Sliding Scale Of Gameplay And Story Integration / Role-Playing Games

Instances of Deliberate Integration in Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration for Role-Playing Games.

Persona 5 has its own page.

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RPG — Eastern

• Afterimage: Initially, the names of biomes or locations are written in cryptic glyphs. The HUD and menus will show their actual names only after Renee has learned them (either from reading Echoes that mention the place, or hearing the location's name from other NPCs).
• Bloodborne:
  • Like Dark Souls, you have Justified Extra Lives; you signed a magic contract pre-game that makes you not die when you're killed, and also binds you to hunt beasts.
  • You gain Insight through experiencing classic Lovecraftian events; Madman's Knowledge, fighting horrific monsters (i.e. bosses), finding eldritch artifacts, and generally seeing stuff that just doesn't seem fitting for a Gothic Horror setting. Insight in turn triggers certain elements of the game that normally wouldn't happen until the Blood Moon; Gehrman will talk in his sleep about how much he wants to be free of the Hunter's Dream, the Hunter's Dream theme changes, certain enemy attacks will change, you can see the Lesser Amygdala hanging around Cathedral Ward, and you can hear a baby's cry off in the distance. Insight also reduces Frenzy resistance, because you're already on the brink of a Freak Out from all the things you learn.
  • The Powder Kegs were a group of hunters known to be fond of explosives and Awesome, but Impractical weaponry (their motto was "If a weapon ain't got kick, it just ain't worth it"). The first Powder Keg you meet, Djura, wields a gatling gun against you, and Powder Keg weapons include a buzzsaw on a stick (the Whirligig Saw), a portable cannon, the aforementioned gatling gun, a hammer with built-in explosives, molotov cocktails, a spear/rifle combo, and the Stake Driver (Djura's weapon in melee), which uses a mechanism to force stakes into enemies.
  • Certain enemy types are extra vulnerable to certain damage types (i.e. beasts are vulnerable to Serrated weapons). If, in a scripted event, someone transforms into one of these creatures, their resistance values will change accordingly. Father Gascoigne's third phase (where he turns into a beast fully) gives him the Serrated weakness.
    • The first boss of the DLC does this: once Ludwig the Accursed regains his sanity for the second phase of the fight, his title will change to 'Ludwig, the Holy Blade', and he'll stop taking extra damage from weapons that do more damage to beasts.
  • The item description for the Rakuyo (Lady Maria's weapon) says that it was a Cainhurst weapon like Chikage (explaining the Japanese name), but did not use Blood Magic and instead demanded great dexterity. The player-usable Rakuyo scales with Skill instead of Bloodtinge and is one of the game's most Difficult, but Awesome weapons, due to its extremely intricate moveset.
    • Speaking of Rakuyo, its description stated that Maria liked it because, despite being a relative of the Cainhurst Vilebloods, she hated their blood magic and never used it despite having that ability. In her boss fight, she'll begin fighting with only her swordswomanship, and only use her blood magic in later phases of the fight, after she realizes the player might defeat her and uncover the secret she guards. When you do defeat her and enter the Fishing Hamlet, it becomes pretty clear why she's so desperate to keep people away that she'll use the legacy she hates so much. It's not just learning about the Moral Event Horizon Byrgenwerth crossed there, it's because someone might find and unleash the Orphan of Kos.
  • The Bloodletter and Chikage both power up using the user's blood to fuel Blood Magic. In the player's hands (and when used by NPC hunters who largely follow the same system as the player), transforming these weapons costs health because the user has to respectively impale/cut themself on the weapon to activate this. They'll also continue to drain the user's health because either weapon will keep drawing their blood until the magic is shut off.
    • The Bloodletter also inflicts Frenzy, because it's a bit unsettling to see someone stab themselves in the abdomen to power up their weapon, and you'd have to be bonkers to do it to yourself. Naturally, this is the weapon of Brador, a hunter who's somewhat unhinged to begin with (and doesn't have to worry too much about killing himself, because he only fights you by repeated invasions, while his real body is hidden away in a cell and doesn't fight when you finally find him).
  • The gear with the highest Frenzy resistance is Djura's Charred Hunter Set. Djura, desire to protect Old Yharnam's beasts aside (he at least takes measures to make sure the beasts don't hurt anyone), is one of the most reasonable characters in the game. The gear with the lowest Frenzy resistance is Brador's set. Brador is the wielder of the aforementioned Bloodletter and is most definitely a few blood vials short of a boss fight. Brador's Set also has the game's highest Beasthood stat, which makes sense since it incorporates the hide of a Cleric Beast ( who was once Brador's friend that Brador slew in his backstory, significantly contributing to his present mental instability).
  • Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen (yes, she shares her name with the game's setting) was the mother of the stillborn Great One Mergo. In her boss fight, Mergo will assist her by binding you in place if you do too much damage.
  • The DLC's final, extra-spoilery boss, the Orphan of Kos, is instinct-driven and nearly mindless because it's a newborn (really- born in a cutscene just before its boss fight). The hardest aspects of this boss fight are the boss's relentless aggression and its sheer unpredictability.
• Bravely Default: Just before the fight with Red Mage Fiore De Rosa, it is established that he uses pheromones to make women do what he wants, with them remembering none of it afterwards. Edea was captured just prior to this. Appropriately, she begins the battle with Charm status, and will attack the party instead of him.
• In Bravely Second, Altair occasionally possesses Tiz to provide aid to the party. When this happens during a battle, Tiz's special quotes change to reflect this.
• In Breath of Fire II, Katt/Rinpoo is often described as fairly stupid (and hotheaded), particularly compared to pretty much everyone else in the cast. This is reflected in her having the lowest Wisdom stat of all the playable characters — and, by proxy, the lowest natural AP count by a fairly large margin, yet she learns several high-end spells once leveled high enough...that she can't cast normally due to her low AP. In fact, the only ways to up her AP enough to cast at least ONE of her spells is to either recruit a character into your town to raise it for her, and/or fuse her with the proper Shaman combination for a temporary boost. On top of that, the three spells she learns are fairly high-level and powerful. She didn't bother with the smaller stuff she might actually be able to utilize. She went right into wanting to do the high-damage, hurty spells without realizing it might take a lot of smarts and concentration to be able to USE them effectively.
• Chrono Trigger has a few.
  • Magus has no double techs and the only way for him to do triple techs is for one of the party to equip an accessory that does nothing else. He's only with the team to destroy Lavos so the only teamwork he does is at the player's behest. He's also from the time of magic so he has the most powerful magic stat and can attack with every element.
  • In the post apocalyptic future, technology is the only reason humanity is still alive providing all the needs they have in the lifeless world. Robo is from the future and is capable of healing and attacking with every element except water.
  • Ayla comes from a time before magic. She's a physical beatstick, tank Magically Inept Fighter.
  • When the party uses the ruby knife to stop the Mammon Machine, it transforms into the Masamune. If Frog attacks the Machine in the boss fight with Masamune, it will siphon off health and heal Frog.
• In the PSP version of Digimon Adventure, the game introduces Relationship Values between the human party members which gives extra power to their Mons based on how well they get along, which often reflects on their own personal issues (Yamato can raise his rank with Sora by stating that he cooks at home instead of his mother, which reflects her own perceived issues with her own mother) or just being nice with each other (Jou can easily raise his rank with the others during an early episode). Everyone starts at Rank 1, except Yamato and Takeru who start at Rank 3 due to being brothers.
• Dark Souls:
  • You keep coming back to life as many times as necessary to complete the game because you're a victim of the Undead Curse; this renders people immortal because they'll revive after dying, but if they ever lose hope/purpose, they'll permanently turn into mindless creatures called Hollows. So, why doesn't the player character ever turn Hollow? Well, they do... if their player quits the game.
  • The Hollow mechanic also affects your allies in the world. Many of them typically end their sidequests in death as they give in to the Curse. Without you needing their help or them achieving a lifelong goal, they go Hollow without purpose to keep them going.
  • The level up system through taking the souls of defeated enemies is, In-Universe, something that everyone can do - and in fact, several bosses also take advantage of it; for example, the second phase of the Ornstein & Smough fight, after you kill one, has the other absorb the dead one's soul to heal to full health and get a buff (Ornstein becomes giant, or Smough gains lightning attacks). Soul power increases with strength, which is why bosses give you much more power compared to normal mooks.
  • The coop function of bringing in players is acknowledged and explained in-universe, since the world's stability in both time and space is unpredictable. This allows several characters to be from other worlds as they go about their own journeys without you seeing them outside of certain events, and for you to summon people that have already died in your own world.
  • Kingseeker Frampt will give you souls for whatever items you feed him. The amount you get often changes with his literal and personal tastes. Give him something that is unique and easy to eat and you get more, like rings and coins. Give him something hard to eat that he doesn't like and you can get a single soul, like Crystal equipment that will remind him of Seath the Scaleless. Smough's soul in particular only gets a single soul despite other unique souls can be consumed for thousands of souls, because Smough is/was a cannibal and that disgusts Frampt.
  • New Londo has no bonfires to rest by. This is because the place has been abandoned by the gods and flooded, after its Four Kings fell to the Abyss. Pointedly, they are the only Lord Soul bearers not protected by the Lordvessel and one could defeat them at any point they wish.
  • There is no mid-boss on the way to Seath the Scaleless. As he is a dragon that turned on his own kind for the dragon-hating gods of Andor Londo, most that aren't already a part of his forces don't want anything to do with him. Of those forces, most are abroad trying to kidnap more test subjects and are not hanging around Seath's estate as a result. Adding to the fact that no one wants anything to do with Seath, he is the only major player that one cannot join a covenant with.
  • Seath is blind, so most of his attacks are magic Area of Effect attacks and desperate leg flailing to reflect how he only knows an approximate area of where you are; he's also panicking because the player character just found his Soul Jar keeping him immortal. You can take advantage by using Hush and the Slumbering ring to make him lose track of you.
• Dark Souls II:
  • This game is much more about the player character's identity and the fact one can lose it to the Undead Curse than the more mythologically focused I. There is actually some gameplay before character creation to let you know that the player character had a life before the game and respeccing is possible for the first time in a Souls game. A certain coffin can spontaneously change their physical gender.
  • The main plot of the game is for the player character to become a vessel for souls and take the Throne of Want and link the Fire. The main way the game gives you is to acquire the four Great Souls of the bosses in the first half. However it is also possible to simply farm enough souls, one million, to qualify anyway and move on with the plot, since that means the player character is a vessel of souls.
  • The hollowing mechanic is also the explanation of how regular enemies keep coming back when you kill them. This game has the unique distinction of keeping some enemies gone if you kill them enough.
  • The main four Great Souls are implied to be four of the bosses from the original game reincarnated but virtually all of them are fought completely different from their original selves as a show of how one can lose their identity. The Lost Sinner is a physical swordswoman when the Bed of Chaos was a Puzzle Boss with pyromancy, The Rotten is a solo poison spewing berserker while Nito was a Flunky Boss who often mixed powerful spells with his strikes that buildup curse, The Duke's Dear Freyja is a twin headed spider who spews concentrated energy blasts while Seath was blind and used Area of Effect magic to compensate, and The Old Iron King is a physical tank that punches hard and breathes fire while Gwyn was a master swordsman who burnt you up close with a facepalm grab.
  • Lucatiel and Benhardt's quests require you summon them for bosses and keep them alive. Considering that is how you stave off hollowing (i.e. not dying repeatedly), it holds true for them and they keep their humanity in subsequent encounters. Benhardt is implied to not actually be a Hollow so keeping him alive is doubly important, since a human can't revive after dying.
• Dark Souls III: The state of the First Flame has an undercurrent to the stats of the characters and enemies. Everyone in Dark Souls II has higher stats than the population of Dark Souls I to show that while the peak strength of the flame is gone, it is far from nearing its end and is reaching the peak of its cycle again. Everyone and everything in Dark Souls III has even lower stats than I, to help illustrate that the First Flame is almost completely dead and the universe is accordingly breaking down.
• In Dokapon Kingdom, unlike other enemies, when Rico Jr. is defeated, they use a Revival so they can escape from whoever defeated them.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest V:
    • Think about all the bad fortune that befalls the hero... ambushed by Ladja, watches his dad get murdered, enslaved for ten years, has to go through trials to get married, gets turned into a statue and misses the early years of his children's lives, and then has to go rescue his mother from the underworld... and then, during gameplay, when he levels up? You'll notice his luck stat just about never goes up. His luck stat is the lowest in the game.
    • In the childhood section of the game, when Pankraz is with you, you can't control your movement at all, you can't choose to initiate dialogue, you can't do anything but follow right behind him on autopilot. Well, of course you can't do anything; he's your dad, he's the party leader, not you. You're a secondary party member when he's around!
    • In one of the most meta moments in the series, Pankraz makes the mistake every player has in a 2D RPG: accidentally stepping back onto a stairs icon and ending up in the previous screen. Jarring for him as one step sent him down an entire underground stairway and hilariously awkward for you as the party member who follows without a word. This was sadly not as funny for the remake, where there is no longer a 2D icon to fumble with on the way to Coburg.
    • The game actually does lampshade the fact that resurrection can happen in this setting. So, if characters get Killed Off for Real, the narrative makes sure they're either Deader Than Dead or otherwise indisposed. Specifically, Pankraz is hit with a fireball so powerful it blasts him to ashes, and while the Hero and his wife aren't killed, they're turned into stone statues with a spell that only a specific staff can reverse. Even when you get married, instead of "as long as you both shall live," it's "as long as you both shall be resurrected from death in the church."
  • Dragon Quest VII:
    • Ruff joins your party at a measly level one. When you're probably nearing the mid-late teens. This actually makes perfect sense — Ruff is a wolf puppy who just turned human — and the only abilities he learns without Alltrades Abbey relate to summoning wolves to attack the enemy.
    • When you recruit Mervyn, he's the former champion of the Almighty yet he comes off as Overrated and Underleveled due to only joining at level nineteen and with no Class progress. So what's the deal? Actually, the way you meet him is to unseal him where he has been for who-knows-how many. Obviously he's out of practice.
    • Aishe is the latest in the line of dancers for the roamers, but wants to be a warrior like her ancestor (Keifer). When she joins, she has the Dancer class completely mastered, but also a few points in Warrior already. Why only a few? She is self-taught and could only go so far without the help of Alltrades Abbey or being able to actually train without having do so in secret.
    • The game's class system itself is both a gameplay feature and a story feature. It seems as if the sole purpose of Alltrades Abbey is to change classes and learn abilities for the players. However, if one talks with NPCs, they casually mention changing "vocations" just as much as the player does, meaning that this power extends to them as much as it does the heroes.
  • In Dragon Quest VIII, the Hero is under a curse so powerful, other curses (like the Forced Transformation placed on his hometown) don't affect him. He is, in gameplay, immune to the "curse" status effect. To even further emphasize this, a boss that you can defeat to unlock the second ending has a sort of a "Seal" attack that he starts with. It will not affect anyone except the Hero because he is the one that placed the original curse that the Hero lives with.
• Elden Ring:
  • Several enemy types make use of talismans, just like the player- Mohg and his followers use the Lord of Blood's Exultation (increases attack power when Blood Loss occurs in the vicinity), and the Cleanrot Knights use the Winged Sword Insignia (raises attack power for successive attacks).
  • Fitting his status as a Starter Villain, Godrick's Great Seal that enhances all stats by 5 reflects that he has no true power on his own, and that he's fairly pathetic by demigod/divine standards. While very useful in the early to mid-game, when the softlocks on stats start showing up later you will find the benefits from Radahn's or Morgott's much more useful.
  • Radahn was said to be one of the greatest warriors among the demi-gods until the final battle with his sister Malenia infected him with so much Scarlet Rot that he lost his mind and ruined his body. While a major foe to face early on, compared to the other demigods still at the top of their game he is significantly weaker. And fitting his affliction, weaponizing Scarlet Rot is highly effective on him. It's already brought him to the brink, so more will put him over the edge to where his body finally breaks down.
  • A lot of Malenia's stats are based on the Logical Weakness she has as a Handicapped Badass; she has insane Scarlet Rot resistance because she's dealt with it her whole life (and you're trying to weaponize Scarlet Rot against its own chosen Empyrean), but she's still been deathly ill since she was born, so she can't resist other status effects very well, and has zero fire resistance as the Rot is Weak to Fire as a rule. She also has relatively low Poise (heavy emphasis on the 'relatively'; it's only low by endgame standards) because for all her skill, she's only a few feet taller than most humans, while her relatives in the 13-20 foot range have too much sheer mass to be staggered- something reflected in the trailer, where Radahn is able to stagger her and break her artificial arm with a heavy blow due to his superior force.
    • Malenia's Great Rune works by attacking after being hurt to heal oneself, as a symbol of Malenia's will fighting the power of the Scarlet Rot. She heals when her attacks hit the player as the result. This healing only stops when she unleashes the Scarlet Rot, because she isn't fighting it any more.
