Player Headquarters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A location in a video game that serves as a base of operations. Usually contains anything you need to replenish your Hit Points and the like, save the game, etc.

You may not necessarily have it from the start, but it must be easy to access once you have it. You may even be able to decorate it.

Often mobile; see Cool Ship, Cool Boat and Base on Wheels. If fixed, it may or may not be a Hub Level.

Compare Capital City.

Examples of Player Headquarters include:


First-Person Shooter

  • Inverted in Left 4 Dead (and any other game which is based around escaping a hazardous area), where the whole point is to reach such a place (although the "safe rooms" which start and end the levels may count as they allow you to stock up on ammo, switch weapons, provide a medkit for each person in your party and allow fallen players to respawn once the surviving players reach them). However, going there is not that easy.
  • In Deus Ex, the UNATCO headquarters on Liberty Island served as JC Denton's homebase. At least for a while.
  • The Batcave levels in Batman Doom. Since it's a Doom mod, you cannot really return to it whenever you want to, but in between each "chapter" (two to three levels centering around a single villain) you return to the Batcave where you find some supplies. More interestingly, the Batcave has a different, cleverly hidden secret area each time you revisit it.

Hack and Slash

  • No More Heroes has Travis' hotel room where he could change, watch TV or save the game. He also received missions via the phone.
  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle makes it better by letting Travis move around and play several minigames, other than occasionally talking to his friends.

MMORPGs

  • City of Heroes had fully customizable Super Group bases that allow, among other things, storage of salvage, enhancements and inspirations; teleporters to the various zones; a medical reclaimer where you can resurrect when defeated (instead of the in-zone hospital or worse, a hospital in another zone); access to empowerment stations where you can buff your stats, and more.
  • Phantasy Star Online 2 has the Arks Ship, a spaceship where players can shop for supplies and arrange parties and missions to other worlds. Players can also purchase their own customizable rooms.

Platform Game

Real Time Strategy

  • In some games, to 'win' you need to protect your Player Headquarters. Homeworld is an example (with The Mothership as your Player Headquarters), but there are many others, such as StarCraft.
  • Pikmin has the ship Olimar came in which traveled into high orbit to avoid the nocturnal creatures every night.

