Basic Trope: A video game requires a player not only to complete a mission objective, but to complete it in an arbitrarily specific way.
- Straight: In Tales of Troperia XIII, a mission requires Hiro to go undercover as a City Guard. However, it automatically fails if he uses magic.
- Exaggerated: The mission fails if Hiro uses magic, runs too fast, draws a non-standard guard weapon, wears a single non-standard guard piece of armor or accessory, or speaks to any NPC.
- Downplayed: Hiro can use lower-level magic without failing the mission, but high-powered spells will still cause him to fail.
- Justified:
- The City Guards are strictly forbidden from using magic, so using it will obviously blow Hiro's cover.
- Hiro is challenging himself for his own amusement.
- Inverted: The player issues missions and needs to assign arbitrary restrictions to get the NPCs to do so in a way that doesn't backfire horribly or make them fail. Winning an honor duel by using poison for example turns what would have been a war with one kingdom at worst into a war with many outraged other kingdoms.
- Subverted: Hiro is told that he will fail the mission if he uses magic, but due to Gameplay and Story Segregation, he can cast it without issue.
- Double Subverted: Once Hiro heads back after using magic he gets a far lesser reward than if he did so properly as the mission giver chews him out for his recklessness.
- Parodied: The missions with restrictions are given by a Dirty Old Man who has bizzare sexual fetishes which can lead to tasks like knocking out a dragon using a feather duster while wearing only leather.
- Zig-Zagged: Hiro is told that he cannot use magic on the mission, but can without issue. However, it turns out that the Big Bad already knows that Hiro is undercover as a guard, and allows him to proceed so that he will act as a Macguffin Delivery Service when the Big Bad's Teleporting Keycard Squad shows up behind him.
- Averted: Hiro has no illogical restrictions during the mission.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: Quirby says to Hiro before the mission "why can't you use magic? That's totally arbitrary!"
- Exploited:
- Defied: You get a pop-up warning if you attempt to cast a spell during the quest, but if you ignore it and cast the spell anyway, the quest continues without issue. Hiro comments to himself "huh, guess that wasn't really a restriction".
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama:
