I would be lying to you if I told you that death didn't bother me. I am an empty, beliefless body that is terrified by the thought of death. In our world death is a big deal. Some people think it's final, some people think we come back as something else and others think that if they die in a way that reflects well on some ancient book that they'll be having the most bitchin' afterlife ever experienced. In the world of videogame logic though, death is many things, but it is never a big deal.
Take a game like Sonic. Sonic will run so fast that he can't see the cliff before he is experiencing it and will die only to use another life to hopefully learn from his past mistakes. Ah yes. What a different world it would be if we could collect extra lives. Not that it would be too easy. Remember ever trying and dying over and over trying to get an extra life that's in a place more dangerous than the fifth floor of a burning building? Yeah well imagine gambling your only real life in order to get another. Hectic.
In a multitude of FPS games you can come close to death and then recover yourself completely by simply hiding away from danger for a little while. Boy that'd be great huh? Break your leg and instead of hospitals and medical insurance all you need is to take it easy for a while and make sure no more harm comes to you for a minute or so. In these situations you can still die of course, but your chances for survival are drastically improved.
Death in the Sim's is very similar to death in real life. Your loved ones are devistated, you get a grave stone or an urn. But of course in the Sim's you can come back as a ghost to freak people out. Oh and more importantly Death comes in his personified form. Loved ones can play him in a game of chance to try and get you back. That's pretty handy, although they have to be there fairly quickly. But even if you lose at least you get to talk to Death. If he's anything like the Discworld's Death I would be quite pleased.
Death in JRPG's is, to say the least, very confusing. I remember specifically a point in Final Fantasy X where I was battling wave after wave of armed soldiers slowing chipping away at my health with multiple gunshots. After I'd been shot like 100 times and taken it all like they were throwing scrunched up paper at me I came to a cutscene where I was held at gunpoint I this managed to stop me because apparently during cutscenes bullets being fired at close range suddenly become dangerous. To make matter's even more confusing we have the ability to revive characters repeatedly during combat. Yeah I know that they usually call it being KO'd but I don't entirely buy that. After all when you're supposedly KO'd you get revived by pheonix downs (pheonix of course having the ability of rebirth) and even by spells that are called "Life." Both these things would make more sense if they were reversing the effects of death rather than being KO'd. And then there's the curious case where some JRPG's have a main character die off as part of the story. Why can't you revive them then? You still have the spells and items to do it and nothing happened to the character that you haven't already survived a million times before in combat. What the fuck is going on?
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