Outerwilds
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Not exactly what you're talking about, but canonically in some of the souls games and specifically elden ring you are a being that is immortal, but pathetic, theoretically. So dying over and over is just kind of written into the lore
The Batman Arkham games gradually add visible damage to you as you die and reload. It's not exactly story relevant, but adds nice flavor.
There's also resetti in animal crossing that is a bit of the opposite. He just shames you and wastes your time for save scumming.
idk if this is on topic but I remember playing jak3 as a kid and after i constantly died, that stupid fkin rat pops up and said something like "You suck". I think i cried for a bit lmao
There’s a point in dotHack for the PlayStation 2 where you cannot progress until you power off and on the console and reboot the game. In-universe you’re waiting for another player of an MMO to message you in-game, and in real life the devs want you to give up, play another game or go to bed, and try to progress another time.
This reminds me of the book "Only you can save mankind" by Terry Pratchett. The aliens surrender once they realise the player is apparently immortal!
I can’t think of an RPG exactly that does this, but Postal 2 will poke fun at you when you save too often for its liking.
I cant think of any game that does this, but i can think of why. Forcing players to basically not be able to win until they do arbitrary failures and reload would make for an annoying and frustrating experience. Youre sitting there knowing nothing you do matters, so all of this will just be a chore. And if you do have the option to get it right the first time, then the mechanic is wholly pointless.
The closest you get are things like achievements or rewards for not saving or having the save deleted on death.
Forcing players to basically not be able to win until they do arbitrary failures and reload would make for an annoying and frustrating experien
The thing is that is would be a better emulation of RPG if you couldn't reload at every death. The main difficulty is to have multiple story path which would lead to different outcome rather than a real win.
Actually, life is strange turn the video game roload mechanics into the rewind power
I don't think I made my point clear enough. I don't need anything special from the game mechanics, and I'm not talking about forcing some sort of arbitrary failure. It's normal to reload a save once or twice for a tricky quest or boss. Most people don't rage quit for doing so.
All I'm asking about is how the plot of the game handles the protagonist's success. In most games, your character beats the quests or bosses and as far as the NPCs are concerned your character did everything perfectly just once, either because they got lucky or because they are amazingly skilled. But what if it was acknowledged that the real reason is they can see how things will play out if they did things differently, and/or they've had enough time in an alternate reality to hone their skills.
TLDR I'm talking about a narrative tool more than some weird gameplay mechanics.
Edit: from other comments I gather some games fit the bill, Undertale, Deathloop, and Dark Souls, maybe No Man's Sky too.
Prince of Persia on the GameCube (I think? It was a long time ago!) had a mechanism very like this, where you manually rewound time after you died/failed. More Action/Adventure than an RPG, though.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Came out on all the big consoles of the time iirc.
Only ever saw my cousin play it a couple times as a kid so I cant account for much of its mechanics, but I definitely remember the title (and the time play ofc) and the envy I felt for him, because this game specifically piqued my interest back then.
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The sequels, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones, also push through the storyline based on the fact the your character changed the past, did so multiple times, and kept screwing it further until hitting the big reset button.
Warrior Within has a scene where you watch a parallel version of you (you don't know it at the time) get killed, go back in time, and then relive that scene as the parallel version but you make your past version get killed instead.
I'm not sure about an RPG but this sounds similar to the main character's time manipulation powers in the original Life is Strange
No Man's Sky.
spoiler
The game's lore is that it is a simulation. Some of the expeditions require you to live/die/repeat per se.
Interesting, this would fit the bill, thanks
Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter isn't quite the what you are describing, but it is built around saving and reloading regularly.
Maybe check out deathloop?
It’s been a while since I’ve played, so I’m not 💯, but I think Bastion does this when you die and reload. The story is told through 3rd person audio narration as you play. I think it slips in “the boy gets up, brushes the dust off his boots, and tries again” or other such lines.
Depends on your pet theory as to what sort of soul the player character has in the elder scrolls, but being adjacent to the missing God isn't far off.
The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games notoriously do this. It's like half the exploits of the game if you're a speedrunner.
Though, not necessarily in the way you intended to mean. It's just how the save system works mechanically. Shit like having your momentum preserved to get massive speed boosts by simply saving and loading real quick, but also you can quickly backtrack by saving where you wanna be, doing a quest and then reloading as, for some reason, the quest being completed will also be saved eveb though you did it after you made the save.
Yes but there is nothing in game to explain how your character suddenly knew where to go or how they got the power boost. I'm looking for something that actually takes this into account as an essential part of the plot.
Undertale does this. It even goes so far with breaking the 4th wall, that for one of the possible endings you need to close the game and delete your save file from Windows (and it tells you this in-game). It knows you did this, and is the only way to continue with that particular path.
It has other nods to you reloading a save at various times throughout the game, as well.
Yes, it seems to fit the bill pretty well. From all the comments I think I should definitely play it sometime