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Plotline Death: Difference between revisions
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If the killed character is an [[NPC]], it's even worse, the gameplay mechanic usually simply doesn't allow the player to revive such a character.
The flip-side is that, occasionally, what the story gods took away, they may give back; there may be a way to bring someone [[Back
Usually a ''glaring'' example of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]. Very commonly part of a [[Player Punch]] and [[Death by Origin Story]].
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{{examples}}
==
=== [[Action Adventure]] ===
* ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]''. But it only happens in the ending, and it's YOU.
* In ''[[King Arthur and the Knights of Justice]]'', at the end of the game, Morgana kills the two knights that were in your party. If you want them back, you have to go to the Land of the Dead.
=== [[Action Game]] ===
* The difference between Plotline Death and gameplay death shows up again in ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]''... But it's the ''opposite'' of the usual difference. When Kratos dies in gameplay, it's permanent, and you have to reload the last checkpoint... however, when the plot requires him to die, he's allowed a chance to fight back out of the Underworld and complete his quest.
** Given the circumstances of the death (killed by Ares ''seconds'' after claiming Pandora's Box, the one weapon that can kill him), and knowing Kratos, it's possible that when he dies in the plot, he's finally pissed off enough to kill his way out of there. That, and it's only on that visit that someone drops a rope for him.
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* In ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]'', it doesn't matter how many guards or doctors you rescue, most of them will be dead before the game's end.
=== [[Adventure Game]] ===
* Subverted in ''[[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)|Fahrenheit]]'' (''Indigo Prophecy'' in North America) - the last third of the game is played as the main character despite him being technically dead.
=== [[Driving Game]] ===
* ''[[Racing Lagoon]]'', the deaths of the NPCs, Makoto Sawaki and Kyoji Nanba, are quite important to the [[The Hero]] as [[It Got Worse|the show's getting worse and worse]]. It's justified why they are being thought of all the time since their crashes occurred [[Player Punch|right after or not very long after you race with them.]]
=== [[First-Person Shooter]] ===
* In ''[[Killzone]] 2'', you play as Sev, a soldier with a "medic gun" that can heal downed soldiers (as long as they haven't been shot in the head). Some time near the end of the game, one of your partners, Garza, is wounded by Radec and eventually dies. Why you couldn't use your Medic gun to heal him doesn't make much sense.
* The FPS ''Requiem: Avenging Angel'' features a Plotline Death that must be reversed to continue the game. (One of the player's powers is "revive")
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* In [[The Darkness]], Jackie's girlfriend Jenny gets killed by the antagonist Paulie. The Darkness prevented Jackie from saving Jenny in order for him not to be [[They Were Holding You Back|weakened by emotional ties]].
=== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s ===
* During the epic "While Guthix Sleeps" quest in ''[[
=== [[Platform Game]] ===
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006
** And before that {{spoiler|Blaze and Omega}}
*** To be fair, {{spoiler|The game retcons itself by resetting time to before the games starts ensure that none of the events ever happened. ever.}}
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** [[Fridge Brilliance]]: He didn't have his armor turned on. The devs game him Holo-armor so that they could turn it off during cutscenes. Due to the fact that he was completely unarmored, the weak looking energy blast offed him.
=== [[Real Time Strategy]] ===
* Otomo in ''[[Battle Realms]]'', if you choose to follow the Dragon Clan plotline.
* In ''[[Rise of Legends]]'' Carlini dies in a cutscene near the beginning of third campaign. Normally it just takes some resources and time to revive a fallen hero. Moreover in this mission you get to control a hero that has ability to resurrect friendly units.
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** Confusingly enough, however, the spirits that can raise a player from the dead actually do so in canon as well, one featuring in a cataclysm quest.
=== [[Role
* Sort of subverted in the Tactical-RPG ''[[Agarest Senki|Agarest: Generations of War]]''. Canonically, the lead character of each Generation and the three females chosen by Dyshana die at the end of their Generation e.g. Leonhardt, Fyuria, Luana and Elaine all die at the end of the First Generation. ''However'', it is possible to bring back a "mindless, heartless" Marionette version of these dead characters by obtaining the Forbidden Book items and taking them to the Alchemist's Guild. These Marionettes have no purpose plot-wise; they exist merely for people who wish to use them in battles.
