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Narrative
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Kendra Kirai: Uhhh, I'm pretty dang sure that the FFVII thing no longer counts as a spoiler, considering...
Andrew Leprich: I'd have to agree, but I wasn't sure.
Ununnilium: I don't think we can chalk Phoenix Down-as-resurrection up to a translation error. First off, "fatal injuries" doesn't necessarily imply "injuries that haven't quite killed you yet". Second, the Phoenix in Phoenix Down implies dying and returning to life. Third... where exactly in the game was "fatal injuries" shortened to "fatal"? `.`
Andrew Leprich: Furthermore, in FFVII there's the revive materia that casts the life spell, which seems to indicate resurrection from death. People aren't usually described as "reviving" from serious injuries. I suppose you could split hairs and make a case for that being an acceptable interpretation, but then again there are tons of examples in JRPGs besides Aeris where characters can die and be revived in battle yet not be afforded the same luxury in the storyline.
Andyzero: Can we compromise and say both views are right? I think videogames copy each other a lot, especially the mechanics. So one writer's take is different than anothers, but they use what has sold in the past. For example, in early Dragon Warrior games, if someone dies, they are most definitely dead and they follow whoever is left alive in the form of a ghost. Resurrection explicitly states that someone's soul is returned to their now reanimated body. But, on the other hand, there's a few scenes like in Final Fantasy 5 where someone dies dies, and the plot cast tries Life spells, Phoenix Down, etc. But it doesn't work because the character was all dead instead of mostly dead. It gets confusing when the mechanics just aren't explained, and it seems to be in some grey limbo inbetween.
Andrew Leprich: Okay, I removed the Aeris reference and reworded the example to state that it often does happen in RPGs, just not in every one.
Kendra Kirai: The Neverwinter Nights 2 thing isn't exactly accurate, I don't think. Maybe it's different in the game, but in Dungeons and Dragons, one can be an Evil Paladin. Or a paladin devoted to, for example, chaos, whether it's good or evil. There are even Paladins of Law, which follow the laws...presumably of the land they're in, or perhaps where they're from...and they must follow said law to the letter. Even if it says they must annihiliate an entire village if somebody sneezes and nobody says "Bless you" to them or some such. Just saying that in the pen/paper version, "Paladin" does not always equal "Good".
Tulling: It applies here because in the game, paladins can only be lawful good and must dedicate themselves to a particular deity like Tyr or Torm. Perhaps this should be clarified. Under the circumstances mentioned in the game, it should be obvious that slaughtering the village is a heinous act that, if done by a paladin, would make them fall out of favour with their god. Therefore demonstrating that one retains paladin powers should be proof enough that one is innocent. In short, there is a discrepancy here between what the Dn D rules and background lore should allow you to bring up in order to prove your innocence and what you actually are allowed to do by the game script.
Ununnilium: Took out the Metal Gear Solid example, since it was pretty much an exact duplication of the MGS example in Take Your Time.
Andrew Leprich: Well, I had edited in based on the reasoning that, although it applies to Take Your Time, it's also just as much of an example here. But if you find it unnecessary, that's fine by me.
Andrew Leprich: I consider Take Your Time to be a specific form of this, or at least being along the same lines, so I edited that in as an example. If anyone objects feel free to say so.
Ununnilium: ^-^v That works better, IMHO.
Sikon: Actually, even in the tabletop Dungeons And Dragons, paladins must be Lawful Good and lose their powers upon committing an evil act. See this page
 . Ironically, this is not the case in NWN 2: if you stop being Lawful Good, it will merely prevent you from gaining additional paladin levels until you return to that alignment, but you don't lose any paladin abilities you already have.