    • Malenia is often referred to in lore as the World's Best Warrior, and prior to her boss fight, she states that she's "never known defeat". If you somehow manage to make her fight against the game's other bosses, she wins in almost every scenario (in most cases without having to go to her second phase, which in-universe is her Godzilla Threshold). The only boss who can defeat her is Maliketh (who wins generally comes down to who gets the Home Field Advantage)- who himself is a legendary warrior feared by all demigods.
  • Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy has remarkably low poise for a two-story man-snake. Which actually makes sense, snakes don't have ways to stabilize themselves as they lie on the ground and Rykard's limbs erupt from within the giant snake. He has no pelvis to pivot on to hold himself up.
  • Maliketh has remarkably low hp and poise for an endgame boss who is a 20 foot tall wolf-knight. Doing his sidequest beforehand shows that sealing the Rune of Death inside his body has given him a Horror Hunger that can only be (temporarily) sated with Deathroot- and there's only 9 of those in all of the Lands Between. He's been starving for who-knows-how-long before he fights you.
  • Enemy friendly fire is determined by their in-universe attitudes and actions. Most wildlife and soldiers will fight each other but the large dogs in Caelid are so feral that they can damage each other, but won't actually target each other. Same for the Golems, who are so autonomous that they don't register each other as enemy or ally and can deal damage to each other by accident. Uniquely, the swordmistresses of Nox can be attacked and even grabbed by their Large Ant mounts.
  • Enemy placement takes into account the lore around their respective leaders.
    • Godrick's sworn knights have mostly been lost with only the remaining few holding positions outside his castle, and he has to make do with banished knights, sell swords, exiles and even commoners. Most of these are scattered about his territory with little cohesion or direction.
    • Rennala took multiple losses in the backstory and the Academy is currently locked off from the outside world. Her home is mostly held by mages and automaton creations, with a single knight that was sworn to her blocking off access to her library.
    • Rykard the Lord of Blasphemy has no living knights in his service, the set is found on a corpse. His dungeon is instead held by serpent knights and automated contraptions.
    • Morgott is considered the best statesman of the demigods and it shows in the Leyndell knights being found everywhere. Leyndell is also the one place the injured and infirm are taken care of in all the Lands Between. The Leyndell knights and associated forces are mostly centered around their city in established defensive positions and patrolling their city, as part of their ongoing defense against the other demigods' forces.
  • Malenia's personal army, the Cleanrot Knights, are known as some of the most powerful and capable knights in the entire war and thus found in multiple areas and have quite probably the highest numbers of any knights. Fitting for their leader, their armor has some of the highest Scarlet Rot resistance of any set and their unique weapons have resistance buffs too.
  • Radahn's soldiers have committed themselves to fighting against the Scarlet Rot overtaking Caelid. Appropriately, they use a whole lot of fire in their fighting style.
  • Several NPCs can be summoned as allies for boss fights when their quests take them to the boss arena; for example, Sorceress Sellen will become available for the Red Wolf of Radagon once she's been freed and returned to the academy (notable because in order to summon her you'll have to go out of your way to fight Radahn before Renalla, despite the latter being an easier fight), Iron Fist Alexander will aid you in the Fire Giant fight because he too wants to access the Forge of the Giants, and Dung Eater will help with Morgott and Mohg's projection after you free him from his cell below Leyndell, but before you beat his invasion.
  • All the different endings have quests tied to them that flow into their respective Runes. Goldmask contemplates the Golden Order and its secrets, you must uncover the true nature of the gods and follow him every time he moves, notably he has no enemies to fight. Dung Eater considers you a fitting vessel for his mantra that all are equal when all are cursed, you find the seed bed curse items after entering both the most vile and virtuous areas in the game and feeding them to him after beating him in a fight. Fia wants those who live in Death to be accepted into the Golden Order and to do that must find the still living gods who died in the backstory, as well as kill those who most want Death removed from the Golden Order. You become Ranni's consort after proving your undying loyalty to her, which happens after braving a lake of Scarlet Rot and facing a space monster in between the two of you... after she formally releases you from her service. Showing how despised the Frenzied Flame is, it is defended by a projection of Mohg and a barrier empowered by Morgott, the only thing they are ever known to collaborate on considering how different the two of them are in the present day.
• Final Fantasy IV:
  • You begin the game with Cecil and Kain, both trained knights in the service of the most militaristic kingdom on the planet. Both start at level 10 with some pretty good equipment, which fits their background. Rydia, the first other character who joins you, is a small child that starts at level 1 with minimal equipment.
  • Rydia learns black magic (attack spells). Like other Final Fantasy games, battle spells follow most of the standard element patterns (fire, ice/water, lightning). Rydia learns ice and lightning magic on her own by gaining levels, but not fire. Her hometown was destroyed by a fire, and she hates fire as a result. She only finally unlocks fire magic when the group needs to proceed past a wall of ice to warn another town of an impending attack, and there are no other black magic users currently in the party. The fact that innocent people will die if they can't be warned in time allows her to overcome her psychological block and cast Fire to melt the ice.
  • At Mt. Ordeals, Golbez sends Scarmiglione after Cecil to stop him from becoming a Paladin. Scarmiglione is used specifically because he is undead and Cecil is a Dark Knight using swords based on darkness, which would have no effect on the undead.
  • Cecil's Trial is to face his own past as the Dark Knight to gain the Paladin job. The Dark Knight uses the Darkness ability exclusively, which Cast from Hit Points to deal damage. Paladins defend others so the solution is to Sheathe Your Sword and defend and heal. Also while Cecil resets his level all his stats are roughly where they would be with the level you would be expected at the Trial.
  • Rubicante, Archfiend of Fire, is one of the series' shining examples of Noble Demon and Let's Fight Like Gentlemen, and this plays out in battle with him. If Cecil and party use a Fire spell when his cloak is down, it'll heal Rubicante. Rubicante will then respond in kind by healing Cecil's party. (He doesn't follow up with a heal when the cloak is up, but the reason for that is more covered by Violation of Common Sense.)
  • Some characters have their stat growth on level-up logically follow their character arcs. As mentioned above, Rydia start at level 1 and can be decently powerful, but doesn't get her true strength unlocked until spending several years in the summons' dimension, where she becomes an excellent summoner and Black Mage with normal stat growth. Palom and Porom are genius magi, but are still young kids so their physical gains are poor. Cecil resets to level 1 after becoming a Paladin because he has no idea how to fight that way or use his new magic, but he catches to up the others quickly because learning a new weapon and magic is relatively easier than building up physical or mental strength. Edward's stat gains are piss poor because he's so poorly suited to fighting (except in the GBA/PSP version where Edward finds genuine courage to fight to the end after his bonus dungeon, where his stat gains become explosive). Special mention of course, goes to Tellah, who actually gets weaker as he levels up, with his MP costs for magic increasing to boot; he's an old man on an adventure his body just can't handle, instead of strengthening himself like a younger character could, he's putting his elderly body through more stress and strain than it can handle, which is a big contributing factor to needing to sacrifice his life to use Meteor.
  • Also regarding Tellah and Meteor: many characters warn Tellah that trying to use Meteor in his age will kill him. He never gets naturally enough MP to actually cast it and when he casts it against Golbez in scripted battle it does do him in.
  • Similarly the stat gains from level ups stop steadily going up around level 60 and randomly go up or down depending on chance. Training alone will eventually plateau and it can be actually detrimental if done to excess. This is revisited in other games where stats stop going up in later levels, but here is the only time it might actually make you weaker.
• Final Fantasy V:
  • This game justifies the "Nobody uses healing items to save people in cutscenes" problem in RPGs by having Galuf get killed so hard (via fighting and defeating the Big Bad at 0 HP and running on sheer willpower) that not even Cure or Life spells will save him.
  • Leviathan and Bahamut use elements not among the usual spell levels, and are hidden summons to boot. Therefore they do not have corresponding equipment to boost their power.
• Final Fantasy VI
  • The party Blue Mage, Strago has a case of this. The game tells you that to teach Blue Magic in this game, you have to see the copyable spell being cast. What this means is that Strago has to see the spell being cast, so being struck by the blind status effect when the spells are cast means he won't be able to learn them. More importantly though, this means that if you have Relm in a party and her Sketch copy uses its Lore spell, or Gau using his Rage and the A.I. Roulette lands on a Lore, Strago will learn it without having to put himself or other party members in danger.
  • When Sabin (and optionally Shadow) first meet up with Cyan, Cyan is currently on an Unstoppable Rage after finding his wife and child dead. The first few fights you have with Cyan, he's uncontrollable and attacking wildly like he's been afflicted by the Beserk status.
  • Strago and Relm are some of the last remaining descendants of human magi who could use magic during the War of the Magi. While Strago says that the blood has thinned to the point they can only use rudimentary spells, Relm has the best magic stat growth of any party member and can become your strongest mage up there with Terra, since she has the inborn potential to become a powerful mage unlike the other party members who never dreamed of having magic until magicite became involved. Strago's own lack of similar growth can be attributed to his extremely advanced age.
  • Terra's Trance ability is tied to her emotions, as Espers are not very emotional beings and her human half makes her control vary. At first she can only transform for a short time when she first unlocks it. When aiding her friends and defending the orphans in her care from Humbaba she is transformed for the entire fight. Later after fully accepting her identity and getting the go ahead from her found family to go out and fight the evils of the world, Terra's trance time doubles.
  • In the Phoenix cave as you try to find the Treasure Hunter/Thief Locke you find that all the chests have already been looted. At the end of the dungeon Locke gives you all the treasure he had plundered as he doesn't want to be known as a thief.
• In Final Fantasy VII, Rude of the Turks confesses to his partner (and the player, and the party hiding nearby) that he has a crush on Tifa, one of the heroes. In fights against the Turks, Rude will never attack Tifa, and if she is the only one standing, he'll never use his stronger attacks against her, and refuses to attack at all one third of the time.
  • Cloud is noted in-story to be extraordinarily strong as an Ex member of Soldier, even next to the rest of the party who are some of the most capable people on the planet. In game he is coded to be at a higher level then the rest and even on the same level he is stronger than them across nearly every stat. Relatedly, Red XIII is a long lived, four limbed, talking animal from the spiritual Cosmo Canyon. He has excellent stats in virtually all areas, notably the highest speed to accommodate all parts of his anatomy and backstory.
  • At points in the story Tifa and Cid take over as party leader and dialogue changes to match whoever is in control. In a neat bit Tifa won't have a choice in helping Fort Condor, as she is far more altruistic than Cloud.
  • It's stated in the story that Materia can form naturally, and such Materia is said to be rarer than man-made ones (they take at least centuries to form this way) and implied to be more powerful, as they're made by the planet itself. Some caves with natural Materia inside them can be accessed once the player breeds a gold chocobo, and not only they're the only copies the player can find in the entire game (the only way to obtain more is to master them), they all have particularly potent effects relative to most other Materia in their respective categories. The red one is Knights of the Round (by far the game's most powerful summon), the blue one is Quadra Magic (makes compatible spells linked to it be cast at half power four times in a row), the yellow one is Mime (a very versatile command) and the purple one swaps the user's HP and MP values (which turns them into a Squishy Wizard with very low HP, but extremely high MP).
  • The game deconstructs the plot of rpg's in that to progress you have to do what the story says to do regardless of your decisions. For about half of disk one Cloud has several opportunities to make decisions of how to go about things but they won't affect much. After it is shown that the real reason he was on his quest was to follow Sephiroth because of his Cells within him, those decisions stop showing up. From then on the only decision you have is to keep going until defeating Sephiroth. At the end the only real difference story wise for your decisions is what relationship Cloud and Tifa have.
  • In the Gaiden Game and Prequel Crisis Core, you play as SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair. It's not really a spoiler anymore that The Hero Dies at the end, but in the meanwhile you get a fun Action RPG with a Limit Break mechanic in the form of the "Digital Mind Wave," a slot machine that's always in the corner and gives you your LBs or Summon Magic when you line up three portraits of the same NPC. It's a Luck-Based Mission and somewhat frustrating to rely upon... until the Bolivian Army Ending, where it throws match after match, letting Zack use his strongest attacks and treating players to cutscenes of Zack and those characters together. Suddenly the DMW is the heart of the game: it dramatizes Zack's life flashing before his eyes, as he desperately reaches for his memories of the people he most cares about, hoping to come home to them one last time. It's not as big a Player Punch as Aerith's death... but it comes damn close.
  • Two status effects, Fury and Sadness (Fury makes the character take more damage but gain Limit Break meter faster, Sadness makes them take less damage but slows down Limit gain) like to apply themselves to characters depending on how the plot is going for them instead of being applied by enemies (though you can apply them yourself with an item). In the endgame especially, it's not unlikely to find Cloud afflicted by either, given that the journey has been a torturous emotional rollercoaster for him in particular and switching between depression about everything that's happened and rage towards Sephiroth is understandable.
  • Limit breaks are noted to come from emotions, which the fury and sadness status effects magnify. It also has an effect on which characters get their limit meters filled easily, Barret an Angry Black Man who lets his emotions lead his way in the best of times needs the least amount of damage to fill his, Aerith the White Magician Girl who is likely the least maladjusted of the team has a very high damage threshold to use her Limit Break.
  • In the final dungeon the party splits up and you choose who goes where. Yuffie, who can optionally take all the parties materia for a sidequest and still has issues with personal property, won't be upfront with the treasure she found along the way. If you want what she got you have to put another member with her route, otherwise she keeps it and it remains Permanently Missable Content.
• Final Fantasy VIII:
  • The magic system of VIII is actually called para-magic that is a weaker version of the real magic used by sorceress' that stockpiles spells for later use. Rinoa becoming a sorceress results in her getting a second Limit Break that makes her use spells at five times the power, and causes her to cast infinite spells.
    • Related to that, the very first time you're able to use said second limit break, Squall and Rinoa are in space and Angelo, Rinoa's dog and the crux of her original limit break, is elsewhere ( back on the planet). During that time, you can ONLY use Rinoa's 2nd limit break. Once Rinoa and Angelo reunite, that is when you get access to both limit breaks.
  • Limit Breaks in VIII are a Desperation Attack used the worse a situation is (Low HP and number of dead party members are the biggest factors). After the failed assassination attempt at the end of disc 1 Edea impales Squall with an Ice Spike after they critically wound her and defeat Seifer. After having a Heel–Face Turn and becoming a Guest-Star Party Member, if you get curious to see what her unique limit break is, it's same Ice Spike spell - in other words, she got use of her lategame-strength Limit Break at the end of Disc 1 because the party had put her to that level of health and removed her party member (Seifer) from combat. The fact that she has to junction to a GF to have access to magic also acts as mild Foreshadowing that she's no longer a sorceress, having passed her powers onto Rinoa by accident.
  • Irvine was trained by the much more militant Galbadia Garden, so his limit breaks are an odd one out in that he uses assorted ammo for it instead of powering up himself or using magic like the rest of the party.
  • Also regarding Edea, the party defeats her at the end of Disc 2 and when she joins in Disc 3, her level and stats will be similar to the party's, they all closed the gap by gaining enough strength to defeat her, while she's grown slightly weaker from being defeated (it's mentioned she's still recovering from her wounds) and losing her ability to use magic without junctions.
  • The attack Seifer uses on Squall while they're training in the opening FMV you can later use as his Limit Break 'Fire Cross'. Seifer's anger and validation issues also manifest in him having a far higher hp threshold to use his limit break, around 5/8th's of health compared to everyone else's 1/4.
• Final Fantasy IX:
  • All of the character's classes are highly integrated into the plot. Vivi's ability to shoot stuff with fireballs with black magic becomes very important, the hidden Summons inside Garnet are a MacGuffin unto themselves, and Freya, a dragoon, is able to leap to the tops of roofs effortlessly in cutscenes as easily as she can leap into the sky to use her "Jump" ability. Sometimes even their personality traits become gameplay mechanics; Zidane, the Chivalrous Pervert, has a "Protect Girls" skill that lets him jump in front of a female party member to protect her.
  • Quina, the Big Eater of the group, has a unique ability where s/he can eat your enemies and potentially learn skills from them. Eat notably doesn't work on human enemies or powerful bosses.
  • In at least two battles (one of which is mentioned below) the boss is coded to only target specific party members: Your three aside from Dagger in the fight with Black Waltz Number 2 (to the point were he'll cast AOE spells that in every other circumstance would hit all your party members only on those three), and Dagger specifically in a battle with the bounty hunter Lani. The former is tasked with returning Dagger to her mother, and if he succeeds in killing all of your party members aside from her, he'll cast a spell to put her to sleep and the game will end.
  • In a similar instance to the above, the rematch against Black Waltz Number 3 has similar stakes; they are tasked with returning Dagger to Brahne, and if they succeed in killing the rest of the party, instead of attacking, it will start hitting itself due to a combination of its mission (the only foe left is the one they're supposed to bring back alive) and some rather severe malfunctioning, by virtue of having their ass handed to them earlier. It's possible to win the fight by just letting your other members get killed, then wail on it with Dagger until it kills itself. This also doubles as a convenient anti-frustration feature, since there's a lengthy several minute cutscene between the last savepoint and this bossfight which you'd have to watch every time you lost this fight, if it were possible.
