• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

What games utilize death or dying in an interesting way?

Killer7 makes you retrieve the body of the character that "died," then you have to resuscitate them by mashing the shit out of the A button.

Spoilers
but everyone's been dead the entire time
 
A flash game called Super Pig: The entire level is black, when you die your blood splatters across it, revealing some of the level geometry. You only have a limited number of lives before the level resets and the blood disappears.
 
BioShock Infinite

Booker steps through the door of his PI office, implying that your death was just that of a failed Booker, and you're stepping into the shoes of one who got to this point and didn't die. That is until Elizabeth starts ruining this spawning animation by simply grabbing your hand and pulling you up, but maybe she's pulling you from another timeline or something.

Borderlands with the "New U" or whatever it was called thing, that somehow couldn't revive any other characters in the game.

The original BioShock.
 
The Swapper.

You don't really die per se. The game revolves around a mechanic that allows you to create clones of yourself and then swap your "soul" or consciousness into them. So when you do things like try to leap across a wide chasm, you can create a clone at the other end, and then swap into him mid-flight. This leaves your prior self plummeting to his death while you move on. Who was that hapless soul now forever forgotten? Was he you? Or are you now somebody else? Did he die in the fall, or did you? Nobody can say.
 
In Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, bullets that whiz close by to you count as "hits", when you reach your last bit of health, you'll die of a real bullet wound. Always thought that was really neat.
 
Vibranium said:
In Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, bullets that whiz close by to you count as "hits", when you reach your last bit of health, you'll die of a real bullet wound. Always thought that was really neat.
Click to expand...

Yeah, seems like it would make more sense for war games to have a "Luck Meter", rather than a traditional health bar or regenerating health.
 
CheesecakeRecipe said:
Planescape: Torment. Death is just as important as life.
Click to expand...
It always seems like the most obvious games come roughly ten damn posts in. What the hell.

Though ZombiU DID have an interesting twist there so it's a fine first post.

EDIT: Kid Icarus: Uprising IS kind of interesting though in that you can crank the difficulty all the way up and have it gradually lessen each time you die, so you can freely challenge yourself as high as possible without worrying it's TOO hard to complete.
 
Omikron - Your soul transfers to another person, the traits change, stats reset to 0 and story wise you are viewed as a different person which can change things quite a bit
Heavy Rain - You actually die
 
If I remember correctly, in Shin Megami Tensei IV you can pay some dude to revive you where you died instead of starting from the save point.
 
Diablo 2. Die, your gold and equipment is left with your corpse. If someone is in the game with you, they can steal all the gold you had on you.
 
In Tactics Ogre, dying can involve losing the unit forever. Yet to get Angel Knights you need to get units killed. There is a chance that you can end up with an angel knight or one less unit permanently.
 
Soul Sacrifice Delta.
When you're on the verge of death your allies can choose to save or sacrifice you. Saving you costs them 1/2 of their HP while Sacrificing activates a powerful spell that targets the (Arch)fiends.

If you die or get sacrificed you become sort of like a ghost that can lower the defense of the (Arch)fiend you tap on. You can power up your allies the same way.
 
HypnoDarkrai said:
Soul Sacrifice Delta.
When you're on the verge of death your allies can choose to save or sacrifice you. Saving you costs them 1/2 of their HP while Sacrificing activates a powerful spell that targets the (Arch)fiends.

If you die or get sacrificed you become sort of like a ghost that can lower the defense of the (Arch)fiend you tap on. You can power up your allies the same way.
Click to expand...

Definitely a good one. The spirit can also use spells from the land to damage the archfiend or heal/renew spells for its allies.
 
HypnoDarkrai said:
Soul Sacrifice Delta.
When you're on the verge of death your allies can choose to save or sacrifice you. Saving you costs them 1/2 of their HP while Sacrificing activates a powerful spell that targets the (Arch)fiends.

If you die or get sacrificed you become sort of like a ghost that can lower the defense of the (Arch)fiend you tap on. You can power up your allies the same way.
Click to expand...

