In real life, "death" is a taboo topic, it represents the loss of a life, an irreversible process, but in the game, death often only represents the accumulation of experience, technological progress, and the cornerstone of growth. Countless defeats before victory are often not put on the table, only the final success is the attention of everyone, and those game characters who die in the process of defeat are as if they did not exist, and are not mourned by anyone.
The mechanism of resurrection from the dead should have been very fresh before the advent of the game, and because of this feature, the biggest stereotype given to most video games is the save and Load, the mechanism of infinite resurrection, and in the early games, it is true, such a feature can not be said to be a disadvantage, but it is difficult to classify as an advantage. Because of this mechanism, most games actually have a deep sense of separation between the death and resurrection of the character, which makes the death of the character meaningless and reduces the realism of the game to a certain extent. And based on game works, there are many problems when adapting movies and novels. So, if it's not ideal, why is the game still inseparable from the Save & Load mechanic?
Give the player the power to choose
One of the differences between games and other mediums of storytelling is the ability to create non-linear stories, like the common "side quests", which are not necessary for the game, but like a strong flavor of the seasoning, can make a game with only "main quests" emit a more diverse fragrance. Taking the Polish national game "The Witcher 3" as an example, if you only play the main line mission, do not specifically do the side quest, the time spent playing a round is about a hundred hours, and in this rich hundred hours we can see the rich plot, exciting hunting tasks, and the welfare of blushing heartbeat.
However, if you play through the side quests together, the time spent will be multiplied by two to three times, that is, more than two hundred hours of non-repetitive content, and the richness of the game can be imagined. Therefore, in the game world, "side quests" are used to capture players and make them willing to spend more time on the same game, and side quests are often less exciting than main quests, but they are also a good way to build a worldview and deepen the player's impression of other characters. One of the great features of the Wizarding series is the carefully crafted side quests that are more enticing than the main quests.
In common commercial games on the market, side quests often give players the impression of "high sense of work", "high repetition", "low playability", "dispensable, like chicken ribs", while the wizard series spends money and time in side quests to give players the best experience. Side quests often have divergent options that allow players to make their own choices, and the choices they make can even affect the details of the mission after the mission is over, or other missions.
For example, in the wizarding generation, the protagonist Geralt was commissioned by the villagers to investigate the local Wind Moon place, and after investigation, he found that the women there were all vampires incarnated. As a demon hunter, Geralt is supposed to eliminate these monsters that endanger the survival of mankind, but the owner of the Wind Moon Place tells the protagonist that they have not harmed humans, they only ask for what they need to survive, and do not pose a threat to human life, and only hope to coexist with humans in the city. At this time, the army outside the door broke in and demanded that Geralt kill the vampires immediately, or else regard him as a monster of the same kind. At this point, the player can choose to help the vampires fight the unreasonable army, or to help the army sweep away the vampires.
At that time, I made the decision to help the vampire and destroy the entire army, so in the later plot, the protagonist and his friends in the military turned against each other and stopped helping the protagonist. The Wizarding series always emphasizes the concept of "the lesser of two evils", requiring players to make choices at critical moments. For people with choice barriers, perfectionists, or simply wrong choices, save & Load is their weapon to go beyond the limits and choose the game route they want most.
Increase game time reasonably
Being able to increase the amount of time players spend on a game is something that every game developer strives to achieve, and it is the hardest point to balance by giving sugar and whips appropriately over the course of the game so that players can be fascinated by the game without getting bored. In recent years, the game industry has gradually set off a "Dark Souls" trend, which originated from a game series produced by From Software, the "Dark Souls" series, the biggest feature of Dark Souls games is that he is different from the high difficulty of modern games.
Early classic games, such as mega man series, Castlevania series, its games have a high degree of difficulty, most of the ordinary people need dozens of hundreds of attempts to successfully pass the level, in order to stimulate the player's desire to pass the level, growth and breakthrough, but hindered by the modern player's free time reduction, and will not spend time on countless attempts, so the difficulty of modern games is often low, so that players do not need too much training to pass, and this kind of game is often called "fast food" by many hardcore players.