  • The opposite happens when you fight Lani. She's a Bounty Hunter charged with bringing the princess back, so all her attacks will be directed at Dagger. She'll even use Scan to figure out her stats. She's also quite vain, so if you physically attack her, she will yell something and counter immediately.
  • After Garnet witnesses multiple tragic events in a row the death of her mother by Kuja's hands and seeing her own kingdom being destroyed by Garland, she becomes completely mute from the trauma and can't talk at all. Her trauma also affects her performance in battle where there's a random chance that she'll waste a turn because she can't concentrate. Likewise, Garnet also loses access to her Limit Break since she's still too emotionally distraught to make use of her power. These limitations go away once Garnet manages to overcome her troubles.
  • Most characters will skip their post-battle victory poses during plot circumstances that concern them in some negative way, including Garnet losing her voice described above.
  • Garnet can't summon her Eidolons on the first two discs and the in-story reason is that she is afraid of them. As a result, the MP costs for her Summons are incredibly high. When she has gotten over her fear of them by Disc 3, the MP costs are considerably lower. ^note The player can get her to summon them before they are extracted, but only through a max MP cheat or consistent levelling. If doing so naturally then this could tie into her becoming more confident in battle.
  • At the end of the Disk 2, Garnet tries to get an Eidolon that she can use to save her mother from Kuja in battle. The Eidolon she finds is Leviathan — whose attack is to conjure up a tidal wave to wipe out his enemies. As Queen Brahne is with the royal fleet on the ocean (while Kuja is airborne on his silver dragon), Garnet is heart broken she can't use Leviathan to help.
  • The biggest example of this is probably the Trance State. After witnessing Mog transform into Madeen using Trance, Kuja deduces that Trance is the key to unlocking a Super Mode for himself. He's right, and he does... by having you defeat him in battle. It also ties directly into Zidane's Dyne abilities, all of which are a miniaturised Earth-Shattering Kaboom. Quite an unusual skill-set for a Thief-type character... when he finds out that he was intended to be Kuja's successor and Garland's tool for annihilating Gaia, this suddenly makes much more sense.
  • Trance occurs when a character's emotion builds up in battle (being hit by enemy attacks) and then lets loose when the meter is full. In certain battles, a party member will start a battle with a full Trance gauge due to their extreme emotions. Zidane enters his when he sees Garnet held hostage by a plant monster and wants to save her. Vivi goes into a furious rage when he witnesses Black Waltz #3 destroy a bunch of Black Mage golems (which is what Vivi is as well), and Steiner goes into a full Trance state when he declares his love towards Beatrix and vows to protect her from the swarm of monsters invading Alexandria. Kuja also exploits Trance by letting the party beat him senseless, causing him to build up the will to not die and build up his anger and hatred towards Zidane, his superior brother. This lets Kuja enter Trance and defeat the party instantly.
• Final Fantasy X:
  • Similar to Final Fantasy IX above, some characters' abilities are integrated into the plot; Yuna's summoning abilities are the crux of the whole storyline until the 3/4 point, and the whole first half of the game is about travelling to temples to obtain more summons for her. Tidus' Overdrives (and default skill-set) are all based around speed, precision and acrobatics — all essential skills for a star Blitzball player. He also learns Time Magic.
    • Tidus is the only character who comes from the peaceful world of Zanarkand. Notably he is the only one who learns new Limit Breaks by using them over and over, showing he hadn't seen much combat before.
  • Yuna, the White Mage, is a Squishy Wizard who needs to complete a pilgrimage (see: "the whole first half of the game" above). The rest of the party is her Praetorian Guard. To reinforce the idea that they're here to protect her, each of them can exploit Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors against a specific type of enemy: Tidus's swiftness lets him catch four-legged baddies, Auron's BFS lets him slice through armored foes, Black Mage Lulu can handle elemental enemies, Long-Range Fighter Wakka knocks flying enemies from the sky, and Rikku's Video Game Stealing skill can be used to dismantle robots. Each of them can One-Hit Kill these enemy types, which comprise the bulk of random encounters throughout gameplay. Meanwhile, Yuna herself is strong against literally nothing; she's either used for healing spells or is The Big Guy trotted out to use Summon Magic (as Aeons in this game replace the entire party).
  • At the same time with Yuna, her sphere grid is uniquely placed to be able to go into multiple other characters' relatively early (Especially Lulu's), showing how The Power of Friendship makes her stronger, to the point where she can quickly become as destructive a Black Mage as Lulu and as fast as Tidus (in fact, her magic attack stat growth is HIGHER than Lulu's - get her access to -aga levels spells as soon as Lulu unlocks them, and Yuna will massively outdamage her). Most notably with how the sphere grids work, if you're not farming excessively you'll probably unlock Lulu's branch in Yuna's sphere grid at around the point in the story where she's starting to truly find her own willpower without having to rely on her guardians.
  • When hit by a Lightning-spell in battle, most of your party simply grunt. Rikku, on the other hand, screams. This is either a nod to or Foreshadowing of her Fear of Thunder (depending on when you first see it). In the sequel, where she's over it, she doesn't do it anymore.
  • At one point Lulu suggests she learn some elemental magic to help her master her fear. Rikku's Sphere Grid runs straight into Lulu's, which starts with basic elemental magic.
  • A very subtle one; when fighting Seymour's first two forms, if Yuna and/or Tidus are out on the field, he will direct the majority of his attacks at them, which makes sense considering his rather awkward fixation on Yuna. This can be advantageous if you focus on keeping one of them alive and present (easily done with Haste and Nul-spells) while wailing on him with everyone else.
  • Kimahri is a Blue Mage and his Lancet ability is what helps him learn the various skills. When fighting his Ronso brothers Biran and Yenke, they will have a lot of the Ronso Rage abilities too.
• Final Fantasy X-2:
  • The player had the option to choose Tidus's name in the first game, and it's never spoken aloud (due to that being the first voice-acted game in the franchise). In this, the characters won't refer to him by name. Rikku will only say "him" or "you know who", and Yuna's narration addresses Tidus personally so she will just say "you".
  • The Dresspheres in the game come from spheres that were made from the memories and thoughts of various people throughout Spira. The Songstress in particular has massive plot significance; the musical-related abilities come from the fact that it was a Soul Jar for Lenne. One thousand years ago, she was a singer and the costume is what she wore on stage. As she was also said to be out on the front lines fighting during the Machina War, it makes sense that she has other abilities. Likewise, the singing abilities in the game raise the party's stats, which also makes sense when you consider Yuna later giving a concert to motivate the Spirans to stop fighting amongst themselves. Presumably Lenne used her singing the same way when she was on the front lines.
  • If you go to Lake Macalania during Chapter 3, you'll get the Berserker Dressphere from an Al Bhed man who dies in the fiend attacks. When the player ports back onto the Celsius from this, if you talk to Rikku, she won't respond.
  • Paine is a very cold and withdrawn character. So if she's put into the flamboyant Songstress Dressphere, she will complain about it. And she will get very annoyed if you make her sing. She also doesn't change into it during cutscenes, while Yuna and Rikku do.
  • Yuna no longer has her Summon Magic due to the Fayth that gave birth to the Aeons being laid to rest at the end of the previous games. When the Aeons reappear, they've been corrupted by Shuyin.
  • In the Eternal Calm prologue, Yuna is seen practicing holding her breath underwater at Besaid. Later in the game, the player has the option of playing Blitzball. Yuna couldn't in the previous game, but she can now. Rikku couldn't play Blitzball in the first game but she could breathe and fight underwater, so her learning in the two year Time Skip is also justified. The rest of the Gullwings are Al Bhed, who already are used to going underwater.
  • Gippal is an Al Bhed who was also a member of the Crimson Squad. So when you face him in battle, his abilities are based around machina (he uses a mortar to attack) in contrast to Nooj and Baralai's — as at the time he took part in the training, the other two had a taboo about using machina forbidden by Yevon.
• Final Fantasy XII:
  • The battle against Vossler has two examples. Since the preceding scene has Fran getting induced with extra strength and near insanity, causing her to break free from her restraints, she will spend the entire battle with Berserk status. Also, if you take Basch to the party, Vossler will always target him no matter what.
  • Manufactured Nethicite and Dawn Shard are plot-central items that are said to interfere with Mist, which is the game's source of magic: as a result, they can be equipped as accessories and increase magic defenses, but also put the wearer under permanent Silence status and reduce their MP to 0, respectively.
  • Penelo makes her money as a dancer in Rabanastre. All her Quickenings involve her using various dances to cast spells. She also has great vitality but low health, showing that she hasn't trained for battle like the rest has but a profession where physical conditioning is a requirement.
  • In the rematch against Ba'Gamnan, he will only attack Balthier if he's in the party due to his hatred towards him.
  • NPCs will warn you that elementals hate magic and monsters in general hate healing more than anything; this is absolutely borne out in gameplay.
  • Basch, despite being a Mighty Glacier veteran warrior with the highest strength and possibly the highest HP in the party, has the lowest Vitality. Considering that he's just been rescued from two years of solitary confinement, malnutrition, and Cold-Blooded Torture, it makes perfect sense for him to have lingering health issues.
  • Ashe's actions are noted both before and during the story to only cause a great deal of damage but ultimately get her and those around her in more danger than before. Her stats are that of a Glass Cannon, great strength and magic with lackluster defences.
• Final Fantasy XIII:
  • Lightning runs around with a portable anti-gravity device in the inventory that is never used outside cutscenes... except that she is the only player character who never takes damage from falling (when hurled into the air by an enemy). This is actually a remnant of an earlier concept, where Lightning's powers were all based around gravity manipulation.
  • There is a rather sneaky example early on, which becomes this in hindsight. Lightning, Snow, Sazh, and Hope all begin with 2 ATB-slots, but Vanille begins with 3. After becoming l'Cie, they all gain 1 — again, except Vanille, who still has 3. She's already a l'Cie, and has been for much longer than the other four. The foreshadowing can be easy to miss because Fang — the only other party member who is already a l'Cie since the beginning — doesn't join the party until the rest have been turned to l'Cie.
  • The Eidolons have to be tamed via a Defeat Means Friendship because they're spawned from the l'Cie party members when they close in on the Despair Event Horizon or a mental last straw to either kill them or shake them out of it. Fittingly, each one is a Puzzle Boss where the solution is to resolve whatever baggage they're dealing with; Lightning is ready to abandon Hope, who up until then she's considered The Load, so Odin almost exclusively tries to kill Hope, forcing Lightning to heal him and prove that for all her harsh words she doesn't want to see him die. Snow is a protector who has up to that point failed miserably in his role, so the Shiva sisters assault him with magic and then heal him up, to prove that he can be a defender, but he can't do it alone. Bahamut is summoned by Fang who is borderline Driven to Suicide by the time he finally manifests - hence his Time-Limit Boss nature effectively representing Fang's rapidly deflating will to live, and so on and so on.
• Final Fantasy XV: Two/Thirds through the game, [[spoiler:Ignis is blinded in battle with the Empire. In the next bits of gameplay he is much less agile and cannot aim his attacks properly, causing him to be The Load for awhile. He regains some mobility and attacks over the next few chapters, but it isn't until the timeskip and ten years of night that he regains his full capabilities.
• Final Fantasy XVI: In the first Ifrit battle you do not have complete control over the Eikon. As Clive transformed in a fit of rage and hates Ifrit for killing his brother, he has no idea how to use Ifrit's power and just attacks mindlessly. It takes a Battle in the Center of the Mind for Clive to fully accept and control Ifrit's power.
• One of the main mechanics of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is what the game refers to as "visions", which are meant to justify the game's gacha system. However, one of the biggest plot twists of the game is a result of this system: Veritas of the Dark is not Sir Raegen as everyone was assuming him to be (even the other Veritas), but he's revealed to actually have been Raegen all along — he was actually a vision of Raegen during the war between Aldore and Hess summoned by Veritas of the Light. This has been previously hinted at with the Lightlord being able to use visions to summon enemies to aid her during her battle with the party.
  • A more minor example: Sakura focuses on lightning-elemental abilities, being the first ally in the game with Thundaja. This is a direct result of her having previously been Veritas of the Bolt.
• If you lose a battle in Final Fantasy Legend II, you are brought to Valhalla where Odin offers you the choice to redo the battle and you can do this as many times as you wish. However, once you kill him later in the game this ability is lost and dying after that results in an immediate Game Over.
  • Also, related to this mechanic, if you reach Odin without having died at all before, he says nothing before battle. He would normally acknowledge the deal you made with him during the first death.
• After meeting with Garoh's village elder in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, your party rests at the inn. The next day, the innkeeper notes how Felix's party hadn't slept well at all. This is shown by having the party's HP and PP not recovering when they usually would after spending the night at an inn.
• Granblue Fantasy gives us master alchemist Cagliostro, a guy from thousand years ago who nowadays uses fake bodies shaped like a cute girl and, if killed, can use alchemy and magic to switch to another body, thus achieving a form of immortality. Sure enough, Cagliostro can auto-revive in battle to continue fighting.
• The Game Boy Colour adaptation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Just like in the book, Ron's wand is damaged and will occasionally backfire. (And in the few occasions where he fights alongside you before his wand is damaged, it won't backfire.) Professor Lockhart knows every spell your 12-year-old protagonists could have access to because despite being an Inept Mage he is still an adult — but can't cast any of them because you've confiscated his wand. Similarly, Harry cannot use his spells during the final battle.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • A big part of the lore surrounding the Heartless is that they're created from living beings' negative emotions; the more darkness in a person's heart, the stronger their Heartless. This is why, during the brief sequence in the original Kingdom Hearts where you play as a Heartless after Sora sacrifices his heart to save Kairi, your character is a Shadow — the weakest Mook in the game. Sora is a pure-hearted hero with hardly any darkness in his heart, so his Heartless is pathetically weak.
  • Kingdom Hearts II drastically expands the player's range of abilities, introducing new powers like "Drive Forms" and "Limit Attacks", to reflect Sora growing as a Keyblade wielder after the events of the first game and discovering the full range of his powers. Conversely, he has fewer abilities in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (the direct sequel to the first game, released on the less-advanced Game Boy Advance) because the game revolves around him losing his memories after entering Castle Oblivion.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep:
    • The prequel gives the player a substantial array of Spells, Special Attacks and Super Modes at the very beginning of the game, and also revamps gameplay to make it easier to use them in combat more often. ^note  Unlike in previous games, all Combos and Spells recharge automatically, and none of them consume Magic Points This is because the three protagonists (Terra, Aqua and Ventus) are all experienced Keyblades wielders with years of training under their belts, unlike the relative newbie Sora.
    • Near the climax of Birth by Sleep, the battle between Terra and Master Eraqus is one of the few times in the series that the player can wield the elemental power of Darkness. "Dark Impulse" turns out to be one of the most powerful Command Styles in the game, but the player has no control over when it can activate. ^note  It activates automatically during combat in place of "Critical Impact", but only during that particular boss battle The idea that Darkness offers tantalizing power — but is nearly impossible to control — is one of the single biggest themes in the Kingdom Hearts mythos. Hence, Terra can only use it when he's on the verge of losing his soul to Master Xehanort's influence, and he absolutely cannot rein it in once it starts flaring up.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: The plot seesaws between Sora and Riku going through the dreaming worlds as they find the actions of Organization 13 stifling them. This is also the reason this game has its unique mechanics. As one falls asleep the other awakes in their world. As it turns out the world Riku is going through is actually the dream of Sora as he travels the dreams. Near the end the cycle ends when Sora is forced into an endless sleep. The final battle uses the same mechanics as the rest of the game because Riku is going back into Sora's dream to save him.
  • Kingdom Hearts III justifies Sora's Bag of Spilling as the events of 3D sapping him of his strength. When Riku is playable he is far stronger, as he didn't get his powers drained.
• Last Scenario has the dungeon where Helio kidnaps Hilbert's sister Joanna and then manages to capture Hilbert, Matilda and Thorve as well. Hilbert attempts to fight Helio with none of his equipment; scanning him at this point will reveal he has a very high (for this point in the game) 3000 HP. Later on, Joanna sets a trap for Helio that drops rocks on him, and the party fights him for real this time; his stats are the same, but he starts the fight with just 900 HP.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, when introducing the speakerphone function of the Enigma unit to Lloyd, Tio warns him not to overuse it as it consumes quite a bit more EP than usual. In-game, you use the Enigma units to cast Magic from Technology via Orbal Arts, which consumes EP.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, you have Link levels that progress the more the characters fight together that provides gameplay benefits. For characters who join your party that aren't a part of the original nine characters, they have higher Link levels with characters who they have pre-established relationships with. For example, when you get Millium, she has more Link points with the characters who joined you when you went to the Nord Highlands, where you first met her. Another example is when Angelica temporarily joins your party, she has a Level 5 link level at the start with Crow, because they're close friends from the trial run of Class VII. This continues to be the case in the second game, with examples such as Rean and Elise, who are adoptive siblings, and Millium and Claire, who are fellow Ironbloods. The third game avoids this entirely, and treats Link levels and bond levels as different things. For instance, the field exercise in the Sutherland province has Claire join as a party member for a short time, and it's mentioned how everyone in the party except Kurt knows her. Despite having no connection to her, Kurt's link level with Claire is the same as everyone else's when she joins.
