History Main / InformedEquipment

* Totally averted in the ''VideoGame/DiabloII''-inspired ''VideoGame/TitanQuest''. Every individual piece of equipment appears on your in-game character. In fact, ''Titan Quest'' takes it one step further, if a particular monster has a unique item in its inventory to be dropped upon its death, the monster will be shown using that piece of equipment, with the item's model appropriately placed.

* In ''Videogame/{{Diablo}}'', there were very few models, though there were ''some'' different ones for different kinds of armor: specifically light leathery armor, medium chain-y armor, and heavy plate armor. ''Diablo II'' made a branch between early games with no or few extra models and later ones with piles of them, where each class had its own style of armor, and different types of armor each had a different look on each class. Items with abilities that associated with a particular -- such as deep green for poison -- reflected those colors on the character's model, as well.
** Handled ingeniously by splitting the models into different sections and sprites to have more combinations of equipment.
*** Which ends up causing different parts of the character's body to be dyed in accordance with the item. Masks specifically end up dying your Necromancer's normally white hair various colors, and certain one-of-a-kind items will turn a Sorceresses hair into something that looks like a giant bleach-stained towel taped to her head.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' had an informed ''lack'' of equipment in one scene; Peach loses several of her accessories during her forced wedding with Booster, requiring Mario to retrieve them, bur her sprite shows them all still on her. This was fixed in the Switch remake.

* Downplayed by ''VideoGame/TechnoMageReturnOfEternity'', where most defence equipment consists of small accessories like amulets and belts, which would be hard to show on Melvin's sprite, due to the low resolution of the time. There is one exception, Merlin's Cape, which is large enough that equipping it does change the appearance of the cape Melvin wears.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' plays with this for certain races, where boots are concerned. Tauren and draenei both have digitigrade hooves (on which traditional footwear would look odd); [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent worgen]] in wolf form also exhibit a digitigrade stance (which would again make traditional footwear look odd; the boots appear normally when the worgen are in human form). Trolls simply [[DoesNotLikeShoes prefer to go barefoot]]. Unlike other examples of this trope, however, equipping boots for these races actually ''does'' result in a graphical change; the footwear covers the ankles and part of the shin, but stops before the part of the foot that actually touches the ground.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros for 3DS/[=WiiU=]'' has equipment that fighters can equip. They match up with what the fighter wears (for example, overalls can be worn by Mario, Luigi, and Wario), but it doesn't change their appearance.

** In ''VideoGame/CrisisCore'' Zack's outfit doesn't change with his materia and equipment loadouts either. Though he does change his uniform appearance partway through the game, as well as his weapon later.

* All over the VideoGame/RealmsOfArkania trilogy. Especially noticeable in the third game when the whole party is dropped stark naked into the final dungeon due to a shrinking spell but you still see them wearing robes and armor during the fights. Or in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' where you can equip overalls, socks and gloves and say, you don't have any on?

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

** Though in all honesty, could you imagine Mario walking about in Iron Pants and Luigi in School Slacks or whatever?

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'', unlike the previous two games, where [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty Raiden]] or [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater Naked Snake]] would at the very least hold a different type of pistol in cutscenes if you entered it with that one equipped, here Old Snake always ignores your choice of weapon and instead brandishes the Operator he gets after the first ten minutes. Where this gets taken further, however, is that when gameplay resumes he'll have put away whatever weapon you were using and still have the Operator in his hands. If you removed the Operator from your inventory completely, it will be back in slot one, having kicked out whatever weapon was there to make space. The M4 Custom is a rare accomplice to this as well, being the only long-arm he'll equip in cutscenes where he does so outside of maybe two exceptions; this essentially forces players who don't want to use the Operator and M4 Custom to dedicate two of their five weapon slots to those guns anyway, since they're going to find their way back after just about every cutscene.

* While ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'' allows your characters to wield a variety of weapons and outfits, only their outfits will change in cutscenes. Throughout the game, Chris and Sheva are shown wielding only their default handguns.
** Which sometimes leads to unintentionally funny scenes, such as Sheva holstering her pistol on [[ChainMailBikini her bare thigh]].
* Done in a unique way in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil6'' where you can carry numerous weapons, but only two at most will be shown at a time. If you swap from a long gun to a hand gun, the long gun you previously had equipped will be slung on the character's back. The other five guns are in his side pocket or something.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Faxanadu}}'' your character's sprite would display the armor he equipped, which was a pretty cool feature when the game debuted in 1987.

* Title character of ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain: Blood Omen'' -- the first game in the series, made by Silicon Knights for UsefulNotes/PlayStation and PC -- had a rather extensive collection of visually distinctive weapons and armor suits each of which altered the way Kain looked, despite the game being completely 2D.
** Played straight in the pre-rendered cutscenes, though (obviously), Kain would always be wearing his starting equipment, the iron armor and sword. Kind of justified in certain instances; walking into the court of the king wearing a suit of armor made out of bones would probably look suspicious.

