History Main / InvisibleWall

The most extreme and JustForFun/{{egregious}} form of the InsurmountableWaistHeightFence. The Invisible Wall is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: a boundary that limits where the player can go, even though there's nothing physically there to stop them. It's as if someone decided to build a glass wall. You try to walk past it, but your character just stops or walks in place. You can't see the boundary, but it's there.

** Annoyingly, ''[=NiGHTS=]: Journey of Dreams'' plays this normally. Quite annoying, since in the original, at least you could temporarily stop the Egg Timer... Here, the Awakers can't be stopped, so if you come up against an Invisible Wall, you're pretty much screwed.

The most extreme and JustForFun/{{egregious}} form of the InsurmountableWaistHeightFence, the Invisible Wall is, well, just that: a boundary that limits where the player can go, but there's simply nothing there. It's as if someone decided to build a glass wall. You try to walk past it but your character just stops or walks in place. You can't see the boundary, but it's there.

Usually, the only indication that an invisible wall exists is when the player character suddenly bumps against solid air, but very occasionally designers will give it some architectural tells or special effect indicators (at least when the player hits it), turning it into SomeKindOfForceField with in-universe (though usually not elaborated upon) justification.

Generally an AcceptableBreaksFromReality when used to demarcate the edge of a level, but invisible walls are a renowned ScrappyMechanic when used within levels, especially when mixed in with the regular level geometry, where they can seemingly arbitrarily block players off from routes or places that look viable, or in the worst case scenarios can actually be bumped up against during regular gameplay, messing with the players controls in the process. In all situations, the work of the designer is either to find "natural" way to limit the player's movement, or at the very least to make it obvious what is and isn't areas meant for gameplay before the player tests it with their noggin.

** ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006 Sonic '06]]'' is possibly the worst offender in the series. The second hub city had giant invisible walls on ''the streets between buildings'', with no indication that you can't go over there on your map. The game often ropes you into doing side quests by having the police [[NPCRoadblock block the way]], even though you can jump over, move around, and in at least one case, walk BEHIND the officer in question. No, Sonic is [[HonorBeforeReason honor bound]] to not [[StupidGood continue his quest to save the universe until he plays tag with the children]].

* In a sort of inversion, newsman Les Nessman of ''WKRPInCincinnati'' would ''really'' like a private office, but it's not in the budget, so he surrounds his desk with taped lines on the floor. Les acts, and expects everyone else to act, as if these were invisible walls, and gets annoyed if anyone enters his "office" without "knocking" ... or comes in through a "wall" instead of where he's decided the "door" is supposed to be.

Depending on the capabilities of the PlayerCharacter and the geography of the game setting, some Invisible Walls may at times be AcceptableBreaksFromReality. Since the game world is necessarily limited in size, a level designer ultimately has to decide if simply forbidding a player from going out-of-bounds with a seemingly arbitrary block breaks WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief more than [[GatelessGhetto having the player walled-in on all sides]]. One way of averting this dilemma is use a natural GravityBarrier, which is why islands in the middle of the ocean are such popular game settings.

** ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006 Sonic '06]]'' is possibly the worst offender in the series. The second hub city had giant invisible walls on ''the streets between buildings'', with no indication that you can't go over their on your map. The game often ropes you into doing side quests by having the police [[NPCRoadblock block the way]], even though you can jump over, move around, and in at least one case, walk BEHIND the officer in question. No, Sonic is [[HonorBeforeReason honored bound]] to not [[StupidGood continue his quest to save the universe until he plays tag with the children]].

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* The ''VideoGame/GundamVsSeries'' added these in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED: Alliance vs. ZAFT'', and for once it's actually a good thing. Past iterations of the series had the outer limits of the stage be a line that, if crossed, forced your HumongousMecha to auto-pilot itself back into the stage, which was time-consuming, left you open to attack, and lead to a DarthWiki/MostAnnoyingSound ("You've left the mission area, please return!"). The use of Invisible Walls speeds up gameplay greatly, and they don't significantly reduce the size of the stages, so it ends up working out well in the end.

* The ''VideoGame/GundamVsSeries'' added these in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED: Alliance vs. ZAFT'', and for once it's actually a good thing. Past iterations of the series had the outer limits of the stage be a line that, if crossed, forced your HumongousMecha to auto-pilot itself back into the stage, which was time-consuming, left you open to attack, and lead to a MostAnnoyingSound ("You've left the mission area, please return!"). The use of Invisible Walls speeds up gameplay greatly, and they don't significantly reduce the size of the stages, so it ends up working out well in the end.

** In [=KHI=], Goofy and Donald bounce off invisible walls just before Sora fights Possessed! Riku. It happens again in the final dungeon just before he fights Darkside.

