PC Death too much of a player punch?

[aozgolo]

Okay, so I have a very basic idea for a game where let's say you play 2 separate protagonists, one being a bandit / Robin Hood style character, and another been a guard captain, basically 2 sides of the law, and you switch between them at various story intervals. At one point halfway or so through the game a crucial event occurs where a non-interactive cutscene shows one of the two characters dying (for real). The catch being that decisions you made earlier in the game decide the outcome of which character survives. There's no way for both to survive, one has to die, and the actions don't clearly hint at a possible demise (in most cases). An example would be as Guard Captain choosing whether or not to execute a criminal who might save their life later, or as a Bandit not stealing a knife from a guard who might later stab you with it.

This has been done a lot in media (think Game of Thrones) where a significant major character gets killed off, but I can't think of a game where this happens (without some way of avoiding or reversing it at least). In a RPG especially you not only can become invested in a character from a story perspective, but also a time investment. You will spend hours gaining levels, buying and finding gear, training your skills... to then make it where all of a sudden all those levels, all those skills, the whole inventory of that one character... GONE. It's jarring, it's like accidentally overwriting a savegame you spend a good 10 or more hours on.

What I am curious about is, how would you as a player react to this? I would expect throwing down of controllers, angry letters, even declarations of "I'm never playing this stupid game again"... but I wonder how many might come back... the ones who want to see it through and beat the game just to see what else the story has in store... and then start over and play again to get a different outcome, beat it with a different character, get a different ending. Is that being too optimistic?

Basically the question boils down to: How much emotional punishment is TOO much to put a player through?

 

[Cozzer]

Storywise, it would be a nice plot twist, as long as the decisions that lead to the death make at least some sense.

(And as long as both characters are likeable enough that the player would keep playing even if his favorite dies)

Gameplaywise, you need to make the time the player spent on the character be worth something.

You could have the other character find his best items at least, for example, but it really depends on which part of your gameplay is the most important.

(If the gameplay revolves around choices, you could make it so that the dead character's choices have an impact on the rest of the game. Like, he's dead but he managed to make an alliance with the RandomEvil tribe, so they won't hunt us when we pass through their forest.)

 

[arekpowalan]

The premise sounds good, but be careful with that plot, you may end up with a Gundam Seed Destiny or a Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn plot where both sides are questionable or not properly developped, especially if you mistakenly bias against any party or you have a rather large amount of cast that you can't develop throughly.

Killing off a character is not necessary a good thing if you can't handle it well. There are reasons why video games should not carelessly kill off characters even if they are plot-related reason. A player is more attached to RPG Characters than novel/movie ones since they play as them. Killing them off recklessly will

easily transform your story become a slaughter-party house if you don't have themes and events to back them up. If the story and characters' deathes are not properly dealt handled, eventually, the player will stop caring, as the settings and themes are so dark there's no point to celebrate whoever wins.

Gameplay-wise, no player in general like a PC being stripped away for little reasons. Since your aim is "both side can't survive together", this mean there is no possiblity that a player can maintain his characters, no matter what he do. Even with the best effort, both parties will be left with 50/50 ratio of memebers. This can discourage him from training characters as he know he would potentially lost them anyway. If you force the player into both scenario at times, and the player screws up, he will be forced to play one party full of members while he also have to solo a character with another. It would be a totally unbalanced experience.

On the other hand, please take Fire Emblem deathes as your examples. Deathes are permanent, but non of them affect the plot, only the gameplay and your senses of guilt are suffered because you are lack of units to play with, Deathes in this case appear optional, yet effective because you are likely to move carefully to win the game, not to pick a side and hope for the best.

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My suggestion is that you devided the game into two scenarios, each focuses on the respective party, and let a player play it toward the end. This would allow the player to pick different points of view to play, and is able to try his best not to lose anyone. Plus he may be able to understand each party's motives and reasons better than switching around.

 

[Kyutaru]

Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7 say hi.

 

[arekpowalan]

Crono's death in Chrono Trigger and Aerith's in FFVII, yes, but you have to remember, Crono is revivable, and Aerith's death became legendary partly because she's the only important playable character that dies, being the hero's love interest and world's savior and all.

Final Fantasy II has ways lot more deathes, but none of them is as impacting as Crono's or Aerith's. My points is that a player may stop caring who dies if there are too many body counts, or if they die for as little reasons as to open up character slots.

