Interface Spoiler

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Wizards: What makes you think we're Wizards?
Simon: When I move my mouse pointer over you, it says "Wizards."

Not a spoiler about the interface. This is when the way an in-game menu or other interface element is constructed gives away details about the rest of the game. It may be some unexplained question marks instead of a menu item, a few suspiciously blank spots in a circle menu, or any number of other forms.

Like many meta-expectations, this is an interesting form of Spoiler, because it generally gives something closer to hints or Foreshadowing rather than actual details. You can see the Your Princess Is in Another Castle moment coming when you've got half your equipment missing, but you still won't know exactly when or why it happens.

This may be partly excusable in the tutorial and early sections, where the game is still gradually introducing new mechanics, and the player shouldn't be messing with them beforehand.

Some game companies have a deliberate policy of this, so that people who have rented the game can imagine all the Palette Swaps wonderful prizes yet to be unlocked and buy the game.

Pretty much any "Achievements" list will give things away about the game to come; for example, the names of certain bosses, levels, etc. However, others may avert this and leave any story-related achievements hidden until they're achieved or only give them vague descriptions like "Defeat the Final Boss."

In games where characters' names (or lack thereof) are revealed in the dialog box or by selecting them, the player can learn people's names before the player's character does, and the player can use this to determine which characters will be important.

See also Missing Secret, Disc One Final Dungeon and Spoiled by the Format. Can easily lead to Not So Fast Bucko A Tech Tree can be especially prone to this. Occasionally overlaps with Spoiled by the Manual. 100% Completion and Sidequests can actually create subversions or aversions of this, by making it so that finishing the main game/storyline doesn't also fill up a mission roster or what-have-you.

Examples of Interface Spoiler include:

General

  • Games with a Monster Compendium that show the grand list with question marks in unfound entries or number the entries, particularly if they're roughly in the order that they appear. It becomes obvious that the end of the game is approaching when the entries near the end of the list start filling up.
  • Similarly, games with equipment encyclopediae will typically list equipment in order of strength... so when swords near the end of the list start appearing, the Final Boss fight is likely nigh.

Action Adventure

  • The Zelda series typically has inventory screens with each slot reserved for a specific item, and by the end of the game the player will have acquired most of them.
    • The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess avoided this by using a Ring Menu for Link's inventory items, while keeping key items (including sword and armor) displayed on a more traditional "Quest Status" screen.
    • The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time had the outlines of the sage's medallions already in the inventory-screen, long before the player even learned about them.
      • Ocarina also has an outline of the Triforce in the inventory screen. You can't get it.
    • Avoided in The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword: You actually do get the Triforce this time, but its slot on the Quest Status screen doesn't show up until you find the first piece. And it actually replaces the slot for another MacGuffin that has long since served its purpose.
  • Again avoided in Kid Icarus: Uprising with Palutena's Treasure Hunt, styled in a similar way to the challenges in Super Smash Bros Brawl. The 120 individual challenges censor the names of potential spoilers until you've reached that point. (e.g. Defeat ??? using the ???) And then it goes one further: It only features challenges related to the first 9 chapters, supposedly the entirety of the game, so it will seem to be near completion by the time you reach the "final boss". There's actually a second batch of challenges called Viridi's Treasure Hunt, which doesn't even appear until you meet her in the story. There's also a third set that won't appear until you've beaten the game, but there are no spoilers to hide at that point.
  • You can tell the Disc One Final Dungeon of Okami just from the fact that you don't have all the brush techniques yet (and seriously, what kind of final dungeon has you making an appetizer for the boss?), but if that didn't tip you off, the fact that your equipment screen looks so empty is likely to.
  • Cave Story - The number of puppies you bring back is one more than the number that would fit between Jenka and the door.

