The Evolution of Death in Games

There are very few games where the player cannot die, but each game handles the idea differently. Most games choose to ignore how ridiculous it sounds for the player to die over and over, some build the concept into the narrative, while others are beginning to reconsider what it means to die in a video game.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor got me thinking about this, as it does a few at once, and represents a huge shift.

Dying in games exists for a few reasons. So much of modern design has origins in the arcades of yesteryear, and arcades wanted to take your money over and over. An easy way to ensure new quarters was to guarantee death. While most games don't require quarters anymore, the majority do follow a pattern: ask the player to accomplish a specific task, punish them if it's not completed, and ask them to do it again. That cycle is repeated, with punishment enforced through death and repetition. The game pretends as though nothing happened, as if no player has been present in the world prior to this one attempt. This approach has become more frustrating over the years, as games iron out any bump in the road to success. To not achieve success is, at times, considered a design fault.

We've come to accept this dissonance because, well, it's how most games work. And there's nothing wrong with this approach, and I've enjoyed plenty of games that embrace this point and move on.

In Shadow of Mordor, the fantasy setting allows the developers an easy out. The main character, Talion, is simply stuck between the realms of life and death. While he's present in reality, when he dies, he's not allowed access to the afterlife. Instead, he must return to reality. This would usually be enough, but Shadow of Mordor goes steps further with its Nemesis system. When a random enemy kills you (and you die often), they're promoted within Sauron's personal army. The enemy goes from a faceless AI in the crowd to a named archenemy, a moment typically scripted into a game, meaning every player has the exact same experience. Here, while Orc #2039 might have initially killed you, he's now become Gordar the Horrible. You'd never come back for orc #2039, but Gordar? Fuck that guy, off with your head! Each player death means something, as their world is permanently altered because of it. While I'm sure Nemesis took substantial time to build out, it allows the game to endlessly generate moments that would have been more expensive and time consuming to craft, and it wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

Of course, we've been watching other games play with these concepts for a while, it's simply been happening in more "hardcore" games. Both Spelunky and the Souls games are examples of games reinventing the meaning of death. Dark Souls and Spelunky riff on the same idea with differing results.

Everything in the world of Souls is static, and when the player returns to an area, nothing has changed. Their actions might alter based on how the player acts, but the soldiers who were around the corner last time will be around the corner this time, too. While the Souls games are known for being punishing affairs, once the player knows the lay of the land, it's merely up to them to navigate it. The game world isn't cheating, the player must learn to adapt. The consistency allows death to have meaning that isn't possible with how interlocking game systems usually work. Dynamic systems, in which the player cannot expect what happens, can generate surprise, but it also prevents them from internalizing lessons away from that death. A random car that runs you over might not be around the next time. Avoid the car, I guess? In a Souls game, it's often possible to see death as a positive; it's how you learn.

Spelunky's first incarnation was released the same year as Demon's Souls, and it's not a surprise to learn Spelunky's creator, Derek Yu, is a huge fan of the series. The similarities are a lovely coincidence. Spelunky's world is not static, but the rules are. The construction of the world is different every time the player jumps in, but the pieces used to build the world--enemies, items, objects, structure--are very familiar. The early hours of Spelunky (by early, we're talking dozens) are spent internalizing that ruleset. Though Spelunky has reactive physics that can sometimes result in unexpected events, 99% of Spelunky is completely known to the player, and it's a matter of applying the lessons of what's come before.

When you first play Spelunky, for instance, there's no way to know the chomping flower in the jungle section will eat you. Spelunky has a tutorial, but the tutorial isn't interested in explaining what Spelunky's about, only making sure you know how to jump, whip, and other basics of navigation. Everything else is up to you, and there's no way to understand Spelunky's rules without dying. Death is a teacher, and death is Spelunky's constant. This means the friction of death instilled by other games (read: death is bad) is reduced because, in Spelunky, death is expected. It's not possible to understand Spelunky without death, so death is good.

Even though I really enjoyed Alien: Isolation, it frustratingly straddled the line between both worlds. Isolation doesn't have any checkpoints, instead asking players to manually save at phones scattered throughout the game. It's easy to understand why this system exists. Since the player cannot rely on checkpoints, the moment you go without a save point, tension arises. When you've spent 15 minutes carefully navigating a series of hallways and vents, the desire for a save point becomes palpable. You begin frantically checking the map for the next place to save. Then, the alien shows up. You're terrified for two reasons. One, the alien is scary. Two, you don't want to replay that section again. But death is constant in Isolation, and it doesn't always feel fair. Thus, when you're forced to spend yet another 15 minutes in the same section of hallways and vents, the feeling isn't "oh, I've got this" because you've already been here, it's "oh, this sucks" because the tension building only works once.

