History WithThisHerring / Videogames

* ''7.62mm High Caliber'' plays this straight in the main game, sending you off to Algeria with a Tokarev TT-33, two magazines, and a box of ammo. The mercs you can hire early on often don't have much better equipment, maybe having a grenade or knife with them.

** In the prologue you start out with nothing but a quarterstaff, but before the prologue ends you will have enough money to get decent starter gear, most of which comes from the quest-giver. You can also use exploits to give yourself items from the Candlekeep training sections that will benefit you greatly up until the first major dungeon. There's currently an "iron plague" that's making metal weapons in the region brittle and prone to breaking. Quarterstaffs, being made of wood, are not subject to this and are actually fairly good weapons for most of the first couple of chapters.

* ''VideoGame/LaMulana'''s [[AllThereInTheManual manual]] {{Hand Wave}}s Lemeza's lack of starting equipment as being the result of airport security; he was only able to keep his whip and UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} by insisting that they're "souvenirs."

--> '''Manderley:''' We take care of our people around here.

** In the DLC mission ''The Missing Link'' (later integrated proper into the Director's Cut), Adam loses all his augmentation functionality due to being caught and tortured by troops from Rifleman Bank. When he is aided by a source who helps him escape, said source leaves his combat suit and a number of extra Praxis Kits en-route to his first objective, thus enabling the player to have a basic build for the duration of the mission, barring any other Praxis Kits purchased or found afterwards.
* ''VideoGame/DeusExMankindDivided'' plays with this trope:

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' games tend to have the Lord and their handful of companions start out at level 1, maybe level 3 at most. While the Lord usually gets a personal weapon, albeit a fairly weak one, their troops start out the game with cheap iron weapons and very basic healing items. The obligatory CrutchCharacter will be actually competent and well-equipped, if underpowered for their level. Justifications for why TheWisePrince is running around with underequipped newbies varies from game to game, with the usual one being that some prior calamity has separated them from their kingdom's actual army and supply line, or that the Lord is not actually nobility and so commands a group of mercenaries or rebels instead of actual elites.

* ''VideoGame/AceCombat'' games usually (but not always; see the SoLastSeason article for a rundown of the ZigZaggingTrope) start you off with a dinky outdated fighter. True, you start as a newcomer who only earns [[DudeWheresMyRespect a fearsome reputation]] later, but surely they could stand to start you off with a 4th-gen plane. Perhaps most egregious in ''Zero'', where Cipher is ostentatiously a mercenary, but clearly comes from some backwater outfit that doesn't have up-to-date birds.
** Not really that egregious; the narrator makes it pretty clear that Cipher was a nobody before he was hired by Ustio- just because he's a mercenary doesn't mean he's wealthy, and Ustio was pretty desperate at the time. In contrast to Cipher's humble beginnings, Pixy is tooling around in an F-15C and already has a solid reputation.
** Double subverted in ''Electrosphere''. Hooray, you didn't start with a puny little fighter plane, instead you start with a goddamn Eurofighter Typhoon, the coolest plane in the world as of 1998! Oh, but guess what? The year is 2040, and flying an Eurofighter at that year is equivalent to flying a Wold War II fighter in 1998!

* Averted in ''VideoGame/AdventRising''; you're given a [[{{BFG}} fifty-caliber handgun]] just minutes in, and it goes up from there. On the way to Aurelia you get the MagicAndPowers, and though the {{BFG}}s are still available, you probably wont be using them anymore.

** In ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'', however, Booker [=DeWitt=] is told "Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt", and given nothing more than a 9mm pistol([[BagOfSpilling which he lost mere minutes later]], before he could even ''use'' it), a photograph, a postcard, a cryptic message, and a key. He didn't even know he was going to a floating city, and when he gets there, the first weapon he picks up is the Skyhook, which he uses to brutalize policemen until he gets his hands on another pistol and a Vigor.

* Played realistically straight twice in the original ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty''. First, as an [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks American paratrooper]], you land having lost your weapon in the jump. Second, as a [[UsefulNotes/RedsWithRockets Soviet infantryman]], you get off the riverboat at the Stalingrad docks with nothing more than 5 rounds of ammunition and a cheerful suggestion of picking up a rifle if you see one of your better equipped comrades die.

* Averted and subsequently parodied in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiSuperstarSaga]''. After saving Beanbean Castle from trouble, Queen Bean falls ill and you're tasked with finding something to help save her. Rather than send you into a dangerous new area empty-handed, one of the queen's advisers rushes after you to give Mario a free badge. [[ButtMonkey Luigi]] pokes the adviser to get something for himself. Rather than supply the other hero of the story as well, the adviser flatly replies, "Luigi, you'll just have to buy one for yourself." Cue a displeased ellipsis as Luigi sits perfectly still, his finger still pointed outward into the air.