Adventure Game

  • In Trace Memory, four of the (otherwise unlabeled) icons on your menu become selectable very early on in the game. However, the final icon's purpose only becomes clear at the climax.
  • In the NES version of Deja Vu, the game-over screen displayed when the player character dies[1] is a picture of the character's gravestone, which has his name written on it. However, the player character doesn't know his name at the beginning of the game, and the player isn't supposed to know what it is before the character remembers it, but the game-over screen lets the player find it out before they're supposed to.
  • Harnessed to great effect by Gravity Bone. As you make your way through the second mission, you obtain several items which are set to keys 1, 2, and 4 on your keyboard. There is no item 3. Your character is killed before the end of the second mission.
  • Invoked in the first Simon the Sorcerer game. You can locate a group of wizards at a bar using this method, and address them by their title. When they ask you how you knew they were wizards... see the page quote.

Fighting Game

  • In general, going online in any fighting game before unlocking everyone and facing someone using a secret character.
  • Soul Calibur IV was released for the Xbox 360 and Play Station 3, and, like SCII, each platform had it's own Guest Fighter, this time from the Star Wars universe: Darth Vader for Play Station 3 and Yoda for the Xbox (and Starkiller for both). Many people figured that they would release the other system's character as DLC, but Namco didn't confirm nor deny. The suspense (if there was any) was ruined when the game had a single suspiciously empty square on the character select screen once everything was unlocked.
  • Kinnikuman Soldier is called Kinniku Ataru by the game itself in Kinnikuman: Muscle Fight, ruining the fact that he's Kinnikuman's brother.

First Person Shooter

  • Half-Life 2 and its episodes show some of their story achievements but hide others - for instance, in Episode 2, "obtain the Muscle Car" is shown, but "survive the White Forest Inn ambush" is hidden.
  • BioShock (series): The Bathysphere menu spoils the number of levels, and the fact that you have more tonic slots than you can actually unlock before the confrontation with Ryan may tip one off as well. On the other hand, your wallet displays 4 digits, which seems to imply that there is some way to increase the maximum amount of money you can hold from $500. This is not the case, however. The extra digit is probably just a programming relic.
  • BioShock 2 is an interesting case. More linearity/no train menu prevents that from spoiling, but every train station has a little chart of the route, with each stop clearly denoted by a dot. (Even the prison Persephone, whose very existence is supposed to be known to just a handful of Rapture's citizens and which doesn't even have a train station.)
    • As Delta and Eleanor head up the elevator right after the final battle, the achievement "Heading To The Surface" pops up on-screen. Players can immediately pause the game and read the achievement, which reads, "Head to the surface on the side of Sinclair's escape pod", thus spoiling the surprise a few seconds later when the explosives detonate.
  • In Halo 3: ODST, "Data leak on sub-level 9" (from the loading screen) hints towards the ending.
  • The weapon menus in Red Faction Guerrilla and Wolfenstein.
  • Borderlands spoils the existence of Eridian weaponry, which is supposed to be late game equipment because it has its separate skill on your character's stat window.
  • Far Cry 2 has an ingame map, with most town being labeled with vaguely African names and other buildings labeled as "cattle ranch" etc and one twisting path through impassible mountains leading to a valley named The Heart Of Darkness. Guess where the final level will take place.
  • Very common in PC First Person Shooters with remappable controls and the standard 1-9 weapon switching system. Chances are if you start a new game and go to the settings, it'll tell you the names of every weapon you'll get over the course of the game.
  • Metroid Prime accidentally does this a lot. On the map of the first game, the legend outright stated the names of the weapons, as certain weapons were required to open certain doors. For example, the key on the map outright stated that red doors, which you don't even see in the game until very late, are opened by the Plasma beam. The sequels (and remake) fix this slightly, by having the legend say that certain colors are "???," but that still gives a hint at what the later weapons are.
    • Zero Mission also flubs on a major spoiler point when it states the certain power-ups are incompatible with your current suit. A simple one-word omission would have defeated an otherwise dead giveaway, though they could never have completely taken away from the fact that they wouldn't give you powerups that you could never use...
  • The Jurassic Park arcade Rail Shooter game concludes with a battle against two T-Rexes while the player is riding on the back of a vehicle. When you beat the final T-Rex down to a third of his health, the creature flees and the vehicle continues driving towards the gate, leading people to assume the game is finished...but the T-Rex's health bar is still present on-screen, spoiling his eventual reappearance.

