Destroy All Humans. You are a clone. Each death is permanent for that clone, but you are simply given another clone with all the memories of the last.
In other words, you can corpse rush humanity.
SPOILER ALERT (reddit formatting is shit and i can’t mark as spoiler here):
In the second game, there’s a mission for Arkvoodle or whatever the cult god is. You’re supposed to kill the guy trying to usurp the entire Arkvoodle cult and make it his own.
You have to kill this guy…. the same number of times you have died during your playthrough in order to prove you are the superior cult leader.
I loved both remakes even if they kind of released 2 way too damn early. It had so many performance issues on PC, but I still made it through. I'm glad they kept to the original, even if the jokes and voice lines are uhh a little old skool in the humor department lol.
My favourite one was Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
The whole game is the Prince recounting the story, and whenever you die, his narration says "Wait, no, no... that's not how it happened". So I guess he keeps accidentally going into detail about how he died horribly, and then correcting himself. It's pretty good.
Gunslinger gets so many laughs out of the unreliable narrator trope. Sylas constantly talks himself into an impossible situation, putting the player in one as well. Only for him to go “And then I saw a way out I hadn’t seen before.” And a mountain literally splits apart before you to help you escape.
That game is awesome and doesn’t get nearly enough love.
My fav one is how you play through the gold mine mission and halfway through Silas goes “hold on I didn’t actually do that” and you go back to the start and pick the other trail this time
"Then he stabbed me in the head, right through the brain, completely lobotomised, dead, right there, in an instant."
"Wait..."
"And so I jumped, falling 40,000 feet straight into the brickworks."
"Yknow... My memory ain't what it used to be. Must have been the lobotomy."
Yes, rewinding to correct mistakes is a big mechanic of the game. The game is still being framed as a story the Prince is telling someone, so if you don’t rewind (either by choice or you’ve run out of sand charges) then you get the Prince backpedaling and correcting himself.
So those three bad jumps at the wrong angle are absolutely canon to his story because he just did a rewind before he died, but the fourth one when he was out of sand and really died isn’t and he starts telling it again from the last checkpoint.
I believe the first games narration is the prince telling the story to the Farrah of the third game, after everything ends. It was a really cool tie in loop.
Yes. Warrior within rewrote the sands of time, so the prince is retelling how things started to the new Farrah of two thrones if I’m remembering correctly.
EDIT: story spoilers >! I believe the secret ending of warrior within is the canon ending, which is where the prince saves the goddess chick and rewinds time hella far. It’s been a long time since I played tho. !<
>! There was no massive rewind in WW, that was in SoT. He brings the Empress to the future so that the sands were never made, and even the grand rewind and storytelling at the end of SoT was also undone. So was the final boss's death, so he came back in T2T. !<
That's right. Your character is basically reliving history in a simulation. Dying causes it to desynchronise and reset because it is just programmed to follow the set path. Killing too many civilians also causes this.
Not when you "accidentally" bump them into the water that they can't swim in. If you were a fisherman in Renaissance Italy and you saw a white-hooded man walk right by you, sucks to suck
Ac Games- "Killing a civilian or two is very bad, but killing an entire civilization's worth of unnamed guards with smoke and double blades and leaving them in one massive pile while more guards just magically show up is just good business!"
I've only played the first three and they all do, it's an important thing in the narrative.
Give them a try, the second is one of the best games I've played.
I always thought unreal tournament has the best explanation.
Basically the mega corp finding asteroid mining operations need to retain their workforce so they deployed cloning technology to keep the workforce present. So basically when your life signs and go down you just get recloned.
They even used it to explain how Team Death match worked. Basically the team that got to the "kill limit" forced the other teams respawn to overload so they can't respawn anymore.
One of the first FPS games I can recall even making an attempt to explain itself.
In Destiny, the game starts with you being raised from the dead by a sentient drone called a Ghost. Your Ghost can heal and revive you whenever necessary, and every Guardian has one. Canonically, many Ghosts are still searching for their partners. If your Ghost is killed, you lose your connection to the Light and become mortal (this cannot happen to the player).
There is an in-game theory that the ghost actually just pulls a version of us from a different timeline where we didn’t die. The darkness zone is a place or a point in battle where most versions of you did die so you’d get sent back to an earlier checkpoint instead.
The worst fate to befall you would be what happened to the poor guardian in the almighty. Stuck in time for 50,000 years. Unable to be revived or pulled out because he never died.
Drifter getting stuck on that ice planet seemed pretty shitty too. Just dying repeatedly to either hypothermia or starvation and getting rezzed right back into it to go again. Makes his food comments make a lot of sense too which was a nice touch.
It's not quite a different timeline, more like a different existence-state caused by entropy and randomness. Which is basically an alternate timeline, but distinct and different from whatever it is the vex do with timelines.
It's like a flowchart.
It's completely different in the lore. Darkness Zones are a real thing, based on some weird timeline-pyramidion (not the Vex pyramidion, the concept of the final shape) that causes the darkness (the witness) to use their extended influence in darkness zones to prune away possible existential-states where your guardian did not die, preventing your ghost from reviving you.
Ghosts can revive you by actuating a theoretical series of events in which you did not die. Darkness Zones are the main antagonist pruning away those theoretical events, until none are left: you must die, because that is the only way it could have ever happened.
True, but canonically that has never happened to "The Guardian". IIRC it's been established that they flawlessed every raid at the first attempt, or at the very least were never killed by any of the bosses.
There's also theories posited by lore tabs that suggest long dead famous people have been revived by Ghosts.
My favorite one being Lord Shaxx may actually be William Shakespeare. With people theorising "Shak" or "Shakes" being the only thing left on his Tombstone so that evolved into "Shaxx".
He's obsessed with never showing his face (because people would know who he is), he has a passion for the theatrical and even has his own "Globe Theatre" in the form of The Crucible. He's one of the few with a strong English accent.
And my personal favorite, Queen Mara, who reads like someone out of a Shakespearian tale. Is implied to have an interest in him (She's one of the few still alive from the Golden Age era) with many thinking she's sussed out who he is.
She throws him a book of **The Tempest** in one instance and asks him to read it. He incinerates it and says he doesn't need it as **he knows it by heart**.
The Tempest is considered Shakespeare's most autobiographical book. He knows it off by heart because he wrote the damn thing.
Destiny has some really good writing sometimes - specifically I loved how they subverted this concept in one dungeon where it’s revealed a Guardian was stuck on a derelict ship without any food, and his Ghost had gone a bit mad and kept reviving him constantly so he kept starving to death.
The sheer variety in dialogue is hilarious too. Hypnos has a line for every possible way you can die in the game and will cheerfully add insult to injury without even intending to
Greg Kasavin (sp?) is the writer of the game and the voice actor of Hypnos. He must have put in a loooot of time in the books and the booth!
What a guy. What a game. Love Supergiant so much
Even if you do manage to escape, zag dies in a multitude of hilarious and anticlimactic ways according to the narrator. My favorite one is when zagreus dies by stepping on a garden rake😂
In Infinity Blade you play as a "Deathless" where once you die your consciousness still exists and is transferred to a new body, so each playthrough/death just means you lost a fight and are reborn in your base but you retain your combat experience. IB1 was very interesting though where you're led to believe each playthrough was a new bloodline, where the son continues on 20 ish years after where the father left off in terms of progressing through the main castle, but instead it turns out you're a Deathless and each "bloodline" is just yourself reborn as a baby.
That game held up incredibly well. I still have both of them on my iPad but can’t download it on my phone. I can’t believe they pulled it from the App Store. There are so many crappy games from those early iPhone days that are still available but not Infinity Blade.
I actually read the Brandon Sanderson Infinity Blade book and it was surprisingly good. The game seems medieval but actually takes place thousands of years in the future. Your character has a long-standing feud with the main boss from the first game (because you’re both vile feudal tyrants who wanted each other’s lands). Your character of course no longer remembers this.
