Overview
In most games, upon the player character's death, the game either cuts to a Game Over screen that gives the player options to load a saved game or quit, or skips the Game Over and automatically loads the last checkpoint or save.
In some games, however, death is done away with as something that interrupts the flow of the game. In Prey, for example, whenever Tommy dies, he is brought to a shadowy otherworld where he must shoot blue and red birdlike creatures; every time he shoots a red one, his empty life meter is slightly refilled, just as each blue bird adds to his spirit energy meter. When the minigame ends, Tommy is returned to the realm of the living, exactly where he was standing when he died, with his meters slightly refilled even if he failed to kill a single creature.
A notable example lies in the Norse mythology-themed game Too Human; every time the heroic Baldur dies, a scripted sequence depicting a Valkyrie descending from Valhalla and retreiving his body is played. After this, Baldur is revived and sent right back in to continue the fight. However, it has been suggested that the Valkyrie sequences are a penalty for dying, as the scene takes around fifteen seconds to play out, is unskippable, and plays every single time you die, breaking the flow of gameplay.
The 2008 retelling of Prince of Persia did away with death altogether. Whenever the Prince began a fatal fall, his magical companion Elika would teleport over, catch him, and return him to the last platform he was standing on. She would similarly save his life if his health was depleted in combat.
It should be pointed out that MMORPGs do not count; as there are hundreds of players playing at once, it would be impossible to load the game or have a "Game Over" sequence.
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