STORY DEVELOPEMENT: KILLING OFF CHARACTERS

author=Shadowtext link=topic=1441.msg22706#msg22706 date=1215040234

author=Karsuman link=topic=1441.msg22687#msg22687 date=1215031791
Events like this force the player to adapt to a new playstyle, which can create interesting scenarios. Just need to keep it in mind and make sure the player won't hate you too much for investing in the character - perhaps giving an award for doing so.

Forcing the player to adapt to a new playstyle in the middle of a game is generally a bad idea. For the same reason you don't want to have minigames that are required to progress, you don't want to have situations where the skills and/or effort that the player has learned or used up until this point in the game suddenly mean nothing.

As I said, giving the player an award for doing so. There are many types of games that require the player to adapt to a situation - for example, FPS/action/adventure/strategy games. I don't see why this is an inherently bad idea in what I assume is a a non-traditional RPG anyway.

So yeah, I'm not saying this is right for every game. It obviously isn't. But I'd certainly disagree with you on it being inviable.

I really like it when people die. In books, movies, TV-series...

Games? I probably would. If it ever happened. Gameplay permanent character death is something I support except for the fact that I always end up doing the whole "reload routine" if that happens. Iron Man mode is good and all but sometimes you just have to have certain people around. (usually a game balance issue. Nine times of ten you need a full party to have any chance of survival anywhere. Which is unfortunate).

Of course this topic was about story offings. Which I fully support even more so than gameplay character death because you can't reload a story offing. Except if it's an optional offing in which case the cause for it should be so far back and dependent on so many choices that reloading shouldn't be an option until you play the second time with the walkthrough that tells you "how to play the game without X dying".

Whenever important characters a killed off in books, movies and TV-series it's always pretty heavy (except in TV-series where all offings always happen near the season finale if they happen at all. This completely understandable because of contracts and stuff)

I think that if you are going to kill off major character you need to set it up so that minor characters die first. That means that you need to establish that this is an environment where people actually die. I find that this is very rarely the case in games. No one except those enemies on the world map seems to die anywhere which makes the impact of Important Character Death seem weird and out of place.

If you've established early on that people in this setting WILL die from time to time (apart from the mandatory Attack on Home in the beginning) an important death will not seem out of place.


Also my favourite deaths are the pointless ones. Some character has been captured and you have to save him before he is executed. Well guess what he was executed before you got to him. Your unit is fighting in a battle and some people died in that battle. Just pierced by a random arrow or impaled by a knight's lance.

Deaths without meaning are the best deaths. They are not part of any grander scheme but they show that death is very real and is a real threat in the world. And is something that makes the player character more careful.

Of course main characters should rarely be killed off. Everyone around him (or her) may die but not the main character. Even if he survives the strangest of events you can always think of it as the main character telling a story. Which means that he survived all of this and is now telling the story in question. There's always a couple of survivors, no matter how unlikely it may be.

Of course occasionally the point of the game is to change main characters and kill off people a bit like in some kind of relay run, focusing on an area or an object that gets passed around instead. But you should probably kill off the first main character very early on to show the player what kind of game it is. Because if you do it too far in the player will only be pissed.

So yeah. I like death. In huge amounts preferably.

author=Shadowtext link=topic=1441.msg23180#msg23180 date=1215558858

author=Shinan link=topic=1441.msg23179#msg23179 date=1215557685
Also my favourite deaths are the pointless ones. Some character has been captured and you have to save him before he is executed. Well guess what he was executed before you got to him. Your unit is fighting in a battle and some people died in that battle. Just pierced by a random arrow or impaled by a knight's lance.

So what you're saying is that the player has to bust his ass to save a character who ends up dying anyway? Yeah, making a player waste his time sounds like a great way to keep them entertained.

This really isn't a good way of looking at it, ST. If your player at least finds the game entertaining (which they should), they might find said event interesting even if it makes things more difficult.

