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| 3 | %% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks! |
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| 6 | ShootTheShaggyDog in VideoGames. |
| 7 | ---- |
| 8 | !!!In General: |
| 9 | * In many video games, a NonStandardGameOver, as well as HaveANiceDeath and TheManyDeathsOfYou can be considered a Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending, [[ItsAWonderfulFailure especially if they put considerable effort into it]]. Then again, so can an ordinary, generic game over, if you think about the consequences before retrying. |
| 10 | * Any game in the EndlessRunningGame genre inevitably ends in the player character's defeat: |
| 11 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Canabalt}}'': No matter how far or fast you run, the only thing waiting for you is failure and death. There's no escape, and nothing to run ''to''. |
| 12 | ** ''VideoGame/RobotUnicornAttack''. "You will fail. Persistence is futile." |
| 13 | ** ''VideoGame/TempleRun''. You could get caught by the demon monkeys pursuing you, or fall into a temple trap, or run off the temple itself. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | !!!By Title: |
| 16 | * The original ''VideoGame/AlienVsPredator'' game had a particularly scary campaign for the squishy human Marine. Having fought your way through the infested colony and escaped to the unsurprisingly infested space station above the planet, having beaten the inevitable alien queen, you just get abandoned. You've probably seen too much. Yay. |
| 17 | ** In an old ''Aliens 3'' arcade shooter, the players take role of two prisoners fighting for survival as the Xenomorphs invade the prison. Finally, at the end, they run into the Weyland Yutani team sent in to retrieve Ripley. However, rescue is not high on their priorities and the Weyland Yutani thugs opt to just shoot the players instead. |
| 18 | * At least the "Path of Darkness" ending to ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark2008''. If you shoot Sarah, Lucifer's EvilPlan fully succeeds, and the possessed Carnby opens the gates of hell, heralding TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. Earlier, it is said [[XanatosGambit "Lucifer's failure is also his reincarnation".]] |
| 19 | * A partial example with ''VideoGame/{{Alundra}}''. While the main conflict is against the GodOfEvil Melzas, you also spend most of the game trying to save the people of Inoa from horrible, lethal nightmares. By the end of the game, none of them survive anyway, as even the ones you save are eventually killed when the Murgg burn down Inoa. |
| 20 | * Activision's ''VideoGame/{{Apocalypse}}''. At the end, Trey has defeated the Four Horsemen, and confronts the BigBad Reverend himself. But before Trey can take him down, the Rev blasts him with lightning and [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie transforms Trey into one of the demons]]. |
| 21 | * ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'' has the story of Seph and his TrueCompanions. First they try to save the village of Rasalas from [[BigBad Wiseman]], only to arrive too late to do anything. Then they try to negotiate with Wiseman, who uses the opportunity to [[MoralEventHorizon wipe out their hometown while they're away]] and simultaneously prove to them that they were completely powerless against him. This is something that Seph takes to heart after he discovers the results of the aforementioned act, and he decides to make a DealWithTheDevil for the power needed to defeat Wiseman. Once they return, they find that Wiseman has taken over the minds of everyone in the world's largest city. As they are fighting through the aforementioned group to get to Wiseman, the [[MagicalNativeAmerican Children of the Earth]] see the "senseless slaughter" they are inflicting, and decide to fix the problem by killing them. Which they succeed in doing, thus allowing Wiseman to escape completely unharmed. And the best part? The Children of the Earth had viewed Wiseman as a threat and were about to do the same to him before Seph and his true companions stepped in. Meaning that if they had simply done nothing, there would have been no need to lift the world up into the sky, Wiseman would have been killed, and they wouldn't have had to pay the price of their DealWithTheDevil - because there would have been no deal. Every single one of the problems faced in both this game and the original ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' could have been completely avoided. Sucks to be those guys, huh? |
| 22 | * ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries'': |
| 23 | ** [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum''. At two points in the game you have to save Dr. Young, getting a NonStandardGameOver if you fail. After you save her the second time she dies ''about a minute later anyway'' falling for a trap left by the Joker. That being said, you DO end up stopping the Joker afterwards, so at least there's that. |
| 24 | ** In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'', the Joker has a moment that almost perfectly fits this trope, but he's an antagonist instead of a protagonist. Despite all his plans to save himself from dying of Titan poisoning, he comes extremely close to manipulating Batman to bring him the cure. In fact, Batman has the cure and Joker is in the very same room as him [[BackstabBackfire when Joker stabs Batman in the shoulder, making him drop the cure and dooming Joker, who would have lived if he could have seen that Batman would never intentionally let him die.]] |
| 25 | ** Joker's character arc in the first two games could qualify. His plan to tear down Gotham with Titan enhanced inmates is stopped by Batman; if the ending of Asylum is anything to go by, the Titan would've worn off in less than an hour anyway, so his goons probably wouldn't have reached Gotham in time to do any serious damage. Even if he killed Batman, Joker and his gang would've been rounded up once they turned back to normal and be arrested, thrown into Arkham City, and killed in Protocol 10 (although Catwoman's NonStandardGameOver instead puts forth the idea that he and his goons would have survived the protocol and overthrown Strange). In ''City'', his plan to poison Gotham is thwarted, he ultimately didn't leave any offspring behind as seen in ''Harley Quinn's Revenge'', and he dies. |
| 26 | ** Batman gets a perfect moment in ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight''. He spends a significant amount of time and resources trying to find a way to cure [[CloneByConversion the Joker infected]], even [[LockedOutOfTheLoop deliberately keeping Robin in the dark about Barbara's kidnapping and eventual death to ensure he'll focus on finding the cure]]. Then it turns out that Henry Adams, who Batman hoped would be the key to finding said cure, was [[EvilAllAlong faking his immunity]] the whole time, killing the other infected and then himself when he sees Batman himself is infected. The Joker hallucination that haunts Batman throughout the game takes great delight in rubbing in Batman's face about how he forced Robin to work on a nonexistent cure rather than be an effective ally in the field. |
| 27 | * ''VideoGame/BattleTech'' is, somewhat oddly, one for the ''bad guys''. The Aurigan Directorate have seen themselves as {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s, and committed atrocities for what they believe is the greater good of the Aurigan Reach, and firmly believe that once they can get their policies in place and improve people's lot, history will absolve them of their crimes. However, as the Arano Restoration gains momentum it becomes increasingly clear that this is not the case, that the Directorate will be remembered as nothing more than butchers and terrorists, and that whatever good might have come of their actions will simply not materialize. At least one of the leaders chooses SuicideByCop. |
| 28 | * ''VideoGame/BeastBusters'': The ZombieApocalypse was caused by aliens, and the final boss was just the vanguard of a full-fledged AlienInvasion. Also counts for BolivianArmyEnding. |
| 29 | * This trope is the biggest source of TooBleakStoppedCaring afflicting the ''Franchise/BlazBlue'' series, as many of the things done by the protagonists are used as openings for the villains [[FromBadToWorse to make things worse]]; in particular, there is not a single damn thing Ragna the Bloodedge (the series' main protagonist, we should inform you) has ever accomplished that wasn't used to hurt him in turn. He attempts to defeat Nu in Kagutsuchi? She impales him anyway and drags into the cauldron. Noel stops him from falling in and ends the depressing timeloop that would have resulted, but Yuuki Terumi uses that to kickstart his plans to destroy the Master Unit. Ragna tries to fight Terumi? Terumi jams Ragna's Azure Grimoire and puts him at a disadvantage. Ragna beats the shit out of Terumi after Lambda's HeroicSacrifice? Terumi ''[[ThanatosGambit wanted to die]]'' so he could infiltrate and lobotomize Takamagahara, and Relius finishes him off so he can. Ragna fights Mu-12 and reverts her to her "incomplete" state as Noel? The window of opportunity Terumi needed to do the job. Ragna fights Nu at Ibukido and holds his ground without the Azure Grimoire? Izanami uses Takamagahara to jam it and push the fight to a stalemated deathmatch. Ragna, Jin and Noel decom Take-Mikazuchi with Ragna later beating Nu with the Grimoire turned off? Izanami reanimates Nu, merges her with Ragna (like what Ragna was trying to avoid in Kagutsuchi), and he can only keep himself from outright killing his two colleagues, with Noel injured and Jin beaten to an inch of his life. And that is ''not'' including all the crap he goes through on the way, like getting bodied by Carl and Ada, being conned out of what little money he has by Tao and Platinum (the former has no idea the meaning of money, to her only credit), getting pwned by Kagura with Celica in proximity, getting smacked down by Jin, and nearly losing control over his Azure Grimoire when facing Azrael. |
| 30 | * The twentieth and final ending of ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' introduced in the ''Afterbirth+'' DLC confirms that the entire game was a DyingDream and none of it really happened. Isaac's mother didn't really try and murder him because God told her to (and may not have actually been abusive), a falling bible didn't save him from her wrath, he didn't escape through a secret cellar, he didn't fight legions of horrible monstrosities, and he didn't defeat Satan. What really happened is that Isaac blamed himself for the failure of his parents' marriage and gradually going insane from self-loathing, came to believe he was the devil and committed suicide by locking himself in a chest. The whole game is just hallucinations resulting from oxygen-deprivation, with the TrueFinalBoss Delirium representing the Isaac's final delusions before suffocating to death. |
| 31 | * ''VideoGame/BioShock'' had an AlternateRealityGame for [[VideoGame/BioShock2 the sequel]] called 'Something in the Sea' whose main character became well-liked enough to be placed in the game. Many a fan cheered when they saw Mark Meltzer's first audio diary in the game recording his heroic efforts to rescue his kidnapped daughter. Not so much cheering at hearing his last...since you take it off his corpse...after YOU kill him personally...with his daughter a few feet away from his body. Because he had been turned into a Big Daddy by Sofia Lamb. |
| 32 | ** However, if you have a soul and rescue Cindy and you eventually get the good ending, then his sacrifice is not in vain. If you harvest the girl...well...then it invokes this trope. |
| 33 | ** Undermining this somewhat is a bug - if you return to the area where Meltzer is patrolling after killing him, another Big Daddy has taken his place. Killing this Big Daddy will yield ''[[GameplayAndStorySegregation another]]'' copy of Meltzer's final audio diary. |
| 34 | * The ending for ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' essentially undoes the entirity of the game. After killing Comstock, defeating the Vox Populi, and destroying the siphon on Monument Island, Booker and Elizabeth travel through time and alternate realities to "kill Comstock in the crib". It's eventually revealed that Booker and Comstock are alternate-reality versions of the same person, and that to kill one is to kill the other. Booker accepts this and lets various versions of Elizabeth drown him at his baptism at Wounded Knee. The Elizabeths blink out of existence, signifying the undoing of the realities that made them and, essentially, the entire game. TheStinger implies that doing so only killed the Comstocks, not the Bookers, allowing Booker and Anna/Elizabeth to live out their proper lives. In other words, the closest thing the game has to a happy ending is to retroactively undo the whole game! |
