Limited Loadout

So many guns, so little room.

A form of Player Inventory.

Some games let the player carry an impossibly huge array of weapons. Not these games. When this trope is in effect, the player character is stuck with just a certain fraction of the total amount of firepower in the game at any one time. If you want another option, you'll have to trade in one of your weapons to get ahold of it. Very popular in modern titles compared to the Hyperspace Arsenal days of Doom. A common modern variant will limit the player to just two main weapons at any time as popularized in Halo: Combat Evolved. Early implementations of this in console first-person shooters were often driven by controllers having less buttons than a computer keyboard (rather than striving for realism), and before Weapon Wheels became a common workaround for this.

RPG games will sometimes allow the player to queue up a few preset selections of items from their inventory to be swapped through on the fly. For this, see Real-Time Weapon Change. For RPGs where the player can't carry every single weapon in the game, but their bulging pack of death dealing devices still approaches Hyperspace Arsenal levels, see Inventory Management Puzzle. Frequently a cause of Throw-Away Guns. Often a way of mixing up the Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness. Compare Mutually Exclusive Power Ups and Limited Move Arsenal.

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Examples:

Action Game

• ANNO: Mutationem: Ann is able to carry a variety of weapons with different stats that's limited to only being able to select and equip just three from her inventory.
• Each player of Thelast.io has 6 slots for regular items, and since one is always "occupied" by their fists, the usable amount is 5. In addition, there's a separate slot for wearable items.
• Lugaru's Turner can only carry two weapons at a time. The sequel, Overgrowth, increases this to four.
• In The Matrix: Path of Neo, you can have four sets of two guns each and about five or more grenades, then you have to switch something out.

Action RPGs

• Afterimage: Renee can only equip up to two main weapons (one primary and one secondary), one subweapon (spellbooks, staves, wands or scrolls that cast magic), one headgear, one armor, one leg gear, and up to three accessories.
• In Digimon World 4, each character can set up to three equipped weapons at a time. If you want to use that shiny new sword you picked up from a defeated enemy, you'll have to go back to base and equip it at the Digi Lab. Justified in that this is the Digital World and the Digimon probably have to load the weapon data.
• Of the items that can be directly used in Minit, only one can be held at a time, meaning you'll need to return to your house and put down your sword to pick up your watering can or camera.
• The Phantasy Star Online 2 games let you carry a number of items in your active inventory, but you can only equip so many of them at once - three protective units and about six weapons. The weapons you equip likewise determine which Photon Arts you can use at any given time, of which you can equip six per weapon (the basic attack and Weapon Action can be among these six). Choose wisely.

Adventure Games

• Ether One in many ways plays like a point-and-click adventure game of old, albeit with a first-person free-roaming perspective: the player collects inventory items and rubs them against objects in the world to move the plot along. Unlike many of those games of old, however, this one limits the player's inventory to one item. An Inventory Management Puzzle is averted, because the player may at any time teleport to "the case", store excess items on ample shelving space there and then teleport right back to where they were in the game world, but it can still be a bit annoying having to constantly jump back and forth to switch out key items.
• Shivers (1995): There's room in your inventory for exactly one item. This can be a flask to hold an Ixupi, a lid that goes on the flask to hold an Ixupi, or if you find the vial or lid that matches the lid or vial you're already carrying, the complete flask. A key part of the gameplay is not just to find the flasks and lids, but also remember where you left the ones you've already found.

Eastern RPGs

• In EarthBound (1994), key items and consumable items share the same inventory space (though luckily not equippable items). This means one of Ness's inventory slots will be unusable for the majority of the game because he must have the Sound Stone in his inventory—unless Ness's inventory is completely full when he is supposed to receive the Sound Stone (which will require a lot of Level Grinding). This can be mitigated by calling Ness's sister for her to store key items that are no longer required. All four party members also have their own separate inventory, which can be useful for filling Jeff's inventory with the gadgets he'll use during battle without needing to clog up others' inventory.
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates limits the amount of magicite players can carry for spellcasting. Initially you can only carry 10 of each variety, so you'll be leaving a lot of it laying around the dungeons until you find (or purchase) extra "pockets" to carry more in.
• Your inventory in Legend of the Ghost Lion is limited to 8x4 (ie 32) spaces. You cannot ditch items that cannot be replaced, so all those summon spirit items you collect will take up a third of your inventory eventually. So will various tools and weapons. So far, that's fair, but the problem arises when it comes to health items. There's only one type in the entire game, bread, meaning that by the end, you'll need lots of bread on you to make a significant difference on your courage. And those things don't stack either.
• Resonance of Fate allows each character to equip two items. This becomes a problem in parts of the game where characters are own their own, since they're essentially forced to equip an SMG (deals large amounts of non-lethal, regenerating "scratch damage") and a pistol (deals small amount of lethal chip damage for finishing off enemies), leaving no room for healing or utility items.
• Riviera: The Promised Land: The game allows you to take up to four items into any given battle. Combined with Breakable Weapons and inventory, that can hold only 16 items total (one of which always will be Ein's personal weapon), it's quite possible to find your characters stuck ineffectually throwing into the enemy items they can't use.
• Sword and Fairy 7 limits the number of items that the player can use in each battle. So, it doesn't matter if you're carrying hundreds of basic healing items - you can use only nine of them in any given battle. For more potent items this limit is even lower.

