Closed Circle / Video Games

• Modern Battle Royale games invoke this figuratively, by having a group of players dropped onto an island to fight to the last one standing, and literally by having a circle of damaging energy/fog close in around them at certain intervals to ensure that the dwindling players meet at some point and keep fighting.
• Ditto any Asymmetric Multiplayer games with a horror focus; the survivors are trapped inside of an environment with a vicious killer and must complete time-consuming tasks which allow them to open the circle and escape.
• Alone in the Dark (1992) The main character can't leave the mansion Derceto as the door mysteriously slams as soon as s/he enters. And if you try to open it, you get eaten by what looks like a giant Man-Eating Plant.
• You are stuck in the eponymous town of Anchorhead. Your car broke down and has been towed away to the city of Arkham, and your purse and phone are in it. The only phone you can find doesn't work; the road out of town leads into wilderness. In addition, as Croseus's power over him grows, your husband outright refuses to leave, and you're determined not to go without him.
• In Ancient Domains of Mystery, you leave the Drakalor Chain (by going to the same part of the road where you arrived), but this permanently ends the game. Ideally you should do it after you finish the game's main goal. You can freely exit most of the dungeons and get back to the main map, provided you can survive the return trip. With the exception of the lowest levels of the Caverns of Chaos once you've broken the elemental lock. After that, you can only go onward, to glory or death (or quitting, but where's the fun in that?)
• In the first game of The Bard's Tale Trilogy, the magic of the evil wizard Mangar has placed the area surrounding Skara Brae under perpetual winter conditions, making it impossible for the heroes to leave town for the entire game.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum: Joker takes over the Arkham island, trapping Batman inside and forcing him to confront some of his major arch-enemies and a lot of henchmen. By the mid-point of the game, Batman displays that he could have left Arkham any time he felt like it, but refuses to do so until he gets the island back under control. At one point, Commissioner Gordon leaves via speedboat, only to be promptly recaptured by Joker's men.
• Batman: Arkham City: Things just keep happening to keep Batman in the prison area rather than figuring out some kind of escape route. While the auto-targeting machine-guns and heavy guard presence, both on land and at sea, aren't in principle insurmountable, a) Hugo Strange knows his secret identity and will leak it if he leaves, b) he only has ten hours to figure out what's going on before "Protocol Ten" starts, and c) after a little while Joker poisons him and quite a few other people in Gotham, and the only hope of a cure in a meaningful timeframe is located within Arkham City.
• The makers of BioShock went on record to explain why Rapture is a city at the bottom of the ocean and not, say, a hideout in Colorado: to justify this trope. Otherwise, the player character could simply find a plane or just walk out into the wilderness to get away from the freaks in an open air environment. In Rapture, you are stuck down there until you finish the job. Which hides the real reason you are down there obeying orders.
• BioShock Infinite: Instead of under the sea, Columbia is a city in the clouds, and Booker is sent there via a one-way lightouse-rocket, and it's just as inescapable. Any time he and Elizabeth devise a way to leave (mostly via the First Lady Airship) are thwarted by Elizabeth, the Vox Populi, Songbird, or some other external force. By the end of the game, Booker is basically begging Elizabeth to leave Columbia, but she refuses to go until Comstock is dead. The Playable Epilogue throws many, many wrenches into this plan, but also breaks the circle and takes the setting away from Columbia by going to various locations, including Rapture, both lighthouses, Wounded Knee, and Booker's office.
• In Bloodborne, Yharnem is one of these. The game hides it well, by having gates in the game that are unopenable (and presumably would lead to other parts of the city or even outside) and due to the generally confusing city layout and large amounts of Gothic architecture (making it more difficult to tell what direction they're looking in).
• Cepheus Protocol: The containment zone allows no one to go in or out. This even extends to the CERC, which has to rely on resource drops and reinforcements from the air to keep supplied.
• Used in all of the Chzo Mythos.
  • Five Days a Stranger, the house itself won't let you leave.
  • Seven Days a Skeptic, you're on a spaceship. Help is coming in 7 days and the escape pods aren't an option.
  • Trilby's Notes is slightly subtler, and some players may not even notice, but you try walk away from the hotel entrance, you'll simply reappear at the the other side.