Dalantia: In Core D&D 2, 3, and 3.5, Paladins -must- be Lawful Good and cannot be any other alignment. Some supplements allow paladins of other alignments, but they are no longer paladins and have different class names and different Code of Conduct requirements. Lawful Good paladins can, in Forgotten Realms, be worshippers of one chaotic good deity (Sune), however. I don't particularly know how Neverwinter Nights handles it, but Baldur's Gate stripped paladinhood if your reputation fell below a certain level. Also, pulled the lines:
Whogus The Whatsler: I'd have to say that Max Payne doesn't belong here. For one thing, there is an explanation offered for Max's clean slate at the beginning of the second game — Alfred Woden, as promised, used his considerable political clout to get Max's rampage reframed as police heroism — but even without that, at worst it's a matter of credibility in plotting. It has nothing to do with there being an inconsistency between the way things behave in-game and the way they behave in-story; the story at all points acknowledges how excessive Max's violent behaviour is. Andrew Leprich: I would have to agree. I really didn't understand that entry either, and if it is true it seems more like a Snap Back then anything else. Will remove. In a short cutscene in Tales of Symphonia that takes place in the King's castle in Meltokio, Lloyd takes out a huge, heavily armed Imperial Guard soldier who happens to be looking the other way by saying "Sorry about this!" and punching him in the back. Andrew Leprich: I'm probably missing something here, but how is this an example of this trope? Viewer: Imperial Guard soldiers are also regular enemies that you fight, and can take a fair amount of damage before going down. Andrew Leprich: That's what I figured, thanks. Semiapies: Actually, in GTA 3, at least, pretty much everyone was unkillable. Murdered bystanders would eventually get revived by EM Ts (who often made snide comments like "Rise, Rise!" and "Two more of these and I can put in for sainthood!"). Only people targeted for death in missions ever really got Killed Off For Real - in fact, the protagonist was at a disadvantage in that he never got EMT assistance and always took 12 hours of recovery time in nearby hospitals... Andrew Leprich: Very true. Edited for accuracy. Red Shoe: At the risk of being an old stick in the mud, "begging the question" doesn't mean that, and is almost always misused. Changed to "raises", which isn't a nice idiomatic expression, but is at least accurate. Seth: I always preferred "Raises the question" anyway. Morgan Wick: In my view, there's no such thing as "almost always misused" in language. If everyone uses words and phrases a certain way, that way is correct, by way of common usage. Ununnilium: My view is different! I must challenge thee to fisticuffs! MMAN I removed the Phantasy Star 2 example, as far as I know you go to the clone centre and get that dialogue about Nei as part of the story (or at the least, you are very likely to go there after that event), so it's not "easy to miss" and is a reasonable explanation in the context of the story and gameplay. Also it was said it is possible to revive Nei later, which is completely wrong (outside of a cheat device anyway). Andrew Leprich: I would have to agree. I haven't played the game, but that example didn't seem to make much sense to me. SAMAS I don't know what the PS 2 example was, but the situation in PS 2 was thus: Clone centers were used to ressurrect dead party members, but when you try to clone Nei after she's killed by Neifirst, the center receptionist claims that they can't help her because she's not Palman(Human), despite the fact that they could bring Nei back any other time she'd get killed in-game. This is actually a translation error, as the Clone Center was essentially a hospital in the original japanese version, and the reason given was that her wounds were simply too severe. Ununnilium: Sounds like My Name Is Prince Darien. Seven Seals: I'm not sure Half-Life counts as an aversion just because it uses the engine for the cutscenes (yes, they are cutscenes if the player has no autonomy, regardless of how they're done — I've never played Half-Life, though, so I don't know if that's the case). But anyway, the essential point is not that the parts where the game takes over are seamless, but that the story parts and the game parts aren't inconsistent (cutscenes showing things characters simply couldn't do in the game, dialogue that makes no mention of actions you take in the game that should have consequences). Is Half-Life an especially good example of a game where this doesn't happen? Andrew Leprich: I agree with you, you're right. My bad, will remove. I fully understand the concept of the trope; the reason I added HL as an aversion is not because of the easy transition of gameplay-to-story, but because it doesn't contain any glaring examples of this trope. But now that you mention it, it doesn't exactly go out of its way to avoid the trope either, and there's really nothing that makes it an aversion more so than most other games. Mister Six: "In the original Super Mario Bros, fireballs and thrown shells wouldn't affect enemies that had just walked offscreen, due to technical limits. The manual suggested this was because they were doing something sneaky where you couldn't see." <—- Awesome. That is all. Andrew Leprich: Removed the big middle part that simply reiterates specific examples with pages. I added this is a few weeks ago, but now that I read it, it kind of muddles things up and steals the entry's thunder. Morganite: It's not exactly a WWE game, but in the game Rumble Roses you actually have to do things in a match for a characters status to change. It's a pity that the character all seem to lose any personality they might have had in their alternate stories... Bossman: The Advance Wars example needs more work. It isn't clear as to how it falls under this trope, and the second sentance is more of a sentance fragment. Andrew Leprich: Someone like deleted half the examples, wtf. Will attempt to restore. Bob: Cut the entirety of the Baldurs Gate II example and replaced it with something shorter. Preserved here.
arromdee: From what I remember in Phantasy Star II, the fact that the character was bonded to the boss enemy is used to explain why the character dies in the first place, but not why the cloning fails. arromdee: Moved a lot of these to the individual trope. Cutscene Power To The Max and Cutscene Incompetence proved particularly troublesome because having the villain be incompetent is equivalent to having the hero be too competent, and vice versa, so it wasn't clear where some of the examples go. arromdee:
Mman: I added a "Gameplay elements that avert this trope" due to various inappropriate examples in Plot Coupon That Does Something. I guess they might fit a new trope better or something, and there could be a redundancy or two. Edit: I removed it and just made them examples in the main list. wit: You put them in really, really badly to the point that they're mixed in with the straight examples. Please fix your mess, I'm not going to do it. ps. I'm fucking serious. You didn't just append the entries from Gameplay and Story Integration so someone can easily separate the two into easy Straight Examples and Exceptions sections. What you did was PUT THE FUCKING ENTRIES WITHIN THE STRAIGHT EXAMPLES AS YOU SAW FIT. What are you, retarded? |
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