First-Person Shooters

• Afraid of Monsters: Director's Cut swaps out the Half-Life-style Hyperspace Arsenal for this. You have four weapon slots, one for melee (knife, hammer, or axe), one for small handguns (a P228, Glock or Beretta), one for larger Magnum handguns (revolver or Desert Eagle), and one for two-handed guns (a shotgun, MP5k or Uzi).
• Apex Legends: Players can only equip two weapons. Ammunition, grenades, and attachments go into an inventory that you can expand by picking up backpacks.
• The Battlefield series has made use of this as part of its class-based system. Exactly how many slots you have available varies but it generally never goes above six, the maximum being a knife, a primary weapon, a sidearm, two gadgets specific to your class, and grenades. Multiplayer requires swapping out your kit entirely with one on the ground to pick up a different weapon, while the singleplayer campaigns from Battlefield: Bad Company on allow for swapping weapons normally, the first Bad Company and Battlefield 3 forcing you to rely on what the enemy drops or the occasional pickup, while Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 4 add weapon crates to grab any weapon you've used before, even in previous playthroughs.
• BioShock handles this a little oddly. In the first two games the player has a Hyperspace Arsenal as far as weapons go, but the player is limited to only a select number of plasmid powers at a time, with additional slots costing precious ADAM. BioShock Infinite, however, decided to give Booker access to every Vigor at once while guns were limited to just two at a time. After that, Burial at Sea brought back the hyperspace arsenal (without telling anyone).
• By default, Blockstorm's inventory system limits you to six items: one primary weapon (rifle, assault rifle, sniper rifle, submachine gun, machine gun, or shotgun), one secondary weapon (pistol, machine pistol or smaller shotgun), one type of explosive (grenades, claymores, C4, or RPG), a shovel for silently digging, a supply of blocks for building, and a melee weapon. Players don't drop weapons when they die, only backpacks full of ammo, so the only way to get a different weapon is finding a pre-placed spawn on the map or dying and picking something different. Custom maps can also be set up to allow different setups, from extremes such as two primary weapons alongside a secondary, or taking away everything but the melee weapon and forcing everyone to rely on pickups.
• Blood II: The Chosen has a downplayed example. Other than your starting knife, which always goes in the first slot, and the three varieties of bombs, which are treated as inventory items, weapons are assigned to slots in the order you pick them up in rather than any set order. This leaves you with ten slots for weapons, that knife and nine guns (technically more if you have any that can be paired up), which will eventually mean having to drop older weapons to pick up new ones, since there are twice as many guns in the game as there are slots for you to carry them in.
• Borderlands plays with this somewhat. You can have up to 4 guns and no more set to your hot keys. However, there is limited space in your backpack to carry extra weapons. The limited space disappears as you progress, though, since you can upgrade your backpack to hold more items - 3 per upgrade. The extra guns in your pack aren't feasibly usable as extra firepower, however, since you're still limited to 6 ammo types (7 in the first), and the game doesn't pause in multiplayer while you swap weapons. A rare and well-executed combination of this trope and Hyperspace Arsenal.
• Brink! limits the player to a primary weapon, a backup weapon, some grenades, a few class-specific weapons (such as specialist grenades for a soldier and landmines for an Engineer), and possibly a knife if they use a pistol as one of their weapons.
• In Bulletstorm, you only carry the Peacemaker Carbine and two other weapons during the regular game. This is averted in Overkill Mode, which lets you carry every weapon in the game at once.
• The Call of Duty franchise follows this, limiting the player to any two weapons, with a third slot for a pistol in the original game, and some non-gun odds and ends (later games generally settling on one type of "lethal" grenade and one type of "tactical" grenade, with singleplayer sometimes shunting Claymores and C4 into their own slots rather than replacing your lethal grenade type). Rare occasions allow for the player to carry a third weapon, such as killstreak rewards.
• Coded Arms: Contagion gives the player five slots of equipment: one always reserved for the pistol, one that can only take light weapons, one for light to medium weapons, one “anything goes” slot and the last one for grenades.
• Counter-Strike: In the original version, each player can only carry one long gun and one handgun, alongside the knife and a small cache of grenades.
• The Spiritual Successor to Afraid of Monsters, Cry of Fear, goes for a different system. Your inventory in general is limited to six slots, which you can stick whatever you want in, with three quick-access slots you can set any of the items in your inventory to so they can be quickly equipped by pressing the 1, 2 or 3 keys. You can carry as many guns as you can find, sure, but that would leave less room for keys, morphine syringes, or other important odds and ends. The game even eventually points out that the inventory system is thanks to both the pockets in Simon's clothes and the bag he carries over his shoulder - after finally getting a working train to leave Stockholm in, only for it to derail, Simon loses his bag and is left with only three inventory slots for the last fourth of the game. Note as well that for gameplay purposes, some items don't actually take up inventory space, most notably ammo (which has its own limit of around ten mags per gun) but also a few unlockables like the Doctor's night vision-equipped gas mask, which is put on and taken off at the press of a button rather than being a proper inventory item.
• Crysis uses a weird version with four slots, but two of which are dedicated to specific weapon types. The player has a pistol slot that can go Guns Akimbo (there's only one kind of pistol in the first game, though Warhead adds an SMG that can be dual-wielded), an explosives slot for remote-detonated charges or a missile launcher, and two long arms slots that can each hold one assault rifle, submachine gun, sniper rifle, or shotgun.
• You can only carry a limited number of weapons at one time in Dead Effect (one pistol, one longarm, and one grenade), and are only able to switch weapons on the level loading screen.
• Deep Rock Galactic limits your loadout to your main weapon, secondary weapon, and grenades, all which can only be changed for different types in the space rig before starting a mission. Each character will also have a pickaxe, flares, and support/movement tools.
• Before embarking on a mission in the Delta Force games, the player is required to choose a loadout. A knife is always available and the player must choose one pistol, one rifle and a couple of extra supplementary weapons.
• The Simulation setting in Devastation literally puts a weight on every gun and you are limited by how much you can carry at a time. The Arcade setting lets you carry all you want.
• Duke Nukem Forever implemented this despite Duke Nukem 3D featuring a Hyperspace Arsenal; this made things particularly difficult due to the fact that the player can only hold about three or four magazines' worth of ammo for any of the weapons, thus necessitating boxes of infinite ammo to be stashed in every area where the player is expected to stick around for more than a small handful of seconds and kill things. On top of that there was an achievement for keeping Duke's gold-plated pistol with you for the whole game, which required sacrificing one of your two slots. A later patch for the PC version added a toggle option which doubled the limit to four slots, because of fan outcry.
• The End Times: Vermintide and Vermintide II: The heroes have free access to their inventory in the Hub Level, but their gear is set when they enter a mission. Each hero wears a melee weapon; a ranged weapon; and up to three trinkets (in the first game) or a trinket, necklace, and charm (in the second). They also have one inventory slot for each type of pickup found in the map: healing items, magic potions, and bombs. The consumable slots feed into a risk/reward mechanic: instead of using the slots to hold a potentially run-saving potion or healing item, you can instead carry a useless Tome or actively harmful Grimoire - carry these items to the level end and you'll receive commensurate rewards.
• Expert (an obscure Japanese FPS marketed in 2000 as Counter-Strike: Ver. Expert) limits you to a pistol, three grenades, and one special weapon - either a shotgun, Uzi, grenade launcher etc. depending on the stage. For the entirety of the following level you'll be stuck with the weapons you chose before the stage, with the game actually forbidding you from swapping equipment from slain enemies just to screw with the players.
• The Far Cry series:
  • The original Far Cry had a four-slot system, all of which (even the series' now-iconic machete) could be switched out for a new weapon on the ground at the player's whim. The player also had four throwables in a cycled slot on top of that: limited frag, smoke, and flashbang grenades, and an unlimited supply of rocks to distract enemies as well as separate buttons set to binoculars for tagging enemies and, later, a set of "CryVision" thermal goggles.
  • Far Cry 2 used a similar four-slot system, but with the caveat that each slot was dedicated to a specific weapon type: slot 1 carries a melee weapon (invariably a machete of some kind, only able to change the look through free DLC), slot 2 a secondary weapon (handguns, machine pistols, a flare gun, a grenade launcher, a Sawed-Off Shotgun with DLC, or remote-detonated IEDs), slot 3 a primary weapon (assault rifles, full-size shotguns, sniper rifles, submachine guns or a bigger grenade launcher), and slot 4 a special weapon (machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, a flamethrower, a portable mortar, a crossbow with DLC, or a dart rifle), alongside two grenade types (frags and Molotovs), a map with a GPS locator and a monocular for scouting purposes, a set of morphine syrettes for healing, and a bottle of malaria medication.
