Bag Of Spilling - Television Tropes & Idioms

Megaman: I'd Like to Read a poem that drifts in the air... "I don't know where my old chips are I asked Dad... I asked Mom..."
Lan: Hahahaha! That was great... And True... I have no clue where my old chips are stashed!

— Megaman Battle Network 6

Link: I'll grab my stuff!
Gwonam: There is no time! Your sword is enough!

— Legend of Zelda: Faces of Evil opening

Items and experience levels do not carry over to game sequels, regardless of time passed. This makes less logical sense if something is a direct sequel, although the short explanation is to present an honest challenge to the player. This is mostly accepted, although a few games attempt a weak explanation. This is most recognized with the Mega Man series of games. Metal Blade would have been too cheap, although he still can't shoot upwards.

Since it allows each game to stand alone in terms of story development, if not events, it is roughly equivalent to the Snapback and Reset Button story tropes.

Of course, not all games are like this. Sometimes, a direct sequel might start the character with the powers from the previous game, giving them A Taste Of Power before taking them away and making the character start from scratch again.

If the game actually acknowledges personal data from a previous title in the series, it's an Old Save Bonus.

Non Linear Sequels avoid the whole question. Compare Powerless Run, for when this happens inside the game itself.

See also, Restart At Level One for a common justification. If you do keep your powers, you're probably going to find out that they're So Last Sequel.

Examples:

In the first Grail Quest adventure book, our hero is returning home laden with gold and treasure. Then the local Jerk Ass manages to steal all of it in a comically simple ruse. He does retain his magical sword between titles, though.
In the first two Thief games you lose all your equipment at the end of each level and all your money at the beginning (after buying equipment). This arguably makes the game better as it keeps the good items from becoming Too Awesome To Use.
- With one exception in the first game: after you steal it, the Sword of Constantine stays in your inventory for the rest of that game, replacing your shortsword. The Sword is an upgrade (of dubious value) as it doesn't compromise stealth when equipped, and also allows Garrett to kill certain enemies that were invulnerable to the old one. Losing it after the first game is kind of justified, given what you did to its creator, who presumably was powering it.
In every Tomb Raider game, Lara starts with just her pistols (and on one occasion her shotgun as well) and a couple of medipacks, despite the huge amount of weapons and supplies she picked up on her previous adventures.
- Now in fairness, Ms. Croft doesn't just make a living publishing journals about her exploits as well as travel guides, or off of daddy's wealth. She makes a fortune between games selling those ancient Egyptian Uzis and dynastic Chinese shotguns she keeps finding in unexplored and pristine tombs.
- Semi-justified in that, most of the time, the bad guys have got to the tomb before Lara, so they might have been dropped the weapons, medipacks, etc. This would mean the bad guys have Bags Of Spilling, too.
Lampshaded/Justified in Mega Man Legends 2, where Megs is confident he can handle the bad guys as soon as he gets his old gear out of storage... until the penny-pinching Roll sheepishly admits she sold off his equipment to cover living expenses.
In Parasite Eve 2, Aya Brea claims to have sealed her powers pre-game to resist the temptation to use them; naturally, she has to learn them again. Exactly how is not explained nor indicated by either ending of the previous game. She might've also said something about how she didn't want to draw attention to herself. If that's the case, then one would think the one power she did keep would be something relatively subtle, like, say, the healing ability, rather than the one that allows her to set people on fire.
In Kingdom Hearts, Sora and company fall asleep for one year between sequels, and what happens is detailed in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, handily explaining it.
- Interestingly, Sora does lose and have to regain all of his skills and good attacks over the course of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, "justified" in that he's in the villain's house and is forced to play by their rules. However, Sora's maximum ending HP count in Kingdom Hearts is the same as his beginning HP count in Chain Of Memories.
In Knights of Xentar, you actually do start at near-maximum levels - only to be massively depowered by the first boss.
The same thing happens in God of War II, and the rest of the game is dedicated to going back in time to kill the person who took them. Fortunately, the player still retains most of his divine strength at the start of the game, as well as a leveled-up version of one of the most useful spells from the original game, to give players A Taste Of Power.
- In God of War: Chains of Olympus, a prequel to the series, Kratos is robbed of his items by the gods at the end of the game. It is not shown if they took his magic, but regardless, he doesn't have it by the first game.
Averted in Banjo-Tooie, where the main characters are able to use every power they acquired in the previous game, Banjo-Kazooie. This is compensated for by making them gradually acquire even more powers. They still lose a lot of HP and carrying capacity.
- However, in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Banjo and Kazooie lose their abilities due to years of being fat and lazy. Their lack of their abilities is often lampshaded.
In many Metroid games, the heroine loses all her old upgrades early on, and must recover them one-by-one. Or she'll find newer, different upgrades. Most games after Super Metroid tried to explain this in some way — suit damage, physical removal, or in the case of Metroid Fusion, surgical removal after infection by an aggressive parasite. The Luminoth weapons acquired in Prime 2 were incompatible with the suit's power systems, so naturally they would run out of energy without access to Luminoth power sources.
- The Long Beam is one exception to this; you only need to get it in the original Metriod and its remake Zero Mission.
- While Samus loses most of her gear from Metroid/Zero Mission (not to mention the Prime series) prior to Metroid II, she does keep the Morph Ball, Bombs, and a small supply of Missiles.
- Metroid Prime 3 partially averts this by letting her keep a good portion of her non-weapon upgrades from Prime 2... but doesn't bother to explain why she lost the ones she did, including some which weren't Luminoth tech (Boost Ball, Grapple Beam).
- The Prime 2 Bag of Spilling deserves special note here for taking away an item Samus didn't have in the first place. The suit's damage report lists a "Power Bomb Generator" among the stolen items, but you don't have Power Bombs during your Taste Of Power. Nonetheless, you get them "back" later...
- i think this summarizes what happens pretty well http://www.kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=9337
The .hack//GU carries over its lead character from the .hack//Roots anime, and devises a plot reason for having him return to level one.
- Ironically, it's then averted since your characters carry over all of their abilities, stats, and gear from Volume 1 into subsequent games.
The Baldur's Gate franchise dealt with this by having the PC kidnapped by an evil wizard prior to the start of the second game, and naturally stripped of all equipment. One could retrieve some of the contents of one's inventory in the first chamber one comes upon when escaping his dungeon lair — notably the Golden Pantaloons, necessary to forge the Big Metal Unit in the final expansion pack. Note that while equipment was lost, power was not, with characters leveling up to the point where two games, two expansion packs and over 8 million XP later, the PC goes from a level 1 weakling barely capable of defeating a rat to a level 40 demigod.
- There was some carryover; if you had the scimitars of Drizzt, he'd be royally pissed at you.
