Many people think of evoking emotions from in-game characters and via things that happen to game units ie. other characters dying. But I think that this isn't a good way to do it. How about describing a situation and showing a character's reaction to it. So you can sympathise with the character and/ or feel the same way as him. Ie. You hear about person X who has died. Such as in Silent Hill 2 where the main character's wife died three years ago, but he gets a letter saying she is in Silent Hill, so you can empathise with his desire to find out the 'truth' and his bond with his wife. + I think that having results depend on gameplay often reduces the impact of a 'plot point' since the player can usually go back 20 minutes and try again in order to save the day. There isn't the permanence of real life or other media which is where tragedy comes from. [edited by - Ketchaval on March 3, 2004 8:40:53 AM]

I think you''ll probably get more reliable results by "filtering" a tragedy through an empathetic viewpoint character, but you have a shot at evoking stronger emotions in your player if the tragedy directly involves characters they care about. Of course, that may or may not be a good thing. If you set things up such that your player cannot avert the tragedy, they may end up feeling angry at you, instead of teary-eyed over your "plot point." If the player ends up thinking I saw that coming, and my character could have prevented it, if it wasn''t a pre-ordained cut-scene... your immersion is shot.

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