History Main / GravityBarrier

* When outdoor areas in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'' aren't surrounded by {{Invisible Wall}}s or BottomlessPits, they're blocked by cliffs and steep hills.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' uses this on most of the edges of its large map -- nuclear war seems to have kicked up a box-shaped range of mountains around Washington DC. If one tries to swim off the south edge through the Potomac, or walk to an unblocked map edge elsewhere, however, you are simply stopped by a pop-up telling you [[InvisibleWall you can't go any further]]. ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' prefers to block the gaps in the surrounding hills with insurmountable waist-height obstacles such as wrecked vehicles. Both games also have a few barriers of the lethal variety, where falling off a precipice results in mid-air death and a FadeToBlack as if it were a BottomlessPit. Most notable in the ''Lonesome Road'' DLC.

* On that note, the ''VideoGame/JetMoto'' games for the Playstation would often prevent backtracking with huge one-way jumps and large drops off unscalable cliffs. And, of course, half of each game's tracks were loaded with {{Bottomless Pit}}s.

* ''VideoGame/SpyroTheDragon'' uses [[InvisibleWall invisible walls]] to prevent the player from exploring the wide expanse of Greenland surrounding the levels. Charging into them will cause Spyro to stumble back.
* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'', Hyrule is a landlocked valley surrounded on all sides by impassable mountains. [[FridgeLogic Makes you wonder]] where the ship Link was sailing in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening'' set out from.

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' and ''ComicBook/IncredibleHulk'' games in the 2000s have featured these, especially the island-city-and-incidentally-your-hero-can't-swim variety. ''VideoGame/TheIncredibleHulkUltimateDestruction'' uses the ''Prototype'' solution in the city section. If Hulk falls into the water, he automatically jumps back towards shore. Unclimbable cliffs cordon off the desert section.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' has a rooftop chase sequence near the beginning. Even if you manages to slow your descent or jump down from ledge to ledge, if your feet touch the ground you're instantly killed (as if from a fatal fall). ''Episode Two'' adds lush outdoor environments with mountain vistas and sprawling forests... but you will often find your progress restrained by unclimbable cliffs that surround the valleys you traverse.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' has a rooftop chase sequence near the beginning. Even if the player manages to slow their descent, or jump down from ledge to ledge, if their feet touch the ground, they're instantly killed (as if from a fatal fall). The expansion ''Episode 2'' adds lush outdoor environments with mountain vistas and sprawling forests... but the player will often find his progress restrained by unclimbable cliffs that surround the valley Gordon Freeman stands in.

[[folder: First Person Shooters]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' has this in many areas. Falling off a cliff results in instant death, even though you can survive the fall most likely. Jakkob's Cove also kills your character if you try to jump off a cliff to get down to the docks as a shortcut, and going too far out in the water also kills you.

** Even though [[CutscenePowerToTheMax in various cutscenes]] you witness Master Chief surviving jumps and falls from ''the outer atmosphere''... fall 50 feet or so in-game and you're dead. Oddly enough, you die in mid-air rather than on landing. Even worse, many supposedly harmless drops are guarded by instant-kill barriers, usually to prevent players from short-cutting. Notoriously prevalent in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}''. For example, on the Arbiter mission "The Oracle", even if you try to shortcut down the shaft by running around the narrow ledges, you will still be foiled by the death barrier (unless you get lucky and somehow avoid it). And then there are the water barriers, where MC suddenly acquires SuperDrowningSkills.

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal2}}'' has these towards the end. Normally, Chell takes no damage from falling, since she's wearing the long-fall boots (Chell even falls over 4 km and survives at one point.) However, the last set of puzzles has a bunch of pits which kill you if you fall in them. Oddly, earlier puzzles had similar pits that killed you, but with a plausible and more immediate explanation (there's toxic waste in the pits), but the pits in chapter 8 onwards are empty.