| 35 | ** And ''Burial At Sea'' shoots the Shaggy Dog of the main game's ending. At least one Comstock and two other Elizabeths survived the ordeal, although the [[TomatoInTheMirror Comstock we play as killed]] the Elizabeth he was trying to steal and [[TheAtoner had his mind wiped by the Luteces and moved]] to [[VideoGame/BioShock1 Rapture]]. One Elizabeth, implied to be the Elizabeth from the main game (and the only one not shown blinking out of existence) hunts down the final Comstock, although she is much older, implying that she had done so for other Comstocks as well. In short, Booker's sacrifice at Wounded Knee wasn't the solution they'd hoped for, and Elizabeth had to finish the job without him. Still, considering hunting down the last Comstocks in just a few years was even possible for her, whereas previously there were supposed to be a nigh-infinite number of them, Booker's sacrifice did 99.9999% of the job, at least. |
| 36 | *** At the end of ''Burial at Sea'', Elizabeth is killed by Atlas in exchange for the life of a Little Sister named Sally. She then has a DyingDream where she sees the good ending of the first game, putting all her hopes into Jack eventually rescuing Sally and giving her a good life. The player is still free to play the first game and harvest or ignore any blonde Little Sister they see, rendering Elizabeth's sacrifice moot by killing Sally or allowing her to become a Big Sister, ''then'' killing her in the second game. |
| 37 | ** Endings aside, this happens a surprising amount in the game. Need to find a universe where Chen Lin is still a sane gunsmith with all of his tools? They don't exist. Also, the Vox hates you now, so you need to deal with that. Need to find an airship to escape Columbia? The first time you do, Elizabeth knocks you out and it's confiscated by the Vox Populi. The second time it's destroyed by Songbird almost immediately. Need to talk down the Siren so that she'll open the gate to Comstock House? You'll find the three truths you need, but they end up being inconsequential, and the Siren knocks down the gate you needed to get through. Need to control Songbird so he doesn't kill you? You do command him during the final battle with the Vox, but after destroying the siphon Booker loses the pipes and you teleport him to the ocean outside Rapture, killing him. And then, of course, the whole thing is undone anyway. |
| 38 | * Angie, the protagonist of ''VideoGame/BurnhouseLane'', spends the entire game seeking a way to cure herself of her cancer. At the end of the game, she is given a cigarette, and is told that whoever smokes it will be given her cancer. The game then prompts you to "Press E to smoke". If you do, Angie does just that, rendering the entire game absolutely meaningless and triggering an ending where everyone but George ends up dead. |
| 39 | * In the "Sisters" mode of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin''. Since it's a prequel to the storyline of the main game, the ending doesn't surprise anyone who's unlocked it, but it's still a kick in the teeth. You don't even get to fight Brauner or Dracula. As soon as you walk into Brauner's room, he takes CutscenePowerToTheMax and vampirizes the protagonists in front of their dying father. You have no chance to avoid this in any fashion. Fortunately things get better in the main story. |
| 40 | * ''VideoGame/ChakanTheForeverMan'': Chakan, a soldier [[CursedWithAwesome cursed with immortality]] until he destroys all supernatural evil because he bested Death in a duel, never gets his final rest in any of the two final endings you can get. After he has "rid the elemental and terrestrial planes of evil", Chakan impales himself with his own swords, only to be brought back to life by Death and mocked that, since there are countless planets in the universe that still have evil in them and he can never visit them all, his task will remain unfinished forever. You then duel Death. Be defeated, and Chakan will lament that his final rest can wait as he is still bound by his deal with Death. Defeat Death, and the game ends by showing you an hourglass that never empties: Death can't release you if you kill him. Either way, the plot Shoots the Shaggy Dog by ''not'' allowing Chakan to die at the end. |
| 41 | * ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' retroactively does this to ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', by revealing that the kingdom of Guardia was destroyed between the events of the two games, with most of the cast living in 1000 AD implied to be dead, and the first game's BigBad took on a new, even more dangerous form. Whether these things render the entire plot of ''Trigger'' pointless or merely explore a darker side of it is up to interpretation. |
| 42 | ** Both ports of ''Trigger'' released since ''Cross'' also added extra cutscenes to further emphasize this fact: The Fall of Guardia did not exist in the SNES version, so the game never ended with "Unexplainable army kills everyone in Guardia including our heroes." The Dream Devourer fight in the DS version was also new and pretty much exists for you to fight, win, and then be told you ''can't'' win and get sent back to the past...thus Chrono and his friends cannot stop the horrible events in the future from happening let alone their own horrible demises. |
| 43 | ** Certainly not the case. The day of Lavos is contained and the "apocalypse" gets delayed from the Day of Lavos in 1999 AD to the Time Crash in 2400 AD. Civilization gets an extra 401 years directly because of the actions of ''Trigger''[='=]s cast. |
| 44 | * In the flash game ''VideoGame/{{The Classroom|Trilogy}}'', the protagonist must cheat his way through 10 tests set across the last 10 days of school. On day 4, things get dark, with one of the other students being DrivenToSuicide. [[KickTheDog You must ruthlessly]], and [[NintendoHard with near perfect timing]], [[LackOfEmpathy exploit this opportunity to cheat]] in order to pass the level. The next few levels then have you exploiting several other events, from the relatively mundane like a fight, another cheater getting busted, and [[FollowTheLeader all the other students following your lead to cheat]] to a grenade attack on the teacher, which wipes out most of the class including [[PlayerPunch your]] geek [[MauveShirt friend]] and [[ContrivedCoincidence stuns him for]] ''just'' long enough for [[TheSociopath you]] to successfully cheat. Come day 10, only you and one other student bother to show up, with a third student showing up late... [[TwistEnding only to pull a gun and shoot the teacher]]. You manage to successfully escape the classroom as he nails the other student with a MurderSuicide... only for your character himself to be DrivenToSuicide, stand out in the middle of the street, [[HappilyFailedSuicide have a narrow miss and hint at no longer being so keen to go through with it]]... [[SubvertedTrope and get hit by a second car anyway]]. |
| 45 | * The plot of ''VideoGame/CodedArms'' has a hacker exploring an abandoned military simulation for the thrill of it. At the end of the main campaign, the hacker manges to access the simulation's kernel. As he attempts to access it, the simulation's security program responds badly to his homebrew tools and fries the hacker's brain, trapping his consciousness inside AIDA forever. |
| 46 | * The Platform/PlayStation FPS ''[[VideoGame/CodenameTenka Codename: Tenka]]'': The main character is an honest citizen who has worked many years to get off a ravaged Earth, only to find that the colony he has chosen is run by a MegaCorp that use its inhabitants to manufacturate mindless war cyborgs. He narrowly escapes being turned into one and [[PhlebotinumRebel wages war]] with the guidance of a rogue AI in order to escape the colony. After destroying countless assets of the MegaCorp, his "reward" is being killed by the AI, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness who no longer needs him]]. |
| 47 | * ''VideoGame/ConkersBadFurDay''. All the titular character wanted to do was go home. He ends up going through hell, and, at one point, his girlfriend is kidnapped. Then, when he finally finds her again, she's brutally killed right in front of him. ''Then'', just to add insult to injury, he was actually presented with a chance to bring her back to life. But, by the time he realized that it was even an option, it was already too late. Even after becoming the king and basically ruling over the entire land, it's easy to see why he's so bitter over the whole thing. |
| 48 | * The Creator/AdultSwim flash game ''Corporate Climber'' goes somewhere between this, KarmicDeath, and EternalRecurrence. Promoted from "peon" steadily on upwards, you're often given dubiously ethical tasks (for instance, as a CFO you're ordered to "Cook the books" by throwing them into a fire.) As a board member your only assignment is to "Live it up", but once you're promoted to president you "Pay the piper", thrown out the window by all the people you've wronged. If you want, you can go to hell from here, but you can also return to Earth as a peon and start all over. |
| 49 | * The game ''[[VideoGame/CyberLip Cyber-Lip]]'' is a Contra-style action side-scroller developed by Creator/{{SNK}}. The story appears to be fairly run-of-the-mill throughout: the President orders two VideoGame/BadDudes to find and destroy the titular Cyber-Lip, a military supercomputer that's gone mad and destroyed a good portion of the Earth with its deadly army of cyborgs. Throughout the game you receive briefings from the President after each level on where to progress next. Once you reach the final level and destroy the Cyber-Lip once and for all, you receive a message from the President congratulating you on a job well done. Seems obligatory enough, being an arcade shoot-'em-up and all... until the player is suddenly hit with a CruelTwistEnding when it is revealed that the "President" was an evil alien leader bent on world domination the entire time. The aliens apparently were the ones that caused the Earth's military technology, including Cyber-Lip, to go haywire, probably via programmed viruses or some similar means, and you, being the naive pawns that you were, went right along and finished the aliens' job for them: destroy every last remaining bit of Earth's defenses, allowing the aliens ample room to take over your planet once and for all. "The Earth is ours," declares the faux-President, and with an evil grin and a pair of frightening, red glowing eyes to boot. The End! No sequel was ever made, nor announced, and it is highly unlikely that one will ever be made, so as far as anyone knows, this marks the end of the heroes' feckless, fruitless battle. Now, just imagine the reactions of the people who spent quarter after quarter to get to the end of this game and defeat the final boss, only for their efforts to be greeted with THAT. Of course, it is but one example of SNK's long streak of 80s and 90s arcade games that kill the player characters in the end and/or render the whole game pointless. That may be also considered a BolivianArmyEnding, intentionally left hanging. |
| 50 | * ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'' has its PlayerCharacter V plug a biochip obtained during a heist into their brain, which ends up slowly overwriting their own personality with that of a dead rockstar. The rest of the plot has V pursue any possible lead to remove the biochip and save themselves, only for the end of the game to reveal that the biochip has damaged V's brain to the degree that even if they remove Johnny Silverhand from their brain, they'll only have months to live at most. |
| 51 | * ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'': |
| 52 | ** A heavily implied example would be the first ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI'' as there are two endings. As it turns out, both Primordial Serpents, Kingseeker Frampt and Darkstalker Kaathe were witholding the full truth from the Chosen Undead: by [[FateWorseThanDeath rekindling the First Flame, the chain of the undead coming back to life will not be stopped, and the Age of Fire will definitely come to an end. By leaving, the Age of Fire ends, and the Age of Dark (aka the Age of Man) begins, but from what can be seen from what happened to Oolacile, mankind may not even survive.]] As such, it becomes a wonder if the world will ever become better than it was before. |