 

[Sharm]

. . .the actions don't clearly hint at a possible demise (in most cases).


This has been done a lot in media (think Game of Thrones) where a significant major character gets killed off, but I can't think of a game where this happens (without some way of avoiding or reversing it at least).

You keep the promises you make to your readers/players. It's writing 101. The way you make those promises is a little different in games than it is in books because when give player the option to control his world you are making a promise that he will have that control. This is why your cause and effect must be clear if you don't want your player to be angry. In a case where you don't have a clear cause and effect the player won't be mad at the story or the antagonist for killing your character, they will be mad at the game. You never want that to happen, it throws people out of the story.


You can still have PC deaths within that rule, in the case of Aeris and Crono you weren't given any choices that would allow those characters to live and there were foreshadowing elements that made it so when it happened you didn't get angry at the game. I was much angrier at FF5 when Exdeath killed Galuf. I knew it was coming (because I played it later than other gamers) and it still came out of nowhere, plus I lost all the stuff he had equipped. I quickly got bored of the story and stopped playing after that point.


A thing I think is important to keep in mind when planning for things like this; George R. R. Martin isn't a great writer because he boldly kills off anyone and everyone in his stories. He's a great writer because you know he's going to keep killing everyone you love and yet you still want to read and still are effected every time it happens. It's not the deaths that make it an emotional roller coaster, it's the characterizations and solid narrative. My point is, killing characters off is easy, making it work is hard. Make sure your writing ability can handle it.

 

[mlogan]

I think it could work, but as others have said you have to make it work well.

And yes, I would probably be royally upset at first. But then I would want to go back and play and try different scenarios - see what the outcome is with different decisions.

 

[Ksi]

I had the same decision to make in one of my own games (that never got completed. oh shock). Except it was two worlds that hung in the balance and one of 'em was gonna be destroyed. You, the player, made that choice at the end. You were tricked into visiting both, loving characters from both and exploring both, then you had to choose which you liked best. Didn't help that the choice also determined which of you main party died too - your brother or your (possible) lover.

I say if you can do it, do it. Make them love the characters then rip out their hearts. At least they'll have one of their loves left to play and it does add an element of replay value to the game if you want to go through and make different choices. But yeah, make them love both characters - there's nothing worse than having the character you like die and being left with the one you don't like (as many FF7 fans can attest to when it came to Aerith vs Tifa - personally I always liked Yuffie best, but that's just me~)

 

[aozgolo]

Thank you everyone for your input, I have other ideas for games I want to make that are rather ambitious in their "openness" so I wanted to come up with a game concept that was a little more story-driven but where I got to play around and experiment with the idea of multiple protagonists (not in the same party) where choice and consequences actually mattered, and figured it would be as good as any for a game to "start out" with since game length or world size was less important as the narrative itself.

Since I'm not really a publisher who has to worry about making profits, I still would like to go ahead with the idea and just kind of see what happens with the reaction.

To further elaborate I was actually planning to have 4 separately playable protagonists, of 2 opposing ideologies, primarily law vs. chaos and science vs. faith. So let's say a Guard Captain, Bandit, Monk, and Machinist. I was actually planning to only have 2 survive but you could still have some control over which ones did, which creates 6 possible pairings for the next act of the game:

Monk w/ Machinist

Monk w/ Bandit

Monk w/ Guard Captain

Bandit w/ Machinist

Bandit w/ Guard Captain

Guard Captain w/ Machinist

I was even considering possibly making it where you could even have only 1 character survive into the next act, leaving 4 more possibile second acts, and possibly a "suicide mission" type of mission where if you REALLY mess up you get a special game-over at the crucial event where nobody survives.

I then still want consequences to matter, as after all that players will still expect their actions to have impact on the story, not just to the halfway point. So I was considering a 3 ending per scenario deal where you could have a good, bad, and neutral ending for each protagonist pair up.

I may even go so far as to include a very secret and rigid method of having all 4 characters survive into the final act, but in a bit of twist not have a true "good ending" for that match-up, only neutral. So while you might be able to weasel your way into making everyone survive, it has bittersweet consequences in the long run.

So really I do want to ensure the player has choices in the game, but I feel many games that do this always have an option that frees you from the worst possible consequences. That's not necessarily a bad thing if that choice is harder to achieve than the others but I kind of like the moral dilemma you faced in say games like Skyrim where one faction requires you to kill the leader of a different faction to continue with their (admittedly short) questline, but the other faction leader gives you tangible rewards in the form of perks (Blades vs. Greybeards if you're wondering what I'm talking about.) I just want to experiment with a game where there is no escape from the consequences of your actions but you still have that choice.

 

[Sharm]

Of course you want consequences, otherwise there's no point in having choices.  And you can have horrible things happen that aren't directly obvious from the choice, but it should be obvious once the consequence has happened.  Surprising yet inevitable is what you should be going for.  Also, the horrible things will be more effective if you have some really great consequences too.  Changing pace and mood helps you from getting burned out on any one thing, giving each thing more impact.

 

[aozgolo]

Of course you want consequences, otherwise there's no point in having choices.  And you can have horrible things happen that aren't directly obvious from the choice, but it should be obvious once the consequence has happened.  Surprising yet inevitable is what you should be going for.  Also, the horrible things will be more effective if you have some really great consequences too.  Changing pace and mood helps you from getting burned out on any one thing, giving each thing more impact.

I guess what I'm getting at is I do want the consequences to be immediately evident based off your decisions like "Oh I died because I forgot to put sleeping powder in that guard's drink" but I want the it to be a retroactive experience, something where you don't automatically assume a bad consequence as a result of an action. I still want players to know which choices they made lead to that consequence so in future playthroughs they can try a different route instead of scratching their head wondering what went wrong.

At the same time I also am not going to say every consequence has to have a negative aspect to it. Something like donating money to a beggar might not be the difference between life or death later in the game, but it might open up that beggar giving you a tip on a powerful hidden item.

I definitely agree with your point, you have to have some good consequences to keep the player from being burnt too much to care, or too scared to invest in anything.

I think another aspect of my interest in this concept is I often see games with multiple endings based off your decisions but rarely do these decisions actively affect the game itself. I would rather see a game where a consequence of your action directly affects your play experience to the point that you have completely different experiences, even characters, based off how you play.

 

[Kyutaru]

You know there are also "bad endings" to those Japanese dating sims, and everything that follows their lead.  The player is actually EXPECTED to play the game over and over and over and over again to unlock all the different possible endings and learn what choices flag which outcomes.

Putting that into RPG form... Challenge!

 

[Sharm]

The reason you don't get these sorts of things in the middle of the game is that for every divergent point it can change the entire plot until you end up making the equivalent of multiple games with most of your content never being seen by players.  There are ways to avoid that of course, but it's either "make these choices not matter much" or "make a lot of different choices end up at the same place eventually".  There are huge discussions about this sort of thing in the VN making forums, it might be worth looking up.

 

[aozgolo]

The reason you don't get these sorts of things in the middle of the game is that for every divergent point it can change the entire plot until you end up making the equivalent of multiple games with most of your content never being seen by players.  There are ways to avoid that of course, but it's either "make these choices not matter much" or "make a lot of different choices end up at the same place eventually".  There are huge discussions about this sort of thing in the VN making forums, it might be worth looking up.

This is why I'm being very selective in how many outcomes there could be. With 4 characters and only 2 survivors that's 6 possible scenarios. with 3 endings per those 6 scenarios that's 18 different endings, but endings are easier to make. 6 Scenarios is certainly more work but it depends how you do it I guess. In the case of this game I am thinking of using the same world and areas for all 6 scenarios but with a uniquely different story take. Of course this is all as a game experiment, if I was to make it a much larger bigger game then yes that kind of thinking would be a much more difficult ordeal to get into because you'd essentially be making multiple games in one.

 

[Vassim74]

Player Punching should be fair, not cheap. Like Sharm have said before me, I'd be angry at the game rather than the villain/murderer if a character I was controlling was suddenly killed off without warning and for no real reason.

It should be noted that enough foreshadowing elements should always be given so that players aren't left with a bitter taste once the deed has been done. This way it isn't too frustrating to try and pinpoint where the player has went wrong when making another run through the game in the future. Some degree of writing skill is necessary to accomplish this though, so that when the time comes, it actually makes sense for them to die rather than having them killed just because the plot said so.