- It was also claimed by the loading screens in Baldurs Gate II that you would be able to import your characters into Neverwinter Nights. This turned out to be completely impossible due to differences like running on 3.0 Dungeons And Dragons instead of Advanced, and in any case would have required a truly epic Bag Of Spilling to cope with unleashing a 40th level demigod onto the Weak Goblins you start fighting.
- It is, technically speaking, possible to avoid this if you manage to pause fast enough. You can drop all your equipment on the ground and pick it up after the cutscene. Apparently this was intentional given the specific changes that happen to many plot-specific items you might still be holding.
It's implied in the Mega Man X games that X voluntarily disposes of his new armor and weapons after every game, in order to avoid the temptation to abuse his newfound power... or maybe because he simply doesn't like fighting in the first place, really.
- Surprisingly, the dash ability (gained from the Boots Armor upgrade in X) is a starting ability in the all of the later X games.
  - The opening to X1 stated the dash upgrade was optional from the start, so the implication is that this was meant to be available to X in his base form.
- X5 and X6 semi-subvert it. He starts both games with the Fourth/Force Armour and Falcon Armour from the game preceding each, respectively. The only problem is that the armours are severely weakened compared to their original versions, with the implication that X did trash them, but Alia went and salvaged them as best she could.
  - X4-6, X7 and X8 play a variant of the trope. In the first three games, X started with a 16 unit life meter, and built it up to 32. From X4 onward until X8 redesigned the meters, X started with a 32 unit meter, and could build up to 48(X4), 64(X5-6), and 80(X7). Also, X7 and X8 made the airdash and charging his X-buster an extra level available in base form. Respectively.
- However, Zero has no such qualms, which doesn't explain why he forgets learned techniques (i.e. NOT weapons), such as his Ice Stab maneuver in X4. I mean, it's not like he dies in that particular chapter, unlike X5!
- Had Capcom not stepped in, Mega Man Zero would have shown what would have happened if X kept his weapons. Zero had a convenient case of amnesia over the 100 years of deep sleep, so he forgot everything when the series started (but not between episodes.)
- Speaking of which the trope is actually justified in Zero 2 where Zero has his Buster, Saber, and Shield Boomerang damaged and his Triple Rod totaled due to having fighting constantly against Neo Arcadian forces in the desert for over a year without any R&R. It even goes so far as to show the Pause menu looking rusty and a portrait of a damaged Zero.
  - Which is awesome, by the way; especially since the pause menu changes to an entirely different format once Zero returns to the Base and gets fixed up (in the third and fourth games the menu changes right from the beginning).
  - Zero also holds his arm while stationary throughout that entire level, which usually only happens when he's low on health.
- Also, in Zero 3 and Zero 4, when Zero has been lounging at the Resistance Base in between games instead of fighting in the desert for a year, he keeps all of his weapon upgrades (the ones you get by simply using the weapons repeatedly), so you start the game with your weapons at full power. Zero still forgets all of his learned techniques, though.
In Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Soma Cruz, who has the power to absorb the souls of the monsters he slays (much like a Blue Mage from the Final Fantasy series), starts with none of the powers he gained from the first game. Genya Arikado handwaves it, explaining that since he wasn't in danger, Soma subconsciously released his acquired powers. However, if you have the original GBA game in a Nintendo DS when the game starts, you are given an expensive item that increases rare drops.
A lengthy password given to you at the end of of the first Golden Sun allows you to carry your weapons, armour, etc. to Golden Sun: The Lost Age when you get your original party back. And doing so is required to get into the final dungeon and get the final two summons.
- Which is a clear aversion of this trope, though some people will still complain, that they have to have the first game in order to get everything out of the second. Oh and BTW you don't have to use the password, you can just use two Gameboys and a link cable.
Half Life and its various sequels all have halfway-decent reasons why Gordon Freeman doesn't start with all his weapons and items from the previous game (i.e. removed by the G-Man at the end of Half-Life, destroyed by a security system during the penultimate level of Half-Life 2, an explosion at the end of Half-Life 2: Episode 1, etc. Gordon still has his weapons at the end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, however, and shows no indication of possibly losing them. We'll have to wait and see what happens.)
- Funnily enough, though, after both Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Episode 2, Alyx is easily able to find your Gravity Gun. Like, right away. Never mind that it was a MASSIVE explosion at the end of Half-Life 2, or that the Gravity Gun was the ONLY weapon you managed to recover after the train crash.
  - To be fair, you don't know for how long she was conscious before Gordon- for all the player knows, she spent six hours rooting through the rubble specifically looking for it.
  - Also keep in mind that the Gravity Gun is likely the hardest weapon to replace. Combine soldiers use handguns, shotguns, SM Gs, pulse-rifles, and grenades; a new rocket launcher could easily be obtained from the resistance, as could the magnum and crossbow, since the resistance gives you ammo for those. The resistance can also probably get you another pheromone pod. And the crowbar is another easy one. However, Black Mesa East only had the one, so it's likely that there isn't another. It makes sense that Alex would look for it first.
- To some extent this is subverted, or at least ameliorated, in Half-Life 2: Episode 1 - you get to use the super-awesome uber-charged gravity-gun from the end of Half-Life 2 for a while at the beginning of the game before they take it away again.
Variation: Several of The Elder Scrolls games, where one plays a different character in every game, feature particular spells that are completely unavailable in later games. The first game, Arena, features a spell that allows one to pass trough certain walls. This is said to be lost knowledge in later games. In the third game, Morrowind, there are levitation spells which are no longer available in Oblivion, the fourth game. In this latter case, the in-game explanation for this is that such magic has been banned, but the real reason is technical limitations.
Explained in StarWars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, where it is revealed that Kyle Katarn gave up the Force for fear of falling to the dark side (like he did in Mysteries of the Sith, and is thus unable to use the Force powers he had in the previous game.
- For Jedi Academy, instead of reusing that trope yet again, they instead gave the player the role of Jaden, his apprentice with Kyle taking a supporting role. They wisely did the same in Mysteries of the Sith by putting the player in the role of Mara Jade, another apprentice of Kyle's. I think it's needless to say that if another Jedi Knight is made, you won't be in the role of Kyle Katarn anymore.
The Legend Of Zelda series is notable for this trope, as in every game the hero starts with just the basics — a sword, a shield and some minor item — and has to explore dungeons to collect power-ups. There's even a reference to this in Zelda Comic. In this case, there are several different "Links" who wouldn't be expected to have the same items as the previous one; still, even when a Zelda game is a direct sequel (such as Majora's Mask), you don't get the previous game's items. Note though, that, excepting The Adventure of Link, all the direct sequels begin with Link being stranded in a different land — it's not unreasonable to suppose that his swag from the previous game is all safely stowed in his closet at home: it's not like he had much reason to be carrying it all on his person.
