Extra Punctuation: Death in Videogames

[agnosticOCD]

7th paragraph. The question "what if?" comes to mind. What WOULD happen if my character died and didn't arbitrarily come back to life for me to be able to play him? What if the Nerevar died in Morrowind? If Lt. Powell never even got out of the LCVP? If Gordon Freeman got headcrab'd?

I've always wished there would be an alternate storyline continuing the events of the game world after my character's death, and if I have allies I could play them trying to carry things out, perhaps with frantic dialogue because the main protagonist is usually the only one who knows how to disarm a bomb in a 4-person team of supposedly expert soldiers.

Perhaps a good punishment for failing, especially in what should be a crucial part in the game, is that the game files will corrupt and make your PC or your console asplode in a fiery ball of your incompetence.

 

[Rabscuttle]

There's also the technique where the actual gameplay is told in retrospect, and death scenes are followed by "No wait, it didn't happen like that" eg the death scene in Monkey Island 2.

I also played a text adventure a while back where deaths were permanent and your body stuck around. The game opened with you in front of a house - when you knock on the front door, guard dogs attack and kill you. Then when you "respawn" they are busy attacking your previous corpse.
That was a very linear game though - I don't know how well that concept would/could work in a more open world.

I also recall an experimental flash game where the object of the game was to create a tower of corpses up to a point in the sky. However, you only got one life (per IP address, I think) and it was a joint effort. 99% of the time you basically went in and tried to die in the best (or worst) possible position.

 

[archvile93]

I think the reason the reload last save option is more accepted is because the "get up like nothing happened" death system allows you to simply bullrush your way through the game. With loading, if I die I have to try again, and all the enemies from before that checkpoint will return. In the other system, I just have to keep falling down and getting back up, each time a few more enemies fall until there are non left and I can go on my way. In this way, i don't even have to try because failure still brings me closer to my goal. It also makes me wonder why my enemies think they can beat me since I'm essentially immortal.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

I had the idea of a main character who makes a pact with a demon or something wicked so that each time they die, they go to hell and have to work their way back. The problem being that each time the character becomes slightly more imbued with demon power (adjusting difficulty), but also more dependent upon the evil power, and thus more susceptible to being controlled, or prone to evil outbursts. A little bit like the mechanic in The Darkness.

 

[MB202]

That was a very insightful read, Yahtzee, I loved it! Except for the Nintendo part at the end, which I honestly didn't get...

 

[duchaked]

NOW WAIT hold on a minute, I thought he said he liked the "Elika saves ur skin" thing in PoP'08?? good for the free flow or something?

idk, but I thought that one was fine even by the ideas stated her if not just in the grey areas

 

[beefpelican]

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.

This reminds me of Bioshock. You didn't even need to quickload, as you just came back to life with all progress intact. You could just bludgeon your way through the entire game if you wanted.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

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.

This reminds me of Bioshock. You didn't even need to quickload, as you just came back to life with all progress intact. You could just bludgeon your way through the entire game if you wanted.

That's exactly what I thought too. Bioshock, as Yahtzee pointed out in his review, stops being challenging since you don't lose anything by dying. Of course now you have the option to turn off the Vita-Machines but when I played there were times when I couldn't be bothered to even heal since I would respawn 10 feet away.

 

[Starker]

Aww... no mention of System Shock and the bring-back-to-life-instantly chambers?


Going slightly off topic, I feel that the "death means it's game over" approach has something rather unique to add to the gaming experience, even if it's opt-in.

One of the games, where death was a real consequence, was Nethack and I think it was part of its appeal. It not only made the game more challenging, but also forced the player to pay attention to the situation, to learn about enemies and to make good use of the tools at your disposal and your surroundings. It also added a lot of replayability, since not save scumming yourself a wand of wishing meant that no two games were the same.

There are a few other games that in my mind benefited much the same way from playing them without saves. For example Thief and its sequel. Not being able to reload after a mistake really added to the tension and a lucky break or a narrow escape after a bold move just felt much more satisfying, if you knew that failure meant more than reloading from the point before you tried.

 

[Porecomesis]

I do think this is kind of overthought, but then again, I prefer not to overthink things anyway. As Yahtzee said in his review of 'Prince of Persia', a free-running game has to be about the flow, so that's why death doesn't take so much time. On this train of thought, one can be lead to believe that the quality of the death mechanic is subjective to the game. I am one of those passengers.

What else can be said on this, though... I'm not too particularly sure. But one way of not botching this is to make death hard to achieve if not actively pursued. This is why 'Silent Hill 2' is scary; we have no idea what death is. I believe Shamus said something about the difference between these two thoughts:

#1: OH NO! I'm about to die!
#2: Oh no, I'm about to go back to the last checkpoint.

The first one is the one you're looking for in most scenarios. The second one is excusable in some scenarios ('I Wanna Be The Guy', 'Crash Bandicoot', Mario, Sonic, etc.) as some games require a action-based trial-and-error approach to be interesting, as opposed to the adventure-game-based trial-and-error approach (that is, rub something on something else, it doesn't work, rub something else on first something else).

I haven't really thought this through, though, so think what you will.

 

[Ellen of Kitten]

I actually quite liked the PoP '08 death mechanic. I was smart enough to know that all a death would do is just loading the nearest save. Elika didn't simply "nanny" the Prince back from death. In the case of falling, the Prince would be returned to the nearest flat platform (ie, not hanging, not swinging, etc). That was often case quite a setback. With this mechanic, gameplay was streamlined. We would run jump and swing to our hearts content! There were no hang ups or loading screens to take away from the experience. We were always there, in this world. And I loved it there.