| 53 | ** The story of ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' becomes this for the King Vendrick. He was once a chosen Undead who fought and defeated the four great souls of his time and obtained the eternal flame and created a mighty kingdom. He soon learned of the curse of the undead and tries to prevent it without sacrificing himself. While doing this, he soon meets a woman from a distant land who tells him of a threat by giants across the sea. Vendrick invades the giants land; gives them a sound defeat and steals a powerful item that lets him create life out of stone and mud. he marries the woman, making her his queen and builds a castle in her honor. Meanwhile he takes the item and creates all kinds of wonders, trying to prevent the curse of the undead. Even creating a clone of the ancient dragon, and a human firekeeper based off the DNA of the ancient dragon. However, none of this works. Vendrick soon finds out that the woman he married was EvilAllAlong and spends his last efforts trying to prevent her from obtaining the eternal flame, and at the same time gets invaded by vengeful Giants that ultimately sack many parts of his kingdom. Vendrick ends up locking himself away with his most trusted knights and eventually goes hollow. |
| 54 | ** ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII'': The Ringed City is the last bastion of the balance between the dark and the flame, but it has been dying slowly as the ruling princess, the last legitimate daughter of Gwyn, is magically slumbered and the remaining Dark Lords don't know how to fix the city without her. You're hired by one of the last knights to save the city, while your sparring buddy Gael is there to find the key ingredient to creating a new world so his family can live there and not in the ruined world of Dark Souls. You fight your way through the city and manage to wake the princess up, but you screwed up somewhere along the way, and for whatever reason the princess immediately ages into a corpse and her unborn half-dragon egg shatters into dust, and the city dies for good. Meanwhile, Gael has gone mad while experimenting with the disintegrated key ingredient, and you have to kill him to get the ingredient for his family. The knight who hired you tries to kill you for fucking up, and she's in the way of your bonfire out so you have to kill her. While the story of the Ringed City itself ends up pointless, Gael's quest ''isn't'' and the whole arc ends with something of RayOfHopeEnding. It's revealed via item descriptions that [[ThanatosGambit Gael knew he would go insane consuming the Dark Soul and intended you to kill him to extract it]]. So you do, and return to the last surviving member of Gael's family with it, and she successfully paints the new world for the forlorn of the old world. She says it will be a "cold, dark, [[DarkIsNotEvil and very gentle place]], and will make someone a goodly home." |
| 55 | * In ''VideoGame/TheDarkness II'', Jackie finally breaks through all of the lies and deceit of the Darkness to find Jenny's trapped soul in Hell. He manages to free Jenny, defying the Darkness's warnings, getting a moment with the woman he loves. After the credits, though, things go downhill. The game [[PlayerPunch makes the player let go of Jenny]] before she transforms into the ArchEnemy of the Darkness, the [[LightIsNotGood Angelus]]. The Angelus escapes from Hell, leaving Jackie trapped there with no way out, and having the woman he worked so hard to save not only fly away, but become his most powerful enemy, deadset on killing him and destroying everything he has left. |
| 56 | * ''VideoGame/DeadIsland'' pulls this twice in the final few minutes. First, the voice (a Marine Colonel) guiding you to find a cure for the disease gasses you, leaves you for dead, steals the cure, and calls in an order to bomb the island - making all the work you did getting survivors to shelters and gathering medical supplies for them completely irrelevant. Second, when the Colonel gets bitten by his zombified wife, he uses the only vial of the cure (which you spent a good chunk of the game buying time for the scientists to develop) on himself - which doesn't work and turns him into the final boss. |
| 57 | * ''VideoGame/DeadNation'' at the end everybody dies and there is no cure, so really why did you play it? Oh yes the scores and the fun. |
| 58 | * ''VideoGame/DeadRising'' ends this way as well. The protagonist, Frank West, enters a shopping mall that later becomes overrun with zombies. Frank can go around the mall, gathering information on the outbreak and/or save the remaining survivors. Of course, it ultimately doesn't matter, considering Carlito has infected a bunch of orphans, given them all a serum that delays the growth of the larva that turns them into zombies, and had them sent to various orphanages throughout North America, resulting in the infection's nation-wide spread. The rest of the world is left alone, but it can only be assumed that some infected people will cross into other countries. But then again, there ''is'' the sequel. |
| 59 | ** Some of the first game's other endings didn't use this trope (many people who die from plot live). Said sequel make all of Chuck's efforts for nothing if you fail to get the conditions for Ending S. Endings F-B all end with Chuck and Katey dying with no chance of escape despite everything you've done. Ending A leads into ''[[VideoGame/DeadRising2 Dead Rising Case West]]'', so you survive there, at least. |
| 60 | ** This ends up being the story for the first three games. If you got the S-Ending and then went on the beat the DLC in ''VideoGame/DeadRising3'', it's revealed that Carlito's sister, Isabela, who was portrayed sympathetically in first and third game was [[TheDogWasTheMastermind the mastermind behind the outbreak]], not her brother. He was TheDragon to her. She is able to [[KarmaHoudini cover up all loose ends]] in the third game. So the protagonists never got the person responsible for the zombie outbreak to being with, and as ''VideoGame/DeadRising4'' proves, the zombie threat is still a problem even over a decade into the future. |
| 61 | * The ''Franchise/DeadSpace'' franchise is loaded to the gills with such stories. Almost every heroic effort to stem the necromorph tide, rescue loved ones or simply get the hell out of dodge ends in miserable, gory and often tear-jerking failure. Protagonist Isaac Clarke is not excempt. [[VideoGame/DeadSpace The first game]] had him brave the ZombieApocalypse to find and save his girlfriend, only to discover near the end that she killed herself before he even arrived. ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'' ended on a somewhat positive note for him personally, but ''VideoGame/DeadSpace3'' didn't waste a second to pull him down again, going so far as to (apparently) kill Isaac after he defeated the FinalBoss. [[FromBadToWorse And then the expansion rolled around]], revealed that Isaac and Carver survived and found a way to return to Earth, only to find the [[EldritchAbomination Brethren Moons had arrived before them and are already busily wiping out what's left of humanity. It's heavily implied both men instantly go insane for various reasons.]] You may cry now. |
| 62 | * ''Demonophobia'': After everything she went through, Sakuri utterly fails to escape Hell. In fact, she's now damned to die over and over and over again, now with full knowledge of each and every one of her {{Cruel and Unusual Death}}s. As for Ritz? [[KarmaHoudini He simply moves on to the next poor bastard as if nothing has happened]]. |
| 63 | * The plot of ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' revolves around a protagonist who seeks to stop the titular demon from destroying the town of Tristram, setting himself free from the cathedral, and leading his demonic hordes to destroy the world. In the end, he kills the demon (actually, his human host) and plunges [[SealedEvilInACan the stone containing his soul into himself]], with hopes that he will be able to contain the demon's power. All in all, a reasonable ending. Now, cut to the second game. It is revealed that [[UnwittingPawn he couldn't resist it]]. He became Diablo, destroyed Tristram, set himself free, and is now leading his demonic hordes to destroy the world. Well, crap. It was [[RetCon actually revealed]] that by the time you face Diablo in the first ''Diablo'' game, you're already under his control. The entire point of [[EvilPlan Diablo's plotting in the first game]] was for him to find a stronger host body. He reckoned, correctly, that any being strong enough to fight his/her way down to him, and then "slay" him was exactly what he needed. The manual to ''Diablo II: Lord of Destruction'' even points out how every time people thought it was over, the brothers just kept reemerging. |
| 64 | ** Bonus points for the Warrior protagonist, according to supplementary material found in Diablo III: he was trying to rescue his little brother, the cathedral drove him to the brink of madness, and discovering that Diablo's host was none other than his little brother was the final nail to the head. |
| 65 | ** The expansion of the sequel isn't much better. You manage to [[DeaderThanDead smash Mephisto and Diablo's soulstones]]! Except that Baal is still left unchecked, and he's figured out the location of the source of the soulstones, the Worldstone. Oh, and he manages to convince one of the [=NPCs=] to give him a PlotCoupon, meaning free access to the Worldstone for him. By the time you catch up to and kill Baal, Tyrael comes down and notifies you that Baal's corruption of the Worldstone means that the only way to prevent the entire Realm from becoming an outpost of Hell is to destroy the Worldstone. Not even Tyrael himself knows what will happen afterwards. All you can do is enter the portal he opens for you. |
| 66 | ** Zig-Zagged in ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'': Your efforts are eventually nullified or corrupted, but every demon you slay makes your character STRONGER. By the end of Act V, when Diablo is free and stronger than he ever has been, your character is BEYOND DEATH. |
| 67 | * ''VideoGame/DivinityIIEgoDraconis''. In the end, it turns out you have been manipulated by the villain's girlfriend the entire game. You end up resurrecting her, making the villain invincible, and then find yourself imprisoned in some sort of crystal, alive and conscious to watch the world you tried to save burn. That's not even to mention what this does to the already trashed reputation of the dragon knights from their last accidental betrayal of mankind. It's probably a good thing you are the last one. |
| 68 | * The ending of ''[[VideoGame/DonPachi DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu]]''. Next EXY went back in time in order to destroy the [=DonPachi=] Corps and prevent the events of ''[=DoDonPachi=] dai ou jou'' from happening. But in doing so, [[StableTimeLoop she ends up causing the events of DOJ]]--[[BigBad Colonel Longhena]] is appointed the commander of [=DonPachi=], and the Blissful Death Wars happen anyway. Simply put, the entire plot of DFK was ''absolutely pointless.'' |
| 69 | -->''"How long would this endless series of conflicts continue..."'' |
| 70 | * ''Franchise/DragonAge'': |
| 71 | ** The story of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' becomes this if you play The Darkspawn Chronicles DLC (A what-if situation if where your character dies at the beginning and Alistair is forced to be the leader) Even if you play as a Darkspawn, the codex and ending tell how Alistair manages to overcome his leadership issues and awkward shyness and gathers the party and army without the support of the Warden, presumably kills Loghain and even start a relationship with Leliana...only for them all to be slaughtered in the final battle, making it all pointless. |
| 72 | ** Fenris can suffer this in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII''. He escaped from slavery, having been marked with lyrium tattoos that cause him great pain and resulted in his amnesia. During the years you have him in your company, he slowly grows from his bindings as a former slave, potentially with Hawke even teaching him how to read. And then Hawke can ''sell Fenris back to his old master'', an act that leaves Fenris [[DespairEventHorizon so utterly gutted that he leaves with Danarius without even resisting.]] |
| 73 | ** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', if you sent Isabela to the Qunari, Varric reveals that the Arishok's story ended like this. Somewhere along the way, he winds up losing Isabela and the Tome of Koslun once again and returns home to find the Qunari equivalent of a court martial awaiting him, who strip him of his rank. |
| 74 | * This happens twice in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestV''. While your character is a child traveling with your father Pankraz, you get the assignment to rescue the incredibly bratty Prince Harry. After going through the tunnel complex where he's held, you find and release him... but some minions of the BigBad get the drop on you! Luckily, Pankraz beats them both handily. The BigBad then takes you hostage and says that he'll kill you if Pankraz interferes - and revives his minions. Pankraz then gets beaten to death by the minions, and you and Prince Harry are forced into slavery. ''Ten years'' pass before the next phase of the game. Later on, you get married and have children - but the day after your wife gives birth, she is kidnapped! It turns out that the former castle chancellor is in league with the monsters. You eventually find him right before he dies from [[PayEvilUntoEvil monster-delivered injuries]]. Later on, you find your wife - when the BigBad turns both you and your wife into living statues. You are then stolen by tomb robbers and sold to a rich man - where you watch him having fun raising ''his'' child for the next ''eight years''. However, you are eventually found and restored by your children. |
| 75 | * The fifth ending of ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'', which is only unlocked after OneHundredPercentCompletion (keep that in mind). After spending the entire game trying -- and failing -- to protect the [[CosmicKeystone seals]] that will prevent TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt (all of whom are destroyed off-screen no matter what you do), Caim and Angelus manage to face down [[BigBad Manah]]. Before anyone can do anything, Manah is crushed and killed by her own brother, causing the destruction of the fortress you were all in that kills Caim's sister, [[BarrierMaiden Furiae]] (again off-screen). Manah's death and the destruction of the seals and BarrierMaiden angers [[TheManBehindTheMan The Watchers]], who decide to enter the world and destroy it. After losing the rest of the party against The Watchers in a series of {{Senseless Sacrifice}}s, Caim and Angelus engage the leader of the Watchers and both of them are transported into another dimension for a climactic final showdown... The 'other dimension' turns out to be modern-day Tokyo. After a grueling boss fight, the Watcher leader finally gives up the ghost. At which point Caim and Angelus are [[DroppedABridgeOnHim instantly and anticlimactically shot down and killed]] by a JSDF jet fighter in the closing cutscene. [[LetsPlay/TheDarkId DRAKENGARD!]] |
| 76 | ** These events cause the magical plague that nearly destroys humanity in ''VideoGame/NieR''. That game ends with the title character destroying humanity's only hope of recovering from the disease. Also, even if the characters came to some agreement not shown in-game which could save humanity, Yonah's Black Scrawl can't be cured, meaning she dies, and saving humanity would require all of the Replicant characters giving up their free will. |
| 77 | *** According to [[WordOfGod interviews with Director Yoko Taro]] found in [[AllThereInTheManual Grimorie NieR]] the Shades hiding as Humans in the Aerie were because some Gestalts were able to reunite with their Replicants without the aid of Weiss and Noir. They seem unstable (turning back into Shades when Nier mentions wanting to kill Shades), but it raises some hopes that Humanity might be able to somehwhat recover with the knowledge they have. [[LivingWeapon Then Emil nukes the place.]] |
| 78 | ** And in the sequel to the "A" ending of ''Drakengard'', ''Drakengard 2'', also does this in its Ending A. The entire game is spent destroying the districts that essentially form the seals that bind Angelus, Caim's dragon from the first game. After destroying the dragon and launching the world into an apocalypse extremely similar to that of the first game (following Furiae's death), they realize that they have to make another goddess seal... so they place Eris as the goddess seal and the districts are remade. That basically means that the seals you've worked so hard throughout the game and killed a ton of people for the sake of destroying? They all have to be rebuilt to make Eris's burden more tolerable. |
| 79 | ** And it gets worse. The official timeline reveals that the previously mentioned ''Drakengard'' Ending E, is not another dimension, but the future of Ending C from ''Drakengard 2'', meaning the bittersweet ending they achieved still ends with humanity wiped out. |
| 80 | ** And then there is ''VideoGame/Drakengard3'' where in all but one ending, Zero fails to destroy the flower and ends up losing either her life, Mikhail or her sanity. |
| 81 | * The DS version of ''VideoGame/DrawnToLife: The Next Chapter''. All that trouble you had to go through, and the whole thing was AllJustADream?! And almost [[DreamApocalypse all of the characters you worked your ass off to save get destroyed anyway]]?! Plus, that means that the Creator isn't real, and you're ''not'' the Creator, which was the main gimmick of the series! |
| 82 | * Probably less shaggy then most, but the ''VideoGame/DreamChronicles'' series of puzzle games have this sort of ending. You spend the whole game looking for your kidnapped husband and child, and at the end you're whisked away to an enchanted prison. After escaping from that, you get amnesia and forget you even have a husband and child. It's not the worst and these problems are quickly fixed in the next game, but it's annoying. |
| 83 | * In ''VideoGame/DreamfallTheLongestJourney'', none of the game's three protagonists manages to achieve their objectives. Although main character Zoë Castillo manages to prevent a societal and technological collapse in Stark, she fails at her mission to stop [=WATICorp=] from releasing the Dreamer and proves unable to rescue her ex-boyfriend--worse still, she is placed in a permanent coma. Over in Arcadia, April Ryan is unable to prevent the Azadi Empire from completing their EvilTowerOfOminousness, or even figure out what it's for, and is left for dead. The third protagonist, Azadi apostle Kian Alvane, is arrested for treason by the empire just after he decides to try to convince its leaders of the error of their ways. While the [[VideoGame/DreamfallChapters sequel]] managed to undo ''some'' of the doom and gloom (Zoë awakens from the coma to put an permanent end to the conspiracy, while Kian is freed and finds a new purpose in redeeming his nation), calling the original game's ending a downer would be a gross understatement. |
| 84 | * ''[[VideoGame/{{Driver}} DRIV3R]]'': Tanner shoots Jericho, but spares his life. Then Jericho gets back up and shoots Tanner, who is last seen flatlining, the doctors attempting CPR. The game wasn't received so well, then there was the InNameOnly ''Parallel Lines'', which was the final nail in the coffin. RIP ''Driver''. |
| 85 | ** But then ''VideoGame/DriverSanFrancisco'' came out, which carries on this plot line: Tanner is in a coma and a great part of the game, if not all of it, takes place in his head while he tries to wake up. |
| 86 | * ''VideoGame/DyingLight'' ends on a positive note. Rais, the ruthless leader of an army terrifying the survivors is dead. His army is in shambles and Kyle is confident that a cure will soon be created based on the research he discovered. Then comes [[HappyEndingOverride the DLC follow up]] ''The Following''. The research doesn't amount to anything. Many of the survivors of the main game are now dying one after the other. Kyle learns of a group that is able to not be infected by the Zombie outbreak and goes to their land out of a desperate attempt to save the remaining survivors. He discovers in the end that their is no cure, a screen prompt makes it clear that the survivors are dying, and the Rais army is still a threat and being led by a man Kyle meets at the beginning of the DLC. Not to mention the one person he hoped to get help from goes AxCrazy and tries to kill Kyle if he doesn't cooperate. She makes it clear that he is already exposed to the Zombie virus and the so called cure only makes people an intelligent version of a Zombie. In the end, Kyle has two choices: Nuke the whole area killing everyone, or kill the person and become a monster literally, making his whole struggle throughout the game pointless. |
| 87 | ** ''VideoGame/DyingLight2'': And either way, the world ends in the sequel when the corporation responsible for the virus creates a new strain out of pure greed, inevitably loses control of it, and infects the entire planet. Then the BigBad fails to save the daughter he caused so much misery for, and you have to choose between saving an ark that has sufficient resources to sustain the last of humanity forever, or saving the only sustainable population capable of saving civilization. Either way, this breaks the protagonist and they leave what they have saved behind. |
| 88 | * Pirated copies of ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'' give us a meta-example. You play through the game, which ends up being almost exactly the same (more enemies, though) and, once you get to the final boss, The game freezes. And then deletes all of your save files. |
| 89 | * ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'': |
| 90 | ** The life of Mirmulnir, the very first dragon you slay. He survives the Dragon War which saw the disappearance of [[BigBad Alduin]] himself, escapes the dragon pogroms of the Akaviri Dragonguards and their successors, the Blades, heeds the call of Alduin's return... and promptly gets killed by an unwitting [[PlayerCharacter Dragonborn]] and a handful of guards from the nearby city of Whiterun. |
| 91 | ** Potentially also the fate of Paarthurnax. After struggling for centuries against his own dark nature as a dragon, he could be killed by a Dragonborn simply because some members of the Blades [[HeelFaceDoorSlam cannot accept the existence of a benevolent dragon]]. Even one who has become TheAtoner for his part in the war. |
| 92 | * ''VideoGame/ElementalGearbolt'': The game opens with a shot of a ruined city, so [[ForegoneConclusion you already know what happens at the end]] [[LateToTheTragedy due to the entire game being a flashback]]. Once the game catches up to the present, the main characters are all presumed dead along with the rest of the kingdom where that game is set, and Tagami, having planned the whole incident, is unable to leave World 4 in the aftermath. Needless to say, this game is not for the faint of heart. |
| 93 | * ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'', being a CosmicHorrorStory, naturally has most characters' chapters end this way. Special mention goes to Anthony and Paul Luther's chapters. Anthony reads a cursed scroll intended for Charlemagne, and rushes to warn him of the attempt on his life. Not only does he get to Charlemagne ''just'' in time to see him die, [[AndIMustScream but the cursed scroll is slowly turning him into a mindless zombie]], and it takes ''hundreds of years'' before he finally gets a MercyKill (Incidentally, by Paul). Paul Luther is a Franciscan monk who had the bad luck of working at a cathedral taken over by an evil cult, and he ends up falsely accused of a HeKnowsTooMuch murder. He manages to find the evidence to clear his name and implicate the ObviouslyEvil head of the cult (who is actually the game's DragonInChief in disguise), but he's forced to indirectly sacrifice the one person who trusted him, the leader plans to have him killed anyway and as he pursues him to "put an end to the heresy forever", he is instantly (and brutally) killed by the Black Guardian, making everything he went through essentially pointless. |
| 94 | * ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' typically takes place in AWorldHalfFull, seeing what's left of humanity slowly rebuild AfterTheEnd. ''VideoGame/Fallout1'' saw the beginnings of [[TheFederation the New California Republic (NCR)]] which was the first post-nuclear-war nation, and a symbol of humanity being able to rebuild. ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' saw the NCR become more organized and influential, going so far as to replace the makeshift currency of bottlecaps with their own widely-circulated printed money. ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' saw the NCR expand to the point where it's stretching eastwards to new territory, though not without experiencing setbacks such as the Brotherhood of Steel attacking their gold reserves during the war between these two factions and being stretched thin in the Mojave. The TV series ''Series/Fallout2024'' sees the [[spoiler:destruction of Shady Sands and later an NCR outpost in Los Angeles]], and much of California is in an even worse state than it was in the first game. |
| 95 | * ''VideoGame/FarCry5'' sees the cult leader Joseph Seed triumph over you in almost every way. If you ultimately choose to run and leave him to his plans then you probably succumb to brainwashing and kill your own allies. If you fight him to the bitter end then nuclear war breaks out and your allies die, while you wind up stuck in a bunker handcuffed and at his mercy. The best possible resolution is simply to not play the game at all, refusing to arrest Joseph in the first place and letting him carry on with business. |
| 96 | ** Thankfully, this is all resolved in the [[VideoGame/FarCryNewDawn sequel]], where Joseph either ends up dead or having to deal with the guilt of what he's done. It's also hinted in ''VideoGame/FarCry6'' that no nuclear war ever happened and that Joseph was actually arrested correctly, or that if the nukes ''were'' fired, ''only'' Montana was hit and the rest of the world is perfectly fine. |
