Hollywood Darkness / Video Games

Examples of Hollywood Darkness in Video Games.

Straight Examples

• Lampshaded in Mother 3, when power is cut to a concert hall, causing everything to become blue. An NPC in the area comments that it's a "pitiful excuse for a blackout" and asks if you can still see his nose hair in the 'darkness'.
• In the original Mario Golf, Overtime holes during match play take place at night with no visible light sources, but the course is still visible.
• Completely lit cave areas in Avernum are generally handwaved with fluorescent mushrooms. Nobody ever mentions why some indoor areas are completely lit, though (maybe they really don't have ceilings?). Unlit cave areas have full lighting a few squares away from the main characters and no lighting at all farther away from them, with no transition. Outdoor nighttime isn't present until the third game, which provides the same level of partial lighting every night with no regard for full and new moons.
• In Silent Scope's nighttime level, the sniper scope's night vision is activated (which ironically makes it harder to see through the scope), but you can still see enemies clearly with the naked eye, if the brightness isn't too low.
• The visual effect provided by darkvision in Neverwinter Nights 2 is a slight gloom that doesn't hinder vision.
• In the Splinter Cell series, Sam is effectively invisible if he's far enough into the dark. Even if he's standing between a guard and a lit area, as long as he's in the dark, they won't see him. Due to system limitations, especially on the PS2, there were occasionally areas where Sam is perfectly visible to the player (beyond the oft-mocked green lights from his goggles or the radio on his back, which are explicitly part of his character model so the player can orient themselves in proper darkness) but which the game still considered as perfectly concealed in darkness and made him totally invisible to any NPCs unless they stubbed their toe on him.
• One particularly bad example in the Medal of Honor series is "Behind Enemy Lines" in Allied Assault, which looks more like foggy dawn or dusk, unless you turn the brightness down to near bottom. In the HD remake of Frontline, The Golden Lion is set at dusk rather than night, but it's still too bright to fit the hour.
• Common in Bethesda's flagship series, The Elder Scrolls and Fallout (starting with Fallout 3). As the later games in each series share the same or similar game engines, this trope being present in both makes sense. To note some specific examples:
  • The Elder Scrolls series makes use of this trope all the way back to its inception with Arena. Even the deepest caves still have faint lighting. This is still present in more recent games, such as Blackreach in Skyrim, though there are more justifications such as the presence of Glowing Flora.
  • This is likewise still present in the more recent Fallout titles, even without gamma correction. Nights are always dusk levels of brightness, and the tinted fog also has a degree of luminosity. Certain Game Mods make lighting more realistic, emphasizing the chiaroscuro of light spots at night and indoors. Fallout: New Vegas, which was published by Bethesda and uses their Gamebryo engine, was developed by Obsidian and offers more frequent aversions, as ambient regional light coloring was used to turn a few cave interiors truly pitch black. Played straight when you take Friend of the Night, a perk that gives you Innate Night Vision.
• Characters still cast shadows in Higurashi Daybreak, even on the night level.
• In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team: the scene just after the credits is supposed to be taking place at night, so the entire screen is dimmed. Including the protagonist returning to life, which should be glowing brightly. The shadows of clouds, light glinting off water, and symbols of astonishment (exclamation marks overhead) are all similarly visible but dimmed.
• The shadow difference between day and night in [PROTOTYPE] are minimal, as well as the lighting effects. Just a sky swap and a slight tweak in hue of the air.
• Dark areas in WinBack are like this, and using your flashlight only gives away your position to the enemy.
• Most visual novels will have this. Compare a background during the day to that same background at night; the shadows will be in exactly the same places.
• World of Warcraft
  • Caves, crypts and dungeons always have enough light to see by, even when no torches, lamps, or luminescent fungus are present. Also, although the game has night and day corresponding to the local server time, in most zones the night is hardly any darker than the day.
  • Averted in a very few places: nighttime in The Hinterlands is pretty dark, and the Tyrande/Emerald Dragonshrine encounter in End Time is too dark to see your hand in front of your face. Players must sprint for the brief splashes of moonlight to be able to fight off the shadowy attackers.
