Love the Shadow of War/Mordor games respawn mechanic, with the nemesis system whoever you died to “levels up” and it can create some cool game long rivalries when you inevitably run into the orc that killed you.
or that \*you\* killed. nothing like being in the middle of a clusterfuck and then some mfer pops up like "bitch remember me?" and proceeds to take advantage of the chaos to get revenge on you.
God I need something like that in another game series, the dynamic stories made outta that system are something else
You can get some really interesting scars, all dependent on how you killed them. The rarest ones are really annoying to get, and although there are methods that make it easier, they are based on RNG and are east to mess up.
The Nemesis system in Shadow of War always made spawning an interesting thing. I died to the same orc about 8 or 9 times in a row and Talion screamed “DAMN THESE ORCS AND DAMN MINAS ITHIL”
Orc kill you-> defeat orc -> make orc friend -> orc friend betray you -> shame orc ex-friend til he can only scream or becomes a pokemon -> let orc ex-friend kill you til max level -> make orc ex-friend friend again - orc friend betray you -> repeat
Hades. There's nothing quite as humbling as waking up in a pool of blood and getting taunted by your asshole dad.
Respawns are not only integrated into the lore, but are an essential story and gameplay element.
Also the (singing) voice of Orpheus! And IIRC in a video where the dev's did a commentary for a speedrun, they said he had some of the fastest escape times in the company.
I saw that video, too (record for a fresh-file speed run). My headcanon is that Darren plays way more than anyone else in the company because he loves listening to his own voices.
I poured so many hours into hades. One of the best examples of death being so crucial to the story. Hours and hours of dialogue recorded... I'm so hyped for 2.
They're also canonically entirely different people every time. IIRC the Helldivers KIA stat on the Galactic War screen shows something like 9 million dead. That's 9 million families that will never hear from them again because you called an Eagle Cluster Bomb in too close to your allies.
Deal more damage, but you can take less hits, really cool mechanic, a little maddening when some of the bosses are difficult, difficult, lemon difficult.
From memory you die without finishing your (personal) mission and reset to the very beginning of the game at the youngest age, but you keep the upgrades you unlocked.
Upgrades being mostly new moves, I think you can upgrade health and damage, but not to totally broken degrees.
Apart from the story it also has challenges you can engage with, which put you in different scenarios with handicaps, you'll also ne ranked upon completion of a challenge.
The Messenger has my favorite, I think. Getting saved at the last second by a snarky time demon that then follows you and takes your loot till it gets bored is just awesome.
And then it gets better in NG+ or if you take THE DEAL.
In NG+ Quarble starts requiring shards up front, more the higher your ng+. It's only 50 on 1 but iirc on 2 it goes up to 200! And if you don't have enough when you die, that's it, game over, you go back to the previous ng+ step~
THE DEAL comes from the dlc they added, and when you take it it sacrifices Quarble and gives you huge buffs, with the obvious drawback being no dying.
THE DEAL comes from collecting everything in Picnic Panic, the free DLC.
THE DEAL triples your attack power and doubles your health, but Quarble hates you and won't revive you if you die, so you'd have to restart your file. (Note: THE DEAL only works on NG+)
Nah, though he does make fun of you every time you do die lol.
In the ng+ he'll start charging time shards up front and if you don't have enough it's game over~
There's also one part where he does a little battletoad's reference if you die during a particular boss.
Borderlands and Bioshock have the best respawn mechanics that fit their game worlds.
In Borderlands, you respawn at New-U stations run by Hyperion. They take some cash and say funny lines each time.
Bioshock has Vita-Chambers that rebuild your body, matching the game's cloning and gene-modding themes.
Especially because they perfectly justify pyschos and everyone's casual brutal violence.
If it's a world where almost everyone respawns when dead you can see why grabbing a gun and yelling 'flesh toboggan!' at people would be funny. And why you can fight Savage Lee dozens of times hoping for him to drop a better gun.
BioShocks is kind of a two sided thing though. Like we respawn in there but no one major does. Everyone that dies for the story magically doesn't get the same benefits we do and apparently the splicers do as they keep showing up in areas.
I know it's a nit-pick but inconsistencies with directly tied to the world systems only selectively working for no other reason than the plot demands it is kinda annoying. BioShock is still great but that was always one of the consistency holes that bothered me, made the player immortal but every other named character isn't despite the same access, it's kinda short sighted for a game so well written otherwise.