In combat, when the Enemy did the Prince in enough to drop his HP to zero, Elika stepped in to protect the Prince from the would be fatal blow. The mechanic here was the enemy would recover some health, and you'd start anew. Later in the game, the enemies would fully recover, and you'd start the battle all over again. The difference there is just the loading screen, the backtracking to where you lost, and a little perception that you haven't failed.

There is a powerful story mechanic to all this. For any gamer that has a beating and loving heart (which may not be Yahtzee), this is one of the many ways we the player come to feel a need for Elika. There was a chapter in the game where the Prince was without Elika, and I had a very primal fear of high places, all of a sudden. Then the end of the game--

Spoiler: I'm about to spoil the end of the game.

Spoiler: seriously, this ruins the game if you havent played. And it's a good game, despite what Yahtzee may think.

At the end of the game, when Elika dies, all that characterization and attachment you've spent the game developing comes back at you like a rubber band. The game was crawling with ways to get you the player attached to Elika, and the reliance on her to help in the Princes time of need was one of them.

Of course, I can't help if there isn't some machismo involved behind Yahtzee's, and other male gamers that felt the games death mechanic was broken. You? The man? The Prince? SAVED, by a girl?? Pshaw, say it isn't so. So, really, say it isn't so. I'd hate to think this was anyones reason.

 

[Ellen of Kitten]

Hasn't Yahtzee also cried against death screens because they take you out of the game? I'm getting mixed messages here.

This is nothing new. Yahtzee, like any human, is full of contrary statements and conflicting things. This isn't the first time something hasn't quite added up, and likely won't be the last.

 

[teknoarcanist]

All this 'find some way to make the death not count' is kind of slapping a band-aid on a gaping design wound, isn't it? That's the sense I got from PoP 2008. They made all this hype about how they were going step back and completely reassess death in games. And then the game came out, and I was like, "Boy I like how they addressed the problem of death in games by...refusing to...address...death...in...their...game.......???"

So I'll throw my hat in with a suggestion for some kind of staggered impairment mechanic.

Say you're playing through the first level of Generic Third Person Shooter. When your character detects a bullet collision, he flinches out of the way -- seemingly JUST in time. Meanwhile, there's an invisible quasi-HP variable ticking away in the background. If it runs down all the way, eventually he doesn't -- and he takes a bullet in the arm. That's the maximum amount he can get injured in the first level. It prevents him from using two-handed heavy weapons, and it carries through to the next level. Which has its OWN injury for repeat failure, which can stack on top of the first one.

As the game progresses, the injuries accumulate, providing continuous feedback and increasing challenge. What's that? The player's doing really well? Okay, bump the difficulty up to hard mode, and have the villain jumps in between levels to cut one of the player's arms off.

By the end of the game, you've either learned to play well, or your character is a scarred, bleeding, one-arm-broken wreck of an action hero -- or somewhere in between. And if you 'die' at the last boss, you still kill him, but you go out in a blaze of glory (rather than returning home to get the medals, girl, etc).

Challenge need not equal to a brick wall. Consequence does not equate to "you failed" and "do it right this time" is not satisfactory player feedback.

Honestly, I think death really only needs to be there as a vague threat which compels the player toward mastery -- and once you've established that, you have to ask, "How can we incorporate compulsion and consequence at a deeper level, on a longer scale?"

Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2 are a step in the right direction. Modularized alternate endings, depending on success of specific gameplay objectives throughout.

I'd like to see/design the next logical step: a game where you can 'fail' THE ENTIRE GAME completely and still get a holistic, unbroken, thesis-fulfilling, satisfying gameplay experience -- just not AS much so as you would for playing 'right'.

 

[Toeys]

just as the 3rd person games for playstation shouldnt have a different control layout than what is normally used, i think the F5 Quicksave F7 Quickload was good enough for me, although maybe a bit too easy.

what i would like to see more of is the "hardcore character" system from diablo 2. Atleast having the option to do this as opposed to 10 difficulty settings. then everything seems harder, but ofcourse it requires alot more from the developer.

 

[Cat Cloud]

Great article. Funny, thoughtful, interesting ideas.

 

[tzimize]

While I haven't play Meat Boy yet, the quantum mechanics version of death and reloading in video games reminds me of the replay at the end of each level of Meat Boy. You're essentially getting to see all the versions of Meat Boy that failed along with the one that succeeds and moves on to the next level.

Heh, I love that. I got to play a bit more SMB. Its just...the hell level is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard..........

 

[Narcogen]

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 is what GTA4 does, and I hate it, because it mixes elements from the two views of a game's timeline.

If a player dies and reverts to a checkpoint, the entire game state reverts to what it was before you died. This is how games like Halo works. The entire universe rewinds to a point before you died, and you get to play forward again in hope of not making the same mistake again.

If the player "faints" and revives somewhere else, but the quest fails and can-- or rather, must-- be restarted, then the player has continued to move forward in time (he was wounded, treated, and recovered) but some or all of the rest of the world has been reset. The quest giver doesn't remember you having started and failed the quest, you have to re-do parts of it that you'd already done successfully, but usually the resources you used in the failed timeline are still gone.

Bioshock does this but manages to put it in the proper context by having Vita Chambers recreate your body. Sure, that's hard to believe, but if you believe it, it explains why the universe kept going after you died, but you get to live again.

 

[Bwown]

There's a game called Omikron: The Nomad Soul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omikron#Gameplay) where if you die, you get reincarnated as another character. I think more developers should explore this idea.

 

[Gunner 51]

What about the "lives" system? Mess up more than three times, you die permanantly and have to start the game all over again. (Or at least from a much earlier point in the game.)

 

[Jenx]

You want a simple death mechanic? Look at roguelikes. Can't get simple than "you screw up, you die and your character is deleted. Start over from scratch, *****."