[Sone3D]

To die or not to die: that's the question. In Adventure Games.

[skeeter_93]

Yes, but.... only if there's an automatic second chance...

[Mohlin]

Absolutely NOT. That's why I play AGs.

You can not walk past a cliff and fall down and die. Characters you meet will not try to kill you. If you try to mix to kinds of chemicals it will not explode.
If I want to see dying, I'll watch the news...

[dekaneas297]

Of course not

[rayvio]

yes but only if it meets the following criteria
makes sense (example of not making sense: Legends of Kyrandia 1, just looking at the wrong hotspot would, in some cases, prove fatal)
preferably has an auto-save feature or an automatic undo
fits the story/genre - the chances of dying in Horror House Of Death Murder Mystery makes much more sense than in Cute Annoying Brat Investigates Who Stole The Crying Girls Teddy Bear (or to use a real example, dying in a sequence in Willy Beamish that upon successful completion turns out to just have been a dream... yet dying in it is game over)

[7h30n]

If pulled right, sure. But I do mainly play Adventure games casually without worrying about dying or doing things in time.

[aimless]

Sure, if you can try again. I always enjoyed Gabriel telling me he didn't want to be dead.

[kate me]

Yes, if it's resonable. I mean not too many times in one game.
But I do save often so, yes.

[Inwards]

Dying is unacceptable if it's a byproduct of lazy game design. Any game that forces to die multiple times to solve a puzzle (you know how to navigate the minefield now because you've stepped on all the mines already) just plain sucks. It's also stupid to design rooms that kill you the second you enter them without prior warning to the player. If I jump into a blast furnace then fine, but if I walk through the front door of a cottage and have an anvil fall on my head.... If you don't want the player to go somewhere, then make that area impassible or unavailable.

If a game requires that the player's character be psychic to finish it, it's time to rethink the design.

[stepurhan]

I think dying should appear in adventure games where it would be illogical for it not to. If a player deliberately takes a dangerous action then not killing the player for it blows the immersion in the story. So walking next to the piranha-infested pond shouldn't result in accidental slip and death but choosing to dive into the pond should. The middle ground is the player character refusing to do stupid actions ("there's no way I'm jumping in there!"). That still affects the immersion for me but not as badly as just ignoring the possibility of death entirely.

That said, any games featuring death should have an auto-save or restart death sequence option.

[DustCropper]

It depends completely on the game and the mood the designer is trying to create.

Gabriel Knight, for example, is a horror detective game involving murders and scary monsters, and the fact that the character can die (in appropriate situations) adds a great sense of tension to the experience.

It can also give the game more realism. Take the Last Express. I remember all over the train there were emergency pull-handles that you could pull if you wanted to, which would bring the train to a sudden halt. And, obviously, that would be the kind of prank that would get you kicked off a train and end your trip. So my first play though the Last Express, I never pulled those handles because I was too afraid. That really made me feel like I was on board an actual train, and that just like in real life, my actions have consequences.

I also liked how the Last Express auto-saved just before your death so you could go back and try again. Minimal frustration.

So I think if done correctly, the possibility of death can add quite a bit to an adventure game.

[SuperEdy]

Absolutely, dying in Space Quest was so funny Bargon Attack, on the other hand, is jam-packed with too many unavoidable death sequences Like any other feature, it should be implemented with intelligence and carefulness, trying to improve the experience, not to lengthen the game

[Jelena]

I prefer not.
I have played and enjoyed games where I've died and the game auto-saved etc (Gemini Rue is the latest example) but I much rather prefer not to die. Having to do such a stealth/shooting or timed sequence again and again and again (since I suck at said elements) is boring imo. I'm glad it's rare in adventure games.

[Kazmajik]

Yes, but let's be reasonable about it. In Gabriel Knight 1 you had the opportunity to die in a number of places, but they all made sense. If you died in a motorcycle accident because of something stupid or got hit by a car because you didn't push the signal button or something, that would be gratuitous. Many of the Sierra games went a little overboard on the fatal consequences of innocent actions, but I think they have a real purpose if done well. They add excitement and tension to the game. I remember playing Dark Fall and going in, knowing I could not die, made the game feel too safe, and not scary in the least. I say take off the training wheels!

[Fantasysci5]

I completely agree with Stepurhan 100%.

If the player purposefully does a dangerous action (so not accidentally walking off stairs *cough Kings Quest 3 cough*), then the possibility of death should be there. And there should be an auto-save, since if someone didn't they'd be up a creek and would probably quit the game rather than start over.

[aries323]

No. Just no.