Two interesting games to look at in regards to character death: Fire Emblem and Tactics Ogre. Tactics Ogre is particularly interesting because even important characters that die are removed from the plot entirely, unlike Fire Emblem, where important characters are merely 'seriously wounded' and can never fight again. Rescuing someone is always optional in Tactics Ogre - and they may or may not join you afterwards.

Interesting case study in Tactics Ogre: in one of the story routes, there is an entirely optional battle in which you are faced with a very high cliff. The enemies are, of course, on top of said cliff. It would normally be a fairly difficult battle by itself, since enemy archers and mages are numerous, but on top of that there is a hostage that has been charmed and will continue to fight you until she either dies or the boss is defeated, in which case she will be cured of her charm status (the battle continues even after the boss's death). Even worse, the enemies will attack and probably kill her within two to three hits - if you don't have well-trained ninjas and bird men with high speed, she will probably die before you even get to move. To top it off, the girl doesn't even join you IF you save her - you have to fight a band of pirates way later in the game to recruit her if you somehow manage to save her the first time.

Makes you want to let her die. Painfully. Fun, huh?

As far as any character being killed in any game, or story.
As long as the death signals some type of change or event
because of it. If a character is slain and there's no
result as of it, there's no reason at all to have it.
Much like Ashramaru stated, it's important to develop
characters as the story progresses. And if the death of
said character, effects the other characters even a little,
and it's noticeable, I think the event was done properly.


Such is similar in my game's plot.
However the character killed, is a PLAYER CHARACTER.
And that character would have only been part of the party
for a short time. But throughout most of the game is
an npc who's story is integral to the game's plot.
The death of this character, effects mostly my
lead character. But this change alters his personality
almost completely, and I'm hoping that the way I
portray this is effective enough to grab my players.

~Sion

author=Sion link=topic=1441.msg23186#msg23186 date=1215563417
Such is similar in my game's plot.
However the character killed, is a PLAYER CHARACTER.
And that character would have only been part of the party
for a short time. But throughout most of the game is
an npc who's story is integral to the game's plot.
The death of this character, effects mostly my
lead character. But this change alters his personality
almost completely, and I'm hoping that the way I
portray this is effective enough to grab my players.

This is not an advertising thread.

Random thought about PC death: Jeigans?

For non-Fire Emblem people Jeigans are characters that start off really good but have pathetic stat growth, so using them at the beginning of the game eats up valuable exp that you'll need later when they pretty much suck.

Personally, the whole "He's too good!" thing means I shouldn't use a character because they will either a) become non-playable or b) join my party much later in the game when everyone else has caught up. It just seems like there should be a penalty for taking the easy route, and making a character who's slated to die overpowered goes along with that. I mean if your gameplay is bad anyway, this is a bad idea, but if you have at least some sort of good gameplay this could be a way of saying "Hey, this is what you get for trying to bash your way through the game with one overpowered character! Now it's time to actually THINK and develop the rest of your team."

Of course you probably shouldn't make it too obvious, or the player will assume they're going to die or betray you. But I don't automatically assume stronger characters are going to die (Kratos at the beginning of ToS), so it might work out.

What people could easily do is that if a player character is killed, introduce another character and transfer the stats. ???

author=Little Wing Guy link=topic=1441.msg23376#msg23376 date=1215716190
That's all well and good, but then it gets down to the point of why actually kill this character, if your just gonna replace them with someone exactly the same.

It needs a better point than "Look how evil my villain is, He just killed someone...oh wait nevermind."

Hmm, never thought about it that way. If you're serious about merging gameplay with story, that could present an interesting challenge, but it's definitely possible without alienating the player or ruining the story. That sounds like a good point in a story to shift to a different scenario if the story calls for it; take control of a character that wasn't with the rest of your party, who picks up one or more new characters that you level and build for a bit, or even just start up with a completely new character and provide some hunting grounds to help get them caught up with the rest of the party. Really limitless possibilities.