  • Far Cry 3 uses what is essentially an evolution of the original game's system, with the machete given a dedicated slot that is used as Quick Melee rather than a standalone weapon (and can only be traded out for other melee weapons, an unlockable tanto or a DLC tribal knife), and otherwise letting you put whatever you want in the regular four slots; however, the player has to unlock the second through fourth slots by hunting and skinning animals to make holsters and bandoliers out of their pelts. There are also other slots for grenades (again, frags and Molotovs), larger explosives (C4 packs and proximity mines), a camera for scouting and tagging enemies, a set of various syringes for healing and other bonuses (with regular healing syringes and two others of your choice getting quick-use slots, but otherwise able to make as many variations as your syringe kit has room for), and rocks for distracting bad guys in stealth. The Classic Updated Re-release of the first Far Cry reuses this system, minus any of the things that weren't in the original game like the craftable syringes.
  • Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon uses the same system as 3, though with some changes: there's no requirement to unlock slots (you instead have to unlock the attachments for your guns by way of side jobs), you're given a full set of fully-upgraded weapons for the prologue before being dumped into the game proper and having you work your way back up, and there's an extra throwable slot for "cyber hearts", acquired from looting the dead bodies of Omega Force soldiers, to lure around the eponymous and highly-dangerous Blood Dragons.
  • Far Cry 4 more or less uses the same system as Blood Dragon with a few more changes, such as bringing back the need to craft holsters for more slots, putting bait in the same slot as the other throwables (including the also-new throwing knives) rather than a separate button, dedicating the second slot to weapons the game classifies as sidearms like in Far Cry 2, and putting the repair tool in another separate slot (splitting the difference between the wrench in 2 that was just pulled out of the ether when you needed to repair a vehicle and the repair tool in 3 that had to be put in a weapon slot but could be used for things other than repairing vehicles).
  • Far Cry 5 evolves on 4's system as far as unlocking your full potential goes - you start with two slots, one regular and one "sidearm", and unlock the other two via perks - but most of the changes regard the non-weapon options. C4 and mines are dumped in together with the other throwables (which also adds in dynamite and smoke grenades), which now have to be set into three "quick-select" slots so you can just use what you like instead of having to cycle through eight different options. Melee options are expanded into a fifth slot, which allows carrying multiples of any two types of melee weapon (since they're breakable and you can also throw them) or just punching out enemies, and the slot for the repair tool is similarly expanded into an entire separate "utility" bar which holds multiple types of tools like fishing rods, medkits (which replace the craftable healing syringes of the prior two games), and still-craftable "homeopathic" boosts (i.e. the types of drugs from 3 and 4 that didn't heal you).
• F.E.A.R. gives you three slots for weapons, including the option to holster them and use Good Old Fisticuffs, and a grenade slot that could be cycled between frag grenades, proximity mines, remote bombs and, with the expansions, automated turrets. F.E.A.R. 2 expanded onto a fourth weapon slot in place of the ability to holster everything, with the throwables now including the old frags and proxy mines alongside incendiary and shock grenades. F.3.A.R. dialed it back to just two weapons plus the grenade caches (frags, shock grenades, and flashbangs).
• Fire Warrior has the player able to use two weapons and the bonding knife, but one of those weapons (the standard-issue Pulse Gun) cannot be replaced, forcing the player to drop any good gun they find to get another one.
• The Ghost Recon series has always had relatively restrictive slot systems, though they've expanded as the games go on.
  • The first game is the most restrictive, giving you only a primary weapon and one secondary piece of equipment, whether that's a pistol as a fallback or eschewing it in favor of other items like a grenade launcher attached to the primary, claymores for area denial, or a handful of extra magazines.
  • Advanced Warfighter on PC uses the same system, with a space for one primary weapon and one secondary weapon. On consoles it's expanded just slightly with a third slot for grenades, although it's technically four slots as two different grenade types occupy that one slot.
  • Future Soldier expands out to five slots - two guns and three equipment items, which includes two types of throwables and a remote drone for scouting areas and tagging enemies, along with other uses mandated by the plot.
  • Wildlands expands even further, as you now have three weapon slots, the third of which is dedicated to pistols, alongside seven slots for other odds and ends, one dedicated to the drone and the other six able to be swapped at your leisure.
  • Breakpoint uses this same system, though with even more dedicated inventory slots (bandages for healing, shell casings to distract enemies, and a class-specific gadget) expanding out to ten slots in total, though in turn as of the "Ghost Experience" update players have the option to pare weapon slots back down to one primary and one secondary.
• In GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, the eponymous agent only permanently keeps his custom "Spec-9" handgun and a handful of grenades on his person; he can add to that with two other one-handed guns or a single long gun, but must drop them to pick up a different gun or go back to his Spec-9/grenades.
  • Most of the James Bond games under Activision's banner, like the Quantum of Solace adaptation and the GoldenEye remake, go for a system reminiscent of the original Call of Duty, with two slots for whatever guns you please and a third one dedicated to Bond's P99.
• Halo is the Trope Codifier for modern shooters. For all their super strength and other perks of being Super-Soldier Space Marines, the Master Chief, Noble Six, Fireteam Crimson, Blue Team, and Fireteam Osiris can still only carry the same amount of hardware as the Badass Normal ODSTs: two guns and a few grenades. In fact, depending on the game, the ODSTs can carry more of the aforementioned grenades, and throw them farther as well.
  • Halo was the Trope Codifier for this trope, but many other games on this list failed to catch on to a trope that went hand in hand with it: Throw-Away Guns. In Halo, you not only are limited to two guns, you are also constantly switching up which guns they are because of a lack of Universal Ammunition and that any one gun, even if ammo for it was abundant, had an obvious weakness (human weapons shred meaty bits quickly and hit instantly, but for the most part are noticeably less accurate and require a lot of bullets to punch through Deflector Shields; plasma overloads shields quickly and are almost all perfectly accurate, but don't hurt the living things underneath them as much and typically require extensive leading of targets, etc.). This forced varied gameplay, and the development of both skill with every weapon, rather than just what you like the most, and foresight to know when you should drop something you like for something that's more immediately useful. In most other games outside the Halo franchise, once you find the weapons that suit you, you can stick with them basically throughout the entire game because there are always ways to keep them firing, and things that your normal weapons can't do anything against like tanks are typically extremely rare and signposted with exactly what you need for it like a McDonald's billboard along a highway. This provides a different type of fun, allowing you to be Weak, but Skilled instead of Unskilled, but Strong. If there's an Aesop to be picked up, it's probably that tropes don't always work correctly when out of context, but they don't need to work correctly to still be fun either.
• Iron Storm: You can only carry one weapon from each class at a time, and each of them not currently wielded (except grenades) can be seen on Anderson's back and legs in third-person view. This can get pretty tricky, especially with slot 4, which houses most of your heavier firearms (marksman rifle, assault rifle, shell bullets launcher, grenade launcher and rocket launcher). This forces you to choose your load out carefully according to your current situation, since you can't carry both a marksman rifle and an assault rifle at the same time, etc. Sadly, it also gets a little ridiculous occasionally: You can't carry a simple silenced pistol and an SMG at the same time (as the tutorial is eager to inform you).
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy offers a variant where you start each mission with a limited loadout - your lightsaber, a blaster pistol, and your choice of two bigger weapons (with more options available as you progress) and one thrown explosive - but otherwise keeps the traditional hyperspace arsenal the rest of the series has, allowing you to end a mission (or start the second/third part of a multi-part level) carrying two to three times as many weapons as you came in with.
• Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death allows the player to carry two guns, but you are unable to drop the Lawgiver in the single player game.
• Years before Halo implemented this trope, Jurassic Park: Trespasser gave the player the ability to carry only two items: one in hand, and one stowed.
• Killing Floor has a variation based around weight. Each player has a base carrying weight of 15 blocks, each block equivalent to one kilogram and your unsellable starting kit of a pistol, knife and grenades taking up the first one. You can't carry more than that, but you can carry as much as you please if it fits within that limit, even if by all rights it should take more room than your character could conceivably store on their person, including three or four pairs of pistols. The Support Specialist perk also has a passive bonus that gradually increases its carrying capacity up to 24 blocks. Killing Floor 2 uses the same system, though with more perks like the Survivalist getting passive bonuses or active skills that increase their carrying capacity, as well as a later update adding the ability to upgrade individual weapons, making them more powerful at the cost of increasing their weight by one block per upgrade and limiting what you can carry alongside your upgraded weapon.
