Death in Games.

[Dejanus]

... not player death, or respawning, but the death of characters. I have found that very few games handle this well. For a death to be affecting( or in the case of despicable characters rewarding) you have to build the character up. Not many games do this well at all, but that's another discussion. My point is, there are so few games where characters can die, and stay dead, within the framework of gameplay. Not that story-based deaths shouldn't be done, these are often the most affecting, and therefore the most common. But these are no different than what you might find in a film, and games are at their most interesting when they ignore established thematic conventions and do something unique to the genre.

The purpose of this thread, as I am sure you were wondering about, was to collect your opinions of games where dynamic character death was done well. I put forward the Fire Emblem series. Characters there had individual histories, personalities, and relationships. They interacted with each other, and in some cases the player character. And damn near all of them were, in the end, expendable. Throughout a full campaign in FE, it was damn near impossible to not have a few of these characters die, and that can seriously affect you. You felt twice as much loss. Yeah, that Paladin you leveled up since the beginning of the game is gone forever, but you also know that his friends will miss him, he'll never return home, somewhere an orphan is created etc.

What do you think?

PS: A SINGLE TLDR and I will get a mod.

 

[Snarky Username]

TL;DR

Ha! Take that! But seriously, I would probably say Mass Effect.

Spoiler

They basically made you choose between Ashley or Kaiden at the end, and you also had to kill Wrex if your persuasion wasn't high enough

Either that or Final Fantasy VII. Say what you will about the game, but you never saw Aerith's death coming. Also FFV with

Spoiler

Galuf

 

[Rawle Lucas]

The purpose of this thread, as I am sure you were wondering about, was to collect your opinions of games where dynamic character death was done well. I put forward the Fire Emblem series. Characters there had individual histories, personalities, and relationships. They interacted with each other, and in some cases the player character. And damn near all of them were, in the end, expendable. Throughout a full campaign in FE, it was damn near impossible to not have a few of these characters die, and that can seriously affect you. You fell twice as much loss. Yeah, that Paladin you leveled up since the beginning of the game is gone forever, but you also know that his friends will miss him, he'll never return home, somewhere an orphan is created etc.

What do you think?

Big fan of Fire Emblem here. My solution is to reset any time a character dies.

I actually like the perma-death feature, despite its irritating qualities. Recently, I've started playing Pokemon FireRed in this manner.

 

[Dejanus]

I'll give you the Mass Effect, as it was technically gameplay driven, but there's no way in hell that Final Fantasy can be considered a dynamic story. You didn't choose, or fail through gameplay, to make Aerith die, she just did. Not that it was poorly done, I won't insult something that you found affecting no matter my own opinions of that series.

 

[Sacman]

Deus Ex,[color= white] Paul Denton, Jock, Jamie Reyes, Gunther Herman, Anna Navarre[/color]... your forced to decide the fate of each character in Deus Ex...

 

[DeASplode]

TL;DR

Ha! Take that! But seriously, I would probably say Mass Effect.

Spoiler

They basically made you choose between Ashley or Kaiden at the end, and you also had to kill Wrex if your persuasion wasn't high enough

You could also just not recruit him into your squad. Though I've only just got through Virmire, since I try to save him every time. Wonder how that'll effect ME2 if at all.

 

[Egobrain]

This is gonna to make you all think i own a single brain cell, but the game death I found really startling for its suddenness and sad for its permanence was

Spoiler

Nastas, the native guy you do two missions for in Red Dead Revolver

all is going well, you think the mission might turn shitty, and then bang. Right in the face. He wasnt well developed or all that interesting, but the three in mission conversations with him really made me think he was a good guy. Even after the cutscene ended and I had to fight my way out I spent like five seconds mourning. I was just like, aw fuck.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Suikoden Tactics does a similar thing where if non essential characters are knocked out in a fight they have a chance of dying. It's a real pain to reload so you do feel a bit of loss when you lose a character knowing that you levelled them up and that you are missing out on things they could have said or done.

The granddaddy of characters dying though is XCOM. Soldiers drop like flies and are easily replaced but after a while you have your favourites that have more experience and rank who you really don't like to lose. If you rename all your soldiers when you recruit them then you are setting yourself up for drama.

 

[1blackone]

Anything done by Rockstar. The GTAs and Red Dead all deal with death maturely and never just slate it to, "You are dead so/because you lost".

For them, death is a storyline aspect, not a plot bookend. Someone should really take these games to Ebert and show it to him, since one of the claims he made against games being art is that the objective is to win and so narration is one-sided..

Really Rog? Tell me,what did Marston WIN in Red Dead? Niko in GTA?

 

[Dejanus]

This is gonna to make you all think i own a single brain cell, but the game death I found really startling for its suddenness and sad for its permanence was

Spoiler

Nastas, the native guy you do two missions for in Red Dead Revolver

all is going well, you think the mission might turn shitty, and then bang. Right in the face. He wasnt well developed or all that interesting, but the three in mission conversations with him really made me think he was a good guy. Even after the cutscene ended and I had to fight my way out I spent like five seconds mourning. I was just like, aw fuck.

