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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''I have a hard time with [[Grand Theft Auto|GTA]]. I find the total freedom paralyzing. When given the opportunity to do anything, I tend to do nothing.''|'''Tycho''', ''[[Penny Arcade]]''}}
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== [[Action Adventure]] ==
* ''[[La-Mulana]]'' can be like this, even though the whole ruins aren't initially open to you. You do, however, have very little in the way of objectives when you first enter the ruins. Being that Lemeza is an archaeologist, exploration is one of the main themes of the
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda (video game)|The Legend of Zelda]]'' is prone to this. You're basically sent out with little idea what to do and especially where to go leading to some early deaths. ([[With This Herring|"It's dangerous to go alone! Take this!"]])
** The Atari game [[Adventure (1979 video game)|Adventure]] was even more this. You have a general goal and no idea how to accomplish it or where anything is.
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* ''[[Need for Speed]] Underground 2'', after you're stuck into searching for secret races or [[Event Flag|need to complete specially hard DVD/magazine covers]].
== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s ==
* ''[[Second Life]]''. When the question to "what can I do?" can more or less be answered by "anything", this is a big stumbling block for newbies. It also gets overwhelming when you look up tutorials on how to even build things from prims or how to make a script. And then there's the in world currency (mostly gotten with real money) where you can use it for almost "anything"... God help us if ''Second Life'' and ''[[Scribblenauts]]'' have a child.
* ''[[EVE Online]]'' has been described as a sand box with land mines. There are few over arching quest and most of the content is player generated. Leaving many newbies completely at a loss for what to do next. Expect everyone else to repeatedly kill you while you decided what to do for yourself.
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* Most games in the ''[[Metroid]]'' series suffer from this trope; it becomes very easy to become lost in the game world, even in the newer games which tend to be a bit more linear. ''Super Metroid'' is probably the most well-known for this, which, due to bugs, intentional design decisions and underestimating players' abilities, gives the player several different routes through the game, and many weapons and items are [[Sequence Breaking|skippable]] with some ingenuity. Because there's no clear indication of what to do or where to go, putting the game down for even a day can either leave you with no idea how to progress, or stumbling in the right direction.
** The ''[[Metroid Prime|Prime]]'' series try avoiding with an optional hint system that shows where the plot will advance.
** ''Zero Mission'' has each Chozo statue set a rough waypoint to the "next" statue, unless you jump off the rails
* ''[[Castlevania]] [[Circle of the Moon]]''. The game starts off by dropping you into Dracula's Castle; and not telling the player where to go. The hints you get are few and far in between, and even then they just give you a broad goal.
** ''[[Aria of Sorrow]]'' takes a step to avert this trope by having a screen where you can consult a character who gives you a hint on what you can probably do next.
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== [[Roguelike]] ==
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' is possibly the only game to encompass geology, weather patterns, geopolitics, genetics, city building, tactical combat, individual psychology, item crafting and the effects of a punctured liver all in the same game setting. This is made worse by the fact that the author is continually adding new features to the game, making it much more complicated every year. This causes most prospective players to quit in the first week. Once you can make it past the learning stage, the game is immensely fun. By now, the only hope for a newcomer to learn the game is to start out with a version from back when it was still 2D.
** It's possible to start on the newer versions, but you will need a [[Guide Dang It]], by way of [https://web.archive.org/web/20120207003323/http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page the wiki].
*** The wiki has ''become'' the the tutorial, with it even being mentioned in the game itself.
== [[Role
* ''[[Mount & Blade]]'' is this trope turned [[Up to Eleven]]. You just get dumped into the world and basically told to make your own fun.
** Its sequel, ''Warband'', gives players the option to do a starting quest that has a small, simple storyline and conclusion, introducing them to some of the mechanics and the setting...at which point they are again dumped into the world and left to their devices.
** While most user-made mods add only different weapons and textures, there are a precious few which add a storyline, or at least a long-term goal.
* In ''[[Arcanum]]: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura'' the book that tells you what subquests you currently have active doesn't tell you where you actually got the quests, so you can spend hours visiting every city in the game to find Raxinfraxin, the guy who wanted M'hurna's Emerald (or whatever), which you just found in some ruins. A similar problem exists in ''Baldur's Gate''
* Once the ''[[SaGa]]'' games went onto consoles, every single one suffered from this. ''[[
* Several games in the ''[[Ultima]]'' series are like this. Especially ''[[Ultima IV]]'' and ''[[Ultima V]]''.
