abstract
| - A common situation in video game RPGs; there's a single inventory, but the inventory is shared by multiple characters. This greatly simplifies the work required to manage items (both for the player and the programmer), as there is no need to keep track of who picked up what, distributing items among the characters and so on. This makes the trope an Acceptable Break From Reality, because having to repeatedly pause to micromanage the inventory would likely be extremely annoying to the player. Most of the time, this is easy to overlook. Since you don't know who is carrying that Mega Healing Potion, you may simply assume whoever ends up using it had it all along. On the other hand, some items may be used multiple times, by different characters who obviously had no opportunity to pass it over, especially if you're allowed to change the characters' equipment mid-battle. It becomes silly when the party splits up and the inventory remains shared, allowing characters to use items that someone else picked up on the other end of the dungeon. In some extreme situations, the characters can be on different continents, believed dead, not even have met each other yet etc., but you can still use equipment from the single inventory on any of them, or even transfer equipped items between characters via the inventory or even directly. Apparently, the inventory is a series of tubes! Early Western RPGs rarely did this, but with the influence of Japanese RPGs, this has become so common that a list of modern games which do not use the trope would be much shorter. See also Hyperspace Arsenal. Contrast Inventory Management Puzzle.
|