  • 6 Days a Sacrifice, you are trapped in an underground bunker and the accesses to the surface are inoperable/blocked.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: During the Spooky chapter, Conker enters Count Batula's mansion and, after a seemingly cordial reception from his vampiric ancestor, he's forcefully transformed by him into a bat, and has to bring the incoming villagers (who plan to kill Batula) into a meat grinder to offer their blood as food. Conker wouldn't want to fly away from the mansion or its outer garden as a bat, but the trope truly kicks in when Batula himself suffers a Karmic Death and the bat transformation is reversed. Conker notices that the mansion's entrance door was sealed shut beforehand by Batula, and has to explore the place extensively to find the three keys that open the door. The chapter only ends when Conker not only exits the mansion, but also the whole preceding area to return to the Hungover area.
• In Dead Island, military patrol boats surround the island and apparently shoot down any vehicle trying to pass by regardless of intention. This is an attempt to keep the zombie experimentation as under wraps as possible via Leave No Witnesses.
• Dead Rising has Frank West invoke this on purpose, telling the helicopter pilot to return in three days, as he is at the mall for a scoop. Unfortunately a zombie outbreak is happening at the same time, and the helicopter becomes both his and the survivors' only form of rescue. At least at first.
• Dead Space
  • Dead Space invokes this pretty early on, by having the shuttle you crash landed in explode in your face when you go back to try and repair it.
  • Likewise Dead Space 2, except this time it's not just the Necromorphs impeding your escape.
• In Devil Survivor, everyone is caught in the Tokyo Lockdown — nobody can get out of the Yamanote Circle, and has to deal with the demons, loss of electricity, limited supplies, and all the nasty human factors that come into play as the lockdown wears on.
• One of the main story quests in Dragon Age: Origins sends the Player Character into a Circle of Magi tower full of abominations with the purpose of clearing out the creatures (and slaughtering any surviving mages, if the player is feeling cruel). There is only one exit out of the tower and the door is locked behind the Warden when he/she enters. Incidentally, the name of the quest is "Broken Circle."
  • The Golems of Amgarrak DLC also features this trope, as Jerrik and the Warden are unable to leave the thaig until the Harvester is defeated.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion — Intentionally invoked by the contracting client in the 'Whodunit?' quest for the Dark Brotherhood. The same client also awards a performance bonus for carrying the trope out to its murder mystery conclusion.
• Ephemeral Fantasia combines this with "Groundhog Day" Loop. The game takes place on an island where time resets back to Monday at midnight on Friday, and the next ferry won't arrive until Saturday morning. Thus, only by ending the loop can one leave the island.
• In many levels of Eternal Darkness, you can go to the main entrance and examine it, which will give you the reason why the current character can not or will not leave. For example, Paul Luther is framed for a murder and running away would be an admission of guilt, and Edwin Lindsey stays in the temple because nobody gets the better of Dr. Lindsey! Even if that someone is an undead horror. The exceptions are Ellia who gets locked in by a Ghost Butler, and all the forbidden city levels (Pious, Karim, Roberto and Michael), as the forbidden city has no obvious exit.
• Far Cry 5 takes place in Hope County, a region completely surrounded by mountains. The cultists of Project Eden's Gate have cut off all means of communication with the outside world and destroyed the tunnels leading in and out of the valley. The idea of using airplanes to leave is only lampshaded by Nick Rye who asks you to retrieve his stolen airplane to get his family out of the valley. Halfway through the mission he looks back on his family history and decides to stay and fight.
• One story in Fate/Grand Order has two crime families and a larger crime organization under the front of the Marble Trading Company come together to hammer out the details for an arranged marriage between the two families in a beach house on an isolated island because of a letter threatening them to call off the engagement or someone would die. Unfortunately, whoever sent that letter came along with them and because transportation takes a while to arrive to the island, they're stuck with the murderer for several days. The protagonist accidentally intrudes upon it by magically possessing one of them in their dreams and by giving the information to Sherlock Holmes, he deduces the island's location and charters a boat to go stop the murderer. This works because Holmes also figures out that the protagonist's dreams aren't in real time with their waking days so he can create a Stable Time Loop of being on the island a few days before the dream without breaking the circle.
• In Final Fantasy VII, the characters are given a buggy needed to cross the obligatory knee-deep creek in their way to the next area. After crossing the creek, the buggy breaks down — right in front of the town where the player needs to go. Once the quest inside that town is finished, the buggy is conveniently fixed, allowing them to cross the other obligatory knee-deep creek.