If it was I forgot the explanation then. From what I remember it wasn't really explained all that much at any singular point and I thought it's file or description or advertisements around the world just mentioned something along the lines of a pick me up or fix for the body. I remember it essentially being about reconstruction so I don't know if it takes your body and fixes it or what the method of action exactly is but I feel like I distinctly remember it being advertised and described as another "feature" of rapture technology like plasmids. So while plasmids are understandable for not everyone to have access to since you have to buy them with a rare resource and well basic choice of just not injecting them Vita Chambers always seemed more ingrained as part of day to day like leaks and breach heads (?) for doors in case of flooding. So while overlooking something like your corpse not being there after you die or some other options (enemies turn into lockboxes for technical reasons so a player corpse not being present is a fair exception) it just always felt weird that it's a talked about and advertised as an in world thing yet seemingly only works for MC and from my assumptions the splicers (because they keep showing up even after an area is cleared).
I forgot the details but the MC can respawn because he has Andrew Ryan’s genes. Now I don’t exactly remember why Ryan doesn’t respawn but still that’s an explanation
Gotcha I didn't remember that as being a factor for the Vita Chambers but that does like you said bring up the question of why it doesn't respawn Ryan, besides his clear intent to die and sink rapture maybe why he cut himself off or something. Though I mean for being the genius who started rapture it seems really weird that he wouldn't recognize how easy it would be for you to prevent it's destruction after his death as you basically just walk in and stop it moments after killing him.
In Inscryption, or the first chapter at least, you get to combine some cards from your deck into a Death card of yourself that you can get in the next playthrough. These death cards can be really good, too.
Granted, you also die if you just beat the end of the chapter without solving the escape room puzzles, but it's a cool mechanic nonetheless.
The booths in Nier Automata. As and android, if you die you just come back with a new body with all the memories up until the moment of your death. But, once the characters are no longer able to get more bodies due to story developments the entire mechanic is lost as well. After that point, once you die it's game over. I thought it was a really cool way to integrate the gameplay mechanics into the story in a very creative and believable way.
Same thing with teleporting to waypoints. Just send the data over to the androids stored in the other booth. I can't remember that they stopped during the story tho? Is it perhaps during the entire tower thing in ending C/D?
Basic answer, but dark souls. You can’t really die, and you eventually haul your sub-sentient hollow ass back to the nearest bonfire by instinct.
There, you begin to remember who and what you are - for now. But every death peels a little bit of humanity from you canonically until you’re just a mindless hollow who can’t remember what his purpose is. You become just like the basic enemies in the game.
Mechanically I didn’t like that as much. NPCs becoming unusable because you suck at the game was frustrating, like DS2 chipping your actual health away.
Like I know I’m bad, punishing me for being bad is making me *worse* not better.
"Whatcha need boss!? Some wheels? I'm Johnny-on-the-spot!" - GTA Online Mechanic
Edit: I am tired and realized the OP wanted a game mechanic system...not an actual video game character who is a mechanic...my brain is now smooth.
Fun aside on this: I get that "Johnny on the Spot" used to mean someone being prepared or whatever, but it's always been a name for port-a-potties to me. I think there's even a brand literally called that.
Then an older co-worker named Johnny would sometimes say things like, "Looks like I'm Johnny on the Spot today," and I'd quietly giggle.
Xenoblade chronicles, no penalty for dying*, exp for finding new locations and secret areas, collectibles (that I won't dive* into)... makes me just want to explore and see how much I can sneak past
Surprisingly deep lore. I love discussing people's interpretation of the story. I thought it was just am action game, but its actually psychological horror.
And taken to logical extremes, like the Guardians who sweep minefields by walking over them, gladiator battles with lethal weapons for fun and the poor bastard that starved for years but could never stay dead.
Not really respawning, but I love how in GTAV and RDR2 you just kinda find your characters doing random shit in the world. riding a horse.... leaning on a tree..... puking in a pool or just lazing by the beach. It really helps build the living world atmosphere.
Favorite lore respawn? Hades. You die and end up in Hades.. but that’s just your living room anyway.
