Whenever a videogame has an in-universe explanation for why your character respawns it’s always incredibly stupid and also works every single time on me
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My favourite is Borderlands 2 because it's literally the company run by the villain who keeps resurrecting you, yet when you kill him now one resurrects him
To add to this, it’s assumed by the machine itself that your original self is long gone, and that you’re just one of many backup copies. Heck, that machine has a lot of funny dialogue about your respawns.
I think the only one recently that really works is in Nier, since the MCs are androids. So grounded an explanation that one of the possible endings involves self-destructing on the space station. Game over.
Me when my character gets reconstructed on a molecular level every time a big daddy *cough* drills me some time in the 1960s deep beneath the Atlantic ocean.
In my game the plot revolves around having another guy besides the player who also respawns. And you two are the only ones in the galaxy with that power.
FIRE EMBLEM MY BELOVED. I used to just shut off my 3DS when my units died (I should probably have just switched to casual mode lol). The newest games have a time-reverse function. Delights me that they turned ragequitting into a gameplay mechanic.
I think of of my favorites was I was watching someone play a Prince of Persia where there’s a framing device that the game is the main character telling a story and when he dies you hear him say something like “No no that’s not how it went.” Or “I don’t remember it that way.”
"No wait... it was FIFTY natives, and they had the high ground! But I fought 'em off like—"
(Game is suddenly impossible)
"Dammit! Tell the story right, old man."
"Okay... it was five natives and they was hidin' behind a boulder... you happy now?"
Bastion kinda did that too with the narrator describing things as you did them.
'poor kid fell off the edge of the world'
And then you'd respawn on the map and he'd say something like 'well, only a little bit'.
Supergiant has handled this pretty well with the Hades games as well. Making them immortal gods definitely helps with the logic but they still tie it to the characters abilities/ weaknesses and make it a story point
If you jump off at the very start of the game, he goes "And then, he falls to his death...I'm just foolin'." It's one of my favorite lines because it gives the narrator so much personality almost immediately.
People look at me funny when I say that Quake III Arena has a great story, but it really is one of the few games where instantly respawning makes perfect sense lore wise.
Look here your great-great grandfather was merking mad fools up and down the Mediterranean for thirty odd plus years and he didn't take a single hit. Do better
One of the endings of the original SCP Containment Breach does it best. Throughout the gameplay you find clues your character was involved in "Gestalt spiral research". It can be assumed this directly led to your character gaining the ability to respawn. The ending expands upon this ability.
My favorite was Void Bastards. You’re never the same character. If you die the prison ship just dehydrates a new prisoner to continue the mission. Each time they have a different trait. I had one that always had the hiccups… I made him die quickly
I really enjoy when respawning is wrapped up with the universe, Dark Souls is obviously the go to A* approach, but Bioshock did it well too, same for System Shock 2
Hardspace: Shipbreaker where when you die they just clone you a new body and bill you for the expense (with a nasty little note telling you to be more careful with their property 😂)
I loved Undertale in a genocide playthrough, fully acknowledging (and counting) your attempts and encouraging you to just give up.
For those who haven't played, the in-universe explanation is your "Determination" is so strong you refuse to stay dead. I beleve only a couple other characters know.
I love when the boss acknowledges that I have a respawn ability. Even better is when I come back the first time after dying and they didn’t know I could.
Aw man, now I want a boss that thinks you're dead for realsies and is doing some mundane task like cleaning up after the last fight and is genuinely surprised by your return. "Fuck? For real? Let me take this apron off first."
Imagine a boss where the only way to beat them is by taking them completely by surprise the second time and one-shotting them when they still have no idea you can respawn.
The New-U stations were especially nonsensical in BL2, since they were made by Hyperion... You know, the company owned by the guy you're fighting? Somehow it never occurred to him to just... turn them off.
And I bet that was utterly intentional on the devs' part, bunch of trolls that they are.
I don’t know how it hasn’t been ripped off in every game since. Would be so funny if there was a guy in like Star Wars Outlaws who shows up with a new robotic appendage every time you kill him
The Destiny franchise built a large part of its lore around the fact that Lightbearers are resurrected by their Ghosts and how death makes a good teacher when it's no longer permanent(in most cases).
In-game, it mostly means enemies stand around, waiting for you to revive, knowing you'll be back.
Deathloop is mad underappreciated for a lot of reasons and one of them is in how tidily it sweeps away the Dishonored-style lethal-vs-nonlethal narrative tension and replaces it in a way that makes perfect sense. Sure, go ahead and blow those chumps away. They'll be right back tomorrow.
Although you'd have to wonder why any villain that recognizes the player can respawn doesn't just give up? Or try to directly destroy or counter your ability to come back?
Because 'sit in my boss arena and let the hero bash their head against me until they get lucky' doesn't seem like a smart move
The world of Warcraft one was fun when I started , I liked being an angry spirit on my way back to my body so I can wreck the thing that got me ( or more likely die again …)
Favorite off the top of my head was some OG Xbox game where your respawns are clones, and as you approach your last few lives the gruff commanding officer goes "do you think clones are CHEAP?"
Ironically destroys suspension of disbelief while struggling to reinforce it. Sometimes working hard to make everything consistent and self-contained is a lesson on contrivance.
Reminds me of the Portal 1 excuse for "No fall damage". "Oh, yeah you just have these little leaf springs implanted into your calves. They absorb all the force, promise."
it works really well in portal 2 and i think it makes complete sense. portal 1 had its setbacks in terms of lore but i always loved how they expanded on it in the second game. especially with them incorporating it into the plot (when glados asks for a boot and tells you to "land on one foot").
I have an idea for a game where every time you die you respawn in hell and have to fight your way out to recover your vacant corpse. Except the main game is just like a cute little farm sim.