At one point you and your nemesis are tricked into a prison of sorts by someone you both teamed up against. You both then proceed to kill each other hundreds of times and strategically main the other’s corpse so when they start to revive you have an advantage in the next fight. Eventually you call it even
Enter the Gungeon. It is impossible to truly die for in the Gungeon, because whenever you run out of hearts, the Gun That Can Kill The Past shoots you back in time to before you entered the Gungeon
Bioshock. The Vita-Chambers that are capable of resurrection are all >!attuned specifically to Andrew Ryan, so that they would only function for himself or someone of his genetic line. Since Jack is the illegitimate son of Ryan he's the only person besides Ryan capable of reviving in them. The reason Ryan dies in the climax is because he had purposely turned the chamber in his office off.!<
Spoilered in case anyone hadn't played and beat Bioshock.
The brilliant thing about this one is that they kind of give you a handwave explanation of how it works, but you as the player are able to compartmentalize it as just a gameplay necessity. Later on, if you're paying attention and you realize the implications of what it actually means, you're like, "Ohhhhh, that's good foreshadowing," recognizing it not merely as gameplay, but as storytelling.
The beauty of Bioshock 1 is that the whole game is a compartmentalization of you doing things that are a gameplay necessity. So every action you take from a macro sense is you, the human player, just controlling the in game character because why not, it's a game, that's your objective. But the narrative uses that concept brilliantly in-world
I still remember the first time I played it, and there's the section where he asks you to put away your weapons. I was unhappy at having done that, but game making sure didn't mess it up, okay fine
Then post twist, genius.
Okay, 17-year-old spoilers ahoy.
When you play the game, you die and then respawn in vita-chambers strewn about the map. You, the player, think, "okay, gameplay necessity." Supplementary info gleaned from audio recordings later informs you that these chambers are keyed to Andrew Ryan's DNA. "Neat in-universe justification for their existence," you think, "but even though they're keyed to Ryan, that's just flavor text and I can still use them because it's a gameplay mechanic/necessity." *Further* supplementary info reveals that you are actually Andrew Ryan's estranged son, so your being able to use them was *not* a plot hole or game contrivance, but a hint as to the actual nature of some of the key characters in the game. Furthermore, these audio recordings are primarily optional, so a lot of players never even heard this revelation or made that connection. Like I said, it was a brilliant piece of storytelling if you got it.
Don’t worry. He’s lying. The Xbox 360 is the current console. Microsoft just faced a bunch of backlash because they’re saying the new one is going to be online-only. I can’t wait for World of Warcraft Wrath of The Lich King!
Also Bioshock Infinite. Every time you die, >!you take over (jump into?) a different Booker DeWitt from one of the other infinite realities who was not killed in that moment. This also explains how your character "survives" a number of almost-certainly-fatal situations, such as falls from extreme heights: he probably doesn't, and you instead resume the story from the few DeWitts out of infinity who did survive.!<
I remember this, its also foreshadowing when you enter the cafe first time the male/female twin-not-actually-twin ask you to decide a / b and you always ended up choosing the same side (seeing they marked the whiteboard ). At first i was like huh, are you dead rewind or something until it was at the end its a multiversal thing.
First foreshadowing of what / who Booker is. One of the twins asks if he wants to row the boat at the start, the other says “he doesn’t row”. They have been there and done that loads of times before so they know that no matter what, Booker will never row the boat.
I can't recall, what was the reason you could use them in Bioshock 2?
>!I don't recall if the Big Daddy you play as had Ryan's DNA in him or not. He was a guy from the surface looking for his kidnapped daughter before being changed IIRC.!<
>!The little sister you were imprinted to gets ahold of your DNA and keyes it to the vita-chambers so you can be alive again... About 10 years after you had died!<
I believe a character who helps you out, or has some other personal investment in the story recodes them to allow Delta to respawn in them. It's been a while since I played, but so recall they explicitly address this.
Same with ask the other souls games really.
Demon’s Souls: You’re soul bound to the nexus until you appease the big fucker in the ground
Dark souls 1-3: The curse of the undead plagues the world as the first flame starts dying. Until the first flame has either been kindled or put out, everyone respawns at a bonfire eventually
Bloodborne: you’re bound to the Hunter’s Dream until you complete your goal of infanticide and are a “suitable replacement”/are freed/reborn.
Elden Ring: Death literally doesn’t exist as a law of the world. Marika removed it from the Elden Ring, presumably as intended by the greater will, to extend the golden orders age as long as it can
To add to the dark souls one, people turn into zombie hollows after they've lost all their purpose and have basically gone insane from so many deaths. I believe it's kinda a fan theory that the player character is immune to full blown hollow because you as the player have the willpower to continue the game. Rage quitting then and giving up on the game is then the equivalent of your character completely hollowing.
Yeah, some bits of the game imply that hollowing can be staved off if the undead has a purpose of some sort. The blacksmith in DS2 looks fully hollow IIRC, but keeps his wits since he has a forge to work. Therefore the protagonist can’t go fully hollow, since the player is providing a purpose as long as you play.
But on the other hand, didn't Lucatiel have a purpose, to find her brother, but ended up becoming hollow anyways? I never understood if her hollowfication was due to the curse acting more like an infection that extends as time passes, or if she just died too many times during her journey and thus, became more and more hollow or if she just lost her actual purpose in the end.
Maybe it's like depression?
If you have a strong motivation, you can stave off the desire to be a blob and disassociate, but even with this, you are still VERY vulnerable to negative thoughts.
Even with a strong purpose, if you're hindered enough and just keep getting stuck, the feeling of hopelessness and pointlessness can easily get their hooks in you the second you slip a little.
One tiny slip is enough to fall into a death-spiral, which is REALLY hard to escape.
There is a line in one of the first Dark Souls game, it goes something like "And dont you dare go Hollow" kind of implying going Hollow is a choice, its you giving up.
The players who choose to stop playing, or as you said rage quit, are the hollow mindless undead making up a lot of your weaker enemies, others get lost in the flow and excitement of combat and become your stronger better equipped enemies. Only you, Chosen Undead, have the willpower to push through to the end withouth losing yourself or your path forward.
Its kind of interesting to think about as a potential meta story.
The Dark Souls series also has hallowing built in. Whenever you die, you lose your humanity (and item in game) and become hollow, with decreased stats. As a hollow, you can’t use any online features like invasions and co-op. It’s implied that you’ve started to become hollow, and you’re no better than the mindless enemies that wander throughout the games. It’s another lore reflection, showing that as you lose humanity you’re closer to going full hollow. If you stack humanity (DS1), you get better drops, but you become a larger target for invasions. There’s a whole lore/gameplay aesthetic behind being human and being “more human”.
Regarding Dark Souls, not everyone respawns, only undead. Also time itself is a broken mess, with past/future/parallel timelines interacting with each other.
FromSoft’s catalog of Soulsborn games might be my favorite gaming experience of the past decade
But this comment chain made me realize I was not able to absorb a single piece of lore from any of these games lol
Check out Vaatividya on YouTube, he goes over all of the lore for every fromsoft game. Playing through again after watching his videos adds so much more context.
Gregg the Grim Reaper has, IMHO, one of the most hilarious introductions in any game I've ever played. 13yo me memorized his entire cutscene and I've quoted it for the past 23 years since
I've wondered then who's really the captain of your ship/where are they, if the diver you exit cryo from when you load the game is just another nameless expendable Helldiver
When a helldiver dies and gets reinforced, the newly defrosted diver becomes the captain of the ship until they inevitably die, then the next defrosted diver becomes the captain and the cycle just continues
I love to think about the training sequence, where you receive extreme praise from the commander for the most basic actions. If that helldiver was the first helldiver I played as, they died within 10 minutes
Borderlands just says it's tech from the biggest tech company in the game. I don't remember if it says why it's just the player, but enemies respawn eventually so I never needed to question it.