• In Lunar: Eternal Blue, Lucia's character is a major example of gameplay and story integration:
  • Lucia's development of human emotions happens concurrently with her developing new tactics in battle. For example, after a plot point wherein she returns to Hiro because she misses him (though she doesn't understand that), she begins casting healing and protective spells on other characters, favoring Hiro, in fact. Prior to this plot point, she would only cast these spells on herself.
  • When you first get her, she's, well, a Physical God, with absurd stats and the ability to solo any group in the dungeon you find her in within a single turn. Once she's injured by Zophar, however, her stats are reduced to nearly nothing and she spends the game recovering, even in battle.
  • And then there's her mana supply — or rather, the "lack" of it. Lucia is a pure spellcaster, and doesn't possess a physical attack — at the worst she'll chain-cast a single-target damage spell on an enemy. However, her MP supply reads "null", just like any pure physical-damage warrior. And then you realize... oh yeah, she's a Physical God, her mana supply is infinite. The game doesn't bother tracking it because she'll never run out.
• In Kumatora's introductory cutscene in Mother 3, she uses a PSI attack to fend off some enemies. If you check her stats after she has joined the party, you can see that the corresponding PP has been deducted from her totals.
  • The "mortal damage" system allows a character to continue acting after receiving damage that would reduce their HP to zero until their HP rolls all of the way down (or they're healed). When the Masked Man (Claus) performs a Heroic Sacrifice, the prompt "Claus took mortal damage!" appears, and Claus is able to stagger to and embrace Lucas, speaking one last farewell before dying.
• Octopath Traveler:
  • Before Tressa enters the pirate's cave, she gives the pirates a barrel of wine that's spiked with a sleeping drug, putting all of them to sleep. Upon entering the cave, any random encounters against the pirates will start with the pirates asleep.
  • It's also played with to heartwarming effect near the ends of some characters' stories. Most notably, halfway into his final chapter Alfyn will use inquire—his personal skill, letting him find out the backstory of any NPC and gain bonuses—on himself to recall the memory of Graham Crossford preparing the tincture that saved his life; within the memory you then have to inquire Graham to get the information. And in one of the most heartwarming scenes in the game, at the end of Ophilia's story, you have to use Guide—Ophilia's personal skill, letting her take an NPC along with her, either for use in battle or to take them somewhere to complete a quest—on Lianna to lead her to the spot where she helped first break Ophilia out of her shell fifteen years prior.
  • The gimmick to the fight against Simeon is that he often inflicts the Silence status on your party. This is reminiscent of how he and his accomplices "silenced" Primrose's father for finding out classified information.
  • The possessions townspeople have on hand correspond to the information revealed by Inquire/Scrutinize, often in slightly alarming ways. For instance, there's a woman in Flamesgrace who's obsessed with keeping her mercenary boyfriend from leaving home, and checking her possessions, she has a lot of sleep-inducing items...
  • Several of the game's most evil antagonists (e.g. Helgenish, Gideon, Miguel and Werner) are weak to Light magic.
• In Octopath Traveler II, Osvald is muzzled while in prison so he can't use any of his magic, as he was accused of burning his house down (and supposedly killing his wife and daughter) by using fire magic. During his first fight, where he uses his Mug path action on his cellmate, he's inflicted with the Silence condition and indeed can't use any magic.
• Oswald's playstyle in Odin Sphere lacks any kind of defensive options, instead having a powerful Super Mode that drains your POW meter extremely quickly and encourages the player to play like a violent berserker, clawing through enemies as quickly as possible before your POW meter runs dry. This is perfectly in-character with Oswald, who has zero sense of self-preservation and will throw himself into any fight without any regard for his own survival.
• Ogre Battle 64 features the Chaos Frame, a complex Karma Meter based on the Order Versus Chaos dichotomy that is affected both by your story decisions and by your conduct in the battlefield (among other things, whether you "capture" or "liberate" enemy towns — which, in turn, depends on the story-based alignment of the unit that sacks a town). Although you only learn your Chaos Frame standing at the end of the game, it determines which story branches are open to you at any time, which characters join your army, and ultimately which one of the Multiple Endings you get.
• In Opoona, there are a specialized group of people, the Rangers, whose job it is to fight against the monsters in the overworld, and the titular Opoona is recruited into them. The monsters outside of the First Town are the weakest in the game because said First Town is the place where new Rangers are trained — naturally, they'd be trained in a place where the local monsters are fairly weak before moving into places with tougher quarry. The monsters get more difficult as the game goes on because later locations are explicitly much closer to the dark half of the planet, where monsters are spawned from. Later in the game, you find yourself with a level 1 character yet again, but in a different part of the world. However, the monsters there are also conveniently weak because said place is the home of a person with huge amounts of holy power, as well as many sacred fairies and spirits. They've already driven out all the stronger monsters.
• Paper Mario
  • In Paper Mario 64, the local Recurring Boss, Jr. Troopa, is so dead-set on defeating Mario that when you travel to a far-off island, he swims across the entire ocean twice just to reach you (he missed the boat Mario leaves on so that's once to reach the island, and a round trip without him resting at all once Jr. Troopa realizes Mario's already left before he made it). When he finally catches up with you, he reveals his brand-new upgrades that make him one of the best defended enemies in the game... except that he's so exhausted from his swimming, his HP plummets to a fairly low number. Something that he's quite shocked to find out, actually.
  • In the ending of Super Paper Mario, your companion Pixl Tippi has to part ways with Mario to help save the universe. In the postgame, you won't have access to her services anywhere. You need to buy a robotic Replacement Goldfish from local uber-geek Francis if you missed anything she could do before the credits.
• Parasite Eve 2 does this for a lengthy cut scene that occurs before the final battle. Aya gets shot during the scene and after the scene ends, her gunshot wound has her current HP lowered to reflect this.
• Persona:
  • Persona:
    • Chewing Souls heal a significant amount of SP out of combat, but a minuscule amount in combat. This is because Chewing Souls are gum, which the characters have the luxury of savoring out of combat, but aren't able to when they're busy fighting.
    • Mark gets captured by demons at one point because his Persona ran out of SP, which is explained to drain the user's energy.
    • Characters who lack a Persona only have 1 Magical Defense. As a result, when Takeda attacks Maki, Elly, and Brown with magic, the latter two, who have Persona, are barely scratched, while Brown, who doesn't, is severely injured.
    • Persona awakening battles always have the party members level up after the battle, and this game uses a Level-Up Fill-Up mechanic. As a result, when Brown awakens his Persona after getting injured by Takeda, he's completely healed.
    • It's shown in the game that characters without Persona are unable to be affected by healing magic. Because of this, when the party tries to heal Yosuke, it ends up having no effect.
  • Persona 2
    • During the boss fight against Sugimoto in Innocent Sin, Eikichi is unable to attack him at all outside of Fusion Spells due to the curse placed on him.
    • Right before the boss fight against Shadow Maya in Innocent Sin, all but one of the party members get hit with an attack several times. The result is that at the beginning of the fight, all but one of the party members have low HP.
    • In Innocent Sin, Yukino gives up her ability to use her Persona in order to reawaken Jun's ability to use his. As a result, Jun has access to Durga, Yukino's Ultimate Persona.
    • Eternal Punishment features flashbacks to Innocent Sin where Tatsuya talks while Maya is silent. That's because in this game, Maya is the Silent Protagonist, while Tatsuya is capable of speech.
    • Kei's Arcanum choices in Eternal Punishment are reflective of his Character Development since the first game. In the first game, he was incapable of using Emperor Personas, while in this game, Emperor Personas are one of his most compatible Persona types.
    • In Eternal Punishment, after Ulala gets possessed by JOKER, she punches Maya. As a result, the fight against her has Maya start with some HP taken off.
    • Innocent Sin ends with the characters' pasts being rewritten to make the events of the game never happen. As a result, the characters in Eternal Punishment are stripped of the power they attained over the course of the previous game, with the exception of Tatsuya, who still remembers the events of the game and so retains his power, causing him to join the party at level 50 and have access to his Ultimate Persona.
  • Persona 3:
    • While Dia spells are effective no matter what, the game's early healing abilities are nowhere near as effective as the late-game healing spells. This is reflected in the story, where Mitsuru never asks Yukari to heal Akihiko's injuries, since Yukari still only has access to the starting healing spells, which aren't effective enough to properly treat Akihiko.
    • The protagonist will end up in Great condition if the player chooses to sleep early at night. When Akihiko first joins the party, he's in Great condition, as he just spent to last few days resting in the hospital.
    • Portable's Female Protagonist route will alter certain dialogues based on who Kotone is in a relationship with (unlike the Male Protagonist route and other games, where references to relationships are exclusive to special events). This includes altered lines in dorm conversations, Social Links, and even the final stage of the game's Final Boss.
    • One of the first things the player learns about Akihiko is that he suffers from a severe case of being Oblivious to Love. For that reason, Portable's Female Protagonist route has him as the hardest of game's romance options to succeed at, to the point that a guide is needed.
    • Over the first few months of the game, Junpei gets increasingly jealous of the protagonist. In Portable's Female Protagonist route, this is reflected by locking the player out of progressing his Social Link from the July Full Moon (where his jealously reaches its peak) to the end of the summer exams (where he apologizes for his attitude).
    • Because Aigis is a Robot Girl, she's incapable of being effected by the Poison Status Effect. FES's The Answer and the Q duology due away with this, with the latter having her note that her parts are corroding when she's poisoned.
    • The first game showed that healing spells are less effective on people who don't have a Persona. In this game, it's clear this also applies to people who repress their Persona, as shown in the case of Shinjiro.
    • Chidori has a Healing Factor, allowing her to heal from her (mostly self-inflicted) injuries faster than other characters would be able to. This translates into gameplay through her having the Spring of Life passive ability, which heals 8% of her health per turn.
    • How you defeat the final boss: The protagonist sacrifices themself to seal it away, represented in the battle system by the Great Seal ability. Look at the HP cost for Great Seal; sure enough, it costs all of your HP.
  • Persona 4:
    • Yosuke is incredibly unlucky, with him getting kicked in the nads within minutes of the game starting for breaking his friend's CD. He ends up falling off of, and crashing whilst on, his bike before he's even named, and to top it all off, his crush gets killed very early on. If you check his stat profile, you'll notice that he has the lowest Luck stat of any of your party members.
    • Yosuke's character arc is centered around his lack of direction in life outside of the Investigation Team. The result is that in combat, he's capable of covering any role, but lacks specialization in any role compared to other party members.
  • In the story mode for Persona 4: Arena, Labrys spends her fights in permanent Persona Break, as she doesn't have access to a Persona until near the end of the game.
  • Persona 5 Strikers:
    • In the climax of Persona 5 Royal, the star that Jose gave the Phantom Thieves that allowed them to perform Showtimes uses up all its power to transform Morgana into a helicopter so the Phantom Thieves can escape the Metaverse. As a result, Showtimes in this game are no longer performed by two characters, but by a character and their Persona, and are much weaker than the Showtimes in Royal.
    • Yusuke's Persona specializes in Ice spells, which is likely the reason why, upon arriving in the Sapporo Jail, he's the only Phantom Thief unaffected by the Jail's blizzard.
    • When Ichinose brainwashes Sophia to fight the Phantom Thieves, everyone except Zenkichi (who argues they have to Shoot the Dog to prevent EMMA's Assimilation Plot) is extremely reluctant to fight. In the subsequent fight, Zenkichi is the only AI character who will actually attack; the others will just dodge.
    • The Jail Monarches of this game each serve as a Shadow Archetype to a character from Persona 5. Because of that, each of them is weak to a specific element associated with that character. Alice serves as a counterpart to Ann, and so is weak to Fire. Ango is a counterpart to Yusuke, and so is weak to Ice. Mariko is a counterpart to Okumura, and so is weak to both Psi, the element Okumura's daughter Haru specializes in, and Curse, both of which are also the weakness combination of Okumura's MDL-GM robots. Akira is a counterpart to Ryuji and Makoto, and so is weak to Electricity and Nuclear, their respective elements. EMMA is a counterpart to Maruki and Sophia, and so is weak to Bless and Curse, the latter of whom specializing in the former element and the former having been opposed the most by Joker, Akechi, and Sumire, who each specializes in one of the two elements.
  • Persona 3 Reload adds a few more cases of this trope that weren't in the original game.
    • Junpei's insecurities are expanded upon from just being jealous of Makoto to questioning his place in S.E.E.S., starting with Mitsuru replacing him on the frontline upon Fuuka taking over as Navigator, then culminating with him snapping at Yukari after the Shirakawa Boulevard operation over the string of successes the other second years have been having. In gameplay, this is represented by the second half of the Arqa block (the section the player must clear in between these two story events) being largely filled with enemies weak to Wind, Ice, Lightning, Light, or Darkness, making Junpei's Fire and Physical focused abilities obsolete for that section of the game while other the other party members end up as much more useful.
    • It's explained that Theurgy abilities can only be used when their user is in a highly emotional state. When S.E.E.S. confronts the Lovers during the Shirakawa Boulevard operation, Yukari is so angry about it trying to mind control her and Makoto into having sex that she starts the fight with her Theurgy gauge already full.
• Pokémon:
  • In general, rare Pokémon will have a lopsided male/female ratio — hence the population having the potential to dwindle with time. The fact that they still exist at all is accounted for in some cases (like Relicanth) by natural longevity and others (like the starters) are implied to be looked after by humans since they're essentially hovering on the edge of extinction. Presumably some other cases just breed like rabbits. Other rare species like Lapras are noted in-game to have been poached extensively by humans.
  • Wild Pokémon attack based on A.I. Roulette. This is justified since a wild Pokémon's fighting style is more based on their instincts and they don't have the capability to use strategies on their own. Legendary Pokémon have much better AI since they are far more powerful and intelligent than a typical wild Pokémon.
  • Some Trainers will have their own unique AI when battling the player. Young Trainers like kids or newbies won't have an effective strategy for battling while stronger Trainers like Ace Trainers and the Elite Four will use more advanced strategies and may even swap out Pokémon or use items. The Rich Boy trainers will use Max Potions or Full Restores to heal their Pokémon, even though their team has far too little HP to make those items worth using, and their team are likely holding Nuggets (which you can steal). Considering that Rich Boys (and similar NPCs) are wealthy, it makes sense that they would use expensive items to flaunt their wealth.
  • Absol is said to be able to predict disasters, and sure enough it is found in areas where disaster has/is going to happen. Hoenn Route 120, ^note  Right before Team Magma/Aqua steal the orb that lets them summon Groudon/Kyogre Mt. Coronet ^note  Cyrus is trying to remake the universe in his image , Unova Route 13 ^note  Near Kyurem's lair which itself gets attacked two years later , Kalos Route 8 ^note  Close to Geosenge Town, Xerneas/Yveltal, and the Ultimate Weapon , and Tapu Village ^note  In ruins when you find it, plus Team Skull kidnaps Lillie and Nebby there .
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue and their remakes, at one point you have to acquire the Poké Flute item to wake up a sleeping Snorlax. Afterwards, you never need an Awakening again because you can play the Poké Flute in battle to wake up any of your Pokémon that are asleep.
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver:
    • These were the first games in the series to feature a real-time clock, and with them, they introduced the idea that certain Pokémon are nocturnal and certain Pokémon are diurnal. This affects the time of day you can find them. You can also use the attack "Headbutt" in the field to shake trees and find Pokémon hidden within them. If you attack trees at night, you can find bird Pokémon normally only found in the daytime... but already Asleep.
    • This is also used to show your rival's Heel–Face Turn: throughout the game he fights with a Zubat, which later evolves into Golbat. Golbat can evolve further, into Crobat, but only if it is extremely happy with its trainer. This doesn't happen to your rival's Golbat until the final battle with him, well after he realizes the error of his ways and starts treating his Pokémon better, showing that he has indeed changed.
    • When you capture a weakened Pokémon, its HP will be exactly as it was before it was caught. While this is nothing new since Red and Blue did it first, the captured Pokémon's PP for its moves will also be already spent based on how much it used their moves.
