Current Events > ITT: Name video games that cleverly worked the player dying a lot into the plot.

(+) Yeah! (+)

80/80

Instead of just staring you over or at a checkplot, actually having an in game explanation for how you came back and making your death canon.

Some games cheat like Neverwinter Nights and just have a guy go "Oh I brought you back to life because I can do that."

But others actually work into the lore. One that springs to mind is System Shock 2 where you're a helpless man being roped along and kept alive by Shodan (inspiration for GLADos to you young folks out there) the evil AI using you for her own aims.

Every time you "die" she brings you back using a Quantum Bio-Reconstruction Machine that esstentially just clones you. When you die, that human being really died. And Shodan just used their matter to bring out a new clone. Disturbing stuff and actually is inkeeping with the plot. On top of that, it adds a gameplay mechanic as well as only one machine can be active at any time, so you have to decide where on the ship your checkpoint is going to be at any moment.

When you're on low health do you risk exploring an area to activate the nearby checkpoint? Or do you risk plowing on and then if you do die, being sent way back in the wrong direction?

Good stuff,

Prey 2 was going to do the same thing but that game got scrapped for being shit.

Speaking of Prey 2. The game that stole it's name, Prey (2017) actually also explained player death in universe (MAJOR SPOILERS) As it turns out the entire game is an simulation. Every time you die, you just fucked in the simulation and they start it over. It's not clear if this a new alien every time or the same alien failing over and over. But every time you 'died' they canonically did occur, just as part of a failed simulation. The point of the simulation was to test your humanity and empathy and if you die and fail over and over then you have failed the simulation. It makes sense


There's also Assassin's creed. Which because it's supposed to be the Animus showing the memories of ancestors, everytime you screw up it goes "Well thats not what happened, the link must have desynchronized!" and sends you back. Like Neverwinternights, this is kinda cheap but it's still an in-game explanation for why the hero of the hour died in a heap by jumping off a cliff.

But these are sci-fi games. What other games have in-universe multiple lives explanations?
---

the Soulsborne games

your character is either undead or in a dream, and basically is stuck in that state until you complete your mission

and after you've completed it, you're still stuck
---

- State of Decay, a zombie survival game a lot of people on here probably didn't play. You play as a survivor and once you die that survivor is gone for good and you play as another one, and when you die it affects the other players in a bunch of ways

- prince of persia - i always thought this one was funny because the game is framed like the prince telling a story, and when you die he goes "no it didn't go like that, let me start over and try again" as if he was telling a story to someone and goes "so there i was, leaping from one platform to another when i slipped and died. oops, no, i don't think i died. let me tell the story again!"

- bioshock, kind of made sense with the whole transhumanism theme going on

- dark souls 2, basically the premise is that you're an undead character destined to live forever and slowly go insane unless you go on this huge, impossible journey to kill the king. so every death makes sense thematically. same for the other DS games but I thought DS2 did the biggest job of making you being undead the main focus
---

Planescape: Torment. You are an immortal trying to find out about yourself with a loss of your memory when you first awake. You can "die" but you wake up elsewhere after and continue on on your quest.
---

Bioshock Infinite

Elizabeth revives you when she's around, but the more interesting aspect is when she's not there. The implication is that when you die, the Luteces are just getting another copy of a Booker from a different parallel universe and trying again. The bit with them flipping the coin and having a big sandwich board of tally marks shows how many times they've tried it with Bookers.

WoW: Legion...sort of

In Warcraft lore, demons don't permanently die unless they're killed in the Twisting Nether (a sort-of-alternate dimension). If you create a demon hunter character and die in the tutorial, Illidan notes that you've consumed enough demonic power that you do the same thing.
---

I bet Metal Gear Solid 1 probably did with Psycho Mantis, but I dunno.
---

Does GTA count?
---

Destroy All Humans

Every time you die you're revived as a clone with a higher number than the last one. The game begins with the current clone being sent to investigate why the last one disappeared.
---

Somehow I never noticed that about Bioshock Infinite
---

Conker's Bad Fur Day
The Grim Reaper says Red Squirrels get as many lives as they think they can get away with.
---

The Borderlands games, kinda.