* Occurs frequently in the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games.
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* One of the bosses in Sion's campaign in ''[[Treasure of the Rudra]]'' has an ability called [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|'Foxy Killer']] which it uses to force one of these. Foxy can't be revived by usual means after being hit with this skill, only by a trip to the underworld.
=== [[Simulation Game]] ===
* ''[[Ace Combat]]'' deaths (for anyone but yourself) only happen when the story says that they happen. Unlike [[Gameplay Ally Immortality]], this applies to enemy NPCs as well. For example, in ''[[Ace Combat Zero:
** Also done in ''[[Ace Combat 5 The Unsung War]]'' with one of your squadmates and an enemy. If you shoot the named enemy in the second-to-last mission there's a comment about you being the ace of aces, but the enemy still appears during the final sequence to get his final [[Karmic Death]].
* In the original ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'', if a character died, they were gone for good, sometimes resulting in you having to fly missions solo. (Given [[Artificial Stupidity|wingman AI]], however, it could be argued that [[It's Up to You|you were always flying solo.]]) Starting with second game, pilots who get shot down eject, until the storyline calls for them to die.
=== [[Stealth Based Game]] ===
* In ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', you could've totally saved your father and brother with a fair bit of skills and some attempts, but they have to die during a cutscene and your sword had totally be knocked out of your hand even though you could easily pick it up/dodge the attack if it's in gameplay.
** Justified - We're replaying events that actually happened past, so avoiding this would have been an inaccuracy.
*** No, it's not. What the above is saying is that Ezio should have done all those things, not Desmond.
=== [[Survival Horror]] ===
* In ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'' there is no way to prevent Maria's death in Brookhaven's basement.
** Or in the jail cell. Or in the room with the Pyramid Heads. Or when you fight her, on some endings, anyways.
* The ''[[Fatal Frame]]'' games tend to conclude their (generally canon) endings with a Plotline Death. In the first, Mafuyu stays behind with Kirie, effectively killing himself to be with her; in the second, Mio strangles her sister Mayu to death as part of a ritual; and in the third, Kei (Mio's uncle) is captured and killed by the Tattooed Maiden, with Mio left in a perpetual coma ever since the game's events. Good endings allow you to negate a lot of these, but again, they haven't been canon thus far.
* An interesting aversion occurs in the [[Survival Horror]] game ''[[Obs Cure]]''. The only way a character can be killed off is through [[Too Dumb to Live|your own]] [[Yet Another Stupid Death|incompetence]]; the game continues until all four (later five) available player characters have been killed. You can theoretically finish the game with [[Everybody Lives|all five characters still alive]], or with [[Final Girl|only one]]; in fact, [[Multiple Endings|which ending you get]] is determined by whether or not everyone made it to the end. The sequel, however, plays this very straight, with most of the characters getting [[Cruel and Unusual Death|brutally butchered]] as the game progresses, ending with only Shannon and Stan still alive.
* ''[[Resident Evil Code: Veronica]]'' has a distinct NPC scenario. Steve, having mutated into a large green monster, can take any and all damage thrown at him by Claire without missing a beat. But he gets killed by a tentacle. A tentacle that had its end chopped off. [[Flat What|Wut?]]
=== [[Turn-Based Strategy]] ===
* ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral]]'', Sigurd, main character and Lord for the first half of the game dies on you at the end of a chapter. Along with his entire army except for one or two survivors. Fortunately, all the ladies left children behind to carry on the struggle. Two children each, in fact.
** And there's a [[Justified Trope|justification]] as to why you couldn't use the Dead-raising "Valkyrie" Holy Stave—when you get the wielder of the Staff, Claud, he says that it cannot raise those who have lost their Quintessence, which happens slowly over time, or could be stolen by special weapons... by time you get another Valkyrie wielder, the first gen characters have been dead far too long.
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*** Ninian is replaced by Nils for gameplay purposes.
*** Fairly popular Shaman Canas's death is a [[Foregone Conclusion]], given that his son in the previous game was an orphan. His unavoidable death in his ending led to the cry "[[Memetic Mutation|Canas was killed by continuity errors!]]"
