History Main / ScriptBreaking

* ''VideoGame/QuestForGloryI'' (at least the VGA remake) unsubtly parodied this. If you find brigands' messages and try to give them to the sheriff, the game displays a message "Oops. You did something that we did not expect. Whatever it was, it is not required to finish the game." and the game quits.

** Similar messages, but requesting to file a bug report, were frequently displayed in beta versions of Sierra "Quests", when a player entered a legitimate command that did not do anything.
** The "oops" message is actually a debug message built into the Sierra game engine, and occurs when the game's script file does not specify a way of handling the command the player entered - script breaking in every sense of the word.

* ''ArxFatalis'' has a PuzzleBoss that requires two steps to kill. A fast player can actually perform the second step before the first, which removes the boss as a threat but the game does not acknowledge the boss as actually defeated. Players thus miss out on substantial experience for the kill, and missing the first step may close off areas that need to be explored.

* ''Dishonoured'' has a hilarious example which occurs if Corvo exposes the Lord Regent's crimes after rewiring one or more of the "Wall of Light" security devices in his mansion to attack the guards instead of Corvo. The guards arrest the Lord Regent and begin to follow a script of marching the Lord Regent through the mansion to the exit and to prison - but their route takes them through one of the rewired Walls of Light, meaning they lead the Lord Region into it and watch him get incinerated in front of them.

* In the final mission of the single player campaign in ''Age of Mythology'', you are supposed to get Arkantos turned into a demi-god and have him kill a statue of Poseidon. By using cheat codes, you can just cast tornado repeatedly on the statue until it dies, at which point, sure enough, there's a cutscene of demi-god Arkantos fighting and finishing off the statue.
** If you're good, you can also get it by just building a very large, very good army.
*** Siege units in particular work well. It is a statue and therefore very similar to a building in terms of damage resistance.

*** A justification is given beforehand ([[note]]the Zerg are swarming across the entire planet, and have begun to converge on your location - so even if you hold out now, sooner or later the Terrans would be overrun if they don't leave anyway[[/note]]), but still feels odd that nothing happens when you destroy the attackers and settle in to wait for the timer to run down with the threat of immediate attack averted.
**** They have to wait for evac to get there. Can't get off-planet without the proper vehicles.

*** Actually not true in that case, the damage reports are because the ship was over loading its beams to the point of melting themselves so it makes sense that the crew is panicking over their melting ship.

* Portal 2 contains some very subtle tweaks to avoid script breaks. The most obvious is that the color of the very last portal you shoot in the game is ignored.

* Sequence breaking is possible in certain ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania}}'' games. A glitch in the recent ''CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'' makes it possible to enter a cutscene room from the wrong side -- in which case the scene still happens, but with you standing behind the bad guys, who don't turn around. The fact that there are ''gestures'' in this scene makes it even more surreal.

** Similarly in ''Half-Life 2'', at one point the player will come across two men, on a rock, one injured. A small little scene will take place and summon three Antlions at once. If the player is extremely lucky and skilled, they can kill the antlions when they pop up before they are able to do anything, but the injured man will die regardless. I guess one of "the greatest minds of our generation" can not be saved (hence the release of a patch to imply he died of blood loss).

** Similarly in ''Half-Life 2'', at one point the player will come across two men, on a rock, one injured. A small little scene will take place and summon three Antlions at once. If the player is extremely lucky and skilled, they can kill the antlions when they pop up before they are able to do anything, but the injured man will die regardless. I guess one of "the greatest minds of our generation" can not be saved.

* With the use of a cheat code in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto 3'', a player can use cars as flying vehicles. If the player manages to master the controls of the vehicle, they can fly over the broken bridge that they start at in the beginning of the game, causing the script to completely skip the first third of the game.

* In ''Franchise/StarWars: Rogue Leader - VideoGame/RogueSquadron II''[='=]s penultimate mission, [[Film/ReturnOfTheJedi Battle of Endor]], the mission starts with the Rebel fleet, you (as Wedge) included, flying towards the Death Star II. After a little time passes, Lando finds that the Death Star's shield is still up, and thus orders a turnaround of the entire fleet, only to discover the Imperial fleet behind them and to get ambushed by squads of TIE Interceptors. Players aiming for Gold Medals, speedrunners, and impatient players can simply turn around at the very beginning of the stage to make the [=TIEs=] show up immediately.

*** A justification is given beforehand ([[hottip:*:the Zerg are swarming across the entire planet, and have begun to converge on your location - so even if you hold out now, sooner or later the Terrans would be overrun if they don't leave anyway]]), but still feels odd that nothing happens when you destroy the attackers and settle in to wait for the timer to run down with the threat of immediate attack averted.

* In ''HalfLife'', near the beginning of the game, the player climbs a ladder to see two zombies fighting a security guard. The guard talks to the player upon seeing him. A particularly lucky and/or skilled player can shoot the guard to kill him as soon as he begins delivering his line, therefore causing the guard's corpse to speak.

* Several first-person-shooters (including ''Red Faction'' and ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRenegade'') have [[AlmostDeadGuy dying allies who are scripted to deliver a message and then expire]]. Since these scripts are uninterruptable, the player character can freely whale on the dying soldier/medic/civilian/scientist with any weapons he has available, while the poor schmuck continues delivering his important dialogue. ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life}}'' features a similar situation, with scientists and guards who are supposed to remain in sitting, lying, crouched (or otherwise immobile) positions (and usually deliver a Message Of Importance). When given a whack with the crowbar, they will ignore their previous script, stand up, and perform as any other instance would.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 2}}'', at one point the player runs across a courtyard dodging fire from a huge disintegrator ray. When the player rushes into one of the buildings, they'll see a man behind prison bars get shot to death by some Combine. If the player is lucky/skilled enough and fast enough, they can kill the guards before they can kill the person behind bars. However, the NPC will crumple up and die anyway.