In all of these games, the punishment angle still exists. You didn't kill that orc in Shadow of Mordor, you didn't beat that boss in a Souls game, you couldn't get past Olmec in Spelunky. But what the player takes away from that death is very different. There's value in it beyond the cycle of repetition. Shadow of Mordor presents a path to revenge and redemption, and both the Souls games and Spelunky encourage (nay, demand) success through failure. What we're learning is death can have multiple meanings in games, and that's a healthy, welcomed evolution of a concept left stagnant for way too long.

Good read, I'd really like to see more pieces like this looking at specific gameplay mechanics.

Great article Patrick, I hope more developers would look at the static part of their games and change it.

That was a great read, and I hope it becomes a trend of adding consequences to your failures after Shadow of Mordor. I like the idea of some stealth games where enemies get tougher when you mess up, call in for reinforcements and wear armour (Splinter Cell). It just makes me more attentive and take my time with planning->execution.

My personal thing is, I'm not a fan of procedurally generated level design. I have to understand the layout all over again, rather than think of new strategies for the enemies I failed against.

About losing tension after the first time, isn't the unpredictable AI of the alien ratcheting it back up? I guess not in players' experiences, I have yet to play it (soon soon).

My favorite recent shifts in game design are the ones that take a common player experience and make it unique, instructive, and rewarding. Part of the reason I enjoy narrative-focused games so much is the small changes in motivation they can provide, and reworking mechanics to elicit the same feeling (even by tying them to said narrative) seems like a great way to move forward creatively.

@patrickklepek The second paragraph seems to be incomplete or strangely worded:

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor got me thinking about this, as it does a few at once, and represents a huge shift.

Presumably in MGSV, if your combat buddy dies during a mission (i.e., Quiet or DD), they're dead for good. And you continue on playing the rest of the game without them.

To be fair a lot of older games use the same formula as Souls games. Especially the arcade kind. Nearly everything used to be static, enemy placement and level layout did not change and you died and died and died some more until you knew the level by heart.

Souls games did not really innovate on that system all that much.

There is obviously room for both kinds too, I quite enjoy it when a game throws me a curve ball. Dynamically changing level design or enemy behaviour.

This is an area where Souls did innovate, through the player interaction mechanic of invasions.

You're running around through a level you've ran around in hundreds of times and you know where every enemy is going to be, you're going through the motions. You zone out, barely paying attention but then suddenly another player enters your world and throws a spanner into your well-oiled, predictable machine.

Adrenaline kicks in,

I remember a lot of people giving Prince of Persia grief for not letting you die, with Elika always grabbing you moments from death and pulling you away from danger, but it was pretty much responsible for how deep I got into that game. Because there was never a point at which the game stopped and I had to restart, I kept going and really got into the game in a way I didn't usually. When I'd start dying in other, similar games, that'd usually be when I'd put the controller down, take it as a sign I needed to step away before I got frustrated. But PoP08 eliminated that, and one of the more frustrating parts of a game for me, and it really stuck with me, and it's probably why I look back on that game so fondly.

Patrick, you should really try and play Dwarf Fortress sometime. Losing is fun!

I love the nemesis system. While I don't want to see every game copy and paste it, and while it certainly won't fit most game worlds, I would really like to see similar systems in other games.

Good article! The only thing i disagree with is that you will die a lot in shadow of Mordor ;). Everything you say about it is true, but where it fails is that the very thing this game receives a lot of praise for only works if you well.. die.

For a game build on evolution in death its really easy to almost never die in it. And that's really to bad because because its almost like you are punished with a worse experience if you are kind of decent at the game or think carefully about how you approach a situation.

I agree 100%

I don't really agree that Dark Souls and Spelunky are as similar as you seem to think since Spelunky is much more randomized. Remembering what certain enemies do isn't really the same as going through the exact same area over and over again. Overall this was a great article though Patrick. Looking forward to the next one.

Good article. I think it's a stretch, though, to say that the way Spelunky handles death is "new," since it's basically using the roguelike system for death. In other words, you start over if you die, and end up in a new, randomly generated series of maps, but the RULES are always the same. It's about what you, as a player, learn in each run, and what you can then apply to the next run.