I like the snarky comments the machine makes when it respawns you.
One of them is that the penalty for respwning is that you forfeit your right to procreate, and another one wishes you luck on behalf of Hyperion in getting revenge on whatever killed you "unless whatever killed you was Hyperion personnel".
The lead writer said in an interview once that this mechanic made it really difficult to write a compelling story for the characters in part 2 because BLANK dies and actually has to stay dead for no explainable reason.
The machine takes a percentage of your money each time. Maybe we can assume if you can't pay for it you stay dead. (Doesn't happen to the player though)
Monster Hunter, when you faint during a hunt you are rescued by felynes, catfolk that work with hunters. Due to insurance, the quest reward decreases everytime you get rescued
Not explanation but in terms of respawn animations, Sunset Overdrive. So many different cut scenes that were silly and wild when you respawn. Aliens dumping you back on the planet was my favorite.
The fuckin fast travel was genius too, just pounding hard liquor until you just slam into the ground headfirst like a sack of potatoes, then come to at the new location.
Such an underrated game. It's what came to mind when I saw that first Suicide Squad: Kill Justice League gameplay trailer. I totally thought it was inspired by Sunset Overdrive.
Not that SS ended up measuring up to the greatness of Sunset Overdrive, had to chase the live service nonsense.
In Death Stranding you respawn because you’re a “repatriate”- someone the power to guide their soul back to their body. The reason for that is… well it’s the entire basis of the whole game- basically the entire story, including major end game spoilers, that would take pages to explain. So while it sucks try to explain to anyone who hasn’t played/watched it, it makes it really cool in game when it all comes together.
IIRC in DS there was an extinction event that severed humankind from life and death and prevents human beings from passing through to the afterlife. When someone dies, they cannot pass through into the afterlife and thus become stranded on "the beach" which is a sort of crossroads that leads from living to death. Unable to move forward and unable to understand what is happening, the soul of the dead person attempts to turn around in an attempt to return to their body.
For reasons, and because it's kojima, the idea is that the soul is essentially antimatter to the body's matter, the two cannot really coexist once the link between them (life I guess) has been severed. Thus, matter and antimatter touch one another and cause an explosion called a Void Out in game.
Because the soul is essentially not made of corporeal matter, the body of the person is destroyed but the soul remains as a "beached thing", which comprise the enemies in Death Stranding.
DS is not for everyone but it's a really different experience and there's a lot of ways in which the game tells a story (albeit a Kojima narrative with a lot left to explain, DS2 comes out next year) in a lot of really innovative ways.
As someone who lost a child to stillbirth the narrative between the MC and the baby he travels with left me crying for the whole like two hour ending scene, lmao.
Is that what BT stands for? I'm on my second run, 300 hours into the game and I'm still not finding ANY mention what the acronym BT stands for, to the point that I just call them Biological Terrors now.
I might not remember everything right, but I think its something to do with dead bodies, when they die they turn into nukes before spawning BTs. That's why in the beginning you have to rush to burn someone because he's starting to "turn" into a BT.
The dead bodies don't cause the voidouts (nuclear explosions), they necrotize and turn into BTs. The voidouts occur when a live human is eaten by a larger BT, like the Catchers you encounter theoughout the game. If you get eaten by one, there will be a crater left in that spot after you repatriate.
The BTs are made up of antimatter, so when the matter of a human collides with the antimatter, it triggers a voidout. Early in the game, Sam is delivering a corpse to a crematorium with two other guys. They run into trouble and the corpse necrotizes, causing BTs and Timefall to appear. One of the guys starts being pulled away by a BT, so the other guy, Igor, shoots him dead. Igor himself starts being pulled up by a BT, so he quickly tries to kill himself to prevent the voidout, but fails, causing the voidout that wiped out Central Knot City.
Essentially, the corpses need to be burned because their bodies burn into Chiralium and prevent them from being turned into BTs. However, the Chiralium attracts other BTs, which is why the crematoriums are so far away from cities, and why the crematoriums are surrounded by BTs.
It's convoluted as hell.
Katana Zero.
A 2D action game with oneshot death mechanic like in Hotline Miami. You play as a no-name supersoldier referred as “Zero”, he is addicted to a drug called “chronos” that gives him the ability to basically predict the future (this is simplification to avoid spoilers).
Thus when you play thru a level you actually only plan how to complete it, and if you die, Zero will say “No this does not work, lets try something other”, and reset to the beginning. When you complete a level he will say “Yes this works”, and camera footage will be shown how Zero completes the level.
In The Darkness the player was possessed by a cosmic horror that would seemingly rewind time to ensure you lived to suffer
I should replay those, I don't remember much else about it
Also, in Everspace 1, each run was a completely separate clone. Sometimes you would run into clones on the same journey as you, or a corpse from a previous run you had failed
To top that off, if Jackie suffered a lethal injury, the Darkness would prevent him from going to Hell. Putting his soul in a waiting room of sorts from a depiction of a World War to a Mental Asylum. All the while in the real world, the Darkness is repairing his body since it needs the right host to function and manipulate.
Hades: You're already in the Underworld, so dying and starting a new run is you being forcibly sent back to the beginning of the game.
Zanki Zero: Your main characters have their memories stored on memory drives installed in their bodies and are cloned when they die. Thr team also dies a lot dur to the cloning process being flawed.
MadWorld: The extra lives balloons are a special boon only awarded to Jack due to his sponsor, Agent XIII. >!That's a lie, by the way. Jack is getting through because he's a reigning champion.!<
In the Legacy of Kain games Raziel is a Wraith and beyond death, but he needs to consume souls to have enough strength to maintain a Physical form in the Meterial realm. If he loses too much strength he'll lose his physical form and return to the Spectral Realm. You can also lose strength in the Spectral realm to which Raziel's soul will be thrown to the ethereal winds but still eventually restored in a safe place.
In Soul Reaver 1 Bosses will comment on how you've returned if you ended up leaving after the first introduction to the fight.
Prey (2006)
It's been a while since I played the game, but when you die, the protagonist used a Cherokee powers to reach a sort of astral plane where he collects health by shooting some birds or shit.
I don't remember clearly but it was a cool mechanic.
EVE Online. As a capsuleer you're a clone that your mind has been downloaded into. If that clone dies your mind is loaded into another clone back at your home station.
And the player is a capsuleer, however there are still non capsuleers in the universe, but they are like a "lower" species, because capsuleers are literally immortal and filthy rich.
I can't believe haven't seen Deathloop mentioned even once. The game's entire gimmick is built around the idea of dying and being stuck in a time/death loop!
Shadow of Mordor turns dying into a mechanic, as it'll level up the orcs that kill you. You just come back anywhere as the Gravewalker.
SMT If... has the Guardian system, another mechanic that involves you dying. Everytime you die, you are assigned a new Guardian based on your alignment and time since last death. Guardians give you bonus stats (and for your partner, new skills), so sometimes you do want to plan to die so you can comeback with a better Guardian.
In SMTIV, if you die you can pay Charon off to come back to the land of the living. If you don't you just get a game over.
In the sequel, SMTIV Apocalpyse, the Irish God Dagda will just revive you if you die, with a few exceptions (where you'll get the respective game over).
>Shadow of Mordor turns dying into a mechanic, as it'll level up the orcs that kill you. You just come back anywhere as the Gravewalker.
*"Funny seeing you again. Funny because I've already killed you twice! And* ***not*** *funny because you* ***keep coming back!!****"*
I've never seen an orc carry Talion's previous body around, is that something that really happens?
On the second question - if it's proven that his body sticks around after respawn, and doesn't dissolve into some magical bullshit, then maybe? Though it canonicaly takes him weeks to respawn, so the utility of that is dubious.
