(no subject)

the only game i remember playing that has a "you have accumulated M allies that will travel with you, but your party size is limited to N<M, you must pick a fraction of them for your party" mechanic and bothers to justify it within the narrative is Phantasy Star 4.

(how? you have a party limit of 5. for most of the plot you lose and regain allies because they have to go off to deal with their own problems and recover from sickness and occasionally die, such that it works out that at most you only have 5 people in your party. Then, by the end, all the surviving ones say "yeah, we worked out the things we needed to work out but now we're done, final battle against the source of all evil, all hands on deck". But the final fight is in a hell dimension you can't enter unprotected, and you only have five of the items that allow you to safely enter it, so party limit)

perhaps not coincidentally, Phantasy Star 4 is a fairly old game (came out in 1993). has it become common wisdom that you don't need to justify your arbitrary party limits for the same reason you don't need to justify all the other things video games do? or do i just have a bad sample and there are a lot more games that do it that i haven't played, or played and forgotten?