Some roguelikes are bigger on this than others - Dungeon crawl, for instance, will fill in a bestiary as you encounter new monsters that persists between runs, whereas Nethack has ridiculously obscure stuff like carving "Elbereth" into the ground, which keeps monsters away from that tile. That technique isnt referenced anywhere in the game, and you only really find it out by hanging out on message boards. Nethack has a lot of that stuff.

Anyway, Spelunky is great, and definitely one of a kind. But it's worth mentioning that it's building off a tradition that started in the 80s, with games that have ASCII characters for graphics.

I feel like some people push against the 'death as a teacher' thing a lot, as if death should always be an avoidable failure state rather than necessary. You often see 'em just get completely turned off of that sort of game really quickly.

I've heard this a few times now that Mordor was too easy, but personally I ended up dying a lot. I didn't go crazy doing all the side quests and getting completely powerful, I just played through the game normally and occasionally did some side things for extra experience.

I think this is why I didn't just stroll through the game without dying, which was to the game's advantage in pacing. Even though the game gave you an opportunity to retaliate at death with the last chance mechanic, at least you could only do it so many times before being cut down for good.

Thanks for the article Patrick.

Worth reading, the article I mean. It's interesting how far designers have come since the advent of checkpoints in games. They're starting to straddle that line of being challenging but fair without entirely killing your momentum or suspension of disbelief. I'm a bit more curious if multi-player games will get better at making death feel the least bit tragic. I remember I use to play a lot of pick up games in Left 4 Dead's versus mode and as a survivor I played accepting that I'm going to die since nobody was going to be able to reliably keep me alive until the end. There's something oddly cathartic about sort of welcoming death as a lesson on a game's design rather than just feeling ripped off by crap mechanics. Good write-up Scoops. Spelunky ain't got shit on you.

What I like best about death in Dark Souls is how well it's incorporated into the story. Almost all games have 'Prince of Persia death/fail states': "No, no, no, that's not how it happened". The narrative stops and resets when the player dies.

Dark Souls operates in the same way mechanically (everything resets and you go back to a checkpoint), but the narrative itself is very much about overcoming this exact mechanic.

The game's story incorporates the traditional game design idea of dying and resetting, yet the narrative isn't rewritten when the player dies. It merely continues. Pretty brilliant!

I always liked how Planescape: Torment used death in the game. The game's story revolved around the mystery of your character not being able to die, and the developers played to that conceit in some interesting ways.

Yup.

Pop08 was one of the first games I can remember where they actually explained death away in an in-universe manner. Mechanically it's just a quick checkpoint system, but in-universe it means that the protagonist isn't an invulnerable killing machine like most games had, and made the Elika connection all the more important.

Great game, haters be damned.

I feel like many of the big titles for a while have had their own creative ways for explaining away your in game death, AC has the animus, Bioshock had the vita chambers and then the separated universe thing, borderlands it's reconstruction or whatever.

I think for most people unexplained death respawns really aren't a huge immersion breaker. It is definitely cool what shadow of mordor does with it and a pretty core aspect to the initial design document, so that's cool.

The other most notable game I enjoyed for it's take on death was Prince of Persia as some have mentioned above. It wasn't popular at the time, but it really lent to the relaxing exploratory nature of the game.

Dying in roguelikes like spelunky STILL pisses me off to the point I really can't play these sort of games for more than short bursts. I just really enjoy the journey of progression in games and it just yanks too hard when I'm pulled out of that. I've definitely loosened up on the concept, but i'm not sure i'll ever break with it being somewhat detrimental to my experience. The blow is definitely softened in the roguelikes that have an overarching persistent progression.

I think i'm just at the point i've played so many accumulated hours of video games at this point in my life that my patience for repetition is severely low. Nothing will throw my enthusiasm for a game than a two or three deaths under the same circumstance requiring more than a minute to get back to that same point.

There is a point with spelunky for example, that I just accept the first 6 levels of that game is all i'm prepared to "grind" to get to. Playing 90 percent of the game retreading the same early levels only to die quickly on the attempts I get further to new circumstances, just isn't engaging to me.

Another thing about Dark Souls lore, which you may or may not have ever read into too much of, is that your character has the curse of the dark sign, is undead, and like Talion cannot die. It's slightly different but complicated to get into detail, but Dark Souls also has a nice story reason as to why all the enemies come back. Everything in the land cursed.

