History DownerEnding / Videogames

* ''{{Halo}} 3'' ends with Master Chief and Cortana floating helplessly in deep space, and Sgt. Avery Johnson and most other favorite characters KIA.
** The entire Halo Trilogy does this. Halo 1 ends with almost everyone dead, and John and Cortana alone. Well, there is Dustin Echos (Yeah, bad pun). Halo 2: Earth gets raped... hard. Halo 3: Wake me... when you need me.
*** And worse, Gravemind may have only been temporarily destroyed. And the Ark was damaged or destroyed by the firing of the ring. Looks like you {{broke your arm punching out Cthulhu}}.
*** ''[[{{Halo}} Halo: Reach]]'', anyone? [[DoomedByCanon It can only end very, very badly.]]

** A ShootTheShaggyDog too; the only significant thing happening other than Alma raping Beckett is that a few ineffectual people die. And the fate of the Pointman, etc. is still hanging, since the {{Expansion Pack}}s featuring him were discounted as CanonDiscontinuity.
** Alma's [[FetishFuel rape]] was supposed to be a downer? [[CompletelyMissingThePoint Oops]].

* Averted THRICE in ''Bayonetta'' ([[spoiler:You defeat the one which caused the extinction of your clan, only to put in motion his [[XanathosGambit Xanatos Gambit]] and let the titular heroine being caught and use her to start [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt The End Of The World As We Know It]] Then [[EnemyMine Jeanne]] who was [[IGotBetter left for death]] pop up from nowhere with a motorcicle, and [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome ride it jumping on rockets and starships in order to reach the outer space]]. When you defeat the [[BigBad Big Bad Evil God]] and punch her soul into the sun, [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt her corpse is going to plummel into Earth]] then Jeanne, who was left for death again pop up from nowhere, cheers up the protagonist, and the two witches proceed to smash the [[BigBad Big Bad Evil God]] corpse into bits before it does any damage. THEN, the two must make through [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat re-entry]]. Next time, we see the funneral of the titular character. Only to her [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic break through the tomb and start kicking asses, AGAIN]].]])

** And the movie ending: Alessa merges with Sharon, then she and Rose leave Silent Hill, but are still stuck in the other dimension where no one can see them, which can imply that the Dark Alessa has expanded the "nightmare" beyond just Silent Hill. How's that for a Downer Ending, having a vengeful, bordering-on-demonic spirit expanding her reality-warping, nightmarish anger and hatred over the whole world? There's a reason why people call this game "the scariest game ever" simply because the implications seen throughout the series are [[DismalImplications very depressing]].

* ''KaneAndLynch: Dead Men''. In the "damned if you do" ending, Kane winds up alone on a small motorboat at sea with a dying Lynch and his dead daughter, despite the game giving you the illusion of there being a way to keep Kane's daughter alive all the way to the ending by making you protect your daughter through the last area. Even if protected flawlessly, she -will- get gunned down at the docks, and Lynch will take one in the chest while you get your boat started, and be dying. The one member of your crew you -did- save curses your name, rushes ahead, and grabs a second boat, ditching you. In the "damned if you don't" ending, Kane abandons Lynch in South America, with his crew being burned out of a church, certain to die, with his daughter vowing to hate him forever for abandoning the crew to save her life. For a game that seemed to be about Kane's redemption, that's two epic {{Downer Ending}}s that some people viewed as WallBangers.

* ''Game/AnotherWorld'' (aka ''Out Of This World'') ends with [[AlternateDimension otherworldly]] [[UnlikelyHero researcher]] Lester Chaykin unconscious, after being injured while escaping from enemy troops. This could also wind up under NoEnding or maybe a {{cliffhanger}}, since nothing is ever finalized, but Lester's alien buddy, err Buddy, shows up to carry him off into the sky to destinations unknown, [[SequelHook leading to the sequel.]]

* Averted THRICE in ''Bayonetta'' ([[spoiler:You defeat the one which caused the extinction of your clan, only to put in motion his [[XanathosGambit Xanathos Gambit]] and let the titular heroine being caught and use her to start [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt The End Of The World As We Know It]] Then [[EnemyMine Jeanne]] who was [[IGotBetter left for death]] pop up from nowhere with a motorcicle, and [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome ride it jumping on rockets and starships in order to reach the outer space]]. When you defeat the [[BigBad Big Bad Evil God]] and punch her soul into the sun, [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt her corpse is going to plummel into Earth]] then Jeanne, who was left for death again pop up from nowhere, cheers up the protagonist, and the two witches proceed to smash the [[BigBad Big Bad Evil God]] corpse into bits before it does any damage. THEN, the two must make through [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat re-entry]]. Next time, we see the funneral of the titular character. Only to her [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic break through the tomb and start kicking asses, AGAIN]].]])

* While ''DirgeOfCerberus'' itself has a happy ending, its online multiplayer mode certainly does ''not''. The nameless Deepground soldier PC defeats the tyrannical Restricter, but with his last breath he lashes out at her, fatally wounding her. As she dies, the Tsviets appear and tell her that the entire them they were tricking her into killing the Restricter so they could commence they're ''own'' plans for world conquest. The game ends with the camera showing the Tsviets laughing at their triumph from the PC's point of view as the screen slowly fading to black as she slowly bleeds out.

