The Evolution of Death in Games

Wait, hold on a sec, The Alien shows no patterns? At all?

@bicycle_repairman: That's really interesting. It got me thinking about how I feel like I've died a lot less in games in general since beating the Souls games; like the lesson they teach is both specific and universal: be careful, be prepared, be smart.

It might feel a little weird to throw caution to the wind when I play Mordor (like others have said, in stealth games I am ridiculously methodical), but I don't think it would feel like I'm "artificially" making the game hard by putting myself in super-hard situations. I'll just think of it as a challenge.

Wow this was a fantastic read! It's always cool when the death mechanic has some sort of purpose, reason, or lore. It's also something that most players, I am definitely one, take for granted. Sometimes I walk around the real world hoping that there's some respawn mechanic (e.g. Groundhog Day) but what would probably be more interesting would be the lore rather than the mechanic behind the respawning.

I never thought about the Soul's game death mechanic but now it make sense to me with regard to all "respawned" creatures. Where in reality it's not the creatures' respawning, but the player respawning back into the same world.

Thanks for the great insight and read, @patrickklepek!

He shows super general patterns; he'll likely be nearby most of the time, and when he comes out, he'll stop, look around, and choose a direction, then he'll stomp around and will be attracted to noise, which makes it fun to toy with him.

A lot of people have tried to claim that there are "unfair" deaths from the Alien, ones you couldn't see coming, but in my time with the game that couldn't be farther from the truth. You can always do something to get his attention away from you. Toss a noisemaker, fire a shot and move from your position, etc. And he doesn't just randomly attack, either. If you've got your motion tracker out (Which beeps... and yes, he can hear it beeping.) inside a locker, he might notice it and stab you through the locker. If he sniffs out that locker and you're not quick on holding your breath and leaning back, he'll getcha.

I'm sure there's been a few weird glitch deaths out there, there always are in games, but nearly every single "BS" kill video I've seen has simply been someone not paying as close attention as they'd like you to believe. Because it's easy to call BS on the game if something we weren't watching for happens, it's much harder to admit when we're wrong. In 15 or so hours with Alien Isolation, I have yet to see a single BS death from the Alien, and I've died a ton of times. It's always because I get impatient or I wasn't being nearly careful enough. Always.

Nice article, but somehow it feels like i read the majority of this before. Especially the part where death was used in arcades to get more quarters and the way spelunky & dark souls handle death in their own respect.

It's still a nice article, but i guess i read / watched too much content about this already that the article didn't bring much news to me.

Another well written article Patrick.

Yeah, it makes a lot more sense when you put it like that. Having a smart AI is one thing but being completely unscripted is another.

Still, I'm a bit surprised at how many people complain that the AI was too clever, I mean, doesn't the unpredictable nature of the Alien make the game more scary and grounded/realistic? If anything it should enhance the experience. It's something a lot of developers don't do(take a look at outlast) so if you ask me, it's something worth appreciating.

And based on your comment here you seem pretty satisfied with the game. I might just give the game a chance...might.

I'm playing XCOM on Iron man mode right now (and failing pretty hard at it) so I can relate to the way death with consequence ups the tension in games. It's bloody nerve wrecking.

For anyone that hasn't already, i highly recommend seeing Edge of tomorrow. Its plot borrows from common video game structure in some interesting ways. It's also a great film!

More like this would be great. This is what I come here for! I quite like Shadow of Mordor because I feel like my death has not made me a weaker player, in fact, the next time around, the enemy will be even tougher so I would be potentially just as proud if not more so of beating the guy.

In dark souls, while its still rewarding to kill someone who killed you a dozen times, in hindsight it feels like your knowledge of how to approach the encounter is cheap and only bad players will die lots to learn the encounter.

I enjoyed this article. I think death is best served almost when it helps develop the story and game world. The Souls games, Spelunky, and Mordor all use death as a means of augmenting the game and almost creating purpose. Personal player stories are created because of death. In that sense, dying is an experience that both affects and is affected by the game itself.

While I did not have the same experience with Mordor as most people (I did not die often and did not really have a nemesis), I still see the potential for that system to create a player story. I think that is what excites me the most about the games mentioned in the article.

I've never really thought about it like that before, but I suppose it is pretty clever when death can be used as another gameplay mechanic (whether the developer intended it to do so or not).

I absolutely adore the Souls games but what it gets right with death isn't that its world is so static that you can memorize things. That's a shitty thing that most games do, and it's a sad reality of game design in general. I think From is incorporating those bells that disperse enemies in bloodborne for that reason. In my opinion, death is more interesting in dark souls because of the stakes. Your player character's life has value to you as the player because s/he is holding all those damn souls. But once you get to a boss, that mechanic kinda goes out the window, unless you're a crazy person who is trying to farm on your way to the boss every time.