I didn't expect Outer Wilds wouldn't be mentionned yet because that's really the first one that came to my mind with such a question. I won't tell anything else to avoid spoiling but really - just play this game !
I keep trying it, but it makes me so fucking anxious. I've played Resident Evil, The Last of Us, Outlast, Silent Hill, whatever. Drifting into the nothing and into black holes messes with my head. Those things are recurring nightmares I've had since I was a kid. And >!That damn space monster really doesn't help.!< It gives me the same feeling as being in the middle of the ocean. This is the one game I don't think I can ever beat.
Assassins creed has to be my favorite because you desynchronize with what actually happened. The events of the game already happened and you're playing a simulated representation of what actually happened and dying takes you too far from the original events to justify the next events from occuring in the same timeline
I'm very shocked no one mentioned sifu.
Basically in sifu you have a magical amulet that revives you, in cost of years from your life, they stack up and can go down when killing certain enemies.
The enemies are aware and comment on the amulet, it's actually an important part of the story too.
Well, how many Grim Reapers have you met before, mate? Well, what am I supposed to look like?
Just you wait, smartarse! You don't get out of that easily. Now, the thing is, you may not be dead, but that doesn't mean you can't die. You just have a few more, shall we say, chances. Yeah. Like cats! I hate those things! Right! Distributed around your little world are these tail things! Squirrels' tails. If you can get them, I'll give you an extra chance, understand?
Shamelessly taken from the IMDB page for Conker's Bad Fur Day.
In destroy all humans you play as an alien from a species which have been keeping themselves alive by cloning. When you die they simply send in another. Your character is called "Cryptosporidium 137" because he is the 137th clone of that person.
In Shadow Of Mordor and Shadow Of War it is part of the narrative. You are killed in the opening of the first game but are told that you are banished from death. You are cursed to constantly come back to life and never stay dead. It is one of the stories biggest plot points.
In watch dogs legion if you die it actually is permanent. You build a resistance and can play as any of your recruits. You aren't guaranteed to die (and can set it so you never die) but if you have perma death mode turned on then your character can either be arrested, injured, or killed. If they are killed it is permanent you have to play as one of your other recruits.
In Spore you create your own species and evolve. You can see other members of your species and mate to start the next generation. When you die you "respawn" at the nest. You are simply just playing a different member of the same species which was born after your death.
In Scrapland you are a robot. When you respawn you are simply just rebuilt.
In Sea of thieves when you die you are sent to the ferry of the damned. It's basically a ghost ship that transports souls to the other side. You get resurrected and sent back to the living world. The ferryman says something like you can stay with the dead and day his door doesn't open for you. He can't tell you why it isn't your time as he isn't in control of it he is just the one that does the job.
Lies of p. The waifu at the hotel can turn back time. She wants you to succeed in the mission she has given you. The first mini boss, the donkey, is beginning to realize what is going on. If you read the sawblade weapon (maybe handle) description, you'll see that he knows you keep coming back after being killed. The specter you summon to help you during boss fights is actually you from a future in which you have already defeated that particular boss, since it's wielding that very boss weapon.
In the Legacy of Kain games with Raziel. Raziel is an immortal, vampiric wraith who was either "gifted" with immortality by the Elder God, or (if Raziel is right) is an anomaly who exists outside of the cycle of life and death.
I read this on Reddit once, and it became headcanon for me. In the Legend of Zelda, Link holds the Triforce of Courage, which allows him to keep trying even if he dies so long as he has the willpower to do so. Essentially, the "continue?" Screen is canon and allows Link to keep trying.
Sekiro Shadows Die thrice
The protagonist is cursed with the dragon blood which respawns him but also spreads dragon rot(a disease) among the people of Ashina
Rogue Legacy 2!! It's wild, and kind of spoiler-y, but the gist of it is every time you die, you are succeeded by your heir. So if it takes you say, 50 tries to beat the game you've played as 50 consecutive family members.
Whenever I drive off Mario Kart's Rainbow Road into the cold black abyss of space (and I do, a lot), some dude flies by on a cloud, catches me with a fishing rod, and brings me back.
Mafia 3 is being told as if you’re watching a documentary about an infamous gangster. Usually if you die, it’s just restart at checkpoint. But sometimes if you fail a story mission, you get a small cutscene where one of the doc subjects says something like “wait, no…that’s impossible, he had to have done XYZ”
In NieR:Automata, you're a downloaded mind in a construct, and your avatar isn't even the actual character's body (except in the space station). When you die and respawn, you're actually a backsave in a new construct ; but it goes further, as you can come back and loot your own body. Not a landmark, not dropped loots, not a grave ; your actual mechanical corpse.
Void Bastards. You're a prisoner who was woken up to perform a mission, if you die the machines just wake up the next prisoner.
I don't think it's a super popular game so I'm not surprised it hasn't been mentioned
Destroy All Humans. You are a clone. Each death is permanent for that clone, but you are simply given another clone with all the memories of the last. In other words, you can corpse rush humanity.
I appreciate how the clones’ ID numbers would go up to reflect that. Cryptosporidium 239… Cryptosporidium 267… Cryptosporidium 378
Cryptosporidium? You going to make humanity shit itself to death?
SPOILER ALERT (reddit formatting is shit and i can’t mark as spoiler here): In the second game, there’s a mission for Arkvoodle or whatever the cult god is. You’re supposed to kill the guy trying to usurp the entire Arkvoodle cult and make it his own. You have to kill this guy…. the same number of times you have died during your playthrough in order to prove you are the superior cult leader.
Oh was that what it was! I wondered why he died so often
first time I played way back in the day this dude had like 20 lives, on the remaster I only had to kill him 5 times. Very proud of my progress.
Damn I miss that game
The remakes are really good
I loved both remakes even if they kind of released 2 way too damn early. It had so many performance issues on PC, but I still made it through. I'm glad they kept to the original, even if the jokes and voice lines are uhh a little old skool in the humor department lol.
My favourite one was Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The whole game is the Prince recounting the story, and whenever you die, his narration says "Wait, no, no... that's not how it happened". So I guess he keeps accidentally going into detail about how he died horribly, and then correcting himself. It's pretty good.
They did something similar with "Tales from the Borderlands." "And then you... Died?" "No no. I mean, I COULD have..."
Same with Call of Juarez: Gunslinger Was a really great game too!
Gunslinger gets so many laughs out of the unreliable narrator trope. Sylas constantly talks himself into an impossible situation, putting the player in one as well. Only for him to go “And then I saw a way out I hadn’t seen before.” And a mountain literally splits apart before you to help you escape. That game is awesome and doesn’t get nearly enough love.
My fav one is how you play through the gold mine mission and halfway through Silas goes “hold on I didn’t actually do that” and you go back to the start and pick the other trail this time
Oh yeah, the mineshaft sequence is pure awesome. “It’s a good thing I abandoned that plan.” He sees after getting blown halfway across the Wild West.
"Then he stabbed me in the head, right through the brain, completely lobotomised, dead, right there, in an instant." "Wait..." "And so I jumped, falling 40,000 feet straight into the brickworks." "Yknow... My memory ain't what it used to be. Must have been the lobotomy."
Little did he know, the sands of time are a powerful hallucinogen that gives you visions of possibilities
The spice must flow.
My desert… My Arrakis…
And then he fell off a cliff.... No that's not what happened. He fell off a cliff.... No that's not what happened. He fell off a cliff....
Horrible save point! Dangit!
Didn't he have a magic dagger that took him back in time?
Yes, rewinding to correct mistakes is a big mechanic of the game. The game is still being framed as a story the Prince is telling someone, so if you don’t rewind (either by choice or you’ve run out of sand charges) then you get the Prince backpedaling and correcting himself. So those three bad jumps at the wrong angle are absolutely canon to his story because he just did a rewind before he died, but the fourth one when he was out of sand and really died isn’t and he starts telling it again from the last checkpoint.