PlanetSide 2 had the cloning explanation, with a tidbit that because the world is isolated with no new people arriving some of the soldiers are starting to recognize people they've killed before. This however, along with most of the game's background, is sadly never brought up in-game.
There was a fan made Neverwinter Nights server back in the day called Neversummer that had respawning built into the lore. You enter the world through a rift and this is how all creatures entered with no way back. Slavery and imprisonment were rampant. One faction was dedicated to finding a way out.
In SMT IV, so many people are dying that Charon is almost literally drowning in paperwork, and as a result tells Flynn "Look, just give me some Macca so I don't get yelled at, and you're free to go"
Reminds me of RIFT, where the Defiant faction had to pour all sorts of time and resources into creating a technology that resurrects fallen warriors, while the Guardian faction was just like "ya we just prayed super hard and God did it for us".
When the game factors your fast travel in as simple in universe travel time with expenses and consequences uh yeah thas the good shit (yeah it's ESII daggerfall)
Playing Starfield, being greeted with just a loading screen during fast travel, I explained that away as staring at the really boring in-flight magazine while travelling
DS3 is my favourite, the explanation sounds less like you're a guy that just won't die and more like you're a horrible amalgamation of every guy who ever failed to link the fire
Makes the hollows losing their memory much more poignant if you're literally leaving bits of yourself at every bonfire
Transfers your consciousness into a clone
we have teleporters that can also undo mortal injuries
a bored god literally won't let you stay dead
the script says you live until the climax so you just got stuck in a closet somewhere
you just had a nightmare about your own demise, that's all
I loved the random animations Sunset Overdrive used for respawns. They’d straight up teleport you back to the checkpoint if you fell off the climbing level
I remember playing Phantasy Star Online Episode 3, which was a tactical card/board game and it actually had its in universe respawning after losses mechanic become story relevant, which to me was so wild.
i liked this a lot in elden ring, where if the tarnished are returned to life more than once or not is never clarified, and there's also more than one competeing explanation for them being alive at all. super fun to think about
I noped out of Hard Space Ship Breaker the moment I saw my character die before I could even play her. Like I know it's a space dystopia game but I find scrapping in games relaxing and don't want to immediately have the happy ending ruined. Otherwise I agree
Nine Sols doing this really amused me because it also resets boss intro animations. These guys all canonically gather together and go "shit, gotta get into position before he gets back" and the idea of it cracks me up every time
There was so much that I felt like I was "getting away with" in that series, especially with scrolls. How do we get to that chest? Teleportation scroll lmao
I liked the original Prince of Persia's mechanic; you're being told a story and when you die the narrator breaks in and goes "No, no, that's not what happened, let's start over."
The core problem making the world of Cruelty Squad so awful is that resurrection technology has reduced life's economical value (and therefore metaphysical value since the two are cosmologically tied in this world) to zero
Katana Zero approached this in a neat way: the main character has a form of future sight, and each attempt at a level is him looking at a possible future. Failing just means he has to look elsewhere, and the "instant replay" when you beat a level is actually him executing what he saw in that vision.
My headcanon is that New-U stations are why there are so many interchangeable enemies; it's the same group of guys, and clearing an area is actually killing them so many times that they run out of money and can't use the stations until their next payday
Instantly the first one that comes to mind and arguably the best instance of this is Bioshock's Vitachambers. It's explanation isn't even 'that' stupid imo. They are totally unnecessary relative to gameplay. Any checkpoint system would work fine but fuck it, the more retrofuturism the better
I have always assumed every videogame is like PoP Sands of Time, where the protagonist is recalling a memory and every time you die is him getting it wrong.
Dead Cells is also there. You are an immortal, invincible, sentient blob that occupies and controls a corpse. So the body gets destroyed, while you go ahead and take over another of the millions of corpses on the massive island kingdom you live in.
Their commitment to those explanations also made it so you couldn’t fail the hour long intro or you had to restart, and also ruined any sense of fear around 2B’s death.
It had its consequences on the game.
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(Game is suddenly impossible)
"Dammit! Tell the story right, old man."
"Okay... it was five natives and they was hidin' behind a boulder... you happy now?"
Very cool mechanic, honestly.
'poor kid fell off the edge of the world'
And then you'd respawn on the map and he'd say something like 'well, only a little bit'.
And realizing players would be outraged if the price in game was actually close to IRL.
For those who haven't played, the in-universe explanation is your "Determination" is so strong you refuse to stay dead. I beleve only a couple other characters know.
And I bet that was utterly intentional on the devs' part, bunch of trolls that they are.
Come to me, through fire and war. I welcome you.
In-game, it mostly means enemies stand around, waiting for you to revive, knowing you'll be back.
And non-respawn zones are areas where those alternate timelines are very sparse.
And the guardian trapped in an event horizon? Oof, good stuff.
Because 'sit in my boss arena and let the hero bash their head against me until they get lucky' doesn't seem like a smart move
2 at least made them full boots.
Maybe the best way to have it?
“Then maybe you should stop DYING.”
FUCK YOU TOO CELEBRIMBOR
Makes the hollows losing their memory much more poignant if you're literally leaving bits of yourself at every bonfire
we have teleporters that can also undo mortal injuries
a bored god literally won't let you stay dead
the script says you live until the climax so you just got stuck in a closet somewhere
you just had a nightmare about your own demise, that's all
https://youtu.be/pD1wWUlpNS4?si=oKF8J7Ab8OE6kAws
Resurrection scrolls can raise your party members
Me: why can't my enemies or the random citizens use these?
Divinity original sin ii: watch yourself buddy
Me: ✋ 😨 ✋ sorry my bad
don’t play dumb with me, bone man
It had its consequences on the game.