Final Death: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

...also known as Permadeath. Beyond [[Non-Lethal KO]], beyond [[Only Mostly Dead]]. This is a relatively rare case in video games where a character dying in battle under certain circumstances is gone forever, and now the rest have to go on without him or her. Usually only happens with games where it's possible to get a fairly steady stream of replacements, so that if you manage to dwindle your party down so much that your next fight is pretty much [[Unwinnable]], you deserve to be screwed. Said replacements [[Unstable Equilibrium|may not be as good]], however.

 

This is a video game trope; the equivalent of this in fiction is [[Deader Than Dead]]. The inverse of this is [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist]].

{{examples}}

== Video Games ==

=== Action Adventure ===

* As mentioned by the AVGN, in ''[[The Wizard of Oz]]'', if the Lion dies, he's dead for the rest of the game.

** Not just him: Scarecrow and Tin Man too. Though you can pick up lives for all 3 of them, they are pretty rare in comparison to Dorothy's.

* ''Friday the 13th''. When they're all dead, "You and your friends are dead, [[Game Over]]''.

* The SMS port of ''[[Wonder Boy in Monster Land]]'', and the English version of ''[[Wonder Boy in Monster World]]''.

 

=== Adventure Game ===

* In the [[Fighting Game]] ''[[Weapon Lord]]'', you can continue after losing a match normally, like almost all fighting games. However, if the opponent defeats you with a [[Finishing Move]], you will not be given this chance, and you'll have to start all over.

* The manikins in ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]''. While in the original game they were just Mooks, in the prequel ''Duodecim'' it's revealed that anyone killed by a manikin isn't revived for the next cycle in the [[Groundhog Day Loop]]. {{spoiler|This is why Lightning, Kain, Yuna, Laguna, Tifa, and Vaan weren't in the original. They got overwhelmed by manikins after closing the rift that they were spawning out of.}}

 

=== First Person Shooter ===

*** Unless you've got [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|lots of quarters]]!

** ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]'' did this, and the developers recommended you back-up your bought copy and only play the game using those back-ups. Ah, the days where archival purposes wasn't considered piracy...

* This gets inverted in the MSX game ''[http://vault.digitalmzx.net/show.php?id=1273 The Short-Lived Adventures of Hobo Dan]'' - you can die as often as you want, but after you actually ''beat'' the game, it ''erases itself''.

 

** Some players of ''[[Dungeons and Dragons Online|DDO]]'' do this as a [[Self-Imposed Challenge]]. If your character dies and nobody is around to resurrect them, delete and roll a new character.

* Spoofed in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' with the April Fools Day announcement of Wisps as a new player race. They would have the ability to explode, permanently sacrificing the character in exchange for draining 50 mana from all units nearby (the ability wisps had in ''[[Warcraft]] 3''). This ability would not be even remotely useful if it caused a [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist|normal]] [[WoW]] death, and there is naturally no ability in the game worth destroying your character in order to use.

 

=== Platform Game ===

 

* The true extreme is ''[[You Only Live Once]]'' a flash platformer which is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. No extra lives, no continues, you only live once. Oh, and you can't play again, as it will remember that you died. And deleting cookies won't help. And purging your cache. And reinstalling your browser. The only way to truly restart the game is by going [http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html here] and deleting the files uploaded to your player, but it's [[Completely Missing the Point]].

* ''[[Mega Man X]] 3'' is notable for that. If you play as Zero and Zero dies, that's it, he's DEAD FOREVER AND YOU CAN'T USE IT ANYMOAR!! ...actually he is just "really badly damaged and therefore can't help you anymore", but the idea is still there.

** But you can cheat him back pretty easily: {{spoiler|Get your new password, enter it in, then keep adding 1 to the last digit and pressing start. Eventually you'll get one that works where Zero's back.}}

=== Real Time Strategy ===

 

** ''Lords Of The Realm 3'' is also notable, and along those lines. Aside from a few infinite [[Red Shirts]], all of your knights are actually drawn from a finite pool specific to the scenario you're playing. Knights are often able to retreat safely, rarely die even if felled, and high-tier or [[Hero Unit]] knights have a "luck" attribute that makes them even less likely to die in battle. However, if the knights ''are'' killed, or are captured and deliberately executed (as opposed to being honorably ransomed), they're dead for good. Killing certain knights is a victory condition in some scenarios.