• Left 4 Dead: You can carry one primary weapon from a selection (submachine guns, pump-action and semi-auto shotguns, assault rifles and sniper rifles, with the sequel adding a limited-ammo Grenade Launcher and M60 machine gun), one secondary weapon (an unlimited-ammo pistol or two, the sequel adding options of a single bigger pistol or a melee weapon) and one equipment item of each type (a molotov, pipe bomb, or jar of Boomer bile; a medkit, defibrillator, or box of bullets to give everyone a single magazine of incendiary or explosive bullets for their primary weapons; and a bottle of pills or an adrenaline injector).
• Medal of Honor series:
  • Earlier games in the series only limited you to one weapon per type depending on the game, with the only real limitation being that Nazi weapons (or even other Allied ones, on the several occasions the player gets to work with the British) were for the most part simply not usable except as an ammo source. Frontline and Allied Assault, at least, dropped this stigma, though what weapon went into each slot was still decided on a per-mission basis, so for the most part, excluding the mounted MG 42s every few dozen feet and stolen Stielhandgranates (Allied Assault particularly giving you separate caches of pineapples if you started with them and stolen potato mashers, even though for the purposes of gameplay they're identical in use and function), you could only use a Nazi weapon if you didn't start the mission with any of its Allied equivalents.
  • Medal of Honor: Vanguard started to have an actual limit on the player's equipment, letting them only carry two guns and ten grenades. Medal of Honor: Airborne uses the same system with only the addition of a third slot dedicated to a sidearm (which is invariably an M1911 until you finally pick up an alternative in the penultimate level).
  • Medal of Honor (2010) plays this differently depending on single- or multiplayer. Singleplayer has a variant on the traditional two-weapon limit, where the player's secondary weapon (a pistol which is given Bottomless Magazines) cannot be swapped out, while still keeping two slots for primary weapons that the player can switch out whenever they find a new gun. Multiplayer instead goes for the same system as in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, giving you a primary and a secondary weapon that can only be swapped out by replacing your entire kit with someone else's.
  • Medal of Honor: Warfighter also has separate methods depending on which mode, but plays it noticeably differently. Singleplayer extends the secondary slot to include shotguns and submachine guns, and also disallows you from dropping your primary weapon either, leaving you with only a temporary third slot that requires you to drop the weapon in question to go back to one of your regular weapons. Multiplayer instead disallows taking enemy weapons at all - you're stuck with what you spawned with until you die and respawn.
• The Metro 2033 series:
  • Metro 2033: You can carry a primary weapon (one of a selection of assault rifles or an SMG), secondary (shotguns/pneumo guns), a revolver, an Emergency Weapon knife, a medkit containing five syrettes, five pipe-bombs of each kind and five throwing knives.
  • Metro: Last Light allows Artyom to wield any three guns (which are customizable) and up to 5 each of three types of explosives and the same amount of throwing knives. The Emergency Weapon knife from the first game has been swapped to a Call of Duty style Quick Melee stab. It's still used in Press X to Not Die situations.
• Perfect Dark Zero has a variant incorporating a basic form of Grid Inventory: Joanna is allotted four slots for weapons, each kind of weapon taking up one (pistols, frag grenades, flashbangs, Multi-Mines, Hawk Boomerang and the Viblade), two (submachine guns, assault rifles, shotgun and the combat shield), or three (sniper rifles, rocket launcher, heavy machine gun and the plasma rifle) slots. Gadgets, meanwhile, are limited to two (they technically use their own four-slot system, but each option takes two slots), one a required, mission-specific gadget like the audioscope or CamSpy, and the other your choice of the optional but still helpful Locktopus, Demo Kit or Datathief.
• The first PlanetSide 1 limits players to a certain number of ready-to-fire weapons based on their armor's holster slots; a Reinforced Exosuit can carry two long guns and two one-handed pistols or tools, while an Infiltrator can only carry a single one-handed weapon. Each armor also had a different sized backpack to carry ammo, extra tools, grenades, and sometimes even entire weapons, though they must be put in a holster before use. Planetside 2 uses a more rigid class-based system, where players can have one primary weapon, one pistol, a tool, one class ability, and so on.
• The Rainbow Six series has traditionally had a four-slot system - two for weapons, a primary and a secondary, and two for other gadgets and equipment like frag grenades, flashbangs, breaching charges, a heartbeat sensor, or simply packing a few extra mags for one of your guns. The Vegas subseries tacks on a third slot and allows you to pick up guns from dead enemies, with the only caveat being that the pistol slot is still dedicated to pistols and replenishing or swapping out your other equipment options requires finding an ammo box. Siege goes back on this with only two weapon slots, and two slots for other things, one of which being your selected operator's unique Gadget (anything from a simple hammer or underbarrel shotgun for breaking down walls at close range, EMP grenades and bear traps, to more unique things like a miniature active-defense system to intercept grenades, shields that can be mounted on the user's rifle for extra head protection, a deployable machine-gun turret, a Healing Shiv, the old heartbeat sensor, and several varieties of unmanned drones for seeking out enemies) and one other piece of gear depending on whether the operator is an Attacker (where they get various kinds of grenades, laser-tripwire Claymore mines, or breaching charges) or a Defender (where they get deployable barbed wire, remote-detonated C4 charges, or deployable shields to protect themselves).
• Rise of the Triad: The player can hold at one time any number of the infinite-ammo bullet weapons (of which there are three: single pistol, dual pistols, and machine gun) and only one of the limited-ammo missile/magic weapons.
• Resistance 2 dispensed with the weapon wheel from Fall of Man and imposed a two-weapon limit just like Call of Duty. Fans of the first game reacted with dismay, so the weapon wheel was brought back for Resistance 3. The portable Gaiden Games Resistance: Retribution and Resistance: Burning Skies also averted this trope in favor of the weapon wheel, making Resistance 2 the odd game out in the series.
• Soldier of Fortune 1 and Payback only allowed the player to carry a max of three guns (depending on their size) and a knife, but the second game had a significantly higher loadout limit, e.g. Mullins may lug around a sidearm, shotgun, assault rifle w/grenade launcher, light machine gun, and sniper rifle at once.
• In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy, you can carry as many guns as you want, but only have slots to equip two guns at any given time^note in Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky, a pistol in slot 2 and a two-handed firearm in slot 3; Call of Pripyat removes this restriction, alongside four other slots for a knife, grenades, binoculars, and screws for testing anomalies. The game also has a weight system where everything has a weight value, and your limit is around 50kg^note though it can be increased with an exosuit armor or the right artifacts. Go a hair beyond that and your Sprint Meter will deplete way faster than usual; go 10kg beyond the limit, and you'll be completely unable to move around.
• The Stalin Subway puts a limit to your inventory by default. You have your sidearm, some grenades, and a larger automatic weapon, and that's it: trying to pick up a Thompson when you already have an AK-47 will have the game displaying the message "Cannot get the unit: not enough space".
• Star Wars: Battlefront, as the Star Wars equivalent to Battlefield, uses a similar system, limiting you to a weapon slot cycled between your class's primary and secondary weapons, and an item slot cycled between whatever grenades and/or gadgets your class uses. The games even follow the Battlefield mould, where in the first game your weapon was determined solely by your class and your faction and the sequel only allowed you to upgrade your weapon by doing well enough with it, before the 2015 game and its sequel (interestingly now by the same devs as Battlefield) went for allowing you to switch out weapons as you want.
• Star Wars: Republic Commando gives you a maximum of three guns - your weak recharging blaster pistol, your primary blaster carbine, and a second primary weapon of some variety once you picked one up off an enemy or from a weapon cache - as well as separate caches of four different grenade types that can be cycled and thrown with a button press. In practice, it's closer to five different weapons at maximum, since the primary blaster carbine is a Swiss-Army Weapon that also gets attachments to switch it into a long-ranged Sniper Rifle and an anti-armor Grenade Launcher - conversely, your pistol is so worthless that the console version doesn't even particularly advertise how to switch to it once you have a proper secondary weapon.
• Team Fortress 2 has this as part and parcel of its class system. Every class has (usually) three slots — primary, secondary, and melee — and each slot is (usually) taken up by the same type of weapon — the Soldier's primary will always be a type of rocket launcher, for example. Weapons can only be swapped out without dying and respawning by either revisiting the ammo cabinet in your team's spawn point after changing your loadout in the menu, or, as of the Gun Mettle update, grabbing one from another dead player of the same class as you.
• In Titanfall, your pilot has three weapon slots, one each for their primary weapon, anti-Titan weapon, and sidearm. However, you can drop your sidearm to pick up another primary weapon.
• Tribes: Ascend previously only let you carry two weapons, dependent on which of the nine classes you used. The December 2015 patch changed this to allow three weapons for light and medium armors and four for heavies, as in the earlier games.
• In the first Vietcong, you may only carry a knife, a primary weapon, a handgun, one grenade type, one medkit, and one special item, like a radio or C4 charges. The sequel also allowed you to carry a secondary weapon and an additional grenade type.