  • Pokémon Black and White:
    • The games make it mandatory to catch your version's mascot to move the plot along. The pre-battle dialog says it's testing you, but wants to be caught; accordingly, it's fifteen times easier to capture than a normal legendary. ^note Most legendaries have historically had capture numbers of 3, which at full health with a normal Poké Ball, would translate to less than half of a one-percent chance to catch them. Reshiram and Zekrom have capture numbers of 45, which is almost a six-percent chance to catch at full health with a normal Ball. However, the developers didn't account for a certain sequence-break where the mascot can be skipped; even if you do encounter it later than usual, the catch rate of 45 is still there. In Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, you can capture Reshiram and Zekrom once more, but their capture rates have been reduced to 3 as they're not involved in the story this time around.
    • In the sequels, it is possible for the player to encounter and capture the same wild Pokémon that N used on his teams in the previous games. Normally, newly captured Pokémon are at a low happiness stat, but all of the Pokémon N used start out with maximum happiness, reflecting N's Friend to All Living Things nature.
  • A rather amusing example can be found in Pokémon X and Y. A new mechanic was added called "horde battles" which basically pits a group of 5 low-level enemies against your solo Pokémon in a Zerg Rush. Most of the time, these hordes will be a single species, but there are a few exceptions:
    • Zangoose and Seviper will occasionally show up in the same horde battle on Route 8. These species of Pokémon are sworn enemies, and therefore will try to attack each other before they try to attack you.
    • A similar example is on Route 18, where four Durant are accompanied by a Heatmor, their predator.
    • Sometimes on Route 20 there are a group of Trevenant, walking trees, with a Sudowoodo, a Rock-type Pokémon that just pretends to be a tree.
  • Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
    • Both Groudon and Kyogre change the weather. For Alpha Sapphire, the heavy rainfall in a way changes it to nighttime (if you played it in the daytime) with heavy rain, while Omega Ruby's drought changes it to daytime (if you played at night), with the sky burning. The effect of both weather carries on in the overworld and battles until you defeat or catch either legendary.
    • After capturing Kyogre, if you use it to Surf, random trainers won't battle you if you cross their line of sight, since they're intimidated by a trainer sailing around on a legendary Pokémon that nearly caused an extinction-level flood a short time ago.
  • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, wild Pokémon can call for help. Sometimes this results in Pokémon of the same species or evolutionary line appearing in battle to fight your Pokémon, but sometimes the call for help will attract a Pokémon that preys on the first Pokémon and will attack it instead, like Carbink and Sableye, or Mareanie and Corsola. Some belligerent and territorial Pokémon, like Stufful, will attack each other instead of your Pokémon. Baby Pokémon have a small chance of calling in a Happiny or Chansey and Cubone have a chance of calling in a Kangaskhan, both of whom are known for being motherly.^note The latter example also has the bonus of being a Mythology Gag, since the original design had Marowak evolve into Kangaskhan, and Cubone still bears an extremely close resemblance to a baby Kangaskhan.
  • In the postgame of Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Eevee!, after you fight Green, she attempts to catch you in a Poké Ball, five times. This obviously fails, but after that cutscene ends, there are now five Poké Balls laying on the ground around you, which you can pick up and take like any other item ball.
  • Early on in Pokémon Sword and Shield, a Wooloo is seen ramming the fence outside your house. This leads into you and Hop first encountering the legendary Pokémon in the version you're playing in the fog of Slumbering Weald. The fog around the Weald impedes the player's Pokémon's attacks, but it also impacts the look and sound of your battle screen, which grows steadily more difficult to see and hear.
  • In general, no matter what level you are, any Pokémon you catch will always respect and obey you since you proved yourself by capturing it. Pokémon you receive in a trade will very likely disobey your orders in battle unless you have certain badges. In a lore building sense, traded Pokémon would be wary of you and don't trust you since they were basically given away to a stranger. The badges are proof that you are a strong Trainer, thus the traded Pokémon will respect you. From a gameplay perspective, traded Pokémon disobeying players is a way to prevent them from cheesing the game early on by stomping everything with a high level Pokémon until they get the appropriate badges for their level.
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus:
    • Pokémon acceptance among the majority of humans is only just starting out in this game, and Hisui isn't very well-settled, so some common services like Pokémon Centers and breeding daycares aren't available because there isn't demand for them yet. Similarly, Professor Laventon has a one-room office due to his position not being considered as prestigious as it will be in the future.
    • There are relatively few battles with other Trainers compared to other mainline games, as Poké Balls are a relatively recent invention and have not yet become widespread, in addition to the general public still being distrustful towards wild Pokémon. Most Trainers you battle are either Galaxy Expedition Team members or members of the Diamond Clan or Pearl Clan who have been raised alongside their partner Pokémon for much of their lives.
    • Since Poké Ball technology has just been developed and the balls are made from Apricorns, a type of fruit that grows on trees, the Voltorb and Electrode in this region and time period are Grass/Electric types. However, given the recency of the tech, the Pokémon are suggested to be similar to Poké Balls in parallel, not by natural adaptation to mimic them.
    • Fossil Pokémon have no facilities to study and revive them at this point in time, so the the only way the player can obtain the Shieldon and Cranidos families is by finding them in space-time distortions. Said distortions are also used as a justification for the presence of Pokémon beyond this time period's tech level, like Magnemite/Magneton and the Porygon line, who are found exclusively inside the distortions. Interestingly, Magnezone is found naturally in the Coronet Highlands, but seeing how it is UFO-based...
    • Snorlax are unaffected by the stunning effect caused by throwing a Spoiled Apricorn at them. Several of Snorlax's Pokédex entries in other games note that Snorlax can eat moldy, rotten, or even poisoned food with no ill effects.
    • You can toss a Poké Ball even during fights with multiple wild Pokémon, unlike previous games. The justification for not being able to do so before is that the presence of multiple wild Pokémon messes with the targeting system used by modern Poké Balls; since the Poké Balls of this era must be manually aimed, they don't suffer from this issue.
    • There is a sidequest where a wild Blissey is shown to approach wounded humans to heal them. Normally during gameplay, wild Blissey will flee from you upon notice, unless you happen to be wounded from other Pokémon or a fall, in which case Blissey will approach and stay by your side until your health fully regenerates. Indeed, its Pokédex entries have mentioned before that the Chansey line will seek out people who are hurt and try to heal them.
    • In Pokédex entries, it's mentioned that some people use Nosepass as a compass because they always point north. Sure enough, unless startled and alerted to the player's presence, Nosepass found in the wild will always point north.
    • After you join the Galaxy Team, the save screen changes to incorporate your ID card (also including rank/obedience information in the same manner as i.e. Trainer Cards in Sword/Shield). When you get kicked from the Galaxy Team and expelled from Jubilife Village, it reverts to the initial format. Naturally, they took your Survey Corps ID when you were kicked out; once you're reinstated, you presumably get it back (or get a new one) as the save screen returns to normal.
    • There is story justification for the gameplay elements of having to return to the Jubilife Village between surveys and to always tell the Security Corps where you're going before you leave. Namely it's to ensure they know the general area to look for you should you get knocked out in the field and need rescuing.
    • When you meet Giratina in Turnback Cave it still initiates a battle with you, seeming at odds with Volo stating the creature has had a change of heart and wants to protect Hisui at your side. Yet two features support that this battle is different from the previous one, namely there is a held stare between the protagonist and Giratina in Turnback Cave that is meant to be a Meaningful Look, and secondly is the fact that Giratina can be caught at all (it having been not catchable in the previous battle, indicating Giratina is open to joining you now).
  • In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, during the Teal Mask DLC, Ogerpon is revealed to have lived alone after being shunned by the villagers for years. As a result, once you get the chance to catch her, she always has a Lonely nature.
  • Pokémon Colosseum: The protagonist is already an experienced Pokémon trainer at the start of the game who has had his teammates for a long period, so your two starter Pokémon are both Level 20 from the beginning (most Pokémon games start at Level 5).
  • In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Cipher has expended a lot of work to turn XD001/Shadow Lugia into an unpurifiable Shadow Pokemon... and they mean it. No standard methods of purification will work on Shadow Lugia, as the Pokemon has been corrupted to the point of its physical appearance changing. The only way to turn Shadow Lugia back to normal is to put it into Professor Krane's purpose-built Purify Chamber once the machine reaches its maximum effectiveness.
• Rune Factory Oceans
  • After completing the storyline, the player can separate Sonja's consciousness from Aden's body and return her to her own. This is also the point when the player can choose to continue playing as Aden or choose to play as Sonja from now on, and doing the latter means she will inherit all the levels the player has achieved with Aden. Except when it comes to his cooking level. Should his cooking level be below 40, Sonja will immediately jump to that level, referring to her cooking experience.
  • Talking to the sister currently running the restaurant at the Three Sisters Inn allows the player to buy food. When it's Lethal Chef Lily's shift, the only food available to buy are a handful of extremely basic recipes, like ice cream or hot milk. These recipes are simple and require very little actual cooking to make. On the other hand, Supreme Chef Odette's shift will have a much more expansive menu available, with a few high-end, elaborate recipes.
  • Mikoto doesn't have a bath scene for the player to listen to, nor appear in swimming wear at the beach in Summer. Unless the player finishes the storyline, chooses to continue to play as Aden, and increase the relationship with Mikoto. It becomes clear that Mikoto is actually a woman, having been raised as a boy for most of her life because of her family's traditions. Her later events have her choose to begin anew and live on as a woman. This is when she gets a bath scene, where she talks about how happy she is to be able to freely bathe in the women's bath now, and changes into swimming wear at the beach in Summer.
• The Shadow Hearts series has some nonintuitive and hard to find ways to get the hidden endings and ultimate powerups. Koudelka needs you to defeat the Final Boss when it is three times stronger then the last story boss where failing it gives you the true ending, Shadow Hearts has a lengthy sidequest you aren't given a warning the cutoff is coming and the Seraphic Radiance sidequest isn't hinted at anywhere. Come the sequel and you find out that the characters in-universe canonically got the bad ending.
• Early in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, you see Dante jump from the top of the really tall Mantra building, land unharmed, and attack you. You also happen to be able to do this as a shortcut, though everyone in the active party will be reduced to 1 HP. If you recruit Dante near the end of the game and have him in the active party while doing this, he won't lose any health, most likely referring to that fact that none of the games he's starring in have any Fall Damage.
• In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, in some cutscenes, enemies will strike at you in mid-cutscene. To drive home the point that you're dealing with an entity you don't want to screw with, not only does the game narrate you being hit, your entire party takes damage.
• In Star Ocean: The Second Story, Ashton has abysmal luck and somehow manages to get the two-headed dragon he was trying to kill grafted onto his back: his natural luck stat is a mere 17 regardless of how high his level is, and this is in a game where most endgame stats easily break quadruple digits.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • Kratos loves to spam healing and support spells on Lloyd the most — and this isn't an issue of him being the tank; even if Colette is in melee range, he'll use it on Lloyd first. Because it's actually an act of a father looking out for his son. Meanwhile (though only tangentially related to gameplay) when Colette loses her voice for plot reasons, she stops Calling Her Attacks in battle and the victory quotes for her aren't shown.
    • One subquest during the first arc of the game involves needing to collect a statue from a geyser. The party's solution is to have Genis freeze the geyser long enough to get the statue. If Genis doesn't know Icicle yet (normally learned at level 11, though you could also carry it over via New Game Plus), then he says "Great idea... but I don't know any ice magic yet." And if you try the quest anyway, he simply repeats himself; you won't be able to complete the quest until he knows the spell.
    • Casanova Zelos comes with an EX Skill that allows him to get free items from female NPCs by flirting with them.
    • One of the last Angel Skills Colette learns is "Sacrifice", which heals all party members and deals heavy damage to all enemies, at the cost of dropping Colette to 0 HP. This not only foreshadows Colette's role as a human sacrifice in Cruxis' plan, but reflects her disturbing lack of self-preservation and extreme selflessness due to growing up with the knowledge of her status as a sacrifice.
    • With Colette and Presea both being afflicted by their Cruxis Crystals, they become an Empty Shell and lose their personalities. As a result, their facial expressions within their portraits in battle never change.
  • In Dawn of the New World, Emil's Ain Soph Aur mystic arte only works once against Richter (in a cutscene) before he learns how to counter it, both during cutscenes and in actual fights against him, where he'll just reflect it back at the party.
    • When Emil gains Ratatosk Mode, the only thing it does gameplay-wise is give him more aggressive attacks and let him learn his first arte rather than increasing any of his stats, making it seem like a Power Up Letdown. Later, it's revealed that Ratatosk is his true and more confident personality rather than an external powerup. Once Emil becomes more confident, he's able to fight just as effectively even without Ratatosk in control.
  • Tales of the Abyss establishes very quickly that Jade Curtiss is more than worthy of bearing the Colonel Badass trope, and one way they do this is by having him show up halfway through the first boss fight... at level 45, during a time where Luke and Tear are probably somewhere around 5. After you leave the first dungeon, one of the villains uses a Fon Slot Seal on him; in gameplay, this brings him down to level 5 himself. There's even a skit when you get him back up to his original level that can best be summarized as "I finally broke the seal, but you all caught up to my original power, I'll be continuing to trust you."
  • In Tales of Vesperia, character AI also prioritizes healing based on personality and character relationships. For example, Flynn will spam healing on Yuri. And the Death Seeker Lovable Sex Maniac Raven prefers to heal women over a dog over men over himself. The game also gives a explanation for the world's Ghibli Hills and all their Random Encounters: all the towns in the world are shielded underneath giant energy shields that keep monsters out, and only highly trained professionals (like the party members) are allowed outside.
    • The attack that Yuri uses to defeat the Adephagos can be learned in the PS3 version as his second Mystic Arte Heavenly Bladewing.
    • Raven admits that he hates sweets. As such, he gains the least benefits that come from desserts.
  • Tales of Legendia has an unusual take on its Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system. While it has all the standard like Fire, ice, lightning, water, earth, wind, and darkness... but one classic element is missing: Light. Yet there are still light spells like Ray, Judgment, and Brilliant Lance in the game. But they deal water damage instead. Why is this? Well, in-universe, the ocean is basically tied to Nerifes, the world's "god" — thus the sea is holy, and this also means that water aligned spells like Spread, Aqua Laser, and Tidal Wave are just as effective against dark enemies as light spells.
• In the Touhou Project fangame Touhou Mother, Yuuka is described as hating high speeds. During a cutscene, you have to fly very fast to reach a certain location, and during the trip, Yuuka is described to have taken "mortal damage". Sure enough, if you check your stats after the cutscene ends, Yuuka will have just 1 HP remaining. Her speed stat is also consistently at 1, and there is no way to improve it; conversely, she often arrives late in cutscenes.
• Wild ARMs 3:
  • The primary motivation behind the first battle with Melody is Clive's speech on true beauty. In the battle, she will always attack Clive, if he's still alive. Combine this with some liberal use of the Revive spell, and the battle becomes trivial.
  • At a later point when the party is on route to attack the villains at their base, Virginia gets struck by a poison by the main villain during a cutscene event. She is treated for it, but her Vitality gauge is drained and cannot be refilled due to the poison's lingering effects. After they beat the villains, Virginia gets time to fully recover from the poison, and as such restore her Vitality gauge.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
  • The Monado gives Shulk visions of the future. Throughout the game's story, Shulk uses these visions to try and avert disaster. This translates into a gameplay mechanic, as well: during battle, Shulk can have visions of an enemy inflicting catastrophic damage on himself or one of his allies. He is given several seconds to avert this possible future, either by redirecting the enemy's aggro, healing and buffing his teammates, inflicting status ailments on the enemy that can lessen the damage or stall the enemy, or kill the enemy and Screw Destiny outright.
  • In-story, the Monado is the only sword that can damage a Mechon's tough armour, but if used against a person, it bounces off to no effect. In gameplay, any normal weapon will only deal Scratch Damage to Mechon with physical attacks and half damage with energy attacks, while the Monado will do the same to people. Several cutscenes also show that Mechon can be taken down by knocking them over, which ties into the fact that Mechon take normal damage if they are toppled.
  • The player can make characters give each other collectables as gifts, in order to increase their affinity. The affinity can be raised or diminished based on how much the character that receives the gift likes it, and the gifts logic actually follows the character's personality as written. For example, Dunban hates fruits (which he voices several times) and Sharla loves them, so giving fruits to Dunban will make the player gain little or lose affinity while giving them to Sharla will increase it.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  • When Mythra is awakened, she provides Rex with a form of precognition that enables him to evade enemy attacks, which proves crucial to driving back the enemy at Olethro Ruins. This is represented in ingame battle situations with the Foresight ability, unique to her Affinity Chart, which confers increased accuracy and evasion chances to all party members while she's active. Likewise, after this point, if a fight is going poorly while Rex is equipped with Pyra, Mythra will forcefully switch in like she did in Olethro and refuse to switch back to Pyra.
