History Main / CutAndPasteEnvironments

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' re-uses the same room design for mines, and for planetary outposts. The sole variation is in the placement of crates used for cover. And even then, a lot of outposts have the crates piled in the exact same manner. These are [[JustifiedTrope partly justifiable]] in that some places like the bases and bunkers could be pre-fab, and thus more likely to be bought because they would be much cheaper (as for the ships, well, doesn't the interior of every Mustang look alike?). This doesn't work so well for mines however, and even the underground bunkers all share the same orange rock wall colour. The uncharted planets meanwhile are all made up of amazingly similar hilly terrain, the only difference being that each planet had a slightly different color scheme. This is because all the terrain is determined by the height value of points on the terrain; the look of the terrain itself is determined by how steep it is. This leaves very little oppurtunity to have distinctive environments.

** One might say that the entire campaign would qualify, what with basically having to play the first half of the game over again after the library.
** In the original Halo, pretty much every interior level consisted of completely identical rooms one right after the other, with fresh enemies being the only sign that you are not in the same room you just came from.

** ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'' likes to feature many rooms exactly two times.

** Central City counts as well. There are tow parts that look exactly the same, in fact, even the ''landmarks'' are the same.

* The "shops in sandbox games/RPG's all with the same interior" variety is referenced in ''Comicbook/ScottPilgrim''. The title character wanders into a Second Cup coffee shop, expecting to find there his sister, who works in one, but is confused when he finds other person (his ex-girlfriend, kinda) attending it instead, then a caption says "Scott suddenly realized for the first time, that all Second Cup exteriors do not lead to the same Second Cup interior".

* The original ''Videogame/PlanetSide'' had only a few base types at release, most of which were visually very similar except for the layout of rooms. At most, the only difference between a base on one continent and the same type of base across the continent or on an entirely different continent was the placement of defensive pillboxes outside and the courtyard's ground texture. Tactics for taking a base almost never varied unless it was in a special position, such as Cyssor's Gunuku Dropship Center, which was isolated on a small island.

* The Northern Island in ''Videogame/BatmanArkhamOrigins'' is the same area that would eventually become [[Videogame/BatmanArkhamCity Arkham City.]] But with major structural changes.

* ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' frequently reuses room layouts, with the only differences being the placement of objects.

** The same issue returns in ''Videogame/PlanetSide 2'', particularly at release; all bases were copy+pasted and there was only about 5 base types and with less than a half dozen independent building designs. Later updates made bases more unique and with unique rooms, such as the underground bases on Amerish, though surface facilities still frequently suffer from having identical buildings.

Game developers have a limited time to develop their games; some have limitations of budget. Sometimes, though moreso in the past than nowadays, they have limitations forced on them by the particular platform they're developing on. And some game developers are just lazy.

* ''VideoGame/StarOcean1'' has only two designs for its ports, one that faces west and one that faces east (with Sylvalant port looking like every other east-facing port but with snow over it). A better examples is the Seven Star Ruins BonusDungeon, which is 30 floors of descending through mostly the same caverns with only differences being in puzzles and treasure.

-->--'''Covetous Shen''', [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]] the dungeon design in ''VideoGame/DiabloIII''.

[=MMORPGs=] (and other forms of [[WideOpenSandbox Wide Open Sandboxes]] for that matter) are big users of this trope, but they mostly do so for reasons of economy. They have a huge world that needs building, and any cost-cutting measures they can find are of value. First-person shooters are also a common victim of this, reusing versions of their single-player maps for multiplayer (or vice-versa, depending on which side the developers are focusing on).

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* In {{Lemmings}}, about a third of the game is reused levels. (Technically, though, most such levels are reused before they're used the first time.)
* Infamously, the Library level in ''HaloCombatEvolved''.

** Halo 2 likes to feature many rooms exactly two times.

* AnarchyOnline. Pick a quest, ANY QUEST: 150% of the time the rooms will look dead similar, right down to the kitchen sink.
* It is a running joke among players of the MMORPG ''CityOfHeroes'' that only one architect designed all the buildings in Paragon City, and he was either insane or on serious drugs. Office buildings all have the same basic room and hallway components, and in some cases they aren't even randomized; warehouse interiors are also suspiciously uniform, right down to the big multi-level room at the end of one map branch where you usually find the villain boss for the mission. Similarly, there is a large but limited number of texture maps for building exteriors.