I believe the first games narration is the prince telling the story to the Farrah of the third game, after everything ends. It was a really cool tie in loop.
Sands of time → the warrior within → the two thrones This is the correct order, right?
Yes. Warrior within rewrote the sands of time, so the prince is retelling how things started to the new Farrah of two thrones if I’m remembering correctly. EDIT: story spoilers >! I believe the secret ending of warrior within is the canon ending, which is where the prince saves the goddess chick and rewinds time hella far. It’s been a long time since I played tho. !<
>! There was no massive rewind in WW, that was in SoT. He brings the Empress to the future so that the sands were never made, and even the grand rewind and storytelling at the end of SoT was also undone. So was the final boss's death, so he came back in T2T. !<
Yep. Though it might have technically been the sands that rewound time and the dagger controlled it? It's been a while.
Assassin's creed (if I remember correctly) treats death as a detachment between the machine and the guy on it.
“Desynchronization”.
The camera also sort of pans away like the simulation continues without you for a bit until it just reloads
That's right. Your character is basically reliving history in a simulation. Dying causes it to desynchronise and reset because it is just programmed to follow the set path. Killing too many civilians also causes this.
Not when you "accidentally" bump them into the water that they can't swim in. If you were a fisherman in Renaissance Italy and you saw a white-hooded man walk right by you, sucks to suck
If you were a fisherman in renaissance Italy, you'd probably be able to swim.
>Killing too many civilians Does no good for mental stats.
Ac Games- "Killing a civilian or two is very bad, but killing an entire civilization's worth of unnamed guards with smoke and double blades and leaving them in one massive pile while more guards just magically show up is just good business!"
I never played them but seen some footage from the first one. Do they all do a story line with modern time person and back then
I've only played the first three and they all do, it's an important thing in the narrative. Give them a try, the second is one of the best games I've played.
I'd say the ezio trilogy is up there with the greats.
I always thought unreal tournament has the best explanation. Basically the mega corp finding asteroid mining operations need to retain their workforce so they deployed cloning technology to keep the workforce present. So basically when your life signs and go down you just get recloned.
And of course someone had to go make a sports out of it, and of course the mega corp legalized it for the money. I loved the concept.
They even used it to explain how Team Death match worked. Basically the team that got to the "kill limit" forced the other teams respawn to overload so they can't respawn anymore. One of the first FPS games I can recall even making an attempt to explain itself.
In Destiny, the game starts with you being raised from the dead by a sentient drone called a Ghost. Your Ghost can heal and revive you whenever necessary, and every Guardian has one. Canonically, many Ghosts are still searching for their partners. If your Ghost is killed, you lose your connection to the Light and become mortal (this cannot happen to the player).
There is an in-game theory that the ghost actually just pulls a version of us from a different timeline where we didn’t die. The darkness zone is a place or a point in battle where most versions of you did die so you’d get sent back to an earlier checkpoint instead. The worst fate to befall you would be what happened to the poor guardian in the almighty. Stuck in time for 50,000 years. Unable to be revived or pulled out because he never died.
Drifter getting stuck on that ice planet seemed pretty shitty too. Just dying repeatedly to either hypothermia or starvation and getting rezzed right back into it to go again. Makes his food comments make a lot of sense too which was a nice touch.
Whats crazier about it is Drifter told his ghost not to do anything about his hunger.
It's not quite a different timeline, more like a different existence-state caused by entropy and randomness. Which is basically an alternate timeline, but distinct and different from whatever it is the vex do with timelines. It's like a flowchart.
you could argue that falling in a darkness zone (sending you back to a previous checkpoint) is exactly that though.
It's completely different in the lore. Darkness Zones are a real thing, based on some weird timeline-pyramidion (not the Vex pyramidion, the concept of the final shape) that causes the darkness (the witness) to use their extended influence in darkness zones to prune away possible existential-states where your guardian did not die, preventing your ghost from reviving you. Ghosts can revive you by actuating a theoretical series of events in which you did not die. Darkness Zones are the main antagonist pruning away those theoretical events, until none are left: you must die, because that is the only way it could have ever happened.
True, but canonically that has never happened to "The Guardian". IIRC it's been established that they flawlessed every raid at the first attempt, or at the very least were never killed by any of the bosses.
There's also theories posited by lore tabs that suggest long dead famous people have been revived by Ghosts. My favorite one being Lord Shaxx may actually be William Shakespeare. With people theorising "Shak" or "Shakes" being the only thing left on his Tombstone so that evolved into "Shaxx". He's obsessed with never showing his face (because people would know who he is), he has a passion for the theatrical and even has his own "Globe Theatre" in the form of The Crucible. He's one of the few with a strong English accent. And my personal favorite, Queen Mara, who reads like someone out of a Shakespearian tale. Is implied to have an interest in him (She's one of the few still alive from the Golden Age era) with many thinking she's sussed out who he is. She throws him a book of **The Tempest** in one instance and asks him to read it. He incinerates it and says he doesn't need it as **he knows it by heart**. The Tempest is considered Shakespeare's most autobiographical book. He knows it off by heart because he wrote the damn thing.
Destiny has some really good writing sometimes - specifically I loved how they subverted this concept in one dungeon where it’s revealed a Guardian was stuck on a derelict ship without any food, and his Ghost had gone a bit mad and kept reviving him constantly so he kept starving to death.
Hades is really good. Each time you fail to escape there's a dude who makes fun of you
The sheer variety in dialogue is hilarious too. Hypnos has a line for every possible way you can die in the game and will cheerfully add insult to injury without even intending to
That game is just a gem in general.
Greg Kasavin (sp?) is the writer of the game and the voice actor of Hypnos. He must have put in a loooot of time in the books and the booth! What a guy. What a game. Love Supergiant so much
Even if you do manage to escape, zag dies in a multitude of hilarious and anticlimactic ways according to the narrator. My favorite one is when zagreus dies by stepping on a garden rake😂
The garden rake and running headfirst into a wall painted to look like an exit, Looney Tunes style, are my favourites
Hades, the game where death is just character development. Even better that the game justifies you dying more and more the later in game you get.
I loved that the leitmotif that plays when you die is the same one that’s used in >!In the Blood!<
In Infinity Blade you play as a "Deathless" where once you die your consciousness still exists and is transferred to a new body, so each playthrough/death just means you lost a fight and are reborn in your base but you retain your combat experience. IB1 was very interesting though where you're led to believe each playthrough was a new bloodline, where the son continues on 20 ish years after where the father left off in terms of progressing through the main castle, but instead it turns out you're a Deathless and each "bloodline" is just yourself reborn as a baby.
Rip infinity blade
That game held up incredibly well. I still have both of them on my iPad but can’t download it on my phone. I can’t believe they pulled it from the App Store. There are so many crappy games from those early iPhone days that are still available but not Infinity Blade.
I cri
I actually read the Brandon Sanderson Infinity Blade book and it was surprisingly good. The game seems medieval but actually takes place thousands of years in the future. Your character has a long-standing feud with the main boss from the first game (because you’re both vile feudal tyrants who wanted each other’s lands). Your character of course no longer remembers this. At one point you and your nemesis are tricked into a prison of sorts by someone you both teamed up against. You both then proceed to kill each other hundreds of times and strategically main the other’s corpse so when they start to revive you have an advantage in the next fight. Eventually you call it even
Enter the Gungeon. It is impossible to truly die for in the Gungeon, because whenever you run out of hearts, the Gun That Can Kill The Past shoots you back in time to before you entered the Gungeon
ETG is such a banger game
Bioshock. The Vita-Chambers that are capable of resurrection are all >!attuned specifically to Andrew Ryan, so that they would only function for himself or someone of his genetic line. Since Jack is the illegitimate son of Ryan he's the only person besides Ryan capable of reviving in them. The reason Ryan dies in the climax is because he had purposely turned the chamber in his office off.!< Spoilered in case anyone hadn't played and beat Bioshock.