  • In the Spirit Crucible Elpys, there's a field permeating the place that interferes with ether particles, which the Blades rely on for their abilities. The various Blade characters are depicted as being exhausted and in pain while in the area. Accordingly, the player's Blades will be significantly weakened during battle while in the Crucible, unable to access anything beyond their basic Arts. However, Poppi is a unique artificial Blade, and is powered by an internal Ether Furnace, rather than relying on ether from the environment. As a result, she remains at full power and can still use her higher tier abilities. The same is true for the DLC Blade Poppibuster, which is likewise artificial, and Shulk, Fiora and Elma, who are not Blades despite being treated as Blades for gameplay purposes.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: About halfway through Chapter 1, the party unlocks the Flame Clock mechanic, which reflects the Life Drinker nature of the cast by very slowly filling up as the party accumulates kills, and draining over time, providing buffs when it's full or penalties when it's low. Not only is it exceedingly unlikely that the player will actually fill the Clock up even if they kill everything in sight, but the mechanic strongly discourages exploration since there's a constant ticking clock any time you aren't engaged in battle. This is, of course, exactly the sort of mindset that the Flame Clocks encourage in the party, making them laser-focused on killing with no time to consider anything else, and the actual Second Hour Superpower at the end of Chapter 1 permanently takes the Flame Clock mechanic away once it's done demonstrating this influence.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X:
  • Those cool looking Skells you see early in the game can be used by you, the player character...but not until you prove yourself. Skells are expensive and valuable pieces of technology, and the loss of even one can be a harsh blow to BLADE's efforts to colonize Mira. Before you are allowed to step into the cockpit of one, you have to prove to BLADE that you are worthy of using them. As such, you are only allowed to take control of one after a certain point in the story (approximately halfway through), and even then, only after passing a test which can only be undertaken when BLADE's senior staff determines you're ready to do so. And to drive the point of how expensive these robots are home, if your Skell is destroyed in battle? You are paying for the repairs, and they are extremely costly (insurance is available, but limited).
  • Some of the gameplay elements of the game are tied to an important story element revealed early in the game: the fact that all of the humans in NLA are not actually humans, but mimeosomes: android bodies controlled by the consciousnesses of humans trapped in the Lifehold. The Overdrive ability? That's you and your allies overclocking their robotic bodies. The fact that you can sprint and swim indefinitely? Your artificial bodies will never run out of stamina. The ability to perform massive 20 foot vertical leaps and the absence of Fall Damage? Mimeosome bodies have superhuman agility and can take the impact of falls from great heights. The ability to alter your character's appearance after completing a specific sidequest? That's because you're modifying your mimeosome body's appearance.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon integrates just about all of its RPG mechanics into the plot by portraying the Player Character as a questionably-sane but hyper-competent Cloudcuckoolander/Bunny-Ears Lawyer who contextualizes everything through the lens of his favorite video game, and presenting the whole story from his point of view. Fights are turn-based to represent his analytical approach to combat, he views his closest friends as being his Player Party because they always help him out, unrealistic events are the result of him viewing life as a High Fantasy story and mentally-warping mundane events accordingly, and so on.
  • Your boss-fights with Majima, Saejima and Kiryu are also examples. All three characters are said to be holding back in their respective fights, and this shows; high-level moves are used sparingly and none of the characters are anywhere near as durable as in their prime. In Kiryu's case, his unwillingness to hit women and messy history with Chinese and Korean gangsters means he will prioritize Joon-Gi and Zhao, and never actively target Saeko or Eri.

RPG — MMO

• Destiny and its sequel do this so much that they sometimes border on being deconstructions of the whole MMO genre:
  • You know all the weird, meta things MMO players do, like obsessively leveling up, fighting over loot, playing dress-up, jumping off ledges for no reason, and spamming dance emotes? That's actually what Guardians act like in the lore; you read numerous reports wondering why Guardians, the supposed defenders of humanity, act like a bunch of crazed man-children, and many of the NPC Guardians are Bunny-Ears Lawyers. It's implied this behavior is a sort of Restraining Bolt installed in them by the Traveler to keep them focused purely on fighting the Darkness.
  • Justified Extra Lives is in effect; one of the main powers Guardians possess is a form of Resurrective Immortality where their Ghost simply regenerates them whenever they're killed... something which horrifies many enemy NPCs, who describe the visceral terror of shooting someone only to watch them get back up and continue slaughtering anything in their path. At one point, the Drifter describes how he once died of starvation, only for his Ghost to revive him (against his will), with him still being hungry afterwards. It's also mentioned that the Traveler's light is weakened in areas where the Darkness is strong, hence why dying in a Darkness Zone permakills you and Forces you to restart from a Respawn Point; your Ghost is low on juice and can’t resurrect you instantly like usual.
  • Events and raids that repeat indefinitely for gameplay reasons? Many of these are given plot-based reasons for repeating, such as the Leviathan raid being a sort of giant training course (complete with the boss being a robot duplicate who's replaced every time it's destroyed) or the Dreaming City raid repeating because of a Stable Time Loop arranged by one of the villains as part of a Xanatos Gambit where the Guardians can either do the raid over and over forever (supplying the villains with endless blood sacrifices) or allow the villains to conquer the Dreaming City.
  • The Player Versus Player mode exists In-Universe and is a form of combat training for Guardians called Crucible, with the announcer being the resident Drill Sergeant Nasty. Just as noted above, player behavior is taken into account; in one lore entry, Lord Shaxx mentions being disturbed by Guardians who ignore objectives in favor of killing as many of the other team as possible. The various nerfs and balance buffs are also indicated to be the result of Shaxx making rule patches, such as altering the firmware on SUROS weapons after they turned out to be a Game-Breaker in Crucible (just like in real life).
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Enforced with the game's relaunch as A Realm Reborn, as well as the story content in 1.0 leading to the game's original closure: in the waning days of 1.0's service, a conspicuous red dot of light could be seen in night sky, which grew larger over time until it was revealed to be the moon of Dalamud, which was descending towards Eorzea. Over the following days, story quests were added revolving around attempts to stop Dalamud's descent, and contain the chaos erupting as a result of its imminent impact. In the end, the heroes' efforts amounted to naught, as Dalamud approached Eorzea, only for its destruction to end up unleashing Bahamut and bringing the realm to the brink of oblivion, with one of the heroes sending the player characters into the future. When A Realm Reborn launched, five years had passed since Bahamut's rampage, and the realm had recovered, yet irrevocably changed, while player characters returning from 1.0 would see changes to the story to account for their presence during the previous version's events.
  • Linkshells are devices that allow people to communicate over long distances, basically like having a cell phone. In gameplay, these function as basically chatrooms for other people with the same linkshell to talk in, but you also receive a linkshell in the story from Minfillia when you join the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, and at multiple points she or others will contact you over them, not to mention various other characters who also speak to one another using linkshells. The animations for using them in cutscenes also take into account that not all of the playable races have their ears in the same relative position on their head as a regular human — Miqo'te and Viera will reach noticeably higher up to place the linkshells nearer to their raised cat and rabbit ears.
  • NPCs will, generally, remember you if you've interacted with them before. This can be as minor as the leaders of the city's adventurer's guild remembering you if you started in that city when you visit them for other quests, to as major as class and job trainers acknowledging your membership if you go there on quest-related business not related to the guild itself. Even the one-off holiday events show signs of the latter. Yugiri in the main story will even change her dialogue accordingly if you're a Ninja when you meet up with her again ("You should train to be a Ninja" to "You fight like one of us, I'm proud of you").
  • Members of the Garlean Empire are biologically incapable of casting magic, therefore the only casters you find in Garlean strongholds tend to be Lalafell or Highlander humans (who were drafted after their countries were conquered) and tend to be low ranked at that, or use shock-sticks, in which case they can only cast thunder and paralyze. In story quests where you're fighting alongside characters who have no healing capability like Cid (Garlean and incapable of using magic) or Sidurgu (never in his life touched Conjury) instead of using a cure spell on you like most NPCs in the same type of story battle, they'll use a powerful Aqua Vitae potion that accomplishes the same effect.
  • The Echo is an Anti-Frustration Feature buff that boosts your maximum HP, attack power, and healing potency so that you can clear a battle if you're struggling with it. In lore, the Echo is granted to a select few whose abilities differ from person to person. In the player's case, their Echo grants them ungodly strength and makes them immune to being tempered by a Primal. During the Heavensward main story, you come across the Warriors of Darkness and they also possess the Echo. Just like the player, defeating the group has their Echo kick in and makes them stronger in the exact same way as the player.
  • Normally, the game does not take into account on what the player's job or class is when a cutscene occurs, but as the game has gone on it's started to acknowledge your job more often. In Stormblood, Y'shtola is gravely wounded and an NPC asks you to help her out. Normally, she would ask you to hold the person down as she heals them. If you are a healer, she asks you to help her heal. One of the Eden raids in Shadowbringers has Urianger asking if you know how rain is formed. Normally your options are to say you're vaguely familiar with the idea or claim "it's an Allagan conspiracy", both of which result in Urianger explaining how it works in the game's lore; if you're playing as a Scholar, you can point out that people of your profession are generally well-versed, at which point he apologizes for not remembering and asks you to explain it.
  • Why are players only able to teleport to other aetherytes? Because it's dangerous to do otherwise! As shown at the end of A Realm Reborn and later in Heavensward, there is a spell known as "Flow" that allows one to, in theory, teleport anywhere in the world by delving directly into the Lifestream. Unfortunately, returning from the Lifestream is nearly impossible to do, and even if you manage it, your body and aether will suffer for it. Thancred managed to return from the Lifestream on his own, but wound up being completely incapable of using magic afterwards, leaving him stranded where the spell plopped him out until the player character happens through the area on unrelated business. Y'shtola wasn't as fortunate: she was only able to return from the Lifestream with aid, but wound up losing her sight. Although she can still "see" the aether of others, doing so greatly taxes her and shortens her lifespan.
    • Thancred's loss of magic power also plays a role in Shadowbringers where he's a Gunbreaker. Several of the Gunbreaker's abilities involve the use of aether; Thancred can't use said abilities since he can't manipulate his aether. Ryne shows that she infuses Thancred's cartridges with her own aether, which allows him to perform his job to the fullest. This stipulation also affects Thancred's performance as a Trust NPC in dungeons, where Thancred can't use all of his abilities unless Ryne is also in the party.^note It's mostly for flavor, however; the "Solid Barrel" combo he uses when Ryne isn't present has the same potency as the "Cartridge" combo he uses when she is, so that players who need an NPC to act as a tank - which Thancred is the only option for in the vast majority of Trust-compatible dungeons - aren't required to also bring Ryne along to let him perform the role properly.
  • Each of the casters have a different way of managing their MP that suits the job's lore;
    • White Mage draws on the land's energy to heal, but must be careful to prevent overhealing and using up the ambient aether and leaving them dry, much like how a White Mage needs to be conservative with their MP; casting a weaker Cure 1 over and over to keep a single player healed is far more beneficial than casting the much more expensive Cure II over a long drawn out fight, as spamming the latter will drain their MP dry quickly. Conjury also requires at least a basic understanding and consent of the elements of the world around them; without that, Conjury and White Magic can dip into being Cast from Lifespan, which is another way to look at "reckless casting leads to exhausting your MP".
    • Black Mages study the ebbing and flowing nature of the Astral and Umbral eras and apply it to their casting, burning out their MP in fire-aspect Astral stance and restoring it in chunks in the ice-aspected Umbral stance. They also don't start learning any spells with massive impact until becoming Black Mages proper, as high level Black Magic is exceptionally dangerous for Thaumaturges to try to use without a conduit, which their soul crystals act as.
    • Summoner and Scholar are strategists who value strategy, planning, and caution, and as such they manage their mana through the one-minute cooldown Aetherflow buff which restores mana and enables strong abilities, and also keep most of their spells already drawn out with aether-imbued ink in their spellbooks to take the burden off their body's aether. Also, Summoner works on a twofold Defeat Means Friendship with their summoned Egi; as such Arcanists can't learn other egi until killing their respective Primal (the issue of summoning Ifrit-egi is sidestepped, since you can't advance any class into a Job until completing a quest sometime after fighting Ifrit in the story), making them the only job blocked from progressing their A Realm Reborn Job storyline by Main Story progression.
    • Astrologian uses aether pulled from the stars around them, thus running out of MP on an Astrologian is extremely difficult because they draw on the metaphysical power of something fundamentally infinite. Their star-charting ability also allows them to see into the future, and as such many of their healing in-lore and in gameplay require them to plan things ahead, which results in most of their spells being fairly weak immediately, but much stronger if their conditions are met (IE: Earthly Star charging for 10 seconds and gaining a massive damage and healing boost, Horoscope healing for more and making the buff last 30 seconds instead of 10 so you can plan when it pops easier if you cast a Helios spell, and Essential Dignity healing significantly more when the target's health is below 75/50%), or being healing-over-time spells that gradually patch party members up. When dealing with The First in Shadowbringers, Astrologians even find a bit of Loophole Abuse in this logic by focusing downward, since technically the planet ALSO counts a "star", a solution that boggles your job trainer's mind.
    • Red Mages refuse to draw on the land's aether like White and Black Mages, due to their history as descending from mages who accidentally triggered the Sixth Umbral Calamity from overuse of the land's aether, and sidestepping the Cast from Lifespan issues brought up with White Mage by using focusing crystals to magnify their aether, allowing for small amounts to translate into larger and more powerful spells; this results in them having no unique way of restoring their own MP, having to rely on their party, ethers, or role actions. It's also explained that their spells work up-front, which translates to Red Mage's versions of the several elemental spells other casters get having long cast times but dealing their damage all at once while getting no spells that apply a damage-over-time effect, compared to others having the standard shorter or even instantaneous cast times but dealing damage over time. Also, as mentioned above, healing without the aid of the land's aether is very taxing, so even with Vercure's acceleration making it powerful, the MP cost on it and Verraise are both astronomical, and having to frequently heal or revive party members will leave the Red Mage running on empty.
    • Dark Knight, despite being a tank, teaches about the Cast from Lifespan nature of tapping into the Darkness, and how they need to be careful with tapping in too deep, which translates to the Dark Knight's un-tank-like focus on MP, which is used up in large chunks with skills that trigger Darkside, and running out of it heavily stunts their ability to fight and hold enmity.
    • While also a tank, the Gunbreaker also uses magic (at least according to lore) by using aether-infused cartridges to produce magic effects from their gunblades. In practice, they gain aether for their abilities by attacking enemies and drawing a portion of their aether into their cartridges. As mentioned previously, this leaves Thancred unable to use all of his abilities as a gunbreaker unless he has someone to charge his cartridges for him.
  • Dark Knight itself, like the other classes introduced with the Heavensward expansion, caught some flak for the fact that you cannot play as it until you actually reach the expansion's content. But in a beautiful case of this that is a bit of Fridge Brilliance, the player's access to the Darkness is built on the events of the story up to that point, turning everything from the tragedy of the finale of the first story arc to the chronic cases of Dude, Where's My Respect? from NPCs into the well from which the player can draw as a Dark Knight.
  • One of the Garlean enemies in Bozja is a Thaumaturge known as Saurtavoir the Inferno. As his name implies, he's a borderline Person of Mass Destruction with his fire magic, but he very deliberately refuses to use ice magic. This results in him doubling over and leaving himself extremely vulnerable to attack until he recovers, just like a player Thaumaturge/Black Mage would be if they were being nonsensically stubborn about switching from fire to ice stance.
  • Going to Novrandt in Shadowbringers involves crossing the void between worlds to an entirely different dimension. As such, you initially can't use retainer bells until The Crystal Exarch introduces you Feo Ul, one of The Fair Folk who makes a pact with you that allows them to interact with your retainer on The Source by following your aether there. Even after you can access retainers again though, you always have to return to the Source to access the Aesthetician (the NPC who does haircuts and other minor recustomizations) because, although he is always on the move (thus able to be summoned at any other inn, whether the one in Limsa where you first meet him or ones in the Far East on the other side of the world), he only exists on Hydaelyn, and having Feo Ul, what with their Blue-and-Orange Morality as a Pixie, try to cut your hair would probably end... poorly.
  • In regards to Shadowbringers: when you first travel to Norvrandt, the sky is blanketed in brilliant, unnatural light and Endless Daytime. As you progress through the game and slay the Lightwardens, areas of Norvrandt will see a return of their natural day-and-night cycle, which will persist permanently thereafter (save for near the end of the MSQ, during the Darkest Hour).
  • New Game Plus is justified by the end of the MSQ of Shadowbringers: before the credits scroll, the player character is approached by a young child wondering if they are the famed Warrior of Darkness and asking about where they came from. The cutscene ends as the player character appears to be preparing to tell the child the tales of their exploits. Actually accessing it, likewise, is done by talking to a specific NPC, with the implication that you're retelling your adventures rather than literally replaying old content.
  • When fighting Alexander Prime, he will sometimes cause time to freeze, which also freezes the whole party in place. Players with any buffs or debuffs applied to them will have the timers on them freeze whenever Alexander stops time.
  • The Big Bad of the Marauder storyline is a feral Aurochs known as Kujata. Part of the reason Kujata is so dangerous is because its victims are inexplicably very hard to heal and often die from their wounds while being treated. When the time comes to actually fight and kill it, you learn Kujata places the Infirmity debuff on you with every attack — which drastically reduces how effective healing magics are, making it a race against time because your partner's efficiency at healing the grievous blows you take is nearly nullified.
