Actions, of whatever type, should have consequences, good or bad. This is what happens when you refuse to pay the entrance fee in the village of Velegarn The group DOES NOT automatically recover at the end of combat.Įvery fight counts, every trap activated and every wound inflicted. In older classics like Wizardry and Might & Magic, most of the dialog is actually player driven rather than relying on characters, so it’s not too much of a problem if some of the characters end up being cadavers. In other games, like Dragon Age Origins, all of the characters are healed or revived instantly after every combat encounter, so the problem with what to do if a character dies is completely avoided. What happens when they are supposed to participate in dialog or story? Some games, like Baldur’s Gate, allow party members to contribute to the story from beyond the grave without it being a big problem. Those who lived will always remember their loyal fallen comrades.Īnother aspect of games that has never made a lot of sense is the allowance of dead party members to remain in the game. They fought valiantly and in the end perished victoriously without ever being resurrected. If I’m at the very end of the game and some of the characters have died, then there’s no problem, that’s simply the way their stories ended in the adventure for me. The only exception to this rule for me has been in the final boss battles of the games. If in combat, or through some accident, a member of my party died, I have always reloaded the game and re-played everything up to the point of the death (I have played like this from Might and Magic 1 all the way to Baldur’s Gate). Do these things make sense in a world where anyone can simply be resurrected? How can a king, with all his power and wealth, be permanently dead when the characters in your party just need to stop by the local apothecary to pick up a potion or a spell to revive their fallen companions? This is too much of a discontinuity for my tastes.Īpplying this principal to my own playing style in RPGs, I can proudly state that I never allowed a member of my party to die and be resurrected. Many times the main conflict in the story revolves around events like assassinated kings, revenge for the killing of a loved one or a quest to end the reign of some terrible sorcerer or monster. In RPGs, the issue becomes even more absurd. If anything that happens can be easily undone or changed, then where is the danger? Where is the suspense? For me, time travel can also have a similar effect of removing tension. Otherwise, the player is left with the feeling that “nothing matters and there is nothing to worry about, not even death”. I think that, no matter how fantastic the setting might be, there are certain things that should be unalterable. Personally, I have never been a fan of resurrection, not in games, or books. Can unconscious or dead characters be healed or resurrected? Are there consequences?.Is the game over when one character dies, they all die, or simply when the protagonist dies?.Can the characters die? How about the main character?. However, in RPGs where the player controls a group of characters, the outcome is not so obvious: It’s clear that in RPGs, as well as in other genres, that when the player is represented by just one character and that character dies in the game, there is only one possible outcome “GAME OVER”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |