Adventure Forums - View Single Post - To die or not to die: that's the question. In Adventure games

Datadog · 02-06-2012, 07:57 PM

If killing off your character is appropriate to the game, then I don't mind death. It makes things fun. But of course, this is a "Yes, but..." post.

Monkey Island might hold the biggest case against in-game death. In "Tales of Monkey Island",

Spoiler:
Guybrush dies and the adventure continues. Had this been a series where Guybrush died frequently, the shock of seeing him die let alone finally seeing the pirate afterlife would have been lost on us. Not like "Space Quest" where we've become desensitized to Roger getting disemboweled.

So, in a way, if a game deprives us of being sadists, it's also opening itself up to a lot of narrative possibilities.

I should also mention that making death sequences is very time-consuming in development. If you're going to extremes to make sure your character dies every possible way, then that's less time spent developing game-play and puzzles (i.e. "Jurassic Park" extended their release date by several months just so they could fill their game with death sequences.) The advantage of having a semi-intelligent ego character is that their sense of self-preservation does add to the realism of the game when they refuse to blindly walk off a cliff.

02-06-2012, 07:57 PM	#66
Datadog Member Join Date: Dec 2011 Posts: 48	If killing off your character is appropriate to the game, then I don't mind death. It makes things fun. But of course, this is a "Yes, but..." post. Monkey Island might hold the biggest case against in-game death. In "Tales of Monkey Island", Spoiler: Guybrush dies and the adventure continues. Had this been a series where Guybrush died frequently, the shock of seeing him die let alone finally seeing the pirate afterlife would have been lost on us. Not like "Space Quest" where we've become desensitized to Roger getting disemboweled. So, in a way, if a game deprives us of being sadists, it's also opening itself up to a lot of narrative possibilities. I should also mention that making death sequences is very time-consuming in development. If you're going to extremes to make sure your character dies every possible way, then that's less time spent developing game-play and puzzles (i.e. "Jurassic Park" extended their release date by several months just so they could fill their game with death sequences.) The advantage of having a semi-intelligent ego character is that their sense of self-preservation does add to the realism of the game when they refuse to blindly walk off a cliff.