** 358/2 Days showed that this could be a blessing in disguise. It kept the "enemies heal when they disappear" mechanic KHII introduced, but not the "lock-on means you can't leave the area" mechanic, while several of its bosses don't use the invisible barriers. This means that you could be knocked out of an area by a particularly difficult boss's attack, only to return and find it fully healed.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' has these in much the same way VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion does -- try to walk off the map, and a pop-up box will tell you something along the lines of "You cannot go any farther north." Also combined with InsurmountableWaistHighFence, particularly obvious in parts of downtown: there are piles of rubble you're not supposed to be able to pass, but the actual Invisible Wall is often halfway up the slope, leading to the frustrating situation of you being unable to climb a two-foot block suddenly, despite having easily leapt over noticeably taller barriers just seconds ago.

** Infuriatingly, ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' does this egregiously. Several mountain ranges that look like you should be able to jump over them just randomly won't let you. It's understandable when it's there to prevent SequenceBreaking, but in some areas it's pointless and completely arbitrary. Especially when they already have a perfectly good BeefGate blocking the player. There are a few times these do make sense, such as the wire gate at the NCR Mojave Outpost which serves as a gateway in ''Lonesome Road'' after you choose to [[spoiler:'''nuke the NCR's only way into the Mojave''']].
* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}} Air Ride'' has one around every course, a well as the city in City Trial mode.

* ''[[VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles Sonic The Hedgehog 3]]'' pulls the Invisible Wall at the first Launch Base Act 2 boss. You SHOULD be able to jump to that ledge but you can't, and until Robotnik jumps into his machine, you can't do anything to him. Annoying, considering that the invisible wall disappears once he's been defeated.

* "In the Walls of Eryx" by Creator/HPLovecraft is a sci-fi horror tale about an alien maze built of these. A person trapped in the maze would die of thirst while looking at a nearby lake.

*** Used at the edge of the map. Should you try to cross it, a caption will come on the screen telling you that you can go no further, which by then is perfectly obvious given you literally cannot go any further. Nevermind that the land and/or water continues, and you can see the terrain continuing into the distance, often with locations that would give you a strategic advantage over the enemies, or some rare plants with precious alchemy components just out of your reach. These border walls - unlike other invisible walls within the game - can be turned off with a switch in the game's .ini file. The area between them and the ''real'' end of the map is completely empty, consisting only of ground and vegetation. Similar to the "beauty strip" between a clearcut forest and a road, it exists only to mask the fact that at some point the world simply ceases to exist, cutting off in mid-air.
*** Within the game world, invisible walls are sometimes used to make certain obstacles, such as burning houses and steep mountainsides truly insurmountable, which becomes obvious when the player is buffed to superhuman skill levels far beyond what is achievable through normal means. Even though the player should be able to leap low buildings (even burning ones) in a single bound, they are stopped in mid-leap - ostensibly by an obstacle that, the 3rd person view shows, doesn't even touch them.

* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': In ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'', horizontal instant-kill barriers prevent the player from taking a shortcut from the top to the bottom of certain areas (for example, the elevator shaft on "The Oracle"), despite there being no fall damage in the rest of the game. Vertical "death walls" are also used, in addition to nonlethal invisible walls. They apparently forgot to patch up the holes in some places, though, eg. some seemingly insurmountable hills can be climbed, leading to major SequenceBreaking. Subsequent games have these too, though the insta-kill barriers have been replaced by timed-kill ones.

** Similarly, [[{{VideoGame/WarCraft}} WarCraft 2]] almost plays this straight, with the one exception of whirlwinds, which are able to move at least a short distance off the edge of the map and then return.

* ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' uses invisible walls in a very FourthWall-nudging way. The Reapers make the Reaper's Game more interesting by blocking off sections of Shibuya, forcing you to run as they want you to. Some of the walls are lowered by completing tasks assigned by Support Reapers - everything from defeating Noise in a certain fashion to bringing them food to answering a PopQuiz. Later in the story, a character gains the ability to smash holes in them, allowing you to cheat your way out of the game-within-a-game.

** [[VideoGame/SonictheHedgehog2006 Sonic 06]] is possibly the worst offender in the series. The second hub city had giant invisible walls on ''the streets between buildings,'' with no indication that you can't go over their on your map. The game often ropes you into doing side quests by having the police [[NPCRoadblock block the way]], even though you can jump over, move around, and in at least one case, walk BEHIND the officer in question. No, Sonic is [[HonorBeforeReason honored bound]] to not [[StupidGood continue his quest to save the universe until he plays tag with the children]].

* ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI'' has points where whenever Altair attempts to wander off somewhere he's technically never been to yet, a not-quite-invisible wall appears and blocks his path, along with a message from the Animus stating that he cannot go there YET!
** Not only that, but the wall only blocks Altair if he attempts to walk into it at ground level. It's possible for Altair to cross over this wall at a higher point (say by momentum from LeParkour off a nearby building) but the moment you land ''you will die''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has these in much the same way VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion does - try to walk off the map and a pop-up box will tell you something along the lines of "You cannot go any farther north." Also combined with InsurmountableWaistHighFence, particularly obvious in parts of downtown: there are piles of rubble you're not supposed to be able to pass, but the actual Invisible Wall is often halfway up the slope, leading to the frustrating situation of you being unable to climb a two-foot block suddenly, despite having easily leapt over noticeably taller barriers just seconds ago.