MMORPGs

  • Most World of Warcraft achievements are fairly spoileriffic, but the achievement for the Trial of the Crusader raid hides the name of the final boss, only showing it as "Complete the Trial of the Crusader". The final boss is Anub'arak, after the Lich King breaks the floor of the Coliseum and makes you fall into the Nerubian tunnels below it.
    • Later, even the name was spoiled by the raid-lock system, which limits players to killing each boss once per week and names the bosses that have and have not been defeated this week. By then, though, raid leaders generally insisted on either giving all first-timers a Walkthrough or having them watch one on YouTube, making a Late Arrival Spoiler inevitable anyway.
    • A simpler example would be one quest of Sven's Revenge, when you are given clues to a person's identity. The person, obviously, then shows up on your minimap as a quest complete icon.
      • This happens with a decent number of quests, where you're sent to find someone who has gone missing, and the quest objective will show "<character's> corpse found 0/1", showing that he's dead before you even find the corpse
  • In EverQuest, every zone of the last few expansions has a "Hunter" achievement which basically lists every "named" or boss mob in the zone. Is "Lord Bob" a quest person, normal trash mob or named (special loot dropping) monster? If he's on the "Hunter" list, you have the answer.

Platform Game

  • The later Jak and Daxter games have your health in the form of little green dots around a circle. Starting with Jak 3, you can calculate how much more health you're likely to get based on how much of the circle it covers. Similarly, even if you were just handed a Jak 3 disc without a case and had missed the entire second game, you could easily guess that you eventually access Light Eco powers when you see that only half the Yin Yang symbol in your HUD fills up with purple when you collect the dark stuff.
  • The Ratchet & Clank games tend to do this too, if you look deeply enough into the menus. The Skill Point lists tell you which planet each is found on, effectively spoiling every level in the game and making it easy to see Your Princess Is in Another Castle moments coming. A particularly egregious example from Up Your Arsenal: It's pretty obvious a certain character isn't really dead when you know you'll later visit a place called Qwark's Hideout. Another possible one from that game is "Crash Site." Although what exactly crashed may not be immediately obvious.
    • There's also arena challenges such as "Defeat all enemies using only the Rift Inducer", which appear long before said weapons are available.
    • The Monstropedia in the second game lists the 'home planet' of each enemy; when it's not the world you first encounter them on, you know you'll probably be visiting it later on. Examples include all the Thugs 4 Less members being from 'Snivelak' which you go to when you storm their base to rescue someone very late in the game, and all Mega Corp robots listing 'Yeedil', it's the location of Mega Corp's headquaters, and it's The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Subverted with some though, such as the B2-Brawler's home planet 'Cerebella', which has yet to make an appearence in the series.
  • The challenge achievement for beating the game in both Mega Man 9 and 10 say "Whomp Wily!", despite the plotlines of both leading you to believe otherwise.
    • Throughout the franchise, the menu screens almost always have exactly enough room for every weapon and item in the game. When you get one Sub-Tank, for instance, you can see where the Sub-Tanks appear on the menu, how much more room there is, and therefore how many more Sub-Tanks are in the game (generally a total of four).
  • Iji spoils the existence of the Komato from level one as their weapons are an upgradable stat.
  • In New Super Mario Bros.. for the DS, you can scroll through and view the entirety of the current world, no matter which levels you've unlocked. Except for the last world, where once you beat the "final castle", Bowser Jr. runs across a bridge to the second half of that world, which previously wasn't able to be viewed.
  • In Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, in the controls menu the 3rd option you can change is for the jet pack. Take 3 guesses as to how you beat Clockwerk.
  • Jumper Two's unlockables menu blatantly spoils the existence of "secret" levels. Chances are that you will see said menu long before finishing the last sector (one requirement for secret stage 1. The other is getting total record time below certain threshold.)
  • Psychonauts presents all the minds you can enter as doors. Already from the start, you can see how many minds you get to enter over the course of the game.
    • It becomes especially Egregious when you factor in the Meat Circus: just before you unlock it, you've passed the Point of No Return and you're fighting the Big Bad in an epic, presumably final battle...with the nagging thought of "Wait...wasn't there an extra door?"
    • From the start of the game there's a silhouette of a brain jar with a question mark in it on the inventory screen. You don't find out you have to collect the campers' brains until you get to the asylum.

