Power Floats / Video Games

Now, think of the happiest things.
It's the same as having wings

• City of Heroes:
  • The first of the flight powers is "hover", but it's essentially extremely slow flight. Well, it used to be only that. Recently, it was changed so that instead of just being in the "superman" pose but going comically slow, the character remains upright, with arms held out to the sides. It looks much more badass. And, of course, it can be used to invoke the trope: a very high level, powerful character who suddenly starts hovering above the ground can be, depending upon what they're saying, a visual shorthand for "you REALLY should be respecting me more" to "don't worry about it, I'll clear the entire map."
  • There is also the Soul Storm power, which will raise the user into the air, flight or no flight.
• Soul Calibur IV: Algol perpetually hovers a few inches above the arena, surrounded by an ethereal blue aura. Only rarely does he ever touch the ground, during certain attack animations, or when he's been defeated.
• Bloody Roar 3: Uranus' pre-fight introduction has her float several feet above the arena, with her legs crossed and her hands clasped atop her knees, as though she's reclining in an invisible chair. She remains above the ground throughout the match and can levitate herself and her opponent higher during air combos. Yes, she's so broken that even the laws of gravity don't apply to her.
• Dead by Daylight: The Nurse is the only killer that floats and is also widely considered the strongest in the game.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • As far as playable characters go, Mewtwo and Palutena float both while running and when using certain abilities, and Rosalina constantly floats a few inches above the ground. The first one is a very powerful psychic Pokémon, and the other two are Physical Goddesses.
  • Final Bosses Master Hand, Crazy Hand, and Tabuu constantly float.
  • Smash Balls, the items that grant the player a Final Smash, float all around the battlefield.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Ansem-possessed Riku from the first game. Coupled with Riku's echo-y voice and new outfit, this just screamed that you were in for one hell of a fight. After Ansem kicks Riku out altogether, he spends pretty much all his time floating.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, this applies to two of Sora's Drive Forms. The magic-based Wisdom Form doesn't walk so much as magically slide along the ground. Final Form takes this further, as Sora is constantly levitating to illustrate the form's power.
  • When you play as Xemnas in 358/2 Days he does not walk as the other characters do, but floats instead.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, the Mirage Staff and Ultimate Form formchanges have Sora hover constantly like Final Form.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Super Sonic and most of the other super characters.
  • And Super Mecha Sonic at the end of Knuckles' run of Sonic & Knuckles. The way it floats is perfect Nightmare Fuel.
• There are plenty of characters who do this in the Tales Series, usually villains.
  • Dhaos from Tales of Phantasia does this whenever he's moving, though he's always doing it in his final form.
  • Miktran in the remake of Tales of Destiny does it both of his forms.
  • Shizel from Tales of Eternia is another "only while moving" example.
  • Colette from Tales of Symphonia provides a heroic example while in combat.
  • Duke in the battle against him in Tales of Vesperia. Rita can also get in on the floating with her Levitate ability, though it rapidly expends TP while it's active, due to being able to levitate out of the reach of many enemies. Estelle does it in both of her Hi-Ougis, as well.
  • Emeraude and Solomos from Tales of Graces.
• The gods of Soul Nomad & the World Eaters float. Effortlessly. All the time. You do not want to tangle with them.
• Metal Gear Solid:
  • Psycho Mantis.
  • And The Sorrow from MGS3, although he is technically a ghost.
• While it's not really floating as much as it is slowing her fall, Justicar Samara from Mass Effect 2 can use her biotics to float herself through the air for short periods of time. Given that she can send hundreds of Collectors flying with some effort, she could probably support herself for a while. Why she would is another question.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: Levelling up the Adept character profile (which grants bonuses for related skills rather than being the ironclad "class" they were in the original trilogy) will eventually cause Ryder to forego using their armour's jumpjet in favour of propelling themselves around with sheer biotic power.
  • Meanwhile, kett Ascendants like to float about the battlefield, thanks to some eezo-related assistance.
