Against player expectations


2016-07-27 (updated 2016-07-27)
Players are trained by hundreds of games to always break things, press buttons, turn levers, etc. the moment they're encountered. I was wondering what to call it when the player is expected not do so (or at least return them to original setting after realizing their mistake), possibly ignoring them entirely.

I was reminded of this happening in some very rare games while investigating Playdead's Inside, but surely this happens in other games as well?

This is somewhat similar in essence to neutral monsters but it can easily occur in games where simply identifying hostiles from friendlies is difficult (most commonly seen in milsims, but also present in some full RP games with open PvP).

2016-09-26
Divinity: Original Sin 2 breaks conventions on "safe" actions in RPGs and behaves more like old skool adventure games where there are actions you can do that can lead to death. It also includes paths that literally tell you if you go somewhere you will die, you actually will, and it's a failure state. The protagonist is not safe from dangers the NPCs and characters in lore are susceptible to.

Part of the above could be added in reverse manner where the protagonist is "special" and thus not susceptible to dangers normal people are in the lore. Especially common in zombie apocalypse games where the player character is immune to being zombified.