Another example would be Rogue Legacy, in which death helps to gear up the next generation with more gold, ability points, armor pieces etc.

Rogue Legacy really scratches an itch I have for that kind of meta-game planning. Any ideas of other games with similar mechanics?

I think he explained the similarities and differences well. Like yeah it's not exactly the same but both games are about learning the enemies more than the environment.

I don't think Patrick claims this is "new" even once though. There is lineage. There is influence. Those things are alluded to. It's more of a reflection that stems from the Shadow of Mordor system that leverages death in an interesting way, and he connects this to other recent games that have been very successful in using death in an interesting way. I think if you look at things in the most banal kind of ways, you may want to make the claim that dying in Contra on the NES is trying to appeal to your desire to master the level and game mechanics. There's just something about the Souls games or Spelunky that are far more rewarding and engaging in the mastery of the game systems. In a way it's the depth of the mastery that's the biggest differentiating factor between various games. That stuff isn't binary. A game doesn't have depth or no depth, so arguing whether death is a plea to mastering the depth of the game mechanics is going to be a futile debate in points of view and preferences. Mordor's death and your desire to continue forward though isn't about mastery, and I think this is where arguably there is something interesting to explore.

Things are rarely ever new. Whether there is a renewed focus on using a less "traditional" take on the death mechanic is the implied question or point being highlighted. I think the renewed interest in rogue-like (game rogue-lite) games is arguably a trend and developers trying to iterate ever more slightly on old concepts is more what Patrick is highlighting and finds worthy of mention. I don't think there are any bold statements of a revolution here. Is this even a trend yet? Is this an evolution yet? Is there anything "new" here. If you think it's sufficiently meaningful, I guess. It's interesting enough to be talking about it. Yea.

Exactly. It was such a simple thing, explained in fiction that made the game and its story stick with me much longer than it would of done if there had been a black screen, and quick load, and I'm back to where I was a minute ago.

Great article, patrick!

Oh spelunky, such a fair game you are.

Great stuff, Patrick. Death is always a finicky aspect of gaming. One of my favorite iterations of death/failure is in Stealth Inc. with the various taunts written on the walls after dying. It's nice to at least be humored while dying (sometimes over and over again).

Hah, I was going to mention that. That's a really good example for a narrative that aknowledges, and parodies, many of those videogame tropes.

Very interesting article! I like both ways sometimes. Checkpoints or quicksaves are fine in games that are just difficult enough to keep the tension up but don't require you to replay shit a lot of the time. That or the repeated parts should offer a wealth and variety of solutions so that it doesn't get stale. But for me the real deal are indeed games that have soft fail states or just make dying over and over again part of the RNG and learning fun.

@noizy: i mean, he called them new in the subtitle. Also, there's the final sentence. And I understand what you're saying, but what I was writing wasn't meant as a criticism. I just wanted to point out that Spelunky has a very specific legacy - which was very conscious when Derek Yu was making Spelunky. It was his intention to take roguelike mechanics and apply them to a platformer - and he definitely succeeded!

So I just thought that legacy deserved a mention, since it was very conscious, and unmentioned in the article. It was just a tiny bit odd to me to see Spelunky referred to as something new, simply because what it most reminds me of is games like Dungeons of Moria that I played out of a DOS prompt when I was 8. That, to me, is pretty distinct from a game like Mordor, which really felt like a new (and cool) idea.

Edit: Here's a quote from Yu, introducing the game for the first time on the TIGSource forums:

"Probably the easiest way to describe Spelunky is that it's (kind of) like La Mulana meets Nethack - every time you play the levels, items, monsters, and so forth, are all procedurally-generated. [...] My goal was to create a fast-paced platform game that had the kind of tension, re-playability, and variety of a roguelike. In roguelikes, the gameplay tells the story, and I wanted to give Spelunky that type of a feeling... but make the player rely on their reflexes rather than their brain (or knowledge of what 50 billion command keys do!). If there's a best of both worlds, that's what I was trying to go for."

Great and insightful article Patrick. Hope to see more articles like this in the future.

Yeah, totally.

I feel like this article is a few years late, but okay.

@homelessbird: Damn. I missed the "new" in the subtitle.

I hear you though. I think Shadow of Mordor's system though is new in a meaningful way. I don't think Patrick has much experience with the original type of rogue-like, and he probably would feel disingenuous to allude to them without having engaged with them. These recent pieces have been mostly based on his experience and interest, and I don't think they are an academic essay on these topics. I'm guessing these omissions are mostly in respect of word count and research time.