• Mega Man Battle Network:
  • Bass/Forte. His trademark float is just one of those little things that make him even more badass.
• Granblue Fantasy: It's mentioned in the Wind version of Metera's first Fate Episode that Flight magic is incredibly advanced and that only the most proficient of users are able to fully fly freely; this is consistent with magic users like Niyon, Marquiares, and Tweyen being incredibly powerful and all flying unassisted.
• Guild Wars:
  • Your character levitates into the air while casting spells.
  • Mursaat are constantly levitating. Mursaat are also near-godlike beings that can kill you by just being near you.
• The World Ends with You:
  • Joshua at first appears to be just a white haired Bishōnen with a magic cell phone, and no real athletic prowess. However, about midway through his chapter, he reveals that he's actually much more powerful then he lets on. While in Levitate Mode, Joshua is arguably one of the most powerful partners in the game, and his Jesus Beams are much more powerful than his standard ground combo. Of course, it only makes sense that he can float because [[spoiler:he is Shibuya's Composer.
  • Neku floats when he uses most Psychs that prevent him from moving during the attack. Examples include Pyrokinesis, Discharge, Psychokinesis, and Cracklepop Barrier.
• In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the Empire of the Rising Sun has a special unit named Yuriko Omega who can float. Her unit description? It basically boils down to "she floats because she enjoys rubbing in the fact that she can kill us mere humans with her mind." This does have a practical purpose in that it allows her to cross water at a reasonable speed. (Other commando-class units have had extensive swimming training; her "education" didn't include much in the way of P.E.)
• In Sword of Mana, when you finally get to fight Julius, he floats a few inches off the ground. This is before he actually goes One-Winged Angel, but then, his Vandole blood has basically taken him over by now, and he's also leeched most of the Mana Tree's power too.
• Dimentio of Super Paper Mario is only ever seen standing or floating, never walking.
• Chrono Trigger:
  • Characters casting high-level magic will rise to a foot or so off the ground for the duration of the spell. Magus, a powerful sorcerer, prefers to skim along just above the ground in a dramatic pose, since running is apparently for chumps.
  • Significantly, the Chrono Cross masked magician Guile also hovers serenely while the rest of the party is jogging. At least, this would be significant had the developers not discarded developing his story so they could include forty-four other characters...
• Metroid:
  • Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime Trilogy qualifies quite adequately, also displaying an ability for full-scale flight in the third game.
  • Every time Samus got a new suit in Metroid Prime 1 and 2, she would rise into the air while glowing energy surrounded her and she equipped the suit. In Metroid Prime 3, this was reserved for when she released phazon into Leviathan cores, again glowing, but this time with phazon.
  • Her Final Smash in Zero Suit form in Super Smash Bros. Brawl involves getting her Power Suit back (as well as dealing massive damage to anyone unlucky enough to be standing next to her during it), so it also has her floating as the suit's pieces form around her.
• Polvakian Gem Slugs in Startopia are so rich, lazy, and haughty that they loco-mote on hovering wheelchairs.
• The original Mortal Kombat (1992) has Sorcerer Shang Tsung floating just off the floor when you fight him, making sweeping attacks ineffective. The Edenian Queen Sindel can also do this as part of her win animation.
  • The power also lies with other characters, most notably Ermac, a collection of souls, and Raiden, the Thunder God.
• .hack//G.U.:
  • Azure Kite very, very rarely walks, or even stands. He just floats two inches off the ground, even when you later get to recruit him into your party.
  • None of the Avatars walk either; when an Epitaph User summons one, he appears to be floating (Avatars themselves are invisible to normal players).
• In Final Fantasy XI, float is forbidden magic, so only certain very bad, badass characters can actually float. This includes the Arcangel Tarutaru, Kam'lanaut, and Eald'narche. Not to be out done the Big Bad from the Wings of the Goddess expansion, Lady Lilith, is so badass that she can actually fly. On the good side, Selh'teus can fly because he bonded with the Terrestrial Avatar Phoenix.
