I’m sure we’ve all encountered it: normally, your characters will take machine gun blasts to the face without blinking and shrug off grenades, and if they happen to get a bit overwhelmed by a thermonuclear blast or something, all you have to do is tickle them with a burning chicken feather and they’re fine.
But suddenly it happens. There’s a cut scene, and someone gets stabbed with an oversized knife, and it’s time for you to turn on the waterworks, because that character is dead as a doornail and never coming back. There is nothing you can do about, not before or after, for the plot has decreed that It Shall Be So, and it’s not like you, the mere player, get to affect it in any substantial way (perish the thought).
Except when you can. In some games, playing through it normally the character dies and stays dead… but if you do it right the character is saved or resurrected. Maybe if you do the hard optional dungeon to get the magical artifact of resurrection. Maybe if you get there fast enough to save them. Maybe if you choose the right dialogue options the power of love revives them. Maybe something else. But somehow, if you do it right, you get to save them.
In short, the topic of the thread is, what games have hidden plot paths where a character who normally dies lives?
A note on spoilers: obviously merely mentioning a game in this thread is a spoiler to some degree, but that can’t be avoided. However, please put any details about a game in a spoiler box so that people can choose how much they want to be spoiled about what.
On to my examples. I have two. The first one is a fairly well known game: Final Fantasy 6.
[spoiler]Two examples, actually. Normally Shadow gets left behind on the floating island and dies there. But if you wait at the ship until the timer has almost run out (30 seconds left, I think it was) he will show up, and survive, and he’s available in the second half of the game.
There’s also the mini-game to save Cid at the start of the second half. That’s not particularly hidden, but it is quite difficult to save him if you don’t know how to go about it, and I have encountered people who didn’t know it was possible to succeed.
But there’s no way to save General Leo.[/spoiler]
Cave Story is considerably less well known, though it is about as well known as a freeware game made by a single person is likely to get. It’s awesome, by the way, you should all play it.
[spoiler]Normally Professor Booster dies in the labyrinth teleporter room, and Curly is left waterlogged in the Core chamber. However, it is possible (and necessary if you want to reach the best ending) to save them both, and you have to save the former to save the latter.
But Toroko and King are doomed as far as I’m aware.[/spoiler]
So. Got any other examples for me?