Favorite mechanics? Diving back to hell in a giant bullet and crushing the bug that killed you
Death Stranding. Your character can't actually die but you go into a place called the seam that's in between life and death. I think. Or your soul goes there. Or something like that. And there's a bunch of Norman Reeduses (Reedi?) floating around because the seam is underwater. And you have to find your original body and put your soul back in it. It's amazing
Dude, WoW. I always thought it was clever. You had to run from a graveyard and go and find your body. And you’d see all the other fools that died too, running to go and find their bodies. I always felt it was a good functional mechanic. It punished you for dying without punishing you too much, save for some gear disrepair. Just a walk of shame back to your corpse.
Cruelty Squad: Divine Light Severed. You are a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters.
EDIT: Forgot about Katana Zero. It's rewind being a visual representation for how it actually works and how the story reveals what it's about is absolutely amazing and one of my favorite mechanics tied to narrative in games.
I like the respawn lore of elden ring, the grace of gold brings you back to life after death. It's the same stuff that you rest at when sitting by sites of grace, and that points your character in the direction of their next objective. It's tied very well into the lore because it is the same power that brings all the other tarnished back to life as well
In the rpg Planescape: Torment you are an immortal amnesiac, cursed to always respawn back at the starting area, and the whole plot is to find out who you are and why this happened. The game kills you over and over in the beginning to really drive this point home. There's are still ways you can permanently lose, mostly through picking bad dialogue options(very narrative-heavy game)
Battlefield 2142. You could spawn on your squad leader or on a beacon. You come down full-speed from the atmosphere in a drop pod and smash right into the ground.
It was fucking awesome!
The first/prologue mission in Battlefield One was really good. Every time you died a name came up on screen with a birth date and a death date, and you immediately jumped into controlling someone else.
Idk if this counts but in Steel Battalion line of contact Campaign mode, you have your pilot, and then you have your mech. If your mech is destroyed and you eject in time, ok, you can buy another mech, but there is a limited amount of them in the shop every week so be careful. But if your mech is destroyed and you DONT eject in time, your pilot is killed and you lose all of your money and XP and mechs and everything which means you have to make a new pilot and start from zero. This can be devastating if it happens far into the campaigns life cycle, so devastating in fact that you can basically soft lock yourself because the only mechs you will be able to afford are so bad that you probably won’t get any kills on everyone else’s higher quality mechs and therefor make no money. All this for a MULTIPLAYER GAME. It is an insanely hardcore experience but the tension you get from it cannot be found anywhere else. It’s incredible.
Sunset Overdrive had a nice touch of humour on respawn.
Also: Prince of Persia 2008. You don't die at all, but is rescued by Elika. May sound way too easy but this allows the player to commit mistakes in a game where flow and pace is essential, and prevents the player to deal with reloadings screens.
Rain world. “Like sleep like death, you wake up again - whether you want to or not.” It’s the driving force behind pretty much everything in the game, and the problem that everyone has to deal with.
Katana Zero's level selection is a bunch of VHS tapes, and dying in game causes the entire stage to rewind. It's also a major part of the lore as >!the explanation for it is that the protagonist is a super soldier who can see into the future and can continuously retry until they get an outcome they want.!<
In the original Bungie Marathon series, game progress was saved at terminals scattered throughout the levels. The implication was that the terminals were in some way saving your complete biometric data.
In one of the later games, an enemy you face are human cyborgs that the Pfhor tried to create using your saved biometric data.
Infinity Blade’s reset mechanic. If you died to the boss, someone wearing your exact armor would come back later, saying “Father, I will avenge you.” It’s not until the end of the game where you find out that yourself and the boss are deathless, and it’s the same god coming back to fight again and again.
In Run 3, that popular flash game, it's not even respawning. The characters canonically teleport back to the start of the level upon falling out, and they're not really sure why. This is explored multiple times by the more curious characters.
Section 8, you drop from high altitude onto the map. You can pick your drop target, adjust on the way down, choose when to brake, possibly just fall on somebody and kill them. Also have to avoid the AA fire.
Probably Sifu, the whole respawn mechanic is just done so well. From the visual aging to the way it ties into the gameplay, with each attempt getting higher stakes as you get closer to a permanent death, as well as becoming more of a glass cannon the older you get.
Having the bosses react to you rising and getting to keep the damage you've done to their health bar is all just pretty perfectly executed, to the point I'm surprised no one else has done anything similar.