• Nighttime in Fallen Earth is as dark as a very clear night with a full moon and stars, assuming your character has very good night vision. (In other words it works much like Prototype, mentioned above.) It used to be more realistically dark but that was done away with as the game already runs pretty heavy and the lighting effects weren't doing anyone any favors. Mines and tunnels are sometimes much darker, though, actually meriting the use of your flashlight.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, when you're outdoors, even midnight looks like just before dawn or just after dusk, due to the sky being quite blue near the horizon.
• Zig Zagged in Lone Survivor. There's light, gloom and complete darkness, and "You" can read the map and any documents just fine in pitch black areas without needing to use his flashlight — the map appears to the player as if illuminated by dim diffused light.
• Zig Zagged in the Left 4 Dead games. Chiaroscuro is the word, and generally it's pitch black inside buildings (especially underground during the day), but when you're outside at night, the lighting is clear enough that you can spot things easily with your light off, even at a distance. The "horror film fog" effect helps.
• In Star Fox Adventures, there's nighttime darkness, and there's "inside a dark area" darkness. Nighttime darkness is not particularly hindering; even when you're tasked with lighting the beacons because "it gets too dark at night" and "we be scared of the dark", nighttime without the beacons doesn't even make the Thorntails too scared to sleep.
• In Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, all outside areas are well-lit at night even if it's in the high seas in a stormy night - which is good, since the only flashlight available is attached to the pistol and prevents you from using a silencer, and both the Thermal and Night-Vision Goggles heavily restrict your field of view. The three areas that avert the trope (the Armory where Sam lives and you have to rescue him from after a bombing attempt, the Prometheus chemical weapon plant at Kamchatka after you shut down the generator and the Shop after Prometheus invades it) are all indoors and either underground, window-less or with malfunctioning closed shutters.
• In the Borderlands series, the difference between night and day is nothing but a slight tint shift (orange in daytime, bluish during the night), and it's always well-lit indoors. It helps keep the gameplay active and fast-paced.
• In Sonic Lost World, Silent Forest Zone 4 is set in an ancient temple. At certain points, the torches go out, and the stage is depicted in dark blue hues with foreground elements, including Sonic, in silhouette. Though you can control Sonic as normal, he cannot perform his Homing Attack on enemies as, in-universe, he can't see them.
• It's never dark in XCOM 2, neither in the wilderness nor in the Lost-infested cities. That said, XCOM operatives have torches on their guns that stay lit when you're playing in those maps, and a visual mod gives ADVENT riflemen the same lighting effect.
• Played very straight in Dragon Age, as even the subterranean Deep Roads miles below the surface are perfectly lit. Finally averted in a couple sections of Dragon Age: Inquisition, but only so you can use the Anchor as a light source.
• Red Dead Redemption 2: Night is always brightly lit by the full moon, so it's never more than a little dim, and shadows are still strongly apparent.
• In Subnautica, the deeper biomes have enough ambient light to make your flashlight unnecessary.

Aversions

• Several of The Legend of Zelda games feature caves and dark dungeons which only become clearly visible using a lamp in-game. Only a zig-zag, though, since there are other unlit areas that are perfectly clear to the eye without the aid of a lamp.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In Morrowind, caves which don't have sapient beings living in them (and thus no torches) are very hard to see in. It also includes Night-Eye and Light spells/enchantments which assist with seeing in dark places.
  • Some caves in Oblivion have lit areas without any sunlight, lamp or torch, but most of the time a hole is dented through the ceiling to bleed in sunlight. In general lighting is more realistic than usual. One of the challenges of the game is that you can't use a shield a torch and a weapon at the same time — rendering the cave monster almost completely invisible due to sheer darkness. Blocking and attacking become difficult. There are magical aids, but the Night Eye effect is squint worthy ugly monochrome.
  • Skyrim also has torches, but also includes the Candlelight and Magelight spells to help alleviate darkened caves. Candlelight creates an orb of light that hovers over your shoulder for one minute, while Magelight has you shooting the orb of light to stick against whatever it hits, again for one minute.
• Half-Life 2: Episode One has a chapter that is almost completely dark. The player has to use the Ten-Second Flashlight to spot targets for the NPC sidekick to shoot. In the finale of the section the player and Alyx have to survive an endless stream of zombies until an elevator arrives. The room is completely dark, but can be lit by the tiny flashlight beam, or explosions or the burning corpses left by explosions. If you survive said explosion.
