Weakened By The Light / Video Games

Examples of Weakened by the Light in Video Games

• Alan Wake: The game's combat system is based entirely around using light (from flashlights, flares, flashbang grenades, etc.) to damage or render vulnerable the Taken (humans who've been possessed by the Dark Presence): a standard flashlight takes a while to stun an enemy and burn off their darkness shield, but a heavy-duty work light burns them much faster. The best weapons in the game are the Flare Gun and the flashbang: the flare gun will instantly kill anything short of a boss (and do significant damage to bosses) while also dealing Splash Damage when the flare explodes, and flashbangs will kill anything too close to the blast.
• Chaotic units in Battle for Wesnoth are weakened by light; generally this is sunlight provided by the day-night cycle, but some special illuminated hexes (such as lava tiles) and powerful light-magic auras can achieve similar effects.
• The Immortals from Boktai are all harmed by sunlight. You can harm and even kill enemies (and one boss) by luring them under skylights, and to kill immortals once and for all you have to use a machine that zaps them with amplified beams of light.
• In the Boogeyman games, shining your flashlight on the boogeyman is the only way you can keep him at bay.
• In Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, all outdoor creatures are stronger when it is nighttime.
• The "Phantom" boss in Chasm: The Rift is killed by luring him into the light after activating three switches. The manual lampshades this by hinting that he is "dying to see the light."
• Codename: Kids Next Door - Operation: V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E.: Count Spankulot and his spank-happy minions are immune to your attacks in the dark, so you'll need light from bug zappers and spotlights in order for your attacks to work against them, or simply use a Powuh Shot.
• You in Dark Watch. You don't get damaged but you lose your vampire abilities until you either find shade or get close enough to a certain McGuffin.
• The Infected from Deceit are slowed down by bright lights, and cannot transform into their Super Mode when the lights are on. Common tactics for delaying an Infected during blackouts are shining a flashlight in their eyes before capping them in the skull with a pistol, taking pictures of them with a camera (flash included) and capping them in the skull with a pistol, and deploying a Flashbang trap that gets triggered when they get too close to it and then capping them in the skull with a pistol.
• Doppelganger the Deathvoid in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is a Living Shadow who's invincible while in the darkness. But when exposed to light, he's stunned and temporarily vulnerable to your attacks.
• Inverted in Digital Devil Saga 2, where the Sinister Sentient Sun kills everyone except for those infected with the Demon Virus.
• Disgaea's platforming spin-off, Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?, takes a spin on this. The game starts during the morning, and as the stages are cleared and the story advances, time passes until it's dark out, with the difficulty gradually increasing, both seen with the stages changing and adding new elements, and the end of stage bosses getting tougher. It's generally believed that weaker demons are out during the daytime to avoid the stronger demons who come out to play at night, though there do seem to be some exceptions.
• The Big Bad of Dragonfable the Mysterious Stranger's original form had this weakness. He spent the entire game manipulating Sepulchre, the Shadowscythe, and even the heroes so he could create a more powerful body that wouldn't have this weakness. He recently succeeded by merging with the near-dead Drakath Darkness Dragon (itself a fusion of Drakath, Fluffy the Dracolich and the Ultimate Orb) and became the Ultimate Darkness Dragon. He then summoned every spirit of darkness in the world out of hiding to blanket the world in darkness. Luckily, though, he neglected to create a weakness to the newest element, which is then harnessed by the hero...the Element of Bacon.
• Ghosts in Dragon's Crown could only be defeated by light, which generally means you need to approach them with fire to banish them. Thankfully, the game provides you with convenient torches whenever you encounter them. The Wraith boss, being a higher class of Ghost, couldn't be banished by a simple torch, but could be damaged if you manage to light the candle of the nearby Goddess Statues. It also couldn't approach a room filled with sunlight, giving your characters an avenue of escape if you're unable to defeat it with the available holy candles.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, all known bloodlines of vampire are, at the very least, weaker in sunlight than they are at night. This ranges from a mild irritation which prevents natural healing and Magicka regen, to outright being burned by sunlight and potentially being killed by it. The Vvardenfell strain of vampires in Morrowind are outright damaged by sunlight no matter when they last fed. In Oblivion, sunlight could kill them, the longer they went without drinking blood the more damage they took. Fast traveling in daylight could prove lethal. In Skyrim sunlight stops vampires regenerating health, stamina and magicka, something non-vampires can naturally do. Online includes a vampire bloodline who are not harmed by sunlight, but simply have far greater power during the night.