Hack-and-Slash

• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance only allows the character to carry one weapon at a time. Upgrading means dropping the old in favor of the new.
• You can have up to three weapons or items at a time in Mordhau.

Isometric Shooters

• Every player in Foes.io can only carry two items by default, and finding a backpack expands this to three. Doesn't matter if the item in question is as small as a revolver or a syringe, or as large as a hunting rifle or an LMG.
• Hatred: The Antagonist can only carry three weapons at a time.
• Hotline Miami: The player character can only use either a single weapon or their fists. Guns are not reloadable, and tossing the Throw-Away Guns and melee weapons at enemies is a viable and encouraged tactic.
• You can only carry one weapon on each mission in Judge Dredd vs. Zombies, along with several clips to it.

Puzzle Games

• Chip's Challenge: You can only hold up to four non-key items at a time. This never comes up in the first Chip's Challenge, because there's only four non-key items that Chip can pick up, and walking over an item he already has just causes that item to be erased.

Real-Time Strategy

• In Satellite Reign, your agents are limited to two weapons. With the proper skill upgrade or with special augmentation, you can increase the amount.
• The titular character of StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops has four slots: helmet, suit, gadget and weapon, which means she, for example, can simultaneously have a shotgun (a weapon) and grenades (a gadget), but not a shotgun and a sniper rifle (two weapons).
• Warcraft III: Each hero has six inventory spaces, but units can be upgraded to carry two items (but not use them). There is no limit to the type of item carried, so your character can can six swords around and the damage will stack (custom maps have evolved a wide variety of inventory systems to limit the items used while increasing the items carried).
• Plants vs. Zombies: You start the game with only 3 plant slots, but as you progress the slot amount is increased up to 9.