Explains why you and all the baddies come back. But does make a sort of plot hole when it comes to overall story and people being dead-dead for plot.
---

Legend of Zelda?

Kinda hinted thats the triforce of courages ability. Avoid death and succeed by learning of past deaths?

Um, what? That's not hinted at at all.
---

Portal and Portal 2
---

There are a lot of things I hate about Phantasy Star II one of the ones I hate most is the way that you can clone (revive) a specific party member as many times as you want until the death is plot-driven, at which point all the sudden the cloning process doesn't work because of the character's biology.
---

MGS1 was a simulation for Raiden in MGS2.
---

Nah.

MGS2 was never going to happen when they made MGS1, so in its own canon, it happened.

And the events of MGS1 really happened in the canon of 2 also. It's just unclear whether the version of the story given in 1 is the one that's actually canon to 2, or whether the one in that in-game book is, or whether they're both wrong. It's unclear which was the simulation Raiden did, if either. Hell, maybe it was even the TTS version.
---

Not dying a lot, but I want to mention Dragon's Dogma in two ways.

Firstly, as the Arisen you can summon pawns from rift stones to make up your party. As these aren't actually living people if they "die" they just return to the rift where you can go back and re-hire them again and again.

Secondly - and more plot related - is one of the game's "endings". The opening cutscene shows a portal forming in the sky above an ocean and a dragon emerges before flying towards your coastal village, taking your heart, and setting you off on your journey. If the Seneschal kills you at the end of the game, your character falls to the swirling, misty floor and starts to sink through it as a portal opens beneath them. A portal that looks down at an ocean. And then the opening cutscene plays again. Really drove home the whole cyclical nature of the story and gives the "true" ending a bit more impact.
---

The Souls series is definitely the biggest one that comes to mind.
---

Inevitable Undertale mention
---

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor? I guess, since Talion's spirit is bound to Mordor by Celebrimbor.
---

Just remembered, Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday. You're a time traveling ghost who possesses people, so you just 'jump' out of their bodies when they die.

DevsBro posted...

the TTS

The the (ATM machine)
---

Funkydog posted...

Planescape: Torment. You are an immortal trying to find out about yourself with a loss of your memory when you first awake. You can "die" but you wake up elsewhere after and continue on on your quest.

that's just the start of it

many puzzles require you to die in order to progress because they were created by your past selves

also the goal of the main quest is to regain the ability to die permanently since your immortality is a result of random other people dying in your place and it's killing the entire multiverse
---

if I used a computer, I'd definitely try out Torment.

maybe I'll try out Numenera, since it's on the PS4.
---

boxington posted...

if I used a computer, I'd definitely try out Torment.

maybe I'll try out Numenera, since it's on the PS4.

It's old, so unless you straight up don't own a computer you should be able to play it
---

Samaellives91 posted...

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor? I guess, since Talion's spirit is bound to Mordor by Celebrimbor.

Das a good one

One of the Orcs even mentions it
---

The the (ATM machine)

Interesting observation. I think because TTS is the (sub)title and also because it's abbreviated, it's appropriate in this context, using the title as a single adjective, to add "the".

Look at it this way:

If I were to say "I really like the red one" you would use "the" because it's grammatically correct. In the same way, you could swap in most titles while retaining the "the": "I really like the Back the the Future Delorean."

You would probably omit the second "the" if you were speaking the unabbreviated subtitle, by shortening the subtitle: "I really like the Twin Snakes version of the story." But since it's abbreviated as TTS, and this is the commonly accepted abbreviation, what you have if you did just one "the" is "I really like The Twin Snakes version. Which, if you swapped it out for another adjective is obviously wrong.
---

CapnMuffin posted...

The Borderlands games, kinda.

Explains why you and all the baddies come back. But does make a sort of plot hole when it comes to overall story and people being dead-dead for plot.

A planet full of immortals would explain quite a bit about Borderlands, but then plot-dead keeps happening.