  • If you went to the town first, thus not breaking the buggy, an NPC still offers to fix it for you. An odd oversight, as the town is easily spotted and the player is just as likely to go straight there.
• All Sumio Mondo needs to do at Lospass Island in Flower, Sun and Rain is stay one day at the hotel and then leave to disarm a bomb at the airport. Except there's a time loop that resets every time he fails, and first he has to solve a puzzle to leave his room, then open the stairwell, then unblock the lobby entrance...
• In Fredbear and Friends, when Thomas decides it's high time to leave the haunted pizzeria, he finds the exit door locked. After smashing the lock with a hammer, he discovers, to his horror, that the short corridor behind it that would normally lead to the exit now somehow ends with a solid wall, and the back door has likewise disappeared. The front door returns after the clock hits 6 AM, although now it's locked with a keypad.
• Goat Simulator has one boat in Goat City Bay that turns around and takes off when you land on it. If you ride it to its ultimate destination, it crashes on an island that has barriers around it to prevent you from "swimming" to shore. You can just pick "Respawn" from the menu to return to town, though.
• In most of the Grand Theft Auto games the town you're in seems to have no entrance roads, i.e. a Gateless Ghetto, or they're blocked by Insurmountable Waist Height Fences. And to add to that, the district you start in is isolated from the rest of the city at the beginning of the game, either by Broken Bridge or Border Patrol.
• In inFAMOUS, Empire City has been quarantined following the explosion because of a spreading plague. And the military isn't kidding; an early mission is a blatant escape attempt only to watch quite a few NPCs mowed down by a wall of machine guns at an exit point. Later on, gangbangers put hostages out for display on boats so the Navy won't sink them as they leave for open waters. The player makes sure it doesn't come to that, but Mission Control assures him the gangbangers are wrong. Also happens on a smaller scale like Grand Theft Auto above; the routes into different boroughs are closed until the plot opens them.
  • In inFAMOUS: Second Son, the city of Seattle is quarantined under martial law by the D.U.P. due to several "bio-terrorists" escaping into the city. Delsin and Reggie make it into the city just as the D.U.P. collapses the last bridges into and out of the city.
• Like the video game that it was based off, the entire premise of HetaOni is that a group of nations are locked in a mansion, with one (or several) bizarre monsters trying to kill them. The situation is inverted later, when the remaining nations find out what's going on and try to come to help out. They reach the mansion grounds, only to find that they can't get inside and must settle for fighting any monsters that wander out.
• Kingdom Hearts starts because the characters feel this way. They live on a series of islands and feel like there's nothing to do, so they build a raft to see the world. Chain of Memories plays it straight. A narrow pathway leads to Castle Oblivion. There's nothing but an empty field in the opposite direction. To top it off, Marluxia appears and hints to Sora that Riku is there.
• Colonel's Bequest and its sequel Laura Bow & The Dagger of Amon Ra both have closed circles. Though part two lets you wander about the city a bit before hand before locking the door. Both also have a Serial Killer walking about though only the first one is a psycho the other one is merely a man who would've gotten away with it if Laura hadn't been there that night.
  • In fact many Sierra games feature closed circles, including Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals and Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!.
• In the original King's Quest if you keep heading in one direction you will eventually end up where you started (provided nothing gets to you.. Later entries would bound the area with sheer mountains, oceans, deserts and other impassable terrain.
• The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: Link becomes trapped in the Wind Fish's dreams when he arrives on Koholint Island, and must wake the Wind Fish to be able to leave.
• Luigi's Mansion:
  • Luigi's Mansion: Played with. At first, the front door is locked, but by the time Luigi finds the key, he's found evidence that Mario's probably somewhere in the mansion and therefore has no motivation to leave.
  • Luigi's Mansion 3. The first visit back to the lobby shows that the ghosts have barricaded the exit and tampered with all other exits and phone lines to ensure Luigi and co. stay trapped. However, some of Professor E. Gadd and King Boo's comments imply that Luigi could have escaped any time if he really wanted to, but he wouldn't leave until he has rescued Mario, Peach and the Toads.
• The Matrix: Path of Neo this is what happens when an Agent/the System 'seals' off an area in the Matrix. You can't leave until you've gotten rid of the Agents, or it's subverted in that you sometimes find a way out that they forgot to block off.
• In Maze: Subject 360 when the main character gets in her car and tries to leave Haven she encounters an endless road where everything looks exactly the same, courtesy of a malicious Reality Warper.
