Permanent Death - in Single-player Video Games

In Single-player Video Games

Few single-player RPGs exhibit death that is truly permanent, as most allow the player to load a previously saved game and continue from the stored position. Intrinsic implementations of permanent death can be seen within the roguelike games, such as NetHack, most of which do not allow for restoring games upon making a fatal mistake (although save files can be retrieved by copying them before death, a frowned-upon tactic known as "save scumming"). Another example of a single-player CRPG that has permanent death is Wizardry 8 when playing in "Iron Man" mode. In an Iron Man game, it is not possible for the player to save the game manually; it only saves on completion of certain quests or when exiting the game. If the player's whole party dies in an Iron Man game, the save file is permanently deleted.

A variant of permanent death was used by some mid-1980s CRPGs, for example Ultima III. On the death of any party member, the game would automatically be saved, preventing the player from restoring the game to a point before that death happened. If the last character alive died, it would be impossible to continue with that auto-saved game. However, a player could then assemble a party of new characters and heap up enough gold to have their old characters resurrected in-game, then continue with the old characters again; so there was no completely permanent death. Players usually circumvented the whole feature by pulling the floppy disk out of the drive when death of a character seemed to be imminent, thus preventing the auto-save feature from working. Another way of circumventing it was by making a copy of the floppy disk that stored the characters before going on a dangerous quest, so that the game could be restored from that copy if the characters died. A related concept was used in some releases of The Bard's Tale and in The Bard's Tale II: Upon loading any character, the game would automatically re-save that character devoid of money, so that if a player just quit the game by turning off power without saving, for example to avoid character death, he would find his characters bankrupt when re-loading the old saved game. This was usually circumvented by making a copy of player character data before loading.

The trio of mobile games by Trese Brothers Games, Star Traders RPG, Templar Assault RPG, and Cyber Knights RPG all have permanent death built in as a staple. Star Traders RPG, the first-released of the three, features permanent death on all but the two lowest difficulty levels, Basic and Normal. Templar Assault and Cyber Knights feature variable settings which allow you to configure permadeath and certain other factors, but it is an ever-present possibility unless you turn it off. There is no save point to roll back to in these games whatsoever, your character's game is forever finished, and while you can review your character's history, the character's game itself is erased from the database, never to be restored in any possible way, unless you cheat by backing up the game's data with a third party app, and restoring it in place of the current one after death. The games sometimes strongly mirror real life on the higher difficulty levels, where no matter what strategy you use to build your character's various skills and attributes, there is always a chance of meeting with an enemy that can annihilate you, and especially so the longer your character survives in the ongoing game. The difficulty scales up more quickly in proportion to your character, based on the level on which you have chosen to play.

The Mystery Dungeon series of games feature gameplay whereby the character will lose all items, levels, and progress upon dying, although players can stash items in "warehouses", allowing the items to be recovered on a later playthrough.

The Xbox game Steel Battalion offers an example of permanent death in a non-RPG context. The lengthy campaign mode must be started from scratch if the player fails to eject from a destroyed vehicle. This reinforces the simulation aspect of the game, and forces the player to think seriously about any risks taken on missions. The hacker game Uplink also features an example of permanent "death"; although the player cannot die in the game, the player can have his or her campaign end if caught hacking an important server, which results in the PC being disavowed by the Uplink corporation and forced to start from scratch.

In the first two games in the Way of the Samurai series, players are forced to restart the game upon death, and if the game is saved you are also forced to quit back to the menu. Subsequently re-loading the saved game promptly deletes the save straight after, thus preventing re-using saves as a means of avoiding permanent death. As the game features multiple story pathways and endings, this device is used to attach weight to your decisions, such as the option to yield to certain boss characters if low on health and facing possible death (and subsequently be forced to work for them and follow their story path) rather than risk being killed by them and having to start the game from scratch (but with the reward if victorious of being able to carry on down your chosen story path) You can however carry items through into subsequent new games upon death in specific circumstances such as mailing them away during play, which has the added consequence of preventing you from using them in the current playthrough and thus making that more difficult to survive through.

