10 Dead Video Game Characters You Can Actually Save

Sometimes a character dies because you didn't think things through, or didn't act, or just panicked. Other times, it's just because you didn't have a strategy guide or supernatural good luck. That's the case with Dogmeat in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, an early steampunk inheritor of the old Fallout formula.

Anyone who's played Fallout will recognize Dogmeat, the weirdly strong German Shepherd companion that appears throughout the series. He makes a cameo as an even more surprisingly powerful canine friend in Arcanum. But good luck figuring that out.

In order to find Dogmeat, you have to travel to the city of Ashbury and find the poor fella being kicked by an abusive gnome. If enough time passes, Dogmeat will die and be lost forever. And the clock for saving him starts ticking the second you enter the city for the first time.

Seeing as it's extremely unlikely that you'd get to town and immediately sprint to an arbitrary point on the map, you probably won't find him in time.

But, get to him in time, and you can tell that gnome to buzz off, gaining a grateful and ridiculously strong companion. Seriously, he tears through stone golems with his bare teeth.