* ''7.62mm High Caliber'' plays this straight in the main game, sending you off to Algeira with a Tokarev TT-33, two magazines, and a box of ammo. The mercs you can hire early on often don't have much better equipment, maybe having a grenade or knife with them.
** The Blue Sun mod both [[JustifiedTrope justifies this]] and averts it; you begin with a Beretta 92, two magazines, and a box of ammo (and only if you search a car at your starting location for it) and the mod FAQ recommends that players take a short quest in Puerto Viejo to earn a Glock 22 (which is barely more powerful than the Beretta) and some ammo, but you're told at the beginning that your guide, Paquito, has disappeared with your luggage. After running around Algeira for about a day with Paquito, you eventually find it [[spoiler:in the police station in Sagrada]] and are given a longarm that matches your character class (like a SPAS-12 or a Thompson), grenades, medical supplies, and a helmet and ballistic armor.

*** The plot pretty much requires the elite agent of the Citadel Council to buy their own weapons and armor. However, the game strongly implies that Spectres not only fund themselves, but that they are ''expected'' to do so (and you are told by the quartermaster that your starting gear is standard issue). No one bats an eye when its revealed that Saren has a controlling interest in a major weapons manufacturer and commands his own private armies and massive research facilities, and by late-game Shepard should be swimming in cash, guns and armor, or both. They ''did'' give you a spiffy spaceship at least. There are some hints that, because Spectres can get into really... ''questionable'' activities, the Council gives minimal support to them in terms of gear to keep their hands clean. ("We just told them what to do, we didn't give them the stuff to do it.")

** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' is a glorious aversion. Cerberus, the human supremacists from the first game, essentially tell Shepard, "Humanity is in danger! Take this state-of-the-art ship, an armory's worth of weapons and armor ([[BribingYourWayToVictory if you bought the Firepower Pack DLC]]), two of our best commandos to accompany you until you recruit more squadmates, and a pile of cash. We'll be in touch to give you intel and more money, and [[BetterLivingThroughEvil if you need something else, call us]]." Shepard still has to buy weapon modifications, but to tweak higher performance out of gear that's already top of the line. Other upgrades have to be researched in the ship's lab, putting the team at the very edge of weapons and armor tech in the galaxy.

*** Depending on what [[PreOrderBonus pre-order bonuses]] or version of the game you've bought, you'll receive a boatload of messages after leaving Mars about extra gear that was secured for you. This includes additional armors for your squadmates (which have unique bonuses), a bunch of N7 weapons (including a sniper rifle, shotgun, SMG and pistol) that are among some of the best in the game, two sets of armor (N7 Defender / Reckoning) that would normally costs tens of thousands to buy at a store and (if you completed ''Lair of the Shadow Broker'' from the previous installment) an Armor Modkit intel bonus that increases your health or shields. The DLC weapon packs include several guns that are [[BribingYourWayToVictory flat out better]] than anything that can be found or bought in regular gameplay, to the point that some online game guides recommended against equipping them just to keep the game from being too easy.
*** The Alliance ''finally'' starts paying Shepard, possibly out of shame at how their refusal to do so for three years drove the latter to ally with Cerberus.
*** The DLC equipment packs award Shepard with many weapons and one suit of armor that are flat-out superior to anything in the normal game. The armor grants a total of +80% in all its bonuses to Shepard, compared to the +50% maximum for using piecemeal armor or +60% with the various suits that are available for purchase.

** The worst WithThisHerring abuse in the ''VideoGame/{{XCOM}}'' series is not your equipment, which is miserable, or your funding, which is miserly, but your soldiers. Rather than give you the elite special-ops Delta/SAS/Spetznaz/GSG-9 types you would expect, you get a bunch of folks who have inhumanly bad reflexes and apparently didn't even go through basic training; some of them would almost certainly have failed the physical to boot.

** Averted in ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'': The value of "credits" isn't given, but applied economics estimates that one thousand credits is enough to buy your own third-world dictatorship. You get paid a third of this ''each month'' for a C grade war effort. Any equipment that exists before you reverse-engineering (assault rifles, shotguns, grenades, bulletproof vests) is given to you for free. Not to mention the already-empowered state-of-the-art secret base, complete with expansion options and a legion of the world's finest engineers and scientists. [[WeHaveReserves Now go out there and get your soldiers killed]] until you steal enough technology to reverse-engineer and bring out the pain.