Should Monster Cadaver Stick Around?

[Burning Man]

Earlier Silent Hill games had enemies kind of just flatten out after being killed, usually with a stomp (or four if you're Heather). Just a piece of monster texture was left behind. When you came back to that area, the texture is usually still there. This made me a bit uneasy, especially in Silent Hill 2, because I could never be certain if the monster was just playing dead. Those damn lying figures. A small but neat detail is the bloody footsteps if you happen to step over the cadaver.

I think it was DooM 3 that I first saw enemies dissipate into nothingness. Story-wise, I guess the enemies are being sent back to Hell? But in Silent Hill games, it didn't quite work for me. There's a sense of timeliness when you come back to an area you were before and see the things that you did before.

From a technical perspective, removing the monsters after death frees the engine from having to keep track of those dead polygons, which is quite expensive even with modern hardware. Games based on the Unreal engine uses this mechanism, so naturally, Silent Hill Downpour has enemies dissipate like that after being defeated.

Unless I heard wrong, I believe Silent Hill 2 Remake is developed using the Unreal Engine...? It's a minor detail so maybe it doesn't matter for most folks.

[leftshoe18]

> Games based on the Unreal engine uses this mechanism, so naturally, Silent Hill Downpour has enemies dissipate like that after being defeated.

The engine the game is developed in has no bearing on whether enemies are going to disappear or not. That is entirely up to the dev how they want to implement that.

[MrMeow]

This would all be figured out during a cost benefit analysis when the project was first being planned out. It wouldn't be practical for non linear level design, where you can backtrack, to have models exist after death. So the texture thing you mention may be an option but most modern games just have the body disappear. I think Silent Hill 3 has issues with this exact system, specifically related to the insane cancer which visibly deflates after death.

[jdnation]

I'm okay with bodies disappearing after you leave a room/area. Though I think it'd be cool to leave a bloodstain behind. Or maintaining area damage you've created. The latter for persistence, the former for a WTF? feeling, and psychologically, because the continual presense of monster corpses littering the place will eventually devolve into parody and therefore hinder the perception of them as a credible threat.

[Burning Man]

I guess if I were to think about this more seriously, corpses in general were used to supplement the theme of death and James' own mindset in the game. I think it would add some depth to keep the monster corpses around after they die. We can even say that the persistence of the monster corpse is a reminder for James on what he has done.

If these monster corpses dissipated after a few seconds, certain scenes may lose its original impact. We can take the "Blue Velvet room" where Pyramid Head kills the Mannequins as an example. In the original, you can observe the Mannequins after the scene. They lie there dead, broken and discarded. You're given as much time as you need to digest what just happened here. Would the player remain as shocked if the Mannequins disappeared after a few seconds...?

[MrMeow]

For sure, it’s a balancing act and sometimes limitations plus the creative workarounds they manifest can help strengthen a game’s narrative.

[leftshoe18]

Would the player remain as shocked if the Mannequins disappeared after a few seconds...?

They could easily just have the monsters that die in the cutscenes stay there.

[aj4x94]

I just hope they don't ragdoll after they die. Now that would really kill the immersion.

Perhaps enemy corpses could stay until the player leaves the area after which they disappear.

[Droo]

I just hope they don't ragdoll after they die. Now that would really kill the immersion.

Perhaps enemy corpses could stay until the player leaves the area after which they disappear.

I think they will but not in an exaggerated, Max Payne-ish way.

[The Adversary]

Pardon my old-ness, but what is ragdolling?

[jdnation]

Pardon my old-ness, but what is ragdolling?

Basically the corpse becomes a physically interactive object whose entirety or arms and legs will move or flop around if you bump into it by walking over/near it, kinda becoming like a football.