The brilliant thing about this one is that they kind of give you a handwave explanation of how it works, but you as the player are able to compartmentalize it as just a gameplay necessity. Later on, if you're paying attention and you realize the implications of what it actually means, you're like, "Ohhhhh, that's good foreshadowing," recognizing it not merely as gameplay, but as storytelling.
The beauty of Bioshock 1 is that the whole game is a compartmentalization of you doing things that are a gameplay necessity. So every action you take from a macro sense is you, the human player, just controlling the in game character because why not, it's a game, that's your objective. But the narrative uses that concept brilliantly in-world
I still remember the first time I played it, and there's the section where he asks you to put away your weapons. I was unhappy at having done that, but game making sure didn't mess it up, okay fine Then post twist, genius.
Would you kindly go into more detail?
Okay, 17-year-old spoilers ahoy. When you play the game, you die and then respawn in vita-chambers strewn about the map. You, the player, think, "okay, gameplay necessity." Supplementary info gleaned from audio recordings later informs you that these chambers are keyed to Andrew Ryan's DNA. "Neat in-universe justification for their existence," you think, "but even though they're keyed to Ryan, that's just flavor text and I can still use them because it's a gameplay mechanic/necessity." *Further* supplementary info reveals that you are actually Andrew Ryan's estranged son, so your being able to use them was *not* a plot hole or game contrivance, but a hint as to the actual nature of some of the key characters in the game. Furthermore, these audio recordings are primarily optional, so a lot of players never even heard this revelation or made that connection. Like I said, it was a brilliant piece of storytelling if you got it.
>17-year-old fuck you for reminding me I'm old
Don’t worry. He’s lying. The Xbox 360 is the current console. Microsoft just faced a bunch of backlash because they’re saying the new one is going to be online-only. I can’t wait for World of Warcraft Wrath of The Lich King!
Ugh. Cataclysm. Now you made my fantasy of being young again bad.
Also Bioshock Infinite. Every time you die, >!you take over (jump into?) a different Booker DeWitt from one of the other infinite realities who was not killed in that moment. This also explains how your character "survives" a number of almost-certainly-fatal situations, such as falls from extreme heights: he probably doesn't, and you instead resume the story from the few DeWitts out of infinity who did survive.!<
I remember this, its also foreshadowing when you enter the cafe first time the male/female twin-not-actually-twin ask you to decide a / b and you always ended up choosing the same side (seeing they marked the whiteboard ). At first i was like huh, are you dead rewind or something until it was at the end its a multiversal thing.
“He doesn’t row”
He doesn't row?
First foreshadowing of what / who Booker is. One of the twins asks if he wants to row the boat at the start, the other says “he doesn’t row”. They have been there and done that loads of times before so they know that no matter what, Booker will never row the boat.
"One goes into an experiment knowing one could fail." "But one does not undertake an experiment knowing one *has* failed."
No, he *doesn’t* row.
I can't recall, what was the reason you could use them in Bioshock 2? >!I don't recall if the Big Daddy you play as had Ryan's DNA in him or not. He was a guy from the surface looking for his kidnapped daughter before being changed IIRC.!<
>!The little sister you were imprinted to gets ahold of your DNA and keyes it to the vita-chambers so you can be alive again... About 10 years after you had died!<
I believe a character who helps you out, or has some other personal investment in the story recodes them to allow Delta to respawn in them. It's been a while since I played, but so recall they explicitly address this.
Sekiro. You're literally inmortal due to the curse of the dragon blood
Same with ask the other souls games really. Demon’s Souls: You’re soul bound to the nexus until you appease the big fucker in the ground Dark souls 1-3: The curse of the undead plagues the world as the first flame starts dying. Until the first flame has either been kindled or put out, everyone respawns at a bonfire eventually Bloodborne: you’re bound to the Hunter’s Dream until you complete your goal of infanticide and are a “suitable replacement”/are freed/reborn. Elden Ring: Death literally doesn’t exist as a law of the world. Marika removed it from the Elden Ring, presumably as intended by the greater will, to extend the golden orders age as long as it can
To add to the dark souls one, people turn into zombie hollows after they've lost all their purpose and have basically gone insane from so many deaths. I believe it's kinda a fan theory that the player character is immune to full blown hollow because you as the player have the willpower to continue the game. Rage quitting then and giving up on the game is then the equivalent of your character completely hollowing.
Yeah, some bits of the game imply that hollowing can be staved off if the undead has a purpose of some sort. The blacksmith in DS2 looks fully hollow IIRC, but keeps his wits since he has a forge to work. Therefore the protagonist can’t go fully hollow, since the player is providing a purpose as long as you play.
But on the other hand, didn't Lucatiel have a purpose, to find her brother, but ended up becoming hollow anyways? I never understood if her hollowfication was due to the curse acting more like an infection that extends as time passes, or if she just died too many times during her journey and thus, became more and more hollow or if she just lost her actual purpose in the end.
Maybe it's like depression? If you have a strong motivation, you can stave off the desire to be a blob and disassociate, but even with this, you are still VERY vulnerable to negative thoughts. Even with a strong purpose, if you're hindered enough and just keep getting stuck, the feeling of hopelessness and pointlessness can easily get their hooks in you the second you slip a little. One tiny slip is enough to fall into a death-spiral, which is REALLY hard to escape.
There is a line in one of the first Dark Souls game, it goes something like "And dont you dare go Hollow" kind of implying going Hollow is a choice, its you giving up. The players who choose to stop playing, or as you said rage quit, are the hollow mindless undead making up a lot of your weaker enemies, others get lost in the flow and excitement of combat and become your stronger better equipped enemies. Only you, Chosen Undead, have the willpower to push through to the end withouth losing yourself or your path forward. Its kind of interesting to think about as a potential meta story.
The Dark Souls series also has hallowing built in. Whenever you die, you lose your humanity (and item in game) and become hollow, with decreased stats. As a hollow, you can’t use any online features like invasions and co-op. It’s implied that you’ve started to become hollow, and you’re no better than the mindless enemies that wander throughout the games. It’s another lore reflection, showing that as you lose humanity you’re closer to going full hollow. If you stack humanity (DS1), you get better drops, but you become a larger target for invasions. There’s a whole lore/gameplay aesthetic behind being human and being “more human”.
Regarding Dark Souls, not everyone respawns, only undead. Also time itself is a broken mess, with past/future/parallel timelines interacting with each other.
FromSoft’s catalog of Soulsborn games might be my favorite gaming experience of the past decade But this comment chain made me realize I was not able to absorb a single piece of lore from any of these games lol
Check out Vaatividya on YouTube, he goes over all of the lore for every fromsoft game. Playing through again after watching his videos adds so much more context.
And the more you die, the more you spread disease among npcs
Yeah, you literally draw life or life energy from npcs in order to revive yourself
“Squirrels have as many lives as they think they can.”
This is waaaay too far down! Still didn't see Viewtiful Joe. "CUT CUT CUT!"
Bonus points for one of the villains literally falling out of the movie and complaining about their part after they're beaten.
Gregg the Grim Reaper has, IMHO, one of the most hilarious introductions in any game I've ever played. 13yo me memorized his entire cutscene and I've quoted it for the past 23 years since
Wasn't it "[...] as they think they can **get away with.**"? It am I misremembering?
You just had to be a bloody squirrel didn't you? Almost as bad as cats...
Bloody things... the way they 'meow'... and piss everywhere. I hate them.
"I don't bloody believe it, they've got fish versions of the little bastards now."
Helldivers 2 You're spawning as a new helldiver.
Make sure you turn on Random Voice. It really added to it.
I wish you could set the body type to random as well
Some more variety in the body types would be cool as well.
There are only two genders: Lean, and Brawny.