  • Plenty of very dark places throughout the series and expansions, notably the parts of Opposing Force that feature Night-Vision Goggles. Gordon and Barney are masters of the non-OSHA compliant Ten Second Flash-lit Air-Vent Passageway escape.
• Averted in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, where you get stuck in a cave complex, and it is way too dark to see anything. By luck you can stumble around and eventually find a torch. If it takes you long enough, it actually becomes easier to see, probably to reflect Snake's eyes adjusting to the light. You can also use his cigar to help.
• In the Pokémon games, the HM "Flash" allows one to see in dark caves. Many people are unable to find the HM in Pokémon Red and Blue, and end up stumbling through the Rock Tunnel in complete darkness. The amount of darkness varies by version. In the first generation you get a faded view of the walls (good enough), in the second you see absolutely nothing but the glowing entrance/exits and yourself, and in the third there's a small lit circle where you can see normally that expands to most (if not exactly all) of the screen with Flash.
• An interesting take can be found in the Adventure Game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Upon entering an abandoned dig, it is impossible to see anything, and the "look" command is replaced by the "touch" command, until you find a way to turn on the lights. However, while the lighting is at first pitch black, as Indy's eyes adjust to the darkness it becomes easier to make out the surroundings, adding a touch of realism.
• Doom:
  • The original Doom is one of the first games to make use of varying light levels between sectors and a dark fog effect to scare and disorient the player. I.E.: pick up a critical key, the lights go out, monsters appear. The only light sources in these situations were the very rare light amplification visors and the Muzzle Flashlight, though modern source ports can support dynamic lights or even limited raytracing.
  • Doom³: Most of the game is pitch black. The player is forced to use either his gun or his flashlight, but not both at the same time. It was dubbed "the best flashlight simulator ever" and widely ridiculed for being so aggravating. One of the first modifications created for the game was the Duct Tape mod, which removes the misfeature by "duct taping" a flashlight to the shotgun and machine gun.
• The whole Silent Hill series plays with this like a child does a toy.
  • In the first three installments, with the lights off, you can see your way around, but much less so than in a perfectly straight example, and the characters can't collect items or see the map, though. When your torch is on, however, the only lit area is as far as the beam goes; everything else is pitch black.
  • The fourth game generally averts it, with the environments being considerably well-lit. The lone exception is in a certain area that must be lit for a keypad to be seen - in that moment, it's just like the earlier games.
  • In Silent Hill: Origins it's subverted - Travis has a good enough night vision not to be hindered by the gloom. However, that doesn't necessarily apply to the player, moreso in the darker Playstation 2 port.
• Averted in The Witcher where you need a special potion in order to see in dungeons and other underground spaces.
• There are two temples in Tales of Symphonia which avert this. In one area of the Lightning Temple, the player must wait for lightning to strike to see the pathways, lest they fall in the gaping abyss. Another is the Shadow temple, where the player is stopped at the entrance when it is realized it is too dark to see. The player then must fetch the blue candle as the only way to get through the temple. Although with the Lightning Temple you can still clearly see the pathway without waiting for the lightning. They corrected this in the PS2 version.
• Resident Evil 4 and 5 avert this in different ways. In 4 Leon has a light clipped to his belt. It covers most of the screen and activates in dark areas. In 5 there's That One Level where you must navigate a pitch-black cave using a bulky electric lantern.
• The Penumbra and Thief series, both for atmospheric and game play purposes (unless you cheat by turning the gamma way up). Penumbra also plays with this trope, since the protagonist can see in the dark if he crouches and waits a little (his vision apparently adjusting to the dark after a few seconds) . In Thief, you can sometimes use portable light sources (like flares or small lanterns).
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent uses the same method as Penumbra - which makes sense, since that's precisely how it works in Real Life, given enough of a residual light-source. However, there are some locations in the game described as "unnaturally dark" where the darkness is thick and impenetrable, and the player can see nothing beyond the small circle of light from luminescent sources. To make it worse, Daniel suffers from nyctophobia, an extreme fear of the dark, so staying in darkness drops his Sanity Meter like crazy.
