Should the player be able to die and how should one manage that?

Game Development Writing and Content
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I’m going to be honest, I’m almost completely against the idea of the game ending prematurely because of death. If there’s a generous checkpoint system, I’ll manage, but if you have to restart the game and flip back through it every single time, I’m personally going to avoid that kind of title. When I was a kid, I actually read a couple choose your own adventure books where you have to flip the appropriate page. It was just a guessing game, really, to see if you find out which choice wouldn’t get you killed. Not a lot of fun looking back.

If the idea is “Well the choice made was so dumb it only makes sense that you die” I would suggest simply, not including said choice in the first place. If you think the decision’s so dumb, you might as well leave it out. Maybe replace it with a smarter option that could lead to some kind of success instead.

I’m fine with a character dying at the end of the game if there’s a narrative reason for it, instead of you dying for failing a stat check or something. The best example I can think of being Dragon Age: Origins where you can choose whether to sacrifice yourself at the end. That type of decision is fine with me because it’s a narrative one that happens at the end of the story, not something forced upon you for making a bad decision.

Now if the story’s more lighthearted and has some comedic elements, and you decide to include a couple of comedic deaths depending on what choice the MC makes. That’s fine by me. One example I can think of being from a game called Outer Worlds. At the end of the game, if your intelligence stat is too low you unlock a dialogue option labeled “stupid” where you can decide to input the ship’s coordinates manually. The ship’s AI will warn you that’s a bad idea, but if you insist, you can go through the idea, and end up launching your ship straight into a star.

That’s the type of premature death I’d be fine with. It gives you plenty of forewarning, a chance to back out, and is also clearly there for comedy.

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42

That sounds awesome!

43

I’ve landed on a return to scene x solution. After contemplating this and reading up on it, sounds like you can’t in state save naturally. I don’t like being able to save whenever, saw a very cool patch on a thread. And I’m not going to code my own, unless this is not as hard as i think it is. But going back to a scene presents its own issues, mostly with grinding stats or items, so there is that problem. If someone can lead me to a solution that doesn’t involve a downloaded patch I would jump on that hard. I’m really trying to stick inside the walls of the program. If you can save too often that also can be abused. I’m really looking for a check point i think

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44

Who cares? Let the people play as they want.

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45

I actually did that in Oedipus if you fail the riddle test. It didn’t have any permanent negative consequences from memory (and also knew if you’d died more than once), but you can choose to allow an entity to bring you back to life just before the events happen to provide a story line reason for popping back into existance. I’ve also allowed a hints system from the same being to help get people through to try and prevent it getting frustrating. (I know I’ve seen storyline based save points in other WIP’s too, not sure if in anything else published yet though? There’s definitely games with checkpoints though with is super handy for games with a lot of battles in particular.)

Each to their own, but I don’t mind checkpoint saves like this that prevent you needing to go back to square one, and having the ability to can increase the feeling of risk and needing to puzzle things out if there’s a challenge.

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46

I disagree. In many game (mostly horror) not being able to save whenever you want is actually part of the gameplay. In the old Alien’s games, the player (as the marines) had a limited stock of save (you had some manual save represented as Disk in the game, and they were rare, and the autosave at the beginning of each level…).
I have to play it again, but I think it was the same in Fatal Frame 3. You had a limited stock of save when you were in the dream manor.

Now, I think 0 save isn’t a good idea either. Checkpoint seem to be the most interesting choice for me.

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47

No. Limited saves just wastes people time and creates the wrong kind of tension. Not tension from the story( arguable if COG titles even have that), but from fear of loosing x amount of time. That’s why i advocate for every game having freely accessible save system built in and why i consider ChoiceScript inferior to others for lacking it out right.

Not to mention, i personally won’t re read a block of text, I’ll just click exact same choices that got me there and alter only the one that killed me.

Also some people just want to see what different choice do without “replaying”(skipping through) large amount of text. Or worse, if the game is stat based and choices aren’t clear and player picks wrong one and is sent back couple minutes back just to reread a portion of text without any meaningful reason.

48

In my opinion it can be okay to die but if you have to Play back from. The start… Well it just pisses me off so if you loose a fight and experience a cool death It’s and later they say it was a vision or something… Fine by me alternatively you can do it in (I call it Tinstar style) you can get a penalty that doesn’t bother you except no one will remember your hero if you died to often (that’s the best solution in my opinion because you not actually died but the Story other people tell about your MC differs and that’s why your Mc will be slowly forgotten)
In this way you have the tension of dead but Also no one spoils your experience

To sum it Up Perma death sucks

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49

You can die in Blood Money, as part of the climactic scenes - the easiest way to do so is by sacrificing yourself, I believe. I figured it was thematically appropriate for a game about ghosts! I made sure to have an indepth epilogue for those endings, so that it wouldn’t feel like an annoying “game over”; as with the living endings, you can explore what’s going on in the city, and in some cases interact with loved ones. I don’t know if many people get those endings, but I did enjoy writing them.

I wouldn’t be as interested in a death ending where it cuts off the rest of the game, though. It feels like it would just be frustrating. Basically what @SamsonJBodney says above - I’d prefer it to have a narrative reason and drive.