- For Majora's Mask, this wasn't just limited to between games: Whenever the time traveling hero hits his Reset Button, most, but not all, of his gear and supplies would literally spill out from his pockets into the endless void as he flew back in time (even better, the only way of accumulating money was through a stamp made of special ink imprinted on your skin by a bank teller, recording the balance of your supposed account. Whenever you travel back in time, it's implied that you fool the bank into believing you currently have an account with this balance).
- On the plus side, Majora's Mask does explain WHY Link starts with no items: The Skull Kid and his Terrible Trio fairies spooked your horse, causing you to fall and lose consciousness for the few seconds it takes the Skull Kid to steal your stuff.
- Additionally, a lot of the items you find in Termina are child-sized versions of the tools you use in Ocarina. Why would Link bring a hookshot or bow he's too small to use?
  - However, also in Majora's Mask, Link loses all the Ocarina songs he learned in the previous game- he remembers the Song of Time in a flashback upon recovering the Ocarina of Time, but he has to relearn other songs he already knew, such as Epona's Song and the Song of Storms. Maybe it has something to do with going back in time, but who knows?
  - This is blatant Fan Wank, but perhaps in losing the Ocarina the mystical connection it had with Link was severed, forcing him to accumulate the magic spells all over again because the powers of the Ocarina were essentially reset?
  - More likely a case of Easy Laser Guided Amnesia.
  - Wind Waker does say something about how, when Link left Hyrule, he was "Separated from the elements that made him a hero", causing his part of the Triforce to split and scatter itself ready for the next Link to find them again. This could account for his loss of power.
- In Phantom Hourglass, Link has lost not only his gear but also his ability to wield swords.
  - Not to mention his ability to swim. Before, he could swim as long as the swim meter didn't run out; now, he sinks like a stone, losing a little energy and appearing on shore.
  - To be fair, he IS in a dream/nightmare world. The water could have different qualities, making it somewhat harmful to Link. Heck, one could use the fact that it is a dream world to explain why he even needs to relearn how to use a sword, and why none of his items carry over (that, and the fact that he DOES wash up on a beach, which could mean that his items have sunk to the bottom of the ocean).
  - There is a fanfic (yes, I know) that implies that after his quest, he goes around and replaces the items in their respective temples or tries to give them back.
- Lampshaded/justified/something in The Faces of Evil for CD-i. When Link is informed that "it is written" that only he can defeat Ganon, he declares, "Great! I'll grab my stuff!" only to hear Gwonam reply, "There is no time; your sword is enough."
  - Bullcrap. If there was "no time" to just walk to Link's room, Gwonam wouldn't have made link have to search for his house before letting Link fight Ganon.
Final Fantasy X 2 is the only example of this in the whole series, being the only direct sequel to a previous game, Final Fantasy X. Yuna and Rikku start the second game as if none of the Level Grinding of the other game had occurred, having changed careers. While this might make some sense for Yuna, who starts off as a completely different class than she was in the previous game (though it doesn't explain where all her White Magic went), this makes no plotline sense at all for Rikku. Of course, Rikku was a combination Thief/Chemist in X, while in X-2 her starting class is a Thief. Make of that what you will.
- Considering the party's ability to easily plow over a Behemoth at the beginning of the game, it seems they very much have retained their general power levels. The enemies are simply all more powerful than the ones they fought in Final Fantasy X. This is especially evident in Omega Weapon becoming a regular enemy.
- To add to this, why does Yuna need to re-learn Al-Bhed when it was heavily implied that she knew the language in the previous game, plus she's been traveling with her teammates who are ALL not only fluent in the language, but also speak it to each other for, FOR TWO YEARS!!
  - She hasn't been traveling with them for two years, she's been traveling with them for a number of weeks. Months, at the most. She's been in Besaid for two years. And she didn't know Paine spoke Al Bhed, Buddy and Rikku are fluent Spiran speakers, and Brother has been teaching himself the language.
- Presumably, dress spheres don't pay attention to what abilities you already know. Otherwise you wouldn't have to switch between them to use different abilities.
- The other direct sequel, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings has the same thing. There are a few implications that it's more the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil making you look weak rather than power loss, but it's hard to tell.
- It happens again in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. Yes, you do start the game with the minimally trained Prince Ceodore, but his parents and everyone else that saved the world seemed to have lost all the gear and levels/spells they had. While you could say they've basically retired from monster-slaying, we've got Kain, who supposedly spent all his years holed up in a mountain filled with undead. He really has no excuse. No, not even when his really angry side kicks his ass and goes amok. At least Rydia's explanation is there: some chick froze/stole away the Eidolons, so Rydia can't summon any of them.
In Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Yuri, the only returning PC, starts out the game at a low level with none of his previous equipment. However, the loss of his special abilities is explained by the weakening properties of the Holy Mistletoe he's stabbed with, and although he doesn't join the party until after this happens, you see him using the Amon fusion soul and fighting at a power level consistent with having beaten the last game in cutscenes prior to this.
Super Robot Wars in general gets away with this, because the levels in it are fairly abstract — you generally just lose your best units for a while for various reasons. For instance, you get Shin Getter Robo and Mazinkaiser for the first few missions, but during a time jump, you are forced to ship them back home for repairs. In the Original Generation games, your characters generally keep their better units, though in some cases they have to go and pick them up out of storage.
- Super Robot Wars F allows you to carry everything over to the sequel, F Final. If you don't use that, instead you're given a lump sum of cash to use, and you don't get any of your upgraded units.
There is actually an anime example of this, although it happens to be in a video-game-based anime: Whenever Ash in Pokemon heads to a new area of the world (corresponding, naturally enough, to a newly-released game in the video game series), he will leave almost all of his Pokémon with Professor Oak, instead catching completely new ones.
- Oddly, though, this is averted in the games themselves. Each one stars a different hero, so they would naturally have their own new Pokemon to start with. Moreover, once you progress far enough into each game, you gain the ability to trade with previous releases, and the Pokemon from these games are just as useful as they were before.
Notable exception: The Advanced Dungeons And Dragons licensed games published by SSI during the 80's and early 90's were arranged into series of 2-4 games, and almost as a rule allowed the player to import characters from earlier games in the same series, keeping all of the experience and most of the gear. Often doing this allowed the player to get a more powerful party than starting fresh, most notoriously in the Eye of the Beholder series, where importing would give you better loot at the beginning of the game than starting fresh let you have by the end of it.
- Played semi-straight by the transition from Champions of Krynn to Death Knights of Krynn, as you lose most of the good gear. Also, in all the games, despite keeping experience, it makes more sense to make new characters and have the old ones hand off the better gear, as the Modify command let you max stats on your newly created characters; older characters could have substantially less hit points, as they had random hit point gains until 9th or 10th level. A character from an early game could have less than half the hit points of a newly created one, despite being a level or two higher if you Level Ground.
Some series went so far as to allow the players to import characters from entirely different, unrelated games (ie. the Bard's Tale series let the player import characters from the Ultima games, not even by the same company).