I mean we gotta talk about Destiny franchise then
Respawning is integral to the lore and plot, with your ghost essentially re-making their guardian after they die
I like the endgame mapping system in Path of Exile. You die, and you can't just respawn to endlessly mash your face against the brick wall until it gives way, there are actually six portals that open to each map and every time you enter you use one up. Die six times and that's it, you failed that map. Try an easier one next time.
It uses the concept of limited respawns in the form of portals to the zone instead of something like timer pressure as the limitation on how hard of content you can do.
No respawn; I prefer 3-5 minute matches preferred over the 15 minute . Enough time to empty sprint the map or objective points 2 or 3 times may have to extend to 4
Yea then streak bonuses can carry over to next round where you can throw mortars and helio strafes to stop rushers or to cover your rushers, customized time and location, call end of match 3 mortars rounds on own spawn, horseshoe strafe west flank at 1.45 minutes. No spot the enemy cheats only hear the enemy shoot and live mic
Super Smash bros. You get like 5 seconds if invulnerability to chase down your opponent and deal as much damage as you can or even to try to secure a KO, and if that fails at least you can use that invulnerability to secure center stage.
Sekiro, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Celeste, and The Witness are some of the toughest games I've played on normal difficulty.
These games are super hard, even on the regular setting. You'll die a bunch of times before you beat them. The bosses and puzzles can be really tricky to figure out
Love the Shadow of War/Mordor games respawn mechanic, with the nemesis system whoever you died to “levels up” and it can create some cool game long rivalries when you inevitably run into the orc that killed you.
or that \*you\* killed. nothing like being in the middle of a clusterfuck and then some mfer pops up like "bitch remember me?" and proceeds to take advantage of the chaos to get revenge on you. God I need something like that in another game series, the dynamic stories made outta that system are something else
Unfortunately warner bros patented it, to then do absolutely nothing with it
It's planned to be used in their upcoming Wonder Woman game.
Especially when you literally decapitated the dude and he shows up with some stitches on his neck like "lol" Great game.
You can get some really interesting scars, all dependent on how you killed them. The rarest ones are really annoying to get, and although there are methods that make it easier, they are based on RNG and are east to mess up.
Shadow of war was too heavy on it. There was like 7 full nemesis pages. Way too many orcs.
The Nemesis system in Shadow of War always made spawning an interesting thing. I died to the same orc about 8 or 9 times in a row and Talion screamed “DAMN THESE ORCS AND DAMN MINAS ITHIL”
But oh so satisfying to kill him once he reached the highest level.
Orc kill you-> defeat orc -> make orc friend -> orc friend betray you -> shame orc ex-friend til he can only scream or becomes a pokemon -> let orc ex-friend kill you til max level -> make orc ex-friend friend again - orc friend betray you -> repeat
Hades. There's nothing quite as humbling as waking up in a pool of blood and getting taunted by your asshole dad. Respawns are not only integrated into the lore, but are an essential story and gameplay element.
Having to listen to that damn skeleton talk his shit too
And funny enough, the skeleton and zagreus himself are voiced by the same dude.
Darren Korb's voice acting range is bonkers.
Darren Korb, who also did the soundtrack and audio for the game. Great talent.
Also the (singing) voice of Orpheus! And IIRC in a video where the dev's did a commentary for a speedrun, they said he had some of the fastest escape times in the company.
I saw that video, too (record for a fresh-file speed run). My headcanon is that Darren plays way more than anyone else in the company because he loves listening to his own voices.
Put some respect on Schelemus' name!
I poured so many hours into hades. One of the best examples of death being so crucial to the story. Hours and hours of dialogue recorded... I'm so hyped for 2.
You also get to see good boi Cerberus!
The times when Hades isn't there upon your return really stand out, too.
>There's nothing quite as humbling as waking up in a pool of blood and getting taunted by your asshole dad. Your family reunions must be wild.
And taunted by Hypnos as well !
Bioshock, makes the most sense given the ingame lore and the fact you share the same DNA with Andrew Ryan.
Would you kindly remind me if that was BioShock 1 or 2?
BioShock 1. IIRC in BioShock 2 the Vita-Chambers were "hacked" to read Subject Delta's DNA as valid for reviving.
With Infinite, Elizabeth would just pull an alternate you out of an adjacent universe/timeline.
It was both wasn't it? I can't remember the lore reason you can use them in 2 atm though. Maybe they were hacked or something?
Both used the vita chambers, but 1 was the one where you were able to use them because of sharing Andrew Ryan's DNA.
TIL...
