Where do all the dead bodies go?

xsynergyx | June 02, 2008 | Blog | Misc

Clive Thompson of Wired was playing Ninja Gaiden II when he realized that after a period of time, the dead bodies didn't disappear. In all Ninja Gaiden games, the bodies disappear into the thin after you have dealt with them. Why? Well, if you kill all those people, you'll obviously be wading in dead bodies. A thought occurred to Thompson. What happens to all those people you've killed? Gaming heaven perhaps?

On the one hand, this vanishing-body thing is such a blasé convention of gameplay that it's barely worth mentioning. No big deal, right? Often the designers make the bodies disappear for reasons of gameplay, because leaving all the bodies piled up is ludologically impractical: If every monster killed in World of Warcraft hung around forever, Azeroth would be so chest-deep in stinking corpses that you couldn't walk anywhere. The sheer metric tonnage of killing in our favorite games essentially requires that there be some sort of cleanup crew.

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2 thumbs!
Gothic Girl | June 03, 2008

I've always hated it when dead bodies disappear in games. Mostly because it's so unrealistic. Considering many next-gen games boast realistic graphics, it's weird watching dead bodies fade away after a short while

Kudos to NGII for letting them all pile up. XD
- -1 thumbs!
  Final Blade | June 03, 2008
  
  _{Games aren't supposed to be realistic, so having this in a game is stupid.
  
  Same as GTA games.}
  - 4 thumbs!
    Gothic Girl | June 03, 2008
    
    quote
    Games aren't supposed to be realistic
    You've gotta be shitting me ._.
    - 6 thumbs!
      xsynergyx | June 03, 2008
      
      Coming from Final Blade, that's no surprise.
    - 0 thumbs!
      Final Blade | June 03, 2008
      
      _{Why are games supposed to be realitic Gothic Girl? Please tell me?
      
      I 100% agree with iLL.}
    - 1 thumbs!
      Silver Mirror | June 03, 2008
      
      How is he shitting you? Have you played Ratchet and Clank, Final Fantasy or Mario? None of them even try to be realistic.
      
      And those are just the games which aren't trying to be realistic, in Metal Gear Solid you can take tremendous amounts of damage, in Halo you can fall a hundred metres and live no probs, in Motorstorm you respawn. If games were realistic none of those things would happen.
      
      But Finalblade that doesn't mean having this feature is useless, it all adds to the immersion
    - 1 thumbs!
      Gothic Girl | June 03, 2008
      
      Obviously having the dead bodies stay on screen adds a sense of realism to the game (and because it looks cool). Game companies try to add realism where it's due. Small things like hair blowing in the wind, leaving footprints in the snow, slippery roads making cars harder to control and, yes, dead bodies staying right where you killed them all help a player better immerse themselves in a game.
      If companies could keep bodies on screen without it hindering load times or gameplay then more would try it. They don't think "hey, let's make dead bodies disappear because games aren't supposed to be realistic".
    - 0 thumbs!
      Final Blade | June 03, 2008
      
      _{Fair enough SM, but I don't think having this feature is really anything crazy to go by, since iLLmatic sumed up the point quite well.
      
      Ohhh! So now you want realism, when the SC4 clothes flies off was a stupid feature. LMAO}
    - 0 thumbs!
      Blackfalcon | June 03, 2008
      
      Exactly, we don't play games for a realistic experience. We play them to $h!t around doing things we never could do in real life.
      
      If you want a realistic experience, join the army. Or the navy.
      
      =P
    - 0 thumbs!
      Zero and X | June 03, 2008
      
      Umm, SOME games are meant to be realistic, and some arent. Simple as that.
- 2 thumbs!
  Sonic Flash | June 03, 2008
  
  The problem with stacking bodies is that you're constantly adding stuff for the game to figure out. My brother and I froze the Doom II that came with Doom III for the 360 when we sat there for 30 minutes killing enemies and littered the ground with pixel corpses.
  
  If they have a means around this then great!
1 thumbs!
xsynergyx | June 03, 2008

I'd love to see a game(Grand Theft Auto would be a good example) where everyone you killed stays and suppose that over time, as you visit them, they start rotting, blood dries up etc. That would actually be cool.
2 thumbs!
Tank | June 03, 2008

Hitman Blood Money was pretty cool because they would come and put bodybags on corpses and drag them to a security room.
- 1 thumbs!
  xsynergyx | June 03, 2008
  
  Yeah, or something like that where you actually seem them go away somewhere instead of fading out.
0 thumbs!
Storm | June 03, 2008

This guy's last name is...Thompson? Man, I'd change that.

That's cool, having the bodies stay there, although their essence/souls belong to Ryu now.
2 thumbs!
iLLmatic | June 03, 2008

Not a big deal to me. There are a lot of different reasons why dead bodies disappear in games. The main reason is of course memory. Too much on the screen is going to slow down the game, no matter whether its NES or PS3. Also, its much less stressful for a game like Ninja Gaiden, where the stages are pre-set and load individually, as opposed to something like GTA or Assassin's Creed, where there are way too many more important things in the game world to worry about in the cache.
0 thumbs!
Blackfalcon | June 03, 2008

It's fun when they don't disappear!
For example, in the Hitman games, there's a lot of ragdoll physics gone into killing people, and this stays in effect when they're dead. So basically you can shoot all the corpses around, and in some cases, into lakes, the sea, etc.