• Mostly averted in Minecraft. The player can technically make out shapes in even the darkest of underground caverns without torches, but only just. However, the light during the nighttime never drops below full moon brightness, even after the update that gave the moon phases. The darkness level can be adjusted to make caves and nighttime somewhat more unnaturally bright. Mods exist to both eliminate darkness entirely (often considered cheating, since this can be used client-side on many servers) and to go the other direction by making unlit caves pitch-black.
• The Catacombs and the Forgotten Tomb in Drakan: The Ancients' Gates were dark to the point all you could see were the glowing eyes of your enemies, leaving you quite helpless to aim your killing blows. You can carry a torch, but you must put it out in order to use your weapon. Most other caves or interiors had ample lighting with or without torches, glowing mushrooms, etc.
• Averted in the Myst series; lighting up pitch-black areas is typically a prerequisite for using any passage or equipment therein. Also averted with dim areas; some are so dark that it can be hard to make out detail on some screens.
• Metroid Prime has glowing mushrooms to explain the illumination. Justified, since Samus's Combat Visor adjusts for light levels.
  • In the Metroid series in general, it's very rare to find an unlit area. There are always skylights, equipment, or luminescent flora. The only time it's really, really dark is when the game wants to make you tense and scared, most notably in Metroid Fusion when you're hiding from the SA-X and its visor illuminates dark areas.
• Played straight with Area 7 in Pilot Wings, which is at dusk, but visibility is still clear. Averted with Area 8, and the final helicopter mission, which are in near pitch darkness, with only a few lights.
• Fallout: New Vegas averts this for many caves and poorly lit buildings, which require your light or night-vision to properly navigate. Other caves (luminescent fungus) and outdoor areas (depending on how believable the moon's lighting effects are) play this straight.
• Eternal Darkness and F.E.A.R. encourage averting this: though you can adjust the brightness levels so you can see everything just fine, they recommend playing with fairly dark settings... the reason being that the games are much scarier that way.
• The flashlights in the Left 4 Dead series, due to a limitation of the Source engine's technology, have the odd property of having essentially no light scattering. Every survivor's flashlight will illuminate what they're looking at and absolutely nothing else, not even their held items' viewmodels if they're right up against a wall. There's the bright center of the light, a slightly lighter ring around it, and that's it for light. Due to a limitation of the game, you also can't view any beams but your own; your teammates' lights are reduced to glowing tips at the end of their guns. This is especially conspicuous if seen in a dark room. Every other light functions normally.
• Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect: Andromeda have certain sections which take place in darkness, and the light is handled very well; you can see fine (though with realistically affected colors) within the area of your torch beam, and can see vague shapes at close range outside the beam, but absolutely nothing further away.
• In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, you can't see anything at night other than the sky, even if it's a clear one, and the headlamp isn't much help. With all the anomalies and mutants in the Zone, some of which are nocturnal and really, really dangerous, it's best not to travel at night. In most situations (even if you have the best Night-Vision Goggles), it's best to just find a campfire, pull out your sleeping bag, and snore until the sun comes up.
• Averted in the original Dragon Quest where upon entering a cave you are unable to see beyond your character sprite without a torch or a light spell.
• The PC version of 'Ghost Recon'' had a number of night missions or pitch-dark rooms that required the night vision goggles, but the console versions played this trope straight due to hardware limitations, thus out in the country in the dead of night you can see almost as well as in a lit city.
• Midnight Landing is set at midnight, with only the city lights and runway lights visible. Justified, as the game was released in 1987 when 3D technology was very limited, so the developers chose to use lights in a late night setting to provide a sense of altitude without having to invest in expensive graphical hardware. However, since buildings aren't rendered, each stage looks as if you're landing on a bare runway in the middle of nowhere.
• In Slender, the whole game is really dark that you can barely see anything in arms reach away without the flashlight.
• In Betrayal at Krondor, nighttime and dungeons are dark enough that you really want a torch or light spell to get anything done. (Or, for preference when outside at night, get some sleep and travel during the day.)
• The Syphon Filter series has many completely black rooms, requiring either the use of a flashlight or Night-Vision Goggles, the latter of which are automatically equipped in the first three games.
