[Authoritarian Trope] Casually being questioned/threatened by an imposing authority figure out of nowhere

[u/TheWalkingBag]

One way to really set the oppressive atmosphere of a setting is by having our characters get randomly questioned or interrogated by a soldier/cop out of nowhere, often for very minor reasons

1. "Pick up that can." (Half-Life 2)

When Gordon first arrives to City 17, a Combine Civil Protection officer he's passing by suddenly drops a soda can in front of him and orders him to pick it up. If you comply here and throw the can in the bin he'll amusedly let you pass, but if you don't then he'll proceed to whip out his stunstick and attack you on the spot

1. "I'm just a tourist." (Andor)

In the episode "Announcement" of Season 1, a random shoretrooper on Niamos questions and threatens Cassian (using the fake alias "Keef Girgo") for nervously looking around too much while they're conducting a crackdown. The trooper asks if he's "a part of it" to which Cassian repeatedly protests that he isn't and that he's just a perfectly normal tourist; he's then violently arrested by him anyway and sentenced to hard labor in Narkina 5 without a fair trial

1. "Now, you. Show me your identification papers, please." (Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus)

A Nazi commandant randomly sits down at Papa Joe's Diner, orders a strawberry milkshake for himself and then very casually asks Blazkowicz to show his ID papers to him. Here you can show him your fake IDs (where you use the alias "John Smith") which seems to fool the commandant for a bit before he looks at a wanted poster on the wall and immediately recognizes your true identity, frantically pulling out his pistol before being shot by the diner's owner

[u/WillSym]

While also casually showing off their tech. This was a big deal for the time, full physics on any loose object in the world like a random can in the bin an NPC can knock over, and you can pick up, carry, and put back in the bin/donk off his head.

[u/Gebsfrom404 → u/WillSym]

I replayed hl2 this year and sadly it's still impresive. Not a lot of games have player interacting with physics this naturally. Lil seesaw that you need to raise using barrels floating in water feels so good, it feels like lost tech sometimes.

[u/spicesucker → u/Gebsfrom404]

It’s a shame how PhysX was sidelined in favour of graphical fidelity like ray tracing

[u/g0atmeal → u/spicesucker]

It's because loosening constraints on makes game dev way harder. Valve programmed for every possible thing you could do with the can, accounting for it possibly getting lost or stuck somewhere inaccessible, etc.

So most "true" physics are either for cosmetic reasons or kept to sandbox games that are open-ended by design. Cases where if something breaks or something unexpected happens, it doesn't interrupt the player's experience too much.