Ditto the Realms of Arkania series. Not all that useful in game 3, but life saving if you import your party from 1 into the very hard 2.
Wizardry 8 not only allows players to import characters from the previous game, but also allows imports from the game before that. Characters maintain any alliances they had formed in prior games, and will even start at the allied base camp, but lose many levels due to the long space voyage to the new planet. The game encourages players to save after winning so that they may import their characters into Wizardry 9, but the company went bankrupt so this isn't going to happen.
Wizardry 6: Bane of the Cosmic Forge had three different endings. Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant not only allowed you to import your characters from Wizardry 6, but had four different introductions and start points - one for each ending of Wizardry 6, and one for players starting fresh.
The game series Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children explained this in the Fire and Ice entries for Game Boy Advance by having the powerful characters depowered at the beginning through a minor but plausible plot device.
- While we're on Megaten, Digital Devil Saga has this happen between the two games. This is lampshaded then explained.
The Xenosaga games did not carry over experience between games, despite that the second game literally starts *the next day*. Granted, each game only lasts a few days (rather than taking years), and indeed, none of the characters is really assumed to improve (in combat anyway) over the course of the game outside of game battles. Still, Kos-Mos needs to level up in the second and third game to gain some of her previously acquired special abilities (though the fact that she's replaced with a different model every time explains that, at least).
- Not completely true. While characters would have their levels start over from the beginning with no way to carry them over, many of the skill points used to acquire special techniques would carry over. However, after a certain point, there is a ratio of diminishing returns, such that it's not even worth your trouble to try and level grind through the previous game to gain a bonus in the next. Even the maximum allowed bonus is equal only to a few hour's worth of grinding.
- Also, it's notable that the characters get seemingly more powerful in each game. In the first Xenosaga game, you'll usually fight the final boss with characters who have in the neighborhood of 1,000 HP each. In the second game, it'll be about 2,500 HP, in the third game, somewhere around 6,000. It may be the series' way of allowing you to think your characters get more powerful from one game to the other while still making you start off as a weak level one character.
Devil May Cry 2 starts Dante with none of the weapons or powers from the first game except for the "Air Hike" double jump; it doesn't explain why, either. The third game is a prequel to the first two, and thus it is only natural he has none of the gear from the second one, except for a weaker version of his "Rebellion" sword... but then it leaves the gaping question of where all the weapons he picked up in that game went before the first Devil May Cry. There must be a closet somewhere in his office stuffed with demonic weaponry. Then there's the Force Edge sword, which loses all the special abilities it had in the transition from 3 to 1 (and the loss is permanent - Dante can't buy them back); there, however, it's forgivable, since writers aren't psychic and the people writing DMC1 had no idea what would happen in the third game. It remains to be seen if 4 will continue the trend.
- It does. Devil May Cry 4 comes between 1 and 2 chronologically, and it features a new main character altogether (Nero) who obviously has none of the weapons Dante had. However, Dante becomes the lead halfway through the game, which becomes a partial subversion: you can use the points you earned as Nero to purchase abilities as Dante.
- Though to be fair, Dante never had access to the Force Edge's powers. He didn't even touch it until after the final mission of Devil May Cry 3.
  - You can get the Force Edge if you unlock the Sparda costume. However, the change is merely cosmetic, it has the same abilities of Rebellion.
- Also, in Devil May Cry 4, Dante is able to use all of the "style" moves from Devil May Cry 3, although, at Level 1.
  - You can upgrade them at the beginning of missions and at Divinity Statues, and doing so unlocks many new moves.
- This troper always assumed that Dante, because he's so...confident, figures he can get through a game with just his basic equipment. That or maybe he's leaving room for new weapons, since after 4 games of getting new weapons from almost every boss I think you'd begin to expect that you'll need extra room in that suitcase.
  - Considering how Genre Savvy Dante is, that troper may be right.
Oni is a particularly egregious example, not letting you keep items between levels, despite most of them being connected in some way (e.g.: level seven ends when getting inside a room; level eight starts in the same room, yet all ammo clips and hyposprays you may have collected have disappeared).
- Halo did this as well. However given that you could only carry two weapons and two types of grenade, and that level switches usually involved a dramatic change of setting, the reset was less egregious.
- Also, Battlefield: Bad Company. It's probably a conscious design decision, to try and avoid Too Awesome To Use.
- Blackthorne also does this, because of the limitations of its save system. It was developed for the SNES, it doesn't include a battery in the game cartridge, and its save passwords are only 4 characters long.
Dawn of Mana does something similar - all your levels and items are lost whenever you start a new chapter of the story. This has naturally led to the videogame being very frustrating and unpopular.
Despite the fact that Agent 47 of the Hitman games can amass a literal armory of weapons in just one game, and despite the fact that he is a master assassin who requires more exotic weapons like sniper rifles and poison, by the start of the next game, the only weapons he has are his trademark AKA 47 Silverballers, a silenced variant, his garrote, and a syringe. He then (although it's always optional) proceeds to either buy his weapons in the black market, or takes them with him when he exits a level. What makes it an even sillier problem is the fact that the games are not chronological, and therefore, parts of one game can happen in between the levels of another game in the series, but 47 still has to acquire the same weapon multiple times in a row.
- At least it was somewhat justified in the second game, as 47 had quit the life and was living with Father Vittorio, and he could really only realistically store his Silverballers and a couple other things in the closet he had there.
  - Also, Blood Money begins the game with Mr. 47 having freshly flown into the United States from his usual operating area of Europe and Asia. The loss of equipment then could be justified, since getting an arsenal past customs may be fairly difficult.
  - Blood Money sort of subverts this, too — you don't have all your kickass weapons, no, but you do start with five basic weapons, one in each broad category, including the Custom Sniper / W2000 Sniper, which was the ultimate rare weapon in the (chronologically) previous game, and very hard to obtain outside that game's final mission. Since these five are generally the best or most generally-useful in their category, it makes sense that they'd be the five he'd choose to bring with him.
  - Contracts is a special case, as the majority of the storyline of the game shows 47 fighting for his life after suffering a near fatal gunshot wound, the missions being mostly remakes of missions from previous games or flashbacks to, presumably, earlier missions in his life. The only mission taking place in reality is the final one. However, it's entirely possible to play the final mission after equipping yourself with weapons acquired during the hallucinations as far as this troper can remember. Chronologically, Contracts also takes place after the Curtains Down mission of Blood Money, meaning aside from his dream armoury, he still has his hideaway...
- Also somewhat justified by the fact that 47 is, you know, an assassin. So preforming high profile assassination after high profile assassination with the same weapons is just asking to be identified. Then again, we are talking about a six foot tall white guy who frequently disguises himself as Asians.