• La-Mulana has two areas that remain pitch dark until certain conditions are met: half of the Chamber of Extinction (or all in the remake), and one room in the Hell Temple. In the 8-bit version, the only things you can see are enemies and Lemeza, unless you fire the Flare Gun. In the remake, all you can see is a spotlight on Lemeza.
• A significant portion of Sin and Punishment: Star Successor's Stage 4 is in pitch blackness, illuminated only by the ninja-like Keepers and a light that points at where you're aiming. Later the stage starts to get brighter, presumably due to the moon.
• In Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 2, Hakone is very dark at night, with the only things visible other than your opponents' car lights being whatever is in your headlights. However, Maximum Tune 3 plays this trope straight instead, with Hakone being well-lit despite a clear lack of light sources that make sense. Maximum Tune 4's Hakone is still lit up, but at least there's street lamps to justify it.
• Terraria pays a lot of attention to lighting effects. The surface openings have light diffusing in, which can be obscured by hanging vines. If you venture much deeper than that, you'd better carry an ample supply of torch-building materials or some other light source. Even the surface gets pretty dark at night. Certain parts of the underground do have some ambient light, mostly supplied by glowing mushrooms or lava pools.
• Initial D Arcade Stage lets you turn off your headlights in night races for a reason: It is nearly pitch black at night. This can be used to your advantage: Turning off your headlights disables the opponent's Advantage counter in human-vs-human races, preventing your opponent from seeing just how far ahead or behind you are.
• Averted with a vengeance in Arma 3: while the predecessors suffered from the trope to varying intensity, in part 3, darkness means just that: utter pitch-black darkness. If your character is not equipped with night vision goggles or a flashlight attachment, or a rangefinder/laser designator, or a NV scope, or... well, in short, if he has no means of light production or amplification, and you're in an area of the map without any artificial light sources close by (and good luck finding those on about 85% of Stratis) at night...well, you won't be able to see anything at all, period, and will probably fall prey to someone who can. That occurs regardless of the brightness setting and can only be circumvented by cranking up the gamma correction to maximum.
• Averted in Planet Explorers. At night, the planet Maria becomes completely dark, making it impossible to do anything without a light source.
• In Conan Hyborian Age, the dungeon in which happens most of the action is almost completely filed with complete darkness, the only exceptions being either rare rooms with lit candles or braziers, or rare instances of rooms with holes in the ceiling. The mod's description even explicitely advices to bring torches.
• In Dark Souls, the Catacombs and related areas are pitch-black and can only be illuminated by a limited number of methods. Even those light sources cut off completely after a few meters, for presumably supernatural reasons.
• An Action Man game for the Game Boy Color averted this for objectives involving a cave in the Jungle stage. If you don't have the flashlight to traverse the cave, the screen will gradually get darker as you try to head towards its entrance, eventually reaching near-pitch-black and preventing you from entering. The Mine stage similarly has no qualms about dumping you into complete darkness if you shoot out the lights, unless you bring the otherwise-unneeded flashlight with you.
• The 2003 game of The Hobbit usually plays this trope straight, but averts it at the beginning of the fifth level, when Bilbo is lost in the caves and it's pitch black. He has to equip his glowing sword, Sting, in order to see his surroundings. However, the player sees Bilbo himself as usual, whether or not they have Sting equipped.
• Outlast and its 2017 sequel strongly avert this. The games are almost entirely in pitch black darkness, with whatever lighting there is being from the environment itself. The only way for the player to properly see their surroundings and avoid enemies is to activate the night vision on their camcorders.
• While Rust used to play this trope straight, the current version of Rust averts this trope (though the change did anger quite a few players at first, but the developers were adamant that the new nighttime would stay as it is). At night, the only natural light available is the moonlight, beyond that, only the sky and the outlines of the terrain against said sky if there are no other lights around.
• In 2Dark, the dark parts of the level are really dark. Smith is completely hidden when he enters such shadows, and the player can only tell where he is because the game places two blue footsteps on their screen where his feet are.
• Night in Don't Starve is not only completely dark, but the darkness itself will kill you. Played straight on the full moon, when the world is bathed in bluish light.
• Night in Dragon's Dogma and its sequel is dark, and getting caught in the wilderness as night falls, especially without a lantern, is a huge risk. Even the lantern, especially in open outdoor areas, will only illuminate a certain area before being subsumed entirely by blackness.

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