Puzzle Game

  • In Portal, the new game menu appears to spoil the number of levels. Then you find out that the entire second half of the game doesn't show up on said menu.
    • Portal 2 truncates the name of the last chapter ("The Part Where He Kills You") in the New Game menu for spoiler reasons. The achievements reveal the full title, but are worded vaguely enough that if you haven't reached a certain point in the game, you won't know who "He" refers to.
  • Subverted in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. The mysteries panel gradually fills up with "SOLVED" markers as the game reaches a climax... only for three of the mysteries to be re-solved, this time with "The Whole Story".

Real Time Strategy

  • Similarly, StarCraft 2 has achievements for each set of missions: the Mar Sara missions, the Hanson missions, the Tosh missions, the Horner missions, the Artifact missions, the Zeratul missions - and the Final missions, so named to avoid revealing that the last missions take place on Char. Also, the achievements don't mention that you can betray both Hanson and Tosh (seperately) in their storylines or the nature of Zeratul's missions. They kind of blew it on hiding whose side Warfield and Valerian end up on, though. (Well, technically you join their side. Semantics.)
  • In Brütal Legend, entering the multiplayer menu plays a tutorial cutscene which spoils Ophelia turning villainous.
    • Less blatantly, there's the empty unit and solo slots.
  • In Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, you can get armor plating equipment that is listed as only able to be equipped by Dreadnought, even before you get the resurrected Davian Thule as a party member.

