Ra Ra Saint-14 Russia's Greatest Love Machine

in eso, you are The Vestige. (technically one of many, though the game does kind of single You out as being The Protagonist during quests and stuff.) you are a daedric simulacrum of your former self that should not exist, and when you die, you get right back up.

this is, as many others have said more succinctly, horrifying. you become the vestige in a traumatic way, you're not really you anymore, and depending on how you interpret the world, it's lonely.

In destiny, you are A Guardian. there are thousands of others like you (you're still kind of The Protagonist though.) you are a protector brought back from the dead after the near extinction of humanity, and when you die, you get right back up.

it's horrifying in a different way, though. you're not alone. even setting aside the ghost for a moment, you awaken into a society that was built by people like you, and you're given a place there.

in both games, death is an extremely common and normal thing to experience, and pretty much a guaranteed part of the gameplay loop.

but I do appreciate that destiny answers a question that eso kind of skirts around - so, what would it look like to have a society where dying is no big deal? well, you get sports where you can blow up your friends for fun and profit. you get scholars who kill themselves to try to get a map of what death actually feels like. you get an entire class of people who, when deprived of the thing that allows them to resurrect and die permanently, don't actually know how to deal with grief and loss.

psssst if you like:

GMless games

slice of life fantasy stories

minigames with mechanics and prompts tailored for specific types of scenes

cooking monsters

thinking about characters' lives after the big battle

essential addition

I've spent the last couple of days redrawing this post from 2 years ago, because of the uh... the recent news.