History PaintingTheMedium / VideoGames

* The 1985 wargame ''Theatre Europe'' simulates conventional WWIII. Accessing nuclear weapons requires a real-world phone call. Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}: "The telephone number connected the player to a recorded message, which started with the sound of air raid sirens and dramatically built up through various sounds of war to a huge explosion, followed by the sound of a crying baby. As this faded out, a voice stated "If this is really what you want... the code is 'Midnight Sun'"." Global thermonuclear war is a complete loss; for single strategic missiles, the player has to remember to turn off automatic retaliation for nuclear attacks with equal or stronger force, a system that both sides use and which responds to retaliations. At the hardest difficulty level, it's impossible to win as the Warsaw Pact.

* ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' has a plot point that Ouroburos wants to break into a "higher dimension". At one point? The 3DS camera turns on - revealing that the being in the higher dimension is in fact you, the player. Similarly, the game will call upon other alterantive worlds... which are your ''friends''' copies of the game.

** During ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'''s single-player campaign, Agent 1 tries to communicate with her radio upside down, which somehow [[AchievementsInIgnorance manages to make her unintelligible on the other end]]. This is represented by having her dialogue box shown upside down. A mysterious stranger ends up doing the same thing while trying to contact you during [[VideoGame/Splatoon2 the second game]], [[spoiler:cluing you in that [[NoOneElseIsThatDumb it's secretly Agent 1]].]] DJ Octavio also speaks in upside-down text in both games, this time to represent being physically upside-down after being knocked back into his HumongousMecha. [[spoiler:Commander Tartar delivers his last words the same way in the ''Octo Expansion''.]]

* During ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'''s single-player campaign, Agent 1 tries to communicate with her radio upside down, which somehow [[AchievementsInIgnorance manages to make her unintelligible on the other end]]. This is represented by having her dialogue box shown upside down. A mysterious stranger ends up doing the same thing while trying to contact you during [[VideoGame/Splatoon2 the second game]], [[spoiler:cluing you in that [[NoOneElseIsThatDumb it's secretly Agent 1]].]] DJ Octavio also speaks in upside-down text in both games, this time to represent being physically upside-down after being knocked back into his HumongousMecha. [[spoiler:Commander Tartar delivers his last words the same way in the ''Octo Expansion''.]]

** ''VideoGame/SplinterCellChaosTheory'' is the first game in the series to not have a hard limit on alarms as [[VideoGameLives a "lives" system]], where you invariably fail the mission upon triggering the alarm three times. It demonstrates this by having the first mission not have a central alarm system to worry about, and then when the second mission does, there's this exchange:
--->'''Lambert:''' Fisher, we just pulled up Celestinia's dry-dock report for the ''Maria Narcissa''. They have a newly-installed central alarm system.\\
'''Fisher:''' Don't tell me - three alarms and the mission's over?\\
'''Lambert:''' Of course not! This is no video game, Fisher.

** That's not even going into everything that happens once you finally make it to the final ranked battle. The poor, unfortunate fourth wall gets painted, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, and then the pieces get repainted. It's the most divisive ending since the [=MGS2=] Ending.

* The Mr. Saturns in ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' are the only characters in the game to speak in a different font from everyone else. Their font is a squiggly, loopy font resembling a child's handwriting, highlighting their alien nature and childlike naivety. This continues in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}''.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', whenever you end up in a FirstContact situation with an alien entity, that entity is referred as the "[[GratuitousGreek Alpha/Beta/Delta/Gamma]] aliens" by the interface until you formally establish contact with them. Unless you are a [[AbsoluteXenophobe Xenophobe]] empire, in which case they are referred to as the "[[GratuitousGreek Alpha/Beta/Delta/Gamma]] menace" instead... A subtle implication that any alien entity has been through an extensive {{Demonization}} campaign in your empire...

* ''VideoGame/{{Fahrenheit}}'' has a [[PressXToNotDie quick-time event]] where the on-screen cues light up like a Christmas tree, and it becomes impossible to win. This represents how the main character is panicking and frantically hammering on a keypad. There's also a scene where the solution is to fail a series of quick-time events, since they're for making the main character shake off a horde of glowing hallucinatory spiders, actions which the not-hallucinating policeman interrogating you will take as proof of violent intent.