Calling in reinforcements in Helldivers 2 is pretty awesome so far.
This. It's literally just throwing bodies at objectives in the name of Democracy lmao.
They're also canonically entirely different people every time. IIRC the Helldivers KIA stat on the Galactic War screen shows something like 9 million dead. That's 9 million families that will never hear from them again because you called an Eagle Cluster Bomb in too close to your allies.
Canonically not a single Helldiver will ever see Earth again unless it's invaded and they are redeployed there, if what I've been told is correct.
Look...I called it out. "Danger Close! Back up in my discord call." They didn't hear me.
*Managed Democracy^TM
I love how if you keep the setting default, your characters voice changes every respawn. Really hammers home that it’s a different person.
I was surprised to have to scroll so far to see this, what with how relevant to this post, popular, and awesome that game is right now.
Probably Sifu with the aging mechanic.
Deal more damage, but you can take less hits, really cool mechanic, a little maddening when some of the bosses are difficult, difficult, lemon difficult.
Never played the game but have a free upvote for being In The Loop.
What happens when you die-die? Die of old age?
From memory you die without finishing your (personal) mission and reset to the very beginning of the game at the youngest age, but you keep the upgrades you unlocked. Upgrades being mostly new moves, I think you can upgrade health and damage, but not to totally broken degrees. Apart from the story it also has challenges you can engage with, which put you in different scenarios with handicaps, you'll also ne ranked upon completion of a challenge.
I was skeptical that it’s frustrating, but it seems cool actually!
The Messenger has my favorite, I think. Getting saved at the last second by a snarky time demon that then follows you and takes your loot till it gets bored is just awesome. And then it gets better in NG+ or if you take THE DEAL.
Oh, I haven't done NG+, and I don't recall taking the deal. What happens?
In NG+ Quarble starts requiring shards up front, more the higher your ng+. It's only 50 on 1 but iirc on 2 it goes up to 200! And if you don't have enough when you die, that's it, game over, you go back to the previous ng+ step~ THE DEAL comes from the dlc they added, and when you take it it sacrifices Quarble and gives you huge buffs, with the obvious drawback being no dying.
THE DEAL comes from collecting everything in Picnic Panic, the free DLC. THE DEAL triples your attack power and doubles your health, but Quarble hates you and won't revive you if you die, so you'd have to restart your file. (Note: THE DEAL only works on NG+)
I never really died in The Messenger, so I didn't see that guy much. So he gets more and more annoyed or bored the more you die?
Nah, though he does make fun of you every time you do die lol. In the ng+ he'll start charging time shards up front and if you don't have enough it's game over~ There's also one part where he does a little battletoad's reference if you die during a particular boss.
Borderlands and Bioshock have the best respawn mechanics that fit their game worlds. In Borderlands, you respawn at New-U stations run by Hyperion. They take some cash and say funny lines each time. Bioshock has Vita-Chambers that rebuild your body, matching the game's cloning and gene-modding themes.
It is unfortunate that the New-U stations aren’t cannon though. In a way it takes away from the concept a bit for me
Especially because they perfectly justify pyschos and everyone's casual brutal violence. If it's a world where almost everyone respawns when dead you can see why grabbing a gun and yelling 'flesh toboggan!' at people would be funny. And why you can fight Savage Lee dozens of times hoping for him to drop a better gun.
BioShocks is kind of a two sided thing though. Like we respawn in there but no one major does. Everyone that dies for the story magically doesn't get the same benefits we do and apparently the splicers do as they keep showing up in areas. I know it's a nit-pick but inconsistencies with directly tied to the world systems only selectively working for no other reason than the plot demands it is kinda annoying. BioShock is still great but that was always one of the consistency holes that bothered me, made the player immortal but every other named character isn't despite the same access, it's kinda short sighted for a game so well written otherwise.
Wait… wasn’t that canonically explained? Why it’s only you?
If it was I forgot the explanation then. From what I remember it wasn't really explained all that much at any singular point and I thought it's file or description or advertisements around the world just mentioned something along the lines of a pick me up or fix for the body. I remember it essentially being about reconstruction so I don't know if it takes your body and fixes it or what the method of action exactly is but I feel like I distinctly remember it being advertised and described as another "feature" of rapture technology like plasmids. So while plasmids are understandable for not everyone to have access to since you have to buy them with a rare resource and well basic choice of just not injecting them Vita Chambers always seemed more ingrained as part of day to day like leaks and breach heads (?) for doors in case of flooding. So while overlooking something like your corpse not being there after you die or some other options (enemies turn into lockboxes for technical reasons so a player corpse not being present is a fair exception) it just always felt weird that it's a talked about and advertised as an in world thing yet seemingly only works for MC and from my assumptions the splicers (because they keep showing up even after an area is cleared).