* The campaign in the original ''DawnOfWar'' ends with the Blood Ravens Imperial Space Marines and their Eldar allies victorious over Sindri Myr and the Alpha Legion Chaos Space Marines, only to have Blood Ravens Captain Gabriel Angelos [[SealedEvilInACan smash the stone imprisoning the demon lord]] in the belief that this would destroy the demon forever. Only to learn, of course, that because so much blood had been shed in the war for Tartarus, the demon had actually been set free by smashing the stone. Since this is a {{Warhammer40000}} game, [[CrapsackWorld this is hardly surprising]].

* To many the ending of Siter Skain Reflex was this or [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]] at best.

* To many the ending of Siter Skain Reflex was this or [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]] at best.
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* The ending of DragonAge for a female character who romanced Alistair is pretty bad. Either he has to cheat on you with Morrigan (and the game forces you to ''[[PlayerPunch watch]]''), or one of you has to die.
** The ending for a male character who romanced Morrigan isn't quite that bad, but your character's SternChase after the vanished Morrigan and the TearJerker bit with the ring in the epilogue definitely place it here.

* ''InTheHunt'' has a very nasty variation of MultipleEndings: In the first, you fail to escape the enemy HQ and are destroyed along with it, in the second, you become the new leader of the evil organization you were trying to destroy throughout the entire game, and in the third, both players sink to the bottom of the sea endlessly. None of these seem to be a GoldenEnding.

* ''Resistance 2'' plays this extremely straight. The game ends with the main protagonist Nathan Hale finishing his transformation into a Chimera and [[IronicEcho even repeats the very first line you hear from the game's]] BigBad. You also see a large mysterious Chimeran object or building in the background and many Chimeran aircrafts off in the distance. Joe Capelli then tells Hale "I'm sorry sir. It was an honor." (a complete change from his earlier attitude towards him) and shoots Hale in the head, killing him. The entire scene also implies that the Chimera have defeated the human race, which the setting for Resistance 3 confirms.

* ''Divinity 2'' has a major one. You fight the BigBad...only for him to effortlessly trounce you and seal you in diamond. He then mockingly reveals that your only ally is actually his girlfriend and has been stringing you along as part of his plot to free himself all along. Literally ''everything you've done'' throughout the entire game was all in the villain's benefit. The villain and his girlfriend then leave you stuck in diamond to conquer the world, but not before making it so you can watch them do it. The game ends with the hero being unable to do anything but watch as the villain rules the world with an iron fist, ''forever''.

* [''Resistance2''] plays this extremely straight. The game ends with the main protagonist Nathan Hale finishing his transformation into a Chimera and [[IronicEcho even repeats the very first line you hear from the game's]] BigBad. You also see a large mysterious Chimeran object or building in the background and many Chimeran aircrafts off in the distance. Joe Capelli then tells Hale "I'm sorry sir. It was an honor." (a complete change from his earlier attitude towards him) and shoots Hale in the head, killing him. The entire scene also implies that the Chimera have defeated the human race, which the setting for Resistance 3 confirms.

* ''Resistance2'' plays this extremely straight. The game ends with the main protagonist Nathan Hale finishing his transformation into a Chimera and [[IronicEcho even repeats the very first line you hear from the game's]] BigBad. You also see a large mysterious Chimeran object or building in the background and many Chimeran aircrafts off in the distance. Joe Capelli then tells Hale "I'm sorry sir. It was an honor." (a complete change from his earlier attitude towards him) and shoots Hale in the head, killing him. The entire scene also implies that the Chimera have defeated the human race, which the setting for Resistance 3 confirms.

* "Resistance2" plays this extremely straight. The game ends with the main protagonist Nathan Hale finishing his transformation into a Chimera and [[IronicEcho even repeats the very first line you hear from the game's]] BigBad. You also see a large mysterious Chimeran object or building in the background and many Chimeran aircrafts off in the distance. Joe Capelli then tells Hale "I'm sorry sir. It was an honor." (a complete change from his earlier attitude towards him) and shoots Hale in the head, killing him. The entire scene also implies that the Chimera have defeated the human race, which the setting for Resistance 3 confirms.

* ''CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow'' ends with Gabriel Belmont failing to save his childhood love from the dead [[BittersweetEnding in spite of having saved the world from the darkness]], leaving all his efforts to turn into nothing. He also unwillingly becomes Dracula in the end, forever separating him from her in spite of still maintaining his own bitter sanity for the following 1000 years.

** Some people thought the Really Bad Ending was SoBadItsGood, though. ''"I'm the light bringer, I'M THE FUCKING UNIVERSE!''.

** Worse, the game's negative reception may have [[FranchiseKiller killed the franchise]]. No plans for a sequel so far.

* Most of the Bad Ends in ''FateStayNight'' are {{Downer Ending}}s to begin with, but