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Essays 21 November 2020, 21:28

author: Jakub Mirowski

Twelve Most Memorable Deaths in Video Games

Death is almost stunningly prevalent in video games, but it's usually void of emotional charge. There have been "a few" games, though, which weren't afraid to do away with some really significant characters. Here's a list of the most memorable of them.

Table of Contents

Booker DeWitt – BioShock Infinite

Game: BioShock Infinite

Cause of death: drowning

Last words: "No… I'm both.”

How we will remember him: as a taciturn, impulsive, but caring man

Booker was an FPS protagonist, and this convention does not enable you to get to know a given character as well as when you look at them from the back or from the side. Yet this veteran and private investigator has a distinct personality of his own. His companion Elisabeth, trapped in the tower like a princess from a fairy tale, is even more spirited and distinct.

Together they traverse the subsequent fragments of the cloud city of Columbia. They discover the dark, ugly side of this seemingly idyllic place. Booker fights a religious fanatic, Zachary Comstock, only to eventually discover that there is no "enlightened eye" and the only one he is fighting is himself.

Without a beard and with a shotgun – that's how we'll remember him. - Twelve Most Memorable Deaths in Video Games - dokument - 2020-11-21
Without a beard and with a shotgun – that's how we'll remember him.

To this day, I can't tell if the plot of BioShock Infinitewas brilliant or rubbish. I'm willing to accept the possibility that it was both at the same time, just like the protagonist of this story, who in the end, due to existing in many parallel realities, turned out to be both a hero and a criminal. However, I can say with certainty that while watching the finale of this game, part of which is Booker DeWitt's death, I sat in my chair and stared at the screen in pure delight, torn by a storm of emotions. Not many titles were able to do that to me.

Good narrative can be interpreted in many ways. In my opinion, BioShock Infinite is a game about a choice and the question of whether that choice matters. We can't, like Booker, choose two different things at the same time. However, we can – and we do – make contradictory decisions. That's just one step to saying that each of us carries both DeWitt and Comstock inside. And now I can't tell if that paragraph is wise or gibberish, but I think that's a good thing.

Ken Levine, the man who was at the head of the team working on the BioShock series, is nearing the end of work on a new game. Just to remind, it's been more than seven years since the launch of Bioshock Infinite. I reviewed this game back on Xbox 360. What will the creator surprise us with this time? That we do not know, but his new work is supposed to be "immersive science fiction game with RPG elements. I'm holding my breath.

Jakub Mirowski

Jakub Mirowski

Associated with Gamepressure.com since 2012: he worked in news, editorials, columns, technology, and tvgry departments. Currently specializes in ambitious topics. Wrote both reviews of three installments of the FIFA series, and an article about a low-tech African refrigerator. Apart from GRYOnline.pl, his articles on refugees, migration, and climate change were published in, among others, Krytyka Polityczna, OKO.press, and Nowa Europa Wschodnia. When it comes to games, his scope of interest is a bit more narrow and is limited to whatever FromSoftware throws out, the more intriguing indie games and party-type titles.

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