** In ''FireEmblemAwakening'', Paralogues 2 and 4 involve a mini-arc with ThoseTwoBadGuys Vincent and Victor. You fight Vincent in 2, and Victor seeks to avenge his death in 4. Except Paralogues can be completed in any order, meaning it's possible to do the latter first...

* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'', you can instigate some support conversations that refer to characters that haven't joined. Notably Neimi will refer to scaring Cormag with her stare, even if Cormag hasn't joined your group (And is still a soldier of the enemy, and thus wouldn't even be known by Neimi.)
** Although it might be referring to Colm, who does have a minor glare as well and is the one she's talk to, and it was just a translation issue that she refers to a later character.

See also ButThouMust. For the idea of "breaking" a script in the writing process, see: ScriptLifeCycle. The polar opposite of this trope is TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything. Often coincides with SequenceBreaking, which deals with the intended sequence of gameplay elements rather than the logical cohesion of the narrative, since breaking one of these tends to break the other as well.

Most kinds of games rely on a certain set of triggers and rules to regulate the progress of the scenario and check whether certain conditions are met. In addition to triggers and rules, there are also implicit assumptions about the state of the world. That certain entities are still alive. That the player cannot reach spot X without having done task Y. These are usually collectively known as the game's "script".

* Spectacularly subverted in the indie game ''Iji''. At one point, an assassin teleports into a room in a cutscene to kill Iji's companion. If you already know that this is going to happen, you can place a mine underneath where the assassin is due to arrive, blowing them up during the cutscene. However, this does not actually break script at all: the game has an ''entire script lasting the rest of the game'', and even a variant ending, for this specific event!

* Several first-person-shooters (including ''Red Faction'' and ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRenegade'') have [[AlmostDeadGuy dying allies who are scripted to deliver a message and then expire]]. Since these scripts are uninterruptable, the player character can freely wail on the dying soldier/medic/civilian/scientist with any weapons he has available, while the poor schmuck continues delivering his important dialogue. ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life}}'' features a similar situation, with scientists and guards who are supposed to remain in sitting, lying, crouched (or otherwise immobile) positions (and usually deliver a Message Of Importance). When given a whack with the crowbar, they will ignore their previous script, stand up, and perform as any other instance would.

* In ''StarWars: [[VideoGame/DarkForcesSaga Jedi Knight II]]'' if you kill Tavion not the usual way, by accumulating damage, but by tossing her off a cliff (ridiculously hard to do, because they were almost always immune to Force Push) the cutscene that plays afterwards, where Kyle is supposed to threaten Tavion, plays out as normal... except without Tavion. At one point, Kyle is suspending Tavion in mid-air with the Force Choke ability, thinks better of it, and drops her. At which point Tavion fell out of midair, back into the scene.
** This is even harder to do than one would initially think. To prevent premature ending of the battle by dropping Tavion off the cliff, there are walls at the edge that only work for NPC's unless said NPC's are dead. So, to actually push her off the cliff, one must kill her from damage and then get in a force push as the cutscene starts.
** There is actually a much simpler, if idiotic, way to pull this off, and the best part is that it's entirely Tavion's fault. One simply has to get onto the highest point in the stage, which is, if I remember correctly, a container stacked on top of another container, and crouch. Tavion will jump up to get to you. Getting under her at the correct angle will result in you getting goomba-stomped... and Tavion sailing off the edge, where you can get in that last force push as she dies from the falling insta-kill.

* Somewhat famously, in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', the game only checks for completion of two of the five "adult" temples. By abusing certain bugs, the savvy gamer can complete the Shadow and Spirit temples without completing the Forest, Fire or Water temples and then gain access to the final temple. The game assumes that you have completed the other three.
** Temples are for sissies. It's possible to beat the game while skipping all 5 by glitching items into your main hand and capturing stuff in bottles to overwrite the quest flags.
*** Bottles, who needs them? You can abuse a cut scene to make entering a door actually lead to the final part of the final dungeon... and beat the game without ever growing up.

* Somewhat famously, in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', the game only checks for completion of two of the five "adult" temples. By abusing certain bugs, the savvy gamer can complete the Shadow and Spirit temples without completing the Forest, Fire or (frustratingly obnoxious) Water temples and then gain access to the final temple. The game assumes that you have completed the other three.

* In the free web game Realspace 2, there is an opening cutscene of the enemy ships attacking a smaller set of good ships and then they attack the planet the good ships protected. The trouble? Not all events were actually scripted. The game simply spawned the necessary number of ships and had their AI's battle. But once in a blue moon, the good guys overcome the odds, destroying every enemy. The game stops there, the rest of the events never happen. Luckily this was an intro that could be skipped so the game didn't break. Notable for not requiring the player to do anything for this to occur.

* In ''Half-Life 2'', at one point the player runs across a courtyard dodging fire from a huge disintegrator ray. When the player rushes into one of the buildings, they'll see a man behind prison bars get shot to death by some Combine. If the player is lucky/skilled enough and fast enough, they can kill the guards before they can kill the person behind bars. However, the NPC will crumple up and die anyway.

** In [[VideoGame/CallOfDuty Call Of Duty: World At War]], on the Vendetta mission, by performing a series of very simple jumps after the sniper duel, you can reach the area where Amsel is later on in the mission. There are invisible triggers all over the place which spawn soldiers, trucks and Amsel. By going through the triggers in a certain order, you can get Amsel to appear. This makes getting the achievement for [[CherryTapping killing him with a pistol]] a LOT easier.