Exception: As each new game in the Quest For Glory series was the same hero on a new adventure, players are provided with a chance to save their hero at the end of one game, and import him into the next. Importing gives your new character the stats and spells he knew in the previous game, as well as some of his gear and all his money. The one time the series plays this trope straight, in the transition between games 3 and 4, it's Justified by the fact that the hero is the subject of a forced teleport spell which is interrupted partway, throwing him into an Eldritch Abomination's final resting place.
- Also of note that even if you didn't import a character he would still start out more powerful than he did in the last game statwise, this all works because as the games progessed the actual stats went up, so an extremely high stat in the first game was mediocre in the second, by the fifth and final game, the minimum score you could have on a stat was the same as the cap in the first game.
  - However, if you worked enough at it in the previous game, you could usually increase your ending stats well beyond the next game's starting point for new characters. It's also notable that in the first game, the creation system was more flexible, allowing for effectively multi-class characters, and in the second, you gained the opportunity to wish for two additional skills your class couldn't normally learn... and these benefits all carried over into subsequent games at least as far as the fourth. You still couldn't be both a Paladin and a Wizard, but a lot else was feasible.
  - You totally can be a Paladin and a Wizard, or even a Paladin and a Thief, and this doesn't require importing anything or wishing for anything. In the second game, if you behave honorably enough, you become a Paladin regardless of what your starting class was (although the Thief doesn't get full points for being honorable). In the third game, you can only become a Paladin if you started as a fighter.
Lego Star Wars 2 has an "extra" that allows the user to import characters from a Lego Star Wars 1 save file for use in the "Free Play" mode.
Ultima VII was literally cut in half, creating Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle. However, each one is a full game, and by the end of The Black Gate, you're all powered up. This would be a problem for Serpent Isle. The solution? Immediately after getting off the boat there, you're struck by magical transposing lightning that trades your Infinity Plus One Sword for a piece of cheese, your Uber Armor for a bucket, etc. It even trades your party members for random scrap items. Oh, and welcome to level 1 for no reason.
- Lampshaded in Ultima VII: The Black Gate. At one point, Iolo explains to you that, every time you go to Earth and return to Britannia, it is as if you were newborn. This explains why you always begin at level 1, and why you can approach a unicorn, something that can only be done by characters with zero experience If You Know What I Mean.
Gothic 2 features a heavily justified example of this. After defeating the Big Bad of the last game, the hero is caught in a massive cave-in and left for dead for days before his mentor can teleport him to safety. His equipment was ruined, and being on the verge of death for so long atrophied his mind and body, causing him to lose his strength and forget his former skills.
- Gothic 2 also featured alternate dialog that would allow a player to respond to characters from the previous game, either as familiar friends, or with a kind of apparent amnesia.
- Gothic 3 follows a similar trend, having the player embark into adventure on the open sea with several other characters. After making landfall and discovering most of the population has been enslaved by orcs, a battle breaks out between the slave driving orcs and the rebelling slave population. Upon saving the town, the hero quickly discovers that pirates raided his ship during the battle and made off with all his spoils. To make matters worse, his time at sea has rusted his skills to nothingness, allowing you the joy of raising them back up.
At the beginning of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush Threepwood is hideously wealthy after his adventures on the high seas between this game and the first. He is almost immediately robbed by the diminutive but tough Largo LaGrande.
- A strange case occurs in The Curse of Monkey Island (the third game in the series). You begin the game with only one item in your inventory: an inexplicable pair of helium filled balloons. Presumably these are the same balloons acquired in the endgame of Monkey Island 2, but everything else from that game has been lost.
Fire Emblem avoids this beautifly in the move from Fire Emblem 9 to Fire Emblem 10, the only linear sequal in the series besides FE 1 and FE 3, by having each character able to gain an additional 20 levels (going from two Class tiers to three). So only a handful of characters really lost any level, stats, or experience. The only notable loss was that the main character Ike gave his Legendary weapon Ragnell to the Kingdom of Bengion as its rightful owner.
- Any A supports from 9 even become bonds in 10.
- Fire Emblem 3 (Mystery of the Emblem) starts with a remake of Fire Emblem 1. So there isn't anything lost between the stories (except a character, some items, and 5 levels of gameplay...).
- Fire Emblem 4 and 5 are also linear sequels; actually, the events of 5 occurs in between the two arcs of 4. However, only the two led characters of 5 showed up in 4 and it was pretty well handled in the case of Leaf.
This editor remembers playing Little Big Adventure PC games (Twinsen's Adventure and Twinsen's Odyssey) back when she was a kid. You eventually get all four available levels of magic (via certain items) and a cool sword in the first game... and then, in the sequel, not only the sword is gone (along with some other stuff), but when you retrieve your magical tunic at the start of the game, you only get the first level of magic and you need new items to get powered up again. This looks kinda odd, because the character still has one of the items that acted as magic power-ups in the first game... yeah.
Averted in Knights of the Old Republic 2, which has a different main character from the first game - but according to the new character's backstory, they were once a famous and powerful Jedi who has now lost most of their powers through the exact type of mechanism often used to justify this trope.
- Interestingly, this happens to several characters in the game, both new and returning. Kreia was once a Sith Lord, and was stripped of her power and exiled by the other Sith, Mandalore Canderous Ordo from the previous game mentions that he has suffered multiple wounds over the years, and is not as powerful as he used to be, and HK-47 has actually been destroyed at the beginning of the game, and must be repaired. Doesn't explain why T3-M4 is suddenly much weaker, though.
  - Apart from getting all fragged up during the near-destruction of the Ebon Hawk, I take it? Sure, even ion weapons haven't done that to him before, but...
- What about the first game? A sith lord, a high ranking jedi and a hero of the war (not to forget one of the most successful mandalorians) all starting with no clue as to how to hold a weapon.
  - With the way levels get presented in both KOTOR games, it's pretty easy to forget that level 6 actually is fairly competent, and Level 20 is a paragon of what a character can achieve before they become some kind of epic figure that can go toe to toe with gods and come out on top. So most of the NP Cs do start off at reasonable levels, except Carth.
  - Revan is literally brain-damaged, and Bastila isn't a "high-ranking" Jedi — she's very important because of her unique Battle Meditation power, but she's otherwise considered an inexperienced Padawan who hasn't even attained the full rank of Jedi Knight yet. This is directly lampshaded in one of your conversations with her and in one of Carth's conversations with you, when he expresses his shock that a new Jedi trainee would be sent out without only a fellow Padawan rather than a true Jedi Master to guide him.
  - Carth is a pilot first and a soldier second; there's no reason for him to be particularly good with firearms.
Slightly averted in the Suikoden series. In II and III you can load up saved games from the previous games, and the recurring characters get a power boost in line with their level, and their weapons are sharper than they would be otherwise. Granted, they aren't nearly as buff as they were at the end of the previous game, but the general power level seems to scale up with each successive game.
- Lampshaded in a scene in Suikoden II, where returning character Viktor unsuccessfully chases one of the minor villains. When the villain gets away, Viktor remarks "I could have caught him a few years ago".