[[folder:Hack And Slash]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'', suit upgrades are visible on the model in all games. In the 3D games, the model even changes for weapon upgrades, and in ''Metroid Prime 3: Corruption'', the suit also reflects Samus's Phazon corruption.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'', every piece of equipment has a unique look to it. This can lead to some [[RainbowPimpGear rather strange looks]] as you mix and match the things with the best stat gains.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}''. Your character will always appear to be wearing whatever clothing or armor he currently has equipped. If you unequip everything, he will be forced to run around the game world clad only in his underpants. Almost every quest has a bonus if you do it without any equipment, in fact.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' had most of its {{cutscene}}s rendered via the in-game engine, and thus changes to weaponry were acknowledged; armor, meanwhile, was handled entirely via shields and other small items. Weapons rarely ever appeared in the prerendered sequences.

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChroniclesEchoesOfTime'' this trope is averted, as any armor, helmet or weapon you equip on any character actually shows, although you can't ''remove'' any of these, so no running in the nude or fighting barehanded. However no matter what a character is wearing, the icon of their face (next to their HP and MP on the top screen) remains the same.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'' has a semi-aversion with its weapons, but much like the above the clothing does not change. However, this was changed in the sequel ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChroniclesRingOfFates Ring Of Fates]]'', the first DS entry. Every piece of equipment you equip changes how the on-screen characters look.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyThe4HeroesOfLight'' boasts an aversion of this: weapons and armor equipped will change the character's model to match.

* This is ''mostly'' the case in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' during mission sequences (outside of missions they wear whatever is appropriate), but every character has a couple of outfits that change the character model's clothes as well. For instance, females can wear the [[BreastPlate High-Cut Armor]], and each also has a separate [[{{Meido}} maid outfit]]. When you assign these armors to the characters, they tend to get a...bit...flustered. Some of the unique male armor also gets a less dramatic reaction (since none of it is anywhere near as FanService friendly). Note that this only happened in the ''FES'' version -- while the outfits do exist in the vanilla game, you can only get the reactions from the characters while their clothes stay the same.

*** 4 is pretty good about this: the gang use their school uniforms to smuggle equipment into Junes (The big department store that the gang likes to use as a base because it houses the safest entry to the TV world) because Youske and the protagonist once got ''arrested'' for waving around weapons in there. This is actually a fairly conceivable {{Handwave}}, as all the armor is usually magical or wearable under clothing, and most of the party members carry weapons that can be easily concealed. Nevertheless the Protagonist somehow sneaks enormous swords/baseball bats/golf clubs into Junes and Kanji is even worse. [[ImprobableWeaponUser His first buyable weapon is a DESK.]]
*** In the remake, ''Persona 4 Golden,'' "Outfit" became a seperate equipment slot and each character could wear different outfits that they had previously purchased or received, including swimsuits, holiday wear, and more.

* All equipped gear in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' is visible on your character model, in both the gameplay and cutscenes. It's also accurately reflected in the flashbacks. Understandably though, any flashes of prophecy in the future will use the character's current models as opposed to the impossible task of attempting to predict what equipment the characters will be wearing several hours of gameplay down the line when that scene in question actually comes into play.

* Played straight in ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'', where nobody's weapons or armour is reflected in their sprite. This is because they go for reflecting their ''job'', instead. In a sprite-based game, with eight distinct playable characters and eight jobs with vastly different outfits, ''[[DoingItForTheArt none of which are exclusive]]''.

** In VideoGame/HeartOfTheSwarm's campaign, several units have a permanent upgrade that gets a different model (the zergling Raptor strain has wings, as mentioned above, while the Swarmling grows a great big dorsal fin) with a general green or purple color scheme.

As a result, the hero you see on the game screen usually doesn't represent the hero you see on the equipment screen. It's become so ridiculous that some games will just skip giving the heroes any body armor at all, which is okay because they're heroes and heroes are MadeOfIron. Still, by the end of the game, it can be hard to excuse your hero bumbling around in civilian clothes while going up against the 10-story BonusBoss.

** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'' has unique weapons for each character, but mostly plays the trope straight as far as armor is concerned. A few armors or armor combinations do change the character sprites, though (though most of these are for the one female character, [[{{Fanservice}} for some reason]].)

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' falls into this trope as well. While weapons change and the characters actually draw them when they start a fight, armor is still non-existent. I'll be damned if the game can show you Crono and Frog equip the same Nova Armor... And Crono's [[JokeItem mop]] still shows up as a {{katana|sAreJustBetter}} when he uses it.