Role Playing Game

  • Lunar: Dragon Song lets you find a chest (in a room that is mandatory to clear, no less) with Gideon3's card inside. This happens even before you fight Gideon2 at the end of the game, quite the giveaway...
    • Also, you'll find claws for Gabi on sale long before you even meet her. And equipment for Rufus is available in only one town (Although by then you've already met him, and he offered to join your party more than once), but unless you backtrack immediately after he joins he gets killed by Gideon before you ever get the chance to shop for his equipment.
  • Children of Mana has a similar situation: there are slots in your equipment screen for several weapons that you don't start with, and the gem inventory screen can rather taunt you with its emptiness.
  • Shows up in Seiken Densetsu 3: The game leads you to believe that opening the gate to the Mana Holyland and acquiring the Sword of Mana will be the game's big finish. It's somewhat undermined by the fact that unless you've spent an inordinate amount of time Level Grinding, you're nowhere near the level needed for your second class change, and at that point in the game, have no obvious way of getting the MacGuffins needed for it anyways. (They can be obtained early, but it is unlikely to the point of Guide Dang It; they're plentiful later.)
  • Super Mario RPG: The game's subtitle ("Legend of the Seven Stars") is already a clue in and of itself, but the Star Piece screen nonetheless displays seven specific slots, one for each piece you collect.
  • Final Fantasy IV: Not so much an Interface Spoiler as Interface Foreshadowing, but Tellah is seeking out the spell Meteor for purposes of revenge. He finally gets it, and supposedly even has access to it in Random Encounters...but a quick check of the menu reveals that he doesn't have, now, and will not ever have enough magic power to actually cast it. What can come of casting something you haven't the power to use?...
    • A more blatant one comes when Baigan joins the party. That brings the party total to six, which is more than can even physically fit in the menu screen, so it's no surprise when he turns out to be lying.
    • In the sequel The After Years, checking the Hooded Man's equipment shows he uses his left hand to hold his sword, which is a huge hint on who he really is.
  • In Albion, shops sell weapons none of the party can wield (in the early game), though it is justified and otherwise would be plenty of Fridge Logic. The weapons, themselves, are described with a list of character classes which can wield them, revealing whom you can expect in the party later.
    • Similarly, equipment in Summoner actually lists the name of everyone who can use it, including equipment solely for characters you haven't yet recruited.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, you can always go to the (empty) "esper" menu. Even though it's about a third of the way through before you properly find out what espers are and how they work.
    • Also, the battle menu, specifically the discrepancy between Terra and every other party member. At first, she can only use magic, and there's a gap where her special ability would be. Similarly, characters like Locke and Edgar have their special abilities, and a gap where the magic would be. Think people will eventually be able to cast spells, or that Terra will develop a secret power?
  • In Final Fantasy V, Faris is Bifauxnen. You learn it early, but it's spoilered even earlier when you change jobs first: Faris uses female sprites (especially noticeable in the White Mage and Black Mage jobs)
    • It's even more noticible in the GBA port, where Faris has a clearly female face portrait.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has a fairly subtle one; four of your starting characters have two ATB slots and get a third when they become l'Cie. Vanille, however, already has three slots before this happens, because she already was a l'Cie before supposedly getting transformed alongside the rest of them, a fact also hinted at by her relatively high starting stats compared to the normal humans.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, the Cathedral of Shadows has 12 slots demons for use in fusion when you can only have 8 in your party at a time (the size expands by 2 twice before midgame).
