Dear Jagex: Major NPC deaths in quests aren't dramatic or meaningful when they're so cheap (SPOILERS)

This has been a trend in almost every single one of the bigger quests released in OSRS. In Monkey Madness II, a boulder falls on Nieve. In Dragon Slayer II, Bob gets killed by a random fireball. In Sins of the Father, four of the Myreque are instantly incinerated by Lowerniel. In a Kingdom Divided, King Hosidius gets assassinated almost as an afterthought as the quest concludes. And I'm probably missing some more deaths that clearly didn't leave any impact on me.

Deaths in fiction aren't some switch that you can flip to turn your story from a bad one to a good one, or from a boring one to an interesting one. They aren't checkboxes that you have to mark to ensure you have a good story. They're significant plot elements that are supposed to have meaning, and in OSRS, they simply don't.

Not only do the deaths come out of nowhere and change nothing (in the cases of Nieve and Hosidius, they're instantly replaced with a carbon copy anyway), but we have no reason to care about the characters that died, or feel sorry that they're gone.

Rose's death in A Kingdom Divided was far more tragic and impactful than Hosidius's, which might as well have not happened at all for all the difference it made. It's sad because her life and story were already sad, and there's this feeling of helplessness when you learn that despite all the effort you've put into helping her and trying to make things better, she was already long gone years ago and you never could have done anything. Bob's death? All he had to do was stand 10 feet to the right and he would have been just fine. There was no point to it.

The new quests in OSRS definitely have a lot more thought and artistry put into them than most (if not all) of the originals. But killing characters just for the sake of killing them is poor writing. I'm not offended or hurt by it. I don't think they should have been spared because of some personal connection. But that's just it - I don't care that they died because I never cared that they lived. And you need people to care about your characters first before killing them has any meaning or purpose.

So I’m going to be biased here as I’m the one responsible for killing most of these characters (sorry about that), but with the exception of Nieve, I don’t think we killed any of these characters for the sake of it.

I 100% agree that death for the sake of something like shock value is poor writing and is never something we’d intentionally go for. For most of the characters you’ve listed, their deaths have very specific purposes in the stories we’re telling. Admittedly, these purposes may not be clear for all of them right now as most of those deaths are actually setting up sequels we’ve not yet released. For example, the death at the end of A Kingdom Divided is going to have huge impacts on the future of that storyline, even if the impact on A Kingdom Divided itself is more limited.

One thing I will admit is that even if the deaths themselves do have purpose, I do wish a couple of them had played out better. For example, Bob was originally meant to sacrifice himself to save the player, but a tiny cat jumping in front of the player to absorb a fireball would have just looked comedic. It’s definitely something we tried to learn from with future quests.

Hopefully this helps explain our intentions a bit. Thanks for the feedback. It’s always super useful.

(2022) Dear Jagex: Major NPC deaths in quests aren't dramatic or meaningful when they're so cheap (SPOILERS)

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