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Samus arrives on a planet in response to a distress call or otherwise, but her ship gets damaged, forcing a crash landing. Throughout the game, the ship is the process of gradually repairing itself while Samus is out and about on her adventure, and if you periodically return to the ship, you can even scan it and get a reading on how far the repairs have progressed.
• As soon as you enter Mortlake Mansion, you're trapped in there until the mystery is solved.
• The Mystery Case Files game Dire Grove has a form of this. The titular community is very isolated and experiences harsh weather conditions, so the residents pack up every fall and spend the winters elsewhere. Because of this, anyone who does go into the town during this off season has almost no chance of escaping it.
• You can leave the dungeon in NetHack — but then the game calls you a coward and ends. You're actually supposed to leave once you have the Amulet of Yendor, but when you do, you step into the Astral Plane and head on up.
• In Otter Island, when the friends realize they need to get off the island, they discover that someone has taken the oars for the rowboat, their only method of transportation. Zachary tries to find something to replace the oars so they can escape, eventually finding a motor and gasoline to power it.
• In Penumbra Philip is forced to stay in the abandoned mine, first because of a blizzard outside, then because of a lack of accessible exits.
• The Phantasmat series has a variety of ways to trap its main characters, whether it's an avalanche or a car accident or the front door of a creepy old house vanishing.
• In the original Phantasy Star, a guard forbids Alis from leaving the first town, although she can simply leave through another exit.
• In Phantasy Star Online, the people of Pioneer 2 are attempting to colonize the planet Ragol. However, colonization efforts are halted due to a mysterious explosion that cuts off all contact with the scientists already planetside, and can't proceed until the cause of the explosion and the fate of the scientists can be ascertained.
• The seventh generation Pokémon games pull off a justified example; After defeating Guzma in Po Town, you cannot use Charizard Glide until after you talk to Nanu at the front of the Shady House. ^note If the player were able to, they would have been able to prevent Lillie and Cosmog from being kidnapped by Plumeria.
• At the start of Princess Peach: Showtime!, Madame Grape and the Sour Bunch seize the Sparkle Theater, the former using magic winds to blow some of the unwanted guests out of the theater before locking the doors completely. Not only is it impossible for Peach and the captured Theets to break out, it's impossible for anyone else to get in, either, leaving the Toads stuck outside with Peach's crown.
• [PROTOTYPE] does something similar. The main character can't swim, and the only other route out of the city is heavily guarded by the military, and impossible to break through without getting killed.
• Quest for Glory uses this in 1, 2, and 4.
  • In Quest for Glory 1, you make it into the valley the game takes place in just as it becomes snowed in. Although, this is arguably played with in the manner of the game's Multiple Endings. Of the main quests, the only one you have to complete (and ends the game) is freeing Elsa. As a result of freeing Elsa, the brigand's treasure is returned to its owners, which includes a Flying Carpet, giving you an unconventional way out of the valley. Your main goal is being a hero, not escaping the valley, but the two are coincidentally related for the only mandatory quest.
  • In Quest for Glory 2, you're trapped by way a seemingly infinite desert surrounding the city the game primarily takes place within. Crossing the desert is a plot point late in the game, but it can technically be done earlier in the game (in what is basically an Easter Egg), it just takes forever and benefits heavily from knowing where to go. It also serves no purpose before the plot gets there and, when it comes to game mechanics, you're still unable to access any location outside of the two cities and the desert in between them, even if the desert would probably exit out somewhere else in-universe. Magic users have an option to leave by joining the local magician's academy, but it leads to a game over because it symbolizes you abandoning your original purpose in life.
  • Quest for Glory 4 uses a similar excuse as the first game, with the story taking place within a valley that has been closed off from the world around it (this time due to a swamp filled with the undead due to the curse of an Eldritch Abomination). This time, however, you don't arrive just as the pass closes, but were magically transported to the inside of the closed circle, leading to a lot of suspicion from locals about a stranger who managed to reach their land while it's physically inaccessible.
• In Resident Evil, most games evoke this trope to some degree:
  • In Resident Evil 0 Rebecca and Billy are trapped on a train, then a mansion, and finally an Umbrella research lab. All three locations are full of monsters and locked doors.
  • In the first game, the your character and his/her team were attacked by mutated dogs and chased into the mansion. If you attempt to open the front door, one will jump in to attack you.