  • The game playfully points out the oddity of the Player Character always having between 3 and 7 people blessed with the Echo and just as strong as them at any given time to justify group content. MUCH later in Shadowbringers you learn that The Warrior of Light is a reincarnation of Azem, the "Shephard to the Stars" of the ruling class of the Precursor society of Amaurot. Azem's powers were explicitly to work together, empower, and summon allies at will, which carries over to the Player Character's tendency to gather up friends to help tackle obstacles. When the full power of Azem is unlocked in one of the most climactic battles of the story, they gain the ability to summon said allies from as far away as other dimensions, and can even transcend death by calling on the soul of Emet-Selch, one of Azem's best friends. The "Summon friend" spell of Azem's crystal continues to be used well into Endwalker to justify having party members to fight by your side as the locations of trials and dungeons become increasingly improbable and eventually outright impossible for other adventurers to be around.
  • Advancing a class into a full job grants many more skills and abilities, which is justified by the way of soul crystals, which contain the skills and memories of previous owners in that profession, letting you draw on experiences that aren't your own. It also explains why expansion jobs start at higher levels (30 for those from Heavensward, 50 from Stormblood, 60 from Shadowbringers and 70 from Endwalker); conversely, the Blue Mage limited job starts at level 1, because blue magic was newly-introduced to Eorzea, so the description for its soul crystal mentions that it's new and pristine, with no past deeds carved into it yet.
    • Machinist would seem to be a subversion, as its soul crystal description says the same thing about having no great deeds carved on it yet - the explanation for why you start at a high level anyway is that anything you can do before that point are simple things (mostly pointing the gun at an enemy and pulling the trigger) that are theoretically possible for anyone to do from the instant they strap on the gear, because like in real life the machinists' firearms are meant to get people with little to no training up to a similar level as knights who've trained all their lives by putting much of the ability within the weapon itself rather than the user's skill. Sure enough, most of the skills and gear you acquire past its start at level 30 are either refining the basics or acquiring/developing new gear to augment your existing gear, like the Rook autoturret and its eventual evolution into a Mini-Mecha.
    • The Stormblood Monk questline heavily revolves around the fact that the player advances to jobs from a separate class. The main plot point is that your teacher and his other students, descendents of an organization called the Fists of Rhalgr, are finding themselves complete at the mercy of enemies who know a fighting style specifically designed to counter that of the Fists. The player character, however, is able to stand up against them, and later teach the rest of the group how to fight them on even footing, because they don't just know the Fists' style, but rather they learned it after starting with the basics of Ul'dahn pugilism.
  • A side quest in Endwalker tasks you with gathering a very poisonous plant that can gravely poison you on mere touch unless you use a pair of gloves to extract the plant without harming yourself. You can still gather the plant without the gloves and doing so will inflict a very strong poison debuff on you whose damage is higher than your natural HP regeneration, meaning it's possible to outright die from the poison.
  • One of the main story quests in Endwalker has you finding a tank of fuel inside a pool of cold and dirty water. Upon finding the tank, the Warrior of Light celebrates their find and then realizes they're standing in a pool of freezing water in a land filled with snow and ice and begin to shiver. After the cutscene ends, you're inflicted with a frostbite debuff that damage you for a couple of seconds.
  • Early on in Endwalker, the Warrior of Light, Thancred, and Urianger need to get to Thavnair but they aren't attuned to any aetherytes in the area and taking a boat would take too long since they have a very urgent matter that needs to be resolved right away. They partake in an experimental teleport that lets them warp without needing to be attuned to an atheryte, but one of the side effects is aether sickness, which is the equivalent to a very violent hangover. Sure enough, everyone gets hit hard with the sickness. The player will randomly stagger in place due to the sickness until they get some juice that will cure it.
  • The Heavensward Blacksmithing questline has the Warrior of Light helping out a disgraced Ishgardian noble by making her gear as she tries to reclaim her family's honor. She's damn near poor and can only pay for necessities with all of her payment for you put down on an I.O.U. Because of this, you don't get any money from finishing the Blacksmith questline until the final one, where she finally pays you for all five quests' worth of Gil at once after reclaiming her status like she promised.
• Mabinogi:
  • Player characters, aka Milletians, are presented as spirits from outside the game world, who are temporarily incarnated within it. Because they are not normally part of the world, they do not "die", but simply lose the body they were using, which can be restored by a particular NPC. NPCs are aware of your status, and will casually mention it from time to time. This is actually made a significant story point for Elf and Giant characters.
  • In the semi-prequel Vindictus, the fact that the Giant Polar Bear is such a popular target is referenced in a quest, where it is suddenly attacking more areas than before and you are the prime suspect because you bother it (I.E. use it to grind) so much, and are thus demanded to either calm it down or prove that you weren't the one that caused it to get angrier. You weren't the one who made it mad.
• The lore of Nexus Clash is set up as an Eternal Recurrence to justify being a game that deliberately averts Perpetually Static as much as possible and asks the entire player base to make occasional visits to the Bag of Spilling.
• The Secret World goes a long way to justify its gameplay tropes in-story:
  • Skill Scores and Perks: Player characters gain their powers by being symbiotically bonded to a biomechanical construct from a past age known as a bee that gives them access to far more power than most people get on their own. Such powers include increased skill and greater skill gain in using magic, explaining why the characters are generally better than regular people at magic and how they can quickly grow far more powerful.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The Bees, as they're called, are also immortal; if killed, they appear in the spirit world and can either revive their body or reconstitute it at a nearby anima well. It's so difficult to kill such a being that only a few enemies you ever encounter could even try it, and it takes so long that they find more creative ways to occupy your time while they work on accomplishing their goals.
  • Notice This: Why are there honeycomb symbols that give the player access to snippets of lore about enemies, events, and places? Because the hive mind of the being you're bonded with sometimes gives you a little information about a subject.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: Why do you have to spend so much on weapons when you could just grab a dead enemy's gun? Because you require a weapon capable of channeling magical power, which also explains why guns you use don't eject casings and can reappear with your dead body.
  • Money Sink: Why do clothing, plastic surgery, and even a haircut cost so much? None of that is so easy to pull off when a person's body can heal anything up to and including death and dismemberment, then reappear out of thin air looking the same as when they were just killed.
  • Perpetually Static: Even the various locations not really advancing on in time is explainable both because they're all in some form of crisis that's more important than redecorating, and because the travel hub sends people to specific points in both space and time.
• World of Warcraft
  • A lot of examples of this existed in early and older versions of the game's launch, which were changed into segregation in the process of being made an Anti-Frustration Feature: One of the most obvious examples is the Forsaken player race originally being classified as Undead instead of Humanoid (changed since this made Forsaken immune to many kinds of crowd control, making them hard to lock down in PVP).
  • Logical immunities were also originally in play on the integration side in Classic and a bit of the way into The Burning Crusade, before being changed because they made some specs (and in fringe cases, some entire classes) useless as damage dealers, which is why in the modern version of the game, you can kill elementals with their own elements, and bleed or poison constructs made out of stone or metal to death.
  • The now-defunct specialization split in engineering between Goblin and Gnomish engineering showcased the stereotypes associated with the two races; Goblin engineering is focused on Stuff Blowing Up and has a ton of bombs that can be made, and even their proper gadgets still have a chance of explosively malfunctioning. Gnomes meanwhile are brilliant, but also hasty and eager to move on to the next project so their inventions aren't QA tested, this results in a lot of nice quality-of-life inventions... that have a chance to malfunction in bizarre, potentially harmful ways like the teleporters missing the mark and putting you at a near-fatal drop height, or the rocket boots malfunctioning and shooting you directly up instead of boosting your speed (also putting you at a near-fatal drop height).
  • The Forsaken are fair-weather allies within the Horde and often viewed with suspicion because of their undead nature and willingness to commit terrible acts in the name of the Horde. Out of all of the 21 playable races (including Allied races), they're the only race that starts as Neutral reputation with their other factions' races instead of Friendly, with the sole exceptions of the Blood Elves who have an Odd Friendship with them and because the Forsaken's leader is one of the Blood Elves' greatest heroes, so they would be more willing to extend the olive branch to each other.
  • Every Borrowed Power system that requires Artifact Power has a reason to justify the catch-up that increases how much their tokens give. Legion's artifact weapons gained more AP because you're becoming more familiar with them, and in fact required waiting for tokens of Artifact Knowledge to come through to learn more about the weapon, which additionally unlocked chapters of that weapon's backstory. The Heart of Azeroth requires Azerite (the blood of the planet) from the bleeding wounds of Azeroth which is being harvested all over the place; the later the expansion went, the more potent the Azerite became because Azeroth bled from deeper and deeper. Anima in Shadowlands as it went on gained additional tokens for completing objectives that gave them, because in helping fix the afterlife, you're also restarting the proper flow of things which put the anima from a drought back to being flourishing.
  • The Maw is an inescapable hell controlled by Zovaal the Jailer, much is driven home that the Maw is a place where hope goes to die, where suffering is the norm, and where escape is impossible, so it has unique mechanics to enforce that.
    • At the start, they enforced this hardcore by having the Maw be exceptionally dangerous in all respects with the "Eye of the Jailer" mechanic where doing certain things would draw the attention - and eventually ire - of the Jailer's enforcer, a giant mechanical eye of the same name, leading to significantly worse things to befall you until you have a damage over time effect chunking your HP and negating your healing done to force you to leave immediately lest you die and be forcefully ejected. In 9.1, as part of efforts to actively defeat the Jailer, the players with the help of Odyn's Val'kyr deal significant damage to the Eye of Jailer and force it to retreat for repairs, which removes the associated mechanic entirely and permanently.
    • Starting out you can't use any mounts at all in the Maw except for one very specific mount that's a creature specifically bred there, being that it's quite literally an inescapable hell, and while the player is an exception to that rule, it's not always a sure shot so your mounts decide against heeding your call. This also got relaxed in 9.1, where in the process of having to stop the Jailer a consistent and reliable portal to and from the Maw is established so the Covenants can raid it and leave, which re-enables mounts.

RPG — Western

• A Dance with Rogues has some impressive instances of integration, ranging from your attributes (including primarily combat stats like Strength and Dexterity) and Skill Scores (including Pickpocketing and Tumble) having major impact on the outcome of dialogue, to integrating the Player Inventory into the story (e.g. if you wear a Spy Catsuit in public, the guards will come after you; if you carry weapons in the open, they will demand that you unequip them — unless you are of the Ranger class, then they leave you alone, since Rangers are considered law enforcement; some puzzles can only be solved by taking off your armor, but if you are caught without it outside in the rain, you get the Disease status effect — and NPCs will comment on your cold, etc.).
• Deltarune:
  • The Chapter 1 Superboss, Jevil, can only be spared by making him tired via hypnotizing him. Each use of hypnosis has a very weird and out there effect that seems to be random (healing everyone, buffing your defense, buffing Jevil, or doing nothing, as examples). But fitting with the game's themes of You Can't Fight Fate and predetermination, all of these seemingly random effects are actually completely scripted and predictable.
  • In Chapter 2, Noelle is afraid of mice, which is utilized in puzzles where you need to scare her so she jumps over barriers. After the last of these puzzles, Noelle says that she isn't scared of mice anymore, and actually thinks they're cute now. If you go back to fight a Maus enemy, this is reflected by a new ACT for her. She can compliment the mice, allowing you to spare them after one turn, which is faster and easier than the method you had before.
• In Disco Elysium, the Detective's skills, being Anthropomorphic Personifications with their own voices in his head, will notice and point their equivalents in other characters he comes across.
  • Characters like the computer programmer, Soona, and the consultant, Trant Heidelstam, for example, show the downsides of having too much Interfacing and Encyclopedia, respectively, becoming obsessed by minutiae and indifferent to the actual people around them, and Cuno and Idiot Doom Sprial's Hidden Depths include a creative, artistic streak which the Detective's own Conceptualization can recognize.
  • The Detective's partner, Kim Kitsuragi, has high Interfacing (he loves cool machines such as cars and cameras) and Volition (his calmness, self-control and common sense), as well as off-the-charts Authority (but which his high Volition keeps him from abusing) — and, underneath it all, high reserves of Motorics skills such as Hand/Eye Coordination (undercut by his nearsightedness) and Savoir Faire (his secret fondness for appearing "cool"). But he lacks imagination, which Conceptualization quickly picks up on; even if you lack Conceptualization or Inland Empire yourself, your way of communicating with your own skills shows the Detective are imaginative in a way Kim never has been, and which he can eventually come to admire about him. He also has terrible eyes, leaving him weak in Perception and Visual Calculus, and constantly misses physical clues and makes bad deductions based on appearances.
• Most characters in Dragon Age: Origins can take two specializations, but Sten can only take one. Sten is Qunari — the culture he comes from upholds Crippling Overspecialization as a key virtue. He can't learn two specializations because doing so is, effectively, against his religion!
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind:
    • Dagoth Ur's rising power doubles as Anti-Grinding, with stronger ash creatures and blighted fauna appearing more and more as you keep leveling up.
    • In the Imperial Legion questline, your superiors will refuse to give or accept quests unless you are in uniform — i.e. wearing body armor of a specific type that Legionnaires must wear while on duty.
    • Ordinators hold their Indoril armor sacred, and consider it blasphemous and punishable by death if someone not of their order wears it. Don't speak to them while wearing it unless you want to have them attack you.
    • NPCs sometimes recite unique dialogue depending on how much health you have left, or if you have a disease. For example:
      "Those wounds you've incurred are nothing compared to what you'll receive if you continue to bother me!"
  • You start off in Oblivion without a class, but after you complete the Tutorial Level, one of your allies will guess your preferred class based on how you beat the tutorial (e.g whether you sneaked past the enemies or fought them, whether you used magic or weapons, etc.). Your class plays no further role in the story, but the NPC has unique lines for all of them. If you choose a class different but similar to his guess (e.g. a knight instead of a warrior), he'll comment that he wasn't far off, and if it's wildly different from his idea (e.g. a battlemage instead of a thief), he'll be surprised and say that he'd never have guessed.
  • Skyrim:
    • A major mechanic in the game involves the player gaining various combat abilities by learning to shout special incantations written in the language of dragons. This is subtly reflected in the story: the player can't understand dragons at the beginning of the game, but more of their dialogue is translated as the player gains more "Dragon Shout" abilities—and consequently learns more of the draconic language.
    • The Thalmor are a Nazi-esque Altmeri State Sec that nobody, absolutely nobody outside of the Altmeri (and few of those who aren't explicitly members of the organization) cares for. If at any point you murder a Thalmor agent in cold blood, you'll just receive the 40 gold bounty for assault, instead of the massive 1000 gold bounty for murder. And if the territory is controlled by the Stormcloak rebellion, who really do not like the Thalmor, you won't even get that. If you kill the Thalmor emissary in Markath in particular, who's being a massive headache to the local Jarl, he'll even send you a thank you note with enough Septims that you can pay off the bounty and still profit from it.
    • The game subtly implies, and if you threaten to kill Paarthunax, he'll outright explain to you that the Dragonborn — and therefore the player's — desire to kill everything hostile in sight - especially dragons - and grow stronger for it is just a manifestation of their Dragonborn soul desiring dominance, control, and being at the peak of their strength in a similar way as the dragons themselves. Whether the Dragonborn gives into this instinct or lives more like Paarthunax can easily apply to how much needless cruelty or restraint and caring the player chooses to show.
    • The game does this with the Dragonborn in a more subtle way too. Dragonborn have the soul of a dragon, and dragons are most well known for slaughtering all who stand in their path and collecting a great hoard that they don't really need. What are the two most typical characteristics of player characters in RPGs again?
    • The Necromage restoration perk makes your magic more effective on the undead. While clearly meant for supporting your own raised minions and making offensive magic more useful against undead, Elder Scrolls lands on the "vampires are undead" scale of Our Vampires Are Different, thus if you're a vampire, all of your beneficial self-healing and buff spells gain Necromage's bonus increases.
• Similar to Planescape: Torment, Fallout 3 gives you a few occasions where a sufficiently high Strength stat allows you to intimidate certain NPCs into submitting to your will. Fallout: New Vegas adds the Terrifying Presence perk, which gives you the option to frighten NPCs in dialog by reminding them how tough you are.
• Fallout: New Vegas in general is a better example of this as your proficiency in a particular skill isn't just useful for its basic uses (e.g. science is primarily for hacking computers), but can be used to interact with the world at large (e.g. teaching people to synthesize drugs). This even even extends to perks. For example, having the Strong Back perk allows you to convince the Happy Trails caravan merchant that you can handle carrying larger loads.
  • One of your companions, Boone, is a former NCR sniper and he hates the Legion above all else. Unlike all of the other companions, he will immediately fire upon seeing Legion troops, regardless of your reputation with them.