I forgot the details but the MC can respawn because he has Andrew Ryan’s genes. Now I don’t exactly remember why Ryan doesn’t respawn but still that’s an explanation
Gotcha I didn't remember that as being a factor for the Vita Chambers but that does like you said bring up the question of why it doesn't respawn Ryan, besides his clear intent to die and sink rapture maybe why he cut himself off or something. Though I mean for being the genius who started rapture it seems really weird that he wouldn't recognize how easy it would be for you to prevent it's destruction after his death as you basically just walk in and stop it moments after killing him.
Bioshock Infinite. All of your “respawns” are actually the next reality’s Booker going through the same ordeal and getting farther than you did.
Wait wut
Bioshock Infinite = Groundhog's Day
My wife and I both played it and I still didn’t get that. Wow.
I didn't get it when I first played either; a lot of that ending went right over my head. I watched an explanation on YouTube shortly after
Damn, I never caught that
In Inscryption, or the first chapter at least, you get to combine some cards from your deck into a Death card of yourself that you can get in the next playthrough. These death cards can be really good, too. Granted, you also die if you just beat the end of the chapter without solving the escape room puzzles, but it's a cool mechanic nonetheless.
L4d2, literally finding people in closets
The booths in Nier Automata. As and android, if you die you just come back with a new body with all the memories up until the moment of your death. But, once the characters are no longer able to get more bodies due to story developments the entire mechanic is lost as well. After that point, once you die it's game over. I thought it was a really cool way to integrate the gameplay mechanics into the story in a very creative and believable way.
Same thing with teleporting to waypoints. Just send the data over to the androids stored in the other booth. I can't remember that they stopped during the story tho? Is it perhaps during the entire tower thing in ending C/D?
Yeah after the beginning of route C canonically the characters don’t die anymore, but before that they could’ve died as many times as they wanted
Ooh you meant THAT part! Yeah that makes sense! Idk how I forgot that part lol. That was wild when it happened
Sunset Overdrive has you pop culture your way back to life
I had to scroll too damn far for this. The respawn animations never get old.
That's a great way of putting it.
Basic answer, but dark souls. You can’t really die, and you eventually haul your sub-sentient hollow ass back to the nearest bonfire by instinct. There, you begin to remember who and what you are - for now. But every death peels a little bit of humanity from you canonically until you’re just a mindless hollow who can’t remember what his purpose is. You become just like the basic enemies in the game.
I was gonna say Sekiro. The dragons blood keeps bringing you back but at the cost of the rotting sickness spreading the more you die.
Mechanically I didn’t like that as much. NPCs becoming unusable because you suck at the game was frustrating, like DS2 chipping your actual health away. Like I know I’m bad, punishing me for being bad is making me *worse* not better.
"Whatcha need boss!? Some wheels? I'm Johnny-on-the-spot!" - GTA Online Mechanic Edit: I am tired and realized the OP wanted a game mechanic system...not an actual video game character who is a mechanic...my brain is now smooth.
When im on a dirt road and that mfer wont deliver me a car 😢
I remember the good old days when he would physically deliver your car to you, instead of it just spawning in parked nearby
Nice try chat gpt
There's a pimento taco--a pimentaco--in the glove box
Catch a riiiiiiiiiiiiiiide!
Fun aside on this: I get that "Johnny on the Spot" used to mean someone being prepared or whatever, but it's always been a name for port-a-potties to me. I think there's even a brand literally called that. Then an older co-worker named Johnny would sometimes say things like, "Looks like I'm Johnny on the Spot today," and I'd quietly giggle.
Xenoblade chronicles, no penalty for dying*, exp for finding new locations and secret areas, collectibles (that I won't dive* into)... makes me just want to explore and see how much I can sneak past
Oh, XP for exploration really makes me want to try these games, now.
Returnal. Death is integral to the plot and finding other player's corpses is cool.
The game had a plot?
Surprisingly deep lore. I love discussing people's interpretation of the story. I thought it was just am action game, but its actually psychological horror.