** In ''[[Fire Emblem:
** In ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Path Of Radiance]]'', we have Greil and Rajaion.
*** In ''Radiant Dawn'' (for at least your first playthrough), Pelleas.
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* In ''[[Jeanne D'Arc]]'', one would naturally expect the lead female to be burned at the stake. However, since Jeanne herself had already gone MIA, and the French higher-ups made her childhood friend Liane pose as her for the remainder of the war... Although [[Team Pet]] Cuisses [[Powers as Programs|inherits her stats]] via the Paragon's Armlet, Liane only comes back as a spirit to assist in a [[Battle in the Center of the Mind]] against a demonic duplicate, and the player can recruit her ghost as a post-game bonus. Nevertheless, she remains legitimately dead to the plot, and Jeanne and Roger are last seen praying for her at the Chapel near Domremy.
* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'', especially [[Original Generation]] series love this trope. We have Captain Daitetsu Minase and Ouka Nagisa dying on the course of the game and there's no way to resurrect them. Likewise, some [[Anti-Villain]] like Folka's [[Aloof Big Brother]] Altis Tarl will fall into this.
** But they have also toyed with us with this trope. Axel Almer and Alfimi were supposed to be [[Killed Off for Real]] after [[OG 2]], yet they came [[Back
** Another version of toying around: According to [[Super Robot Wars Compact 3|Compact 3]], Fernando Albark, Maysis Mark and Alion Lucada are supposed to suffer Plotline Death, there's no way you can save them. But their stories get tweaked that they didn't die. Fernando and Alion ends up joining you for good, while Maysis takes the back seat. Likewise, this also happens to [[Super Robot Wars Reversal|Despinis]], who ends up doing a [[Heel Face Turn]] before she could get killed, ensuring her survival.
** And for non-OG examples (for this instance, Z), we have Setsuko's teammates Toby Watson and Denzel Hammer, killed by [[Complete Monster|Asakim Dowin]] to [[Break the Cutie|further traumatize Setsuko]].
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* So when the king is killed in the very ''beginning'' of [[Shining Force]], ''why exactly can the local priest not revive him?'' Even worse, since he didn't die right away, why can't you just HEAL HIM?
=== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ===
* In ''[[Saints Row]] 2'', Carlos could have EASILY been saved. How? Shock Paddles, some food, walking it off, or calling 911 for an ambulance. Though he does come back as a zombie, and since Zombie Lin from Saints 1 is canon (some goths mention her, and the Boss says he tried to sell the story to Channel 6 in one of the DLCs) then so is he.
** It's supposed to be a mercy killing due to the mutilation of his pretty face, which hard to swallow with [[Story and Gameplay Segregation|so many cheap plastic surgery clinics around]].
** This troper always assumed that it was a mercy killing due to the fact that he was in horrible agony due to being shredded by the road, with no chance of getting him to a hospital in time since he can't get the damn chain off.
* A version of this occurs in ''[[Little Big Adventure]] II''. Normally, non-villain characters in the game can't be killed, and most of them won't die even if they accidentally get whacked by a villain aiming at the hero. However, at one point a dissident escaping prison with you gets shot before he can get out of the building, and dies. An interesting thing about this is that your character possesses some sort of a healing ability, and the dissident doesn't really die ''instantly'' after being shot—but since the event happens during the cutscene, there's no way you can save him.
* ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]''. A character who has the oomph to resist multiple bullets moments ago (on the roof of Madd Dogg's mansion) gets taken down by a single bullet in the foyer.
=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===▼
▲== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* This can happen in tabletop games too, if your GM decides to unleash [[The Plot Reaper]] on an important NPC. Even if one of the PC's has healing abilities, they will not be able to help. Resurrection will be completely out of the question. Of course, this works better if the game is already very cinematic/story oriented.
** The spell's description explicitly says that a person can only be brought back if they want to come back. Since the afterlife is usually a great reward for most people, they usually only come back if they have something important to finish. The GM usually doesn't have to pull any tricks - it's not difficult to argue "no, he's happy where he is and doesn't want to come back."
*** Using this excuse too often on beloved NPCs is likely to result in the players walking out in disgust though.
*** There are games besides [[Dungeons
=== [[Web Comics]] ===
* Lampshaded in [https://web.archive.org/web/20131011082824/http://www.virtualshackles.com/47
* Poked at in this [http://www.goldcoincomics.com/?id=126 Gold Coin Comics strip].
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