[[folder: Massively Multiplayer Online Games]]

[[folder: Racing Games]]

[[folder: Role Playing Games]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' uses this on most of the edges of its large map -- nuclear war seems to have kicked up box-shaped range of mountains around Washington DC. If one tries to swim off the south edge through the Potomac, or walk to an unblocked map edge elsewhere, however, you are simply stopped by a pop-up telling you [[InvisibleWall you can't go any further]]. ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' prefers to block the gaps in the surrounding hills with insurmountable waist-height obstacles such as wrecked vehicles. Both games also have a few barriers of the lethal variety, where falling off a precipice results in mid-air death and a FadeToBlack as if it were a BottomlessPit. Most notable in the ''Lonesome Road'' DLC.

[[folder: Survival Horror]]

[[folder: Wide Open Sandboxes]]

* ''VideoGame/MotocrossMadness'' had a GravityBarrier that can actually be scaled, allowing you to face the ''second'' safeguard: the [[InvisibleWall Invisible Cannon]].

[[AC:Tabletop games]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{Ironclaw}}'' included a GravityBarrier in a TabletopRPG. In the middle of the map are the Walls of Calabria: a v-shaped cliff formation leagues long and a mile and a half high. Of course, they're not as much of an obstacle for the flying races, and the second edition reveals that a Noble House of Bats claim the caves riddling it as their domain.

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'' has these around many of its [[SceneryPorn incredibly huge and detailed environments]], where the characters will fall to their doom if they cross them. Justified, as most of the game takes place across the bodies of two continent-sized giants.

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' and ''ComicBook/IncredibleHulk'' games in the 2000s have featured these, especially the island-city-and-incidentally-your-hero-can't-swim variety. ''The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction'' uses the ''Prototype'' solution in the city section. If Hulk falls into the water, he automatically jumps back towards shore. Unclimbable cliffs cordon off the desert section.

** Beyond X/Z ±32,000,000 meters, the blocks cease to be solid, so traveling here will cause you to fall into the Void.

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' makes it [[RuleOfThree a hat trick]] for the series. However, the super-tall mountains can be scaled fairly easily with a [[AutomatonHorse horse]], leading to the [[http://i.imgur.com/Xaoka.jpg "Physics? B***, I'm a horse"]] {{meme|ticMutation}}.

** ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1'' had gravity barriers. There is a hill in the Marble Zone (part one) that you can run down but cannot run back up. It also had others that you could only go back up very slowly. So, gravity-impatience barriers. Now, the latest ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' games have entire levels SURROUNDED by these, which, due to the inexplicable insistence on extremely linear paths, winds up with long stretches of road over BottomlessPits. This hasn't been met with much applause.

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'':

** Even though [[CutscenePowerToTheMax in various cutscenes]] you witness Master Chief surviving jumps and falls from ''the outer atmosphere''... fall 50 feet or so in-game and you're dead. Oddly enough, you die in mid-air rather than on landing. Even worse, many supposedly harmless drops are guarded by instant-kill barriers, usually to prevent players from shortcutting. Notoriously prevalent in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}''. For example, on the Arbiter mission "The Oracle", even if you try to shortcut down the shaft by running around the narrow ledges, you will still be foiled by the death barrier (unless you get lucky and somehow avoid it). And then there are the water barriers, where MC suddenly acquires SuperDrowningSkills.

** You can try to fly from Northrend to Eastern Kingdoms only to discover that it doesn't exist there. The map says that the [=PC=] is over Eastern Kingdoms land, but it dies anyway.

* ''Franchise/SlyCooper'' levels tend to be bounded by mountains and water.

* The ''SuperMarioBros'' and ''VideoGame/WarioLand'' platformers will often have secret items on high platforms unreachable unless the character comes back with the special feather, leaf, or other item that allows them to fly.

* Recent ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' and ''IncredibleHulk'' games have featured these, especially the island-city-and-incidentally-your-hero-can't-swim variety. ''The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction'' uses the ''Prototype'' solution in the city section. If Hulk falls into the water, he automatically jumps back towards shore. Unclimbable cliffs cordon off the desert section.