In the various Fire Emblem games, if a character dies in combat, they will be permanently dead, though one loophole is to restart the battle from the beginning (The game saves the number of deaths in even if the player restarts). If a player chooses to finish the battle after a party member dies, they will be permanently lost. In some situations, goals of the missions are to keep one character alive, so that loss instantly ends the level and forces the player to start that battle from the beginning. In all cases, the main player character must not die under any circumstance—the death of this character will result in a Game Over. Also, in some of the games, such as the fourth, there exist ways to re-obtain characters who have died in battle. The twelfth and thirteenth games add a "Casual mode" where permadeath is disabled entirely, and lost characters are returned at the end of the chapter.

Characters left dead on the battlefield in Final Fantasy Tactics for more than three turns are permanently removed from the game. However, this fate can be avoided by winning the battle before three turns pass, reviving the character in-battle, or, in extreme cases, resetting the game.

Fantasy action RPG Depths of Peril features the ability to play 'Hardcore mode' after at least one character has attained level 25.

Runic Games' 2009 action RPG Torchlight has a "hardcore" mode with permanent death, as does its sequel.

In Mass Effect 2, depending on the player's choices and actions during the game, any of the party members can die permanently, including the player character Commander Shepard.

In the first three games from the X-COM series, soldiers who were killed remained dead permanently.

Dead Space 2 features a hardcore mode. Using a New Game + save is not allowed, supplies are limited, and enemies are more lethal in this mode. Also, once the player dies, they are reverted to either the start of the game, or one of the three saves they are allowed to make. As the only viable strategy is to space out the three saves, this makes the game much more difficult.

In Heavy Rain, depending on the player's choices, any of the four playable characters may perish, affecting game events and endings.

In the Steam version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, an additional official campaign known as "Justine" does not allow the player to save progress, this forces the player to restart the game upon death or if the player quits the game.

In Dungeon Hack, there is the option to have "real character death". When this option is turned on, all saves involving the character are erased upon character death.

The Wii U game Zombi U has permanent death as a central mechanic, uncharacteristically for a first person shooter. Any time the player character is bitten by the eponymous zombies, it is always fatal. Another playable character is procedurally generated upon death, and then the player must set out to find the zombie of the previous playable character to retrieve their Survival kit.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II features elements of permanent death in its campaign mode (a first in the series), where some characters will remain dead for the remainder of the story, depending on choices made by the player. This in turn affects in-game events as well as the game ending. Also, in the "Strike Force" missions, if the player dies they will reappear playing as one of their friendly AI soldiers.

It was revealed that BioShock Infinite will contain a 1999 Mode (which becomes available after beating the main campaign on any difficulty level), where ammunition and money are much less available and a death will result in a restart of the current level and a loss of all nostrums, vigors, audio diaries and Silver Eagles gained during that level.

The indie game Receiver, by Wolfire Games, randomly generates a new game world and weapon state upon death.

In the roguelike/city sim hybrid game Dwarf Fortress, if the player loses they are forced to start anew, but the world and lore which was generated remains if the player desires to build another fort.

The Microsoft game Combat Flight Simulator 2 featured permanent death of the player's character if he is killed while on a campaign mission, forcing the player to create a new campaign. In the sequel, the permanent death was eliminated by allowing the player to reload to the last save.

In Minecraft, players can opt to start single-player games on "Hardcore" mode, in which players can not only die, but when death occurs, due to a variety of possible causes in-game, the world that is generated for that game is deleted. However, if the player likes the world used for that certain game, they can choose to re-create that world in which the world is given a certain seed number and the player can then choose to recreate it either as survival (players can die due to the same in-game causes, but are able to respawn) or creative (death can only be caused by falling out of the world, and all blocks are easily created, placed and destroyed) mode.