While I absolutely agree about Nastas, it was very well done, please re-read my post and respond to the actual question from now on people.

 

[LazerStallion]

HL2 Episode 2. Although that had a couple games of character development behind it.

 

[Egobrain]

Ok heres my real answer cause i dicked up the first time.

I thought The WHOLE of Red Dead Redemption did character death well.
They made it seem shitty. Like extremely pointless, and this effected me to the core.
No one who died in RDR gained anything by it. Everyones death was painfully bland and emotionless, which somehow evoked emotion anyways.

Even the deaths of the storyline badguys were so fast and uninspired that you were incapable of pulling some sort of great revenge thrill or even a sence of dutiful justice. It just felt empty and left me feeling sorry for John Marston.

Games like Reach you feel sad, but proud. Knowing they died acheiving their ends.
Even in GTAs you usually chuckled when you knocked a betrayer out of the game, but this game lingers in this purgatory that just made everything seem so pointless, but in a good way.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I thought Tommy's death/suicide in The Darkness was handled fantastically. That game is so under rated in my opinion.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Damn it Double Post!

 

[ultrachicken]

This is gonna to make you all think i own a single brain cell, but the game death I found really startling for its suddenness and sad for its permanence was

Spoiler

Nastas, the native guy you do two missions for in Red Dead Revolver

all is going well, you think the mission might turn shitty, and then bang. Right in the face. He wasnt well developed or all that interesting, but the three in mission conversations with him really made me think he was a good guy. Even after the cutscene ended and I had to fight my way out I spent like five seconds mourning. I was just like, aw fuck.

Don't you mean Red Dead Redemption?

 

[Gigaguy64]

The purpose of this thread, as I am sure you were wondering about, was to collect your opinions of games where dynamic character death was done well. I put forward the Fire Emblem series. Characters there had individual histories, personalities, and relationships. They interacted with each other, and in some cases the player character. And damn near all of them were, in the end, expendable. Throughout a full campaign in FE, it was damn near impossible to not have a few of these characters die, and that can seriously affect you. You fell twice as much loss. Yeah, that Paladin you leveled up since the beginning of the game is gone forever, but you also know that his friends will miss him, he'll never return home, somewhere an orphan is created etc.

What do you think?

Big fan of Fire Emblem here. My solution is to reset any time a character dies.

I actually like the perma-death feature, despite its irritating qualities. Recently, I've started playing Pokemon FireRed in this manner.

Same here.
If i lost anyone, even characters i had just recruited but knew i probably wouldn't use, id just restart the chapter and rework my strategy.
I like the Perma-Death because it forces you to be smarter about your decisions, that is until you get you character to a high enough level.
But even then you needed to be careful, simply because the RNG hates the player in Fire Emblem.

 

[Egobrain]

This is gonna to make you all think i own a single brain cell, but the game death I found really startling for its suddenness and sad for its permanence was

Spoiler

Nastas, the native guy you do two missions for in Red Dead Revolver

all is going well, you think the mission might turn shitty, and then bang. Right in the face. He wasnt well developed or all that interesting, but the three in mission conversations with him really made me think he was a good guy. Even after the cutscene ended and I had to fight my way out I spent like five seconds mourning. I was just like, aw fuck.

Don't you mean Red Dead Redemption?

yes I did. thanks for bringing that to my attention.

 

[Rawle Lucas]

If i lost anyone, even characters i had just recruited but knew i probably wouldn't use, id just restart the chapter and rework my strategy.
I like the Perma-Death because it forces you to be smarter about your decisions, that is until you get you character to a high enough level.
But even then you needed to be careful, simply because the RNG hates the player in Fire Emblem.

It's interesting that you mentioned the RNG. You see, from FE6 (Sword of Seals, the one with Roy) onward, the RNG works by calling up two random numbers, averaging them, and checking the result against the posted hit rate. The attack hits if that average is less than the hit rate, and misses if it is equal to or greater than the hit rate.

This has the effect of making attacks with hit rates below 50% miss more often than they should, and attacks with hit rates equal to or greater than 50% hit more often than they should.

This chart [http://serenesforest.net/general/truehit.html] compares displayed hit rates to the actual hit rates.

 

[Judgement101]

TL;DR

Ha! Take that! But seriously, I would probably say Mass Effect.

Spoiler

They basically made you choose between Ashley or Kaiden at the end, and you also had to kill Wrex if your persuasion wasn't high enough

Either that or Final Fantasy VII. Say what you will about the game, but you never saw Aerith's death coming. Also FFV with

Spoiler

Galuf

I have to be this guy but, what is a TL;DR?

 

[Snarky Username]

TL;DR

Ha! Take that! But seriously, I would probably say Mass Effect.

Spoiler

They basically made you choose between Ashley or Kaiden at the end, and you also had to kill Wrex if your persuasion wasn't high enough

Either that or Final Fantasy VII. Say what you will about the game, but you never saw Aerith's death coming. Also FFV with

Spoiler

Galuf

I have to be this guy but, what is a TL;DR?

Too lazy; didn't read or too long;didn't read.

It's what people right in a reply if a post is really long and they don't want the fact that they having nothing to say to get in the way of their posting.