• For both Fallen London and Sunless Sea, practically everything that's even slightly off in the Neath, be it the local Fantastic Drug, people who've died and come back, or even simple jewel-like stuff from the roof called Glim, will either be violently un-weirded or simply destroyed outright, with Prisoner's Honey becoming regular honey, Glim melting into useless goo, and people who've either died and revived or simply stayed long enough spontaneously bursting into flames. Devils don't risk going to the surface presumably for the same reason, and it's simply terribly difficult to get anything that bends the laws of physics even slightly to survive on the surface for this reason. This doesn't stop people from catching light in special mirrored boxes and smuggling them back in. Apparently, sunlight is also dangerously addictive, especially for something that literally burns you alive. And hilariously enough unscrupulous dealers cut it with moonlight, which leads to weird visions of a timeline that never happened along with the horrible burning. There is a good justification for this: sunlight is used by the Judgements, living stars, to enforce the laws of physics. The Neath, mostly hidden from sun's light, has pretty wonky physics that the Judgements don't approve of.
• In the Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt, the Trogs are oversensitive to light, and Ashur's henchmen have installed floodlights in Uptown to keep them out. Wernher's solution to the quest line involves turning off the lights and turning the Trogs loose on the slavers.
• The Tunnelers from Fallout: New Vegas: Lonesome Road, who are an Underground Monkey Palette Swap of the Trogs, are similarly photophobic due to decades of living underground, thus Flashbangs and Flare Guns are very effective at repelling or frenzying them.
• In Final Fantasy XV, Daemons only come out at night because they burn up in the daylight. Episode Ardyn reveals that this also applies to Ardyn, a humanoid Daemon, himself. However, unlike other Daemons, the Healing Factor provided by the highly concentrated Starscourge within him is more than powerful enough to overcome the damage inflicted by the sunlight. The constant cycle of burning and regenerating is still quite painful, which is why he covers up his body and wears his trademark hat to shield himself from the sunlight.
• Constance from Fire Emblem: Three Houses hates sunlight and sinks into a state of depression and self-loathing if she has to go outdoors when it's not raining or about to storm. In gameplay terms, her personal skill, "Circadian Beat", grants her attack power bonuses when she's deployed on indoor maps (or some outdoor maps where the sun isn't directly bearing down on her), but she loses those buffs in favor of defensive bonuses on outdoor maps, and her Character Portrait and battle quotes become more pessimistic.
• Gears of War: Kryll have an aversion to light.
• In Gems of War, Sapphira insists on Trial by Combat (having been refused a proper trial), but her accusers insist that it be fought in broad daylight. Since she's a vampire, this is a problem for her.
• Vampires in Golden Krone Hotel take heavy damage from sunlight, enough to instantly kill most of them. Unfortunately, this also applies to the player once the vampirism meter fills up. Light from torches and magic is safe, though.
• Golden Sun:
  • A dragon boss in The Lost Age, Serpent, is weakened significantly the more sunlight you reflect onto him by making use of the environment. Without that he is nigh-unbeatable.
  • The various enemies in Dark Dawn are said to suffer from an extreme case of this, in that they can't emerge in lit areas, but when the Grave Eclipse goes down, they come out en masse. And that's just the start...
  • One city is safe during the Eclipse thanks to the Alchemy-powered lights that constantly illuminate it.
• Mentioned as a gag in Grandia II. Millennia screams about the accursed light of the sun the first time she is seen during the day (The sun had risen while the party was underground). Then she says "Hah! Fooled you, didn't I?".
• Hakuouki:
  • The furies find daylight very uncomfortable and only function well at night. How severely it affects them varies; most are incapable of doing much of anything in daylight, and Sanan, Toudou, and Okita quickly turn nocturnal and spend the daytime resting listlessly if they're awake at all. On the other hand, Determinators Hijikata and Saito steadfastly ignore the discomfort and continue working during the day (and indeed almost stop sleeping entirely); it wears on them and leads to episodes of extremely painful craving for blood, but for the most part they just refuse to give a damn.
  • Experimentation on the "water of life" which creates furies eventually allows Yukimura Kodo to create a strain of fury which functions just fine during the day. Since these furies are made on the Imperial side, this makes life harder for everybody.
