Personally. I find these missions aren’t annoying or stupid. I personally find they add TENSION. Since as a rule you get your stuff back later. It jars the players sense of empowerment. Forces them to think. You have your opinion, I have mine. And mine is that these levels are often the most tense in the game as your characters is knocked off their high horse and forced to use their wits to prove their stuff.

Fallout Fucking 3.

The pitt super blew. Want to increase health? Well, you’re gonna get rad poisoning if you do. Great.

Mothershit Zeta? HARD AS BALLS

That’s just the DLC.

WANT TO JUMP? HAHAHAHAHA NOPE CAN’T JUMP ON THIS SMALL ROCK

I think a very nice implementation of this theme was done in the first Deus Ex, where you were thrown in prison and all your gear was taken. For that entire level, your main objective was pretty much to get your gear back (since you most likely already upgraded lots of weapons) and then escape. However, the level design being great, you never really felt that weak. Maybe someone who went for a shooty-kill-all game style might have, but anyone who was used to stealth could have a great time.

I remember going through this in the first Vampire the Masquerade. Great game, really enjoyed it until poor Christof entered torpor. Centuries later he awakens in modern day New York with a lot of his stuff gone. A few weapons and armor pieces would be transferred with you however.

And in GTA: San Andreas something similar happened when you had to run for your life to another city. You lose all your weapons. Looking back, it is pretty early in the game though.

It happened in the fantastic Oblivion TC Nehrim as well during an imprisonment-type quest. You can get everything back though. I guess I don’t mind too much if I can get my stuff back and as long as the items are not changed in any way. If I carry around high level enchanted/enhanced gear I’d be pretty pissed if I wouldn’t get it back!

I have some rather dusty memories of old games on the C64 doing this to me…
Sure, dying has to have some side effect but loosing all gear already did suck back then.
Damn, do I sound old!

KotOR does this with the Leviathan level, where you’re stripped not only of your gear but also of the rest of your party.

KotOR 2 did this when fighting the maidens. Armor and force powers not allowed, at least at first.

Oblivion has a quest where you enter someone’s dream to rescue them. The quest is entirely optional, but stripping away your gear makes the game forget all of your gear settings.

I never played it myself, but I know one of the Fallout 3 DLCs put your character in a virtual history scenario without your gear.

I would say World of Warcraft instituted this when they added vehicles. There are quests, dungeons, and raids where you control a vehicle instead of your character, and your gear, abilities, and stats have no bearing on the vehicle’s properties.

@ John Wilson:
Dark Forces () has a level like this when your character gets kidnapped by Jabba the Hut. It predates Half Life by at least five years so I don’t think we have Valve to blame.

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Anyway, depending on the game and how it’s implemented, I don’t usually mind this trope. It shakes the gameplay up and forces you to adjust your playing style for a bit. I’m usually more annoyed by poorly implemented physics puzzles.

I believe Half Life 1 does this to you, towards the latter part of the game. You’re knocked out by soldiers and thrown into a trash compactor. You don’t really have time to think about your weaponless state as the walls of the compactor start moving together a la A New Hope and you have to hop from box to box to get out. While I remember it was frustrating, it appears to be a point of transition where Gordon starts picking up the Xen weaponry along with other conventional guns. It appears to be one of the earliest instances of this, so perhaps we have Valve to blame for the weaponless trope.