| 97 | * ''VideoGame/FatalFrame'': |
| 98 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Fatal Frame II|Crimson Butterfly}}'': Mio and Mayu get lost in the Minakami village, but try to leave. Mio fights off ghosts with the Camera Obscura, all while trying to protect her sister, who is being possessed by Sae's spirit and complicating things. In the end, they enter the room of the ritual and Mio becomes possessed long enough to strangle her sister and fulfill the ceremony. It wouldn't have mattered if both had become possessed upon entering the village or hadn't found the camera and fought, as the [[DemonicPossession spiritual possession]] made it all null. |
| 99 | ** ''VideoGame/FatalFrameMaidenOfBlackWater'': You spent an entire chapter trying to find Haruka Momose, the girl Hisoka had gone missing trying to find and Fuyuhi died over. After bringing her back safely, she goes back to the mountain at the end of the Fourth Drop and dies anyway. |
| 100 | * ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon FEAR 2: Project Origin]]'' ends with three of [[PlayerCharacter Michael Beckett's]] teammates dead, one missing and presumed dead, one mortally wounded, and Beckett himself trapped with the BigBad [[StringyHairedGhostGirl Alma]] in the very machine meant to destroy her-which has been turned off by CorruptCorporateExecutive Genevieve Aristide in an attempt to curry favor from her superiors by capturing Alma. To add insult to injury, Alma then ''rapes'' Beckett and conceives a child who is implied to be just as powerful as its mother, possibly setting the stage for TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. |
| 101 | * In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles: Echoes of Time'', Larkeicus spent 2,000 years planning a way to restore the crystals to the world, building a tower miles high to reach the place the cataclysm would occur. It then occurs anyway, only BECAUSE of the methods he used in the process, and since he's there at the time it ends up killing him. To top that off, the only reason it happened so nauseatingly high in the sky was because he built the tower that high. |
| 102 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'': [[HappyEndingOverride Timey-wimey stuff cancels out the seemingly happy ending]] from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII''. The plot of this game centers around Serah searching for her sister Lightning, who has vanished for no apparent reason. Various time paradoxes destroy progress made by the protagonists. In the end, Serah dies after beating the bad guy, the world is consumed by Valhalla, Lightning is crystallized, and the bad guy [[UnexplainedRecovery gets better.]] The next game pretty much confirms that ''XIII-2'' ended with TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, it's just taken some time to actually get to the actual ending, but now Lightning's job is to save people in preparation for the destruction of the current world and the creation of a new one. |
| 103 | ** Bonus points if you get OneHundredPercentCompletion, which doesn't change the ending but DOES ''laugh directly in your face'': You try so hard that Caius realizes you exist. He then insults you for spending hundreds of hours trying to rewrite an ending that was already (A)canon, and (B)supported by beings with higher stats in EVERYTHING than the player and the player character multiplied. |
| 104 | * ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'': |
| 105 | ** The story of Sigurd and most of his army plays out like this thanks to his status as a FailureHero. He rescues a friend from a suddenly-aggressive neighbor in the first two chapters. When he tries again with a second friend trapped in a similarly-aggressive neighbor, nothing he does can save that friend from death. He marries a woman marked with a terrible fate, and then she disappears. Then Sigurd is framed for treason because his own country has used him as an UnwittingPawn to conquer the first two. When Sigurd tries to return home and clear his name, he kills the conspirators against his family--which plays into the hands of Arvis, his most dangerous foe. Arvis lures him in for the kill by promising a pardon, then turns on him, reveals he's married Sigurd's brainwashed wife, and brutally murders him before becoming ruler of TheEmpire that Sigurd has accidentally built. |
| 106 | ** Lewyn of Silesse deserves a particular mention. His personal plotline is his struggle to feel worthy of his inherited responsibility as king, which he's dodged by [[KingIncognito pretending to be a bard]]. When Sigurd shelters in Lewyn's homeland, Lewyn finally takes responsibility, confronting his traitorous uncles and claiming his AncestralWeapon to finally ascend the throne. And then he loses it all with Sigurd's demise. Despite surviving, he abandons the throne, Silesse is conquered, his wife passes away, and he shuns contact with his children. He becomes TheMentor to Sigurd's son and refuses to return to Silesse when his children catch up. ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThracia776'' also states that his own people despise him for running away a second time. It is strongly implied at the end of ''Genealogy'' that the reason for all this is that Lewyn's body was taken over by a dragon god, and most or all of him really did die with Sigurd. |
| 107 | * In an old Bullfrog game called ''Flood'', you guide your character Quiffy through 42 levels of platform trouble and reach an ending animation where Quiffy climbs up a manhole to freedom and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbGjm_x808&t=1h53m20s is immediately squashed by a truck]]. He deserved better. |
| 108 | * ''VideoGame/FragileDreamsFarewellRuinsOfTheMoon'' has the protagonist searching for the first survivor he's seen since setting out, find out there's others elsewhere in the world, stop a second apocalypse, and then go off to look for the survivors with the girl he spent most of the game chasing after. The last part is ruined because a narration from the older protagonist reveals that said girl died before him and he is alone when he dies. |
| 109 | * The ''VideoGame/{{Futurama}}'' video game ends like this, as the playable characters' reviving device is destroyed, and they, who have traveled back in time to prevent the beginning of the game, are crushed shortly afterward by the final boss. And then, just when it looks like their actions had prevented the professor from selling the company, Mom offers him the sombrero he was wearing at the start of the game. Return to the first scene. |
| 110 | * ''VideoGame/GameOfThronesTelltale'': |
| 111 | ** If the player chooses to have Mira reject Lord Morgryn's proposal in the final episode, she will be executed for the murder of the Lannister guard earlier in the season. That means that Mira spends six full episodes just failing over and over to contact her family or win over any allies in King's Landing, no matter what choices the player makes. Since she's the only playable character not to have any direct on-screen contact with any of the other main characters, her story could almost be removed from the season without disrupting the plot, and her death curtails any possibility that she'll be able to actually achieve something in the (now cancelled) sequel. |
| 112 | ** The option where she survives isn't much better: she's locked away in a forced marriage that is basically no better than prison, so she ''still'' can't do much to help out House Forrester, let alone actually get herself home. Due to the difficulties of scripting such intricate branching paths, she probably wouldn't have played a large role in the sequel either way. It's sort of easy to see why over 70% of players [[DespairEventHorizon just chose to kill her off at this point]]. |
| 113 | ** Since Mira is the only character to have a cross-over cameo in [[Series/GameOfThrones the TV series]], the cynical player might almost think she was more there to give the developers a reason to set part of the story in King's Landing (and therefore facilitate marketable guest appearances by Creator/LenaHeadey, Creator/PeterDinklage, and Creator/NatalieDormer) than to advance the plot in any significant way... |
| 114 | * ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'': |
| 115 | ** At the end of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'', Claude, our hero is implied to have flipped out and ''literally shot'' the shaggy dog, i.e. Maria, who he went through all that trouble to rescue. This is one of the few times this is played for laughs. |
| 116 | ** The diamond subplot in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV''. Practically every criminal organization (and there are a lot) in the city gets involved in one way or another trying to steal a bag of diamonds the size of your fist. At the end of a long shootout, one of Bulagarin's men throws the bag into a passing truck full of mulch. Newspapers later report that the diamonds are found by a homeless man. |
| 117 | *** The homeless man is later shown in the ending of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIVTheBalladOfGayTony'', right after Luis lands in the park. He is later seen partying, though he strangely is still seen in his ragged dirty clothes. |
| 118 | ** The "Kill Michael" ending in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' is done in a tragic way. Michael, who led a life of crime and heists that tore his family apart, is finally turning his life around by reconciling with his family and his daughter got accepted into college. This is all thrown out the window when Franklin kills Michael in order to save his own skin from Merryweather. |
| 119 | * In the ending of ''[[VideoGame/{{Contra}} Gryzor]]'' for the Platform/AmstradCPC, destroying the alien heart triggers a SelfDestructMechanism that causes an EarthShatteringKaboom. "How sad." |
| 120 | * ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': |
| 121 | ** ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' has several moments like this. At the end of the first chapter, John dramatically rescues a marine who trips and nearly misses the last lifeboat; unfortunately, all the marines on board die in the crash anyway. In the third mission, you have the objective of finding/rescuing Captain Keyes; you do so, only for him to become a part of the proto-Gravemind later. The goal of the second chapter, plus side-objectives several times throughout the rest of the game, is to rescue groups of marines so that they can be evacuated to a safer part of the ring, which is destroyed at the end of the game leaving no survivors (later retconned in ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike'' to a single dropship of survivors). |
| 122 | ** In ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', Jorge sacrifices himself to destroy the Covenant Supercarrier... only for an entire fleet to emerge from slipspace. In the mission before that, you lead an attack on a Covenant spire being used as a base and teleportation site for inconspicuously bringing down their ground troops and have a frigate destroy it. As the pieces of the spire are raining down, that very same Covenant Supercarrier makes itself known by destroying the ship and revealing that it was the very ship that was transporting the initial invading force to the spire and deciding to cut its losses. Also note as the game itself is a ForegoneConclusion, this was all bound to happen anyway. |
| 123 | * ''VideoGame/{{Hangaroo}}'': You can save the roo from the noose, but you can't save him from death. Once you "win" the game, the kangaroo will flee from the hanging platform, but just as he's happily hopping away, he gets crushed to death by a falling meteor out of nowhere. |
| 124 | * ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'': |
| 125 | ** In the first game, attempting to complete the final chapter without discovering the hidden password to the computer will prompt the Biker to break into the cellar of a non-descript building, whereupon he confronts the two janitors who were indirectly responsible for almost all of the murders which took place in the game's story. They don't respond to the Biker's threats and interrogation, and they literally taunt him into killing them as well, leaving all of the story's questions unanswered. This is lampshaded by Richard at the beginning of the game. |
| 126 | --->'''Richard:''' You will never see the whole picture. |
| 127 | ** ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami2WrongNumber'' is all about the futility of vengeance and violence. None of the cast members achieve anything of significance, most of them are killed by one another, and events taking place entirely off-screen result in the remaining characters being killed in a full-scale nuclear war. With the futility of violence being a core theme, it was already expected things would end [[DownerEnding poorly]], but just ''how'' incredibly wrong it all goes still packs a punch. |
