Until Death Do Us Part

Gaming has always had a special relationship with death.  A topic so often feared and avoided by contemporary society is an easy lesson every gamer comes to terms with the moment they fall into a pit as Mario or get shot in the head in a first person shooter.  In many ways death is essential to gaming because there needs to be a way to fail at a game and having the central character die has often been the logical consequence.  As games have moved into the realm of “reality” (I use quotes because the reality is perceived even though the plot may be far from possible), death has also moved on this way.  A few contemporary titles have made death more of a finite principle, allowing NPCs and even the main characters of the game to die permanently (although in most cases a new campaign will net you another chance).  This is a far stretch from the days where you had three chances to conquer Castlevania as Simon Belmont or the dreaded escort missions that required you to die if the person you’re protecting happened to meet their doom.  This concept of a permanence to death and the things you do having actual consequence may be easily shrugged off by the “churn” gamer, but for the rest of us trying to find a deeper connection in video games it’s a whole new world.

For the sake of familiarity I’ll use the best two examples today: Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain.  Rest assured those that have not played the game – this article has no spoilers save the fact that the main and supporting cast can permanently die.  The reality that some gamers may have avoided this fact in both games for fear of the all too popular spoilers that seem to infect today’s enthusiast press is, for the first time, a disservice to the resulting unprepared gamer.  In Mass Effect, you are able to import the Commander Shepard you finished the first title with, which already creates a connection to your character.  Then you are given tasks throughout the game that involve assembling a team, including optional loyalty missions for any comrades that not only give back story but build or sever confidence within your team.  Regardless of the gameplay aspects and decisions within these missions, the fact that you learn so much about NPCs and the connection you could potentially have to your own protagonist creates a sort of bond with these characters.  The idea of losing any of them is a stronger disappointment for any gamer, whether it’s because your team weakens, you lose all the effort put in to recruiting and becoming loyal to the character or for those that actually feel sympathy for their passing.

This is a new dynamic that I hadn’t really experienced in a form of such permanence in a game before.  Additionally it all comes to a head in the “suicide mission” that can have outcomes ranging from everyone getting out alive to the antithesis.  The gamer in you always wants to get the whole team out alive because, after all, that is the perfect outcome isn’t it?  And since it’s the ideal gamer outcome I could see many players upset with the reality of losing a character along the way, even if the reasoning is based on decisions or aspects you decided way before embarking on the mission.  I know some killer players out there and it ate away at them that they lost a team member or two.  When they discover that a gamer like myself, who tends to get their ass handed to them by these guys, made it out with my team completely intact.  Sure, you can return to your pre-suicide mission save and redo it again and again until you get the ideal outcome, but then that’s not how the developers intended you to play the game, is it?  Well you can play the game as you see fit, but for me, I wanted to take it as it comes and whatever happens is permanent and will continue over to my Mass Effect 3 campaign.

The point is, no matter how good at games you are, just like specially trained soldiers and individuals in real life, there are curve balls in the real world that you can’t always prepare for.  Maybe you just didn’t get to know your team as well as you would have liked and missed the fact that your perception of a person wasn’t their reality.  Instead of beating yourself up over losing a teammate, take comfort in the fact that most of your team got out alive.  Most players keep track of the teammate NPCs they really like enough that they rarely lose any of them, so at least you still have your core group.  Take it from anyone who’s played a Pokemon game, you don’t have to collect them all.  What was truly dynamic, though, was the fact that every decision I made within the game had me thinking in the background, “is being careless at this moment going to affect the lives of either myself, my teammates, or both?” and that is something I previously only found myself considering in real life.

Then there’s Heavy Rain.  In this game you play as four main protagonists that all have the potential to die within the plot.  When a character dies, the game continues without them, which I was skeptical of at first, but when you see how the game comes together it works rather nicely.  In direct contrast to Mass Effect 2, I had probably one of the worst “gamer” endings of all time: everyone died.  That didn’t stop me from getting to the end of the game, mind you, nor did it make me feel like I had a poor ending – I was very satisfied.  It was just one of the various potential outcomes that Heavy Rain provides and in my case, it was Hamlet all over again.  This is an even deeper touch on reality because life is not scripted and at any moment a person can step outside and have their life stolen from them for no reason at all.  Just like Mass Effect, this game also filled me with that fear that any wrong move could make me lose a character but unlike Mass Effect every character that died was under my control.  The sense of loss was more personal because like it not, I had complete control over whether that character lived or died and in every case my actions or lack of skill were responsible for my character dying.

Dying in video games has begun to take a shape of its own.  There are some web based browser games that register your IP and once you die, you’re dead.  When you return to the game you can actually view your lifeless corpse and there’s no way to replay the game (save obvious registry hacks), just like in real life.  Most other games like to live under the false reality that when you die, it’s a mere mistake and you return to the previous checkpoint which will eventually result in a cumulative “perfect run” of the game.  The niche group, games like Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain, deal with death in a more realistic and permanent light, resulting into a change in how I play video games and perceive the decisions I make within a game.  You can poke holes in the logic as much as you like – there is a formula to Mass Effect 2′s success rate and only during certain chapters of Heavy Rain can a character meet his or her demise – but without breaking down the syntax of the game both BioWare and Quantic Dream have done a commendable job in emulating the realities of death.  Here’s hoping more games work like this.  I’m not too pleased with the idea that I couldn’t save a single life in Heavy Rain, but thankfully it’s not attached to a trilogy so replaying the game requires, tops, 10 additional hours of my time (and we’re all screaming for replay value, right?).  In Mass Effect 2, preparation and calculation are required to succeed and a misstep here or there may cost you a crew member but won’t end in total annihilation like my Heavy Rain ending.  I like this new direction some games are taking and if a player steps back and enjoys the experience instead of just trying to “beat” it like every other video game.  After all, isn’t that the overall goal?

Spydersvenom