  • Resident Evil 2 starts with Leon and Claire fighting to escape the zombie-infested streets and get to the police station. Once they get there, the rest of the game is them trying to figure out how to escape.
  • In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis Jill is trapped in zombie raccoon city. At one point, Nemesis shoots down her rescue helicopter.
  • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica has Chris and Claire stuck on a remote island and an isolated Antarctic research lab. Both of which are controlled by Umbrella and full of zombies.
  • In Resident Evil 4, even after rescuing the President's daughter, the bridge to get out of town is out and a helicopter before Mike sent to pick you up apparently got shot down.
  • One of the common complaints about Resident Evil 5's narrative and gameplay is that it subverts this for most of the game. Narrative-wise, save for the segment when Chris and Sheva go underground into the ancient ruins and discover the laboratory where the Projenitor Virus was created there is never a moment that they're not in full contact with their superiors and able to call for an extraction and/or for reinforcements. Unsurprisingly, the underground segment is also often considered to be the best segment of the game since the isolation and the goddamned Licker Betas is the only time the game is actually tense and scary. Gameplay-wise wise, since you can replay whatever chapters you want, item and ammo management no longer exists since you're free to quit the game whenever you want, go to a previous chapter and farm for herbs, ammo, and rocket launchers, and then pick right back up where you left off with enough firepower to invade a country.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations: The characters spend the majority of the game trapped on Ghost Ships infested with a new type of BOW. Bonus points for Jill and Parker's BSAA ship being destroyed by Veltro agents.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations 2 takes place on an abandoned island near Russia. At one point, they find a helicopter but Alex Wesker sabotages it causing it to crash.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is set on an isolated Louisiana plantation out near the swamps, with the mutated Baker family killing or trapping any who come near. Even after he initially escapes, Ethan remains in order to locate a cure and rescue the survivors. By the time they try to escape for real, the Big Bad is physically blocking the path with biomass, so the only way out is to return and destroy the source of the infection.
  • Resident Evil Village is set the titular remote European village, where Ethan's kidnapped daughter has been taken, so he has no reason to leave until he rescues her, but also no way to get help anyways, as the outbreak of monsters has pretty much killed everyone else.
• In the original Rogue, the stairs only work one way until you get the Amulet of Yendor.
• Scratches not only uses this trope, it makes it your fault that you're trapped because you let your car's battery run down. Guess there aren't any cab services in rural England.
• The protagonist in Serena refuses to leave the log cabin for various reasons throughout the game.
• In Shivers (1995), the player is locked in the museum grounds on a dare. In addition, once the player enters the museum, there is no way out.
• Silent Hill
  • In Silent Hill Harry Mason crashes his jeep after trying to dodge Alessa, who appears out of nowhere on the road. Later on in the game you can find the truck, but no vehicle including his truck works. Nor can he climb up the cliff he crashed down, and most of the town's exiting roads have giant gaping pits straight to hell.
  • In Silent Hill 2, for most of the game you can backtrack to James' still working car parked in a freeway rest stop and theoretically leave, but you can't because then the game would be over.
  • Silent Hill 3 has a combo of case 1 and 3. At the beginning Heather goes into a slightly dark version of the mall populated by monsters by crawling out of a women's bathroom window and entering another section of a mall, but refuses to go back that way before facing monsters because the "weird old guy" is outside the bathroom door. Attempting to leave through that door after encountering monsters will reveal that the door can no longer be opened. In fact the long walk out of the bathroom to the other entrance of the mall, framed by the setting sun, is perhaps the only time direct sunlight seen in the series, and the alley is very appropriately blocked off by a van that leaves no space for the driver to enter or leave. Still, leaving through the women's restroom after meeting the first monster would probably still lead back to the Dark World. Interestingly, even after killing a boss and returning to the "real world" (quotations are used since it's still populated by flesh rending monsters) both she and the PI can't find any other real people but each other and two crazy cultists. Oh, and monsters, corpses, and monster corpses.
  • Silent Hill 4 actually does this three different ways, Henry starts off locked in his own apartment, then he discovers a way to travel to different locations - only to find that, due to locked doors, blocked exits, and enclosing fences, these areas are inescapable, too. Finally, he manages to break free of his apartment, only to find that it's been a part of the Dark World all along.
    • There's also a fourth example as part of a puzzle. Holding a specific item in his inventory in the forest will cause the pathway back to loop forever, so Henry must find a way to get it from point A to point B without carrying it.
