Permanent Character Death

[SquirrelPants]

(Searched, didn't find anything. Inb4 search button trolls. =P)

Alright, so. I remember playing games in which character death was permanent. You played, and if you failed, you were done. Start over at the beginning. Simple concept, right? I'm sure it wouldn't work well in games like Halo or Gears, but in games in which you make your own characters, such as Fallout, Oblivion, and the like. Having savepoints and stuff really takes away from the feeling that you're going into the next room, or fighting the next boss. You're not risking anything.

Now, on occasion, I'll play Oblivion like that, dying and building a brand new character, but even then I know that if anything goes wrong, there's always my last save to revert back to. Even though you play it like you're not going to be able to go back, the feeling is no longer there. Dungeon Crawl does this well. Even newish mainstream games, like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and EVE online are reminiscent of this. FFTA had quests in areas which had no 'judges', meaning that if your characters died, they friggin' died. In EVE online, character death isn't permanent, but if your ship were to get attacked and destroyed, you lose the ship and everything on it.

I think it would be interesting if an MMO decided to do this. People wouldn't take as many risks, and the PVP would be much more interesting, because instead of a minor annoyance, they would seriously lose their characters, and all of the work they did.

So my question to all my fellow Escapists is this: What do you think about permanent character death? Is it a good idea? Does it ruin an otherwise good game? Does it thrill or annoy you?

And also, are there any newer games out there that do this? I know of Dungeon Crawl, and I think Ghost Recon does it, but that's about it...

 

[JRCB]

I think it could work. Maybe be able to enable and disable it?

 

[Redkop]

you know, you could just choose to NOT save the game.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Heavy Rain is doing something where if you die, the game continues and you never get the character back. Considering I'm really shitty at videogames all my characters would be totally dead.

 

[AroLombardi]

It's a total freakin' piss off! But it's fair, and gives realism.

 

[HardRockSamurai]

I hate to play the devil's advocate here, but it doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Let's face it, permanent death isn't an asset of video games, it's an asset of life. Building a game around such a concept would only serve to make a game more realistic, a trend which games were originally designed to avoid.

Sorry, but that's my two cents.

 

[angrytaco26]

short answer: no
long answer: hey up in the sky, its a bird, its a plane, its no

 

[Idocreating]

Diablo 2 has this system. Normal Mode and Hardcore. Normal has nasty penalties for deaths, in hardcore it's game over for that character.

On the plus side, Hardcore is extremely more fun to play if you like playing a more defensive style, which most of the online playerbase isn't. If you have a bunch of buddies to play it with regularly, Hardcore is like playing L4D properly.

Unfortunatly, public games on Hardcore can be hell due to the griefy glitchy nature of some players. I had my Druid get instakilled due to a portal glitch which allowed a guy to do something he shouldn't be able to and one shot me, with a text macro to display an ASCII middle finger in the chat box.

I do hope karma bites him in the arse for that. I really liked that Druid.

 

[SquirrelPants]

you know, you could just choose to NOT save the game.

Most games have an autosave function, you know.

No. Just no. It's a horrible idea, it's would be annoying as hell, and not all players are as masochistic as you.

Well think about it. People in many games will just run into a room of enemies and get gunned down. In RPGs, they'll try to kill seven or eight guys at once. It would also be a sort of way to learn what your character's limits are.

 

[Mad Maniac with axe-firing chainsaw]

(Searched, didn't find anything. Inb4 search button trolls. =P)

Use the se... damn.

I'd like the idea. It gives you a real stake in defending your characters, if one of them goes down, the game may not be over, but you'll be REALLY grandly screwed over later on in the story. It adds a sense of tension and drama, as well as immersion; main character death is traumatic enough in immersive games but its even worse if you know it really was your fault that character died, especially if everything was riding on that ally or NPC. Its even more exciting if the story could alter to allow even the main protagonist to die. Imagine the tragedy of every main character minus that sissy you don't usually use except for support getting killed, only to have the astounding glory of that pathetic kid taking several levels in badass and completing the game anyway.

However, in practice and done poorly, it could turn the entire game into one long escort quest if your allies are numbskulls or weaklings. I like the realism, but I'd be highly suspicious of any game that claimed to have pulled it off.

 

[olee12343]

With a game as big as Fallout 3 or Oblivion, I personally think that it would be REALLY dumb if they implemented permanent death. However it MIGHT work with the upcoming Mass Effect 2, which allows you to save, but one specific event is where a permanent death can happen. Even then, it MIGHT work...

 

[squid5580]

This concept has been done a billion times. Just pick up some NES, SNES, Atari or Coleco games.

 

[Worgen]

Diablo 2 has this system. Normal Mode and Hardcore. Normal has nasty penalties for deaths, in hardcore it's game over for that character.

On the plus side, Hardcore is extremely more fun to play if you like playing a more defensive style, which most of the online playerbase isn't. If you have a bunch of buddies to play it with regularly, Hardcore is like playing L4D properly.

Unfortunatly, public games on Hardcore can be hell due to the griefy glitchy nature of some players. I had my Druid get instakilled due to a portal glitch which allowed a guy to do something he shouldn't be able to and one shot me, with a text macro to display an ASCII middle finger in the chat box.

I do hope karma bites him in the arse for that. I really liked that Druid.

I second this, hardcore was fun but I ended up getting a lag spike that killed my lock or bone mage or whatever, it was in the sewers in the jungle, that place can fornicate itself with an iron rod

 

[army-88]

Its a horrible idea. Much too stern a penalty for getting killed in a game.
The OP mentioned MMO's, but thats where it would work the least. I mean I imagine that the hardcore WOW player who spent a couple thousand hours of his life building his elite level 70 character gets killed by a bit of lag in PvP, I think he'd be pretty enraged.

Permanent death in any game would just be an excercise in extreme frustration.

 

[Ariyura]

Don't games like Fire Emblem have permanent character deaths?

 

[Rimefrost]

I do like the idea, it would make you feel for the characters more, knowing that if you screw up, its over for them. That being said, I don't think it could work in every situation. Games with multiple player characters would be ideal. I am looking forward to Heavy Rain for this reason in particular.