    • Persona 3 does get around the "list expansion" business - there are no individual slots, just blank space. (Then again, in that game, your Persona headcount is set by your level, not the plot.)
    • Also, in Persona 4, you are still at Level 9 for the Fool social link when you get to a point which pretends to be the ending, giving away that it's a Bad Ending and there's still more plot to go. The link doesn't reach level 10 until you've found the path to the real ending. Plus, you haven't even unlocked the Judgement link until then, and it won't max out until you've beaten the "Final Boss".
    • Rule of thumb for Megami games: If the game presents what appears to be the final dungeon or the final boss, experiment with some fusions. If the level of the demons or personas that come up are significantly higher than your current level—we're talking about a level difference of at least 40—you're not nearly close to finished yet.
  • Chrono Trigger has a major one during a flashback, if you're paying attention: When Frog is recalling Cyrus' demise at the hands of Magus, Ozzie's dialogue is prefixed with OZZIE's name in all-caps, as you'd expect of an NPC, but Magus' dialogue is prefixed with a very PC-looking 'Magus'. Hmm... The DS version rectifies the problem.
    • The worst offender is the DS version's "Dojo", which shows Magus in tech screenshots and it shows his two techs. Before you get him. The Item Encyclopaedia also shows weapons, which includes a portion of the list with scythes. Now who do we know that uses that type of weapon?
  • Rogue Galaxy has a few examples of this. The "SP" folder on the inventory screen blatantly spoils two key item collection quests, and Jaster's Tech Tree unlocks the dual tech "Fated Passion", whose description (and animation) detail a romantic subplot that comes almost completely out of left field. (I say almost because the game is already so Troperiffic it's pretty freaking obvious in any case. Still?)
  • In Shadow Hearts: Covenant, you can quickly see how many characters will join your party at the end by looking at the vertical spaces left in the main menu. That's assuming you didn't read the manual, of course.
    • The game also tries to trick you into thinking Nicolai is a main character. He's listed alongside the rest in the booklet, he's in your party at the very beginning, and is even the first character you control outside of combat. But checking his bio not only reveals that he is not what he claims to be, but is a bad guy as well!
  • Tales of Phantasia had two NPCs, Rhea and Brambard, join the party, with message and all, going so far as to give them stat pages in the party menu (though they were entirely blank save for the character portrait and the word NPC). Arche, the owner of the body Rhea was using, would later actually join the party as a spellcaster.
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, you can tell if a companion will join your group permanently because their character and inventory screens have an approval bar, while those of temporary followers do not. Temporary followers also don't gain any experience.
    • They try to avert this in Awakening. Mhairi will never survive her Joining, but will acquire experience and gain/lose approval in the brief time she's with you. But it's revealed anyway: if you check the character info screen, you'll notice her contribution to party damage stays at 0% no matter how much damage she's done to enemies.
  • Averted in Nie R, where the menu screen interface actually changes completely once you gain access to Grimoire Weiss shortly into the game. Before that, pretty much the only thing you could see was a list of your consumable items; these menu items get changed into completely different and much more comprehensive menus once you pick up Weiss.
  • Lufia & the Fortress of Doom has a rare case of a sprite spoiler, although it's rather subtle: Lufia's in-battle and menu sprite shows her wielding a polearm, though it's not actual weapon of choice in gameplay. Female, blue-haired and using a polearm—think back to the beginning of the game. Who else meets that criteria?
  • Ultima VII's Dialogue Tree, as noted in this Let's Play:

