Bag Of Spilling - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Who do you think you are, throwing your weight around like that?"

Captain Briggs, to the ogre who just shook his inventory away, Limbo of the Lost

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 Megaman 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.

Examples:

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.
Lampshaded 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.
- This troper seems to recall Aya also saying 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 levelled-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.
Exception: 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 will lose most of their moves from the last two games.
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.
- Metroid Prime 3 actually partially averts this by having her keep a good portion of her non-weapon upgrades from Prime 2... but doesn't bother to provide any explanation as to why she lost the ones she did.
  - Possible justification is she keeps most of the standard Chozo based weaponry, but loses the technology created by the Luminoth, which as mentioned above are incompatible.
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.
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.
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.
- However, Zero has no such qualms, which doesn't explain why he forgets learned techniques (ie NOT weapons), such as his Ice Stab maneuver in X4. I mean, it's not like he dies in that particular chapter, unlike X5!
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.
Likewise, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night begins with Alucard armed to the teeth with some of the strongest weapons in the game, but Death steals his equipment five minutes in, and it isn't recovered until well towards the end.
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, thogh dome 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 passowrt, you can just use two Gameboys and a linkcable.
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 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1, 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.
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.
- This Hand Wave-y justification becomes a Wall Banger if you think about it : Kyle quit the Force for fear of turning to the Dark Side... but comes running back to it when he essentially needs superior firepower ? Riiiight.
  - No, he needed it in order to fight Dark Jedi. Badass Normal or no, if he had gone against his quarry head-on, he would lose.
  - Actually, you DID go up against your quarry head on. And you got your butt handed to you. Luke also expresses that precise concern to you as well.
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 Team Rocket fairies spooked your horse, causing you to fall and lose consciousness for the few seconds it takes the Skull Kid to steal your stuff.
- 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.
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 ocurred, 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.
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.
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.
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).
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 ~~will~~ 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 and will eventually get a bunch of weapons he never had before, which will presumably be lost in 5.
- 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.
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.
- Also, Battlefield: Bad Company.
  - Actually, when used in a single game between level to level, it's probably a conscious design decision, to try and avoid Too Awesome To Use.
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, Bloody 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...
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. While most of your old equipment was prone to disappear between games, your stats and learned magic were preserved.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
- 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...).
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.
Slightly averted in the Suikoden series. In 2 and 3 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 succesive game.
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...
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.
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 II 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.
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!"
  - 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 Big Bad of the first game's viewpoint.) 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.
Justified in the last level of Urban Chaos: Riot Response. Your safe house is bombed with you in it while you're offduty. So of course you don't have any of your T-Zero equipment for you have to leave that at Headquaters. 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.
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).
Warcraft 2 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.
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.
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.
In the Thief series, your equipment is reset at the beginning of each mission, so there's no expectation that Garrett would stockpile equipment from game to game. That still doesn't explain where all the money Garrett stole in the previous game went when you start out dirt poor at the beginning of the current game. Also, as Garrett is The Stoic, you wonder exactly what he spends all that money on, since he doesn't seem to be the type to really appreciate wine, women, or song (nor the type to pay his taxes, apparently).
Limbo of the Lost has you the lose 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. Spells learned in previous games are carried over (although some are lost in the third game due to actions of your enemy).

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