History Main / StoryOverwrite

** ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' has a few instances where the previous game doesn't line up with the sequel. Most importantly is [[spoiler:Leliana's]] reappearance. She's very much alive even though more than one option can lead to her death.

* Notably averted in one instance in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'': the Dollet mission ordinarily concludes with the player party being chased through the city by a giant robot, complete with FMV cutscene when Squall makes it to the beach. It is, however, very distantly possible to kill the mech and get to the beach within the time limit provided, and if this happens, [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything no FMV plays]].

A StoryOverwrite happens when you accomplish some mission in a video game--be it beating a boss, rescuing a friend, or saving the world--only to have your handiwork suddenly [[{{Retcon}} retconned]] by a following {{cutscene}}, or perhaps a future plot summary of some sort. A StoryOverwrite occurs whenever the storyline overwrites something the player did in-game.

* At the end of every ''{{Pokemon}}'' game, somebody will still say that you won because you treated your Pokémon with kindness and didn't just concentrate on pure power. They will still say this even if your Pokémon all have 0 happiness and you constantly ditched every Pokémon you had as soon as something higher-levelled became available.

* Depending on how well you fight in [[PunchOut Punch-Out!!]] for Wii, you sometimes get a cutscene of Mac's final blow to the opponent. It's fairly common for the punch thrown in the cutscene to not match up with the punch that you actually used to finish the fight.

* The cutscenes for the original ''MarvelUltimateAlliance'' all pretty much centre around the original default combination of Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Thor, regardless of what combination of heroes you're actually playing the game with.

* ''Franchise/TombRaider'' suffers the same problem as ''Metal Gear Solid'': Lara always uses her pistols in cutscenes, no matter what other weapons the player has, because obviously the designers have no idea which guns you have and if you have ammo left in them.

* A very mean example is KnightsOfTheOldRepublic where you have to fight Darth Malak. Even if you manage to do so without him scratching you even once (not at all difficult on easy or with a dedicated fighter), at some point Bastila will jump in and sacrifice herself to save you - which of course means that now you'll be fighting ''two'' enemies. StopHelpingMe!

* ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'' ''loves'' this trope. You kill them in the boss battle? They're still alive afterwards. It gets to the point where it's just silly if you used explosives.
** Especially with [[RasputinianDeath Mr. Sunshine]].
* In the ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' games, Snake or Raiden will almost always be using their WeaponOfChoice [=SOCOM=] pistol in cutscenes, regardless of the actual weapon the player had equipped beforehand. This is most jarring at the end of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' [[spoiler:when Snake and Raiden rambo their way through Arsenal Gear]]. Most players have one of the assault rifles equipped during that segment, yet the following cutscenes will always show Raiden using his dinky pistol.
** Particularly groan-inducing is the fact that you can equip the BDU, body armor, or any wigs, and cutscenes will reflect it, but his gun is ''always'' the pistol. If Raiden is shown firing at people with it in the cutscene, the gunshots will still be loud, even if you have the suppressor equipped. One notably silly example is equipping the M9 (a tranquilizer gun that always has a suppressor equipped ''and'' normally has to have its slide pulled back after every shot) before the fight with Vamp.

** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'', Big Boss is almost always carrying either an assault rifle or an RPG in cutscenes. Completely forgivable since the cutscenes are hand-drawn.
* ''Franchise/TombRaider'' suffers the same problem as ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'': Lara always uses her pistols in cutscenes, no matter what other weapons the player has, because obviously the designers have no idea which guns you have and if you have ammo left in them.

** Among the multiple drinking games for MGS, one for the original PlayStation[=/=]PC version involved taking a shot when the SOCOM was silenced, or unsilenced, or silenced, with absolutely no consideration given to whether you had even picked up the silencer at the beginning of the game. ''The Twin Snakes'' "fixed" this by having the SOCOM always appear without the silencer, regardless of whether you had it.

* ''ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume'' does this a few times. Whatever path you're on, Chapter 4 contains an escort mission where you have to rescue certain characters, and each have a cutscene showing, [[spoiler:despite your efforts, your charges are dead]].

*** For story reasons, the fight with Lich King in Icecrown Citadel ends with [[FissionMailed apparent failure]] with him instantly killing all the players, who are then resurrected by an ally in a scripted scene, allowing them to finish him. However, the ability he uses to kill the raid actually just does a large amount of damage, far more than was survivable at level 80, for which the raid was designed. At level 90 and above, players can actually survive this damage, but the scripted scene continues as if they died anyway — and the Lich King cannot be killed until it plays out fully, staying at 1 HP.

** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', there's an early cut-scene where, based on your actions in the previous section, Snake will say one of three responses depending on whether you managed to sneak past the guards, alert but evade them, or killed any. The way he describes the third option makes it sound like he slaughtered the whole base in a bloody battle, even if you silently killed one just guy and disposed of his corpse via throwing it off a cliff.

* SaintsRow2 ''loves'' this trope. You kill them in the boss battle? They're still alive afterwards. It gets to the point where it's just silly if you used explosives.

** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', there's a cut-scene where, based on your actions in the previous section, Snake will either say "I had to kill them all" or "No one spotted me", which has some very odd ways of discriminating between the two. For instance, if you tranquilize one guard and knock another unconscious, you ''still'' get "I had to kill them all". Even though you ''didn't''.

** When Saren attacks you at Virmire, even if you kick his ass taking while taking no shoots the cutscene will show him walking towards you and gripping your neck like if you had been beaten badly.

* The final battle of ''LegacyOfKain: Soul Reaver'' ends with Kain, beaten and bloodied, fleeing Raziel into the past. The sequel's opening cutscene retells the confrontation, except Kain bats Razzy away effortlessly before calmly stepping through the chronoplast portal.

* Parodied in ''VideoGame/LastWord''. Winning the HopelessBossFight against Professor Chatters (entirely possible with enough LevelGrinding) will lead to some EasterEgg dialogue where everyone is flabbergasted. Chatters will then request that Whitty [[ThatBattleDidntCount pretend she lost the battle]] [[BreakingTheFourthWall so that the plot can continue as planned]].

* ''VideoGame/FarCry3'' has two endings, both of which seem to irrevocably end your time on the Rook Islands. However, after the credits have rolled, you find yourself back on the islands and free to explore and finish side quests as if nothing had happened.

* ''FreeSpace'' and its sequel generally don't let you deviate from the way battles are supposed to go - you simply can't destroy ships you're not supposed to because they'll leave before you're able to, and protecting your own ships is either a condition for mission success or else they're guaranteed to go boom - even to the point of their hull integrity dropping like a rock on its own if you've been protecting it too well. But some of the mission briefings can be a little weird if you do really well; for instance, in ''FreeSpace 2'', after the Colossus has engaged the [[spoiler:first]] Sathanas juggernaut, there's a mention of how the Colossus was heavily damaged and will take months to repair - ''even if you took out all of the Sathanas's forward weapons and the Colossus doesn't take a scratch.''
** These games also demonstrate how easily such a means of plot convinience can become infuriating. You never know until the debriefing screen if a mission is supposed to be lost or not. Especially bad is the "Mystery of the Trinity" mission in ''FreeSpace 2'': The ships are supposed to be destroyed, should you however manage - usually with cheats or on the easiest setting - to keep them alive the mission will stop dead in its track and becomes UnWinnable. The added tedium of this being one of the longer missions in the game doesn't help if you reflexively go for the restart mission button after the Trinity was destroyed.

** When Saren attacks you at Virmire, even if you kick his ass taking while taking no shoots the cutscene will show him walking towards you and gripping your neck like if you had been beaten bad.

* On the final mission of the original ''{{Starcraft}}'' campaigns, you could kill every single Zerg on the map except for the Overmind, then completely close in on it with 400 troops for a final victory...only to have Tassadar say that your side has taken heavy damage and that he needs to [[HeroicSacrifice end it once and for all]]. The final cutscene will still be full of Zerg, either way...

** Blizzard seems fond of this. There's an earlier mission in ''StarCraft'' where you have to defend a base for 30 minutes. If you're talented enough it's possible to fend off your attackers, go on the offensive, kill the Zerg standing army, burn the Zerg base to the ground and then begin mining operations where the Zerg base once stood. However you're still "rescued" and subsequently arrested for allying yourself with a traitorous faction when the timer rolls to zero.
** The final Protoss mission in the Starcraft expansion has you defending a temple. The outlying computer bases are on islands that are ridiculously heavily fortified to prevent players from carrying out this trope. However, skilled players can easily gather the resources necessary for 4 or 5 keys of guardians and 2 keys of corsairs. These units, when properly managed, can tear through the static defenses leaving only the pathetic standing army to stop you. As your reward for killing the unkillable bases the game forces you to sit for 30 minutes while you can do nothing but look at the screen before cutting to a video of you almost dying anyway.
** ''{{Warcraft}} III'' has a similar mission, but there are no magically-spawning enemies, and if you destroy the enemy bases, the mission ends regardless of time; the cutscene always shows Uther and a bunch of Knights coming to the rescue, though, even if there wasn't a single Undead left on the map just a second ago.

** Also in Warcraft III, there's that one mission where you're supposed to have your dudes drink demon blood to get powered up so they can kill an otherwise invulnerable demigod. You can win without finding the fountain (it's just a huge pain to do so) but the story continues as if they all drank from it anyway.
** Even earlier, in Warcraft II, the goal of the last Alliance mission is to destroy the Dark Portal. No matter how you accomplish this in-game, the ending cutscene shows the wizard Khadgar destroying it with a Blizzard spell (in-game it would actually take many such spells to burn the Portal down).

* Possible in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII''. It's possible to either skip [[TheNightmareBeforeChristmas Halloweentown]] or [[Disney/{{Aladdin}} Agrabah]]. However, after a certain point, you have to go back and do one or the other again. When you go in, the {{Cutscene}}s will remain unchanged. [[spoiler:So, even though you know now where [[TheLancer Riku]] and [[TookALevelInBadass King]] [[SixthRanger Mickey]] are, [[TheHero Sora]] is still yammering on endlessly about looking for them.]]