Dead State Design Update
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Let me first explain my view on death scenes they're generally hokey. Assuming the characters aren't saved miraculously seconds before doom, people in most media die heroically or calmly in bed surrounded by loved ones. They get touching or reassuring last words, they die slowly and gracefully holding hands, they hold on long enough to complete a complex task, and everyone remembers their noble sacrifice with appropriate honors. Cowardly and evil characters get punished, while sympathetic characters will see another day. Everybody earns the death they deserve.Finally, someone gets it.
It's all pretty much the opposite of how death actually hits in the real world. Death is frequently sudden and unexpected a car crash, a sudden malfunction of the body, or a household accident. Loved ones die on the operating table before they can say goodbye. A bite of tainted meat, untreated pneumonia, a bee sting it could happen at any time. But like almost everything in fiction, even death is romanticized, because we at least want to hope that we'll die on our own terms and that our death will have meaning.
Since Dead State is a videogame, let's take a look at that genre first. It is very hard to point to games where death has any impact beyond the heroic example or melodramatic event. For one, death is an inconvenience in most games. One phoenix down, resurrect spell, second wind shot, or reload later and death is cured. Characters only die in cutscenes, and then these are usually sacrifices or manufactured tragedies designed to (motivate) your character (though you yourself are probably motivated by the promise of loot and an experience system). Most enemies or allies are designed to die at pre-determined parts of the story, like any other kind of fiction. There are very few games where a player is afraid for the safety of their companions, which in a way makes them feel less real.
Movies and TV have frequently relied on death for cheap drama or resolution. While there has been a lot of maturity in the storytelling (especially in cable television dramas) there will always be the good guy lives/bad guy dies, famous last words, and morality plays. But there have been plenty of deaths in movies and TV that have come out of nowhere or that were painful to watch (emotionally) in a very real way. Death of a main or a popular character before half the movie or TV series was over, characters in an unwinnable scenario, and quick and senseless deaths have all been used to elicit a feeling from the viewer that the story is not playing by the rules. At this point, subverting a trope or expectations is enough to shock an audience and make them start worrying about the characters' fates.
Dead State is open-ended any NPC can die at any time. Some of the death in the game relies on personal player attachment and game mechanics to punctuate the event - for example, having a favorite character get killed while out scavenging. Here one minute, gone the next. Characters react to death of loved ones, but life goes on. However, some deaths are the slow, lingering type the death of infected, specifically. These are the deaths I've been writing at the moment. It's one thing to have someone get shot by another scavenger senselessly, but watching them die in front of you and having to execute them before they turn (for the good of the shelter) is a more gut-wrenching experience. What's worse losing someone unexpectedly or watching them die slowly in front of you without being able to do anything?
