History Main / QuicksandBox

* Capcom's famed Keiji Inafune suggested that the effect of this Trope, combined with the Japanese desire to be guided, explains the relative lack of success that WideOpenSandbox titles have had in Japan. There was mention of Western attitudes towards free-roaming gameplay being similar to going deer hunting and bagging a bear instead. [[note]]''GTA'' on the PC does have some popularity with Japanese [[GameMod modders]]. Apparently the sandbox isn't so bad if you can make it look like the gamer's favorite anime. [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential Or least favorite.]] [[http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/09/24/gta-crazy-anime-mod/ Nothing like the scent of dead Pikachu in the morning]].[[/note]]

''"[[NoodleImplements I've got a brass key, an amulet, two plasma couplers marked #1 and #17-b, a map of a cattery, a codephrase, piranha treats, the second half of a warning for 'Kevin,' and]]'' ''[[PrecisionFStrike no fucking idea.]]"''

* Derek Smart's ''Universal Combat'' is this trope to its extreme. In an amazing example of why it's important that Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, this PC game gives the player a subluminal spacecraft and a whole galaxy to explore with, only allowing thankfully instant superluminal speed between individual solar systems. There is truly a massive universe out there. Too bad no one alive has the patience to see much of it.

* ''Videogame/KerbalSpaceProgram''. You have all the spacecraft and rocket parts you might need, all the eager pilots you may require to test them out, [[SurpriseDifficulty an unexpectedly realistic physics engine]] and an entire solar system. Everything else? Up to you.

* Contrary to the PennyArcade page image, ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' averts this problem for the most part. You go through a few training missions before getting the [[CoolSpaceship Normandy]] to freely fly around the universe, only to be restricted to one ship/planet/asteroid to explore within each star system. Story progression is rather straightforward, despite you being able to play a trio of core missions in whatever order you wish, and a clear goal in mind. In addition, all active missions are logged in the pause menu -- even separated to required and optional missions -- so you never have to wonder what you're supposed to be doing.
** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' has more missions to do and has a wider scope of freedom, but it's still linear, nonetheless.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'': The island the game plays on is ''huge'', it takes almost 45 minutes to walk from one end to the other. In the tutorial you learn in five minutes how to use the controls, then the game kicks you out of the door, hands you a couple of coins and basically says: "Here, this is the world. Have fun". You only get some hints of where to go for the next story mission, aside from that the game itself doesn't help you ONE bit (well, unless you pay a basic degree of attention, since you're given a name, a city, a place ''in'' that city to ask about that name ''and'' two separate instructions on how to get information on how to get to the city). It's incredibly easy to get lost.
** The world of ''Morrowind'' may be large compared to other, non-Elder Scrolls games, but according to one of the game's programmers, it's literally only about 0.01% of the area covered in the previous title in the series, ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]''. You are told to use quick-travel to Daggerfall and the game basically leaves you alone. Given how big the world is - its' ''very'' easy to get lost. If you follow Daggerfall's main quest, you explore maybe a dozen towns and dungeons. The rest of the ''15,000'' locations are optional. Morrowind's main quest brings you through most of the island.
* ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]''. There's nothing stopping you from exploring all of Skyrim, other than a "Go meet my sister/uncle in Riverwood" spoken by the person you help at the end of the tutorial dungeon. On the one hand, the world is huge (compared to other [=RPGs=]) and incredibly detailed, with dozens upon dozens of quests. On the other, nearly all the quests are neatly catalogued in your pause menu with reminders of what you're doing and geographic markers to where the next objective is located, and each individual quest can activated or deactivated from that menu.

* ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania}} CircleOfTheMoon''. The game starts off by dropping you into Dracula's Castle; and not telling the player where to go. The hints you get are few and far in between, and even then they just give you a broad goal.
** ''AriaOfSorrow'' takes a step to avert this trope by having a screen where you can consult a character who gives you a hint on what you can probably do next.

* Many LifeSims require some scrambling around at first to keep your character alive, before your enhanced skills give you the free time to explore. PrincessMaker and CuteKnight have the initial struggle to pay for food and housing. CuteKnightKingdom removed a lot of this starting urgency, and thereby left some players with no idea of what to do.

* ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]''. There's nothing stopping you from exploring all of Skyrim, other than a "Go meet my sister/uncle in Riverwood" spoken by the person you help at the end of the tutorial dungeon. On the one hand, the world is huge (compared to other RPGs) and incredibly detailed, with dozens upon dozens of quests. On the other, nearly all the quests are neatly catalogued in your pause menu with reminders of what you're doing and geographic markers to where the next objective is located, and each individual quest can activated or deactivated from that menu.

* ''WorldOfWarcraft'' has ''become'' this due to the sheer amount of content added over its expansions. Players can easily reach max level before doing most of the main questlines and most players are likely to not experience all of them before quitting. This is actually fairly typical of MMOs that follow the traditional structure as they may start off with a single linear main path but will over their lifetimes grow extremely diverse in terms of endgame alternative content as developers are forced to give maxed veterans new things to do. This also tends to make the path to max level more like a pre-sandbox tutorial.

Efforts to avoid this in sequels may actually be seen as overly-pampering. [[TropesAreNotBad Openness is not bad]], some players prefer the risk of getting lost to being railroaded. Compare AltItis, which largely focuses on differing character abilities and options, and SidetrackedByTheGoldSaucer, which may overlap. Contrast NoSidepathsNoExplorationNoFreedom.

* ''[[{{Gothic}} Gothic III]]'' does this far more so than the previous games in the series. At the start you're dropped into an overrun town and must liberate it, but then other than some far distant goal of meeting up with an old friend ''somewhere'' and the vague notion that it'd ''probably'' be a good idea to liberate the rest of the country and see if the King is still holding up, no real direction is provided. Exactly what you do and how you do it are left up to the player to decide, with consequences for your actions learned the hard way.

[[quoteright:269:[[PennyArcade http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pennyarcademeffect_8295.png]]]]

-->--'''Tycho''', ''PennyArcade''

* ''{{Terraria}}'' is a bit less intimidating, since you start with basic versions of three main tools (Axe, Pick, Sword). Even if you do decide to wander, Terraria is 2D and has a much smaller game world, making it much harder to get hopelessly lost.

* ''VideoGame/TheDeadLinger'' throws you in a zombie-infested world, gives you a small prompt on how the controls work...and that's pretty much it. The game has no definitive end, but since your goal is to survive the ZombieApocalypse, you're probably always on the run, evading zombies and trying to scavenge food. But still, if you get lucky with the random world and item generation, you could just find the biggest backpack, fill it to the brim with food and stay in the town you probably started in (or near), without ever going out to explore the more interesting places in the procedurally generated world.

* As per the page quote, the GrandTheftAuto series has this, particularly since GrandTheftAutoIII. It gets marginally better in San Andreas with the introduction of the cell phone, and much better with the smartphone in GTA IV. In the original GTA III though, having the option to do police, ambulance, and taxi side missions (all with valuable rewards), search for and collect hidden packages, find vans or weapons with rampage side missions, doing ''actual'' side missions for gangs or the mob, and finally progressing the story, all with little guidance from the interface...things get paralyzing quickly.