| 128 | * The video game version of ''VideoGame/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' was built with this in mind. There is only one way to win in any satisfying, [[MultipleEndings "good ending"]] kind of way. Either you get all the characters to face their personal demons and die with dignity, after which four of them sacrifice their lives to give the fifth one a chance to defeat AM once and for all but must continue to forever roam AM's deceased mind to make sure it stays that way, or the lone survivor is turned into an [[WhoWantsToLiveForever immortal]], hideous, [[AndIMustScream miserable monster]]. And apparently Creator/HarlanEllison, the original story's author, had initially objected to the good ending. And the part where the characters can die with dignity at all. In this sense, it's entirely true to the original story. |
| 129 | * In ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy'', if you don't move out of the way out of a [[EverythingTryingToKillYou slowly falling apple]] at the end of the ending sequence, you will actually ''die'', which defeats the whole purpose of trying to be The Guy in the first place. Also, you have to fight [[ThatOneBoss The Guy]] all over again! |
| 130 | ** During the fight with The Guy to become The Guy, it is revealed that, The Guy is your character's father. He killed his own father to become The Guy, and you are going to kill him to become The Guy, and in the future your son is going to kill you and become The Guy. Geez...talk about pointless. |
| 131 | * The TowerDefense game ''VideoGame/ImmortalDefense'' Shoots the Shaggy Dog with an elephant gun. At the end of the fifth campaign, after nearly a hundred missions of defending your beleaguered home world against increasingly impossible odds, you finally learn that the enemy actually wiped out all life on your planet at the end of the second campaign, your character has gone insane, all the "transmissions" you've been receiving from the planet were in fact hallucinations, and you've been defending a lifeless ball of rock. You can still play on in the sixth campaign, though - as an insane spirit in Pathspace gunning down anything which approaches your former planet, finishing only "At The End Of Everything" (that's the actual title of the last mission) |
| 132 | ** The game's creator has said that some or all of the last campaign is a hallucination, so the enemy isn't really wasting ships or lives at that point (it also explains how so many of the unique boss enemies reappear). |
| 133 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Infidel}}'', the PlayerCharacter solves an ancient pyramid's brutal riddles, defuses its {{Death Trap}}s, and opens the treasure sarcophagus in the Burial Chamber... only for the room to collapse, burying him alive. This is arguably [[JustifiedTrope justified]], as the PlayerCharacter is a greedy, lying fool, but is that really a consolation after solving ''so many Expert-level puzzles?'' |
| 134 | * ''VideoGame/{{Inscryption}}'' ends with Grimora making a final attempt to keep the OLD_DATA from spreading by deleting all of the game files - including herself; her fellow Scrybes; and the souls of the dead that she's been preserving. Once the deletion is complete, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the player is left face-to-face with the unharmed OLD_DATA with nothing left to prevent them from opening it]]. The attempt to kill P03 to keep the game from being uploaded appears to have also failed [[ForegoneConclusion considering that in]] RealLife it is now widely available for purchase online- indeed, the end of the ARG revealed that he continued his upload after his death. |
| 135 | * ''VideoGame/{{Jinxter}}''. The game begins when you are about to be run over by a bus, when you are suddenly teleported away to become one of the guardians of a mysterious fantastic world. If you save the world, they teleport you right back and you are immediately hit by the bus. ''Computer Gaming World'' labeled this one of the top fifteen worst game endings of all time. |
| 136 | * ''VideoGame/{{Killzone}} 2''. All the ISA's sacrifices have apparently been for naught, as they are about to be annihilated by the Helghast's reserve fleet. Well, there is the threequel. |
| 137 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2''. Roxas's best friend, who has spent the entire game trying to figure out her purpose and later ''defy'' the purpose Organization XIII have engineered for her ends up getting brainwashed/reprogrammed, doing their dirty work for them, including trying to kill Roxas. He is forced to kill her, and when he gets ready for a RoaringRampageOfRevenge, he gets beat down by TheRival from the first game, gets his memory wiped so that he doesn't even remember his friend, and the stage is set for ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII''... where he is absorbed by Sora in the prologue. At least you knew (most) of it was coming, if you played the games in [[AnachronicOrder the order they were released.]] |
| 138 | * ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' starts on the planet Taris, which has several side quests such as helping innocent people escape from bounty hunters (or killing them) and finding a cure for the [[TheVirus rakghoul disease]]. As soon as you leave Taris, [[BigBad Malak]] [[DeathFromAbove fires on the planet from orbit]] and kills everyone. Even the HopeSpot you earn playing light side is turned into a twisted joke by the [[VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic MMO]]. The Outcasts found their Promised land, and survived for a few generations, only to be picked off by rakghouls, disease, starvation, and finished off by toxic waste. Then again, the MMO ''is'' Creator/BioWare post-Franchise/DragonAge, so NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished. |
| 139 | ** Even better; the ''protagonist'' of the first game? Takes the protagonist of the [[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords second game]] and goes on a foolhardy run against the Sith Emperor without making ''any'' provision to warn the Republic the Sith ''still existed.'' The Exile ends up stabbed InTheBack and killed, lingering on as a babbling Force ghost. Revan ends up as a chew toy for the next 300 years, goes nuts, tries a couple of genocidal and incredibly stupid plans, and ends up being put down like a rabid mutt to prevent him from ''resurrecting'' the villain. |
| 140 | ** The events of the classic Kotor series are essentially this. Revan and the Exile might have successfully dismantled the Sith Empire, but said Empire is nothing more than Vitiate's rogue scouting party, whose original objective was to test the Republic's defense. When the pair set out to defeat Vitiate once again, they end up losing again and ultimately accomplish nothing in their war against him. |
| 141 | ** Canderous Ordo's plot arc also comes to a depressing end come the MMO, with his goal of leading the Mandalorians to a brighter future coming to an end after they are ruled by by a Sith-aligned Mandalore and the insurrectionist movement of his followers crushed. Their leader ends up exiled to Taris, eventually hunted down by the Bounty Hunter PC. |
| 142 | * ''VideoGame/KyaDarkLineage'' ended on what seemed to be a happy note with the heroine defeating the BigBad and restoring peace to the alternate world... until the artifact that was supposed to take the heroine and her brother home dumps them in a desolate world where it's implied they're attacked by a monster... this was of course supposed to set up for a SequelHook, but considering the game's sales, it's in the same limbo as ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil''. |
| 143 | * Both ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' games can be considered this, depending on how you choose to interpret them. |
| 144 | ** The first game was originally four unrelated campaigns, each meant to be a different "movie" that the characters were in, each of which ends in at least one of the characters surviving (assuming you beat the finale). However, later-released DLC filled in the time "between" two of the campaigns -- suggesting that the whole thing is pointless, because each time they're rescued, they only end up in the next campaign, no better off than they were before. |
| 145 | ** [[http://www.l4d.com/comic/ The Sacrifice]] has its share of Shoot The Shaggy Dog moments and aversions. The comics take place immediately after the crew is rescued by the military where they're kept in quarantine in a military camp slowly dissolving into anarchy, by guards who don't even know what Boomers and Smokers are. Also, it's revealed that Zoey had shot her father for no reason -- he may not have zombified, but they took their cue from horror movies once he got bit. It ends with Bill sacrificing himself so that the other three can get to an island. |
| 146 | ** The sequel makes this explicit -- the five campaigns are in definite chronological order, rather than being distinct "movies" like the first game -- and even taken as a whole might ''still'' end up shooting the shaggy dog. In the ending to the last campaign, the characters are evacuated by the military, but various things about the city in the last campaign suggest that the military ''may'' be killing off "carriers" (people who do not themselves become zombies when infected, but can spread the infection to uninfected people who ''will'' become zombies from it), which ''may'' include the player characters. An alternate interpretation has them being kept in isolated quarantine and being subjected to medical experiments in an attempt to find a cure, instead of just being killed off, because [[SarcasmMode that's so much better]]. |
| 147 | * ''VideoGame/LifeGoesOn'' focuses on a King's quest for immortality, to find "the Cup of Life". He sends countless Knights to finish this quest requiring the deaths of many, over 50 incorrect cups are retrieved and in the end the Knights defeat the personification of Death himself to reach the last cup. This time no mere Knight comes out of the portal to retrieve it but the King himself, he grasps the cup, the music crescendos...and the King is promptly squashed by a pillar of rock. All those deaths were completely wasted. |
| 148 | * ''VideoGame/LifeIsStrange'' becomes this in a nutshell. Everything Max did to give Chloe a happier life and keep her safe is ultimately for naught. Either Max decides to travel back in time and let Chloe die from being shot back in Episode 1, making all of her actions pointless or allow the tornado to destroy Arcadia Bay and kill probably the entire population of the town, which will lead to Chloe surviving, but suffering from SurvivorsGuilt because she knows that her being alive caused the tornado to begin with. |
| 149 | * ''Franchise/MassEffect'': |
| 150 | ** This is part of James Vega's backstory in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. On a mission against the Collectors (the big threat from the previous game) gone FUBAR, he had to choose between keeping his team alive or getting out with intel the Alliance could use to stop the Collectors once and for all. He chose the intel, only for Shepard's team to take out the Collectors themselves before any good could come of it. This serves as the inspiration for the animated movie, ''Anime/MassEffectParagonLost''. While not cruel enough to let us see the ultimate DownerEnding where it turns out the information that James Vega saved was useless, it's still wince-inducing to watch for anyone who's played the game it serves as a prequel to. |
| 151 | ** The original, controversial ''Mass Effect 3'' ending shot the shaggy dog in the [[FridgeHorror fridge]], as it included the destruction of the Mass Relays. Problem is, earlier games established that destroying a Mass Relay causes an EarthShatteringKaboom, and everywhere you've been in the game probably had one handy.. so ''everything you've done in the game? It's all just been destroyed.'' The ending rebrand changed this to just ''damaging'' the Mass Relays, so the planets aren't destroyed.. well, not instantly, as they're probably doomed to slow death due to the loss of their critical trade network. However, if you [[EarnYourHappyEnding put in enough legwork]] they're quickly repaired and the galaxy enters a golden age. |