• Hanako: At least one Wanderer, when light is shined upon it, will hold its arm over its facial area, while smoke rises off of its body.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic VI Shades of Darkness, Dungeon units have this weakness. They all have the "Blessing of Malassa", which gives them a slight resistance to darkness and a slight weakness to light. While there is a magical reason for it (Malassa is the polar opposite and rival of Elrath the Dragon of Light), it's also partly a Logical Weakness. After living underground for decades, the Dark Elves' eyes just aren't used to sunlight.
• inFAMOUS 2 has the Dunbar Beam, a searchlight with amped up UV powers to fight off the Corrupted. No, they're not just weakened, they spontaneously combust. Even tough creatures like Ravagers fall in three seconds flat thanks to these.
• Played with in AGD Interactive's King's Quest II Fan Remake. An enchantment-breaking talisman requires that sunlight be shined through it onto the person, creature, or item enchanted in order to break the enchantment.
• Kingdom Hearts: The Heartless, as beings of darkness, are weakened and destroyed by light. At the end of the first game, Ansem is also defeated by the light of Kingdom Hearts pouring out of the Door to Darkness.
• In League of Legends Cho'Gath will sometimes scream "The daylight...it burns!" when moving. It doesn't seem to slow him down too much, but maybe he'd be even scarier in darkness.
• The Legacy of Kain series varies from one game to another regarding how light affects vampires. In Blood Omen, Kain is weaker during the day than at night due to the sun's effects, though not outright harmed by it, and light from other sources has no unusual effects. In Soul Reaver, fledgling vampires are killed by exposure to sunlight, but adult vampires are unharmed (with the exception of the Rahabim, who retain their weakness to sunlight into adulthood in exchange for losing their weakness to water). Later games in the series don't mention it one way or the other.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past:
    • Ganon cannot be harmed when he shrouds the boss room in darkness. But if Link lights up the two torches, it temporarily blinds Ganon and leaves him vulnerable to the Master Sword.
    • Blind the Thief might count. You have to expose him to sunlight to reveal his true form, but it happens before the battle starts.
  • Playing the Sun's Song in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time near Redeads will stun them for a while and in Wind Waker, you can stun them for a few seconds by shining light on them with the mirror shield. Also, the Light Arrows make your bow the only weapon able to weaken Ganondorf (which is foreshadowed when you battle Phantom Ganon in the Forest Temple).
  • Stalfos and their variants are often shown as being weak to sunlight. In Ocarina of Time their Stalchild variant will only appear at night, and when the sun comes up will immediately burrow back into the ground. In Breath of the Wild a similar thing happens with the skeletal versions of the common enemies... and if you forcibly keep a stalhorse with you as the sun rises, it will disintegrate in the sunlight.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: while you can defeat the skeleton minibosses normally, they'll just keep reviving over and over unless you shine sunlight on them while they're downed.
  • Redeads, Stone Chus and Poes in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker can be stunned with light. With the latter two, it's the only way to make them vulnerable to conventional attacks.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, our light is not only painful for Twili, but (at least in Midna's case, although she was cursed at the time) fatal.
  • Implied in Wand of Gamelon:
    Ganon: You dare bring light into my lair?! You must die!
• Played straight with the bosses in LIT (2009), and almost any potential source of light (desktop lamps, cherry bombs, etc.) available in the room may be used.
• At one point in The Lost Crown, Nigel must open a window and let in some sunlight to repel a black, smokey entity that is stalking him. Subverted in that actually defeating the entity takes another step or two, and other ghosts in the game are active in broad daylight.
• Luigi's Mansion: most ghosts must be hit by Luigi's flashlight in order to expose their hearts to be sucked up. The ghosts in Dark Moon and Luigi's Mansion 3 can handle Luigi's flashlight just fine, but Elvin Gadd designed a Strobulb which provides a potent flash to disable them. The ghosts respond with a few items to shield themselves, which must be lowered or otherwise removed before they can be zapped and vacuumed.
• A group of magically-enchanted rats in Lunarosse are killed when exposed to sunlight. However, this was an accidental discovery, as the party was just trying to get away and found this out when they smashed the exit wall open.
• During a mission in Mass Effect 2, Shepard and his/her squad fight on a planet orbiting an unstable star. The immense radiation quickly shorts out shields, so Shepard must stay out of the sunlight to maintain a tactical advantage.