Can be done with allied NPCs too but don't do it on plot critical ones or after the mission you get told off for messing up the story (since the game is a retelling of past events and you could theoretically sacrifice characters that are still alive in the present) and have to pay lacrima to undo the mission result, forcing you to replay it.
 
I thought it was interesting how things were handled in Banner Saga. Every win or defeat resulted in another string of the story with results. I haven't played much, but it seems like the kind of game that will be awesome to replay and pursue different results to see the outcome.
 
JMDSO said:
ZombiU. You take the role of another survivor while your previous character becomes a zombie.
Click to expand...

I do love that if you find your old character's zombie you can beat it to death to get your stuff back.

Also with the online you get random other players zombie appearing. That scare the shit out of me when there was a zombie where there shouldn't be a zombie.
 
Shadow of Mordor.

Once you die in the game you will be revived by the wraith but the Orch that kills you will become stronger and rise in the hierarchy and when you meet him again he will remember that he already killed you.
 
If you got savaged by giant ants in It Came From The Desert you'd wake up in hospital which led to a stealth mini-game where you had to escape in a wheelchair.
 
4173_front.jpg


The first 4 times you die, you are sent to the Underworld, where you get the chance to fight your way back to the land of the living. Each successive death gets your further in Hades, making it harder to fight back to life.
 
Some games allow you to come back to life / back into the game if you do well enough.
Example: some games in the Bomberman series (Super Bomberman 5 ?). If you "die", you can keep on playing, throwing bombs from outside the arena. If you kill someone you take the dead player's place and vice-versa.
 
Assassin's Creed 1 was cool with its synchronization bar. It serves the same purpose as a health bar, but it emphasizes how much of a bad mother fucker Altair was.
 
Aliens Infestation for the DS. Death is permanent and if you run out of squad members it's GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER. You start with three and can rescue more throughout the story. Pretty awesome since you can create your own narrative.
 
Fire Emblem

Once the characters die they're gone for good unless you load a previous save. I love that mechanic. Makes you much more careful and care about the characters more since you spent hours progressing each one.
 
Zombi U is an obvious choice. It involves perma death, having to kill the reanimated Zombie to retrieve your gear, having other players dead Zombie Characters appear in your game anywhere, etc... I can only hope that we get a Zombi 2 regardless of platform. Should be an amazing game if it received a full budget and development time.

Fire Emblem games (and a few other strategy games) have perma death for any units lost. This also adds to tge strategy and makes every single move feel more important and forces you to think through each move before mindlessly making it.

Valkyria Chronicles has a unique take on the perma death system. You have 3 turns to revive the fallen unit. If you do not revive the unit in 3 turns or if an enemy unit comes into contact with the fallen unit it's perma death. It's a little more forgiving than some other Strategy games perma death mechanic while still forcing you to think through each move to ensure no units are lost.

I hope more Developers look at how death influences their game and think outside the box for new and interesting takes on death. For me, Zombi U was the best Survivor Horror game I played in a long time because of the real tension added throughout tbe game. Knowing there were real and clear consequences for dying made even an encounter with a single Zombie feel tense. It works extremely well for a Zombie Surbivor Horror game, IMO.
 
Fable III, I guess. It isn't effective, but it is interesting. That is Molyneux for you I guess.

Dying gives scars to your character, but I don't think anybody really cared. And if you do, it just feels shitty. In the DLC you got a potion that removed scars so it was entirely pointless.
 
The upcoming Shadow of Mordor has canonical deaths, and your enemies will remember that they've beaten you, gloat and even be promoted.

You can exploit this to move orcs around in the power structure to where you want them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

After feedback that Death Stranding was 'too slow,' Kojima wanted more players to see Death Stranding 2 all the way through to the end
Opinion Game Dev 
33
380
Deerock71 replied
Best way to sell retro games?
16
349
Trogdor1123 replied
What Do You Love or Hate About Indie Games?"l
Opinion  2
54
567
Guilty_AI replied
Thomas Mahler shares an interesting message for Asha Sharma
2 3
129
2K
saintjules replied
Death Denied - Official Announcement Trailer
Trailer Indie 
3
125
Loomy replied
Top Bottom