* In [[Real Time Strategy]] game ''[[Sacrifice]]'', souls are essential for monster-summoning and, for certain sides, resurrection. Unfortunately the battlegrounds are giant floating islands, and if a monster falls off the edge, its soul(s) are lost forever. One particularly nasty spell cuts the ground out from under their feet. Conversely, one side's monsters can use ''friendly'' souls to [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|fuel powerful attacks and upgrades]].

* In the multi-platform game ''Cannon Fodder'', all of your troops only had one life. The more you killed, the more populated your graveyard would be with gravestones. Although the basic idea was that you'd be sending a few hundred troops to their deaths, it still stung when your current Lt. or General "Witty Name" got taken out by a spear trap.

* ''Warlords Battlecry 2'' has an "Ironman" mode which deletes the save profile if the players hero dies. (Essentially the same as the Diablo example above)

* Some bosses in ''[[Patapon]]'' can perma-kill your soldiers.

=== Roguelike ===

 

 

=== Role Playing Game ===

* The "Gone" status from the classic ''[[Wizardry]]'' is just that: You tried twice to resurrect someone, and it didn't work.

** ''[[Class of Heroes]]'', a [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Wizardry]]'', operates the same way.

** The 'Ironman' mode in Tactics makes reloading even more costly, as you can only save while in a BoS bunker. If a companion dies you have to make a hard choice whether to accept it as Final or roll back all progress before even setting out on the trip. If your main character dies, [[We Cannot Go on Without You|you don't even have that option]].

** [[Fallout: New Vegas|New Vegas]] has ally permadeth only in "Hardcore" mode.

* In ''[[Baldur's Gate]] 1'' & ''2'', whether or not party members can die the final death is configured by difficulty. On the "easy" and "normal" settings, dead characters can always be resurrected; on "core" and "hard" it's possible for them to be permanently killed if enough damage is done to them in one turn, or if an instant death spell is cast on them. As an exception to this, being the target of a successful disintegration effect or being petrified and then having the statue damaged will always kill a character completely dead, but petrification is at least reversible by applying a ''Stone to Flesh'' effect on the statue. And as an exception to ''all'' of this, having the protagonist killed or Imprisoned is an instant game over, even if you could have technically "gotten better" at the hands of your party members if it had been a tabletop game.

** You own un-resurrectability is justified: {{spoiler|Children of Bhaal instantly turn to dust upon death, their essence going towards fueling the resurrection of the dead god, as seen in BG 1's final cinematic with Sarevok. This still leaves a few strange issues, such as why it doesn't happen to Imoen as well, but those are probably just engine limitations.}}

** To clarify, there were no reviving party member tricks, and only a limited number of inventory healing items throughout the game and one minor cleric.

*** And said cleric only healed status effects, not health.

* ''[[Final Fantasy IV: The After Years]]'' has this for only a handful of characters. During Edge's Tale, you get four mini-missions with his Ninja in training, with each ninja going solo. Whereas in the rest of the game you get a Game Over if the party's wiped out, in this case, if a ninja dies on his or her mission, the game just moves onto the next one, and you never get that dead ninja back.

* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', if Wrex, Kaidan, or Ashley dies in Virmire, they stay dead in ''Mass Effect 2'', they don't come back as a burn victim, they don't come back as a badass, they stay dead. And anyone who dies in ''Mass Effect 2'' stays dead, and won't come back in ''Mass Effect 3''. One of the endings even has Shepard dying, and if Shepard dies, you can't import that save for ME3. All of the above fall somewhere between this trope and [[Plotline Death]], since all deaths take place in cutscenes integral to the plot, but you can still affect some of them thanks to the non-linear story ({{spoiler|though either Ashley or Kaidan ''[[Sadistic Choice|must]]'' die on Virmire}}).

