There are hundreds of video game cliches (and almost as many threads on the topic). However, I think that this one is probably one of, if not the, most common – at some point in the game, usually around the middle, you are knocked out / captured / whatever and lose all you weapons and everything in your inventory and have to acquire and generally work your way back up again. How many games can you name where this happens?
One of the earliest I can remember is Goldeneye for the N64 [library/archives level]
This also happened (maybe more than once?) in Baldur’s Gate.
It happens in Half-Life 2 [in the citadel], though you’re thankfully granted the Super Grav Gun for the first time as compensation.
And damn if it didn’t just happen to me again last night while playing Rainbow Six: Vegas.
At the end of Metroid: Zero Mission for the GBA, you are stripped of not only your weapons, but your entire power suit, and have to sneak along in a Space Pirate ship without triggering alarms, because you die in about five shots and can only stun the enemy with a wimpy pistol.
In No One Lives Forever, it happens a few times. Fortunately it’s not really a problem; either you don’t really need all of them, or you get replacements fairly quickly.
Tomb Raider II - You start the oil rig level sans weapons after being caught by the baddies.
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Tomb Raider III** - After breaking into Area 51, the gubbmint takes away all your guns.
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Tomb Raider Chronicles** - Not sure if this counts, but in the flashback level where you’re playing as jailbait Lara in Ireland you end up without weapons, though they weren’t taken away from you by anyone, she just doesn’t have guns as a kid.
Why, yes. I do play a lot of Tomb Raider, thanks for asking.
Duke Nukem 3D (1996) beats any of those. I don’t have a copy handy to verify this, but early on (around the completion of level 3 or 4), a level ends with the player being captured and starting the next level weaponless and sitting in an “electric chair” of sorts. If you stand still, your health will gradually drop to zero. Moving allows you to explore the execution chamber, find an unlocked door, escape, punch a witness alien to death and go on to quickly rebuild your personal arsenal.
Half-way through Far Cry, you end up stripped of your weapons and dropped in the middle of a forest filled with mutated monsters. As I recall, you have to evade them all in order to get to the hand-glider.
I know it seems like a cliche, but it was one of the most heart-pounding parts of the game!
In fact, this happens in a few Metroid games at the very beginning. You go through the short prelude stage armed to the teeth, and for one reason or another you lose all but your basic gun. It works as both a teaser for the game and a way to establish continuity within the series while keeping the gameplay more or less intact.
Not quite what the OP had in mind, but I thought I’d mention.
See the thing is, although this is a huge cliche, I can’t say that it really annoys me that much. As mentioned above, it can lead to some fairly heart-pounding gameplay. I’m sure it’s also a way for game creators to let you experience the cool weapons and items within minutes of starting the game but then take them away from you to provide a challenge, or keep you from getting too powerful.
I vastly prefer the “Early Give – Mid-game Takeaway” to other models like the first SW game where you got a lightsaber (was it Dark Forces II?). You had to diddle through 3 whole levels in the beginning before they gave it to you. My attention span is such that I’ll give up before long if I have to slog through the first 2 hours of a game with only a pistol. (Half-Life was a course a huge exception to this).
The only thing that sucks is how common this cliche is, and therefore how predictable it is. As soon as I see a capture scene, I’m like “Here we go again!”
Metal Gear Solid does this. You wake up being tortured, and there was a reason why you should let yourself die there, but I can’t remember why at the moment.
Also if you let yourself get caught by the police in Postal 2 you’d be in a jail cell with nothing and have to figure out how to escape.
Good call. In Metroid: Prime, a space station explosion damages systems, in Metroid: Prime 2, the Dark Samus steals them (i think.) No explanation for why you have to get them all back at the start of Super Metroid, though (unless you somehow lose them at the end of Metroid II: Return of Samus.)
In Perfect Dark, you start Mission 8 stripped of your weapons and locked in a cell on an alien attack ship. You have to break out of your cell and kill one of the (heavily armored) alien warriors with a knife, which nets you a (fairly weak) gun.
Final Fantasy XII strips you of all your stuff when you get thrown in the Nalbina Dungeons. In fact, I seem to recall this happening quite a lot in Final Fantasy games, but I can’t pinpoint when it happens in which games.
In Breath of Fire 2, you have to leave your items behind on entering the Wild Cat Café, I think. Also, it tries to get you to swap your armor and weapons for napkins and silverware (if you don’t follow the instructions, you get attacked).
I liked this part though, It doesn’t take everything away, it leaves you with a Pistol, and after you shoot the first guy you can take his shotgun. It forced me to play with the pistol more and now I have the acheivement unlocked for Pistoleer, which none of my other friends have cause they just blazed through the level with the shotgun.
Nope, no explanation for Super Metroid. Even in the prelude stage, IIRC, you’ve only got your basic gun. In Metroid Fusion, the explanation for losing your weapons is you get a brand new combat suit which the old weapons are incompatible with. Granted, that takes place before gameplay starts, but in terms of continuity it works.
For non-Metroid games, in Quake 4 there’s a part where you get captured. I believe you lose your weapons, but you regain them PDQ once you’re free anyway.
For Final Fantasy 7, Yuffie will steal all of your Materia at one point if you activate her sidequest.
Deus Ex, one of the greatest games of all time had this. Right after you meet up with Paul Denton in New York. You get captured (in my case I actually got gibbed by a rocket from the patrol robot, haha) and sent to the secret base under UNATCO. Luckily you could get all your weapons (with upgrades) back after you snuck through the robot repair facility.
Dark Forces: you get stuck on Jabba’s ship with no weapons and have to recover your gear.
Max Payne: you get captured by the bad guys and beaten up with a baseball bat. All your guns get taken away, but they leave the baseball bat in the room. Idiots.
Spoilsports!