonist is a kid who's rather pathetic at combat but happens to come across the [[Upgrade Artifact|Book]] [[Artifact of Doom|of]] [[Great Big Book of Everything|Prophecy]] and becomes insanely proficient with any weapon that is literally pulled from within it. Then Chapter 5 ends {{spoiler|after the [[Big Bad]] tricks a character into stealing the Book from you and attempting to use it himself, and another villain steals it in the aftermath -- on top of an [[All of the Other Reindeer]] moment that neighbors [[Phantom Brave]] proportions}} and you're back to being a puny kid. Heath decides to fix that and teach you to fight without weapons -- whichweapons—which you have no choice but to do for the entirety of Chapter 6.

** Played partially straight in the sequel, ''Jedi Academy'': there is a level in which the player is captured and stripped of all weapons and then has to escape. Gathering weapons is not difficult, as there are plenty lying around, but the player ''is'' denied one of the most powerful weapons in the game -- thegame—the lightsaber. This is deliberate on the part of Jaden's captor -- hecaptor—he's created a sort of sport out of letting dangerous prisoners try to escape while he hunts them down. Of course, he's never hunted a ''Jedi'' before, and doesn't consider finding a way to take away the other most powerful weapon in the game -- thegame—the characters force powers. (It makes a huge difference in this level whether you have third-level Force Lightning or not, because it enables you to fry all [[Mooks]] in front of you at once without aiming.)

** Also in predecessor ''Dark Forces'' -- Kyle—Kyle Katarn gets captured by Jabba the Hutt's henchmen and dropped into a pit with at least one krayt dragon. Fortunately, he can dodge its attacks and kill it with enough hits from his fists.

* Happens fairly early in ''[[Tron 2.0]]''. Particularly irritating in that one of the weapons you lose costs energy to acquire in the first place -- energyplace—energy which might have been better spent elsewhere -- andelsewhere—and upon losing it you cannot retrieve it (you do eventually get your frisbee back, though, and are also given a new weapon to make up for it). And there are several infinite (and, until you leave the level, infinitely reusable) energy sources between the time you acquire the weapon and the time you are relieved of it.

* Happens three times in ''[[Red Faction]]''. In both cases, you are able to rebuild your arsenal the same way you built it in the first place (taking guns off dead enemies), but whatever weapons and ammo you had originally are lost. On the plus side, one of these sequences can be skipped -- justskipped—just ignore [[Ninja Butterfly|Hendrix]]'s insistence that you need a disguise in the hospital.

* In ''[[The Conduit]]'', you can finish a level armed to the max with your favorite weapons -- includingweapons—including rare super-weapons with [[One-Hit Kill]] capability -- andcapability—and then lose them all when you transition to the next level.

* ''[[BioshockBioShock (series)]]'' has one section where you won't be allowed to advance unless you turn over all your weapons. You fight through the next area using only plasmids, though you can find one or two dropped guns. That said, it is possible and in fact quite easy to cheat and bring a weapon in with you, as the gate which opens when you surrender your guns doesn't close again if you pick up another one and it's possible to carry items around with the telekinesis plasmid without collecting them.

=== MechaPlatform Game ===

* Both versions of the Final Caves and in the Sacred Grounds levels of "''[[Cave Story]]"''. 'You feel a black wind pass through you. All levels dropped to level 1!"

=== Roguelike ===

* In ''[[Ultima VII Part Two]]: Serpent Isle]],'' you are stripped of all your weapons early on by uncontrolled teleportation magic, but quickly scrape up at least serviceable weaponry. Later on, you are thrown into prison for a crime you may or may not have chosen to actually commit and stripped of all your weapons -- onlyweapons—only to discover that THIS is where the previous game's [[Infinity+1 Sword]] was teleported at the start! The weapon retains all its previous power. Your windfall doesn't last you long, though: To escape the prison, you must destroy the gem in your sword, rendering it powerless -- withpowerless—with the demon contained within killing the [[Big Bad]] of the prison in a rather gory fashion, letting you escape. You still get some other loot in this sequence, meaning that when you get your existing equipment back you end up the richer for having been imprisoned.

* The first third of the ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]: [[Dark Corners of the Earth]]'' is played like this, and after that you still lose all your weapons in several occasions to retain the horror feel. Once you're strangely quickly given a pistol, even though the only monster in the level is utterly immune to bullets, and in other time you're reduced to a pistol, even though you would think that being sent to help a party of soldiers would call for ''more'' arsenal.

* In ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'', CJ loses all his guns after the helicopter he's gunning down from gets... gunned down and crashes in water. You must then make your way aboard the gangster-ridden container ship you were attacking and acquire guns by killing gang members. (Or {{spoiler|you can simply swim ashore, buy new weapons, and go back}}). Another mission, Stowaway, has CJ inside a plane loaded with explosives (possibly landmines). Shooting in there is not forbidden, no - but one shot that misses a government agent mook in there means hitting the explosives and the whole thing goes kaboom. Players are likely to resort to melee weapons or unarmed combat in there, risking no such thing - especially since getting into the plane in the first place is [[That One Level|That One Level Part]] players are unlikely to want to repeat. <ref>Driving up to and then up a narrow ramp of said plane, while it's taking off, on a motorbike, and with barrels rolling out of the ramp every once in a while. And the plane has quite a lot of head start...</ref>

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