• In MechWarrior Living Legends, "Extremity" takes place on an asteroid rapidly revolving in space near a star. When in the shade, battlemechs dissipate heat at an astonishing rate, allowing them to fire lasers almost endlessly. When the sun comes back up, temperatures skyrocket to dangerous levels, making laser-heavy mechs massive deathtraps because firing their weapons has a pretty good chance of causing their fusion reactor to explode.
• The Spiderbugs from Metro: Last Light and Metro Exodus start smouldering just from the light of Artyom's headlamp. Immediately upon contact with the beam, the bugs lit up will scatter back and try to break line of sight; a second or two more will make them flail until they fall on their backs. From there, you can shoot them dead, perform a Finishing Move with a knife, or just keep lighting them up and they'll burn to death.
• In Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the Ing must possess other creatures to enter the Light side of Aether, and use of the Light Beam to energize protective fields on Dark Aether can vaporize weaker Ing.
• Might and Magic VIII: Although it isn't actually shown (the mentions indicate to be to lethal degrees), a plot point relies on vampires being subject to this trope — the Necromancer's Guild of Shadowspire is embroiled in a war with the Church of the Sun, with the war effort hampered by the fact that vampires can only defend Shadowspire during the night (there is a type of amulet that protects against sunlight, but it serves as a handwave for playable vampires — it is far too expensive to outfit an entire army with). Their solution was a localised The Night That Never Ends, but the Church managed to steal the Brazier that had been painstakingly crafted for that purpose. If you want to recruit the Necromancers into the Alliance, you quest is to retrieve the Brazier, tipping the balance of the war in the Guild's favour and making things a lot easier for vampire members of the Guild.
• None of the hostile monsters will spawn in Minecraft if there is enough light. In addition, spiders become non-aggressive during sunlight while zombies and skeletons will outright burn.
• Exaggerated with the Gremlin enemies from Monster Hunter (PC). They're based on the 80s movie, alright, but with their weakness to light dialed all the way to the max - getting a torchlight to their face for two seconds and they start melting into a puddle.
• Revenants in Nexus Clash get their power from the death-goddess Hashaa and are weakened or even outright harmed by daylight.
• In NieR, Shades take damage when exposed to direct sunlight. As such, they tend only to be active in indoor areas or when skies are overcast. After the Time Skip, they begin to wear armor to protect themselves from sunlight, but their armor can be damaged or destroyed to expose them.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: All Vampires are hurt by sunlight. In fact, it's the only thing that can hurt the Count.
• The final form of Ōkami's boss, Yami, is powered up by darkness and weakened by sunlight. Fortunately, you, as the wolf-goddess Amaterasu, can Cue the Sun.
• Pikmin 3: The cave-dwelling Phosbats take continuous damage when in the light of a Glowcap or Light Bulb. Their adult form, the Vehemoth Phosbat, does not lose health in the light, but can be temporarily stunned by it, and enough light in an area prevents it from becoming invisible.
• Implied with the final boss in Pinball Quest; hitting the candles around the chamber increases the damage you inflict.
• Polyroll: The boss of the Marble Museum world is a ghost that doesn't take damage from Polyroll's normal attacks. It can only by defeated by pushing it all the way to the sunlit area at the top of the room and forcing it to stay there for enough time, as the light will gradually damage it. If the boss is allowed to move out of the light, it heals any damage rather quickly.
• In Psychonauts, The Phantom/Jasper Rolls cannot stand the spotlight shining into his eyes due to the fact that as a Straw Critic, Jasper cannot stand any form of positivity and as such his boss fight involves triggering spotlights to hit him so that he's made vulnerable. In the ending of his stage, Jasper is unable to withstand Bonita's radiance and is left to shrink while screaming ineffectual insults, representing Gloria's positivity overcoming her self-hatred.
• Resident Evil 4: Flashbang Grenades can kill Las Plagas instantly. Their light sensitivity is the reason why they don't start emerging from their Ganado hosts until night falls. Though general sunlight immunity has been engineered out of them by the time of the next game, the Flashbangs still work.
• Resident Evil: Revelations 2: the T-Phobos based B.O.Ws all have an intense allergy to light, allowing you to stun them by shining your flashlight on them. One mid-game boss takes this to the level that your best strategy is to first focus your flashlight on him, then offload bullets into his heart when the light-induced overheating causes it to burst through his chest. Doesn't get much more weakened by the light than that...