DarthAragorn posted...

boxington posted...

if I used a computer, I'd definitely try out Torment.

maybe I'll try out Numenera, since it's on the PS4.

It's old, so unless you straight up don't own a computer you should be able to play it

thanks, I'll see what's up.
---

I wouldn't call it clever, but in SMT 4, when you die you meet Charon (ferry man of the river Styx, guards passage into the underworld, standard Greek myth reference). The first time you die, he gives you a mulligan and resurrects you. After that, you have to bribe him in order to avoid a game over. If the bribe costs more money than you have, you end up in debt to Charon until you pay him off. If you die while in debt, it's game over.

It's really just a safety net for noobs who don't save often. (The game has no checkpoints.)
---

Axiom Verge, for reasons I still don't understand.

UnfairRepresent posted...

Samaellives91 posted...

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor? I guess, since Talion's spirit is bound to Mordor by Celebrimbor.

Das a good one

One of the Orcs even mentions it

I like how they sometimes shittalk you the next time they see you after they kill you
---

Darkman124 posted...

Funkydog posted...

Planescape: Torment. You are an immortal trying to find out about yourself with a loss of your memory when you first awake. You can "die" but you wake up elsewhere after and continue on on your quest.

that's just the start of it

many puzzles require you to die in order to progress because they were created by your past selves

also the goal of the main quest is to regain the ability to die permanently since your immortality is a result of random other people dying in your place and it's killing the entire multiverse

Yuup. Didn't want to ruin too much of it though.
---

DarthAragorn posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

Samaellives91 posted...

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor? I guess, since Talion's spirit is bound to Mordor by Celebrimbor.

Das a good one

One of the Orcs even mentions it

I like how they sometimes shittalk you the next time they see you after they kill you

One of the Orcs (one of the comedic cowardly ones) when you're about to kill him and he is begging you off says something like "Come on human, give me a break, yeah I killed ya but you keep coming back so it's not like it matters" or something.

He has a point
---

DevsBro posted...

There are a lot of things I hate about Phantasy Star II one of the ones I hate most is the way that you can clone (revive) a specific party member as many times as you want until the death is plot-driven, at which point all the sudden the cloning process doesn't work because of the character's biology.

This was an interesting one. I always found it a little disturbing that the characters actually died but were revived as (presumably) separate clones. It could have easily been a translation error, though, since there was no mention of cloning tech in the later games.
---

Undertale does a great job of it towards the end of the game.
---

Questionmarktarius posted...

CapnMuffin posted...

The Borderlands games, kinda.

Explains why you and all the baddies come back. But does make a sort of plot hole when it comes to overall story and people being dead-dead for plot.

A planet full of immortals would explain quite a bit about Borderlands, but then plot-dead keeps happening.

Yeah, as much as I like the writing in Borderlands in terms of dialogue, it sure doesn't compromise with the game mechanics very well, try as it might.

Like, at least you can assume Phoenix Downs don't actually heal fatal stab wounds and just wake you up from a bad punch. In Borderlands it's straight-up respawning that doesn't work on this guy anymore because fuck you.
---

Nier: Automata.

Since you play as an android, you save your actual data at save points that double as manufacturing depots. When you die, the nearest "save point" reconstructs a new body with the data that you saved from your previous body.

Of course, after a certain point in the story, it doesn't make sense anymore and only still works because of gameplay convenience...I can't say why due to obvious spoilers.
---

This was an interesting one. I always found it a little disturbing that the characters actually died but were revived as (presumably) separate clones. It could have easily been a translation error, though, since there was no mention of cloning tech in the later games.

And in 3 they actually changed it so your characters "lose the will to fight" lol.

But you still have to go to the hug shop and pay to have then revived, lol.
---

Hellblade! I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned in here yet. When you die, it's really just your crazy mind going crazy cause you be a crazy bitch.
---

spanky1 posted...

Hellblade! I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned in here yet. When you die, it's really just your crazy mind going crazy cause you be a crazy bitch.

We said clever tho and that game sure aint
---