Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

I disagree with you there Red Soul. Yes, sadness can be easy to pull off. Well written powerful despair and sadness that really tugs on your heart-strings can be much more of a challenge. The only reason sadness seems easier, is because you see it done half-arsed so much. Sadness is easily recognized half-arsed or not unlike humor. Good powerful despair and sadness though, are really a challenge. Also, recently I wish game makers would lose the shock value sadness that is starting to catch on in games (mostly because it got rampant in anime and games tend to follow suit)

What I mean by shock value sadness, is a death that happens to a main character or a side character just to shock you. The death will be a pretty meaningless affair overall, and only happened because the creators wanted to shock you that they did it. Too bad its gotten so common that there is no shock value to it these days. It will be a somewhat sad event but overall the death is meaningless and it really doesn't do much beyond make you upset. If you want a good example from Tales of Legendia. *SPOILER ALERT* The death of Grune at the end of Tales of Legendia's Epilogue is a great example of a shock value death. The death was very meaningless, it was simply done because they could to piss you off. And it wasn't much of a sad event in the end because of this *SPOILER END*

Now a good powerful death scene on the other hand, when you feel invested in the character and they die for good cause or reasons, can be quite a powerful thing. There has been plenty of examples of this over the years as well. Phantasy Star 4 comes to mind for me. *SPOILER ALERT* The death of Alys in Phantasy Star IV is the one I think of to fit this bill. *END SPOILER*

At any rate, when someone dies protecting their comrades because they're the only one that can. Taking a blow means saving a life? Sure it is, but is it common to real life? Certainly not. Thus I think it makes them all the more powerful. The shock value deaths are far more true to real life, and it maybe because they are that they carry less impact. The point is, sadness can be harder to pull off properly in my opinion. A long ways for a short message eh

Personally, I see all main and side character deaths as pointless and stupid. Most if not all of the time, the fight could be won without anyone dying. Bah, I see it as weakness of the script writer! I can sway people's emotions without any corny death scenes. I hate the whole "You saved the world, but your brother/sister/best friend died... tough luck!). I dislike this so much that at times I can turn down and not play a perfectly good game because of it. Most story writers these days can't really seem to balance their stories. Either it's completely childish and lame or a overly dark and sadistic plot which makes no sense. I've written better manga plots.

Edit: Of course, I'm talking about most of the game writers today, not anyone here. Wildbill does great work on game scripts.

Personally I didn't feel much at all for Alys death in PSIV...Nei's death in PSII really messed me up somehow though (so much that I refused to play for a long time).
I see your point with the banalization of sadness, but we can't forget that half of what we feel is up to us and the rest is to the writer...much of the impact
will depend on the audience, so it can be hard to measure what's corny and isn't regarding scripts.
In my above example, Nei's death was much more predictable than Alys's when Neifirst was made known, but still it affected me much more.
Heh maybe I'm the corny one.