The music intensifies as all other sound becomes a damp whisper. A single gunshot is fired and a beloved character slowly falls to the ground while their comrades yell out in shock. What an emotional scene! Or at least, it would be if it weren’t for the fact that the character in question already received about a thousand bullet wounds earlier in a gameplay segment.

This is a problem that plagues many gaming narratives. Story is often governed by a very different set of rules than gameplay, resulting in some very awkward and even comical moments in what should be distressing scenes. Because of the interactive nature of games, it’s difficult to avoid these pitfalls. Yet, some games manage to handle it a cut above the rest.

Permanent character death by player action is one way to drive the point home. Of course, not all games can support this variable approach to storytelling, but the ones that do have proved quite effective.

Consider the suicide mission found in Mass Effect 2. Every party member’s life hangs in the balance. A single wrong decision on your part means you have to watch them die. To make things even more panic-inducing, that means you won’t just miss them in the final portion of the game, but also its save-importing sequel, Mass Effect 3. The fact that it can happen to anybody and that it’s your own fault gives it a sense of weight not commonly found in the medium.

But permanent death (or “permadeath“) is controversial. Even Fire Emblem, a series known for its consistent use of this idea for over 20 years finally added the option to turn it off for the first time ever in its Japan-only remake of the series’ Super Famicom debut last year. This decision was not made lightly, however, as an Iwata Asks column revealed it involved four months of heated debate between Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.

Giving the option to remove the feature may have made the game more accessible to beginners, but there’s a reason project manager Masahiro Higuchi stated, “…this would make the game cease to be Fire Emblem.” It’s about more than losing a playable character and a few lines of disposable dialogue.

My own experience in 2005′s Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance showed me that permadeath can change the entire tone of a mission. By keeping Jill (a defected soldier from the enemy side) alive, you’ll eventually come in contact with an enemy general named Shiharam who just so happens to be Jill’s father. Had Jill not been alive and kicking, I wouldn’t have witnessed her emotional turmoil at the situation or the danger of her father convincing her to rejoin the opposing army (yes, that can actually happen if you’re not careful). So the death of Jill, or any Fire Emblem character for that matter, carries not only the weight of losing their personality and strategic advantages, but also potentially missing out on a far more personal context to certain scenarios.

I’m not saying that scripted deaths are never the answer. In fact, the threat of character death by player action can actually enhance the effect of a scripted death. It may sound crazy, but stay with me.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt as down after a scripted death as I have after one featured in SEGA’s tactical gem, Valkyria Chronicles. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the details. VC’s handling of death was so effective because of the way the game trained my brain beforehand through the aforementioned use of permadeath.

Much like Fire Emblem, every single one of your soldiers in Valkyria Chronicles is a unique character with their own personality, appearance, abilities, and backstory rather than the empty shells you’ll often find in games like Final Fantasy Tactics. As you use a character, their bio will gradually fill in allowing you to get to know them. And to really tug at your heart strings, the game makes excellent use of its visual style if a character dies. With their last breath they say their final words as the watercolor is removed from the scene, leaving only the pencil sketch of their now lifeless body behind.

It’s enough to make you want to save every last soldier in your squad. This teaches you two things: Death is a constant danger and by playing well you can keep all your troops from dying. But the latter is a total lie. At some point the game will remind you that this is a war and not everybody is coming home. This reminder comes in the form of a scripted death that turns your former feeling of control into a sense of powerlessness.

The fragile mortality of your soldiers up to this point makes the scripted event feel all to real. The only difference is that this time, like many things in life, it can’t be prevented. It was at this point I had to stop playing for the night. I needed some time.

Another powerful portrayal of death is found in letting the player control a character’s final moments. While probably not the first game to do it, the earliest example of this I can recall is Final Fantasy VII‘s PSP prequel, Crisis Core. By having the player actually interact with a completely hopeless situation, it portrayed death in a far more effective way than any cutscene could have hoped to. Since then, I’ve still only played a small handful of games that used this method including Naruto SUNS 2 and Halo: Reach (though neither executed it nearly as well).

Games have the ability to approach death in ways that simply aren’t possibly in other mediums. While the examples that take full advantage of this are few and far between, it’s my sincere hope that this will be something that helps set gaming’s narrative capabilities apart in the years to come.

On a very special episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, the twenty second as it turns out, Jesse and Jonah are left to their own devices, as several people had to cancel at the last minute.

Not ones to let a thing like that keep them down, they decided to do the show with a live video stream.

In “What We’ve Been Playing”, Jesse talks about Fire Emblem, “BlazBlue” and “Mega Man Star Force 3: Red Joker” (aka Megamon Red). Jonah checked out the “Overlord II” demo, Finished “Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal” and more “Battlefield Heroes”.

Then in the second half it’s off to the news, where we talk about new adventures in writing for other websites, Lucasarts classics arrival on Steam, Game & Watch games being released on DSiWare for 2 bucks a pop, Wipeout HD Fury being in the final testing phase (wooo!) and a lot more.

So check it out, and watch this space for details on the next LIVE episode of Barrel Roll coming this weekend!

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Show Links:
Nintendo’s New Suprise
LucasArts Classics on Steam
InsulinFunk.net
The MegaMan Network
Song in the Middle – “I Am Evil” Monkey Island remix