It's important to note here that Klog is lying. Characters normally don't tell you they know nothing about a topic; you usually just don't get the topic to ask them about. Since Klog does have these topics, it means he does know something, but it will be quite some time before we can coax the truth out of him.

  • The World Ends With You's save stats shows your current partner. Towards the beginning of the game this will spoil that you get more than one party member.
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the fact that enemies you don't use Tattle on have their entries given to you for the log if you can't fight them again supplies some spoilers. In particular, there's the fact that while Marilyn and Beldam are refought, Vivian is not.
  • In Yggdra Union, you can pick up various equippable items that can only be used by Russell and Elena as early as chapter 2. They don't even show signs of wanting to join forces with you until chapter 4.
  • In Tales of the Abyss, the records screen shows the names of all your party members, including a guest, right from the beginning.
    • In Baticul, one of the citizens mentions that Princess Natalia is a master of the bow. The store in Baticul sells bows. None of your other party members can equip bows.
  • The Disgaea series does this as new menu items are added. Especially in the remakes, where new ones that weren't in the original are added—in the PSP version of Disgaea 2, you have to play through the bonus mode to unlock an option.
    • The Disgaea character creation/reincarnation screen also "spoils" the existence of class tiers once you start unlocking them, though the levels needed for each tier to unlock varies with each class, and there are certain classes that don't unlock unless you meet special requirements. Ditto Makai Kingdom.
    • In Phantom Brave, however, character creation occurs on a Ring Menu where new choices expand the ring.
  • In Planescape: Torment, the first time the player meets a future member of the party, an entry about him/her appears in the journal (in a specific "Party members" section). It is a kind of spoiler, because some of them join the player's party late after the first meeting.
  • In Tales of Symphonia you finally reach what seems to be the end of your quest in The Tower of Salvation. Then Remiel tells you the only reason Colette was brought there was to die and become the new body for Martel. Colette then proceeds to complete the transformation into a lifeless being. This would be an emotional scene if not for the fact that right after Colette completes the transformation and is supposedly dead you get a message that says "Colette Learned Judgement!".
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, in the first area you visit outside of your Doomed Hometown—the road to some seemingly-unimportant swamp ruins—the minimap reads "The Mere of Dead Men". Now, the player character knows the apt name of the creepy swamp their home village is built on, but the player isn't supposed to know that yet. Also, one of the initially greyed-out prestige classes is Neverwinter Nine, potentially spoiling the offer Lord Nasher makes to you much later in the game.
    • Also, since the developers didn't bother/weren't able to make it possible to change the names of NPCs on-the-fly and weren't willing to outright lie to the player, you can tell that someone's going to try and deceive you about their identity if the overhead label that appears when you mouse over them says something vague, like "Man", instead of their actual name.
    • The identity of the main enemy of act one, the Githyanki, is revealed to the player by the interface almost immediately, but it takes most of the act for the characters to learn
  • Mass Effect 1 has silhouettes of unrecruited party members.
    • During the Noveria mission, the player comes across some bugs which, when aimed at, are identified as "Rachni". Naturally your party cannot see this, and will wonder what those bugs were until The Reveal.
    • The moment you gain control of Shepard in the first game, you can go to the Squad screen with three points to give to your character. When you check out the Charm and Intimidate skills, it cheerfully informs you that you'll be allowed more points for them once you become a Spectre. This despite the fact that you're still a whole cutscene away from even knowing you're up for it.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the silhouettes are replaced with datacards with information about your future party members, since the point of the main quests is to recruit them. However, others that Cerberus wouldn't have been aware of (or would they?) like Legion also have a datacard on your squad menu.
    • When you go into the Collector ship and find out the truth about them, the dialogue wheel, as usual, pops up before The Reveal has actually been said, and one of the dialogue options reads "The Collectors are Protheans!"
    • If you go and customize your armor after the first mission (post-resurrection), you're allowed to pick what clothes you wear on the Normandy, which at this point is totally illogical given that the ship was destroyed in the tutorial level. Thus, the appearance of the second Normandy is somewhat less surprising.
  • In Mass Effect 3, if you import your character from Mass Effect 2, the game gives you a quick review of all the decisions you've made thus far. Most of them are expected, but one of them is the choice of whether or not you saved Maelon's data, which is treated as a fairly minor decision when you make it. This makes it clear that the data is going to have an impact later on regarding the genophage cure.
    • This is also averted in the same game during the mission on Palaven. When Garrus talks off screen they are listed as Turian Soldier in the subtitles. It's not until Shepard and the player actually see them that they are then listed under their own name.
  • The "fill-in-the-blanks" party menu also appears in Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. Basically, BioWare is very fond of this.
    • In Jade Empire, Wild Flower has two portraits, one for each spirit possessing her. When Ya Zhen (the evil spirit) reveals that he may aid you in return for your support, it comes as little surprise.
  • Sands of Destruction features a Quip mechanic, where sometimes lines that characters say in cutscenes become equippable. They can gain these lines before they join your party, however, highlighting your incoming members.
  • Checking the achievement list in Xenoblade Chronicles will more or less make clear Fiora rejoins you at some point. To be fair, it's the most telegraphied spoiler in the game and bigger reveals are much better covered, but there you go.
    • The fact the quests you get in some places are ALL "timed", meaning you can't do them after a certain point, will also spoil to you you won't be able to come back to those places and the quests are Lost Forever.
    • And then there's the fact that Bionis' Interior has a collectibles page, but no collectibiles...
  • Suikoden I has a somewhat subtle one in that Sanchez, who you go to to change your team, is not listed on the Tablet of Stars, which reveals which of the 108 Stars of Destiny you've recruited. It's because he's not on your side; he's The Mole.
  • Suikoden V avoids this by taking a while before it gives you the Tablet of Stars. In doing so, it hides that one of your allies, Sialeeds, is set to betray you.
  • Legend of Dragoon's pause screen includes a section devoted to Dragoon Spirits (enough to hold 8 of them) and the Addition section has a column devoted to SP gain (the meter built up that allows Dragoon transformations). Furthermore, the status section lists Magic Attack and Magic Hit (accuracy) on each profile, a stat that can only be useful to Dragoons. It's quite clear early on (after Lavitz gains his) that everyone in your party will eventually become a Dragoon.

