Unusable Enemy Equipment: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''That zombie's got armor! '''I''' want armor!''|'''Coach''', ''[[Left 4 Dead|Left 4 Dead 2]]''}}

 

For whatever reason, the player is not allowed to pick up and use the weapons, ammo, and equipment of fallen enemies. Instead, he must either find the same weapons and equipment lying around by themselves, or simply can't pick up weapons at all outside plot events that give them to him. Often this doesn't extend to ammunition; once the player has a gun, enemies with the same gun may well start dropping ammunition for it. This isn't really as unrealistic as it may seem; knowing where your weapon came from means you can tell it's well-maintained and not booby-trapped or locked out in some way, but it's fairly safe to assume someone who was just shooting at you is carrying ammunition that works in the gun they were carrying.

 

 

In real life, a soldier will be trained to pick up an opponent's weapon only as an absolute last resort. This is because of a laundry list of issues that most fictional depictions skirt around. (A biggy is that when opposing forces are using guns with very different reports, say a US M16 and a Viet Cong AK-47, friendly soldiers will tend to shoot at anything that sounds like the enemy...) In the case of police, weapons owned by criminals are evidence and tampering with them could destroy a later court case. On the other hand, in that absolute last resort when you're out of ammo for your own weapons and surrounded by enemies, it ''will'' feel unreasonable if the game prevents you from picking up the gun from the dead Mook next to you.