Pixelnauts.net

Over the following years, the increasing importance of narratives created a personal investment in characters. When Aries died in Final Fantasy VII, players were generally not upset at the blow to their party's fighting ability, but rather for the loss of a beloved character. In contrast, when Cloud died, a restart simply created annoyance. Which of these events has stayed in gamers mind's for over a decade? Maybe that isn't a fair question. After all, Aries' death was crafted to be memorable - but Cloud's failures, with current technology and creative developers, could be too. The fact that a sense of loss in modern games is still primarily construed from scripts is a testament to their fundamentally archaic design.

Few narrative-driven games have any real consequences for poor decisions. Their stories essentially operate as movies with token interactions. Since games with cascading dynamic outcomes are almost non-existant, gratification (the metric of success) cannot be derived from player's choices. Instead, it's measured by the number of times one must replay a level. When broken down to its fundamentals, how truly compelling is that experience? A much better system would be one where a player's action dictates a narrative outcome. By creating real consequences, games appear less like Simon Says and more like the vibrant and dynamic worlds we want them to be. Integrating mistakes into the design structure prevents the most common break in immersion: repeated scenes and dialogue. Since developers have been hyping virtual living, breathing worlds for years, why do they still implement such a counterproductive mechanic?

Probably the most significant reason is simply the fact that it can be almost universally applied. A push toward something new requires intense testing and development time (AKA risk and money) for almost every game. Punishment systems could no longer be 'one size fits all'.

That's not to say it's impossible (or even improbable) for the industry to shift away from the death mechanic. Games like the new Prince of Persia, Fable 2 and the soon to be released Heavy Rain all try to implement replacement systems: perfect examples in showing the creativity required to shed the mechanic. Out of the three, Prince of Persia is the most conservative; a fall results in the prince's companion swooping in for the rescue. She then places him just before his previous jump sequence. While Prince of Persia handles the event as an almost instantaneous and generous checkpoint system, it's so successful because the illusion is never broken. Also, by never taking away more than a minute's worth of progress, the game encourages the risk and exploration at the heart of its series.