Since every dungeon in The Legend of Zelda series contains one new piece of equipment (which will be needed to kill the boss and progress further) you can bet your last rupee that it'll have a use in both puzzle solving and combat (unless you end up against a Puzzle Boss, of course).Super Metroid: Every weapon you get (beyond the basic power beam, which can still open basic blue doors) will help you bypass a specific obstacle.The basic "Power Beam" doesn't do much outside of combat (although in Metroid game, it was upgraded from the short beam to the long beam, which made it possible to clear a few early obstacles), however all the later weapons in every game can be used to remove certain obstacles and open colour coded doors. Often leads to a form of Equipment-Based Progression. This may also function as one of the Standard FPS Guns. Also related to the Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality (where abilities and weapons are more useful when they're less effective at dealing out damage). Within the story of the game itself, the weapon might be an Improvised Weapon (if it's a tool which could normally be used to bypass the puzzles which the game allows the player to use as a weapon) or an example of Mundane Utility (if it's something made as a weapon which just happens to be useful for solving the game's puzzles). Unintended examples of this trope (for example using the recoil on a weapon to jump higher) may lead to Sequence Breaking. Supertrope to Muzzle Flashlight.Ĭompare Sword of Plot Advancement for when a weapon has a non-combat use in the plot rather than gameplay. Nor do weapons which happen to be the weakness of particular enemies those fall under Achilles' Heel. Note that a weapon being used to smash through barriers (or innocent furnishings) or do anything else which any weapon could achieve doesn't count the utility effect must be unique to that weapon (or a couple of specific weapons). The Action/Adventure (especially the aforementioned Metroidvania games) genre also favours this trope (as well as Ability Required to Proceed), since it allows the player to both progress through the game and be more capable of fighting enemies at the same time. Another good reason is that doesn't force the player to fumble around switching from "puzzle solving equipment" to "weapons" (thus averting a Scrappy Mechanic). Since the original engine probably already allows the player to carry and use weapons, it makes sense (from both a technical and gameplay point of view) to create weapons which can be used in puzzle solving. If the engine was originally designed for a purely combat based game and the developer wanted to make it more puzzle based (as was the case in the '90s, when the First-Person Shooter genre began experimenting with more story based games as well as RPG Elements) then they have to modify it.
The reason for this trope is often rooted in the constraints of a Game Engine.