History VideoGame / BlackAndWhite

** Nemesis' ex-creature, The Guide, for teaching you about [[McGuffin The Creed]] and giving you your Creature, [[spoiler:especially significant given the final Creed Fragment turns out to be [[ItWasWithYouAllAlong inside your chosen Creature]] all along. Without him doing that, Nemesis would surely have won since you'd only have two Creed Fragments by the time you faced him.]]

* ArtificialBrilliance: The Creature's AI may be the most advanced in video game history, using early, simplified versions of the same techniques used in modern neural networks. He watches both you and the villagers to learn new skills and figures out how to apply them, which you can tweak by rewarding or punishing him for certain behaviours. What makes this truly brilliant is that it considers not just the action, but the context behind the action, for example whether it was one of your people or an enemy that he just ate, whether you handed the villager to him or if he picked them up himself, where you are, the time of day, and all sorts of other factors that get attatched to the action along with the amount of reward or punishment received. A skilled trainer can coax all sorts of complex behaviours from their Creature, such as throwing its own poo into enemy food stores to taint them, casting food miracles into its pen so it's not stealing from anyone to feed itself, or even making the Leashes of Compassion and Agression have opposite effects!

** GoodPaysBetter: Many sidequests in the first game reward the Good solution but not the Evil one, costing an Evil god a variety of miracles and even [[spoiler:a bonus starting village in the final Land.]]

* ThePlague: In the sequel, one sidequest has you saving a town on Land 6 which is affected by a sickness. Not only does it pass to other villagers making it hard to clear away, but it will pass to your soldiers should you run them through the town before getting rid the sickness, killing them very quickly.

* TheStinger: After the credits roll in the second game, the broken Aztec leader prays alone in front of an altar, begging for a god to help his people. The prayer ends up being a true one, and a new god arrives in Eden, that god being the expansion's [[OmnicidalManiac Undead God]].
* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Eve is the only female Creature in the first Black And White Creature Isle expansion pack.

* AutomaticNewGame: The game prompts the player for his deity's name and symbol, then sends him straight into the tutorial level, which is necessary since the menu system consists of ''[[DiegeticInterface an in-game building]]'' that's only constructed as part of the tutorial.
** A later patch added the option to skip either half or all of the first island.

* DivineParentage: In the second game a villager accuses you of knocking up his daughter and demands a dowry, but it actually wasn't you (despite being a Greek god) and you follow the girl and take her father to her real lover's house.
* DiegeticInterface: [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]] in the original. You have a standard pause menu where you can view statistics, change graphic settings, and exit the game. However your Temple and its many rooms are used for saving, loading, viewing creature information and signpost information. Additionally, you cast miracles directly from your worship sites or using gestures instead of selecting them from a menu like in the sequel (although the required gestures are shown in the bottom-right of the screen).

* FireworksOfVictory: When [[AGodIsYou you]] convert a village to your worship, a small (and entirely anachronistic) fireworks display spontaneously launches from the Village Center.

* MentorArchetype: The Guide in the original game to you and your creature.

* OurOgresAreHungrier: Sleg the Ogre on Land 1 of the original game blocks the way to a chest. Your good conscience points out how hungry he looks, which prompts the player to feed him.

* SpellLevels: In the first game, miracles have up to three power levels; base level, Increase, and Extreme.

** Your temple will grow them if you follow TheDarkSide.

* TakenForGranite: The [[RuleOfSeven seven samurai]] who were turned into statues by an evil entity.