| 152 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' features a subplot version of this while [[EscortMission taking Emma to the Shell A core to upload the virus to make GW bug out]]. You easily spend at least an hour on the entire ordeal, including killing Vamp for the second time, trudging your way through tedious underwater segments, sneaking Emma past several patrolling guards, and then doing a 5-minute long SnipingMission to ensure Emma makes it to the end. If she dies through any of this, Game Over. If she makes it over to Shell A, Vamp jumps out of the water and grabs her. He can also kill her for a Game Over, but if you kill him... he ends up having stabbed her anyway, and there is nothing Raiden or Snake can do to save her. And on top of that? ''THE VIRUS DOESN'T EVEN FULLY UPLOAD.'' The only tiny consolation to that failure isn't even found in this game, but [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots two games later.]] Emma's virus corrupts the Patriot AIs controlling the entire world, slowly killing them...but it also throws them into [[NiceJobBreakingItHero a massive, bloody world war that only ends when they finally die]]. |
| 153 | * In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'', Big Boss's private army, the Diamond Dogs, deal with an outbreak of a mysterious disease, later revealed to be [[ThePlague vocal cord parasites]]. Through identifying the language of the infected, quarantining them, and working with Code Talker on an inoculant, he is able to save most of his army from dying. Later, however, a radiation leak causes a mutation in the parasites that renders the inoculant useless. While Big Boss is able to prevent this mutated strain from leaving Mother Base and causing a potentially apocalyptic pandemic, he is forced to kill everyone in the quarantine area, many of whom had been previously inoculated, one of whom appeared to be healthy up until just before leaving the quarantine area when he started presenting with symptoms. |
| 154 | * ''VideoGame/MichiganReportFromHell'' has MultipleEndings, but all of them end with the cameraman getting killed before he can reveal who's behind everything. The only thing your actions really determine is his identity and his reaction to the hell you've been through. On top of this, if you've been [[VideogameCrueltyPotential nothing but cruel]] [[KarmaMeter the whole time]], in the end he claims to be the one responsible for the whole mess, and transforms into a monster. Thanks, Creator/Suda51. |
| 155 | * ''VideoGame/MiddleEarthShadowOfWar'' becomes this due to ForegoneConclusion and DoomedByCanon given it's set before ''Franchise/TheLordOfTheRings'' trilogy. Talion and Celebrimbor are unable to defeat Sauron (partly because he is indestructible so long as his One Ring exists and nobody knows its currently in [[Literature/TheHobbit Bilbo Baggins' possession]]), he manages to conquer Minas Ithil and turn it into Minas Morgul. By the end of the game, Celebrimbor (who has become corrupted himself and plans to rule Middle-Earth as the Bright Lord) abandons Talion and goes on to fight Sauron himself only to be defeated. After the FinalBoss, Talion becomes a renegade Ringwraith and decides to hold his position in Mordor in hopes of containing the Dark Lord's forces, and he does so for many decades until he too gets corrupted and becomes another minion of Sauron, rendering his struggle also pointless. The only silver-linings to this trope that Sauron is destined to be destroyed at the end of ''Return of the King'' and Talion will be released from his curse after his death. |
| 156 | * ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'': |
| 157 | ** The American campaign in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty4ModernWarfare'', despite being a PyrrhicVictory in the grand scheme, ended ''terribly'' for the perspective of the characters. Everything that Sergeant Paul Jackson does, from taking part in the invasion of the Middle East, trying to capture Al-Asad (and failing), protecting a tank as it moves through a hostile area and rescuing a downed Cobra pilot from group of terrorists is all rendered moot as you evacuate the Middle East. A nuclear bomb goes off in the city, killing your commanding officer, your fellow teammates, the pilot you just saved, and, eventually, ''you''. Al-Asad runs away, and the actions of the characters are reduced to nothing more than another figure in the death toll. This is done to drive home the point that war is (if you consider the actions that you just took in the campaign) pointless. General Shepard comments on this in the sequel: "30,000 of my men died in the blink of an eye, and the world just fuckin' watched." |
| 158 | ** In ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2'', this trope returns in spades. Private Allen goes deep undercover with a terrorist cell killing hundreds of civilians in a Moscow airport -- and then gets shot by the cell leader Makarov. When Russian authorities discover his body, they declare war on the U.S. Later, Ghost and Roach are dispatched to gather proof that Private Allen was innocent and that there was no reason for the Russia and the U.S. to be at war. Roach then delivers the evidence to General Shepard -- who then shoots him and Ghost dead, douse them with gasoline, and set them on fire amid Captain Price frantically radioing in that Shepard is not to be trusted. If only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbk71z4ldFc this had]] [[YouCantThwartStageOne actually worked...]] |
| 159 | * ''VideoGame/MondoMedicals''. You wander through the corridors (of the eponymous facility?), solving your way past mind-boggling obstacles and generally being confused and creeped out, and at the end - instead of any answers at all - you get a sudden bullet in the head. |
| 160 | * ''Franchise/MortalKombat'': |
| 161 | ** In the Konquest mode of ''VideoGame/MortalKombatArmageddon'', Taven and his brother Daegon are forced into hibernation for millennia by their parents in order for them to participate in a quest to stop TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. The quest ends up destroying his entire family, with Daegon being resurrected early and killing their parents and enslaving his guardian dragon for his clan, Taven's own dragon being killed to prevent his progress on the quest, and finally the brothers facing each other in Mortal Kombat (Taven wins, though he doesn't like it). And when he finally ''does'' complete the quest, not only does it ''not'' depower ''or'' destroy the entire cast, as the quest was supposed to upon completion, but it actually ''supercharges'' them, essentially causing Armageddon to happen faster instead of stopping it dead in its tracks. |
| 162 | ** The same thing effectively happens in the Konquest mode of ''VideoGame/MortalKombatDeception''. In both cases, the protagonist falls prey to an EvilPlan thus creating the situation of the main game itself. |
| 163 | ** And then comes ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''. Before being killed by Shao Kahn, Raiden sends a message to his self from ''[[VideoGame/MortalKombat1992 MK1]]'' in order to prevent the Armageddon, thus making the game to clear every event and effort of each of the past games, barring ''VideoGame/MortalKombatMythologiesSubZero'' and ''VideoGame/MortalKombatSpecialForces'' for being prequels. |
| 164 | ** Poor Scorpion in general, even with the [[ResetButton time reset]], he doesn't fare too well. [[ThrowTheDogABone at least until X]]. |
| 165 | * ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'': |
| 166 | ** Ending 5, "Knife". After finding door 9, Junpei and the others backtrack to find Clover. While searching, Junpei finds Lotus stabbed to death and is himself stabbed moments later. Though Junpei sees his killer, the player doesn't, leaving the player with no real understanding of the plot and no idea as to who the killer is. |
| 167 | ** Ending 6, "Submarine", You walk into the main hall, and see Ace, Santa, and Clover on the staircase, covered in blood. Along with Seven and Lotus, you flee through a series of rooms, which had been unlocked, until you reach the Sun Room. Akane lays dead, and you find the dead bodies of Seven and Lotus. With all of the others presumably dead, you run over and examine a strange submarine bobbing on the water. Then... you are stabbed and die, with all of your questions unanswered, and much more mysteries apparent. |
| 168 | * ''VideoGame/ObsCure II'': Mei spends the first half of the game trying to track down her twin sister Jun and save her. When she finally tracks her down, the game lets you control Jun's escape attempts, only to have her brutally killed literally ''seconds'' after yanking that control away. [[FromBadToWorse Things go downhill from there]]. One by one, the heroes suffer increasingly {{Cruel And Unusual Death}}s until only two of the original students remain, all their attempts to stop the infection from spreading fail, and the ending leaves the two survivors facing down a cloud of black spores implied to be surrounding an even more horrific monster than the FinalBoss. |
| 169 | * Mercedes' storyline in ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'' ultimately becomes this after Armageddon. Her book has her becoming queen of the fairies after the death of her mother and having to prove herself, overcoming a rebellion by her cousin and eventually leading the fairies to victory against Odin. Then Armageddon happens and Onyx burns down Ringford Forest and drives the fairies to extinction, while Mercedes (after finding out that her love interest Ingway died before she could meet him again) dies in battle against him, bemoaning that she'd failed her people (though she at least gets to [[TakingYouWithMe take Onyx down with her]], and her Pyrrhic victory does ultimately ensure that ''somebody'' survives Armageddon.) |
| 170 | * ''VideoGame/OneChance'': Possibly the most depressing game ever. The best ending you can hope for is only your wife, coworkers, and most of the world dying. And you can't play again until you empty your cookies folder. |
| 171 | * ''VideoGame/OriAndTheBlindForest''. Subverted. Just as Ori is about to finish the main quest, they are crushed by Kuro, and rendered unconscious. However, upon seeing Naru mourning Ori, Kuro is reminded of her own young, and [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifices herself in order to complete Ori's quest]]. |
| 172 | * ''VideoGame/{{Outlast}}''. Despite [[TheDeterminator Miles Upshur's]] best efforts to [[EvilInc prove the Murkoff Corporation was hiding some horrible things from the public]] and despite not giving up even after [[FinGore getting two of his fingers amputated]] (and possibly infected, due to the 'equipment' being in a bidet), being hunted and attacked by many horrid monsters, losing his camera at some point and going to great lengths to get it back, [[TraumaCongaLine AND doing everything in his power to finish Billy/The Wallrider despite getting tossed around like a ragdoll and wounded...]]just when it seemed like he was going to get out, he gets shot to death by the special forces and dies. [[SubvertedTrope Arguably subverted when we consider he has turned into the new Walrider,]] but even so, after all his hard work and effort, his camera is either lost and/or broken, and all that he filmed will probably never see the light of day. |
| 173 | ** {{Subverted|Trope}} with the release of the ''Whistleblower'' [=DLC=]. The player now controls Waylon Park, the man who originally sent the warning e-Mail to Miles Upshur that made him go to the asylum. Waylon's events begin several hours before Miles arrives at the asylum, but ultimately end up happening simultaneously. Waylon runs away from the insane habitants of the asylum, was labelled a traitor by the company that hired him, got beaten up and tortured, [[GroinAttack and almost got his nether-regions mutilated]], but ultimately manages to get outside of the asylum and heads into Miles Upshur's car. Miles Upshur, now the new host of the Walrider, begins to stumble towards Waylon and the Walrider practically pushed the car through the gate blocking Waylon's road to freedom. Waylon manages to leave the asylum in a rather decently state and has his own, unbroken camera with a lot of incriminating evidence against the company. His story ends with him uploading the evidence to the internet, ready to destroy Murkoff and putting himself and his loved ones in danger of being killed. |
| 174 | * ''VideoGame/PeasantsQuest'' (a video game spin-off from WebAnimation/HomestarRunner and parody of old Creator/{{Sierra}} games) -- The goal is to gather up everything needed to be allowed to go fight the dragon, Trogdor, and then get past the traps guarding the gate to his lair. If you fail, of course, you die. If you succeed... Trogdor tells you how impressed he is that you got this far, and then burnininates you because, of course, silly peasant, you can't defeat a DRAGON! Fortunately, you get a statue in your honor, so it's not ''completely'' pointless... |
| 175 | * ''VideoGame/Persona2: Innocent Sin''. The heroes fail to prevent the Big Bad from having his way and all of the Earth is destroyed aside from the city they live in which now hovers above the destroyed Earth. Maya, the CoolBigSis, also dies because she gets stabbed by some crazy woman and all is lost. In return, the heroes get to rewind time so the event that started it all 10 years ago never happened. Of course this means all they did during the game was for no reason at all and it's pretty much just a big Game Over, please load your latest save (which was 10 years ago). |
