To me, video games and death seem inherently at odds with each other; one is a source of entertainment and fun that I can make a conscious decision to engage with, and the other is inevitable and, to me at least, rather aversive. Yet, after playing or watching people play a number of video games in different genres, I’m led to ask the question: why is the “death mechanic” so instrumental (maybe even irreplaceable) in so many games?
The rogue-like games we’ve experienced this week in particular seem to have an emphasis on dying (and killing) in the single-minded pursuit of some goal (from what I saw playing Cult of the Lamb and watching videos of Hades, Dead Cells, and Loop Hero). In my own experience with Cult, the idea of death did raise the stakes somewhat, both by jeopardizing a percentage of the loot earned on crusades and by threatening the lives of my followers, whom I was surely very attached to. But playing on medium difficulty, I found that the progress that I lost because of death seemed trivial; I was never set back so far in resources or in time that I feared or dreaded death in-game.
Although there are certainly games in which death is to be avoided at all costs (maybe arcade games with permanent death, or horror games in which death is accompanied by a fear-inducing jumpscare), I think that the concept of death in Cult extends beyond mere stakes-raising. In my opinion, its most important function is providing an additional facet of environmental storytelling that helps shape the game’s narrative and the player’s role in it.
“Each time you are brought down, you rise again stronger.”
Minor spoilers:
When you perish in-game on a crusade for the first time, you are reassured by your evil patron that death holds no permanent consequence for your character, and, for the most part, he is not lying; other than a little bit of faith, your resurrection ensures that you don’t end up with less than when you started. And because you even retain some of the resources from the failed crusade, it seems nigh-impossible to even stagnate or get permanently stuck in the game (at least on lower difficulties). The momentum that drives the Lamb seems to tow along the player as well, as unless you stop playing outright, you will always be making progress through cult management/farming and even reduced resources from failed crusades. All the while, you can learn about how best to deal with enemies (through tactics or the limited equipment selections) even as you die to them, increasing your chances of success on the next run.
To make a comparison across genres—when viewing the games through this lens of momentum, I was struck by the similarities between Cult and, one of my favorite subgenres/series of video games, Soulsborne (which includes Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, perhaps Elden Ring, and debatably Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, all by FromSoftware). Despite some disparity, in my opinion, in storytelling styles between the two IPs—with Cult having a relatively simple plot and transparent, informative dialogue, and Soulsborne being known for its melodramatic, vague lore—the very basic core idea seems largely the same: a relatively small character hunting down the fearsome denizens of a degenerative world with the intention of enacting vast change. And in both, death and its foil, resurrection, are mechanics that are embedded firmly in the lore and narrative (and not simply arbitrary checkpoints, for example).
The result is more than just increased immersion, though I think that is a legitimate benefit. In both games/categories, the connotations of overcoming death not just once or twice, but as many times as the player wills ties back to the notion of momentum. But it also introduces a novel but related concept: empowerment of the player. Cult uses the dialogue of the enemies to push this idea, with (spoilers) terrifying, grotesque monsters expressing disbelief and even fear at the player character’s achievements and progress. In Soulsborne, the growth is implied and more “player-side”; that is, between runs, between deaths, a player can learn combos and dodge patterns to an extreme degree, which has to damageless fights and even damageless playthroughs. In both cases, the player character grows noticeably over time, becoming a relentless, calculating powerhouse that even when killed, only rises again stronger. For these games, instead of being motivated by weakness, the potential for and fear of failure and permanent death, the player is propelled by utter self-confidence—the knowledge that even repeated death can’t hold them back for long, the trust in their own tangible progress and growth and momentum. In this context, the tagline of the film Edge of Tomorrow, “Live. Die. Repeat.” no longer seems so grim, in my opinion. In rogue-like games, Souls-like games, Soulsborne games, and likely other genres as well, the temporariness of death doesn’t create a cyclical gameplay experience, but rather something like a planet’s orbit, halting at certain intervals but ever hurtling toward some distant destination (sorry I am not good at analogies).
On a slight tangent, I once saw an intriguingly apt comment theorizing that Dark Souls III‘s main menu soundtrack is the player character’s “boss theme song” and stating that it was what enemy non-player characters would hear in combat. I liked this idea.
I really like your analogy of how the concept of death resembles a planet’s orbit in the types of games where death isn’t perpetual but temporary and largely promising. Really “life” is altered when “death” no longer bears its traditional pattern.