• In Final Fantasy XIV your player character will float when casting some of the more powerful magics in the game. White Mages when casting Holy and Dia, the final Aero spell, Astrologians when casting Gravity, and Summoners when tapping into the power of Bahamut to cast Death Flare. Dia keeps you in the air for the entire cast animation, so if you're casting it as often as possible, you'll never land - and you will be casting it often, because it's the White Mage's best single-target attack spell.
• In Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015), Shantotto spends a lot of her time floating in cutscenes, most likely to make up for how small she is.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, anytime a high-level wizard or mage character casts a high-level spell, they levitate several a foot or so off the ground while performing the spell. The other two powers also occur, as the character gets a glow around them and the chants start to echo.
• In Mega Man X8, Lumine spends the entirety of his first battle phase floating around the battlefield in a figure eight pattern.
• In Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe Yuyuko, Iku, Cirno, and Utsuho only ever touch the ground when crouching or knocked down. Of these, Cirno is a definite non-example, only being especially powerful by fairy standards. Utsuho is the strongest example, having no particular reason to float other than being badass.
• In the Valkyrie Profile games, the bonus character, Freya, is always floating off the ground, and is usually one of the most powerful people you can add to your party (or, similarly, one of the most powerful bosses you can face).
• Castlevania:
  • Joachim Armster from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence.
  • Stella and Loretta Lecarde from Portrait of Ruin.
  • Soma Cruz in the Bad Ending of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.
• Otani Yoshitsugu from Sengoku Basara sits in a floating palanquin and attacks with floating prayer beads he manipulates with his Mind over Matter powers. The only times he ever touches the ground is if you knock him down or kill him.
• While all the Deities in Asura's Wrath can fly, Karlow levitates on low ground, and can even flip upside down.
• The God of light Fortinbras from Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams. Not only has this as a basic powert, he can even Walk in the Air.
• In Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy Gol Acheron and his sister Maia are only ever seen floating. Gol even has weights tied to his waist, probably to prevent him from drifting off.
• Neptunia: You'll never see a CPU or CPU Candidate actually using their feet when they've activated HDD.
• In The Last Story, anyone casting a spell will float for a few seconds.
• In Devil Survivor, you see Naoya doing this on routes where you fight him. Whether it's because of his powers or if it's just a reference to his preference for demons that have Flight, Devil Speed and Phantasma isn't certain.
• StarCraft:
  • The High Templars float, leave glow-y afterimages as they move and echo while they speak. They are arguably the most powerful casters in the game and one the most powerful characters in the games' lore was one of them. Two High Templars can also merge and form an Archon, one of the absolutely most powerful units in the game, and adds a much deeper voice to the already impressive list of clue-ins concerning their powers.
  • The expansion, Brood War, also adds the merged form of two Dark Templars; the Dark Archons, beings with powers so immense they can completely mindwipe any unit that gets in their way. Ulrezaj, another one of the grossly overpowered characters in the games' lore, is a Dark Archon formed by the merging of seven Dark Templars. He is closer to an Eldritch Abomination with the potential to invoke a Cosmic Horror Story more than he is a Protoss.
  • In the sequel, the Hybrid Destroyers float all the time and are incredibly powerful being Protoss/Zerg hybrids that more closely take after their Protoss heritage. They're basically Protoss Templars on steroids.
  • Background material reveals that extremely powerful human telepaths/telekinetics, like Kerrigan and Nova, are able to float by telekinetically lifting their own bodies. In her origin book, Nova does admit that requires a lot of concentration, while Kerrigan can only do it after becoming the Queen of Blades. Fans are still arguing over which of the two is the more powerful (the general consensus is that Nova is more powerful than pre-Zerg Kerrigan but is weaker than post-Zerg Kerrigan, and considering that Nova can emit a psychic blast more powerful than a nuke...).
• In Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, Zara does this to avoid fighting you directly.