Simulation Game

  • In most Ace Combat games, 2 being one of the exceptions, you can see in the hangar and plane select screens boxes either unselectable or empty that give away how many more planes can be bought.

Stealth Based Game

  • The weapon upgrade interface in Hitman: Blood Money does this. Unavailable upgrades lack name and description, but the icon still informs the player that he can look forward to two more silencer upgrades, three additional types of ammo etc.
    • Also, in Agent 47's hideout in said game, customizable weapons are mounted on the wall with silhouettes behind them depicting their fully upgraded forms.
  • In Assassin's Creed - at least the second game - you have a circle menu for your weapons which starts almost empty, and achievements such as Feather collection and Capes are to be found in the menu. In the Villa D'Auditori, there are rooms for all the weapons and armour you can collect, as well as galleries for purchased paintings and pictures of bested rivals. Needless to say, the walls are blank when you initially get there

Turn Based Strategy

  • About halfway through Chapter 3 of Final Fantasy Tactics, rumors begin appearing in bars stating Marquis Elmdor recently died in battle. But his biography still has his age listed, and it's only removed from anyone who dies, which means? Easy to miss, but he was undead the next time you saw him.
    • Avoided with the class system though. The available classes are in a circle that expands as you unlock more (unlocking classes is done by getting class levels in other classes, per character), so you never know which classes you haven't unlocked yet, or which specific classes you need to level up in for the next class.
  • In Super Robot Wars, the games (current ones at least) mark which units will you be forced to deploy next chapter. It gives away which series will be the focus next chapter, though sometimes this means they might just get a new robot or will appear midway the fight to save the day. This is a good thing, since if they're low in upgrades that's your chance to not get stuck in an Unwinnable situation, but still.

Visual Novel

  • The character bio section of the Legend arc in Umineko no Naku Koro ni tells you that Maria shares her fascination of the occult with Kinzo and has strange behavior before she started mentioning magic to her family.

Wide Open Sandbox

  • The powers menu spoils the number (and distribution) of powers in Prototype.
  • In Famous shows you the number of powers in the upgrades menu, but not what they are called or how you get them. Also, some of these are passive bonuses or upgrades such as damage boosts, health boosts and upgrades to your lightning bolt power.
    • In a scene in the last third of the sequel, Cole, Zeke and Kuo have a serious discussion in a train car about whether Cole is physically and mentally ready to use the RFI, having found "the last Blast Core". The scene probably would have had a lot of impact - if the player wasn't already aware from the on-screen text interludes between plot missions that show he still has two more Blast Cores to collect after this, as well as several locked abilities that haven't opened up yet.
    • There's also a mission that has you firing a nuke at The Beast. It's quite clearly made to seem like this is the ending of the game, except A. that would be a hell of an Anticlimax Boss and B. it's still showing that you need to find two more blast cores, which would be pointless if this mission succeeded.
  • Batman: Arkham City has deliberately cryptic and vague trophy descriptions to avoid spoiling the plot. Defeat Grundy? "Stop the unstoppable - Wrecking Ball". Defeat Ra's al Ghul? "We are legion - Sandstorm". Defeat the Final Boss? "All the world is a stage - Exit Stage Right".
  • When the protagonist of the first Grand Theft Auto IV expansion The Lost and Damned was revealed to be Johnny Klebitz, players noticed that completing a mission featuring him and Niko unlocked the "Impossible Trinity" achievement, a blatant hint that the protagonist for the second expansion also appeared in said mission. They quickly came to the conclusion that it had to be Luis Lopez, since he was the only character in that mission whose fate was ambiguous. Much later, Luis was confirmed to be the protagonist of The Ballad of Gay Tony.
  • The screen that notifies you of when you have enough respect to do a mission in Saints Row 2 shows the signs of the four gangs in the game—and the Ultor logo, foreshadowing the missions you'll eventually do against the Ultor Corporation.
  1. ↑ the game has some "lose" conditions that don't involve dying, and these have different game-over screens
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