Very noticeable in Megaman Battle Network, as Lan loses everything, his broken Gater folder, all his HP memory, his power ups, the ability to preset chips, etc. He eventually gets everything backed up (except the gater folder v_v)
- Not only that, but it seems like the Navi Customizer gets uninstalled after every game. Not to mention that in BN 4, the Style Change is replaced outright with the Soul Unison ability... this has been somewhat explained, but not in-game...
- The sixth game Lampshaded via the Poem program. One of the poems brings up this very trope, and it appears that not even Lan knows what happens to everything!
- After the events of 4 and 5, Megaman can become complete tainted dark and be fine at the beginning of the next game. However, this would explain the HP loss.
  - Sequel series Megaman Star Force eventually explains that because digital technology evolves so quickly, all the upgrades you aquire are incompatible by the time the next game rolls around. This reasoning could be stretched backwards to the Battle Network series.
  - Lan does not noticeably age between the games so it can't be that long a time.
Though not a sequel, Assassin's Creed justifies this trope. Altair starts off with a large number of skills at his disposal, being a high-ranking assassin. However, because of his arrogance resulting in the botching of a mission and the attack of the Assassin fortress, he is stripped of his rank...and more importantly his gear which granted him the majority of his skills, up to and including his blade.
Played straight through the Space Quest series - Roger Wilco doesn't retain equipment from one game to the next.
- ...with the exception of the Orium crystal from II, which Roger starts with in III. Also, the effects of another item carry over from II to III: acquiring the free-but-not-really Labion Terror Beast Mating Whistle in II leads to the Arnoid hunting Roger during III.
- Justified, since in Space Quest 6, we see that Roger actually does have a lot of the worthless junk he's amassed over the previous five games, he just usually keeps them in his room.
Averted in spectacular fashion by Paradox Interactive's series of historical simulators. You can play Crusader Kings from 1066 to 1453, then export the save file from that into Europa Universalis III and start with the world map and conditions as they were when you left them, and play up to 1820. Then you can repeat the process with Victoria and play up to 1920. If you have the expansion pack it goes to 1936 and then lets you export its save file in turn into Hearts of Iron II which runs up to 1964. In all you have nearly 900 years of in-game continuity. This is possible because all four games run on a very similar engine.
The original 4 .hack games: .hack//Infection, .hack//Mutation, .hack//Outbreak, and .hack//Quarantine, are notable in that they allow you to bring your save data from one game to the next.
- Well, the original .hack series was One Game For The Price Of Four...
Averted in the Neverwinter Nights series. Within each major installment, you can carry over a character to expansions, with the same stats. (But not between Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2, as their main characters are different people story-wise.) In Mask of the Betrayer, you get to keep whatever you had equipped when the character was exported, but not the weapon and items in the inventory.
- Hordes of the Underdark, the second expansion for NWN 1, has the PC's inventory stolen from his inn room at the beginning of the game. In-game dialogue allows the PC to hang a lampshade on it by repeatedly claiming you "only want my stuff back!" (Technically, however, the protagonist was not the same character from the original game - it was the same character from Shadows of Undrentide.)
  - Which you eventually can get back, provided you remember to loot one of the drow encampments
Averted in the old RPG series Wizardry. Character data can be transfered from Wizardry 1 to 2, then to 3, and finally to 5 (Four was from the viewpoint of the first game's Big Bad). Loss in experience or equipment was explained as them new characters being descendants of the heroes, or the greedy king training you as a reward, but making you pay for your training with all of your gold and equipment. As well, 6, 7, and 8 have their own series of transfers, taking place in a different time line.
Mario has starred in multiple RPGs, but no matter what level he has reached or what equipment/items he has gotten, he returns to level 1 with basic equipment (if any at all) at the start of the next game.
- This makes even less sense in Partners in Time, where his baby form levels up and possibly becomes even stronger than him.
Justified in the last level of Urban Chaos: Riot Response. Your safe house is bombed with you in it while you're off duty. So of course you don't have any of your T-Zero equipment for you have to leave that at Headquarters. However since your apartment was attacked before, you have several weapons stashed in it. And they have a brain about the lack of equipment. "We can't contact Nick! He doesn't have his communicator!" "Use his cell phone." Nick can also grab a shield from a Burner after killing one.
At the start of Sly Cooper 2, Bently begins to tell Sly how to do the ninja spire jump, and Sly chides him for assuming that he would forget one of his most important skills. True enough, Sly retains the spire jump and rail-walk techniques that he learned in Sly 1 for the rest of the trilogy, but he still forgot a host of other skills from that game, such as the power to turn invisible, alter time, and how to not take damage from falling in water.
- Well it does make sence[sic] since the majority of the book in the first game was entirely optional.
- It is in full effect for the jump between 2 and 3, especially with regards to equipment like the Paraglider or powerups like Silent Obliteration. Very annoying when you forget that you lose these..
The Ratchet and Clank series does this with weapons and devices, but upgrades to Clank (a robot) are retained from game to game. However, the loss of equipment is explainable to a degree: The duo are teleported out of their living room in the opening cutscene of the second game, in the fourth game they are captured by the Big Bad in the opening, and in the fifth game they are surprised by a sudden attack. The third game gives no explanation, which is especially odd considering that they are intentionally going into a war zone.
- Different galactic currency means he can't buy ammo for them. Notice that Bogon Galaxy bolts are a different color than Solana ones.
- In an interesting twist if you have a save file from a previous game then you can recover some of your lost weapons later on.
  - Unfortunately, the power of the old weapons is severely downgraded (else, the enemies are implied to be all that much stronger).
  - It's funny, really. The R&C 1 weapons are severely underpowered in R&C 2, but the R&C 2 weapons are insanely useful in R&C 3 (The Lava Gun even changes its upgrade to the Liquid Nitrogen Gun, one of the best weapons in the game, since it can freeze enemies alive)
  - In addition to the upgrades to Clank, Ratchet gives his O2 helmet between games. In the second game, he visits Clank's apartment and finds two of his previous gadgets there. In the third game, the appearance of Ratchet's Omniwrench is identicle to the final upgraded form of the weapon from game two.
Warcraft II introduced naval combat, complete with offshore platforms for extracting oil, a resource necessary for constructing fleets. Warcraft 3 effectively removed this element, having ships only in cutscenes, custom maps and certain campaign levels, with them not constructive in standard skirmish games.
Warcraft III mostly averts this with hero levels. In the Expansion Pack, every hero who appeared before is level ten. Arthas actually spends most of his expansion pack campaign going down from level ten all the way to level two before being allowed to level back up. The only direct use is Thrall, who was allowed to level to three in the training campaign but starts at level one in the full orc campaign.
- Arthas goes from a level 10 paladin to a level 1 death knight after the human campaign.
  - And his Sword Of Plot Advancement loses the ability to do chaos damage.