• In the Kanegasaki Nightmare stage of Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, Oichi is in a "Sleepless Hell" for most of the stage in which she has health regeneration as well as being tougher all around. By capturing the nearby bases the player can light some lanterns that severely weaken her. However, an in-game bonus objective is to beat her without lighting the lanterns.
• In Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf, you have a Puzzle Boss who runs away from spotlights. Curiously enough, he doesn't seem to have a problem with the sunlight when you meet him earlier in the game.
• Sleep Tight (2021): The Player Character is being accosted each night by monsters that will attack them if they get close. That said, their weakness is light, and shining it on them will make them disappear.
• Song of Horror: Downplayed with the Presence. It does not like light, and manifestations of it will retreat when lit up, but the light source has to be fairly intense, such as a ceiling lamp or halogen spotlight. Candles, a lighter's flame or a bog-standard incandescent flashlight's beam just won't cut it.
• In Sonic Adventure 2, the boss of Death Chamber is King Boom Boo, the leader of the Boos. King Boom Boo is invincible in the dark, but is weakened when exposed to sunlight, allowing Knuckles to damage him. King Boom Boo has a small ghost following him around that holds an hourglass that, when flipped, temporarily lets light into the arena.
• In the Zombie Apocalypse mission in Starcraft II, the Infested Terrans will outright burn if caught out in the sun. (They don't exhibit this property in any other map; Hanson mentions Meinhoff's sun emits a ridiculous amount of dangerous UV energy.) This splits the mission into alternating phases of defense (hole up in bunkers and shoot anything that gets close) and offense (burn the whole map to the ground).
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario 3D World: In Bowser's Fury, whenever Mario happens to collect a Cat Shine, its light deals damage to Fury Bowser, forcing him to retreat from one of his rampages. However, as the game goes on and more shines are collected, he begins showing a resistance to the shines, and during the final act, he becomes so unbelievably angry that the Lighthouses warn that their light can no longer contain him, making for a final scramble to collect the final few shines to activate the last Giga Bell.
  • Mario Party 10:
    • The Boos in Haunted Trail will be scared away once Team Mario passes under a streetlight. The streetlights are placed before both of the boss battles on the board.
    • In the boss minigame King Boo's Tricky Tiles, players have to jump across a series of tiles to reach switches that once pressed, cause a Light Box to appear that shines a light that damages King Boo and awards the player points. There are bronze switches that are worth one point and gold switches that are worth three.
    • In Boo Burglars, one player on each team is given a flashlight that they use to shine on Boos to reveal if they have a diamond inside them. Their partner can only grab the diamond with their net if a light is weakening them.
  • Mario Party: Star Rush: In King Boo's Light Smite, participants have to grab one of the Light Boxes that appears at the starting point, and carry it over a series of spinning platforms to bring it to King Boo and shine it on him to damage him and score points.
• Terraria has the somewhat rare Gnome enemies that spawn underground beneath giant Living Trees. If you can lure them out into the sunlight on the surface, they'll be petrified into garden gnome ornaments that increase your luck when nearby them.
• Tornado Outbreak: Players are required to stay within a shaded area at all times, as sunlight is lethal to Wind Warriors, including the protagonist Zephyr.
• Touhou Project has vampires Remilia and Flandre Scarlet, who have the standard weakness to sunlight. The plot of the game they're introduced in, Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, is kicked off by Remilia's attempt to block out the sun with a red mist, so that she can go outside whenever she wants. Unlike some stories' vampires, they wouldn't actually be killed by sunlight. It does, however, turn their skin to ash, which is then absorbed into their body and regenerates into new skin. Presumably, the process repeats for as long as they're in the sun.
• In Turok 2, Blind Ones, due to years of living in darkness, are allergic to sunlight, and thus Sunfire Pods kill them instantly.
• The supernatural creature from White Noise 2 can be stunned by light. This can be used to rescue fellow investigators when it attacks them.
• The ghosts in Wii Party's co-op minigame "Torchlit Terror" can be vanquished by illuminating them with flashlights.
• Defied in The Witcher saga - a vampire (unhurt by sunlight) gives a lecture about how humans, being helpless in the dark, associate light with hope and by extension attribute light sensitivity to many evil creatures.

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