abstract
| - Your protagonist in an Adventure Game walks up to the Big Bad's base. A guard halts you at the entrance. You're presented with a Dialogue Tree; you select "I'm the new recruit." He laughs and notes you're pitifully out of shape for the job, then shoos you away. You walk up to the same guard again. You're presented with a Dialogue Tree; you select "I'm here by order of the commander." He asks for your authorization papers. You don't have any. He chases you off. You walk up to the same guard again. You're presented with a Dialogue Tree; you select "I'm here to fix the boiler." He admits that the boiler has been acting up lately, and lets you through, apparently forgetting that you just tried to con your way past with two other excuses. What happened? Well, it would be cruel to give you a game over (Nonstandard or otherwise) because you selected the wrong choice, without at least a hint of the right one. It would be even crueler to make the game Unwinnable just because the guard knows you're a liar and doesn't trust you on the second visit. And it would be too simple to let the player just shoot the bastard and walk in uncontested. So they stretch your Suspension of Disbelief and give the guard NPC Amnesia. Guess The Guards Must Be Crazy. This could be considered one of the Acceptable Breaks From Reality if there weren't at least two other options -- wait for the guard change (which could be a simple Palette Swap after you've exited the screen), or have a screwed-up conversation force you to find a non-conversational route past the guard instead. Like getting in through the window with your handy Grappling Hook Pistol, find the secret passage, etc. Or just let the player kill the guard, because that's what they'll want to do anyway. But this involved a lot of extra programming work, and the deadline is Christmas. Implementing NPC Amnesia is easier. A subset of But Thou Must!. Compare Welcome to Corneria. Examples of NPC Amnesia include:
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