** ''SuperMarioBros.'' for NES (40 KB) used repeating patterns three screens wide for decorative backgrounds such as hills and clouds. It also reused about two models for castle exteriors (small and large). On top of that, 5 entire levels were reused, as well as World 4-4 and 7-4 which would actually loop if the player takes the wrong path.
*** Additionally, they used the exact same sprite for the clouds and bushes the only difference being the clouds were white where as the bushes were green.
*** ''SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels'' had more unique level layouts, except for World C, which was a complete copy-and-paste of World 7.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda'' for NES (128 KB) encoded each map screen as a list of 16 vertical columns as tall as the screen, causing some areas to look familiar. The dungeons were comprised of combinations of only a handful of room layouts, with only the doors, enemies, treasures, and so on being different.
** The original ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' (128 KB) had a lot of rooms and areas that looked alike, making navigation hell. Interestingly, this was more to make use of limited cartridge space than lazy level design.

** ''Shatterhand'' has a somewhat unique example: One of the levels has a part where a player rides up an elevator while avoiding gears, enemies and fire. This section is then repeated without the last two threats as a boss arena. The highest parts of these two shafts have even the same gear positions as well as a item box for you to collect.
* In ''PlanescapeTorment'' you can go into an area called the Rubicon where Modrons (beings of pure law) are trying to study dungeon crawls. [[JustifiedTrope Because they are beings of law they created a dungeon area of almost completely identical rooms]] (the only difference being which exits are open and how many creatures are present). The only unique rooms are the control center, a boss fight room and a room where you can pick up a character.

* ''Smuggler's Run'' has three settings, one of which is the exact same as an earlier one, but covered in snow.

* The world of ''{{Drakengard}}'' is composed of bleak landscape after bleak landscape after bleak landscape, with biome differences (forests ARE different from deserts, after all) to tell you where you are. Every building you enter in the game has an annoying tendency to have all its rooms look alike, with some notable exceptions.

* Sega employs this trope liberally for the post-millennial PhantasyStar games: ''Phantasy Star Online,'' ''Phantasy Star Universe,'' ''Phantasy Star Portable,'' and ''Phantasy Star Zero.'' Phantasy Star Online is the worst offender, tropewise: The first PSO game told an entire story, with side stories, optional missions and all, '''in the same four reused maps.''' (This isn't even counting how many of the enemies encountered were reskins that used the same character "skeleton" and animations!) The addon/sequels to PSO often included [[DittoFighter reskins of previous content]], especially [[PaletteSwap bosses and enemies]]. ''Phantasy Star Universe'' and ''Portable'' tried to add variety to layouts of the same area, but it's still based on the same concept--and despite having more content to begin with than the first ''Phantasy Star Online,'' it was more or less the same as PSO with all its add-ons (that is to say, it's got a lot of reskinned areas, enemies, and bosses--just with different behavior flags).

** This is not unique to ''Franchise/MassEffect'' for Bioware games. ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'' was built on this; there were innumerable room interiors that were all the same except for some minor set dressing like tables and detritus. Indeed, that's how NWN levels are built; they're like 3D tilemaps. Oddly, ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' averted this, despite using a modified version of the NWN engine. Interestingly, their earlier ''BaldursGate'' series games were rather different, with each outdoor environment and the vast majority of the dungeon environments being ''hand-drawn'', with certain stock elements included where necessary (doors and trees in the main). Quite an achievement given the sheer size, number and detail of the maps that had to be created.

* ''LimboOfTheLost'' offers a very literal interpretation of this trope: Nearly every single one of the game's prerendered background scenes is [[{{Plagiarism}} copied straight from elsewhere]], sometimes with some tweaking to try and cover it up, or placement of props that, once again, are reused.

* The Adaman Sea level towards the end of ''Franchise/TombRaider: Underworld'' is a level that is an almost literal copy-paste of a previous level with different weather conditions, people have even noted that the location of many of the enemies is the same (although the fact you have a {{BFG}} at this point at least mercifully means you can breeze through it in a few minutes).

* ''RogueGalaxy'' is a particularly painful sufferer of this - every level is about twice as long as it has any right to be, and only uses two or three kinds of texture.
* ''EvEOnline'' follows this trope to the letter. Each race has a handful of different station, stargate and planet designs. Agents assign you to a mission randomly picked from a relatively small pool. Also, several NPC factions use ships from one of the major factions, with the only difference being the paint job.

** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in ''[[VideoGameRemake FireRed/LeafGreen]]''; the hotel looks the same but the Pokémon centers have a new layout. However, this means that the receptionist's line no longer makes sense.

* ''InfinityTheQuestForEarth'' features procedural generation of terrain. On one hand, this means no one spot on any of the billions of realistically-sized planets is perfectly identical. On the other, it means some planets are bound to look very similar to each other.
* ''TheConduit'' plays this trope straight. While many of the earlier levels are repetitive (somewhat justified in that they take place in repetitive real-world buildings), the player can also use the [[SwissArmyWeapon ASE]] to show a path to the next waypoint.

* During development, one of Bungie's promotional points for ''{{Oni}}'' was that its buildings were designed by ''real architects'' for the player to fight through. The game ended up with a lot of Cut And Paste Environments because that's how real architecture ''works''.

* Some pseudo-random level generators used in a variety of games, from ''{{X-Com}}'' to ''{{Spelunky}}'' and even ''NetHack'', use Cut And Paste ''Level Elements'' - while the overall shape of the level differs each time, the maps are generated with some sections of level that are always designed in a particular manner:
** ''{{X-Com}}'' uses massive tiles which are composites to plant houses and [=UFOs=] down, and certain sections of an Alien Base always have the same basic layout.
*** ''{{X-Com}} Apocalypse'' plays it completely straight way with fully premade levels. For example, every UFO of a given type always crashes into the same landscape regardless of location.

** ''NetHack'' features "Special Levels", where the floor is mostly pregenerated and stored in the game's database. Most of these premade levels are either Quest Levels, part of the Sokoban {{shoutout}}, or part of the Endgame. Even then, enough random events and monsters make each experience unique.
** ''{{Spelunky}}'' uses large blocks of level formations, which are slotted together and adjusted by pathfinding software to prevent/minimise [[{{Unwinnable}} inescapable]] situations where the player is forced to have bombs or rope on hand. An addition randomising routine makes little changes here and there to keep things interesting, and all items and enemies are always randomly placed, with the exception of Special Level Elements very much like Nethack's.

* The ''BaldursGate'' series had a large number of houses you could break into. And most of them used the exact same layout...
* The revamped version of ''[=OGame=]'' gives planets in different positions different {{Palette Swap}}s but every planet in an equivalent position has the same background.

* In ''ShadowTheHedgehog'', there are two levels in which Shadow is transported to his memory in the past, The Doom and Lost Impact. Completing certain missions that don't just involve getting to the goal ring, especially in Lost Impact, is arduous as every room looks very similar and there are not quite enough distinctive features in each area.

* ''UltimaVI'' constructs its "cave" dungeons from geomorphs. This wouldn't be so bad if most of the dungeons weren't part of a ''single ginormous world-spanning cave,'' so one wrong turn can leave you unbelievably lost.

* In ''{{Mafia}}: City of Lost Heaven'', buildings repeat textures. While this is not too much distracting with bricks and such, seeing several "Pete's Restaurant" buildings is a big jarring.

* While playing ''AlanWake'', you may get tired of seeing trees due to Alan having to trudge through a thick forest at night in almost every level. Yahtzee even remarked on this, saying that the game repeatedly makes up excuses for you to be doing so.

* ''VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptunia'' definitely abused this trope. You'll see backgrounds from ''RecordOfAgarestWar'', and ''VideoGame/TrinityUniverse'' and almost every single enemy came from even beyond those series. Luckily, [[{{Neptunia}} later games]] actually had a ''budget'', due to somehow outselling the aforementioned games by far.
* MMORPG ''{{Vindictus}}'' does this, but in a fairly creative way. All combat is in instanced dungeons, known as "missions," set in specific regions. Each region has a limited number of landscape/room/landmark features. Each time a dungeon is generated, it uses a semi-random selection of available features. Certain missions will invariably have certain features every time, and the boss rooms are always the same for each mission; but there will also be a few randomly-generated features as well. Particularly egregious with The Labyrinth.

* Similar to GTA, ''SaintsRow'' does this for its various shops. Taken to an extreme in ''The Third'', where there are about three unique clothing shops in Steelport - ''every other one in the city'' is a Planet Saints.
* ''GuildWars'' did a decent job avoiding this for most of its run with largely unique zones. However, in ''Eye of the North'' dungeon design bested their development team. Rooms were often copied in several dungeons with only a few remaining unique to a single dungeon.