** Death of old age is also fatal... [[Game Breaking Bug|to the game itself; it makes it crash.]]

* The [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nuzlocke_Challenge Nuzlocke] ''[[Pokémon]]'' runs work like this; if one of your Pokémon faints during a battle, it is considered "dead" and can never be used again. It must either be released or permanently placed in a PC box.

* ''[[The Witcher|The Witcher 2]]'' has this for ''you'' on [[Harder Than Hard|insane difficulty]]. If Geralt dies, all your saves from that playthrough are rendered inaccessible and you must start over.

 

* In one of the [[Crack is Cheaper|most expensive home games ever made]], ''[[Steel Battalion]]'', your character will be killed and your profile erased if your Vertical Tank (Mecha) is destroyed and you fail to use the eject button on the massive controller included.

* The ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' series has flip-flopped on this a bit. In WC1, all wingmen could be killed with relative ease, meaning that you had to fly the rest of the system's missions solo. In WC2, all wingmen played a bigger role in the plot, and would automatically eject if their ship took lethal damage. Starting with WC3, wingmen would start out automatically ejecting, but after a certain point (depending on the wingman in question), each would start to be flagged as "at risk", and would no longer eject in time

* [[Creatures]] series embodies this - a creature, be it Norn, Grendel or Ettin, that dies, dies for good. There are ways to stall death indefinitely but once a creature dies, there is no way to reverse it. The game uses a save system that prevents simply reloading the game and injecting a [[Chemistry Can Do Anything|ton of various chemicals]] in the creature's system to stall death.

* In ''[[Shadow President]]'', depending on the actions that you take throughout the game, your advisors may resign due to policy disagreements, be assassinated, or be caught up in a scandal. These advisors do not come back, making your job as President very difficult, as they're able to provide many of the facts behind other countries including military capabilities, population statistics, and financial standings.

=== Sports Game ===

 

 

=== Stealth Based Game ===

 

** This is made more annoying by the fact that soldiers can die for good even with full LIFE - if they run too hard for too long without eating anything, their Stamina empties and they pass out - forever.

* And speaking of ''[[Metal Gear]]'': ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' includes the infamous torture scene, where Ocelot [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|goes out of his way to warn Snake that there are no continues]], and if Snake can't stand the torture and kicks the bucket, the game is ''over''. Of course, this is all there to give players an incentive to submit to Ocelot's torture if they can't keep up ([[Memetic Mutation|And don't even think about using auto-fire, or he'll know!]]), when the [[Multiple Endings|ending of the game]] depends on how well the player does at the torture scene.

=== Survival Horror ===

* The relatively unknown PSX game ''Hell Night'' had you fleeing through an [[Absurdly Spacious Sewer]] with a partner. If the monster caught up with you, your partner would die permanently and instantly. You'd be on your own until you found the next one.

 

=== Third Person Shooter ===

=== Turn Based Strategy ===

* In ''[[Tactics Ogre]]'', deaths are permanent, unless the character is resurrected during the battle in which they died. Note that the resurrection spell is not found until late-game and is very expensive [[Mana Meter|MP-wise]]. Few alternatives exist, and those are found even later.

** Various games in the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' series have stages called "Jagds," which always lack some vital mechanic of the game. In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' the mechanic in question is the magical law system that governs combat and keeps people from dying of their injuries. Any allies who have 0 HP at the end of a fight in a Jagd will die. (This is the only method by which [[The Scrappy|Montblanc]] can be removed from your party---Ezel will replace him in later scenes.)

* In the ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' series, a slain character is gone for the duration of the game. Plot important characters are considered to have sustained a crippling injury so that they can never fight again (allowing them to interact with other characters during cutscenes), while lesser characters just simply die. (The ''main'' character's death will send you straight to [[We Cannot Go on Without You|game over]].)

** Characters who die in a chapter can be brought back by restarting the chapter of course, but the game (some of them, at least) will keep track of how many times each character died in battle, just to remind you how much you suck.