Averted in the Legacy of Kain series. Abilities gained by both Kain in the Blood Omen games and Raziel in the Soul Reaver games are retained from one game to the next. There are a few exceptions; for example, Kain doesn't use his Wolf form after Blood Omen 1 and Raziel doesn't use his Constrict power after Soul Reaver 1, but those powers were arguably of limited use anyway.
- However, this trope is in full force when it comes to the reaver forges - Poor Raziel has to imbue the damn wraith blade twice with every last element between Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance. Particularly glaring because it is a vital element of the plot. A deleted scene (according to interviews) would have had the Elder God destroying the Elemental Fonts used to switch the sword elements in Soul Reaver 2 - forcing Raziel to re-imbue the sword.
  - But Soul Reaver 2 ends with Kain creating a time-paradox. I always thought that it was the reason Raziel lost his elemental reavers.
The Sims for handhelds features the world's first Blackberry of Spilling. The sequels follow directly from the last, but the people you have befriended, run ridiculous errands for, and helped attain various honors and expensive possessions will not remember you in the slightest. Some have the courtesy of deja vu, at least. This includes Daddy Bigbucks, whose plans you repeatedly foil.
- Though The Urbz does contain a rare Easter Egg where occasionally, when you answer your phone, it'll be your uncle from the first game asking you to come visit sometime. ("The chickens miss you.")
Limbo Of The Lost has you lose the contents of your inventory (except for the items you'll need later) after Chapter I and Chapter III. This is achieved in the exact same way, having an ogre appear out of nowhere and shake Briggs upside down, causing his inventory to fall out of his pockets. And note that they used the exact same cutscene for this both times. Even though the cutscene clearly shows architecture from Chapter I that was not in Chapter III. Really, though, this is one of the least of Limbo of the Lost's problems.
By and large averted in Infocom's Enchanter trilogy (part of the Zork series). Spells learned in previous games are carried over (although some are lost in the third game due to actions of your enemy).
- Not true. Both of the first two games end with your spellbook being lost. It's true that at the *beginning* of the second two games the spellbook you start with is equipped with a decent arsenal of spells as opposed to the anemic spellbook you get at the beginning of Enchanter, though.
Notably averted in the original three Insomniac-made Spyro games: no abilities are gained in the first game, but those gained in the second carry over to the third. Showcased over and over, however, in the later games... seriously, how many times can a dragon forget how to breathe fire?!?
In the two months between The Journey and The Answer, SEES lost anywhere from 50 to 79 levels (most of a year's worth of training), all of their rare and highly valuable equipment and accessories (which also could be considered mementos of the Protagonist), and even their Evokers (though those were handed in as part of their preparation to disband).
- Ken and Akihiko lampshade this by likening it to cramming insanely hard for a test, only to forget everything instantly afterward. It's also possible that the uber-equipment was stored Outside the dorm that they cannot leave.
- It's also likely related to SEES losing their memories of the Dark Hour between the defeat of Nyx and Graduation Day, which surely had some effect on their "levels." One wonders what they did with all the equipment they found themselves holding during that time, though, especially the items that didn't come from within Tartarus.
A mixed bag in Yakuza 2. Kazuma retains parts of his upgraded moveset, is much faster, and even has one or two new abilities, but must relearn others. Oh, and health bar reversion in the extreme, of course...
In Nippon Ichi's Disgaea-verse, this is subverted by always having a new (albeit similar) protagonist take up the mantle of Main Character. This allows the previous heroes (and apparently future ones) to maintain their insane power levels, but they all generally seem more concerned with losing their title as the Main Character (it's beginning to become their sole motivation for making cameos lately). In Disgaea, your title is Serious Business.
- In Disgaea 2: Curse Memories, Etna (one of the main characters from the first game) initially shows up as a super powerful, Lv1000 NPC. She eventually joins your party, but not before a summoning mishap drops her down to Lv1. She was not amused.
In Ys IV: The Dawn Of Ys (not Mask of The Sun), you start off with the Infinity Plus One Sword and armor you had at the end of Ys Book I and II, only to be captured by the Romuns, stripped of your equipment, and thrown in the dungeon.
- Speaking of Ys, this was subverted in the the Turbo Duo version of Ys Book I and II which threw you into the second game immediately after finishing the first with all your levels, experience and gear intact. This was made to work simply by raising the level cap and continuing to offer more powerful equipment as you progressed.
- In Ys VI, the game opens with a shipwreck. All Adol's stuff save his sword is lost, and he spends three days in a coma; between that and the various injuries of the shipwreck, as Olha puts it, "[he's] become quite frail".
In Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap, the first stage is a reenactment of the final stage of Wonderboy In Monsterland, complete with the Legendary equipment and extended life meter. Once you get turned into Lizardman, you lose it all, and must build back up to it.
Justified in the X-COM series; while the games are sequential each game holds a different threat altogether from the last. For example, the second game has you fighting an invasion underwater where all your weaponry and vehicles developed for land and air combat are useless.
- Doesn't explain why you can't borrow some Heavy Plasma guns and Blaster Launchers for when the aliens invade ships and resorts etc. though.
  - It is explained that Elerium is no longer available (not sure why... didn't it come from Mars?). Also that plasma weapons explode underwater, so it makes sense that team that specializes in underwater combat wouldn't carry the things around even for surface assaults. And then there's the Gauss Weapon which the in-game encyclopedia clearly states it's a sort of evolution of said Plasma weapons - with the equivalent power of the previous game's Lasers (weapon adaptation decay, maybe? or simply the aliens in this game have even stronger armor)
  - It would still be nice to have a 9mm pistol for land missions. It's the year 2040, we have those, right?
  - There's no Elerium on Earth, and TFTD is set forty years after X-Com, so you don't exactly have a big stockpile of it to use. Presumably it's all been earmarked for things other than weapons (spaceship propulsion, for example). By the time of Apocalypse humans have managed to find more of it from offworld so plasma weapons are available again.
- In X-Com Apocalypse elerium is available but you still can't get the good weapons from the previous games, just plasma pistols. You do get plasma cannons for aircraft, though.
KOEI's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchise (and the Warriors Orochi crossovers) have averted the trope in the form of unlockables for having save data for the preceding game.
Averting this was part of the justification for Metal Gear Solid 2's infamous player character swap of the legendary soldier Solid Snake in favor of the de facto rookie Raiden who could be plausibly lectured on the game world.
- Otherwise, it's justified in that Snake is being sent into a war zone as a covert operative, and a rocket launcher is not the most subtle thing in the world.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed does a character switcheroo from Vader with all Force powers maxed out in the first stage to the Secret Apprentice who starts with only a few Force powers/talents/combos available and all at first level; mildly subverted in that the Apprentice starts with some mobility-related stuff like the "Force dash" and air dash that Vader doesn't have.
