History Main / ICantReachIt

->''"If I had the slightest inclination to strain myself, I could probably reach it. However, I'm sure I can drag this out into a longer, yet more satisfying experience."''

* ''VideoGame/Phantasmagoria2'': Early on, the hero of cannot reach his wallet, which has ended up under his sofa, so you have to get his pet rat to retrieve it. Fair enough, in a SolveTheSoupCans kind of way, except for the fact that despite heroic attempts by the actor to convince you otherwise, he can quite clearly reach the wallet himself.

[[caption-width-right:312:Options not presented: making waves, throwing rocks, using a stick, draining the pool.]]

* In [[VideoGame/LegoAdaptationGame Lego Adaptation Games]], a character will turn towards the player and shrug if they're told to interact with an object that they don't have the qualifications, tool, or spell to interact with it with.

** Parodied brilliantly with an EasterEgg that triggers if the player messes with any objects without a specific "I Can't Reach It" response. If you direct Sam to pick them up he says "I can't pick that up" do it again "Really, I can't pick that up" again... "I would like to pick that up, but I cannot pick that up" do it over and over he eventually breaks down sobbing. In which Max threatens the player "If I was real and not just a lovable computer game character I would totally come out of the monitor and rip your lungs out!". If you do it any more, Sam simply whimpers with Max saying "Don't worry Sam, maybe they'll go away"

* ICOM's ''VideoGame/DejaVu'', ''VideoGame/{{Shadowgate}}'', and ''VideoGame/{{Uninvited}}'' featured this trope. Examples abounded, such as in ''Shadowgate'', when a magic flute was in a fountain of deadly acid. Forget pushing it to safety with the butt of your spear; find the magic gauntlet hidden inside a well.

[[caption-width-right:312:"Blast! I can't reach it!"]]

* Taken to deliberately ridiculous extremes in ''VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' text adventure, which, in addition to many straight examples of the trope, at one point tells you you can't enter the engine room because you've decided it's a bad idea. The solution? [[spoiler: Just keep saying you want to go south until the game gives up and lets you. It will then pretend there's nothing there for a bit]]. Creator/DouglasAdams claimed the game went beyond "user friendly" by being "user hostile".

!Examples:

* ''[[VideoGame/DarkSeed Dark Seed II]]'' has many of these moments, but the worst is when Mike Dawson won't move an anvil on an ice-box that has life-saving medicine in it, even though the person who needs the medicine is close to dying. The anvil is too heavy for Mike to lift, but he doesn't even attempt to push it or jimmy it off. Hell, even breaking the table's legs so that the anvil and medicine box fall down would have made more sense. Somebody ended up ''dying'' because Mike wouldn't even attempt to move the bloody anvil.[[note]]It's later revealed that the ice box's DarkWorld equivalent is the container that holds the BigBad, thus making it quite possible that removing the anvil would cause a NonStandardGameOver that the developer's just didn't feel like programming into the game.[[/note]]

* This happens to children in [[VideoGame/TheSims The Sims 3]], who are too short to reach some things on countertops, like the goldfish bowl. This problem was avoided in ''The Sims 2'' by giving the children a small footstool to use.

* Early in ''Videogame/RuleOfRose'' you must get scissors hanging from a rope just out of your reach. The only way to get to them is to find a crank in a locked room to lower the said rope, never mind that the room contains, among other things, a rubbish bin you could stand on to get your hands on them. [[FridgeBrilliance However, this is intentional as]] [[spoiler:the entire game is a fractured flashback, with Adult Jennifer taking the place of her child self,[[note]]Mostly... this scene happen in the Orphanage, not the airship, [[MindScrew if it ever did at all]][[\note]] so it's understandable that a child couldn't reach]].

* VideoGame/ManiacMansionMania: If any of Bernard's family is main character and the episode is set in the home, that character will refuse to enter the store room, claiming that there is nothing useful.
* ''Teenagent''. You need an empty plastic bag. You find a plastic bag containing chunk of meat. You'd think you could simply leave the meat anywhere on the floor, or toss it into a trashcan, but nope--not in adventure game land. You have to dump the meat into one specific place, a pot of soup that you aren't going to use for anything else.

* In Dragon's Dogma, killing bandits is like breathing. One quest totally ignores that fact. You have to catch a bandit running around your village & you're inexplicably not allowed to kill him. You have to hit him with attacks to stun him so he might stand still long enough for you to grab him but you're not allowed to target him the way you would other enemies. If he gets to the gate, he disappears even though there's no way he could possibly lift it to get through. You should be able to go out & catch him after he leaves but you can't. You should be able to hide inside one of the places he's there to rob & catch him when he gets there but the A.I is a cheating bastard. These kinds of things are to be expected since it's a quest about a "thief" who just runs around like a crazed lizard instead of stealing anything.
* The titular hero in ''{{VideoGame/Nightshade}}'' was an early lampooning of this trope.
-->'''WebVideo/{{JonTron}}''': Nightshade's hard to impress, you take him to a museum and tell him, "Look at that giant bronze horse from the B.C. times," and he's like, "Nuthin unusual here." You take him to a ''future'' history museum and say, "Hey, look at that giant hologram horse from the distant C.E. times," and he's like ''(points with robotic arm)'' "Nightshade can't do dat!"

** In fact, the only thing stopping Travis from leaving Silent Hill all-together is a fallen tree. Not a thick fog, not an invisible wall, not a magically-appearing chasm with no visible bottom... but a ''fallen tree''. He simply refuses to step over it, with no other explanation besides: "Looks like I can't go that way!"
** This trope manifests itself in each of the [[MoonLogicPuzzle Moon Logic Puzzles]] in the game. For example, in one, a character who is carrying no small number of weapons cannot bust a few bicycle locks with brute force; they have to search out a number of clues. Sometimes, the character with a crowbar, chisel, shotgun, and [[{{BFS}} Big Freakin' Sword]] can't break down a simple wooden door; they have to solve obscure riddles or make a handle out of some wax, a horseshoe, and a lighter. No one brings bolt cutters with them in Franchise/SilentHill; everyone prefers to SolveTheSoupCans. Even [[GameBreaker alien blasters]] are no match for a door if the plot demands you solve a riddle instead.

->''If I had the slightest inclination to strain myself, I could probably reach it. However, I'm sure I can drag this out into a longer, yet more satisfying experience.''
-->--'''Sam''', ''VideoGame/SamAndMaxHitTheRoad''

This trope can overlap with MoonLogicPuzzle, SolveTheSoupCans, and AlphabetSoupCans, where a player cannot advance until a particular puzzle is solved. Compare YouCantGetYeFlask for the text based equivalent. There is no [[TakeAThirdOption taking a third option]]. The player must solve the problem as the developers intended or simply go somewhere else.