I think a lot of people are younger than you and I, and for a lot of people these things are new experiences in our more recent context of "cinematic thrill ride" video games of the last decade or so.

Great Read @patrickklepek

I love reading people's deeper than usual thoughts on common mechanics used interestingly. For me, they're some of the most interesting and truly artistic (Beyond the visuals sense of the world) moments Video Games have to offer.

For example, something like Bioshock. Most people love it because of it's unique world, it's palpable atmosphere, any number of things. I love it for all of those too, but what struck me most about after my first time through was what the twist meant beyond just an interesting story beat. Most people should be vaguely familiar but I won't spoil anything. Anyone who hasn't played it go do so, and those who have, well I think it might be time for my annual run through. I discover at least one big new thing every time.

My main point though, is that that twist was always interesting to me because it tried to saysomething about an element that's absolutely core to most games, the linear objective, with no alternatives, and couch it into the narrative, and not just explain it away as an "Oh that's neat" but also to make you think about the illusion of choice in linear games. It's one of the reasons I love the game.

I've also always liked how Dark Souls treats the idea of death in games, beyond just mechanics. The concept of the undead in that world, and the idea of hollowing. The concept of hollowing mapping directly onto the idea of commitment to a purpose, and that keeping you going. And then there are characters within the world that you can watch as they explore their relationships with their death, purpose and hollowing.

Using death as more than just a mechanic or even a story device, but as a way of exploring the player's relationship with a game, is just fascinating to me, and I'd be interested to hear if you had any thoughts more along those lines as well. It's one of the main reasons I can't wait to get this computer built so I can play through Mordor!

Oh, also, T-Minus 15 minutes till this headline shows up in someone's compiled list of "Gamers are Dead" articles.

@noizy: You're definitely right - these kinds of mechanics are probably a new experience for quite a lot of people. And personally, I'm extremely happy to see these design ideas leak into more "mainstream" (for lack of a better word) games, and that they've become so popular. I would never have expected the Souls games to blow up like they have, but it seems like the "thrill ride" atmosphere that you mentioned has created something of a backlash. And I love seeing the way they are being used in ways I never could have imagined (i.e. the whole "rogue-like-like" or "roguelite" phenomenon).

The thing that I love about these kinds of games is that they are so focused on understanding of difficult gameplay that they don't really need to even have "stories," per se, because they are so intricate that the player creates their own story. They actually do the thing that Destiny was claiming it was going to do. If you go onto a forum for Nethack, say, you will find pages upon pages of stories that players have written, chronicling their adventures in the dungeon - and no two are the same, even when players are following the most "optimal" method. They're actually interesting to read. As much as I like (some) narrative-driven games, these are the kinds of games that made me a fan for life. They're also, in my opinion, the kind of games that create experiences that are most unique to the medium.

I feel like this seems to vary wildy for different people, and I don't think it's about skill or anything but perhaps just the different playstyles of different people.

So I don't necessarily think it's that the game was too "easy" as people have labelled. I had the same experience where I died very little and feel like I didn't get quite the experience others had out of it. I generally tend to play very patiently and carefully to avoid dying, especially in games that have some sort of stealth element. It's so ingrained at this point that I couldn't exactly turn this compulsion off during the game.

Also I didn't spend a lot of time doing side missions to become overpowered before the story missions, in fact it was the opposite that I ran through and mopped up 70 percent of them before the finale.

I REALLY hope the season pass DLC includes some sort of hardcore difficulty mode that comes with a few more hooks and maybe carrying over your runes and abilities to encourage another play through.

Wow, this article's been on the schedule for about a week. I was expected some big, embargoed news or something.

In which multiplayer games is death tragic? You mentioned L4D and I can think of Dota, Counter-Strike and Garry's Mod games like TTT where you only get one life. I would love more stake in staying alive in multiplayer, so I'm open to suggestions.

@bicycle_repairman: I've actually been afraid of this since I learned what the nemesis system is and how it works. Maybe I'll just roleplay Talion as Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli from the films and constantly throw myself into dangerous, outnumbered situations without thinking. The combat certainly looks fun enough to warrant it.