The intro cinematic of Left 4 Dead ends right at the opening to the first level, "No Mercy." But the characters are shown using weapons that they won't actually find until later. During the cinematic, every character either runs out of ammo or has the gun knocked out of their hands, leaving them with only the starting pistol.
Played BRUTALLY Straight in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Not only are the Heroes of Regeneration straight up de-leveled- going from as high as Level 250 down to Level 10 in the most extreme of cases, they can't gain levels in the new game anyways, because they do not gain EXP. Their equipment, on the other hand is partially averting the trope- they come with some of the first game's best equipment from the get-go, but their weapon is each character's weakest/starting weapon- in the final chapter, they gain their best equipment. (But you can't change ANY of it.)
- Again averted with Lloyd who's encountered at the very beginning of the game at Level 50 with his best equipment (at least he has his best -and only- weapon), but he's an enemy.
- Sadly, they missed out on a perfect way to explain this; after the events of the first game, the characters had a pretty good reason to remove their Exspheres, which granted them most of their strength. This whole thing would have made perfect sense if it was stated that they had removed their Exspheres, but unfortunately they do no such thing, which is especially odd in the case of Lloyd, whose Exsphere was formed from his MOTHER.
In the GBC Harry Potter games, Harry somehow forgets everything he learned his first year, lost his entire Famous Witches and Wizards card collection, and loses all his money.
Drill Dozer is about a girl in a mech with a drill on it. (No.) In each level, the player can acquire gears, which allow the drill to spin faster and harder. At the end of every level, the drill conveniently breaks down in such as fashion as to lose the two gears, leaving them with the default first. It's blamed on "wear and tear".
While the main character of Jak And Daxter rarely gets any equipment, he always loses the small amount he does have when Things Get Worse at the beginning of each game. His fortune in Precursor Orbs vanishes when he gets hurled into the future at the beginning of Jak II (granted, the Krimzon Guard probably looted everything they could find while he spent two years being experimented on in prison). The gun and hoverboard he picks up during Jak II (as well as his Dark Jak invulnerability and super-size powers) vanish when he's exiled at the beginning of Jak III. By the time Jak X rolls around, he's for some reason left his armour and gun in Haven or Spargus, doesn't use personal Dark Jak (or, for that matter, Light Jak) form at all (although most of the cutscenes involve sitting and talking), and you actually have to save up orbs to buy back the car he was driving at the start of the game (which isn't actually very good, compared to the maxing-out of a vehicle you can do during the actual game).
Captain Comic 2. "...Armed only with his courage, he enters the teleport chamber..."
Frontlines: Fuel of War has the missions devided into segments for each objective, separated by a short loading screen. The player often picks up many nifty toys to ensure that he's covered for all situations, such as carrying an assault rifle, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, pistol, sniper rifle, grenades, several UCAV drones with rocket launchers, and a pair of binoculars that drop airstrikes wherever he points them. This massive arsenal is lost in between loading screens, even if the next segment takes place mere minutes after and it would make no logical sense for him to take all of his equipment that could make the next mission a total breeze and toss them off a cliff, forcing him to find replacements.
- Seeing as how the player is fully-versed in every weapon and equipment classification in the entire war, it's a surprise they don't give him a full arsenal of whatever he requests at the beginning of each mission, because the commanders know he'll find and use them anyway.
The Ty The Tasmanian Tiger series is a particularly strange offender; you obtain various boomerang sets with various Elemental Powers, and you always, always lose them between games - except for the Aquarangs, which only work underwater. They do, however, change appearance, from rather distinctive finned boomerangs to... the exact same model as your starting boomerang.
Happens mid-game in Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, where Stranger is soon ambushed and captured in a Hopeless Boss Fight, after which the enemies manage to strip him of all his purchased upgrades, which he never gets back. Don't worry, he gets a set of new abilites based on the fact that he's a Steef allied with the Grubbs, such as more powerful ammo, a more useful melee attack to replace his headbutt and the fact that since he's no longer a bounty hunter, he doesn't need to bother with capturing his enemies alive.
Usually in full force in the Jagged Alliance series. You don't keep any weapons or money, and neither do your mercenaries keep their increased levels and skills between games. At least between JA1 and 2, it's not clear if you're even the same commander. Averted with the JA2 expansion Unfinished Business, which had a feature allowing you to import your mercenaries and their stats from the previous game, though not their equipment. Doing so, though, made the game ramp up the difficulty due to your powerful mercenaries.
In Izuna: Legend Of The Unemployed Ninja, Izuna lose all levels in the 2nd game, without any explanation...and also for some reason, the gods you are able to control also start at level 1.
in Mount And Blade you can keep you skills and cash by exporting and inporting
Lampshaded in the cinematic sequel to Final Fantasy VII, Advent Children. “Two years ago... think of the strength we all had when we fought that last battle. It's only been a couple of years, but the feeling already is gone. But Cloud... I think he found it again.”
Tales Of The Abyss has an interesting take on this, performing a Bag of Spilling in one game. Jade, a powerful caster with some limited melee skills, starts out as a level 40 something powerhouse, but is soon nerfed when a fon slot seal is placed upon him, reverting him to a low level.
Kings Quest. In the first game, the protagonist Graham recovers three treasures. One of these is a mirror that foretells the future, which is used to drive the plot in most of the sequels. The other two, a chest of infinite gold and particularly a shield of invulnerability, are never brought up again, although they surely would have come in handy.
Chaos Emeralds
- Subverted in Sonic 3, opening cinematic has Sonic going Super Saiyan for some reason, only to be sneak attacked by Knuckles. Guarenteed Critical, indeed.
A number of old-school first-person shooters (like Doom) were divided into three or more "episodes", each of which would start you off with only your most basic weaponry. Doom 3 does something vaguely similar when you enter or leave hell (though not if you're just using the teleporters to get from one part of Mars to another)
Occurs twice in Crysis. Once after getting captured, and once right before facing the final boss. This includes the attachments, some of which you will never see again after the first half of the game.
Done rather comedically in The Legendary Starfy series of games. In every game, Starfy has more or less the same moves, but still has to re-learn them each game. The canon explanation for this is that Starfy is so spacey and absentminded that he keeps on forgetting how to perform his own special techniques. Moe typically gets mad at him for this habit in the fifth game, at one point going "Sheesh, next this kid will forget how to swim!"
Averted in the Ace Attorney series. Nick manages to avoid losing the Magatama between the second and third games, and then over the seven years between the third and fourth.
In Heroes Of Might And Magic, artifacts generally don't carry over between campaign missions, even though heroes and their levels do. Also, you're often forced to rebuild towns from the ground up in every mission, even when they're plot-wise the same ones as in previous missions.
- The final campaign in Heroes V: Tribes of the East features a justified Bag Of Spilling. Zehir gets a flying city, but has to pay with experience to move it. The first time he uses this ability in a cutscene (accidentally), he loses 200,000 experience, dropping from level 25 to level 9.