Respawning Across Lives: Gamer Perspectives on Reincarnation
The idea of respawning after death is well-established in gaming lore, with countless titles embracing revival mechanics that bring your avatar back to carry on its quest. FPS games grant you endless do-overs no matter how gruesome the kills, while RPGs limit respawns but let you restart levels preserving all experience gained earlier.
But what if we could also retain memories, skills and even the personality of our past lives when we respawn? This form of reincarnation with continuity of consciousness offers exciting possibilities from a gamer POV! Let‘s geek out on such a mode being patched into our real future lives, just like the bizarre case of the Northern Indian woman suggesting precisely this scenario.
Gaming Reincarnation vs Religious Myths
Reincarnation has been explored in fantasy games for eons before we had the graphics to match the magic! Cult classics like Chrono Trigger show the concept in full glory – with characters dying in one historical era only to reappear as another person later, shaken by intense dreams and visions of their past self. The impact of carrying karma, unresolved quests and bonding with people across lives makes for some heart-wrenching moments.
Eastern religions have reincarnation intrinsically woven into gameplay, err, scriptures. But even the Abrahamic faiths referenced subtle concepts like being born again or Lazarus rising from death. Jesus was speculated to be the resurrected form of Elijah the prophet, just like Sumitra channeled the long gone Shiva Duetti!
Mechanics of Reincarnation vs Respawning
Unlike most respawns, reincarnating with memory continuity can completely change how you play as that same character. Seeing NPCs who betrayed/killed you in the past life spark vengeance subplotlines for instance. It may also replace generic background stories with real experiences molding you over multiple lives.
And death matters a whole lot more if it means permanently losing skill trees, gold, weapons and other loot gathered over not just recent levels but entire lifetimes past! So the stakes feel higher to avoid reckless fights or make the same fatal mistakes. Plus accumulated knowledge makes your strategic mastery grow exponentially across incarnations to scale new heights.
Unlocking Past Life Snippets via Easter Eggs
What if reincarnation let you access records or simulations of your past lives? Like watching invasive memories in Assassins Creed through the Animus machine! You could piece together why certain objects, locations or dialogue options trigger personal mysteries the current you has no context for. It brings easter eggs to a whole new temporal level!
The Northern Indian woman‘s odd trances where she saw visions of dying with a crushed head for instance could have been triggered by ancestral temples or villages linked to her past incarnation. The traumatic memories were always there below the surface waiting to bleed through!
Magic, Prophecies and Special Powers
Unlike respawning, reincarnation offers great latitude to get fantastical with past life talents manifesting as innate skills, unlocking esoteric knowledge, keepsake artifacts resonating across lives and even occult prophecies predicting reappearances!
Maybe you‘re the chosen one destined to keep ressurrecting until fulfilling some heroic legacy spanning generations. Epic weapons imbued with special powers could augment this like the Horizon Zero Dawn protagonist wielding ancient tech passed down through the ages.
And rare instances of probabilities overlapping might empower specific spirits to channel strange energies – just like the Northern Indian woman‘s temporary psychic boost granting her fleeting glimpses into her previous incarnation!
What If Reincarnation Gets Proven?
Gamers are oddly open to transcendental ideas like life beyond death or consciousness persisting in some form. So empirical proof that memories and soul imprints transcend bodies would likely get us beyond excited at the prospects such mechanics might bring!
We love nothing better than boundary-breaking game innovations after all. The possibility to retain hard-earned progress or sawy between lives without tedious grind again sounds like the ultimate OP power-up! Not to mention sentimental value of relationships, causes and creations outlasting mortality making everything seem more monumentally meaningful!
Sure it may diminish the finality of death or cheapen its lessons when lives replay over and over. But no permadeath also means no absolute game over! So most of us are likely to embrace the promise of an endless series of fresh quests with continually increasing difficulty curve testing ever greater mastery…now that‘s the true gamer dream!
Maybe our real world is just another massively multiplayer dimension we keep re-rolling new characters in till our soul gets skilled enough to ascend levels beyond known reality! Can‘t wait for expansions unlocking those lofty endgames our successive incarnations inch ever closer towards one life rerun at a time!