Role-Playing Game

  • Most Final Fantasy games rather use the biggest Global Airship as a mobile HQ:
    • The Invincible of Final Fantasy III: Airship. This one even had shops in it.
    • The Lunar Whale in Final Fantasy IV: Spaceship.
    • However, Final Fantasy V had the Catapult, the Lost Technology underwaterground base where you dock your Lost Technology airship. With two scientists working for you full time!
    • The Blackjack in Final Fantasy VI: Airship. Complete with lounge, engine room, bedroom, merchants, and casino! The Falcon replaces the Blackjack later on, but it has fewer creature comforts. Both allow you to change your party.
    • The Highwind in Final Fantasy VII: Airship, which even contains a chocobo stable.
      • Final Fantasy VII also allows you to purchase a luxury home in Costa Del Sol. You can rest there as a free inn after paying the initial cost. Of course, it costs 300,000 gil, and you'll never spend that much in game purely on inns.
    • Balamb Garden in Final Fantasy VIII: Starts as large military academy, and then lifts off and flies around.
    • Quite explicitly, the Celsius in Final Fantasy X-2, complete with item shop.
    • A Mog House (which is a misnomer, as it's really a Mog Room) in Final Fantasy XI allows adventurers to:
      • Check their at-Moogle inventory, which includes a Safe, possible storage space from furniture, and a Locker acquired as a mercenary of Aht Urhgan,
      • Check for any deliveries, which include gifts from players and profits from auctions,
      • Change your job class into pretty much whatever the hell you want,
      • Perform gardening, which can result in possible rare items,
      • Place and arrange furniture, which adds storage space and bonus effects,
      • And even invite your friends in, no matter if the House is a pig's sty or not.
      • It should be noted that most of this is accessible in all major cities, as your moogle goes to any rooms you get there. Hell, the small towns even have Nomad Moogles, which allow you to check most of your items, change job, and check deliveries anyways(Only checking your storage, moving furniture and inviting players in is exclusive to your actual Mog House only).
    • Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings takes this and runs with it. It's the only area in the game where nothing is trying to kill you.
  • The Normandy in Mass Effect.
    • In the Pinnacle Station DLC, if you survive Ahern's insanely hard simulation, he will give you his house on a nearby colony world. In addition to a cool view, it also has grenade and medi-gel dispensers, and a radio you can use to purchase equipment from passing convoy ships.
  • Your apartment in Taris, then Ebon Hawk in both Knights of the Old Republic. It's a Telos apartment, then the Hawk in Sith Lords.
  • The camp in Dragon Age Origins. Soldier's Peak also serves the same function in the DLC once you clear out the demonic infestation and deal with Avernus; in Awakening it's Vigil's Keep.
  • In The Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall and Oblivion give the player the option to buy himself a house on multiple in-game locations to store their loot in. Battlespire, Redguard and mobile phone games don't have things like that. In Morrowind you can't buy, but if you feel like it, you can just kill the owner of a house and it's yours to keep. Beware of breaking any quests though.
    • In Morrowind, you are allowed to continue using the house of your early Quest Giver once he leaves, and can actually have one of three different manors built, complete with guards and servants, depending on which of the great houses you join.
    • In Oblivion, you can buy houses from the head of any major town/city. Each one is different: the house in Bravil is cheap and kind of run-down, but large; the house in Skingrad is extremely expensive, but it's a massive mansion, and you can get a servant!
    • In Skyrim, it's similar to Oblivion. You can buy houses from the heads of the major towns and cities, but unlike Oblivion, you need to earn the respect of the head through completing quests for the people in their town. Yes,even if you're a well-known Dragonborn who resolved the civil war and prevented The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Fallout 3 has two Player Headquarters: the Megaton house for good players and the Tenpenny Tower suite for evil ones.
    • Brotherhood of Steel bases serve this function (late) in the first two games. Medical facilities, item storage, even surgery to improve your stats are available.
  • In Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, there's a place near the GUN base where you can go to replenish HP and PP, and change who's in your current party without having to wait for a plot point. It's not really a hub, as part of the game lets you fly from area to area using the Tornado, and on foot, its area only separates the first area from the rest of the world.
  • Another example is the End of Time from Chrono Trigger, which has a Hub Level, a save point, a healing point and a dock for your Global Airship, a portal to the final boss, and the God of War's crib.
  • Neverwinter Nights has the various Temples of Tyr.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, the Sunken Flagon inn is this at first, succeeded in mid-Act II by Crossroad Keep (which doubles as an Unexpected Gameplay Change). The first expansion Mask of the Betrayer has the Veil Theater. Storm of Zehir, again, has Crossroad Keep, and more specifically your Merchant Headquarters inside its courtyard.
  • Skies of Arcadia has the two ships you travel on, most notably the Delphinus. Vyse also establishes his own pirate base in the latter sections of the game.
  • The Suikoden series has the non-mobile version; in each game you get a castle (or some sort of similar building) that serves as your headquarters. Once you've recruited the right people, you can quickly teleport between it and the outside world.
  • In EarthBound, you'd think this would be Ness' house, and you'd be right until you leave Onett and getting there becomes inconvenient. Saturn Valley later takes its place, especially once you get Teleport Beta.
  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army has Tsukudo-Cho, which has the Narumi Detective Agency (Save/Review/Push in the right direction (if Narumi's there)), Konnou-Ya (item shop), and under that, the Gouma-Den (Fusion/Healing).
  • The Van Eltia in Tales of Eternia.
  • In Divine Divinity you can use abandoned house for this cause, or buy/rent one after solving a quest.
  • The player could have hideouts in Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire, although it didn't have any of the standard healing/item purchasing amenities, and you can save anywhere in Pokemon games. Rather, it served as a place for other players to visit once you've traded data so that they could meet an NPC version of you.
  • In Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, players could build an Underground Base, which served as a hub for a capture-the-flag minigame, complete with decorations listing your various achievements, and traps for snooping adversaries.
  • Your house in Legend of Mana.
  • Like the Suikoden example above, freeware homage Exit Fate has Elysium Castle, which starts out with save points, an inn and the ability to swap party members and eventually grows to contain every type of shop, multiple optional minigames, the ability to teleport to and from anywhere in the world and more.
  • Baldur's Gate 2 had different strongholds for almost every class in the game. The expansion upped it with a private dimensional pocket you could teleport to at will.
  • Persona 3 has the special Mega Corp-funded dorm where all the SEES members live. Persona 4 one-ups it with the Investigation Team's very classy "secret headquarters," which is the Junes food court.
  • The Observatory in Pandoras Tower.
  • The first Mana Khemia game has the party claim a communal workshop where you can save and synth items.
  • Grillin Village in Brave Fencer Musashi.
  • Metal Walker has various base camps. Some are in fixed locations, but most you can place yourself.
  • In Dragon Slayer, you can return to the house you start off at to replenish your health and, if carrying the right things, increase maximum health and attack power. If you have a ring, you can move the house to a spot more convenient for grinding. You also have to bring the four crowns back there after slaying the dragon, but it's not so easy.
  • Breath of Fire 2 has Township. At first it doesn't seem like much, but later on in the game you can heal, save and change your party there, the Fusion Dance granny and her shamans move in there, you can invite various people, some of which will open shops or provide other services, and late in the game it is possible to make it fly.
  • The player gets a home where they can store items, change their appearance, brew potions, create gems, and/or forge armor and weapons in every area in Kingdoms of Amalur. They slowly build in opulence from an abandoned house in Canneroc to a full-fledged castle on the Caeled Coast.

