Extra Punctuation: Death in Videogames

[bawsoot]

"When we finally beat the game, we are playing as the one Gordon Freeman or Sam Fisher or Lara Croft that got enough lucky breaks to see things to the end, while the multiverse at large is riddled with the corpses of our failures."

Check out a film called Triangle.
It's not a particularly great film but it's an interesting concept which illustrates this point Yahtzee's made perfectly.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1187064/

 

[loogie]

I'm a big fan of Hardcore modes in games, even if its just an option... The kind where if you die, your character's save game is erased and you have to start all over...

To me playing a game is much like playing with nerf guns... there's no real threat of bodily harm if you get hit, and its just a whole lot of "I SHOT YOU!!!!", "NO YOU DIDN'T!!!!!" that kids always end up screaming... To me, throwing something like Torchlights (and Diablo 2's) Hardcore mode into the mix is ramping up the challenge, it's like playing the same game but replacing the nerg guns with paintball guns... its much harder for you to pretend you didn't get hit, and you thing twice, maybe even three times before doing something because you don't want a cherry sized bruise on your forehead... I know it's not for everyone, but I think more games should allow such extremes, and reward people for choosing them... Of course this also means a lot of people will end up playing the game over and over again... which brings up another glaring issue to games now, replayability... I would love just ONE AAA game that comes out to have something truely dynamic in it, so that when you start over, you will face different challenges then the first time. Dynamic questing, hardcore deaths... that'd be my dream game.

 

[loogie]

I think I know a solution to the continuous timeline problem.

The character never dies, but can "faint".

Think of the Pokemon games. Pokemon never die, they faint. If you lose a battle, you'll restart at the last healing centre. That way, the flow of time continues as normal, but the player still must replay the battle until they win.

You could apply this to other games (for example Fable 3).
-Player starts quest
-Player is unsuccessful and character faints
-Character is saved from death (by an NPC?) and attempts the quest again, essentially restarting the quest
-Rinse and repeat
-Player completes quest

this concept reminds me of the OLD OLD game called Mordor (or the slightly newer one Decklin's Demise)... It utilized this concept quite well, except it was YOU who had to rescue yourself... You created a character, and rand some dungeon runs... if your character died, you would either have to hire the computer to rescue you (for a tidy sum.. one that just got bigger and bigger the higher level you got) or, you could create your own new rag-tag band of adventurers and head out to rescue your old character... it caused some great moments, where you get dropped down a shaft, lose all sense of direction (and map) hoping to god you survive at least long enough that you get back to somewhere you recognize...

 

[Manji187]

There was one game, Steel Battalion...
If your pilot actually died, it completely wiped your save file...and since it was on the X-BOX, if you weren´t clever enough to use a memorycard to make a backup save, you lost everything you did.
The only thing that could prevent it was if you ejected, saving the pilot, but you still lost the mech.
That is an interesting death mechanic. If you ignore the "WARNING, MECH ABOUT TO BLOW UP! DE-ASS THE COCKPIT!" signs, you lost all your progress (your life, if you will), but if you manage to hit the "Eject" button on that huge controler, you could at least retry.

It was hardcore. It was a sim for a reason. Not only did it have the hugest control interface ever to be used on a home console, it also had the most punishing death mechanic in all of gamings existance.

Which brings up the question: does it have to be so hardcore/ punishing? I bet there were plenty of clever people circumventing the mechanic by use of memorycard.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver also had an interesting "death" mechanic. If you lose all of your energy in the material realm...you fall back to the spirit realm. If you lose all your energy in the spirit realm...you return to the Wheel of the Elder God (the very beginning of the game)...which just means you have to do some backtracking. Unlockable portals (somewhat Stargate style) made it tolerable.

 

[AT God]

The game Second Sight's main plot line is based on the idea of a different death mechanic, explaining it ruins the plot but it is clever. Sadly the game wasn't very fun to play.

 

[Jonluw]

So, in essence, since the revive-function exists outside of the game's mechanics it does not break immersion? Makes sense I guess.

 

[Xenominim]

One mechanic I think could be added back in at least some games is the old Oregon Trail method, just leave a reminder of it. Die somewhere out in the wilderness of Red Dead Redemption, come back later and find a grave in that spot or some old bones. Grand Theft Auto? Chalk outline, police tape. Other games like Dead Space could stack up actual corpses, not the player's but after a few tries you start to notice the stack of dead bodies seems to be growing along a particular hallway you can't get past, just throwing it in your face. Obviously this only works with certain games and within certain limits so you don't have 100 bodies or police crime scenes scattered about town, but I think it'd be a nice little reminder to stick it to the player, especially if it's made where those markers are there even if they reload an old save.

