Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Coava’s Costa Rica Helsar, A-Rod being fed popcorn by Cameron Diaz, or your favorite fruit juice, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
Forrest Gump’s mama told him that dying is a part of life. It’s a part of videogames too. Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about the classic Infocom text adventure Planetfall and how Floyd’s death was one of the most uniquely powerful moments of gaming. Naturally, we started talking about other videogame deaths. While I believe the game is overrated, I can’t deny that Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy VII was a powerful moment that touched millions of gamers.
What videogame deaths moved you? Did a character’s death ever make you cry? Anyone’s videogame death surprise you? Not to get all (digitally) morbid on you, but I think we could have a fun discussion about dying in videogames. Let’s get to it (the discussion, not the dying)!
wow, there is gonna be some super spollarz potential with this thread
top of my head, john marsten…i was surprised to see him die..ill revisit this topic later, my memory is failing me atm
agreed
Only one that stands out to me if FFVII and I don't want to get into it because almost everyone knows and remembers that.
I am willing to piggy back onto some threads, I am relying on you to refresh my memory.
The Boss's death in MGS3. Quite a moment.
Nice dude!
Meryl dying in MGS was pretty effed up to.
maybe this is a bit of a stretch…but i remember the first time i witnessed a mortal kombat fatality…that certainly was memorable for me
yeah lol. The first one I ever saw was Sub Zero's.
Nariko in Heavenly Sword. It was like a Hollywood production. I may be the only one here who played that game though.
I've always been on the fence on this game but if you think it is worth it I'll give it a shot
Very underrated game in my opinion. The main knock is that it's short, about 6 hours.
People are giving it a second look since Ninja Theory received lots of praise for Enslaved.
Enslaved was pretty good. Just finished it a couple days ago, but I don't see why it got so much praise. I felt way too constricted in everything I did in that game and the story wasn't all that great either. The ending cut-scene was definitely a positive though.
The setting was different and Gollum did some voice acting. Game critics love both of those things.
That explains a lot…
I was not particularly fond of the way the game handled, so thus I never finished it. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did.
@rrod or redtailman
Have you guys had issues playing the killzone beta? i haven't been able to log on since Friday. It keeps giving a network error but i can play black ops online right afterwards.
Same problem here. I've been playing botzone instead.
crap. i guess we get on too late and servers are full. at least botzone works. i guess i'll be playing that today if i can't get into warzone.
Tidus fading away at the end of FFX was pretty amazingly done.
That one definitely surprised me. Does that count as a death since he wasn't really alive? Ha!
I was kinda thinking the same thing as I posted that earlier, but decided that the emotional impact of the scene fit the bill.
I die about 48,392 times (on average) whenever I play a game, so after the first 50 times, none of them seem very memorable.
It pisses me off when characters you've been playing with for the entire game die during a cut scene (permanently), when you've been dying left and right trying to get to that point. I believe Nightshade calls this "cut scene hypocrisy" or something like that. There are even some games that let you use potions or spells or whatever to come back to life, but if you die during a cut scene, you're dead regardless of how you were able to come back to life during the game play.
I think the big problem with these situations is that the developers are trying to make the game too much like a linear movie or book. There are just some things that don't work in video games that work well in movies, TV, and books. Do you think that Romeo & Juliet would have been a great story if Romeo kept dying and restarting from the last checkpoint after getting killed by waves of bad guys in order to get to Juliet? The ending would have just seemed retarded.
Deaths in video games have no meaning if you keep dying so much to get to your "point of permanent death". It also lessens the impact of self-sacrifice, since I "self sacrificed" myself plenty of times in the game by holding a grenade, pulling the pin, and walking right up to a group of baddies just to clear the room.
Story and gameplay are usually at odds in a game because most video game stories are linear, like a book, and don't take into account the consequences of an interactive medium, which is more often than not, death. The thing is that you cannot have the death early on in a narrative because that would make for a bad story. Just imagine reading a book or watching a movie where the main character tries to pass a particular area only to die and restart and try it again in a different (or in my case, the same exact) way six or seven times before he progresses. It would suck. It would be the biggest waste of time and the worst movie/book ever.
/end rant.
-M
Cut Scene Incompetence. Close though.
The flip side is Cut Scene Absurdity, when you see the characters doing all sorts of awesome stuff you'd love t actually be able to do, but due to the limitations of the game, cant.
Hmmmm. you gave me an idea for a future Coffee Talk.
There are two moments in Final Fantasy X that are right next to each other that are a perfect example of this:
1) The entire party rail-slides down moving cables from an airship to disrupt Yuna and Seymore's Wedding. (Cutscene Absurdity)
2) They are subsequently captured by a handful of minion enemies that you've just been kicking the crap out of with one hit kills. (Cutscene Incompetence)
I love that game and have beaten it multiple times. But this sequence always leaves me shaking my head.
That happens a lot in Halo. I wish I could move around like Master Chief does in the cut scenes. The coolest thing they gave us is the assassinations and abilities.
I used to to love watching Lara Croft relinquish the mortal coil. So many various ways too.
In the original Silent Hill, there were 5 different endings and in none of them did you actually find your kid. I guess that meant the kid had crossed the River Styx. I remember thinking that was crazy for a video game to do.
I remember borrowing that game from a college roommate and intentionally only played it at night. He'd come downstairs from his room and be like "Dude, you're fucking nuts. How can you play that with the lights off?" I got right towards the end of the game and never finished it because he moved out and I had to give it back. I ended up buying it much later to add to my collection but never went back and finished it.
Raziel being "killed" at the beginning of Soul Reaver was pretty intense as well.
DICE 2011 schedule is coming together. I should have some fun stuff for you guys. Really looking forward to catching up with old friends and excellent developers.
It is very sad when Maria dies in Gear 2. Epic did a good job throwing that plot in because it really humanizes the characters and the war they are in.
Well I was glad when Kat finally died in Halo: Reach. She was great in the book, but she was a real prick in the video game. I can’t really think of too many other deaths in video games that were a big deal to me. I was happy when I killed Hitler in the original Wolfenstein, and I get emotional every time they kill Kenny…but that’s about it. Although it isn’t a normal death, Lavender town is just creepy the first time you get there. I suppose Valve did well though when they made you kill the companion cube, and when you had to sacrifice someone in the L4D(2) games. It wasn’t exactly really emotional, but they were good and well thought out deaths.