Shoot'Em Up

  • Star Control 1 and 2 have starbases where you can build additional ships. In the first game, The star base is just good for cranking out ships. In the second game, you have one starbase that you continue to go to for resupply, story info, and is pretty much your staging ground for the entire campaign.

Simulation Game

  • Of course, your house in Animal Crossing games! In addition to being yours to decorate as you choose, it's where you store your items, listen to music, play NES games (in the original), save, and receive your mail.
  • Your farmhouse in the Harvest Moon. In several games in the series, you can by other properties and build smaller houses on them.
  • Roblox; What will you build? How about... Anything!

Stealth Based Game

Survival Horror

  • The tram loading rooms in Dead Space usually contain a store and a save point, but occasionally contain enemies, especially if you're coming back to them a second time.
  • Playing with this is about the only thing that Silent Hill 4: The Room did right. In between the action levels, you can go to your apartment, where you can save, store and retrieve items, and, most importantly, slowly regenerate your health. For the first half of the game, you'll settle into a pattern entering the apartment, then leaving the game to grab a snack while the health goes up. As the game progresses, a bunch of evil spirits start to move in and can damage you, eventually doing more damage than is repaired by resting. You end up spending as little time as possible there, saving and doing item work at a paranoid pace.
  • The Security Room in Dead Rising. Then later on, Carlito's hideout.

Third-Person Shooter

  • Comedy action game Giants Citizen Kabuto not only did this but had the player construct his own, RTS-style, complete with walls, defense turrets and upgrade-dispenser buildings for two of the playable species. The other one just ate everything he didn't throw.
  • Ghostbusters: The Video Game has the titular Ghostbusters' famous firehouse, complete with the fire poles, Ecto-1 in the Garage, and the containment unit in the basement.
  • Fortnite; salvage material, build a fort, save the world, that's how the game works. The LEGO version goes so far as to use the song "Any Way You Want It" in the promotion material.
  • Roblox, like Fortnite but for younger players.

Turn-Based Strategy

  • In Silent Storm, you go there between missions, and can heal, equip, or switch out members of your team.
  • X-COM and its Spiritual Successors allow you to construct multiple bases to support your team and research captured alien technology.

Wide Open Sandbox

  • Grand Theft Auto San Andreas - you gain several, where (in some) you can get weapons, change clothes, get some health, and (almost always) save.
  • Saints Row 2: Not only can you buy several apartments, wharfs and an airport hangar (and a lighthouse!), The Saints also have a pretty big HQ. You can upgrade your apartments looks to gain style points while the gang HQ evolves along with your progression in the game.
  • Jimmy's dorm room in Bully. Later in the game, he gets another five headquarters (a beach house from the Preps, the Nerds' comic shop, the Jocks' clubhouse, the Greasers' pool hall and a Townie-controlled building in the industrial park.
  • The Saboteur starts with one hidden in a strip club, and you gain more as the story progresses.
  • In Minecraft the player has to build everything from scratch: from a simple hole in the side of a hill, to a small house made of dirt, to a colossal castle.Which the player can outfit with beds to rest/respawn, crafting stations, storage, plantations and any mechanism the player can invent.Other than being a safe haven from the nightly monsters, of course.
  • The X-Universe games starting with Reunion have the er.. Player Headquarters. The headquarters in each game are gained by doing a small sub-plot. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to learn their blueprints), build ships (using learned blueprints and resources), scrap ships (for gaining resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation value on your ship's hull paint. The HQ has a massive storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters, making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, an optional side-quest allows Link to buy and fix-up a house, giving him a safe and free place to sleep and recharge. Ironically, given what the seller claims, it may have been Link's house a hundred years ago before the original battle with Ganon.

Real Life

  • Real Life: In military history, many armies have used something like this, perhaps falling back to a fort at night.
    • Romans built a fort every night when on the march.
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