Topic: Ways to handle death outside of the traditonal checkpoint.

The traditional checkpoint works well for many games, but sometimes something different is a better way to do things. There are a few ways to do this that I can thinks of. Heavy Rain (haven't played though), where you just don't die in the game, instead you have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

There is the upcoming Shadow or Mordor's method where your death is part of the games ecosystem, and has your character with a power of resurrection, but time still passes in the game world while that happens.

This one I will talk about now is the one I find particularly interesting, games where death is the end, game over, you don't just go back to the last save, but the game is balanced so you can get through the game without dying. An example of this is Romance of the Three Kingdoms X. Death can happen, but it's very possible to play the without dying and you live with all of your actions and the consequences. While it is possible to go back to the last time you saved in the game, or take over  sworn brother (close friend you made a bond of brotherhood with), the game is balanced in way that you can play your character, and only use him, and if he dies, he dies (which is how I play). This is an idea I love, and something I would love to see more games designed around.

(For those you who don't know much about Romance of the Three Kindoms X, it's RPG strategy game where you play an officer the feudal china, it's very open ended and you can be ruler or just someone who serves a liege (or wonders without allegiance if you choose.)

So what do you think of handling death in a different way, which way is your favorite, or is there something new you would like to see done with it?

I always thought death should always be penalized in some way, it just takes out the fear of failing and I feel the freedom of just go head on without any fear but I also don't want to rage quit when I realize that I lost all the progress I did in the last 2 hours.
Checkpoint and penalization should just be balanced so it doesn't make it too easy and at the same time make it accesible.

It's a very interesting topic, for sure. The problem is that people are divided on the right answer - maybe there isn't one.

People complain if a game has a bad checkpoint system, and that's fair enough, but how do you fix it? Most of the time it'd be best to just make them more regular, but it seems like there should be a better way.

On the matter of permanent death, it's something that games like Fire Emblem use well, but even then, save files come into the equation - you can always just reload.

If you have a system similar to the one in Fable II, for example, where your character doesn't die and they simply return with a new scar on their body, people start to complain about the game being too easy.

I think it's pretty much a matter of personal taste, but it really seems like a shame that we haven't evolved past basic checkpoint systems yet, at least for the most part.

I think Bioshock: Infinite did a pretty good job of contextualizing the whole instant revival thing - for reasons I won't divulge in the interest of not spoiling things.
Perhaps the most elegant solution to the problem I've seen is in roguelikes. You are penalised, by having to start again, but you're rewarded because you have a whole new world to explore. Obviously that's not going to work in every game, but it's still a pretty neat little system.
This is a tough one, though, and trying to come up with a solution makes me glad I only write about games and don't actually have to make them.