One of These Doors Is Not Like the Other: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

''One of these doors just doesn't belong.''

 

# Or, you notice a character going down one pathway which just happens to be the right one.

 

 

** The original Paper Mario also had the path through the forest to Bow's mansion; each area had a different identifier that you used Goombario's field ability to learn.

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' loves this one.

** The [[Zelda Classic|original game]] had two of these, the solutions to which needed to be purchased from nearby NPCs.

** In ''[[Spirit Tracks]]'', one villager tells Link that he has to turn in the directions tree branches point in order to make it through the Lost Woods... {{spoiler|but another villager tells him that the fourth tree "has no sense of direction".}}

* In ''[[Prince of Persia]]: Sands of Time'', you navigate one of these mazes by where the sound of dripping water is loudest.

* In [[Suda 51]]'s next classic, [[No More Heroes]], the [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|final area]] ends in [[The Lost Woods]], covered in fog, and it warps Travis back to the start if he takes the wrong path. Of course, he's guided by the ghost of {{spoiler|Thunder Ryu}}, who points the way for him.

* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', the Fellowship is able to navigate through the Mines of Moria once Gandalf recognizes than one of the paths has fresher air than the others.

* In some areas of ''[[Illusion of Gaia]]'', there appears to be no door at all, but paying careful attention to {{spoiler|the wind, or else the sound made by striking}} reveals the secret.

** There's actually an area that follows this trope exactly: Will has to visit a set of two rooms and point out the differences between them to continue. These differences can be easy {{spoiler|number or color of pots}} or hard {{spoiler|the contents of a chest or the wind blowing through Will's hair}}. The {{spoiler|chest}} one is particularly tricky because the rooms are ''completely'' identical... {{spoiler|until you open the chest in one.}}

** There's also the teleport pads in the Palmacosta Ranch, which appear to be [[Magical Mystery Doors]] until you use the Sorcerer's Ring and discover that there's a shiny dot (which indicates a hidden item) next to the pad that advances you toward the boss room. Of course, picking up the item destroys the clue (unless it's actually a booby trap that summons guards on you), so you'd better remember which was the right way. And again, you can ignore it entirely if you've played the game often enough to memorize the right sequence.

* ''[[Devil May Cry]] 4'' in the forest level, sort of. You have to make sure your shadow is behind you.

* This trope came up in the original text-based ''Zork''. A lot.

** Some early games in the Nancy Drew series have you win a computer game to access someone's private files. The [[Game Within a Game]] is a maze, which you can win by always choosing the corridors that have a color motif you haven't seen previously.

* The warp doors in ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'''s Nightmare Hotel. Only one of the doors warps you to the other wing of the building.

* A rather subtle instance appears in ''[[Space Quest]] 2'', when the protagonist is swimming through some caves. At one point, there are two paths he can take. One leads to instant death, while the other allows him to advance through the game. Although this isn't mentioned in the game, in a published walkthrough guide called ''The Official Guide to Roger Wilco's Space Adventures'', which is narrated from Roger Wilco's perspective, he chooses the correct path to take explicitly because it looks to him like it's the 'road more travelled'.

** There's no indication which path is correct, but once you go the ''wrong'' way, you have the opportunity to turn back (and you should, it's a waterfall, numbnuts). Once you go the ''right'' way (an equally-deadly ''whirlpool''), you lose control of your character immediately, which throughout the game has been an indication that the plot is progressing forward (usually). It's basically [[Fission Mailed]]: both rooms look like they will kill you after a long delay; one does, the other doesn't.

* In ''[[Spectrobes]]: Origins'', Slayso Tower has three different rooms with seven exit doors each, six of which lead to broken elevators and a Krawl fight. {{spoiler|The correct doors to go through are (in order) the one with the different pattern, the one that you can hear wind through, and the one the Child Spectrobe identifies when sent searching (which most players would not have done due to the lack of hidden items in the rooms.}} Thankfully, if the player keeps choosing incorrectly, Rallen and Jeena will hint at, and eventually reveal, how to find the correct door.

** The legendary weapons on each of those floors can similarly be found through the distinctive humming noise they make, which can be heard through the door.

* In ''[[Secret of Evermore]]'' for the SNES, there's a forest that will either lead you around in circles or dump you in dead ends unless you only take the paths closest to a bizarre blue creature that appears on every screen.

* Each of the ''[[Professor Layton]]'' games has mini-games you can solve during the course of the main story in order to unlock bonus puzzles, but one of the mini-games in ''Diabolical Box'' is actually required in order to finish the game. If you don't assemble the camera, you can't escape from the boiler room of the castle. There's only one visible exit (other than the door through which you entered), and the bridge which leads to it is destroyed. To get through this room, {{spoiler|you must take a picture of the boiler room and find the three things in your picture which are different from the actual scene. As with all other photographable rooms, you are rewarded for this with a hidden puzzle, which you must then solve to open the door.}}

* One of the puzzles in ''[[Jolly Rover]]'' has you [[Makes Sense in Context|using an enchanted conch to listen for ghosts singing]] my using it on one of four caves.

 

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{{reflist}}

[[Category:Stock Video Game Puzzle]]

[[Category:This Index Is Not an Example]]