Law of Cartographical Elegance: Difference between revisions

 

Subtrope of [[Video Game Geography]].

 

* Also see [[World Shapes]].

 

* The special stages in ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles]]'', despite looking like a round world, are actually shaped like [[Alien Geometries|a torus that looks like a sphere that somehow has a curvature that suggests it's much smaller than it actually is.]]

* Present in ''[[VVVVVV]]''. Justified, since the whole dimension you are in is in shambles. As a result, it plays with the concept a bit by using the looping capabilities in unusual ways. In the middle is a tower which blocks horizontal progress; one has to loop to get from the left side of the map to the right (and vice versa). The tower, as an autoscrolling level, is actually 6 rooms larger than it seems from the outside. The laboratory section of the game is on the top ''and'' bottom parts of the left side of the map.

 

* The ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games. (Except for ''[[Final Fantasy II|II]]'', where the map is still a toroid but a land mass actually crosses the edges. And ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' where the world map is projected that way, but the airship doesn't fly freely around it.)

* The ''[[Ultima]]'' games (In some installments. In others, the world literally ''is'' flat and rectangular, surrounded on all sides by an ethereal void).

* The original [[The Bard's Tale Trilogy]]. The guide for the second game refers to it as "wraparound magic".

 

* Most games in the ''Zelda'' series are bounded by topography (usually mountains to the north and the ocean to the south). ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker]]'' keeps you hemmed into the game world by having your boat [[But Thou Must!|forbid you]] to continue past the edges.

** It also mentions that there's a storm (which you can see) further on. So, if you like, you can just imagine that the Wind Waker world is occasionally frequented by ''horrendously magnificent'' hurricanes, and that the game takes place in the eye of one.

* Justified in ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good and Evil]]''. After you pass a certain point, border police tell you to turn your vehicle back. If you ignore them, they open fire.

 

* ''[[Motocross Madness]]'' had an Insurmountable Thirty Foot Fence around the arena, which was actually pretty easy to get over if you crashed into it just right and hit the recover button (in some versions, recovery occured automatical). You can then drive around the border of the arena, but if you drive too far away from it you get fired back into the center of the arena, painfully. Driving along it or even doing nothing doesn't help - sooner or later, you get kicked from the zone of nowhere whatever you do or do not do.

** And [[Rule of Cool|awesomely]].

* Maps in the ''4x4 Evolution'' series all have seamlessly looping edges, most often placed far away from the checkpoints of the race to give a better illusion of large, open spaces.

 

* The world of the ''[[Golden Sun]]'' series is flat, and you're not allowed to go over the edges.

** Would you want to?

* The ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]'' RPG featured this. Trying to go past the map's edges caused a comment about the irradiated wasteland beyond and the notion that you wouldn't survive it.

 

* In ''Doshin the Giant'', it is possible to walk off the edge of the world.

* ''[[Drakengard]]''.

* The world maps (which are actually very large islands) in ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]'' work this way. Each one is bordered by endless ocean, much like the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games but without the invisible barriers out to sea. If you do insist on flying out into the ocean, you just end up off the map and hopelessly lost.

 

* Creation in ''[[Exalted]]''. Like the ''Ultima'' example given above, this is because Creation is ''literally'' flat and (roughly) rectangular; the [[Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence|Insurmountable Waist Height Fences]] are the Elemental Poles of Air, Wood, Fire, and Water, beyond which lie the formless chaos of the Wyld.

 

* In the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games, Liberty City consists of 2 islands and a peninsula with mountains separating it from mainland, Vice City is made of 2 long, parallel islands, and the state of San Andreas is pretty much a huge, neatly formed square of land.

** Out in the middle of nowhere, too. Try flying just straight north/west/south/east. You'll run out of attention span (and maybe trigger a few glitches) before hitting a barrier, I think.

* Perhaps an [[Egregious]] example would be in ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', where even the real life location of Manhattan is rendered into a more rectangular shape by shaving off the entire portion north of 129th Street.

 

* ''[[Discworld]] II: Missing Presumed...'', where, of course, the world really does have an edge.

 

* In all of the ''[[Civilization]]'' games (and the spinoff ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri|Alpha Centauri]]''), the worlds are cylindrical: you can circle endlessly east and west, but north and south you are blocked by "the poles". You can, however, enable an option that allows you to build flat worlds.

** The Activision clone ''Civilization: Call to Power'' allowed a 'Donut-shaped World' option in world generation.

* ''[[Spore]]'' averts this with looping on the X axis, no looping on the Y axis and faster movement on the X axis as you get closer to poles to represent the distortions caused by the projection.

 

* ''[[Katamari Damacy]]'' and its sequels are partial aversion. At the lower sizes the world is restricted by [[Waist High Fences]]. At the second highest size it is the classic toroidal shape, with the katamari, teleporting to the other side of the map in mist. At the highest size the Katamari rolls over a proper globe.

 

* Azeroth of ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' masquerades as a globe. Swimming brings you death, but it is theoretically possible. Outland is a perfect example of this trope, since it's a magically shattered remnants of a planet set in the 'Twisting Nether" where [[Rule of Cool|physics do not necessarily apply]].

** Sometimes, [[Good Bad Bugs]] allowed one to reach the far outside border of one of the continent maps. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9cg9Wnq2xE There's] a massive strip of land out in the middle of the ocean that denotes the edge of the game world for each continent.

 

* Round worlds are commonly seen in every ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' since the second one, though they're not very big worlds, about the same landmass as a regular level.

 

* ''Populous: The Beginning'' is a RTS from 1998 with with planets instead of maps, meaning that every world you fight on is round. If you zoom out, you'll see half the world. You can never see the entire world in one screen, but you can scroll in any direction. Your units can move in any direction as well. For a RTS this is quite remarkable.

 

* Most of the ''[[Might and Magic]]'' games have worlds that are literally flat and rectangular. There's no fence at the edge, so if you're not careful you can walk right off into outer space.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' is a double subversion: if you orbit around the globe at an angle to the map, you'll notice that it doesn't match properly. The map simply doesn't make sense unless the world is a toroid.

* The world in ''[[Secret of Mana]]'' actually is spherical. It rotates normally on the X-axis, but if you fly along the Y-axis long enough, you'll eventually see some of the countries scrolling by upside-down. Interestingly, this makes it harder to navigate since most players aren't used to viewing game worlds that way.

 

* Averted entirely in ''UFO:Enemy Unknown'' (aka ''[[X-COM]]''), which has a nice rotatable round map.