I abselutely hated the funny ways of dying in the old King's Quest series. Suddenly you took a wrong turn, and - bam - you're dead. (not you, of course, but the character...)

Addendum:

No - only if and when it makes sense.

[diego]

I think it's just a choice for game designers, and even though we can all agree that not dying had become a default in adventure games, that doesn't mean dying can't be well incorporated but it demands clever thought-out game design.

That said, it's not the question whether there should be dying or not, but how well it is incorporated into the game. The Last Express wouldn't be the same game without dying but it also has a neat option to rewind automatically.That's good game design, and danger and dying actually help in adding to the general mood of the game.


But obviously, dying as a game element is typical for RPG and action games and not adventure games today (although King's Quest and many others at the time had it) and only minority of nowadays adventure games has dying in it.

So, to conclude it - if game designers do it right and convince me that dying is doing the gameplay justice, then i'm not against it.

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by stepurhan

The middle ground is the player character refusing to do stupid actions ("there's no way I'm jumping in there!"). That still affects the immersion for me but not as badly as just ignoring the possibility of death entirely.

That said, any games featuring death should have an auto-save or restart death sequence option.

The middle ground is what I want. Or the Monkey Island way (you know "Goodbye cruel adventure game! ... Nah forget it." or the whole Elaine interrupting Guybrush to say that he couldn't have died).

Originally Posted by Jelena

I prefer not.
I have played and enjoyed games where I've died and the game auto-saved etc (Gemini Rue is the latest example) but I much rather prefer not to die. Having to do such a stealth/shooting or timed sequence again and again and again (since I suck at said elements) is boring imo. I'm glad it's rare in adventure games.

Jelena speaks the Truth. The only time I can appreciate a death scene is that there's the chance of an instant replay despite you having saved or not.

Originally Posted by Kazmajik

Yes, but let's be reasonable about it. In Gabriel Knight 1 you had the opportunity to die in a number of places, but they all made sense.

I don't know, I seem to remember near the end there being the chance to die just by going into the wrong room, maybe doing just a little looking around there. That's never logical in my books (in an AG) unless it's clearly warned of beforehand.

I think that the whole point of AGs is the chance to take it easy, to think about the situation and look around etc. I don't think it eats immersion if you give the chance to have a looksie or try different things in a critical situation either (GK1 end comes to mind where I looked at something and then died), as these processes go through your mind in an instant in real life and you can't (or at least I certainly don't) think about an AG as happening real-time but rather as extremely slowed down when you have the chance to interact.

Like when you enter a room and you look at everything. If it takes that long for you to do that in real life then I don't think you're an adventure hero. All the looking happens in an instant, just like there's not really a 10 sec pause while you're thinking about what to say next (though S&M:S2 Ep.4 has a funny scene in that sense).

Ahem, where I was going with this is that if there is a death scene, a) you need to have an instant replay, b) it needs to be warned of beforehand and c) you must have the normal ways of interacting with the world (even if it is just "I don't have time!") as you would if there wasn't a critical situation at hand. Because sometimes it takes time to get a full grip of the situation and if you have just one action to do without fully knowing what's the deal then it's just stupid and unintuitive for an AG.

But it'd be much appreciated that there weren't a death scene at all. Besides, I always feel awful when an AG character dies...

So, I always prefer no death scenes. And if there still must be one, then see above.


P.S. On the other hand, I heard there's an interesting death scene (or rather the aforementioned instant replay option) in a Monty Python game...

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by UPtimist

I heard there's an interesting death scene (or rather the aforementioned instant replay option) in a Monty Python game...

Which Monty Python game that is?

[zane]

death scenes add a certain atmosphere you cant get otherwise. It makes it feel like your actions matter and you should fear the unknown. Its superficial of course, but it adds to the fun. There are wrong and annoying ways to put death scenes into a game, but then there are wrong ways to make anything in a game.
One of the best ways to do it is to have a very small number of deaths that can only occur at climactic moments in the story to wake the player up. But games where you can die left and right can be done well too.

Darkstar is one of the very few recently made games iv played which uses alotttt of deathscenes. If there was a button to push, you had to consider it might be part of a plot to kill you. If you suddenly heard a new narration starting by peter graves, you knew you had met a new death. And that is part of what made the game fun. Without the intensity and dark humor it wouldv been a kindv boring myst clone.

I think where developers get in trouble with death scenes is when they make them a part of timed mini-games. When theres a patrol who constantly is bumping into you and making you reload, or when theres poorly made reflex minigames that kill you if you dont balance your mouse clicks right. I think a timed scene or two can be okay especially at the end, but for the most part death scenes are better if they involve static actions.