Thursday, November 12, 2015

Dealing with Death

Okay, first off THIS IS NOT ABOUT A REAL DEATH IN MY FAMILY OR AMONG MY FRIENDS! Not that that hasn't happened in the past, but totally NOT what I'm talking about here.

No, I'm writing this prior to killing my character in Fallout 4. Or at least thinking about it.

Let me explain.

I guess you could call it a weakness, but I have a tendency to become very attached to my characters in big, open world games. One might even say, "protective". I know that they're not real, of course, but the longer I go without them coming to an untimely end, the more I think of them as characters in something like a book or movie - mediums where Death would spell the permanent end of their experiences.

Realistically, I know that if I/she gets killed, I can just load up the last save (and I still save A LOT), but I can't help the part of me that says, very quietly, "She died. It's over for her. You can't use her anymore." (I almost always run female characters in these games. More on that another time.) In the course of playing a game, the enemies you shoot (or even some of the NPC's you can kill) don't get to "come back". That lends a finality that pervades the game, even if it doesn't apply to the player.

The downside of this is that it stunts my progression through the game. I find I'm very cautious in new locations, and keep to areas where I have either cleared threats or know where they are. Raven's journey in Kingdoms of Amalur and Victoria's quest to find her father in Fallout 3 have both been held back because of this mild(?) obsession with avoiding Death.

And so far, neither of them have suffered that fate. Not once.

Mind you, this affinity is unique to open world games - I don't get the same sappy feelings about Mario or the Marine in Doom. Your character dying there is simply a way of the game telling you to do it right the next time. Those games (and I lump in linear story games like Uncharted and Dead Space here) give you little or no way to physically and emotionally customize your avatar. In open world games, ones where you can truly do ANYTHING, you have the option to be "good" or "evil", depending on your style of play. Try as I might, I always want to be good and helpful, usually because the NPC's I run into are nice people (if they don't start shooting at me first). Maybe I'm mostly a nice person and that helps to build the bond with the game's character, whose appearance I've created too.

Now I have a new mega-open world game to deal with, Fallout 4, and I think I'm falling into the same "trap". Juliet hasn't met Death in the 10 hours or so I've played so far. I'm also not very far into the game, as in just exploring the outskirts of my home neighborhood, Sanctuary Hills. There have been a couple of close calls in some gunfights, but I've also stayed fairly local and spent time scavenging for materials. (That's a nice way to say "stalling", by the way.)

So, do I purposefully send her out to die? Do I have her go for a radioactive swim in her underwear or try to take on a pack of Raiders and go down swinging? Once I see her crumple to the ground and the camera pans slowly back (assuming it does that), will I get over this phobic fear of my character's Death? But will I feel the same about this Juliet when I load up the last Quicksave, knowing it's not quite the same Juliet that walked out of Vault 111?

** Update, a few days later:  Juliet still lives! And I've found a way to not be too worried about losing her that I can't continue. Basically, it involves pausing and loading a Quicksave before she dies. I had to do this for a mission where she had to turn off some underwater valves and the I couldn't figure out where the surface was (graphics at this point were really hard to see). It's sort of like that game Life is Strange, where you can turn back time in order to do something the right way on the second (or third, or fourth) try. As long as she doesn't get one-shot'ed, it should keep her spirit alive...at least for me.