Games with avoidable plot deaths

The Game Room
1

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?

2

The only character that comes close to what you mention that i can think off is dogmeat from the fallout games. Hes not exactly part of the plot per se, hes just a dog that decides to follow you around after you are nice to him. The thing is, hes not a super powered bad ass dog, you are fighting people with guns and he will suicidally rush them the moment a fight starts which means his survival rate past your first fight is damn near zero. Finishing the game with dogmeat still alive is considered a great accomplishment.

3

The moment I finished reading the OP, the game that immediately came to mind was The House of the Dead. I actually mentioned this in a previous Game Room thread, in fact.

The premise is that you’re a super-secret agent (or two, depending) sent to discover the truth about a mysterious mansion where a certain “Curien” has been performing unspeakable experiments. It quickly turns into a fight for your life against a horde of zombies. In the first level, you attempt to rescue Sophie (a chief researcher and the #1 guy’s main squeeze). She’s nabbed by the second boss just as she’s about to escape. Then when you find her again, she gets hacked right in the guts by the first boss, and you spend the rest of the game hunting down the man responsible.

At the end, the agent (or agents, depending) slowly makes his way back through the now-empty mansion. As he enters his car, he takes one last look at the accursed place. And…that’s it. The screen goes monochrome, and “END” appears in the corner of the screen.

[spoiler]Unless, of course, you had a high enough score (I read somewhere it was 65,000 points), whereupon just before everything goes amber, the POV suddenly zooms in on the main doors, which open…revealing a very alive and very happy Sophie making the dash to freedom. (Doncha just love 3D graphics?) :slight_smile:

Remarkably, this is the only time Sega ever did this. Harry pulls through no matter what, G obviously lives for a long time, and there’s absolutely no preventing James’ sacrifice. Goldman, well, suffice to say that his fate is sealed, although perhaps plot death isn’t the proper term…[/spoiler]

4

Dead Rising is an interesting example of this: most of the side story of the game itself is based on these avoidable plot deaths. During the game, there are dozens of events on a sort of ‘schedule’ (supposedly where your teammates are watching the mall’s CCTV for survivors holed up in various shops) where you’ll have short windows in which to rescue people, each with their own stories and motivations. It’s pretty much impossible to even rescue most of them on the first play-through, however…

[spoiler]Capcom gave the game its Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter trope of letting you “give up” during your three-day stint in a zombie infested mall, thus starting over but with your stats and skills intact.

Even with a maxed-out zombie-splashing photojournalist, it was damn near impossible to save everyone in a single playthrough. Though not impossible.[/spoiler]

5

Does Japanese history still need spoiling?

In Yukimura Sanada’s path for the first Samurai Warriors, Takeda Shingen dies early in the battle of Mikagahara (history says of unknown reasons, but the game has Hattori Hanzo assassinate him); later, once Shingen has been unlocked, you can replay that battle to defeat Hanzo before he reaches Shingen, thus unlocking an alternate ending.

(A number of other paths also have choices of this kind in SW, so I won’t list them all here.)

Sadly, the paths were not kept in the sequels, so everybody only got one ending. :frowning:

6

Deus Ex. You can run away like Paul tells you to, or you can stay and save him.

7

The original Metal Gear Solid

If you give in during the Revolver Ocelot’s torture minigame, Meryl later dies. If you win, you rescue Meryl and get some booty.

Grand Theft Auto 4

You make several decisions that determine who ends up living and dieing at the end.

I thought it was actually impossible to rescue all the rescuable survivors in Dead Rising and complete all the cases.

I would actually like to see more of that in games, where it’s impossible to save everyone or complete every task, but what you do or do not do affects the story and outcome (but without painting you into too many corners).

8

I see I was beaten to Deus Ex. The first time I played, Paul lived. I saw he was putting up a good fight, and I just hid in a closet or something until he killed all the enemies. I didn’t know he would die until I read about it on the internet.

Also, he’ll live if you run away if you go out through the front instead of the back.

9

Suikoden 1 and 2, PlayStation RPGs, both do this. In both games you can recruit 108 characters. In the first one the hero’s nurse, bodyguard, teacher, whatever makes a noble sacrifice to save the hero and his party. If you managed to find all the characters the mysterious woman who had been pulling some strings up until this point will explain that together they can reach through time and grab him before he dies.