Not exactly "death" per say, but maybe my favorite system related to failure that has come about recently is the rewind system from Forza and Codemasters' racing games. Frustration for me in a game sets in when I have to do something I've already mastered over and over just to get to the point of failure. Since you don't get to practice that one section multiple times in a row it is tough to get better at it. It's actually quite similar to the Sands of Time system from the PS2 era Prince of Persia games. Because you can practice doing the same thing multiple times in a row you are much more able to get better at it, also in part because you are more willing to make a risky jump or take a corner at what might be a little too fast of a speed.

Nice read. I enjoy these articles highlighting where we are in game design vs. where we came from. I am excited to see where the idea behind the nemesis system could take us when extrapolated.

One of the knocks I have against open world games is that no matter the side quest, the main part of the game is left static. I would like to see this system used to add weight to side quests. For example, in a space game where you play as a band of mercenaries, your main quest might be to gain enough coin to move your merc colony to a great location in a nearby system before your sun goes red giant. To earn some funds you take a side mission to get weapons and supplies to this race that is being decimated by these space pirates. Later in the game, the race you saved has reverse engineered the weapons you gave them and declared war on the peaceful planet you are trying to relocate to and are bombing it uninhabitable. This now has become your main quest and opens up another game over scenario.

So happy to see some new game design idea happening in a triple A game with a team of that size.

Fuck Gordar

What makes Dark Souls' take special isn't that it's "consistent". Isn't it rather that you are punished for failure in ways like losing the currency/experience you built up or lowering your HP bar? Without having a life system or anything like that, you still have something to lose in addition to time spent. It's a bonus that it's built into the narrative, and I actually think the game was worse for it when hollowing was reflected in gameplay as losing your HP gradually in Dark Souls 2.

Great read! Would like to add Rogue Legacy to this discussion as well

I strangely enjoy all these games mentioned. One not mentioned is the way rogue legacy handles it. Your heir encorporating all your skills

Always love these originals by patrick.

Echoing that this was a great article like everyone else has said. Really would love to read more stuff like this on the site. Thanks, @PatrickKlepek!

"...but Gordar? Fuck that guy, off with your head!"

I had a conversation with a friend recently where they told me they like most games where you can't lose. Dying in games adds to anxiety felt while playing for some, and games are supposed to be fun so this is understandable. In opening games up to new players, I think it's important to remember this. Most would say having no failure states takes away from the challenge or excitement, which is completely fair and a sentiment I probably agree with. Games you describe in the article appear to be a good middle ground for this. When there are benefits to dying, whether adding to the lore of the game as in Shadow of Mordor, or enhancing the knowledge of the player about the game they are playing, it's seen less as a punishment and more like an opportunity. The challenge is explaining these mechanics and ideas to gamers who normally would want to avoid the stress of true failure all together. How do you convince them to give it a shot and not be afraid?

@choicebomb: I was pretty surprised to hear some of the guys at Twentysided Tale(Shamus and Rutskarn) talk about how they were never going to play Dark Souls specifically because they hated anything that was too difficult. They didn't mind being challenged, but they hated having to do anything over again. If you're the type of player who's after seeing more content or watching a story unfold, this kind of game probably won't be for you ever. On the other hand, Shamus had no problem finishing Shadow of Mordor. Only the weakness of the story slowed him down.

So... I assume Patrick himself decides if and when an article is cross-posted onto the forums? And that this isn't just a... thing that sometimes happens on its own.

Started playing Mordor last night, and I find myself jumping into impossible battles. I don't really want to die in any situation, but in the back of my mind I know it'll give me someone new to unleash my wrath on.

And Spelunky? For a long time, dying was just a nice education. Now it's just a sweet release from the addiction, at least until it's 7pm the next day and I need my next daily.

It's a manual thing triggered in our backend. I was on the road all day, so I didn't have an opportunity to have it link to the forums.

Ah, OK then. Thanks for the clarification.

That was a nice read, I continue to wish Ihad a current gen console now.

I enjoyed the checkpoint system of They Bleed Pixels. You decided where to place the checkpoints and the only way to get more was to engage in combat and perilous platforming, which of course made it more likely that you'd die. That game had issues but MAN did it feel satisfying to finish.

Demon's Souls would get harder if you died because the world tendency would get blacker, giving enemies more HP and higher damage.

@patrickklepek: I would throw Rouge Legacy in there as a game that toys with the usual concepts of death in games. In Rouge Legacy it splits the "rouge like" gap of progression and reset, with the player never being expected to beat the game without dying but before each reset changing something about the rules of the game going in.