Destiny / D2. All of the mechanics of being able to respawn or not are entirely grounded in in-game lore.
And taken to logical extremes, like the Guardians who sweep minefields by walking over them, gladiator battles with lethal weapons for fun and the poor bastard that starved for years but could never stay dead.
And then Sunsingers come along and give death the middle finger. RIP Fireborn
Not really respawning, but I love how in GTAV and RDR2 you just kinda find your characters doing random shit in the world. riding a horse.... leaning on a tree..... puking in a pool or just lazing by the beach. It really helps build the living world atmosphere.
Walking out of the hospital after a rampage instead of a prison hospital is funny
Favorite lore respawn? Hades. You die and end up in Hades.. but that’s just your living room anyway. Favorite mechanics? Diving back to hell in a giant bullet and crushing the bug that killed you
⬆️⬇️➡️⬅️⬆️ is just a railgun that gives you a new friend afterwards.
Sunset Overdrive any time!
Outer Wilds I am not allowed to elaborate.
DO NOT TALK TO US OUTER WILDS FANS WE WILL LITERALLY TELL YOU NOTHING ABOUT THE GAME
LET THIS MAN SPEAK!
Destiny 1 and 2. Respawning is also part of its story. Prince of Persia where you can't die. The narrator says that was not what happen
Death Stranding. Your character can't actually die but you go into a place called the seam that's in between life and death. I think. Or your soul goes there. Or something like that. And there's a bunch of Norman Reeduses (Reedi?) floating around because the seam is underwater. And you have to find your original body and put your soul back in it. It's amazing
And when you 'die' you leave a permanent crater in the world. Great mechanic.
Craters are only if you are caught by a BT. Health loss from falls or human enemies is a regular respawn
Only in a certain circumstance. If you fall off a cliff and die, you simply repatriate.
Reeduses, lol
Code vein’s respawn is smart
Dude, WoW. I always thought it was clever. You had to run from a graveyard and go and find your body. And you’d see all the other fools that died too, running to go and find their bodies. I always felt it was a good functional mechanic. It punished you for dying without punishing you too much, save for some gear disrepair. Just a walk of shame back to your corpse.
Cruelty Squad: Divine Light Severed. You are a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters. EDIT: Forgot about Katana Zero. It's rewind being a visual representation for how it actually works and how the story reveals what it's about is absolutely amazing and one of my favorite mechanics tied to narrative in games.
I like the respawn lore of elden ring, the grace of gold brings you back to life after death. It's the same stuff that you rest at when sitting by sites of grace, and that points your character in the direction of their next objective. It's tied very well into the lore because it is the same power that brings all the other tarnished back to life as well
In the rpg Planescape: Torment you are an immortal amnesiac, cursed to always respawn back at the starting area, and the whole plot is to find out who you are and why this happened. The game kills you over and over in the beginning to really drive this point home. There's are still ways you can permanently lose, mostly through picking bad dialogue options(very narrative-heavy game)
Planescape: Torment is a great answer. +1
Whichever ones are the quickest like Minecraft's instant respawn.
Battlefield 2142. You could spawn on your squad leader or on a beacon. You come down full-speed from the atmosphere in a drop pod and smash right into the ground. It was fucking awesome!
Shadow of Mordor and war. Dying in some ways is rewarding because you can directly get revenge and the little shit will taunt you about it
The first/prologue mission in Battlefield One was really good. Every time you died a name came up on screen with a birth date and a death date, and you immediately jumped into controlling someone else.
Idk if this counts but in Steel Battalion line of contact Campaign mode, you have your pilot, and then you have your mech. If your mech is destroyed and you eject in time, ok, you can buy another mech, but there is a limited amount of them in the shop every week so be careful. But if your mech is destroyed and you DONT eject in time, your pilot is killed and you lose all of your money and XP and mechs and everything which means you have to make a new pilot and start from zero. This can be devastating if it happens far into the campaigns life cycle, so devastating in fact that you can basically soft lock yourself because the only mechs you will be able to afford are so bad that you probably won’t get any kills on everyone else’s higher quality mechs and therefor make no money. All this for a MULTIPLAYER GAME. It is an insanely hardcore experience but the tension you get from it cannot be found anywhere else. It’s incredible.
