| rdfs:comment | - This trope occurs whenever there is inconsistency in how things work or behave between the gameplay and storyline sections of the game, the latter of which consists of cutscenes and dialogue. While this trope is generally forgivable due to technological limitations, Egregious instances can result in the shattering of the player's Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Typically, it's done to try and make a more interesting game, since simply hitting One Hit KO all the time like in that cutscene would be utterly boring, while having a person who actually can't open doors like in that last cutscene would make the game needlessly frustrating. Accordingly, it's sometimes excused by Acceptable Breaks From Reality, but by no stretch does that justification cover all of the flat-out weird mismatches pe
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| abstract | - This trope occurs whenever there is inconsistency in how things work or behave between the gameplay and storyline sections of the game, the latter of which consists of cutscenes and dialogue. While this trope is generally forgivable due to technological limitations, Egregious instances can result in the shattering of the player's Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Typically, it's done to try and make a more interesting game, since simply hitting One Hit KO all the time like in that cutscene would be utterly boring, while having a person who actually can't open doors like in that last cutscene would make the game needlessly frustrating. Accordingly, it's sometimes excused by Acceptable Breaks From Reality, but by no stretch does that justification cover all of the flat-out weird mismatches perpetrated by game makers over the years. Since large-scale cutscenes and extensive dialogue have only been present in games the last twenty years or so, Gameplay and Story Segregation is far more prevalent from the 16-bit era onwards, especially ones in which the storyline is a focal point of the game.
* Arbitrary Headcount Limit Arbitrary requirement that stops you from having too many characters in a party or unit.
* Lazy Backup If you're only allowed three out of eighteen party members, and those three are killed, you get a Game Over even though the rest are still alive.
* Canon Shadow A character or item that seems to be in the party, but other than giving stats, doesn't affect the plot at all.
* Commonplace Rare When a seemingly common item takes an excessive amount of effort to acquire.
* Cutscene Incompetence The character can destroy giant monsters in battle, but in cutscenes, they're just normal.
* Cutscene Power to the Max The character is incredibly powerful - but only in cutscenes; in gameplay, their stats are about average.
* Day Old Legend Even though you just made that item using the crafting system, its flavor text gives it several hundred years' worth of backstory.
* Dude, Where's My Respect? You may have saved the world or completed impossible quests, but that won't stop you from being given extremely meager quests and generally treated like crap.
* Fight Like a Card PlayerThe story has almost nothing to do with cards, but a lot of the gameplay revolves around them.
* Follow the Plotted Line You somehow always end up where the plot says you should be, no matter how little sense it makes that you should be there.
* Improbable Power Discrepancy Enemies in RPGs are given statistics based on how powerful you are expected to be at that point, not how strong that enemy would be based on common sense.
* Irrelevant Sidequest In RPGs, people have an alarming tendency to entrust powerful items to random strangers for doing the most mundane of things, and regardless of whether the stranger has any meaningful level of skill at the random thing in question.
* Menu Time Lockout The inventory menu allows you to pause the game and change your armour and weaponry to immediate effect in the middle of a battle.
* Overrated and Underleveled A character introduced as being really powerful ends up, statistics-wise, as being weaker than the main character.
* Plot Coupon That Does Something A form of aversion of this trope, where a story important item also influences the gameplay.
* Plotline Death All cutscene deaths are final; your "revive" spells and items won't work here. Nor will you be revived if you have extra lives left.
* Schrodinger's Player Character The game offers multiple characters to choose from with various backstories, but only the character you choose as your PC ever appears in the game.
* Selective Condemnation The slaughter of a single NPC is a tragedy; the slaughter of one thousand Mooks is a statistic.
* Separate but Identical In strategy games, some sub-factions are said to be different in composition, outlook etc., but ultimately only differ in their color palette.
* Simultaneous Warning and Action Enemy NPCs will always attack you, even when they yell things that indicate they're going to arrest you.
* Solve the Soup Cans A puzzle with bizarre and disconnected elements included in a game purely to serve as an obstacle to the player.
* Alphabet Soup Cans Educational obstacles that are bizarre and disconnected.
* Space Compression Lores and tales of the world tell about the history of large cities in the size of small villages and vast lands which can be crossed within minutes on foot.
* Statistically Speaking No matter how high your strength, speed, etc. goes, you still will not be able to do certain mundane things, like moving that chair out of your way. It must be glued to the floor.
* Story Overwrite When the storyline ignores, overwrites or RetCons one of the player's in-game accomplishments.
* Cutscene Drop When a cutscene begins, a character may be "teleported" to where the plot says they should be, rather than where they really are.
* No Cutscene Inventory Inertia No matter what weapon or armor you have equipped, you will be shown with specific (often default) equipment in cutscenes.
* The Battle Didn't Count After beating a boss, instead of dying, he pulls a Villain Exit Stage Left. Or worse....
* Heads I Win, Tails You Lose A boss battle where you get a Game Over if you lose, but if you win, the boss activates his Cutscene Power to the Max and overrides it.
* Take Your Time You can take as long as you want to finish your sidequests, and that world-destroying meteor will just hang in the sky till you're done.
* Continue Your Mission, Dammit! Even given the above, Helpful NPCs will constantly remind you that you "need" to keep going.
* Took a Shortcut You spent all that time going through the dungeon and beating all the puzzles, so how the heck did those NPCs get here first?
* Video Game Lives If mentioned in the plot, death is treated as permanent.
* Video Game Time Fake use of a time scale means that empires rise and fall in the time it takes to take the trash out.
* Timed Mission When a mission is timed without presenting any reason for it in the story.
* Always Close The cutscenes that follow a Timed Mission don't reflect the actual amount of time the player had left to complete it; they always treat it as if the player escaped at the very last second.
* You Have Researched Breathing You have to research things that have no logical reason to even need to be learned. See also RPG Anime and New Rules as the Plot Demands. There are three types listed here; straight examples, aversions (that you could term gameplay and story integration), and back-and-forth examples, where a game includes major straight examples and major aversions at the same time.
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