  • Lampshaded in Silent Hill: Origins in a late cutscene when Dr. Kaufman asks Travis why he hasn't left yet if he hates the place so much, and Travis snaps back with an irritated "I can't".
  • Finally justified in Silent Hill: Downpour: The town won't let you leave - when Murphy gets smart and tries to hotwire a speedboat, the owner outright tells him that the town has "rules", and gets pissed if you break them. When Murphy ignores him, a horde of Screamers assault him and drive him away from the boat, plus all the giant fences that wall off explorable areas.
  • Silent Hills: Other than the starting room and a mid-game break, you spend the whole game wandering a very creepy hallway, which always loops back to start it all over again when you try to leave. Granted, word at the time was this wasn't indicative of what the full game was going to entail, but we'll never know since the whole thing was cancelled.
• In Chapter 4 of Space Pirates and Zombies you can't leave a system unless you kill lots of zombie bases or ships.
• Sunset (2015): A US-backed coup has broken out the the country of Anchuria, and Angela's college degree isn't recognized by the new regime, meaning she can't go home. She had to take a job as a housekeeper to make ends meet, and the bulk of the game is set in her employer's penthouse apartment suite.
• String Tyrant The game takes place at a mysterious mansion that is in it's own pocket dimension. In-story running away from the mansion has you end up back at the mansion. In-game the mansion is surrounded by impassable trees.
• System Shock and its sequel both strand you in deep space.
  • In the original, you are on a space station and are kept well away from the escape pods.
  • In System Shock 2, you are stranded out in deep space after the ship is attacked and the warp drive breaks down. This is bad enough, but it is made worse as it is the only warp drive in existence.
• Yamatai Island in Tomb Raider (2013) is one. Storms pop up out of nowhere to destroy any transport that gets near the island (Along with any transport built or salvaged by the people on the island who try to leave), so the survivors of the Endurance are stuck there until Lara can figure out why and stop it.
• Ultra Despair Girls has the cast trapped in a very bizarre robot-overrun town. When one character tried to escape via city canal, the bracelet on their wrist exploded in the middle of swimming out.
• Undertale: The Underground is one giant closed circle, thanks to the magical barrier preventing exit. The magic doesn't block entry at all, but the Underground only has two physical entrances, and local legends strongly discourage anyone from approaching. And the magic will allow someone with a sufficiently powerful SOUL to exit, but the amount of power needed means a human has to kill a monster and take their SOUL to leave, or vice-versa. Unsurprisingly, the Golden Ending has the barrier destroyed for good.
• In Until Dawn, the characters are trapped on the mountain due to a combination of a bad snowstorm grounding the rescue helicopter until the morning and a turned-off cable car in which a missing Josh possesses the only key.
• Valkyrie Drive -Bhikkhuni- is set in the eponymous island where Armed Virus carriers are sent to be quarantined until a cure is found. Unlike the island of Mermaid, Bhikkhuni is said to have developed an efective way to treat the symptoms of the disease.
• Witch Hunter Izana: The game takes place on Scier's island. The vampire Verand is sinking all ships that approach the island and has sunk all ships that could leave the island. To drive this home she sinks the boat you are on at the start of the game. Finding a way off the island is part of getting the golden ending.
• The World Ends with You; You're stuck in Shibuya whether you like it or not. Unlike most RPGs where the first town you visit is usually blown to pieces.
• Why Am I Dead? has the ghost protagonist solve the mystery of his own murder at the remote hotel he owns, which is beset by a storm bad enough to keep the guests from contacting the police. Hence, Cricket, who found the body, decides to investigate himself (with some prodding from the ghost). Although the ending reveals he had another, far less noble reason, for investigating instead of waiting for the police to arrive.
• In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim and Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, Adol is shipwrecked on an island and can't leave because he doesn't have/can't build a ship large enough to travel back to the mainland. And once that is resolved, he still can't leave because of conditions that make it unsafe to sail (unnatural weather patterns in VI, a sea monster in VIII). By the time that's resolved, he's thoroughly caught up in the story and has no interest in leaving until he finishes the adventure.
• In Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, Monstrums are restricted in where they travel by the curse that makes them Monstrums. The circle slowly expands as the game progresses, but even in the last chapter its restricted to the city of Balduq and its immediate surroundings. Only by ending the Grimwald Nox and ending the curse is it possible to leave the region. However, this curse only applies to the six Monstrums. Everyone else can go where they like.

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