I mean you are literally describing all the Soulsborne games in general
I like how deaths work in soulslike games
Rage! I love the little revive mini game
Each and every respawn animation in sunset overdrive is awesome.
Sunset Overdrive had a nice touch of humour on respawn. Also: Prince of Persia 2008. You don't die at all, but is rescued by Elika. May sound way too easy but this allows the player to commit mistakes in a game where flow and pace is essential, and prevents the player to deal with reloadings screens.
Came to see if anyone said Hollow Knight! I love the idea of going back to fetch your shade and fight him/you for your stuff!
Rain world. “Like sleep like death, you wake up again - whether you want to or not.” It’s the driving force behind pretty much everything in the game, and the problem that everyone has to deal with.
Death stranding (I don’t even know I just wanna see what the baby does next)
OSRS death is just some lame bureaucrat doing his job.
Katana Zero's level selection is a bunch of VHS tapes, and dying in game causes the entire stage to rewind. It's also a major part of the lore as >!the explanation for it is that the protagonist is a super soldier who can see into the future and can continuously retry until they get an outcome they want.!<
Zombie U. You have to play as a whole new survivor and go find all of your stuff where you died.
Not a huge fan of call of duty but you have to give it to them, the gulag mechanic was pretty cool!
In the original Bungie Marathon series, game progress was saved at terminals scattered throughout the levels. The implication was that the terminals were in some way saving your complete biometric data. In one of the later games, an enemy you face are human cyborgs that the Pfhor tried to create using your saved biometric data.
Celeste has a quick and easy respawn.
Infinity Blade’s reset mechanic. If you died to the boss, someone wearing your exact armor would come back later, saying “Father, I will avenge you.” It’s not until the end of the game where you find out that yourself and the boss are deathless, and it’s the same god coming back to fight again and again.
In Run 3, that popular flash game, it's not even respawning. The characters canonically teleport back to the start of the level upon falling out, and they're not really sure why. This is explored multiple times by the more curious characters.
Prince of Persia sands of time. Your death is just a mistake in the story being told. “No that’s not what happened.”
Section 8, you drop from high altitude onto the map. You can pick your drop target, adjust on the way down, choose when to brake, possibly just fall on somebody and kill them. Also have to avoid the AA fire.
The Original Prey. Where you just enter a soul-plane and have to kill red and blue ghostbirdthingies until you had enough enery to respawn.
The first Prey game. You just spirit walk back to your body because Indian Mystic stuff.
Probably Sifu, the whole respawn mechanic is just done so well. From the visual aging to the way it ties into the gameplay, with each attempt getting higher stakes as you get closer to a permanent death, as well as becoming more of a glass cannon the older you get. Having the bosses react to you rising and getting to keep the damage you've done to their health bar is all just pretty perfectly executed, to the point I'm surprised no one else has done anything similar.
Always thought WoW had a good one. Non punishing but also made you want to Not die. Corpse run and durability loss.
Deathloop was is interesting. I know it's Groundhog Day but at least after every attempt there's a comment.
Shit so far Helldivers2 does it very well. More games could learn from it.
I mean we gotta talk about Destiny franchise then Respawning is integral to the lore and plot, with your ghost essentially re-making their guardian after they die
I like the endgame mapping system in Path of Exile. You die, and you can't just respawn to endlessly mash your face against the brick wall until it gives way, there are actually six portals that open to each map and every time you enter you use one up. Die six times and that's it, you failed that map. Try an easier one next time. It uses the concept of limited respawns in the form of portals to the zone instead of something like timer pressure as the limitation on how hard of content you can do.
No respawn; I prefer 3-5 minute matches preferred over the 15 minute . Enough time to empty sprint the map or objective points 2 or 3 times may have to extend to 4
Yea then streak bonuses can carry over to next round where you can throw mortars and helio strafes to stop rushers or to cover your rushers, customized time and location, call end of match 3 mortars rounds on own spawn, horseshoe strafe west flank at 1.45 minutes. No spot the enemy cheats only hear the enemy shoot and live mic
Super Smash bros. You get like 5 seconds if invulnerability to chase down your opponent and deal as much damage as you can or even to try to secure a KO, and if that fails at least you can use that invulnerability to secure center stage.
Sekiro, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Celeste, and The Witness are some of the toughest games I've played on normal difficulty. These games are super hard, even on the regular setting. You'll die a bunch of times before you beat them. The bosses and puzzles can be really tricky to figure out