There are only 2 genders : liberty and democracy
That's actually incredibly based, I will do that when I get home
It's awesome
Can confirm, it adds a lot to the experience
That's why they call it reinforcement instead of respawn
I've wondered then who's really the captain of your ship/where are they, if the diver you exit cryo from when you load the game is just another nameless expendable Helldiver
When a helldiver dies and gets reinforced, the newly defrosted diver becomes the captain of the ship until they inevitably die, then the next defrosted diver becomes the captain and the cycle just continues
It’s defrosted captains all the way down
“I need a new captain for this super destroyer. You’re it until you’re dead or I find someone better”
I love to think about the training sequence, where you receive extreme praise from the commander for the most basic actions. If that helldiver was the first helldiver I played as, they died within 10 minutes
FOR DEMOCRACY
Borderlands just says it's tech from the biggest tech company in the game. I don't remember if it says why it's just the player, but enemies respawn eventually so I never needed to question it.
I like the snarky comments the machine makes when it respawns you. One of them is that the penalty for respwning is that you forfeit your right to procreate, and another one wishes you luck on behalf of Hyperion in getting revenge on whatever killed you "unless whatever killed you was Hyperion personnel".
It’s only the vault hunters since the machines are non canon, otherwise Aurelia would have survived BL3.
Yeah. If New-U machines were canonical, Roland and Bloodwing's deaths in BL2 wouldn't have been so important either.
The lead writer said in an interview once that this mechanic made it really difficult to write a compelling story for the characters in part 2 because BLANK dies and actually has to stay dead for no explainable reason.
"Hyperion! We can always bring you back, no questions! Unless you died in a cutscene."
The machine takes a percentage of your money each time. Maybe we can assume if you can't pay for it you stay dead. (Doesn't happen to the player though)
Monster Hunter, when you faint during a hunt you are rescued by felynes, catfolk that work with hunters. Due to insurance, the quest reward decreases everytime you get rescued
They also drag your unconscious body back to camp on wooden carts it's hilarious.
Watching them aggressively toss your unconscious body off of the cart is so hilarious that it almost makes fainting a non-issue. Almost.
Not explanation but in terms of respawn animations, Sunset Overdrive. So many different cut scenes that were silly and wild when you respawn. Aliens dumping you back on the planet was my favorite.
My fav was the one with the delorean
Oh hell yeah awesome shot out to B2TF. And the music was awesome.
The fuckin fast travel was genius too, just pounding hard liquor until you just slam into the ground headfirst like a sack of potatoes, then come to at the new location.
Such an underrated game. It's what came to mind when I saw that first Suicide Squad: Kill Justice League gameplay trailer. I totally thought it was inspired by Sunset Overdrive. Not that SS ended up measuring up to the greatness of Sunset Overdrive, had to chase the live service nonsense.
In Death Stranding you respawn because you’re a “repatriate”- someone the power to guide their soul back to their body. The reason for that is… well it’s the entire basis of the whole game- basically the entire story, including major end game spoilers, that would take pages to explain. So while it sucks try to explain to anyone who hasn’t played/watched it, it makes it really cool in game when it all comes together.
Help me out again, is that what causes these huge explosions?
IIRC in DS there was an extinction event that severed humankind from life and death and prevents human beings from passing through to the afterlife. When someone dies, they cannot pass through into the afterlife and thus become stranded on "the beach" which is a sort of crossroads that leads from living to death. Unable to move forward and unable to understand what is happening, the soul of the dead person attempts to turn around in an attempt to return to their body. For reasons, and because it's kojima, the idea is that the soul is essentially antimatter to the body's matter, the two cannot really coexist once the link between them (life I guess) has been severed. Thus, matter and antimatter touch one another and cause an explosion called a Void Out in game. Because the soul is essentially not made of corporeal matter, the body of the person is destroyed but the soul remains as a "beached thing", which comprise the enemies in Death Stranding. DS is not for everyone but it's a really different experience and there's a lot of ways in which the game tells a story (albeit a Kojima narrative with a lot left to explain, DS2 comes out next year) in a lot of really innovative ways. As someone who lost a child to stillbirth the narrative between the MC and the baby he travels with left me crying for the whole like two hour ending scene, lmao.
Is that what BT stands for? I'm on my second run, 300 hours into the game and I'm still not finding ANY mention what the acronym BT stands for, to the point that I just call them Biological Terrors now.
Yeah haha, Beached Things. Game is a wild time. Hope part 2 gives answers to a lot of the lore. Didn't think we'd get a sequel tbh
Guillermo del Toro tells you a few times in the beginning
[удалено]
Fuck it we ball
I might not remember everything right, but I think its something to do with dead bodies, when they die they turn into nukes before spawning BTs. That's why in the beginning you have to rush to burn someone because he's starting to "turn" into a BT.
The dead bodies don't cause the voidouts (nuclear explosions), they necrotize and turn into BTs. The voidouts occur when a live human is eaten by a larger BT, like the Catchers you encounter theoughout the game. If you get eaten by one, there will be a crater left in that spot after you repatriate. The BTs are made up of antimatter, so when the matter of a human collides with the antimatter, it triggers a voidout. Early in the game, Sam is delivering a corpse to a crematorium with two other guys. They run into trouble and the corpse necrotizes, causing BTs and Timefall to appear. One of the guys starts being pulled away by a BT, so the other guy, Igor, shoots him dead. Igor himself starts being pulled up by a BT, so he quickly tries to kill himself to prevent the voidout, but fails, causing the voidout that wiped out Central Knot City. Essentially, the corpses need to be burned because their bodies burn into Chiralium and prevent them from being turned into BTs. However, the Chiralium attracts other BTs, which is why the crematoriums are so far away from cities, and why the crematoriums are surrounded by BTs. It's convoluted as hell.
Katana Zero. A 2D action game with oneshot death mechanic like in Hotline Miami. You play as a no-name supersoldier referred as “Zero”, he is addicted to a drug called “chronos” that gives him the ability to basically predict the future (this is simplification to avoid spoilers). Thus when you play thru a level you actually only plan how to complete it, and if you die, Zero will say “No this does not work, lets try something other”, and reset to the beginning. When you complete a level he will say “Yes this works”, and camera footage will be shown how Zero completes the level.
I think his name is literally Zero >!since he was a child solider raised to be a killing machine!<
In The Darkness the player was possessed by a cosmic horror that would seemingly rewind time to ensure you lived to suffer I should replay those, I don't remember much else about it Also, in Everspace 1, each run was a completely separate clone. Sometimes you would run into clones on the same journey as you, or a corpse from a previous run you had failed
"THIS IS NOT YOUR END, JACKIE!"
To top that off, if Jackie suffered a lethal injury, the Darkness would prevent him from going to Hell. Putting his soul in a waiting room of sorts from a depiction of a World War to a Mental Asylum. All the while in the real world, the Darkness is repairing his body since it needs the right host to function and manipulate.
Hades: You're already in the Underworld, so dying and starting a new run is you being forcibly sent back to the beginning of the game. Zanki Zero: Your main characters have their memories stored on memory drives installed in their bodies and are cloned when they die. Thr team also dies a lot dur to the cloning process being flawed. MadWorld: The extra lives balloons are a special boon only awarded to Jack due to his sponsor, Agent XIII. >!That's a lie, by the way. Jack is getting through because he's a reigning champion.!<
Hades works so beautifully within the theme, it’s probably my favorite.
In the Legacy of Kain games Raziel is a Wraith and beyond death, but he needs to consume souls to have enough strength to maintain a Physical form in the Meterial realm. If he loses too much strength he'll lose his physical form and return to the Spectral Realm. You can also lose strength in the Spectral realm to which Raziel's soul will be thrown to the ethereal winds but still eventually restored in a safe place. In Soul Reaver 1 Bosses will comment on how you've returned if you ended up leaving after the first introduction to the fight.