Roguelikes

• Played with in CTHON, where you start with three weapons, the Cannon, the Blade, and the Launcher, and these remain the only weapons you'll ever get. However, their capabilities can be substantially transformed by the upgrades, and you only have enough inventory space for a few of these.
• In Dead Cells, you only have two slots for weapons/shields and two slots for skills, and there are also two-handed weapons that take up both weapon slots. Sticking to one weapon the whole run is generally not viable due to the fact item power scales with the stage level. Later updates added a backpack slot to carry one extra equipment on reserve, adding some leeway to your build.
• In EVERSPACE, your weapon and device slots are limited depending on the ship you use. You can upgrade the number of slot with perks.
• Depending on your ship type in FTL, you can have only three or four weapons and two or three drones, and each set can only use a maximum of eight reactor points. You can also only ever have three Augments on your ship, and there is only room for eight main systems; if you get things like a Teleporter and a Drone Control, you might not be able to fit a Mind Control or Hacking system on your ship.
• You are normally limited to three weapons out of fifty-one in Immortal Redneck... unless you choose Apis as your god. Then you can carry four. The "Heavy Duty" Scroll will also let you carry an additional gun. Beware a certain scroll that will reduce you to only a single weapon slot, but will increase your damage.
• Despite the game boasting 50+ different guns and five ammo types, in Nuclear Throne you can only carry two weapons at once, and only one character can use both at the same time.
• Each character in Pathway can only carry three items at the same time: a main weapon, an "item" (can be a secondary weapon like a knife or grenades, a healing item, or a tool to repair outfits), and an outfit (serves as armour).
• SYNTHETIK has nearly a hundred different guns to find, but you can only carry three of them at a time (four if you're Heavy Gunner), and you can't drop your starting weapon.
• You have a lot of toys to play with in Void Bastards, but it's balanced by your character being limited to three slots: normal weapon, explosive one, and a gadget.
• The submarine crew in We Need to go Deeper can only carry one item each. Getting a backpack allows them to carry and switch between two.
• In Curse of the Dead Gods the player can only ever carry three weapons into the temple. One for the main hand, one for the secondary hand and a two-handed weapon to which one can switch even mid-battle, but which cannot profit from the synergy effects that the other weapons may possess.

Shoot 'em Ups

• In ZeroRanger, there are 8 different weapons, but the player can only carry up to four of them at a time; two different weapons are presented to the player at the end of each of the first three stages, and the player may only choose one of those two. The other weapon will go to the other player in a 2-player game, and disappear entirely in a 1-player game, never to be obtained again until the second loop, where the player can exchange their weapons. Thus, it is important for the player to decide which weapons suit the upcoming stages and their playstyle the most.

Simulation

• In Roots of Pacha, you have three equipment slots for stat-boosting charms. However, once you wear a charm, you can't take it off until the next day because you "bond" with it. Additionally, the third slot can only be used for fully bonded charms.

Stealth-Based Games

• In Deadbolt, you can only carry two weapons at any given time.
• Death to Spies: You can only carry one long gun and one pistol at a time. You have a slot for one knife, and if you take more knives they go into the 18 slots used for most other items. You need a backpack to carry mines, wirecutters or dynamite, but you can carry more small items in the backpack if you run out of slots on your personal inventory.
• Hitman has varied over the years, but the general rule is Agent 47 can deploy with a limited number of small arms and concealable items, and carry as many as he can get his hands on, but can only carry or use one large item (long arms, rifle case, briefcase, ect.) at a time.
• The Metal Gear series has gradually moved from the Hyperspace Arsenal trope (from the original Metal Gear to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty) to this.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, you carry your entire arsenal in your backpack... but you can only actually select from eight guns or items in your active inventory. Everything else has to be swapped out with an active item in the pause menu to use it in-game. There is a weight system involved as well, where each weapon and item has a set weight, and carrying more and heavier things in your active inventory is supposed to increase the rate at which you burn through stamina, though the effects range somewhere between "completely negligible" and "they didn't even program that part in".
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots uses the same system as Snake Eater, although the active weapons allowed are reduced to 5 at a time. In practice, it's closer to three active slots and two more dedicated to the M4 Custom and Operator pistol, since those are the only two guns Snake uses in cutscenes, and the game will force them into your active inventory (actively removing other weapons to make room for them) whenever it transitions from a cutscene into gameplay as it does before several boss fights.
  • Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops allowed soldiers to carry four items and four items only.
  • Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker uses a similar system to 4, restricting the player to five weapons and eight items that have to be selected before setting out on a mission, with anything you pick up in the field, save ammo for any of your current weapons if you're not already carrying the maximum, being shipped back to Mother Base for later use. The game also makes a distinction between primary weapons (actual firearms) and secondary ones (grenades or other tossed/deployed items), and the ratio of each that you're allowed to carry depends on the outfit your soldier is wearing; going shirtless or just wearing a T-shirt restricts you to one primary weapon and four secondaries, while heavy armor lets you carry three primaries and two secondaries.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain gives Punished Snake access to one sidearm (pistol or SMG), one primary weapon (rifle, shotgun or grenade launcher) and one optional heavy weapon (Sniper Rifle, rocket launcher or machine gun). He also has eight slots for ordnance (explosives, grenades, booby traps, etc) and eight slots for other items.
• In Splinter Cell: Conviction, Sam and the two co-op characters Archer and Kestrel are only able to carry a pistol and one primary weapon of any other variety. Sam can carry every type of gadget at once but the co-op characters get just any two at a time.

Survival Horror

• Alan Wake ultimately gives the protagonist four slots to hold weapons in. Two of the four are dedicated to one-handed guns, one a six-shot revolver and the other a single-shot, more ammo-limited but much more powerful flare gun. The third slot is for long arms, with options of a double-barreled shotgun, a pump-action shotgun, or a lever-action hunting rifle. The fourth is dedicated to throwable weapons, able to be cycled between flares and flashbangs.
• Alone in the Dark (2008): Carnby's inventory consists of what he can hold in his hands and the very limiting confines of his jacket, although you can also keep caches of things scattered about whatever stage you're playing in.
• Youngho could carry a total of 24 consumable items in his backpack in the 2015 The Coma: Cutting Class edition. The backpack space was then reduced to just 'six' item slots in the 2017 Recut edition.
• Condemned: Criminal Origins gives you a single slot for weapons: whatever Ethan can carry in his hands. You have to drop whatever you're carrying to pick up anything else, up to and including a gun that actually has ammo in it, since you can't reload. The only items you carry around with you at all times are your taser, a chest-mounted flashlight, and the forensic equipment in your bag. Condemned 2: Bloodshot adds an unlockable holster to give you one slot to stash a gun in, even letting you take ammo from it to reload another weapon of the same type, but otherwise uses the same system, the only other major difference being that the taser is also made an unlockable in an early level.
• Dead Space: Isaac can only equip 4 weapons at a time. The rest must be either kept within the safe (accessible from any of the Ishimura's store consoles) or sold to those stores to free up space. Most other items, save for cash and power nodes for upgrading or opening certain doors, are kept in a separate inventory with a number of slots limited by what your current suit can carry, starting at around 10 items with the basic suit and maxing out at 25 with the level 5 suit and New Game Plus or DLC upgrades.
• In the Commodore 64 game Project Firestart, you can carry two laser rifles at a time, and there's no way to recharge or swap ammo. If you want to pick up a brand new rifle from the armory, you need to empty out one of the ones you're carrying.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory limits you to an inventory of eight items total. What armour you're wearing also determines how many guns, medical items and grenades you can carry, whilst limits on keycards and SCP objects remain unaffected.