• In Dark Souls II, two of the more dangerous bosses encountered, the Pursuer and the Darklurker, float all the time.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series and in the background lore, the ability to levitate is common among Tamriel's vampire bloodlines, with the exact details of the ability varying.
  • In Morrowind, Vivec, one of the Dunmeri Tribunal deities, can be found floating in his temple. He most commonly floats in a Levitating Lotus Position.
  • Skyrim:
    • Dragon Priests, powerful undead mages who once led the Dragon Cults, float above the ground when they move.
    • The Dawnguard DLC adds Pure-blooded vampires to the mix. Pure-bloods can transform into the Vampire Lord form, where they can either walk on the ground (using their powerful melee attacks) or hover ominously (where they can use their unique magic attacks).
• One of several shout outs to Big Trouble in Little China present in the first Mortal Kombat game, Shang Tsung is animated solely by Midair Bobbing, to demonstrate his power as the final boss, despite being ancient.
• In Shop Heroes, Mojian (one of the high-end characters) begins to levitate from time to time as a sort of Idle Animation.
• In Wario Land 3, Wolfenboss, the sorcerer fox boss of the Pool of Rain, is always floating out of the range of your regular attacks (Complete with Midair Bobbing when he moves), never touching the ground (Even when he is defeated, he just falls past it), while attacking you with powerful magic spells, specifically an energy ball that reflects off the walls and floor and levitates you out of the arena if it hits and a giant spiked ball that inflates you into Puffy Wario if it hits (Causing you to fly out of the arena) and provides the enemies needed to defeat him. He is usually considered one of, if not, the hardest boss in the game.
• Tales from the Borderlands uses this trope a few times, such as when the Gortys core is first assembled. The final instance is a Deconstructive Parody, however. At the height of the tear-jerking death scene resulting from one character's Heroic Sacrifice, the heroes discover that a seemingly innocuous item is actually a one-use resurrection device. As it restores the body to perfect health, it also raises it at least six feet off the ground—and then drops it like a stone when it's done, causing a fresh broken arm.
  Resurrectee: Why would something that's supposed to help me drop me like that?
• In Silhouette Mirage, Zohar and Geluve do this, the former always floating except when knocked down, and the later floating during and right after her boss battle, complete with lounging in mid-air while summoning her mooks to use as weapons against you.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: After ascending from an Evil Sorcerer to a God-Emperor, Ganondorf gains the ability to levitate, most notably in his Final Boss fight with Link.
• Fable:
  • The Big Bad Jack of Blades is the only character shown to levitate at will, which he does with a tentacular red and black Battle Aura. He's also a dreaded One-Man Army and a primordial Humanoid Abomination.
  • When it's Time to Unlock More True Potential for the Hero through the power of his bloodline, he's swept up into the air in a haze of green light.
• Overwatch has Sigma, an astrophysicist who was Driven to Madness and given gravity powers when a black hole oriented experiment went awry. He floats off the ground normally, but activating his ultimate ability allows him to fly for a few seconds (in addition to committing a Gravity Screw).
• Pokémon features numerous examples, some of the most well-known being either Psychic or Ghost-Type, with the stats to back it up. The most recent example as of this writing is Galarian Articuno, who flies around using its psychic powers instead of its wings.
• Temtem: According to The Art of Temtem, Houchic levitates because it's an easy way to convey that it's a Mental-type.
• Warcraft III: Some units like Sorceresses and ghosts float above the ground, leaving no footprints. And while it's not mentioned anywhere, this also allows them to go over landmines without setting them off.
• Shin Megami Tensei V: The hero becomes a god early in the game, and many of his combat animations show him hovering for a few moments. Most just show both feet briefly leaving the ground, while some show him rising meters into the air before raining destruction on his enemies.
• Vermintide II: All Chaos Sorcerers can Teleport Spam, but after merging with a daemon to claim its power, Nurgloth the Eternal starts to fly as well. He only occasionally touches the ground in his Boss Battle and floats to move.

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