Am I Dead Again?

Death and dying have been an integral part of the gaming experience since the beginning. When you failed at a game, usually you pick yourself right back up and try again. Death is usually a big part of the gameplay or used to get you to put in more quarters and increase the length of play time. Today we try to fight back even if we can’t. (I’m probably going to spoil some games where the main character gets killed off. That’s the WARNING.)

Permadeath has been reintroduced to gaming lately in the form of rouge-lites like Rogue Legacy or Dark Souls. These deaths represent a mistake the player has made with the consequence of losing progress. It’s becoming a larger trend in more mainstream, big budgeted games to kill off the player as a plot point. When Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had you die in nuclear fallout it was an incredible scene that no one saw coming. Earlier in COD4 you took the role of a political prisoner who is executed, this was a compelling piece of storytelling that hadn’t been utilized in such a high profile title before. The wave it started is one that really bothers me.

Epic literature has a history of chronicling a hero’s life that usually ends in death. These stories are about a character that isn’t supposed to represent the player, they’re widely told biographies about an exceptional person’s life. I hate to break it to you, but in Killzone: Shadowfall the main character gets murdered with a handgun right when he finds out what is going on. This isn’t the most shocking event as the act is carried out by the commanding officer you’ve willingly disobeyed orders from; it isn’t even a shocking betrayal. It’s more shocking that the entire game you’ve been shrugging off bullet wound after bullet wound, I’d rather be left on a space station that’s exploding with no way out while fruitlessly running around in first person. The story in the latest Killzone game isn’t anywhere near epic in scope, the set up and universe is interesting but it’s still just a science fiction first person shooter.

Outlast is a survival horror game that also came out recently and was the latest release for Playstation Network’s Plus free software program for the PS4. Throughout the game you have no means to fight back and must run and hide from enemies al la Clock Tower. There’s little wrong with the actual gameplay but the atmosphere gets old and stops being creepy about an hour and a half in. So the daring investigative reporter stops the crazy experiments in the basement of the asylum only to get shot repeatedly by what looks like a private security corp. The main character’s death is an unfulfilling important plot point, but you know that he’s met a grim end and a possible fate worse than death.

There are many older games that kill off main characters, especially role playing games. Modern Warfare just seemed to have started the mass injection into the mainstream. That magical commanding officer betrayal handgun also appeared in Modern Warfare 2 and killed off two major characters; these games were like watching huge action movies that needed much better realized plot points. I’m sorry to have spoiled two recent releases but you weren’t playing those for story were you?

I wonder how long until we hit George R. R. Martin levels of character death.