Quote Originally Posted by Mirage View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Yerushalmi View Post
I disagree. Death is part of life. In FFV, when the death of one unnamed-due-to-spoilers character is immaterial to gameplay because their equipment and abilities get mystically transferred to another character, I found that a serious breaking of immersion. If one of my characters is going to die, have the guts to force me to contend with the situation!
But games are supposed to be fun to play as well. Losing 25% of the stuff you gained from grinding with no way to avoid it is terrible from a gameplay perspective. Maybe it is good from a story perspective, but a lot of people (me included) value gameplay far more important than stories in games.

If the gameplay is bad, I won't even experience the perhaps awesome story because I get tired of playing the game before I'm done with it.
Gameplay is very important, sure, but I don't personally see losing 25% of my equipment any more damaging to gameplay than losing 25% of my characters! After all, until you get a new fourth character, the game shouldn't (if it's made correctly) throw anything at you you can't handle with only three, and when you DO get a new fourth character it should come with equipment on an appropriate level for your needs from then on.

If the game doesn't do that, that's a failure of the gameplay designers, not of the story writers. The job of the former is to provide the gameplay for the latter, not the other way around.