Cut and Paste Environments: Difference between revisions
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Repetitive environments can make navigating the world very confusing. Without having unique landmarks, it is very easy to get lost. And it's very dull to see the same things over and over.
MMORPGs (and other forms of [[Wide Open Sandbox
Sometimes called "geomorphic design" after a set of [[Tabletop RPG]] dungeon design "tools" sold by TSR in the 1970s and 1980s.
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** This problem shows up most glaringly in three places in [[Castlevania: Curse of Darkness]]. The Tower of Infinity (50 levels of the same room with different [[Mooks]], the Tower of Evermore, which is the same thing but harder, and most damningly, Dracula's Castle (which of course is required). It's also pretty obvious in [[Castlevania: Lament of Innocence]].
* Being a [[Wide Open Sandbox]], this is common practice in the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' series, albeit not to the degree that it's very glaring to your average player. ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]: [[Grand Theft Auto San Andreas|San Andreas]]'' however is the biggest offender with regards to interiors.
** Barber shops,<ref>Except the the barber shop near CJ's home (since according to the storyline the person running that particular one has been cutting CJ's hair for years), and another on the southeast corner of Los Santos</ref>
** During the burglary missions there are also only a handful of building interiors depending on what kind of building you are breaking into.
** Even as recently as ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'', platform levels of underground subway stations, fast food joints, a clothing chain, two gun stores, bowling alleys, and a multitude of apartment corridors still share common interiors.
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** Oblivion is not the worst offender. ''Daggerfall'' covered an area larger than Great Britain, and since the developers certainly weren't going to actually design all that area, most of it was randomly generated, and looked more or less the same. The random dungeons of ''Daggerfall'' were made by the computer by assembling sections of the main quest's dungeons. This resulted in dungeons where the walls and floor would suddenly change colour.
*** Not to mention that the algorithms involved produced levels that resembled "mating octopi" according to at least one review and completing quests involving dungeons consisted of either a) only completing quests where you find the item in the first room, b) spent hours combing the dungeon for the [[MacGuffin]] (which didn't look any different than the rest of the dungeon trash, or c) used the cheat codes provided with the patch (largely because the developers realized the game was unplayable without such codes) to cycle through the potential quest item locations.
* Sega employs this trope liberally for the post-millennial [[Phantasy Star]] games: ''Phantasy Star Online,'' ''Phantasy Star Universe,'' ''Phantasy Star Portable,'' and ''Phantasy Star Zero.'' Phantasy Star Online is the worst offender, tropewise: The first PSO game told an entire story, with side stories, optional missions and all, '''in the same four reused maps.''' (This isn't even counting how many of the enemies encountered were reskins that used the same character "skeleton" and animatons!) The addon/sequels to PSO often included [[Ditto Fighter|reskins of previous content]], especially [[Palette Swap|bosses and enemies]]. ''Phantasy Star Universe'' and ''Portable'' tried to add variety to layouts of the same area, but it's still based on the same
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' re-uses the same room design for mines, and for planetary outposts. The sole variation is in the placement of crates used for cover. And even then, a lot of outposts have the crates piled in the exact same manner. This also affects the uncharted planets, which are all made up amazingly similar hilly terrain, the only difference being that each planet had a slightly different color scheme.
** Justified in that standardized, prefabricated outposts and dwellings would be completely reasonable to expect in the realm of interstellar travel and colonization, especially as it's strongly implied that most of the Systems Alliance's industrial concerns are handled by a small oligopoly.
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* ''[[The Conduit]]'' both plays this trope straight. While many of the earlier levels are repetitive (somewhat justified in that they take place in repetitive real-world buildings), the player can also use the [[Swiss Army Weapon|ASE]] to show a path to the next waypoint.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] at one point in the sequel when [[Player Character|Michael Ford]] starts complaining about the simularities of the corridors in a later level. [[Voice with an Internet Connection|Prometheus]] then proceeds to note that architects [[Take That Us|and level designers]] [[This Is Reality|for video games]] tend to do this to save money.
* During development, one of Bungie's promotional points for ''[[Oni]]'' was that its buildings were designed by ''real architects'' for the player to fight through. The game ended up with a lot of
* ''[[Sim City]]'' takes this to a large scale level with it's building tilesets.
** Heck, even in ''[[Sim City]] 4'', where lots could come in different shapes and positions, you will still have the same buildings ([[Memetic Mutation|hence why everyone hates Wren Insurance in that game]]), in fact, it's very common to have two of the same buildings right next to each other.
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* The ''[[Diablo]]'' series prides itself for its randomly generated dungeons, and apart from a few carefully-constructed areas (boss levels, the last parts of final dungeons, towns etc.) it manages to avoid this trope completely.
* The ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' series had a large number of houses you could break into. And most of them used the exact same layout...
* The revamped version of ''OGame'' gives planets in different positions different [[Palette Swap
* All the ''[[.hack]]'' games suffer from this. By trying to simulate an MMO, the games offer you an enormous amount of key word combinations to access new areas, and they will lead you to... not a great ''variation'' of areas, mostly a change of enemies.
* [[Zork|You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.]]
* In ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'', there are two levels in which Shadow is transported to his memory in the past, The Doom and Lost Impact. Completing certain missions that don't just involve getting to the goal ring, especially in Lost Impact, is arduous as every room looks very similar and there are not quite enough distinctive features in each area.
** Central City counts as well. There are tow parts that look exactly the same, in fact, even the ''landmarks'' are the same.
* The FPS ''Moon'' very noticeably uses this, but also attempts to justify it. Almost all of the game takes place in alien bases, and since they're all for the same sort of alien and the same purpose, there is no in-game reason for them to vary much. As for the rest of the levels, they're
* Codemasters' ''[[FUEL]]'' is a great offender, having objects repeated several times in a small area. This, of course, is justified by the game's 14400 square kilometers of environment.
* ''[[Ultima VI]]'' constructs its "cave" dungeons from geomorphs. This wouldn't be so bad if most of the dungeons weren't part of a ''single ginormous world-spanning cave,'' so one wrong turn can leave you unbelievably lost.
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