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50

MC dying in the ending is fine by me. I am against choosing a choice that isn’t aligned with a stat and having to “replay” the entire book/chapter just to get back to the exact same spot just to choose another option.

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51

I’m not sure if anyone mentioned this but in Way Walkers University at the end of the game the MC can actually die …but then can choose to return to their ‘unspecified damaged body’. It becomes a near-death experience, and there’s four different disabilities the MC can return with that continue to be a factor for the MC to deal with in the sequels.

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52

If I remember correctly, it’s actually very hard (but not impossible) not to die at the end of Way Walkers.

And then in Way Walkers 2, there’s a choice you can make that always results in your death, and that was done to keep the branches of the story within manageable limits.

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I wouldn’t say very hard, as it’s really about just making choices that will keep you alive… and that involves being less than heroic lol :sweat_smile:

And yeah, the sequel choice isn’t a great solution but it was all I could think of at the time-- and it will honestly be somewhat remedied with a patch once we sort the current recoding of 3 (later followed by the release of WWU3, freaking finally :upside_down_face:)

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54

Personally, it depends on the genre. For instance, I wouldn’t mind dying in a survival horror game. But I would prefer not to do so in something like Wayhaven Chronicles. That being said, if death is a possibility, I would really want save points regardless of the genre. Ultimately, it’s not a big deal to me either way and certainly not something that would factor in on my enjoyment of a game.

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55

Fair enough … maybe it’s more accurate to say dying is the easiest ending to get, at least all the times I played.

In a game with so many possibilities and subplots and so much going on, I definitely can’t fault you for reaching a point where you had to do something a little drastic to prune the branches. And it wasn’t an ending, I minded, when going the other way would have been totally inconsistent with the character I was playing. (My purer-than-Jun Angani-maximizing character would probably consider hanging out with Semryu a fate worse than death anyway! :joy:) I’m not at all opposed to expanding the possibilities, though, although I hope dying in that scene will remain an option. (I thought the post-death bits were brilliant. Heart-wrenching, but brilliant.)

Mostly I’m just glad that WWU3 is going to happen. For a long time I’d resigned myself to the idea that it never would, and I kept on playing it anyway, even without the prospect of a truly satisfactory ending to look forward to, just because I love your world so much.

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@AletheiaKnights It’ll likely stay an option for those that are very anti Sem, but I’m hoping to rectify it for the ones that were friends with sem but choose not to pursue the illyan plotline, and those that were “too red”. It’s certainly on the list.

And thank you. We’ve never stopped working on it to be honest, there’s just been a lot of life stuff and other projects (like the novels) that got in the way. (also, seriously sometimes I think WWU3 is mildly cursed, like omg) But the Halloween DLC came out last year, and hopefully if we don’t hit anymore delays we’ll have a shot at getting 3 out next year. :heart:

We’ve also got an expanded Halloween, a social DLC and a DLC for 3 we’re working on, plus an entirely new Way Walkers title. (Though these will unlikely have any death lol :sweat_smile:)

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57

squees in fangirl

Do you have a website where you sell the books? I would love to order autographed copies, if that’s possible.

Also, just out of curiosity - when do the books take place relative to the game?

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Just regular old Amazon or Barnes and Noble. I’ll DM you some links so we don’t hijack the conversation too much more :sweat_smile:

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59

Just about every single game ive ever played has limited saving. Have you ever died right before a checkpoint? Ahh it’s terrible but it happens. Even turn based games you can’t save anytime. They also incorporate “ wasted” time when you die. Ok but its not wasted time because you learned something about that scene/monster and that should help you succeed the next try, or get further. A world where you get it “right” the first time every time? Thats the true fantasy story there. There is no epic win without a little struggle. And as we all know every game has its exploits. And thats also part of gamming, working the rules. But denying the consequences of all choices… is that really fun? Sounds like the game “ I win”

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60

The thing about COG’s is that, they’re not like classic video games. While it’s annoying to die before a checkpoint and trek back through a level in say, a shooter game, it’s different from dying in a novel-like platform, due to the fact that you’re actually controlling your character, fighting enemies, etc.

In a COG, you just have to flip back through twenty pages until you get the choice you died at before and pick something different. There’s no real strategy behind it, as most will just pick whatever choice relates to their highest stat. And you can never guess how the author might have a decision backfire on you, so chances are logically thinking through the problem might also be a waste of time.

It’s the difference between losing a horse race, and losing a horse race you bet on. In the former, you’re a participant, in the latter, an observer. That’s why I’ve got to disagree with you on that.

But I think your comment is a good depiction of what I essentially see as two different mindsets, here on the COG forum. There’s people (like me) who view COG’s primarily as novels, where the focus isn’t on whether the hero wins or loses, but on their journey, the characters they meet, and the impact they have.

Meanwhile, there’s people who view COG’s more as games, and like challenges, tension, and so on. Neither are wrong, of course, but I think that’s why there’s always disagreements on topics like this. It’s a fundamental difference in how one views COG’s themselves.

This has been my ted-talk.

PS: I’m a save scummer and proud. :laughing:

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