This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Artist: I think that, Soul Calibur games deserve a mention here too. When you knock your opponent into the water which surrounds you, it's an instant win.
mrsaturn: They don't just win the match when they fall in- they completely disappear. Even if it is something like the fountain at that Asian palace stage in SCII.
Looney Toons: It might just be me, but every time I see this item I want to rename it to "L33t Drowning Skillz"...
Dark Sasami: Oh no, they got to you too!
Seth: Its kinda scary but i think id prefer that name as well.
Seven Seals: "Basically, having your character be able to swim means pretty much adding an entirely new form of gameplay, and it's usually nowhere near worth it." See, this is why Super Drowning Skills exist in the first place: it is worth it, simply because players expect it to be possible and certainly don't expect any body of water to spell instant death. Super Drowning Skills are becoming rarer in new games, especially 3D games, because it's a major immersion breaker, much like an Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence.
Seven Seals: took out this: "* Quake had the character start losing HP if he was underwater too long." because those aren't super drowning skills, just regular drowning skills. It's supposed to be about instant death (or complete invulnerability).
Ununnilium: I disagree. It's about any video-game depiction of swimming, or the lack thereof. Besides, that's not a realistic way to do it either; your body in general doesn't get injured by drowning (unless you inhale water), just your brain, from lack of oxygen.
Seven Seals: Any video-game depiction of swimming? That doesn't seem a very useful approach to me, since it's becoming standard for games to include swimming that's no less realistic than jumping, running or martial arts — that is, it's all about equally unrealistic, but realistic enough not to care. It's instantly dying from contact with water or the game going to great lengths to avoid prolonged contact in general that's notable enough to warrant its own trope, since it's such an obvious technical cop-out.
Any "realistic" depiction of swimming will involve the player having their health damaged by complete submersion in the long run, however that is implemented in the game. If you get to the level of detail you're griping about, you're more talking about the problem of Hit Points as unrealistic summaries of health in general, which is a trope all by itself (with no article, go figure — but I haven't looked hard).
Ununnilium: Any video-game depiction of swimming that provides for an illuminating example, anyway, which I think this one does. Too-long-in-water-as-damage isn't the only "realistic" way of doing it, after all, and IMHO, we should at least mention it.
Seven Seals: Fair enough. In that case, there's also Deus Ex, which had several damageable areas on the body — being submerged for too long would damage your chest and head, and complete damage to either would kill you. Then there are some games (I believe The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has this, but it could also be of the regular damage-taking variety) where you've got an air meter running down, spelling instant death if it runs out (a bit more dramatic than taking damage). In the games that implement air meters, there's a slight difference on whether you instantly recover all air on emerging, or whether the bar instead slowly fills up again.
Finally, there are a handful of games (no titles spring to mind) that instead or additionally handle fatigue in a more general sense, through some sort of stamina reservoir that's depleted when you run or swim for too long. All of this is interesting, but I don't know if it's all worth mentioning.
Ununnilium: I think a paragraph about these more realistic ways of handling it is enough. ``v
gryffinp: It should be mentioned that in oblivion, it's fairly easy, sometimes trivial to acquire yourself some spells/enchantments that confer "Water-breathing" which keeps the oxygen meter full all the time. furthermore, running out of air underwater does not actually kill you, it just decreases your health at a VERY rapid clip. I've given my self the extra foot I needed with a last-second heal spell. Whatever the decision, I think this deserves a change.
Just The Bast: I specifically started Oblivion and jumped into a nearby river to test whether I remembered it right. Yes, the loss of health when the air runs out is very rapid, but it is not instantaneous. Even at a comparatively low level I had enough Hit Points to witness them draining away and do something about it in time.
I've corrected the sentence in question on the trope page.
Real Slim Shadowen: Re: being able to drown in Jedi Knight with just a toe in the water... Um. No. You can't. I've played the game many times, and come very close to drowning several times, only for just Kyle's head to break the surface and him to survive. So I deleted that bit. It is here for posterity, and in case anyone wants to counter my anecdotal evidence with their own anecdotal evidence:
- The Star Wars game Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight has a very powerful 3D engine for its time, meaning you can have all sorts of non-intuitive (and gravity defying) pools, rivers, and waterfalls. You can swim quite well, and several levels have large underwater poritions. However, once you go underwater, the game still considers you underwater until your entire body has exited. This has the unfortunate side effect that you can drown with only your left foot in water.
Kilyle: Someone please consider adding the quote from this page
- I don't have time right now, but it's something like "these guys must be made out of cotton candy... how can we justify that Frogger, a frog, dies instantly on contact with water?"
Kizor: This very nice bit of hearsay was left over as I was pruning conversation that was threatening to grow out of control.
- This troper has heard it explained that Sonic's body is too aerodynamic to float or swim properly, as he cuts through the water too cleanly to "push" himself (displace the water around him). This is why he can still move at a decent speed underwater, let alone run on the water's floor, which is nearly impossible for most buoyant creatures.
mew4ever23: I still believe that Spyro the Dragons Super Drowning skills are at least partially justified. A great deal of those fluids were arguably not water.