** The DS version of ''Mystery of the Emblem'' has a "Casual Mode" to turn off permadeath. Characters who die in battle will be usable again for the next battle.

* ''[[Warhammer 40000 Chaos Gate]]''- once a Marine is dead, he's dead. You only have limited Terminators too and can't move them over.

* Unlike every other game in the series, the original ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' on the [[Game Boy]] has permadeath. It can get away with it because it has [[Excuse Plot|the bare minimum of plot]], compared to the series' modern trend of [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover|mixing tons of plots together]].

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' has Hardcore mode where you are stuck on Hard difficulty and dying means your save for that world ''gets erased from your computer!''. Not recommended for players who want to build and/or explore.

** Terraria, the "Minecraft if it were 2-d and more combat based" game, has hardcore difficulty. If you die, the character you made is gone. As multiple characters can go through your worlds, it's not a total loss if you stored items regularly. You still lose that inventory and HP/MP gained on the character.

 

 

* In ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'', Yusuke and his friends are forced to play in an actualized version of a video game titled "Goblin City" against a young kid known only as the Gamemaster. The Gamemaster takes the role of the game's final boss the Goblin King, not realizing that the Goblin King is killed off after the player completes the game, whereas the player can revive as many times as he wants since the game has unlimited continues. As a result, the Gamemaster dies for real when Kurama completes the final stage.

 

=== Fan Works ===

* A particular ''[[Pokémon]]'' horror story features [[Yandere|Mew]] doing this to all its trainer's pokémon.

* This is the underlying point of the [[Nuzlocke Comics|Nuzlocke]] [[Self-Imposed Challenge|challenge]] in ''[[Pokémon]]'' games. The base rules are simple: one can only attempt to capture the first Pokémon they encounter in any given route, and anyone that faints is considered dead and must be released or placed in a PC box indefintely at the next opportunity to do so.<ref>It's also considered good practice to nickname everyone you successfully acquire. Any additional rules are up to the player, should they choose to add them.</ref> As this makes any Pokémon captured very difficult to replace, it becomes surprisingly heartbreaking whenever one of them '''''do''''' faint, whether as a result of a random [[Critical Hit]] or, worse, because of your own mistakes. [[Arc Words|I believe this is all happening for a reason.]]

 

=== Literature ===

 

=== Tabletop Games ===

** There are ways around even that. An Elan ([[The Order of the Stick|no relation]]) has no maximum age. The Green Star Adept [[Prestige Class]] confers agelessness, although it otherwise isn't that good. And depending on the DM, "Reincarnate" might be interpreted as a loophole, as it explicitly creates a young body.

** Inversely, there are also ways of making sure someone stays out of the way forever, too. Certain spell effects or monster special attacks have a 50% chance of essentially destroying the soul of the victim as well, meaning that there's nothing to resurrect. Also, the spells for resurrection require the soul being brought back is willing so if they're happy being dead, then dead they shall stay, and finally, there are alternate rules for the DM who wants death to be a wee bit more enduring then a nap in the dirt.

* In ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' and ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]'', vampires have two stages of death: Torpor, where the vampire is basically sleeping for an extended period of time (up to centuries, in a few cases), and Final Death, which usually involves fire, explosives, or something equally severe.

* You get three tries to bring someone back with the only resurrection spell in ''[[Rifts]]''. It's ''very'' high-level. If you fail all three times (you have a 45% chance to succeed), one other mage may make three attempts. If the other mage fails thrice, the dead person is gone.

 

=== Web Original ===

* TV example, sort of: ''[[Captain N]]'' could survive death in the video game world a few times, but if his "extra lives" ran out, he'd "go to the big game-over in the sky" (Also a [[Never Say "Die"]]).

* The [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Avatar spirit]] itself would suffer this if the current incarnation of the Avatar is ever killed while in the [[Super Mode|Avatar state]]. Otherwise it would just reincarnate into the next part of the cycle after his/her death.

 

=== Real Life ===

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]

[[Category:Final Death]]