In the second game the main character’s sister dies at one point. If you have all 108 characters it turns out that it was a trick. She wanted to get out of sight so the main character could keep leading the war effort without being concerned for her. If you didn’t recruit all of the characters, she really did die.

I can’t recall specifics, but I’m fairly certain Suikodens 4 and 5 had similar situations.

10

In the second Baldur’s Gate PC game, when you retake Nalia’s ( sp ) castle, there’s a scene where you face the charmed Captain of the Guard ( I think that’s his position ). If you cast charm yourself on him, he turns non hostile and talks to you lives, otherwise you have to kill him.

At least, that’s how it was supposed to work, but the scene’s buggy, and I only succeeded once despite trying quite a few times.

11

Also from Deus Ex, whoever it was that piloted the helicopter. My memory’s too hazy to give any more details, but I remember being surprised to find out you could save him.

12

In Eternal Sonata

Claves dies when she stops being a double agent and becomes a double-double agent much to the dismay of her former affiliate who was checking in on her findings. If you go to the mega-uber bonus dungeon where all the super-weapons are right before the last level you get her back, though she’s still the same level as when you lost her so you’re stuck raising her up to par with the rest of the party, though she supposedly becomes insanely powerful if you do.

13

Am I the only one that thinks spoiler tags in a thread about plot deaths is unneeded for anything but the most recent games? Anyway
Chrono TriggerIt’s hard to miss but the main character gets incinerated by Lavos at one point. You can then if you wish simply beat the game leaving him dead. Or you can create a dummy to take his place at that moment in time.

14

Yes. If it was a thread about spoilers in one game, you’d have a point, but just because you want to read spoilers about Deus Ex doesn’t mean you want to read spoilers about Metal Gear Solid.

In Mass Effect:

[spoiler]one of your party members, Wrex, gets in a confrontation about the need to destroy a cure that could save his species from near-extinction. If you have done a side-quest for him or have enough points in your “persuasion” skills, you can talk him down. Otherwise you or one of your party members is forced to shoot him.

Not long after, two of your party members are under attack. You can only save one.[/spoiler]

15

I still think I have a point. There’s threads all the time called ‘Most shocking unbelievable plot twists in movies!’ and suchlike. It’s pretty widely held you enter such threads at your own risk.

However this is just a hijack so I’ll let it be.

16

In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, one of the first characters you meet is a wood elf named Tarhiel, who comes plumming out of the sky and dies upon striking the ground. Turns out he invented a spell called “Icarian Flight” which allows you to leap great distances…unfortunately, the landings are a problem.

However, it’s possible to save Tarhiel’s life by

casting a Slowfall or Levitation spell on him.

It doesn’t affect the plot one iota, however.

17

Actually you can (sort of) run away and have him live - you just must not exit through the window. The rest is irrelevant, he is invincible in the subsequent fight and will vanish at some point while you don’t look, If you help him or not, he’ll live.

18

You can talk to a mechanic in … err, the whats-his-names hideout, with the frozen guy. He’ll be talking strange things, and if you look around you find a mechanics corpse. J.C. warns Jock, and he drops the bomb in a cutscene.

19

Thanks for the responses, everyone. Games that allow the player to influence the plot interest me, and I thought this was one aspect of that that would make for an interesting thread.

And I can tell I need to get around to playing Deus Ex :).

20

In Silent Hill:

You can save the life of the cop who’s possessed by some parasitic creature/demon. You need to get a bottle of acid? or something in the hospital and throw it on her back. If you do save her, she shows up at the end to help you get the ‘best’ ending in the game (and survives). There’s another guy you can save earlier, but he always dies at the end, as far as I know.

In Planescape:Torment, the character interactions can have quite an effect on how the game unfolds. There are several endings, which you have some control over. There’s one that few have seen (at least I never see it mentioned in walkthroughs):

If your character has a ridiculously high INT (something like 24, maybe) you can actually trick the Transcendent One (final boss) to buy some time. He runs off to check if he left the water running (not that exactly, but the same sort of trick). During that time, you can resurrect your friends. It’s the only way you can revive all your friends and still fight the Transcendent One. There is another ending where you all live, though.