Alternatively I would mark the player themselves. Much like Prince of Persia who started out in his royal regalia but gradually stripped down over the course of the game, but in this case it's from death. Start out in a full suit of knight's armor, glowing wizard robes, high tech combat armor, whatever, and as you die it makes a visual adjustment each time. Doesn't change your stats or game mechanics, just your player and outfit look a little worse for wear each time, racking up scars like Fable, slashes in clothes, dents in armor, bloodstains. It would give people something to work towards to make it all the way though with their gear intact.

You could even apply this to the gameworld at large instead. Take Kirby's Epic Yarn for example. Every time Kirby dies on a level and comes back, have the colors more muted, the fabric looking more tattered, stained, falling apart, enemies looking a bit more menacing without actually changing how they act. Just a visual reminder of 'hey, you screwed up and now the whole world is a bit worse for it.' In something like that you could reset it each level back to the 'default' sunny and cheerful.

 

[awatkins]

I'm sure it's been mentioned by someone by now, however, I'm too lazy to read all 150 replies the thread has so far.
Ocarina of Time; DMC series; Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver; and the racing game Shift.
They all have a limited use 'escape death and keep playing at once/ rewind and dont make a mistake again' mechanism built in for your enjoyment.

In Ocarina of Time and the DMC series you are able to capture/purchase an item that, once you die, it imediatly revives you on the spot and you get to keep playing through the fray. This is a very clever tool for developers to use in several ways. One: you can only hold a limited amount of the item, thus, if you contiue to scew up, or just lack the skill at that moment to continue on, you WILL die, and are forced to replay from your last save point. Two: It shows the player that he/she, although possessing the ability to cheat death, must still have the skill necessary to fight their way out of the spot they just died in.

In LoK:Soul Reaver this mechanic is built into the game with a slightly different consequence. Once the player loses enough health his physical body dies and his soul is sent into the 'spectral plane'. In the spectral plane most enemies dissapear, and the ones that are around are usually easy pickings so the player can regain his health and re-enter the physical plane again. But being in the spectral plane isnt really a punishment because the player is forced to play through the game by switching between planes to solve varoius puzzles, however, it is annoying to die in the physical plane and have to reanimate yourself.

In Shift the player is given ( I believe ) five chances to rewind and repeate the last 5 or so seconds of the race. Given enough chances to learn the corners and not screw up again the player should be able to finish a race with 5 chances. Also, I've found this feature very satisfying in a racing game. Too many times have I played out a flawless race only to fuckup in the last lap and come in second to last. Shift rules.

 

[VGStrife]

I always played Portal thinking (on the odd occasion i died) there were X number of clones of Chell in identical situations.

Similar to dimensions etc.

just a thought.

 

[BigZ7337]

Very interesting article, I haven't thought about it too often. Two games that had a semi unique death scene come to memory regarding this issue. I really liked how in the Dead Space games, your death was really gruesome, resembling a horror movie death scene. The other one the comes to mind is one of my all time favorite games, Return to Krondor. Where if/when you died which kind of depicted the world being destroyed and your soul being excepted into the arms of the death goddess (although it did get annoying as the same scene would be repeated each time you die). I really think that games shouldn't move away from the checkpoint and save system bringing you back from death, but it would be interesting to see more games play with the explanation of what's going on. The only idea regarding this that comes to my mind atm, is for a shooter game where each time you die the avatar does die but your presence moves to inhabit another soldier (this could be explained either by something supernatural or technological). Btw, that idea may have already been used in one way or another in a game, though maybe not well.

 

[BigZ7337]

(Accidental Double Post and Don't See a Delete Button)

 

[Cerrax]

The way Borderlands handled dying in the game was pretty interesting. It basically respawned you at the last checkpoint with everything you died with. Then it deducted a certain amount from your wallet. The higher your level, the more it cost (though if you couldn't afford it, the game just dropped your wallet to $0). Now in single player this doesn't mean much, but in coop, it made the game feel more like an online competition, because players who died while trying to complete an object would get teleported back to the last checkpoint with no delay. This had a heavy influence on strategy, since players could return to the mission, granted they could find their way back to where the mission was.

 

[JMeganSnow]

There have been several games that have made the connection that, what with players frequently quicksaving and autosaving, death will usually mean nothing worse than using up a few minutes of your time as you're backtracked to a little way before your mistake.

It's not *time* it's *progress*.

