RIP Whoever You Were

Death in video games is a commonly seen trend. We watch grunts get decapitated by a hero's weapon in Dynasty Warriors, we watch a Goomba get stomped into oblivion when Mario jumps on top of it's head, we watch Aerith die in our hands as Sephiroth ambushes her with his sword. Were those chills that just ran down your spine on that last one? Why was it this death made you feel something?

Although death is not a light subject, how it is presented can be brushed aside easily. In games where killing leads to success, we will gladly shoot a lowly grunt, it doesn't seem so bad when we are rewarded for our killing behavior. Even when a character is killed in a grotesque way, we don't think to much of it. Dead Rising 2 is an excellent example of carefree killing. One of the main mechanics of this game is to use weapons (or combine them to form new weapons, such as Boomstick in the picture above), and use them to kill hordes of zombies to further the plot; the player also has plenty of killing methods, anything from guns to chainsaws to moose heads. But despite the gallons of blood and tons of lost limbs, this game doesn't make a player feel bad about killing any of the zombies, simply because they are enemies that stand in the players way, and the player is rewarded by killing them.

But sometimes it isn't so easy to kill off someone because out enemy isn't a run-of-the-mill grunt. Many boss battles demonstrate this fact, but the goal is still the same, they must be killed. Not because they are mindless zombies in the way that give us power-ups, but because they threaten our character. If an object in a game poses any sort of threat to the player, they will naturally want to fight back. In Megaman X, before the player even knows what is going on with the game's story, they are threatened by Vile, a purple Reploid (humanlike robot) inside a huge robot suit. If his presence alone wasn't enough to pose a threat to the player, Vile immediately begins attacking the player with the robot suit. The player can't run away, or even defeat Vile, but they will fight back to the best of their ability. Towards the end of the game, the player is able to kill Vile, and at that point, the killing is enjoyable, not because we are psychopaths, but because we can finish a struggle we had with someone who had threatened our survival.

From the topics stated above, it would seem that killing off an enemy is alway easy to do. If someone stands in our way, we should always blast them into the ground, but this isn't always the case either. If you have ever played Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, you may understand the difficulty of killing off an enemy.

In Snake Eater, the player has to kill "The Boss", Snake's mentor who has turned her back on America and is fighting with the Russians. After the player knocks down The Boss's health to zero, a cutscene plays, where The Boss reveals everything to Snake. In the end, she tells Snake to shoot her with her gun. Snake picks up the gun, and the player decides when to shoot. Because The Boss was so close to Snake's heart, and someone he looked up to, it is hard for him to do the deed. The game also spends a lot of time developing characters, making the death even more dramatic. The difference between The Boss and Vile lies on a personal level, while Megaman and Vile are sworn enemies, The Boss and Snake are very close.

However, sometimes we don't do the killing. Scripted events in the game are sometimes the reason a character gets killed off. In The Witch's House, the player has to navigate through a house as a young girl named Viola, solving puzzles while feearing for their life, as any mistake can easily kill off the player. Once the player solves all the puzzles, they have to escape from the witch who created all of the deadly puzzles by running out of the house without the witch catching them. If a player manages to escape the house and grab a knife before they leave, the discover the heart-breaking truth of the game. At the end of the game, the player learns they were the witch the entire time, and the girl they thought they were saving has been put in the decaying body of the witch. Not only is this shocking in itself, but shortly after, when Viola's father comes to save her, she shoots the witch (actually her daughter) and makes sure his "daughter" is okay. The witch quickly assumes the role of the scared little girl, and the game ends, with the player in shock (and possibly tears) at the tragedy of the poor girl. This death, although physically similar to the Dead Rising scenario (a decaying body getting shot), is gut-wrenching and saddening, because we liked, who we though was, Viola, and thought we were helping her, only to have the game's reality slammed in our face.

Death is portrayed in such an odd manner in games. It is inevitable in some games, and even then, it can be heart-breaking or enjoyable, sometimes both in the same game. When a story is added to a character, we begin to develop feelings about that character, and when something like this happens, it can be a real tear jerker, even if it is a peaceful death. Presentation is everything in these digitalized deaths, as it can be the difference between killing a worthless grunt, or an innocent girl.