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No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Difference between revisions
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Just as a gamemaster in a [[Tabletop Games|tabletop game]] may create [[Broken Bridge|artificial rules, boundaries and obstacles]] to keep his players on the game track that he has designated (a procedure known as [[Railroading]]), so too a video game may employ such tactics in order to force the player down a [[The One True Sequence|specific path or method]] toward the goal. And one of the easiest ways to keep a player from wandering off is, quite simply, to give the player nowhere to wander to.
Technically, [[No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom]] is the polar opposite of the [[Quicksand Box]]; it describes level architecture which forces the player down a singular path. This trope is most common in [[First-Person Shooter|First-]] or [[Third-Person Shooter|Third Person Shooters]] (except, usually, tactical shooters) and platform games, wherein the challenge is generally supposed to be the enemies and/or [[Malevolent Architecture|obstacles]], not in figuring out which way to go. It can also crop up in RPGs as a very visual form of [[Railroading]]. The trope is forgivable in 2D [[Platform Game|Platform Games]] such as ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'', which allow only forward progression due entirely to the limitations of the geometry; not everything is a [[Metroidvania]]. It only applies in situations where, intuitively, you'd ''think'' there might be other areas of a place to explore, but these are [[The Law of Conservation of Detail|not implemented because they are not plot-important]].
The most common incarnation is to simply have several rooms chained, each with a single entrance and a single exit, or to have long corridors with no side branches and few if any side rooms. The only options for progress are "forward" or "backward." This applies even when the rooms are tightly packed together and should have (you'd think) some degree of interconnectivity; imagine living in a New Orleans [[wikipedia:Shotgun house|shotgun house]], where you have to travel from the front porch into the living room, then through the kitchen, to the dining room, through the spare bedroom, and finally into the den, just to get to the bathroom. ''Every'' time you wanted to go to the bathroom. No shortcuts.
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