EDIT: Oh, man. Increased difficulty modes in DLC. For a game that actually needs something like this (as opposed to Last of Us' random super hard mode; did anyone really ask for that?), it seems like a no-brainer.

its interesting how we only see negative aspects of dying in a video game when its all part of learning process. it should be better utilized and maybe it will with shadow of mordor getting so much praise for interesting game mechanics. death almost been weirdly neglected by game designers and the reason why is probly connected to how we as humans deal with death.

good topic Patrick

Then you have Crusader Kings 2, where death is just a part of life and another step of your dynasty.

Doesn't every video game encourage/demand success through failure?

@eccentrix: If Patrick's previous articles are to be believed then I guess you could consider Eve Online to be chock full of tragedies though that's simply people suffering a monetary net loss than anything else. I think those weird open world survival games are trying to achieve something with perma-deaths with stuff like your DayZ's and Rust's but the raw mechanics in those games are so wonky across the board that it's hard not to feel screwed over by sudden character death. I think it's hard in multiplayer because you need to find the balance of being challenging and engaging versus being inconvenient.

Enjoyed this piece. I'd like more articles of this ilk... Keep up the good work Patrick!

I really loved the Nemesis system and hope more games going forward will adopt a similar practice. The random stories that were generated through playing were far better than the mediocre main story line.

I've always thought of the traditional, arcade life/death system as just hitting the rewind (or previous chapter) button, and when you reach the end of the game that's the true, canon version of the narrative. I just find this accepted video game language, but when alternatives are sown into games it's welcome as long as it gels with the design of the game. When it starts getting too meta or pandering it can be a huge turn off for me, and oftentimes it just feels like a lazy shortcut to avoid balancing the difficulty curve.

@poobumbutt: @rowr:

I think you both are right and that play style has everything to do with it. I really like the works of Tolkien and i also really enjoy playing assassins creed (yes all of them except 3 not so much). So i went into this game with the expectation of playing assassins creed in middle earth. And i think in many ways that is correct. You stealth around, you sync towers and you collect glow in the dark runes in your special wraith/assassin view. But because of this i think i only died to orcs like 2 times until i had like 5 story missions left.

I think it also made a huge difference i just finished the last dark souls dlc before playing this game.

Its not the same combat, but i think playing the last dlc on ng3 en 30 mil soul lvl made me over prepared and over trained for these kind of games. I think i might have had a harder time if i went from playing Civ V to this.

Yeah, with Patrick's point is that its a lot more meaningful when you take into account games like Spelunky or Dark Souls wherein it demands a certain level of mastery and understanding that is attainable through trial and error. They are not the only games that also do that but he just cited them as one of the more recent examples that he himself was able to experience first hand.

EDIT: Also I think those games kinda produced a shift in terms of how developers are now approaching the consequences surrounding your main character's death in recent years and Monolith's Nemesis system is a product of that and Lords of the Fallen is going to be another game that pretty much apes the system made popular by the Souls games, the difference being the tech just makes their game prettier and perhaps just tweaking certain aspects to make it a bit approachable yet as challenging. Overall, its nice that this is having a great effect on how other developers are now making their games.

Surprised there was no mention of ZombiU here, given that's one of few games where protagonist death is canon in a similar way to the Souls games.

Also as for Alien: Isolation, I think the way for how the alien's behaviour is largely unscripted, that goes a long way in making kills by it not seem as frustrating. While it may kill you in this one spot, it may then not even show up the next time you try, so you're not stuck in some endless cycle or anything. Plus in a weird way getting killed by the alien can sometimes feel like a form of relief; a way to vent out all of the tension and terror that's building up as you're waiting for it to getcha, which in my case was sometimes done through laughter.

It's never come across as being overly unfair in any case; 9/10 deaths against the alien have often felt like they were my own fault really. Like maybe getting impatient, or relying too much on the flamethrower -- which I quickly learnt will actually piss the alien off and make it act more aggressive, by way of sticking to the ground level a lot more rather than staying in the vents. Also, it can totally hear the beeping of your motion tracker.

While it's cool what Mordor did with incorporating death into the nemesis system, I couldn't help but feel like there was no real consequence to dying. Paired with the ease of the combat after an hour or two, Mordor just left me feeling like I was playing the most casual focused game ever made. But then of course you have the polar opposite that is Isolation where I got stuck in the last part of medical for like an hour because of cheap deaths and game crashes. After finally getting past it I didn't really want to play anymore and started Evil Within, which has it's own problems but the save system is not one of them. Devs really need to start looking into dynamic death to fit into all of their dynamic worlds, and Dark Souls is a great example of this.