* All three ''[[Fallout]]'' games give you an overarching goal and a suggestion of where to head first, then leave you to your own devices. It's possible to go the whole game without finding out about whole ''cities''.
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** Technically, you're supposed to stop the apocalypse by defeating Baphomet, but that only entailed doing two quests to find the location of the final fortress then beating the fortress itself. There were no hints in game or in the manual that that was supposed to be your goal.
* For the people who love to complete everything, ''[[Pokémon]]'' can be like this. Especially prevalent in the original Gold and Silver, where you were allowed to go to Mt. Silver, but since no one mention the boss at the summit, no one was in a rush to get there.
* ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'': all the way. Once the Sandseas (and Giza Plains) are no longer guarded by the Imperials, you can go ''anywhere.'' Should you continue with the plot, however, you will be stuck in one place after the other. ''FF12'' tends to vary between [[Wide Open Sandbox]] and Linear
** It should be noted that more than half of the time, bringing up the map sub-menu will have either your next destination marked on the map, or your next objective displayed at the bottom of the map screen. Too bad you wouldn't really remember that unless [[All There in the Manual|you read the manual]].
* While the bulk of ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' is in fact [[No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom]], the one exception, Gran Pulse is this trope. You are dumped into a field, given a short tutorial about Cie'th Stone giving missions... and that's it. The next step to continue the story is a red X of in an unrevealed section of the map.
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* The second ''[[Golden Sun]]'' game has a more wide-open world because it is the whole rest of the world. However; there were players who wound up going the wrong way and getting themselves stuck (in Air's Rock) when they were supposed to have done another event first. With the ship you have to get to the other side of the world but are blocked by an obstacle in a canal and have to go elsewhere first, but there are obstacles there too. It can be refreshing to be allowed to do whatever you want but set the game down for too long and it will take awhile to figure out where you've already been if you pick it back up.
* [[Morrowind]]: The island the game plays on is ''huge'', it takes almost 45 minutes to walk from one end to the other. In the tutorial you learn in five minutes how to use the controls, than the game kicks you out of the door, hands you a couple of coins and basically says: "Here, this is the world. Have fun". You only get some hints of where to go for the next story mission, aside from that the game itself doesn't help you ONE bit. It's incredibly easy to get lost.
** The world of Morrowind may be large compared to other, non-Elder Scrolls games, but according to one of the game's programmers, it's literally only about 0.01% of the area covered in the previous title in the series, ''[[The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall|Daggerfall]]''
*** Daggerfall was also like this. You are told to use quick-travel to Daggerfall and the game basically leaves you alone. Given how big the world is - its' ''very'' easy to get lost. If you follow Daggerfall's main quest, you explore maybe a dozen towns and dungeons. The rest of the ''15,000'' locations are optional. Morrowind's main quest brings you through most of the island.
* ''[[Skyrim]]'' zig-zags it. There's nothing stopping you from exploring all of Skyrim, other than a "Go meet my sister in Riverwood" spoken by the person you help at the end of the tutorial dungeon.
* The later ''[[Wizardry]]'' games, VII and 8 especially, have quite a bit of this. You're dumped onto an alien planet with only the broad outlines of what's going on and are expected to figure out what to do from there. If you import from the previous game, you might be immediately greeted with a questline to follow... that's probably far too hard for your level. Good luck figuring out where you're supposed to go and when - the plot of these games tends towards the labyrinthine...
* Contrary to the [[Penny Arcade]] page image, ''[[Mass Effect 1]]'' averts this problem for the most part. You go through a few training missions before getting the [[Cool Spaceship|Normandy]] to freely fly around the universe, only to be restricted to one ship/planet/asteroid to explore within each star system. Story progression is rather straightforward, despite you being able to play a trio of core missions in whatever order you wish, and a clear goal in mind. In addition, all active missions are logged in the pause
** ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' has more missions to do and has a wider scope of freedom, but it's still linear, nonetheless.
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== [[Simulation Game]] ==
* The ''[[
** Though each game has a handful of scenarios with actual win/lose conditions.
** Not to mention ''[[The Sims]]'' series. It can be summed up as "You die, you lose. [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|Maybe.]] Start playing." TS3 did at least have a rolling tutorial that gave you the option of learning how to do things if you activate them with the tutorial section unread.
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* Capcom's famed Keiji Inafune suggested that the effect of this Trope, combined with the Japanese desire to be guided, explains the relative lack of success that [[Wide Open Sandbox]] titles have had in Japan. There was mention of Western attitudes towards free-roaming gameplay being similar to going deer hunting and bagging a bear instead.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Just for Pun]]
[[Category:Videogame Culture]]
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