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Games that break the 4th wall.

Every Suda51 game breaks the fourth wall.

Flower, Sun, and Rain and No More Heroes had awesome moments like that.
 
Would games where the player is written into the story be considered fourth wall breaking? Something like Contact or LifeLine? These games don't necessarily recognize the outside world in which you inhabit, just you.
 
I guess this counts as a contemporary example... though it's nothing new to the franchise. But they really do this one to death.

sammax4.jpg
 
Thinking about it...didn't Baten Kaitos use something similar? I remember you (the player) being some sort of spirit watching over Kalas. Not sure how much the 4th wall was broken though...memory is sort of fuzzy...
 
I just rememeberd Zelda: Link's Awakening, where kids playing ball outside of the library would tell you hints and tips related to the interface or game mechanics and then finish the conversation with "but I don't know what that means, I'm just a kid".
 
Lucky Number Seven Force said:
Man, I was stuck on that Mojo level for years until when playing it with a friend, he casually walked over to the Genesis at the prompt, softly hit the reset button and progressed through the rest of the game.
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Heh, I got lucky. I thought I did something wrong and reset the console out of frustration, and was greeted by the green 0's and 1's. It's easily my favorite example of breaking the fourth wall in videogames.
 
I guess it deserves mentioning that in most real-time strategy games when you click on units they verbally respond to you. This is already kind of 4th wall bending since you have to think... who are they responding to in-game?

Most of the time they'll just say things like, "What is your bidding?". In some games like Warcraft and Starcraft though they'll start saying things that really kind of bend the wall when you spam click them, directly referencing the fact that you're clicking or poking them.
 
Deadpool grabs his own health bar and beats his opponent with it.

Also, when he wins a match, he'll walk into the camera and point at you. One of his win quotes also references an old joke from the MvC2 community.
 
Disguises said:
Thinking about it...didn't Baten Kaitos use something similar? I remember you (the player) being some sort of spirit watching over Kalas. Not sure how much the 4th wall was broken though...memory is sort of fuzzy...
Click to expand...

Yeah the player is a spirit in that game, not sure if that counts as breaking the 4th wall or not but Kalas and other characters have conversations with you and shit.
 
Did Disgaea or Magicka break the 4th wall? It's been a really long time since I've last played to remember any specifics but either of those 2 games seem like they would.
 
AbsoluteZero said:
Gonna need a transcript...I can't quite make out what's happening here.
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"HEALTH BAR IN YOUR FACE! Feel the love of the HYPER COMBO, and its a HOMMMEE RUNNNNN!!!"
 
AbsoluteZero said:
Gonna need a transcript...I can't quite make out what's happening here.
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Here you go.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure She Hulk has a MvC3 win quote lampshading how she used to be Marvel's main 4th wall breaker before Deadpool started doing it.
 
AbsoluteZero said:
Gonna need a transcript...I can't quite make out what's happening here.
Click to expand...
He pulls the health bar down from the top of the screen, smacks his opponent over the head with it and then struggles for a minute to pull up the super bar and then uses that to beat up the opponent for a while.

Beaten many times
 
Grimoire Weiss in Nier has quite a few wall-breaking moments, most notably the "shh these things happen second time around" at the junkheap in NG+.

Mind you, when part of the game has video game characters reacting to being trapped inside a world made up only of words during one "boss fight"... Nier's obsessive meta-ness is one of its defining features.
 
Second said:
Batman AA comes to mind.

I love this stuff.
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That was so amazing. I was really thinking "OMGWTF" when that happened, which is perfect considering the boss. Definitely the best instance of a game breaking the 4th wall in my experience.
 
I don't see it already mentioned but Sacred 2 does this as well.

The character will talk about how they need to level up, they'll yell at you sometimes. It's actually kind of weird in that game IMO though.
 
Kingdom Hearts: During one of the cutscenes the screen is too high up to focus on Donald for his next line of dialogue, so he grabs the screen and pulls it down until he's in full view.
 
Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie have quizzes at the end of them, and some of the questions you can get ask what is displayed on the back of the game box.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts goes much further, as one of the characters is L.O.G., the Lord of Videogames, who constantly acknowledges that you're in a videogame, and talks about other games.

There's also a level where you're inside a games system of some kind, complete with XBox discs of various Rare games, and computer chips which cause the screen/sound to briefly glitch out if you hit them. And there's another level that's a giant museum, full of memorabillia from previous Banjo games.
 
Borderlands, sometimes the Hunter will say stuff when you're idle like "Yes, now that you mention it, I LOVE standing around doing NOTHING."
 
ultron87 said:
I adore the instance of this at the end of AC2 with all my heart.
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Huh, why? That was the biggest "What the fuck!?" in the game.
 
Don't know if this qualifies as breaking the 4th wall.

Shin_Megami_Tensei_The_First.jpg

Creepy message in the original Shin Megami Tensei for the SNES (pretty sure some of you already know about this one. it's quite old): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhfZVd9N9ww

The red text you see filling the screen at the end of the vid translates to "TURN IT OFF NOW!". Here's the full story behind it: http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/2011/05/urban-legend-of-shin-megami-tensei-turn.html

Back in 2003, a poster on the Japanese board 2ch posted a story about how he was playing Shin Megami Tensei on his Super Famicom when the game suddently froze momentarily at the logo, before the screen was flooded with a sole message repeated over and over: すぐにけせ, or "sugi ni kese" which translates to "turn it off now". He was suitably creeped out. Indeed, the intro to the original SMT is pretty damned creepy, as various bits of computer code pop up, which are supposed to be words that summon demons into the human realm. He assumed it was just a very disturbing bug.

The previous year someone on the 2ch occult board had made a similar claim, this time regarding Shin Megami Tensei 2, wherein the message would pop if the game was powered on at night, specifically mentioning the red text.

In 2004, a man claiming to be a programmer for the original game stepped up and admitted he stuck the spooky trick in intentionally. Originally he wanted it to happen 1 out of every 256 times (I'm not clear if this was meant to happen every time you start the game, or every time you hit the reset button), but it happened too frequently, so he ended up changing it to 1 out of every 65536 times. However, this was only present in the initial batch of cartridges, as it removed in all subsequent releases. The use of his terminology makes it almost semi-plausible, especially since he denoted the probability through the use of an 8-bit integer, then a 16-bit integer. If he was lying, then at least he knew how to trick people. There's also been some conjecture that this was an anti-piracy measure, but I haven't found anything that supports that.
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Gametrailers should consider this one for a Pop Fiction: Halloween special.
 
When the Wachowski brothers showed up at the end of The Matrix game and decided that the trilogy's ending didn't fit a video game finale epitomizes how perfectly 99.9% of this in gaming is unclever and ham-handed.
 
As said before, the ending of Conker's Bad Fur Day obliterates the 4th wall. The only other games I can think of that come a little bit close is No More Heroes at the end of the first game and beginning of the 2nd one.
 
Ken said:
Did Disgaea or Magicka break the 4th wall? It's been a really long time since I've last played to remember any specifics but either of those 2 games seem like they would.
Click to expand...

Thank God someone posted Disgaea. Nearly broke my heart not to see it here. :(
 
People have mentioned the MGS series, and even the pre-MGS1 installments do it. In fact, when MG2 was included in Snake Eater Subsistence, it screwed everybody up because part of the game makes you get a code out of the instruction booklet (which was not included).

As for something nobody has mentioned yet, the power up screen of Three Stooges for NES. The fellas stumble onto a "Ghostbusters 2" screen, then remark that they're "in the wrong game" before stumbling into their own.
 
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