From Software decided to do the opposite, first launching the demo "Demon Souls" on the PS3 platform, trying to create a more unpopular hardcore type of game in fast food games. After unexpectedly receiving praise, they began to produce the Dark Souls trilogy, and achieved unprecedented success, and the game manufacturers saw this situation and added hardcore elements to their works, thus blowing up this dark soul trend.
No one likes to die
Games can be said to be created virtual reality, the meaning of this world is mainly in entertainment, no one likes death. This sentence is a bit arbitrary, but for most people, this is certain, imagining that in a world without video games, the words "death", "death", "hanging" appear, representing the death of real lives, not the next resurrection in the game. Therefore, when these games are made, they cannot let players feel the heaviness of death in the game, but hope that we can enjoy this work, so that the characters have N chances to be resurrected, so that players can achieve perfection and extremes in reality in this world, and can easily leave those memories of accidental death, leaving only those successful parts.
This kind of thinking creates the mechanism of Save & Load, and of course, there will be people who try to break through such a system that has been unchanged for many years. Russian indie game developer "Kefir!" In 2015, a work called "One Life" was developed, which uses the first-person shooter (FPS) doomsday survival genre, although this is a very popular genre, but it has a very unique setting - "permanent death mechanism", which means that if the character dies, the player can only leave the game permanently.
It's commendable that a game priced at ten dollars would dare to make such an attempt, and they put the concept and promotional video of the game on Steam Greenlight, a game demo that lets the producer put his game demo, and if there is a big response, he can get the opportunity to cooperate with the Steam official, so as to put their own game on the Steam platform. With a bold idea, they won the expectations of many players on Greenlight, and immediately reached the top of the popularity rankings, and set up an official website to start raising funds from players to develop games.
Then, many years later, this high-profile game did not appear on the game market, and there was no further follow-up, and many players who raised funds received official refunds, and it seems that there is no chance to see the game on the market. Although the concept is very avant-garde, not many players are really willing to pay for it, because no one likes irreversible death, and of course, ten dollars that can't be returned.
Innovate on the basis of the old setting
Save & Load isn't great, but it's not too bad, it just needs a little more creativity to become more distinctive, not just losing and starting over, just a story or logic to make it reasonable, not just a simple, cold game setting. For example, in the movie "Edge of Tomorrow", the protagonist in the play died in a war with aliens, but he was affected by aliens and had the ability to come back from the dead. Whenever the protagonist dies, he returns to the day before he enters the war, just like the video game's save mechanism, allowing him to grow in each death and finally successfully win the war.
Another example is the aforementioned Dark Souls series, in which the protagonists are all so-called "undead", and whenever they die in battle, they are resurrected at the campfire (save point) where they have been before, and embark on the journey again. The European and American independently produced RPG game "Under the Legend" also has a unique interpretation of Save & Load, as the protagonist of humans fell into a world full of monsters, players must choose to fight monsters, or communicate with them to resolve conflicts. If the character dies during the course of the game, he will return to the rebirth point, because the player has a strong determination, and the villain in the game, Flowey, also has the power of determination and can freely carry out Save & Load. Here, I quote his most impressive line from the game:
"I've done everything I can in this world, I've read every book and burned every book; I've won every game and I've lost every game; I've been friends with everybody and killed every one of them; I've read all the numbers, all the dialogue, I've read it all." In this line, Flowey's seemingly unmerciful behavior is something that many players will really do out of curiosity, wondering what kind of plot they would have if they made friends with this NPC, and what kind of impact it would have if they killed the NPC.
The game's first boss, Toriel, prevents the player from leaving the underground ruins to protect the player's safety, and the player can defeat her, kill her, or convince her in battle. If the player chooses to kill Toriel out of curiosity at first, then reads the file again afterwards and chooses to convince her, Flowey will mention it later in the story: "Very clever, very clever. You think you know it, don't you? You think you can play by your own rules, you forgive a life, but don't be too arrogant, I know what you did before. You killed her, and then you came back because you regretted it." Breaking the fourth wall in this way makes the plot of "Under the Legend" very prominent, and won many awards. Such a successful work, in which the Save & Load mechanism is absolutely indispensable.
Games can also be said to be an art, when everyone draws with watercolors, what do you do to make your watercolor paintings stand out? When all the games on the market have Save & Load, how do you make your game stand out? Try to innovate and make the old settings unconventional, which is also a good choice, isn't it?