I've never found death to be much of an immersion-breaker except when it happens repeatedly. I also didn't find the Shadow of Mordor system to be a particularly effective explanation for sidestepping it (like most everything in that game, it didn't take the time it needed to properly explain what was going on). I think that a lot of games that have tried to be clever about death mechanics do so unnecessarily.

However, I have to grant you that I've rarely felt such visceral bloodlust as when I hunted down Olog the Manhunter, who'd laid me low and taunted me three times before, and unleashed three carragors on him. It seems to me like this will be difficult to carry over to other genres of games, but I'm all for it if they can.

I fail to understand in what way Spelunky is different about death or what it invented that set it apart from the whole genre of roguelikes

It's the roguelike that Patrick spent most time with, so he feels comfortable writing about it i guess.

But sure, many roguelikes share the same traits.

I love the idea of progression even on failure. In one of his blogs, Edmund McMillen wrote about how Binding of Isaac was designed to reward the player's persistence with new stuff the more time they put into it. Of course, there are ways to badly implement stuff like this. For example, we have the current trend of multiplayer games doling out experience for every round and rewards for each level up. I don't particularly enjoy how grindy some games can get with this type of mechanic. PayDay was especially egregious about this.

Well put, I've never thought about death in video games and how each game presents the punishments of dying in different ways. I'm certainly interested in Shadow of Mordor and not only because I love Lord of the Rings but because the nemesis system sounds great.

Great read Patrick. I've been waiting for your written take on this subject

I don't mind trial and error and dying a lot, what I do mind and what I think is really frustrating is games with slow death sequences and loading times before you jump back in the game. Metal Gear is one of them, I'm pretty bad at it, the clunky control mechanics also don't help and while I don't mind dying, I have to sit through people yelling SNAAAAAAKE while the game over logo slowly pops in to screen before I can try again.

Games with bad check point systems are also pretty bad, Far Cry 3 for example, there were parts where you had to stealth kill a bunch of people near some ships without being spotted, one fuck up and you had to fly all the way back to the shipwreck and do it all over again.

After playing Alien Isolation I really wish more games make death more punishing, it really gave me some old fashioned feelings of excitement and tension that modern games lack.

A good read, Patrick. Definitely a big fan myself of games which treat death in interesting ways rather than just as a hard-state 'return to last checkpoint'. Thanks for the write-up!

I wish people would stop saying this. Metal Gear Solid controls spot on after all these years and one thing that game does perfectly is show the lay of the land with the radar. Everything is exposed for the benefit of the player, to the point where you're reliant on the radar more than what's in front of Snake. When the radar goes away, you're vulnerable and have to observe and, by then, you should know how the world works.

I know how the world works and have no trouble with the radar, what I have trouble with is trying to stick to walls, often I walk up to a wall, around the corner where a guard is walking and snake won't stick to the walls and gets in the line of sight of the guard. I'm on MG2 by the way.

I had been thinking about the death system of Shadow of Mordor when playing over the weekend. Great article.

I just started MGS2 again, having played it to completion when it came out, and I'm struggling with the same thing. Sticking to walls effectively feels very, very difficult.

Maybe I'm over-thinking it, but left isn't always left: if I approach a wall from the right, to stick to it I have to hold left on the analog stick. Once I get there, the camera rotates to a forward shot of the character, but you still have to hold left on the analog stick. Moving left and right on the wall then requires adjusting the stick to be either up or down, but if you go too far, it launches you from the wall.

I also think the first person shooting mechanic isn't super well implemented: if I want to shoot a dude from a first person view, I need to tap R2 to select the weapon, hold square to bring out the gun, then hold R1 to enter FPS view; if he walks behind a corner during that time and I don't want to fire and attract attention, I need to (in order) release L1, tap R2, and release square. I get that this is how it is because of the inventory management systems in MGS games, but getting the order right (at least initially) has proven difficult.

I was really looking forward to this article. Great write up Patrick.

alien isolation does have checkpoints, generally when you enter a new area...

I'm starting to think I've been playing a completely different game than the people on these forums. The combat is so easy. If you manage to get beaten you can just run away and they'll 'lose sight' of you within 10 seconds. How did any of you die more than, let's say 5-ish times?

I do agree that Mordor had one of the better set ups for its death mechanic I've ever seen. A really good in universe explanation and it ties into its other systems like the Nemesis system. Remarkably well done. Unfortunately all for naught for me; I barely ever died. I wish it had difficulty settings to actually make the Nemesis system matter.

Great read, thanks Patrick!

Games doing interesting stuff with death is far from new. Planescape Torment came out in 1999. Still, that and the Souls games are some of my favorite games ever, so I really appreciate other games playing with what character death means.