* TerminalTransformation: In ''Battle of the Gods'', the [[MagicByAnyOtherName miracle]] "Verdant" permanently transforms everyone in its AreaOfEffect into ordinary [[NeutralsCrittersAndCreeps livestock animals]]. As it can wipe out an enemy army without penalizing the KarmaMeter, it's effectively the Good god's answer to the Fireball; of course, it can't be undone, and the afflicted units behave no differently than ordinary animals, so it's as good as killing them.
* TheFoodPoisoningIncident: In the original game, the Land 2 Silver Scroll quest "The Plague" has Lethys poison the Indian village's food supply, turning people sick. Your objective is to heal the people and dispose of the rancid food, one method of which is to [[HoistByHisOwnPetard place it in Lethys' village stores and poison his towns instead]]. Due to [[AIBreaker the AI being unable to deal with poisoned food]], Lethys' realm will be devoid of people in a few hours, leaving his territory free for the taking.

* ThereCanBeOnlyOne: The villain, Nemesis, has spent some time killing off all the other gods so that he can wield supreme deital power.

At least, this was the ''idea.'' The major complaints about these two concepts was that players found if they wanted to be ''good'' gods, they had to do absolutely everything for their worshippers, who couldn't even wipe their own behinds without divine intervention. Evil gods had to be constantly spreading fireballs and terror all over the place; they had to be the meanest, most fearsome gods in the land and couldn't be nice for even one moment to ''anybody.'' There was little middle ground; being anything inbetween resulted in not being nice enough to be constantly loved, yet not being fearsome enough to ensure worshippers were too scared to worship anybody else. Additionally, if you took your attention off your Creature for more than five minutes, it started defecating all over the place and even chowing down on it.

* BeginWithAFinisher: In the sequel, a Creature can use its unique FinishingMove at the beginning of a fight if its opponent is far smaller or already wounded, virtually guaranteeing a one-hit knockout.

** ''Battle of the Gods'' adds a miracle that turns your enemies into [[BalefulPolymorph fuzzy lambs and bunnies]]. Permanently. Your villagers might then use those animals for food...

* BalefulPolymorph: ''Battle of the Gods'' adds the "Verdant" miracle, an AreaOfEffect that transforms any enemies within into livestock. It's the Good god's answer to the Fireball -- tidy, non-evil, and ''permanent''.

* TheAssimilator: Partially invoked in the first game, where dropping people into a specific village made them change their clothes to fit the village. Averted in the second installment, however, where both immigrants and conquered people maintain their own clothes. Their offspring will also maintain their parental culture.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: The sequel's Norse and Japanese are {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s in service to the Aztecs rather than truly evil, but in the second Japanese map, your opponent is a brutal warmonger who scorns you for almost everything you do and states several times over he will do terrible things to your people. However, when building a Nursery he exclaims "[[WouldntHurtAChild We shall spare their young. We are not monsters after all.]]"

* * FireworksOfVictory: When [[AGodIsYou you]] convert a village to your worship, a small (and entirely anachronistic) fireworks display spontaneously launches from the Village Center.

* AntiHero: The player character can be this in the sequel, if you decide to be evil. Your main mission is to bring back the [[RacialRemnant Greek tribe]] from the brink of death after an attack by the Aztec tribe, and later save the Greek rule from a ReligionOfEvil and its' [[NightOfTheLivingMooks army of undead]] summoned by an evil god in the expansion. This can cross into NominalHero territory, as nothing prevents you from being just as bad, or even worse, than Aztecs and their god. This is averted in the first installment, as your enemy, Nemesis, is [[HeroAntagonist portrayed as being well intentioned]] ([[WellIntentionedExtremist albeit violent and power hungry]]), if you choose to be [[VillainProtagonist evil yourself]].

** In ''Battle Of The Gods'', the Aztec god practices this regularly. In land 2, he informs you that the villagers of your former town were sacrificed. In land three, he continuously sacrifices norse villagers for power to raise undead armies.

* NotTheIntendedUse: The wonders in the sequel serve as miracle generators that your villagers can charge for one cast of a powerful miracle. However, they take very long to charge and are mostly offensive. They are also however, very impressive and extend your influence a lot. Meaning that a good god can build them just for the sake of impressivnes and influence boost, and expand massivlely by building the cheapest siren wonders at the influence border.