Third-Person Shooters

• In After the War, Rodan's weapon setup is Sword and Gun: the former is always with him, but as for the latter he can carry a limited arsenal: one "pistol" (either a single-shot one or a mini machinegun), one heavier gun (which includes sniper rifles, shotguns and assault rifles) and a situational heavy gun (either a rocket launcher or a minigun) which you can carry but are unable to store in your inventory, and will drop if you choose another weapon.
• You can only carry a limited number of weapons at once in all three modes of Fortnite. In Save the World, you can switch between three weapons on the fly, but you can carry a much larger amount of weapons in a backpack whose size can be upgraded. In Battle Royale, you can only carry up to five weapons, but the Bandage Bazooka introduced in the first season of Chapter 2 will take up 2 weapon slots. In Creative, the same weapon limit applies, but can be reduced in certain maps that impose rules on loadouts.
• The first three entries in the Gears of War series give the player access to two primary weapons, a pistol, and grenades on a cross-shaped menu. The fourth game, Judgment, ditches this menu, making pistols just another weapon you carry in your two slots, and grenades throwable at any time with a press of a button. It also sped up weapon switch times and melee speed considerably, and its multiplayer ditched the firepower boost from a perfect active reload, forcing players to utilise their limited arsenal to its fullest effect rather than simply relying on the Gnasher shotgun to carry them through battles.
• In Loadout, you could only carry two guns and one piece of equipment at a time. As much as you would want to carry an electro-pulse rifle, a flaming machine-gun AND a heal-beam, you can't carry all three.
• Max Payne 3 limits the player to carrying one rifle-sized gun and any two one-handed weapons (handguns, one-handed submachine guns, and sawed-off shotguns). The one-handed weapons get shoulder holsters so you can keep them with you while relying on the primary weapon as much as you want, but no longarms come with a sling so Max just holds them by their forend while using a pistol. If you want to dual wield, you need to drop the rifle.
• The contestants in Player Unknowns Battlegrounds can carry two primary weapons, a sidearm, a melee weapon, and equip one grenade. Everything else, including ammo and additional grenades, goes into an inventory. Backpacks and vests upgrade your inventory capacity.
• You can carry two guns at a time in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, neither of which will have much ammo to spare, so this further encourages you to let rip with your psychic powers instead, which are much better anyway. Only the Sniper Rifle is useful for when you need to take out someone out of powers' range.
• In The Punisher, Frank can carry one primary weapon (rifles, shotguns, SMG, explosive launchers or flamethrower) and dual-wield two side-arms of the same type (pistols, machine pistols or revorlers).
• S4 League allows each player to carry up to three weapons and one special skill into a given match. Players are not allowed to swap weapons or skills in mid-match.
• Spec Ops: The Line: Walker can carry any two guns, most of which have a unique alternate fire mode.
• The first three Syphon Filter games had hyperspace arsenals, but in the second trilogy, they switched to a limit of one of each weapon type (melee, grenade, shoulder arm, sidearm, and auxiliary arm).
• In Transformers (2004), you could equip up to four Mini-cons at a time when going into a level, but only two of which (assigned to the R1 and R2 slots) were actual weapons. When you collect a new minicon you have the option to swap it in, but otherwise you have to exit the level and re-enter if you want to change your current set.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron sticks to the traditional model: two guns of any type, a Quick Melee option hard-coded to each specific character, and a handful of consumable options comprising some variation of lethal, non-lethal, or utility gear with a total consumable limit of around three. The variety comes from a given character's special powers and alternate mode.
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has two "special" weapon slots (that can't be used when wielding a thunder hammer or wearing a jump pack) in addition to the chainsword + bolt pistol and the bolter. Special weapons include a storm bolter, plasma gun, remote grenade launcher, sniper, bigger sniper, meltagun... You can also replace your melee weapon from the standard Astartes pattern chainsword to anything from a combat knife to a power hammer.
• Warframe allows your Tenno to carry one Primary weapon (Assault Rifles, Snipers, Bows, Shotguns), a Secondary Weapon (Pistols, Throwing Knives, etc), and a Melee weapon (Swords, Hammer, and so on). Of course, this excludes any Frame that has a built-in weapon as one of their abilities (Excalibur's Exalted Blade, Mesa's Regulator Pistols, Ivara's Artemis Bow, for example).

Turn-Based Tactics

• Each mech in Into the Breach can only hold one pilot and equip two weapons or passives, and their effectiveness is further limited by the mech's reactor power.
• Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden: Characters can carry two weapons and three grenades. The party can access a Hyperspace Arsenal when out of combat, but when the bullets start flying the arsenal closes, and you have to make do with what the party have on their persons.
• Phantom Doctrine: Agents can carry two guns and two consumables (e.g. grenades and first aid kits) and wear one set of armour. Agents wearing disguise have their guns limited to sub machine guns and pistols, and cannot carry consumables or wear armour.
• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus: Each Techpriest can only equip a limited number of augmentations, a catch-all term for everything from weapons to support items, with only their Servo-Skull provided for free. In a variation on the norm, the loadout is actually less restrictive than normal; Techpriests have every slot unlocked at all times, but need to level up to be allowed to fill more of them at once.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, every one of your troops gets a primary weapon (the type of which is determined by their class), a secondary weapon (a pistol, unless they're a Heavy in which case they get a rocket launcher instead) and a slot for extra utility items like medkits, grenades, or armor. Support troopers unlock an extra utility slot once they reach a certain rank.
  • The MEC Troopers in Enemy Within DLC have a primary ranged weapon and a secondary, limited use weapon that can be either medium-range (flamethrower) or close-range (Kinetic Strike).
    • A facility called "The Foundry" allows you to upgrade your entire force in some way. One of these upgrades is pure Boring, but Practical: giving every one of your soldier an extra item slot. Support troopers have their class granted extra slot replaced by an extra use for any limited use items.
  • XCOM 2: Similar to its predecessor in that every soldier gets one weapon based on their class, and one side equipment also based on class (Gremlin, pistol, grenade launcher, sword...).