* ''VideoGame/{{Jak}} 3'' could be considered this in the way that Haven City shares almost all of the layout, landmarks, models and textures to its appearance in Jak II, except for the added destruction. Justifiable for the sake of continuity, and doing so made an actual emotional impact on players as they saw a place they were so familiar with in ruins.

* ''PAYDAY 2'' reuses some maps and/or its assets many times. The bank heist has ''five'' levels dedicated to it and they all use the exact same layout. The Ukrainian Job is a copied version of Jewelry Store with different assets used to make the level slightly different.

* ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon FEAR]]'' frequently reuses room layouts, with the only differences being the placement of objects.

[[folder: Comic Books ]]
* The "shops in sandbox games/RPG's all with the same interior" variety is referenced in ScottPilgrim. The title character wanders into a Second Cup coffee shop, expecting to find there his sister, who works in one, but is confused when he finds other person (his ex-girlfriend, kinda) attending it instead, then a caption says "Scott suddenly realized for the first time, that all Second Cup exteriors do not lead to the same Second Cup interior".

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]
* A rare Live Action TV example occurs in {{Caprica}}. As Zoe-A and Philomon travel in the Virtual World, Zoe-A makes note of the repeated objects and discusses the possibilities of a generative software to independently create environments and objects. The idea is that a program that takes the basic pattern of an object (a tree in this example) but build over it would prevent Cut and Paste environments.

[[folder: Web Animation]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]
* Recently built subdivisions can tend to look like this, often having only 2 or 3 house designs repeated throughout the entire area.

* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilTheUmbrellaChronicles'' has the train and mansion chapters ported directly from the games they appeared in, namely ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil0'' and the Gamecube remake of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil''. ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilTheDarksideChronicles'' has the police station ripped straight from The Umbrella Chronicles since the game takes place in the exact same location.

* Some people [[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/06/increasing-bank-branches-in-manhattan.html argue that this is happening to Manhattan]] thanks to the proliferation of chains like 7-Eleven and Duane Reade and bank storefronts. It's a common complaint that the high streets of England consist of exactly the same chain stores and restaurants these days. If there are any independent stores selling the same stuff, they are usually in trouble.

* Some people [[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/06/increasing-bank-branches-in-manhattan.html argue that this is happening to Manhattan]] thanks to the proliferation of chains like 7-Eleven and Duane Reade and bank storefronts.
** It's a common complaint that the high streets of England consist of exactly the same chain stores and restaurants these days. If there are any independent stores selling the same stuff, they are usually in trouble.

** ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'' plays this out with its BonusDungeon, the Chrysler Building. Although each floor, except every 10th is randomized in layout, every hall and storage room are all identical. Every single floor uses the same exact decor for the walls and floors.
** Another TruthInTelevision example - when architects build a community neighborhood, they'll generally have [[CutAndPasteSuburb three to six house layouts that they build multiple times]]. It's much easier and a lot cheaper to put together fifteen copies of four different houses than sixty unique houses. This planned repetitiveness and conformity is part of what makes the StepfordSuburbia an effective trope.

* It is a running joke among players of the MMORPG ''CityOfHeroes'' that only one architect designed all the buildings in Paragon City, and he was either insane or on serious drugs (or [[Literature/{{Discworld}} Bergholt Stuttley Johnson]]). Office buildings all have the same basic room and hallway components, and in some cases they aren't even randomized; warehouse interiors are also suspiciously uniform, right down to the big multi-level room at the end of one map branch where you usually find the villain boss for the mission. Similarly, there is a large but limited number of texture maps for building exteriors.

* ''VideoGame/WarioLad'':

* ''VideoGame/WarioLand Shake It'' used this for the secret levels, often without even a colour change (and those that were had changes such as in one case going from having a dark blue sky to a red sky). Kind of saddening, considering the fourth game used a completely different background per level.

* [[GoldBox SSI Gold Box]] RPG ''Secret of the Silver Blades'' uses this extensively, along with some engine tricks, to create huge, sprawling areas; within a few minutes of exploration a player will see the same basic room layouts over and over again.

* You could count the number of different backgrounds used in an episode of ''DSBTInsaniT'' on one finger!

* ''VideoGame/{{Something Else}}: The fourth part of the Space Hideout is based on Forest of Illusion 2, but the enemies are replaced with Thwomps and the water physics have been removed.

* ''{{FEAR}}'' frequently reuses room layouts, with the only differences being the placement of objects.