** Infuriatingly, VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas does this egregiously. Several mountain ranges that look like you should be able to jump over them just randomly won't let you. It's understandable when it's there to prevent SequenceBreaking, but in some areas it's pointless and completely arbitrary. Especially when they already have a perfectly good BeefGate blocking the player. There are a few times these do make sense, such as the wire gate at the [=NCR=] Mojave Outpost which serves as a gateway in ''Lonesome Road'' after you choose to [[spoiler:'''nuke the NCR's only way into the Mojave''']].

* In ''VideoGame/AmericanMcGeesAlice'', there are several invisible walls. But they also use giant slimy tentacles as walls. You can jump on just about anything, but you can't jump on those tentacles - you have to find a way around them.

* ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'' has an Invisible Wall around the edge of every zone. While they may not be explained, you at least get a warning that you're about to reach it - the screen suddenly goes black and white, and just a bit blurry.

* In ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'', the game has a mixture of Invisible Walls mixed with natural barriers (A 100-foot high wall or the depths of the ocean for example), but sometimes the wall is seen in places that should be logically explorable, or the wall is extended a bit too far away from the steep mountain your character has come up against.

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** However, the ultimate example is probably the first area in The End of the World. It is literally an entire invisible MAZE. As in, it is a huge empty area full of invisible walls. Your only clue of how to navigate it is that the walls tend to intersect at the random bits of rock, which you are not actually told, you have to figure it out by trial-and-error. Also, certain parts of this maze will feature equally invisible battles that you can't run from. Some treasure chests are booby-trapped and sometimes an odd orb of darkness will hit you even if you don't open any chests. Some of these battles are even against the mini-boss that accompanies the game's difficulty spike, the Behemoth.

-->So this is what an invisible barrier looks like.

-->'''Ed''': Oops! Forgot about the wall!

* The ''VideoGame/GundamVsSeries'' added these in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED: Alliance vs. ZAFT'', and for once it's actually a good thing. Past iterations of the series had the outer limits of the stage be a line that, if crossed, forced your HumongousMecha to auto-pilot itself back into the stage, which was time-consuming, left you open to attack, and lead to a MostAnnoyingSound ("You've left the mission area, please return!"). The use of [[InvisibleWall Invisible Walls]] speeds up gameplay greatly, and they don't significantly reduce the size of the stages, so it ends up working out well in the end.

** In Carnival Night Zone, when Knuckles appears to turn off the lights. Sonic just ''stops'', inches away from the smirking echidna... held back by an InvisibleWall. Even worse, you can have all of the emeralds by this point, and so ''Super'' Sonic can be held at bay by it.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has these in much the same way VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion does - try to walk off the map and a pop-up box will tell you something along the lines of "You cannot go any farther north." Also combined with InsurmountableWaistHighFence, particularly obvious in parts of downtown: there are piles of rubble you're not supposed to be able to pass, but the actual InvisibleWall is often halfway up the slope, leading to the frustrating situation of you being unable to climb a two-foot block suddenly, despite having easily leapt over noticeably taller barriers just seconds ago.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'': when you attempt to go off the Great Sea's map, you'll always stumble upon an InvisibleWall.

* In ''VideoGame/FableII'' whenever you try to swim too far away from the land mass, the game gives you an InvisibleWall and says something along the lines of "There is no reason for you to go any farther." Still kills WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief a bit, but at least it's the truth...

* ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'' has an InvisibleWall around the edge of every zone. While they may not be explained, you at least get a warning that you're about to reach it - the screen suddenly goes black and white, and just a bit blurry.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion''; should you come to the edge of the map, a caption will come on the screen telling you that you can go no further, which by then is perfectly obvious. Given you literally cannot go any further. Nevermind that the land and/or water continues, and you can see the terrain continuing into the distance, often with locations that would give you a strategic advantage over the enemies, or some rare plants with precious alchemy components just out of your reach.\\
These border walls - unlike other invisible walls within the game - can be turned off with a switch in the game's .ini file. The area between them and the ''real'' end of the map is completely empty, consisting only of ground and vegetation. Similar to the "beauty strip" between a clearcut forest and a road, it exists only to mask the fact that at some point the world simply ceases to exist, cutting off in mid-air.
** Within the game world, invisible walls are sometimes used to make certain obstacles, such as burning houses and steep mountainsides truly insurmountable, which becomes obvious when the player is buffed to superhuman skill levels far beyond what is achievable through normal means. Even though the player should be able to leap low buildings (even burning ones) in a single bound, they are stopped in mid-leap - ostensibly by an obstacle that, the 3rd person view shows, doesn't even touch them.

** Interestingly, ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' didn't have invisible walls. The game world was an island; if you kept going in a straight line the ground would end, you'd start swimming, and if you persisted long enough you'd eventually find yourself on the other end of the island, because the game world [[VideogameGeography wrapped around]].
** The mod "Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul" does away with the invisible walls that form the world's boundary. There's nothing interesting on the other side, though; only an endless ocean or grassland.