It's the kind of difference that only matters when the game is actually challenging in the first place. Not actually losing progress means that it doesn't matter if you die- you can gain ground one inch at a time without ever having to change tactics or get better at the game. Losing progress means that you have to actually be able to beat some defined chunk of the game to move on. When you can oaf your way through anyway, it stops mattering so much.

This is why I far, far, prefer checkpoint systems to quicksaves.

I agree with this for the most part (in that losing your progress, in a single-player game in particular) is a big part of the death mechanic. So making your pocket change fly across the room isn't necessarily a bad mechanic, provided you actually give a damn about that pocket change for some reason. (I.e. there's something you want to buy with it.)

There are a number of different ways to make "good" death mechanics. Checkpoints can be a bad death mechanic if they're too far apart with too many insta-death obstacles in between. Quicksaving can be a great mechanic in a game with real attrition (that is, in a game where you slowly use up your resources and they only get replenished so quickly, as opposed to more modern games where you replenish your resources by sitting behind a wall). That way, the quicksave becomes less of a "I can bull may way through eventually if I just keep saving every time I make any progress whatsoever" and becomes more of a choice between "did I do that section optimally enough that if I qsave now, I won't wind up screwed before the end of the segment because I'm out of healing/ammo?" Because then, you may either face a really tough encounter with little resources, or you may have to go back to your REAL save and try the whole section all over again.

You want to hit a happy medium between a system where the game is (metaphorically) *****-slapping you and calling you a noob every time you make the tiniest little error, and one where you can tape the forward button down, leave the room, and come back to find out you won the game.

 

[blankedboy]

Your avatar is running about on the battlefield trying to remember which button is for "crouch" when he fails to heed the warning given by the strawberry jam smeared on his spectacles and is fatally shot.

That's a reference to a comedy skit I saw awhile back :O
Can't remember who it was, but it was hilarious :3

 

[mik1]

I thought of this same sort of thing when playing Ocarina of Time. After falling into one of the bottomless pits that magically starts you back at the start of the room. I came to a sort subconscious/conscious idea that the person who popped back up was the next hero who had done all of the previous links work up to there and was needed to do this because the last one fell off a cliff.

Similar story when playing metroid prime a friend of mine kept dying at a certain part after eventually beating he said wow the space pirates had all these guys positioned there and they all failed. That's when I realized the over bearing stress of being a video game enemy in which you to succeed infinitely and one failure is equivalent to eternal failure

 

[sketchesofpayne]

I like how in the game Sacrifice the story was being 'told' by your character. Whenever you died he would say, "But that's not what REALLY happened, let me start again..." as if he'd gotten off on a story-telling tangent.

 

[Rubymuto]

Yahtzee's multiverse argument came up briefly in the .hack series. In the anime .hack//sign, for anyone who doesnt know about it the series is set in the near future and the story is a gigantic mind fuck set in a wow like online game called The World with futuristic headsets so you can see what your player sees. anywho the world has an evil entity called morganna who puts players into coma's and locks their minds in the game, so while they're hospitalised the character is still online being played and the person cant log out or leave the world.

now that you know that a guy called "Bear" while talking about helping Tsukasa who is stuck in The World makes a reference to "old rpg's" where you played alone and saved your data when you lost you reset the game and reloaded your save and "Bear" often wondered what happened to the world he left behind when he loaded up the game again.

and changing the subject only slightly, If there is a god then we are nought but sims.

 

[pearcinator]

Heavy Rain I feel is a good example of Death.

Once the character you are playing is Dead, thats it, they're dead and the story continues on regardless that one of the major characters has died.

This is the most 'realistic' representation of death I have ever seen in a game and I thought it was cool. Ive only played through Heavy Rain once and it was basically a 'joke' playthrough. The killer escaped, everyone died except the hot chick (cos I actually tried to keep her alive) who ended up having paranoia and couldnt sleep anymore. Which is pretty much the worst ending you can get and thats why the game stuck out for me because it was all completely my fault.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Methinks Yahtzee has been watching Dara O'Briain.

 

[A Gray Phantom]

.Hack//Sign had brought this up once. A character named Bear was talking about the RPG's he used to play, and how whenever he died, he'd simply restart to where he saved last and try again. He said he used to wonder what happened to the world where he died in. When I was a kid, I would wonder that, too.

This also reminds me of a youtube video called, "Many Worlds Mario." Someone played the Kaizo Mario hack and superimposed every failure on top of the one success. The result was something similiar to the end of a Super Meat Boy replay.

That said I found Kirby's Epic Yarn to be a very relaxing game. I did get frustrated a couple times as I attempted to perfect my playthroughs in order to get the best possible rating merely to get the best possible rating and play the hidden levels.

Edit: Darn you Rubymoto!