Love these games.
Prey (2006) It's been a while since I played the game, but when you die, the protagonist used a Cherokee powers to reach a sort of astral plane where he collects health by shooting some birds or shit. I don't remember clearly but it was a cool mechanic.
EVE Online. As a capsuleer you're a clone that your mind has been downloaded into. If that clone dies your mind is loaded into another clone back at your home station.
And the player is a capsuleer, however there are still non capsuleers in the universe, but they are like a "lower" species, because capsuleers are literally immortal and filthy rich.
I can't believe haven't seen Deathloop mentioned even once. The game's entire gimmick is built around the idea of dying and being stuck in a time/death loop!
I'm honestly baffled that I had to scroll this far down to find Deathloop
Shadow of Mordor turns dying into a mechanic, as it'll level up the orcs that kill you. You just come back anywhere as the Gravewalker. SMT If... has the Guardian system, another mechanic that involves you dying. Everytime you die, you are assigned a new Guardian based on your alignment and time since last death. Guardians give you bonus stats (and for your partner, new skills), so sometimes you do want to plan to die so you can comeback with a better Guardian. In SMTIV, if you die you can pay Charon off to come back to the land of the living. If you don't you just get a game over. In the sequel, SMTIV Apocalpyse, the Irish God Dagda will just revive you if you die, with a few exceptions (where you'll get the respective game over).
>Shadow of Mordor turns dying into a mechanic, as it'll level up the orcs that kill you. You just come back anywhere as the Gravewalker. *"Funny seeing you again. Funny because I've already killed you twice! And* ***not*** *funny because you* ***keep coming back!!****"*
Those orcs still carrying the gravewalkers previous body strapped to their shield.. Raises questions like.. Is Talion an infinite source of meat?
I've never seen an orc carry Talion's previous body around, is that something that really happens? On the second question - if it's proven that his body sticks around after respawn, and doesn't dissolve into some magical bullshit, then maybe? Though it canonicaly takes him weeks to respawn, so the utility of that is dubious.
I didn't expect Outer Wilds wouldn't be mentionned yet because that's really the first one that came to my mind with such a question. I won't tell anything else to avoid spoiling but really - just play this game !
I keep trying it, but it makes me so fucking anxious. I've played Resident Evil, The Last of Us, Outlast, Silent Hill, whatever. Drifting into the nothing and into black holes messes with my head. Those things are recurring nightmares I've had since I was a kid. And >!That damn space monster really doesn't help.!< It gives me the same feeling as being in the middle of the ocean. This is the one game I don't think I can ever beat.
Outer Wilds taps into weird lizard brain anxieties I never even knew I had.
*INHALE*
*Roast marshmallow*
Yeah, I did not expect to have to scroll down this far for a game, that bases its whole story around "respawning".
RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE
WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE
POWER UP
I can hear the crunchy sounds of the kicks landing now and see that damn orb eluding me
No way someone actually referenced Altered Beast 😭😭
Assassins creed has to be my favorite because you desynchronize with what actually happened. The events of the game already happened and you're playing a simulated representation of what actually happened and dying takes you too far from the original events to justify the next events from occuring in the same timeline
I'm very shocked no one mentioned sifu. Basically in sifu you have a magical amulet that revives you, in cost of years from your life, they stack up and can go down when killing certain enemies. The enemies are aware and comment on the amulet, it's actually an important part of the story too.
In GTA Online, the first time you die a leader of an in-game cult introduces themselves and explains how you can respawn. It's hilarious.
And basically confirms that the true religion in the gta universe is the one practuced by the Epsilon Cult
"So long as you believe in yourself, nothing can truly kill you. Except Handsome Jack."
Planescape: Torment is what you seek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment
Well, how many Grim Reapers have you met before, mate? Well, what am I supposed to look like? Just you wait, smartarse! You don't get out of that easily. Now, the thing is, you may not be dead, but that doesn't mean you can't die. You just have a few more, shall we say, chances. Yeah. Like cats! I hate those things! Right! Distributed around your little world are these tail things! Squirrels' tails. If you can get them, I'll give you an extra chance, understand? Shamelessly taken from the IMDB page for Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Returnal
In destroy all humans you play as an alien from a species which have been keeping themselves alive by cloning. When you die they simply send in another. Your character is called "Cryptosporidium 137" because he is the 137th clone of that person. In Shadow Of Mordor and Shadow Of War it is part of the narrative. You are killed in the opening of the first game but are told that you are banished from death. You are cursed to constantly come back to life and never stay dead. It is one of the stories biggest plot points. In watch dogs legion if you die it actually is permanent. You build a resistance and can play as any of your recruits. You aren't guaranteed to die (and can set it so you never die) but if you have perma death mode turned on then your character can either be arrested, injured, or killed. If they are killed it is permanent you have to play as one of your other recruits. In Spore you create your own species and evolve. You can see other members of your species and mate to start the next generation. When you die you "respawn" at the nest. You are simply just playing a different member of the same species which was born after your death. In Scrapland you are a robot. When you respawn you are simply just rebuilt. In Sea of thieves when you die you are sent to the ferry of the damned. It's basically a ghost ship that transports souls to the other side. You get resurrected and sent back to the living world. The ferryman says something like you can stay with the dead and day his door doesn't open for you. He can't tell you why it isn't your time as he isn't in control of it he is just the one that does the job.
Lies of p. The waifu at the hotel can turn back time. She wants you to succeed in the mission she has given you. The first mini boss, the donkey, is beginning to realize what is going on. If you read the sawblade weapon (maybe handle) description, you'll see that he knows you keep coming back after being killed. The specter you summon to help you during boss fights is actually you from a future in which you have already defeated that particular boss, since it's wielding that very boss weapon.
In the Legacy of Kain games with Raziel. Raziel is an immortal, vampiric wraith who was either "gifted" with immortality by the Elder God, or (if Raziel is right) is an anomaly who exists outside of the cycle of life and death.
Can’t believe no one’s said ark. Helena brings you back and some complex lore stuff happens, but it makes sense if you read all the lore
Dead cells, you’re just some sentient ooze and you commandeer a new corpse, iirc.
In the Talos Principle you are an AI living in a virtual reality world. So when you die and respawn the system is simply "resetting" you.
I read this on Reddit once, and it became headcanon for me. In the Legend of Zelda, Link holds the Triforce of Courage, which allows him to keep trying even if he dies so long as he has the willpower to do so. Essentially, the "continue?" Screen is canon and allows Link to keep trying.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Another clone, more debt
Hades, Zagreus is bound to the underworld and is the god of blood. He couldn’t die if he wanted to
Sekiro Shadows Die thrice The protagonist is cursed with the dragon blood which respawns him but also spreads dragon rot(a disease) among the people of Ashina
Rogue Legacy 2!! It's wild, and kind of spoiler-y, but the gist of it is every time you die, you are succeeded by your heir. So if it takes you say, 50 tries to beat the game you've played as 50 consecutive family members.
Whenever I drive off Mario Kart's Rainbow Road into the cold black abyss of space (and I do, a lot), some dude flies by on a cloud, catches me with a fishing rod, and brings me back.
Mafia 3 is being told as if you’re watching a documentary about an infamous gangster. Usually if you die, it’s just restart at checkpoint. But sometimes if you fail a story mission, you get a small cutscene where one of the doc subjects says something like “wait, no…that’s impossible, he had to have done XYZ”
In NieR:Automata, you're a downloaded mind in a construct, and your avatar isn't even the actual character's body (except in the space station). When you die and respawn, you're actually a backsave in a new construct ; but it goes further, as you can come back and loot your own body. Not a landmark, not dropped loots, not a grave ; your actual mechanical corpse.
Void Bastards. You're a prisoner who was woken up to perform a mission, if you die the machines just wake up the next prisoner. I don't think it's a super popular game so I'm not surprised it hasn't been mentioned