  • Boone is also an Empty Shell. He's so dead on the inside that he has a unique script that prevents his AI from automatically looking at the Courier or nearby NPCs. He just stares ahead lifelessly until addressed.
  • One of the side quests involves taking the heads of certain targets. The head will be in their inventory like most loot, but transferring it to your inventory will have the body be violently decapitated. This also occurs if you have taken specific Perks that impact the nature of enemy corpses (Bloody Mess being the biggest instigator) or go for headshots instead of fatal torso or limbshots, which results in unique dialogue from Major Dhatri.
  • The game starts with you getting shot in the head (twice) and surviving. You can later kill and loot the character that shot you, to find that his gun is a piddly 9mm pistol, albeit a heavily-customized one. True to the cutscene, it can't kill anyone else with two headshots while you're wielding it, either, no matter how many points into the relevant skill you invest.
• A few examples from Fallout 4:
  • Institute Coursers are among the most feared adversaries in the Commonwealth: they're as humanlike in appearance as Gen 3 synths, and as strong and relentless as a Terminator. This bleeds into the gameplay, where your first encounter with an enemy Courser will be a tortuous battle unless you've leveled up enough and got the right gear for the job. In addition, a Courser who can join you as a companion, X6-88, has a whopping 98 SPECIAL points, more than any other companion in the game.
  • Speaking of X6-88: do not, under any circumstances, bring him to the Railroad's HQ if you want to stay on their good side. The Institute is trying to hunt them down, and bringing a Courser to their front step will make every member of the Railroad (including another potential companion, Deacon) permanently hostile towards you, as they rely on their secrecy to stay alive and you just revealed the location of their secret base to their worst enemy.
  • Fast-travelling between the Institute and the rest of the Commonwealth will only take one minute in-game since you're teleporting in and out of the Institute.
  • Paranoia concerning synths replacing friends and family is so strong that if settlers find out there is a synth in their midst, they will kill them on sight. Searching the victim's body afterwards will reveal synth components in the corpse.
  • Justice, a unique variant of the Combat Shotgun that causes staggering, can be purchased in Covenant, which requires only a short side-trip to reach after Concord. Normally, legendary items available for purchase are too cost prohibitive for low level players, but for quest related reasons, the merchants in Covenant are selling at an incredible loss^note They're trying to attract visitors to screen as potential synths, meaning you only need to scrape up about 1000-1500 caps to purchase it (depending on Charisma and perks.) As a bonus, it comes with several mods already in place that a low-level character will be unable to craft for some time, adding to its usefulness.
  • The standing merchants at Bunker Hill, when first visiting, barely have two caps to scrape together when trading with them. That's because most of the settlement's revenue is tied up in paying off the various raider gangs around the area to prevent them from harming the caravans that operate out of the Hill. This is on top of the problem that feral ghouls have been attacking any caravans passing near the National Guard training yard and making it difficult to trade. By completing Deb's quest to clear out the latter and Kessler's quest to remove a problematic case of the former, the merchants permanently gain a 150 and 300 caps increase respectively to their inventories once the caravan business has become markedly less dangerous.
• Indivisible: Leveling up your party members is directly linked to their Relationship Values; they don't necessarily grow stronger, they just learn new techniques and get better at fighting as a team as they bond with Ajna and the other party members. This, of course, also means that leveling can be affected by events in the story. Zebei's heart level drops sharply after Ajna's true nature is revealed and Kala accidentally released on Mt. Sumeru, causing him to lose faith in her and leave the party temporarily; he is slow to level back up as you/Ajna regains his trust, which is reliant on the main plotline. Meanwhile, Dhar and Ren's heart levels start in the negatives because Ajna (and probably the player) initially hates them both (Dhar killed Ajna's dad and used to be a villain ^note  he remains as such for the early game, due to being trapped by Ajna's powers and still being loyal to the Big Bad , while Ren is just creepy in general and an assassin, so Ajna finds him repulsive). In the former's case, it is quite likely that you'll have only just started getting him decently leveled (i.e., in the positives) when he dies, reflecting how Ajna only starts forgiving him and realizing what a good friend he is when it was too late.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
  • The Relationship Values are the gameplay manifestation of a plot ability that the main character is revealed to have — namely, to subtly manipulate people that they're close to. As a consequence, the more influence you have with a party member, the more their alignment mirrors your own and vice versa (with due consequences to bonuses/penalties to Light- and Dark-Sided Force powers). This veers into "story and story segregation" territory sometimes, since even if you turn a Light-Sided character to the Dark Side with your influence, they will still object to your Dark-Sided decisions and lose affection for you.
  • The XP system, where you grow more powerful by killing enemies, is revealed to be the result of the main character's "rift in the force" growing more powerful by feeding on the destruction she causes. Pretty rough revelation if you are a Light-Sider.
  • Some of your party member's characterization traits turn up as actual abilities in battle. Atton has improved saving throws the closer he gets to knocked out from half health and below, and he can get back up in battle from being knocked out, provided somebody else is still standing, Kreia provides EXP bonuses to the party, Mandalore is immune to mind-affecting powers (though the only enemies that use such things are bosses the player character fights solo), and that's just the start.
  • Obsidian turned "I have a bad feeling about this" (a Catchphrase used in every Star Wars movie) into a gameplay mechanic — namely, signifying that you should save your game at that point. It's integrated even further than that. Atton, the person who says it the most, is Force-sensitive.
  • Early in the game, Kreia loses a hand while fighting Darth Sion, leaving her incapable of equipping two-handed weapons and Dual Wielding for the rest of the game, even if you had her take the perks needed for that. Similarly, Bao-Dur lost an entire arm in the Back Story, so he uses a prosthetic and can only equip a select few armor suits because of it.
  • Battle Meditation is spelled out in the first game as a technique for increasing the skill and harmony of a military force, although in that game Bastila couldn't use it for squad-level combat like every fight you get into. If you learn it in the second game, where it's an available power, you can use it to support your chosen side in the final battle on Onderon.
  • There is an option in-game to switch to first-person camera mode for any character you're controlling. For characters like the Exile, Handmaiden and Bao-Dur, this is just a basic camera swap. When you use it while playing as sightless characters Kreia or Visas, however, the camera becomes misty and blurred and people are signified by red or blue auras since both characters rely on The Force to "see." The droids likewise get unique views with scan lines and a heavy tint in whatever color their eye(s) glow in.
• The blending of the gameplay and the story is a hugely fundamental aspect of LISA: The Painful.
  • The game is unique in that the Nintendo Hard difficulty actually compliments the story. The sheer punishing difficulty- tough enemies and bosses, limited opportunities to level up, limited mags to buy things, Permadeath, instantly dying if you go off a cliff, and many other things- serves to make the player truly feel how much of a Death World Olathe is. If the game had the standard RPG difficulty instead, it wouldn't feel as authentic in its portrayal of a post-apocalyptic hellhole. It's not called The Painful RPG for nothing.
  • Joy is a Fantastic Drug that can "make you feel nothing". It's also an item that can be used to give any character temporary, but ridiculously potent stat boosts. The downside is that anyone who has used Joy will get withdrawals if they don't take the drug frequently, which will make them practically useless outside of using magic attacks or support. To make things worse, Joy is a very scarce resource. Some party members, like Brad, Dick and Queen, come with Joy addiction and will have withdrawals regardless of whether you feed them Joy or not. Also, using Joy will affect the ending of the game.
  • Various events can directly affect Brad's playstyle as a character. Early on, he can get knocked out by an ambusher and lose some of his stats. Later, losing limbs causes the number of types of moves Brad can do in Dial-Combos to go down, along with increasing the need for Joy, removing/weakening some moves and halving your stats.
  • The clearest way to explain the presence of the grotesque mutated men throughout Olathe is through their item drops- Joy pills, which are known to mutate people into monsters.
  • Every human enemy has a name and unique appearance, and the attacks and move they use reflect their personalities and their current status. Sugar Mountain doesn't take you seriously and will occasionally check his hair instead of paying attention. Trips Breezer refuses to fight you, and will only block your attacks, stall for time, and cry. This is everywhere throughout the game, but the most prominent example is the Rando Army, who grows gradually more terrified of Brad as the battle goes on and will waste turns shaking in fear. And their lieutenant Clint Moss, rather than getting scared of Brad, will get enraged and stand his ground – demonstrating his unyielding loyalty towards his boss despite their hopeless situation Even Rando's moveset is relevant to his character. He can use the Buster Punches — a move unique to Brad's custom martial arts style — hinting towards his own connection to Brad.
  • During the Rando Army battle, Brad suddenly develops new moves in the middle of the fight (Scream and Cry) and the music changes to "Soft Skin", the song that plays when you fight the mutants. This is a direct foreshadow to the very end of the game, where Brad becomes a mutant.
  • Fireballs are described as "a blast of flaming emotion", but are more representative of how much of an emotional wreck the caster in question is. Brad himself develops larger-scale fireballs as he levels up and wrestles with his demons. There is an exception to this rule — Percy — but he's using a lighter and hairspray instead of actually throwing fireballs.
  • In the final area, after Buddy rejects Brad, his class changes from "Nobody" to "Failure", reflecting his mental state. Many of his physical moves will be replaced with fire-themed equivalents as well, reflecting the strength of his inner, raw emotion.
  • Terry Hintz's basic attack involves him charging up at the enemy and pathetically tripping and flopping on the ground. At the beginning of the game, he says that he pulled his hamstring.
  • A lot of the Joy Mutant bosses are immune to the "fallen over" status, which makes sense as a part of gameplay balance, and also because most of them don't have legs.
• In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, the money you receive from winning the bet with Prince Peasley in the second half of the game is actually added to your coin total. Unfortunately, due to the exchange rate between Mushroom Kingdom coins (what he bet you — kind of reasonable, since that's where Mario and Luigi are from) and Beanbean Kingdom coins (where the game takes place), your reward is about 1% of what you thought it would be.
• Mass Effect:
  • At the very end of the trilogy, it's heavily implied that the series' Dialogue Trees and Multiple Endings exist because the whole series is being narrated by an elderly man to a child, thousands of years after Shepard saved the universe from the Reapers. Because so much time has passed since war with the Reapers, "The Shepard" is now so Shrouded in Myth that the specifics of their life—including their personality, appearance, and gender—are uncertain, and there are multiple conflicting stories about how their adventures really happened. Every time you replay the games and make different choices, you're playing through a different version of the story.
  • In Mass Effect 2, Shepard has a customizable appearance because he/she is resurrected by Cerberus in the first act and given facial reconstructive surgery to perfect their appearance after a seemingly fatal spaceship crash. During the obligatory "customize character" sequence, you're supposedly controlling the Cerberus operative saddled with the task of rebuilding Shepard's body. Cleverly, Shepard's face is covered by a helmet during the prologue sequence before their death, so you never see what he/she really looked like before the surgery (if you skipped the first game, that is). This also serves as a justification for Shepard's stats getting knocked back to where they started after the first game: Shepard has a new body, and must relearn all of their old skills.
  • While an Engineer Shepard solves most problems with the same blend of gunplay and powers that marks any other class, there are certain circumstances where this class is given a unique option stemming from their brainpower and technical skill — Engineers in 2 gain an increasing discount on research costs from their class-specific passive skill, since they have enough of a grasp on the science behind the things you're making to help Mordin design and build them without needing as much material, and in the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3, they have the only class-specific interrupt in the franchise, allowing them to make a reactor dance to their tune rather than having to spend some time programming it to do what you want or sacrifice thousands of civilians to save a crime boss.
  • How the gameplay treats kinetic barriers (shields) started as Integration but then became Segregation in later games. The Codex describes barriers as activating in response to fast moving objects, allowing them to block bullets and shrapnel but still allowing the user to sit and hold things. Unfortunately this meant that in Mass Effect melee attacks and rachni's poison attacks became That One Attack, because, keeping to the lore, they bypass barriers entirely and do direct damage to health no matter how strong your barriers are. This proved such a loathed aspect that the combat overhaul for 2 changed barriers (and armor) to just another layer of health that all attacks effect largely the same, contradicting the lore but significantly reducing players' blood pressure.
• OMORI has tons of it.
  • Every character has a Follow-Up attack that represents how each character fits into the friend group from Omori's perspective. Omori has two Follow-Ups that involve him attacking by himself, highlighting his (or rather, Sunny's) withdrawn and passive nature.
  • If Kel is at the front of the party, he'll refuse to eat the pickles at Mari's picnic. You have to switch to another character to restore your health.
  • Your party's skills and stats are not relevant to the game's ending. After all, Headspace is All Just a Dream.
  • On One Day Left in the real world, Aubrey will slap Kel for making a lame joke in a cutscene. Checking your party's stats afterwards shows that Kel is missing 10 HP.
  • There's a lot of trash in the Recycultist HQ, but eagle-eyed players will notice that the trash they pick up there isn't actually added to their inventory. The whole dungeon is just Sunny's daydream, so of course you don't get anything from it.
  • The console ports have fancy borders added to the game. The default border for Headspace is a drawing of the six main characters' faces on a purple background. When the player enters Humphrey, the group forgets about Basil entirely due to Sunny's thought repression and the drawing of Basil on the border is subtly replaced with a flower.
• Planescape: Torment seems to build the premise of its vast story on integrating desired RPG gameplay conventions:
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: a great deal of the plot revolves around around finding out why the main character comes back to life if killed. In addition, said character can gain an ability to resurrect other party members without using a spell, because he has power to draw tormented souls to himself, and they all fit the bill. Also, intentionally springing death traps and getting yourself killed repeatedly is required to solve one puzzle in the game which was built so only that person could solve it.
  • Amnesiac Hero: the other great plot axis is recovering the nameless main character's lost memories and piecing back his identity. This also explains why the character can have such powerful unknown rivals and caches waiting specifically for him, while starting as a weakling.
  • Karma Meter: True to Dungeons & Dragons form, Character Alignment exists, and characters can discuss and sometimes sense it. It effects and is effected by both gameplay and story choices. The character's previous incarnations are also divided by alignment, and Arc Words are "What can change the nature of a man?".
  • Character attributes: all attributes effect both gameplay and story. Mental attributes emphasize opening more dialog and story choices and provide some gameplay benefits (experience point gain, learning spells, shop prices), while physical attributes mostly provide combat bonuses and have occasional effects on dialog options (such as physical threats and catching pickpockets in the act). Different dialog choices can also raise characters' attributes.
• Undertale is built on this trope. All sorts of RPG conventions are given silly explorations at the very least (Papyrus has been working on a few sentences to stand around and repeat), and at most are serious plot points.
  • Why are there puzzles everywhere that you have to solve? Puzzles are a major part of monster culture (the initial idea was to create a roadblock for invading humans), with Papyrus in particular being very enthusiastic about (if not all that talented at) making puzzles.
  • Why does everything outside of towns try to kill you? Fantastic Racism against humans is very common in the Underground (and seven human souls-of which you're the seventh- are needed to escape the Underground), so some monsters (the ones who know what humans look like) will attack you on sight. Some other monsters genuinely don't realize that they're putting you in danger; Vulkin, for example, mistakenly believes that the lava they shoot heals people. Finally, there's an in-game document that reveals that Magic (read: Bullet Hell) is quite simply just another way that Monsters express and communicate themselves through.
  • Why do you find equipment scattered around the world? It belonged to previous children who fell into the Underground, and in many cases was left where it was when they died.
  • ACTs generally affect monsters according to their personality, which is often your hint for what can be done to spare them. For example, the spider-like boss Muffet will immediately spare you if you use an item you got from the Spider Bake Sale in the ruins (or if you buy one of the items she's selling right before the fight), because it proves to her that you have spiders' best interests at heart. Otherwise, you'll need to wait a while for your opportunity. Asgore can be seriously debuffed if you eat the pie you got from Toriel in his fight, because he still misses her.
  • Of course, the big reveal you're basing the plot around is that the save/reset system isn't just an Anti-Frustration Feature so players don't have to slog through the whole game again if they accidentally do something wrong or lose a fight, your character is actually rewinding time whenever they need a do-over, and certain characters, most notably Flowey, keep memories of previous timelines. Flowey had this power before you showed up, and used it to keep the Underground in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. When he temporarily wrests the power back in the finale, you can't save the game and the game will crash if he defeats you in his boss fight (You retrying the fight is justified as Flowey deciding he wasn't done tormenting you and reseting the fight himself so he could beat you again).
• In The Witcher, your amulet starts vibrating when there are hidden monsters or magic sources nearby, to warn you of an imminent attack while exploring. However, when it suddenly starts vibrating next to your Quest Giver, you know something is fishy. And indeed, it turns out that your contact was killed and replaced by the Big Bad hiding under an illusion. On another occasion, you make an actual Story Branching decision via gameplay: when fighting a Striga (Princess Adda in relapse), you can either kill it, like every other monster, or keep fighting it without dealing the final blow until sunrise (tracked by the In-Universe Game Clock!) to lift its curse. Either resolution has a profound impact on the plot.

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