Western RPGs

• Fallout 3 has a system where nearly everything has weight, and how much you can carry is determined by your Strength stat (base carry weight of 100 pounds, with each point in Strength adding another 10, plus other things like Powered Armor that buffs Strength and perks to add to your base carry weight or let you carry weapons over a certain weight for half their normal weight value), and if you go even a tenth of a pound over that limit you can no longer run or fast-travel (though the latter limitation can be removed with another perk). Within that limit, you can carry as many weapons, sets of armor, and assorted other junk as you want, though to quickly switch between anything without having to go into the Pip-Boy menu you have to set them to slots, of which you are limited to eight (the 1 through 8 keys on a keyboard, or the eight individual directions on the D-pad). Fallout: New Vegas uses basically the same system, though reducing the number of slots to seven, with up on the pad/the number 2 key rebound to switching ammo types.
• Done in various ways in Mass Effect, which also makes a point of averting Informed Equipment as your equipped weapons appear on your character model.
  • Mass Effect, being more of an RPG that happened to have guns in it than a shooter, had a standard RPG Hyperspace Arsenal inventory (hard-capped at 150 items). However characters were limited to one of each weapon class equipped at a time, and couldn't change equipped weapons during combat.
  • Mass Effect 2 switched to more of a dedicated shooter playstyle. All squadmates could only equip two weapon classes, while most player classes also carried two weapons plus one "heavy weapon". Some player classes did provide more weapon slots, and all player classes received an upgrade of an additional weapon slot at a narrative midpoint of the game.
  • Mass Effect 3 restricted Shepard's party members to two weapon classes out of five, but Shepard had access to all five slots (as seen in the page picture). The game made use of a "weight system" to account for carrying multiple weapons, as the heavier the load carried the longer the cooldown/recharge rate on Shepard's powers. Heavy weapons changed to Throw-Away Guns that are placed on the map which replace the equipped weapon when picked up, then are discared when they run out of ammo. Multiplayer characters also had access to all 5 slots, but are limited to a choice of one or two weapons plus a weightless Cobra rocket launcher that they always carry, even when empty.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda allows the player character to carry two firearms plus one melee weapon. Ryder from the singleplayer may buy increases to carry up to four guns, while multiplayer characters only have two guns max. However, they can carry any class of weapon. Furthermore, Critical Encumbrance Failure is sort of in effect. Ryder or the multiplayer character keeps a 100% recharge speed bonus until they hit a weight limit, at which point there is a sliding scale of penalty to power recharge based on the amount of weight carried over the limit.
• Automated Simulations' Temple of Apshai. Your character could only carry one weapon (a sword) at a time. If you wanted to pick up a sword you found in the Temple, you had to drop (and lose) the one you were holding.
• In The Witcher, you can only carry up to four weapons at a time: two Witcher swords (steel and silver), a short weapon (such as a dagger or a small axe), and a heavy weapon (e.g. a large axe, a Morningstar or a second steel sword). One of the game's armours gives an extra slot for a second small weapon. You cannot carry any weapons in your inventory at all, at least in theory: your Fantastic Fighting Styles only actually apply to your Witcher swords, so any other weapon you pick up tends to be something that you're storing in your extra weapon slots until you can sell it.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt mixes things up - you can only equip two blades at a time, one silver and one steel, but you can also have equipped: a crossbow, two types of bombs, four consumable items, and two plot-related items. There's also nothing stopping you from looting a small army's worth of armor and weaponry to sell until you pass the encumbrance limit, at which point you're limited to a slow walk unless you're on horseback.
• Knights of the Old Republic limited each character to at most a single one-handed weapon in each hand (Dual Wielding or going Guns Akimbo incurs penalties on attack rolls), or a single two-handed weapon. You were not allowed to pair a melee weapon with a ranged weapon. KOTOR II: The Sith Lords added a second loadout slot that a character could swap to as a move action, allowing them to, for example, start a fight with a blaster and then draw a lightsaber if the enemy closed to melee range.
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker uses an encumbrance system, with light, medium, and heavy loads calculated per strict Pathfinder tabletop rules (averting Critical Encumbrance Failure). Each character contributes to party encumbrance for item storage, but also has their own weight of equipped gear calculated separately: characters with higher Strength can fit more gear without penalties. Each character can have up to four sets of main hand and offhand gear equipped (switching weapon sets is a move action), as well as put five non-equipment magical items or potions into their belt slots for quickbar use.

Wide Open Sandbox

• In Dead Rising 2, you are limited to carrying only a certain amount of items in your inventory, as well as certain items you can't keep in your inventory while equipping another item (like the chainsaw). Fortunately, as your level increases, so does the amount of items you could carry.
• A new mechanic introduced in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and carried on from there is weapon categories, from melee weapons to shotguns to thrown weapons to gifts. It's still more than one would expect a normal human being to be able to carry (by San Andreas, the second game in the series to use this system, there's already enough categories that CJ can carry just as many weapons as Claude could in III), but it does prevent situations like carrying both a rocket launcher and a flamethrower as was possible in the third game. This was dropped in Grand Theft Auto V, but even there, you're still better off carrying no more than one weapon of each class of firearm.
• The Just Cause series has used this after the first game, which just let you carry everything.
  • Just Cause 2 has three slots for firearms. Two are dedicated to one-handed weapons (the pistol, revolver, submachine gun, Sawed-Off Shotgun and grenade launcher), any of which can be used on their own or mixed and matched. A third is dedicated to two-handed weapons (the assault rifle, machine gun, sniper rifle and rocket launcher). Explosives are likewise in a separate slot, toggled between the standard frag grenades or remote-detonated explosives that are thrown with the same button for firing the left-hand gun when pairing them up.
  • Just Cause 3 reduces one-handed guns to a single slot (pistols or submachine guns) that are always used in pairs, while expanding two-handed weapons into two separate slots, one for an assault rifle, shotgun or machine gun and another which takes a special weapon like a sniper rifle, launcher, or one of the "FOW" superweapons. Thrown explosives are now on separate buttons, one button quickly tossing grenades and another switching to C4, which you now carry unlimited quantities of but can only place a certain amount of at once.
  • Just Cause 4 brings it down to two weapon slots, period, though both slots can contain any weapon and the environment is lousy with new ones. Grenade types are now associate with specific weapons as an alt-fire, and planting explosives is achieved via Super Wrist-Gadget.
• Just bought some shiny new Pursuit Tech in Need for Speed Rivals? Surprise, your car can only have two. This is especially egregious as a Cop, as apparently an officer with two weapons on his car suddenly loses the authority to radio for helicopters or roadblocks.
• Red Dead Redemption II, in contrast to its predecessor, only lets you carry two handguns and two long guns on your person. Switching which weapons you're carrying requires either going into a town with a gunsmith and switching them out there if you're somehow without your main horse, or switching them out from your main horse's saddlebags.
• In Saints Row, you have inventory slots for every weapon category (melee, pistol, shotgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, heavy weapon, and explosives, plus an eighth slot for just your fists) but can only carry one of said category in the slot, maybe two if you pair them up in Saints Row 2 onwards.

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