How does the death mechanic work?

[captainducko]

I died fighting the first boss, but could reawaken by swimming to my body.

However, upon reloading a save, a void out occured instantly when I was killed a second time, no chance for a reawakening.

So was my manual save edited? How does the reawaken mechanic work exactly?

Or was it because on try 1 I bled out yet on try 2 I got eaten?

[deltahazer]

Pretty much the latter as I understand it.

An annihilation/blowout/void out (it has several names) happens when one of the mega-BT's chows down on a living person, like what happened with the Corpse Disposal guy you inherited BB from in the Prologue.

If a Repatriate like Sam goes down from injury/blood loss, they can reconnect to their body and revive. I'm guessing part of that ability involves a sort of reverse effect to what timefall does, essentially "rewinding" the Repatriate's body to a condition where it can support the soul again. Could also be why Sam generally horks out a bunch of tar after such a revival.

[Protoman]

That first death is scripted, it always happens.

Now, if you're just traveling around the world, and a Catcher BT eats you, one of two things can happen:
1) you will revive, but a huge crater will be in the place where the voidout happened, making that area unavailable
2) if that location has story importance, GAME OVER

Another thing that can happen down the line is this: if you kill a human but don't dispose of their body, it will enter Necrosis and spawn a BT. If that BT catches another human (NPC), a voidout happens and it's another GAME OVER. This can happen very far away from you (other side of the map), but you usually don't need to keep track of kills. One of your friends will remind you and bring up a time limit to incinerate the body.
To avoid this, just don't kill anyone. You get lethal weapons early and non-lethal versions of the same weapons a little later. There are a lot of options to stun or knock people out.

As a last resort, you can throw bodies into very deep water to be rid of them. One story mission happens near one of those.

Lastly, if you die to damage (usually fall damage), you can revive at the same place without causing a voidout. This one is a little weird (I don't understand most of it), but you can actually refuse the prompt to revive twice and the game still does it for you.

[Mobile Suit God Damn]

Originally posted by Protoman:

As a last resort, you can throw bodies into very deep water to be rid of them. One story mission happens near one of those.

So then the question is; why don't they just build giant drills that make holes deep down into the ground. You fill those with water and then just dump any corpses in there with weights so they sink.
Hey presto, problem solved.

[deltahazer]

Originally posted by Mobile Suit ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Originally posted by Protoman:

As a last resort, you can throw bodies into very deep water to be rid of them. One story mission happens near one of those.

So then the question is; why don't they just build giant drills that make holes deep down into the ground. You fill those with water and then just dump any corpses in there with weights so they sink.
Hey presto, problem solved. :LizzyD5:

I doubt that is actually intended to be how it works in-universe, it's just how the game engine handles it.

But even if deep water worked like that in the game's universe, it would not be a practical solution except as a very long-term goal. Huge engineering job both to make the giant drill and to move it from site to site. All the excavated rock would have to be taken somewhere. Where are they going to get all the water to fill that many holes that deep? Plus they'd have to make sure it was watertight all the way down, or it'd eventually drain out and leave a huge pile of bloated bodies that might still be at risk of going necro. Then multiply that by every city, distribution center, and other concentration of population because you're going to need one of those built for each one of them, though you might find a pair or triplet here or there that were close enough to share one site that's roughly equidistant from them and easily accessible.

Hey, you asked ;)

[captainducko]

Originally posted by Mobile Suit ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Originally posted by Protoman:

As a last resort, you can throw bodies into very deep water to be rid of them. One story mission happens near one of those.

So then the question is; why don't they just build giant drills that make holes deep down into the ground. You fill those with water and then just dump any corpses in there with weights so they sink.
Hey presto, problem solved. :LizzyD5:

I know that nations detonate nuclear bombs underground all the time.

However I’m sure these are specially selected sites with a certain geography. Putting them under cities could undermine them, and it seems humanity is perhaps too spread out to undertake such a vast engineering project.


Or, simply, for all we know a void out could be far more destructive and concentrated when it occurs underground with no where for the energy escape to, and it’s just not a good idea.

[Protoman]

Originally posted by captainducko:

Originally posted by Mobile Suit ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

So then the question is; why don't they just build giant drills that make holes deep down into the ground. You fill those with water and then just dump any corpses in there with weights so they sink.
Hey presto, problem solved. :LizzyD5:

I know that nations detonate nuclear bombs underground all the time.

However I’m sure these are specially selected sites with a certain geography. Putting them under cities could undermine them, and it seems humanity is perhaps too spread out to undertake such a vast engineering project.


Or, simply, for all we know a void out could be far more destructive and concentrated when it occurs underground with no where for the energy escape to, and it’s just not a good idea.

That's an interesting observation. I don't know if you've reached that far, but they use antimatter bombs to mine in Death Stranding. You'll see at least 2 of those during the game.