** In several games in the series, allied characters generally have their names colored green in subtitles while they are speaking (''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsColdWar Black Ops: Cold War]]'' uses blue), while enemies have red. This is affected by shifts in allegiances within the storylines; for example, [[spoiler:General Shepherd]]'s name turns from green to red after the EvilAllAlong reveal at the end of ''Modern Warfare 2'', Gabriel Rorke's name turns from red to green during a flashback mission showing his StartOfDarkness during ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyGhosts Ghosts]]'', and [[spoiler:all of the CIA characters turn red while the Soviets and Perseus turn blue]] in the bad ending of ''Black Ops: Cold War''.

* ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'':
** Cutscenes before the start of a mission are presented as the networking and information system used by the protagonists' various organizations, displaying relevant information while important characters speak over it, although the presentation itself is a heavy dramatization of what anything like this in reality would be displaying, it takes up the entire screen, and the characters speaking are never seen, as if they're standing right next to you, watching it just like you are. And then it's taken up a notch in ''Modern Warfare 2'' when one entire cutscene is, with no elements recognizable from the game itself, the [[spoiler:emergency broadcast system of Washington DC, telling you where to go for evacuation as the Russians invade the city.]]
** In both ''Modern Warfare'' and ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyGhosts'', allied characters generally have their names colored green in subtitles while they are speaking, while enemies have red. [[spoiler:General Shepherd]]'s name turns from green to red after the EvilAllAlong reveal at the end of ''Modern Warfare 2'', while Gabriel Rorke's name turns from red to green during a flashback mission showing his StartOfDarkness during ''Ghosts''.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Spinnortality}}}'', during one of the endgame crises a rogue AI explains its plan to subject all mankind to peace, abundance, and control. The player can beseech it to consider pride and the joy of work. Only the player character is the CEO of a horrifying cyberpunk MegaCorp, and this is so rich coming from you that the AI's laughter stretches clear out of its text box.

* In ''VideoGame/Spinnortality'', during one of the endgame crises a rogue AI explains its plan to subject all mankind to peace, abundance, and control. The player can beseech it to consider pride and the joy of work. Only the player character is the CEO of a horrifying cyberpunk MegaCorp, and this is so rich coming from you that the AI's laughter stretches clear out of its text box.

** In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen]]'', [[PinkGirlBlueBoy females speak in red text and males speak in blue]]. The Japanese version does something similar, but without the colors; [[MasculineLinesFeminineCurves male characters speak using a fairly standard font, while female characters use a curvier, "softer" font that resembles handwriting]].

** In the Light World, text boxes are black with plain white borders, and menus once again take after the ones in ''VideoGame/EarthBound}}'', being segmented into multiple of these text boxes. In the Dark World, a more advanced menu divided into drop-down tabs is used, and text boxes have a fancy silver border.

* ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'':
** In the Light World, menus and dialogue box borders are as they are ''Undertale'', consisting of black boxes bordered by white. In the Dark World, a more advanced menu is used, and text boxes have a fancy silver border.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' and ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'', the command window changes to fit the theme of each world. In particular, Timeless River in ''II'' (a {{Retraux}} world based on the WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts) is entirely DeliberatelyMonochrome, and the audio is presented in mono with much lower quality than the rest of a game, as well as a filter that adds hisses, pops, and even the sound of a film projector.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' and ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'', the command window changes to fit the theme of each world. In particular, Timeless River in ''II'' (a {{Retraux}} world based on the WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts) is entirely DelibaratelyMonochrome, and the audio is presented in mono with much lower quality than the rest of a game, as well as a filter that adds the sound of a projector reel, hisses, and pops.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' and ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'', the command window changes to fit the theme of each world. In the DeliberatelyMonochrome world Timeless River in ''II'', based on the WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts, the audio is in mono with a filter that adds static and pops.

* The classic Creator/{{Infocom}} text adventure ''VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' has a scenario whereby you cause a TemporalParadox, which, in typical ''HHGTTG'' style, destroys the universe in a most thorough fashion. The game explains in literary detail the havoc which ensues, ending with "The universe ceases to have ever exis" -- cut off just like that, in mid-"existed".

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' and ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'', the command window changes to fit the theme of each world.