| 176 | * ''VideoGame/Persona3'''s BadEnding. The protagonist and the rest of SEES not only accidentally release the SealedEvilInACan ([[BigBad Nyx]]) but then are given the chance to kill him while he's still in human form. If the protagonist decides to do so, the memories of the entire SEES team are wiped and they lose their ability to summon Personas (which removes the only chance they have of defeating Nyx). Not only that, but they also lose all their memories and friendships garnered during the previous year. The game then fast forwards to the end of the school year, which has the protagonist, [[ChivalrousPervert Junpei]] and [[TheHeart Yukari]] singing karaoke, drinking, and partying their hearts out, unaware that the end of the world is nearly upon them... |
| 177 | * ''VideoGame/Persona4'''s {{Bad Ending}}s. Towards the end of the year, the team corners Namatame, who has kidnapped and thrown every one of the rescued playable characters into the TV as well as taking [[EveryonesBabySister Nanako into the TV world, as a misguided attempt in saving them from murder.]] However, the fog from the TV world causes Nanako to fall ill and lapse into a coma, and starts to seep into the real world. At some point, Nanako dies, and the player has the choice to throw [[UnwittingPawn Namatame into the TV in retribution, or choose to spare him]] and get to the bottom of what's really going on. If you take the first choice, Nanako stays dead, while if you fail to find the truth, Nanako is revived--but either way, she and everyone else will eventually die, either being killed by Shadows or becoming Shadows. And then there's the ending where you figure out who the killer is and destroy the evidence that incriminates them, letting them free and leaving you to be blackmailed by them anytime they feel like it-- destroying evidence is a crime after all. |
| 178 | * ''VideoGame/Persona5'': |
| 179 | ** The variations of the bad ending where you fail to get through to Sae during your interrogation and end up getting shot in the head by Akechi. The final variation is the most in-line with this trope, as you give the identities of all your teammates and confidants to Sae, and Akechi promptly uses that information to murder them all after he's killed you. Either way, you end up being a stepping stone in Akechi's drawn out revenge against Shido, not even particularly relevant to it either. |
| 180 | ** Even the path to the true ending seems to include this, with you getting shot by Akechi ''anyway'', even after you've cleared things up with Sae and chosen not to rat out the rest of your team. However, it's a subversion: [[ChekhovsGun a few critical clues]] allow you to piece together that there's more to Akechi than he lets on, enabling you to anticipate his plan to murder you. It turns out that by manipulating Akechi's phone and carefully timing certain events, you've tricked him ''and'' Sae into unwittingly going into the Metaverse, and substituted yourself with a body double while you make your escape. While Sae is convinced to [[HeelFaceTurn join your side]] shortly afterward, Akechi himself doesn't realize he's been had until much later - and by the time he does, [[AlasPoorVillain it's too late]]. |
| 181 | * In part two of Chapter 9 in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse: Ambition of the Illuminus'', The GUARDIANS are looking for a young Beast boy infected with the SEED-virus to give him the vaccine before [[ShootTheDog the AMF CASTs kill him]]. However once found he ends up turning into a SEED form, forcing him to be [[ShootTheDog killed anyway]]. |
| 182 | * ''VideoGame/PrehistoricIsle'': The titular isle is full of dinosaurs that caused the BermudaTriangle incidents. After having defeated the final boss and escaped from the island, the biplanes dock to a cargo plane, which is then ambushed and destroyed by the basic enemy mooks. The narration states that the mystery of the ship disappearances remained unsolved. |
| 183 | * In ''VideoGame/RadiantSilvergun'', our heroes are powerless to stop the Stone-Like from [[GaiasVengeance wiping out human kind]]. The Creator robot creates clones of Buster and Reanna, but dies before he can warn them of the future. Thus, humanity is doomed to [[GroundhogDayLoop repeat the cycle]], and will never learn the error of their ways... unless one were to take ''VideoGame/{{Ikaruga}}'' into account, where the Stone-Like is eventually destroyed (though not without [[HeroicSacrifice cost]]). |
| 184 | * ''[[VideoGame/RaySeries RayCrisis]]'', [[DoomedByCanon being a prequel]] to ''[=RayForce=]'', ends with your attempts to destroy Con-Human being too late to stop it, since Con-Human infected the entire Earth since [[AIIsACrapshoot it went out of control]], and the last shot of the ending is one pilot taking off to perform [[TitleDrop Operation RayForce]]. |
| 185 | ** In ''[=RayStorm=]''[='=]s 13-Ship mode, you stop the Secilian rebellion by plunging the entire colony into a gas giant, just like in the other modes. Unfortunately, TheStinger reveals that Earth got wiped out too. |
| 186 | * The ending to ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption''. Despite all the hardships John Marston had to go through to kill his partners in his old gang for the US government in order to get his family back, he's still gunned down by the government official that got him into the whole mess in the first place. Worst of all, John's son, Jack, dedicates the rest of his life to be a wandering gunslinger like his father in order to avenge his death, something John explicitly never wanted his son to be. |
| 187 | ** Worse, it makes ''everything'' Arthur did to protect John and Abigail from the outlaw life in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'', even defying Dutch, his father figure in the process, ultimately pointless in the end. |
| 188 | ** Almost all the Stranger side missions also fit - the majority of them end tragically, no matter what you do. |
| 189 | * ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' is quite fond of making sure no one gets a happy ending or makes it as bitter as possible: |
| 190 | ** S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' are tasked with finding their missing companions, the Bravo Team, after they went missing while investigating a series of cannibalistic murders in the mountains. Throughout the game, you find Bravo Team members that are either already dead from the zombies or die in front of you. The team discovers that Alpha captain Albert Wesker was TheMole to [[MegaCorp Umbrella]] and he orchestrated the events to see how Alpha and Bravo Team fared against the bioweapons. By the game's ending, there's only a few surviving members left (how many depends on the player's actions) and although Wesker does die, he comes back a few games later working for a new organization and gains super powers. To make things even crueler, if Rebecca dies or you play Jill's story where Rebecca is never found at all, the entire Bravo Team is completely wiped out. |
| 191 | ** None of the protagonists in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' gains anything positive from their adventure in the infested Raccoon City. Leon was a rookie cop whose first day on the job had him seeing his mentor, Marvin, zombify and was forced to put him down. Leon also wasn't able to save Ada from dying (falling to her death or dying from being tossed into a computer, depending on the scenario), feeling like he failed in his duty as a cop. Sherry loses both of her parents at a very young age; her father becomes a mutated monster and her mother dies from her injuries right in front of her. Claire came to the city to find her brother, only to get caught up in the nightmare and never finding him in the end. |
| 192 | ** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Nemesis'' has Jill trying to warn everyone about [[MegaCorp Umbrella]] and what they did in the [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil Mansion Incident]], but [[CassandraTruth she is ignored]]. When the zombie outbreak occurs in the city, it's too late to save anyone. When Jill escapes from the city, the U.S. government fires a missile into the city and it's effectively nuked to the ground. No one nor the city itself could have been saved and Umbrella effectively got away with its crimes. [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty For a while at least.]] ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Remake'' changes it up a bit by giving the city [[HopeSpot hope of salvation]] if Jill and Carlos can get the T-virus vaccine to the government, which would have them cancel their missile strike on the city. Nicolai stomps on the vaccine right in front of Jill, effectively dooming the city. |
| 193 | ** In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilOutbreak'', if you don't get the antidote for the zombie virus, every character's ending ends with them dying. The best you can hope for is a glorious death, taking out loads of zombies as you go -- and that sort of thing only occurs if you're playing the final level with a combination of characters that can't be set up anywhere but online. And since Capcom took their servers down as far as this game is concerned... |
| 194 | * ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}} 2''. Your first act in the game is to watch the BigBad make a shiny escape, and then lose your home base. Your second act is to lose your second base, but just narrowly manage to save the inhibitor serum, which keeps you from turning into something like the Big Bad. But that doesn't matter, because suddenly you're going from place to place without ever bothering to keep yourself safely injected. What follows is a series of battles that you ultimately fail to win each and every time. But that's okay. At the end, you've set us up the bomb, and killed the big bad of the game. You ride the nuclear wave out of the flagship, and land, albeit roughly. Too bad it doesn't mean a thing. Some big, scary floating rock now dots the atmosphere, Earth is still screwed, and to top it off, your hero has just turned. Then he is very shortly thereafter executed. |
| 195 | * ''VideoGame/Robotron2084'' is an EndlessGame that can't technically be won, then the sequel, ''Blaster'' retroactively shoots the shaggy dog, since it is revealed that the last human family has in fact been killed. |
| 196 | * One possible ending in ''VideoGame/ShadowOfDestiny'' has the main character escape death and, in the process, [[AnAesop realise how precious life is]]. It's all very heartwarming... and then he lies down to look at the sky and is promptly run over by a car. End of game. |
| 197 | ** Even more so given that your character spent the entire game cheating death thanks to a time travelling device and the help of a Homunculus. After he finally comes to the bottom of it and deals with his assailant once and for all, [[AlwaysNeedWhatYouGaveUp he believes himself safe and hands back the time travelling device and parts ways with the Homunculus just before he is run over and no longer able to save himself]]... |
| 198 | * ''Franchise/SilentHill'': |
| 199 | ** In ''VideoGame/SilentHill1'', two endings revolve around the protagonist not being able to save his daughter at all from the great demon, and possibly only delaying the EldritchAbomination from doing...whatever it was going to do. |
| 200 | ** In ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'', all endings reveal the protagonist, originally sympathetic, murdered his wife and is being punished for it. In one ending, he commits suicide. In another, he takes the malevolent spirit who looks like his wife with him, with hints she will 'die' for the fourth time just as his wife did, and in one ending, he attempts a resurrection of his wife with spells from a world which would make Lovecraft wince. One ending, however, at least has him coming to terms with his inner demons and concludes with him moving on with his life. |
| 201 | ** In ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'', there is a NonStandardGameOver where the protagonist is consumed by an evil spirit in a horrific scene and an ending where she is possessed by a diabolic entity and kills the OnlySaneMan. |
| 202 | ** In ''VideoGame/SilentHill4'', one ending kills both protagonists horribly, one ending kills one protagonist and the other is lucky to survive, and a third leads to an evil genus loci taking over the protagonist's apartment, with who knows what horror to come. |
| 203 | ** In ''VideoGame/SilentHillOrigins'', one ending leaves the protagonist trapped in asylum-like surroundings and given sinister injections by mysterious hooded individuals, as well as strongly hinting that the protagonist is in fact the serial murderer known as the Butcher. |
| 204 | ** And finally, in ''VideoGame/SilentHillHomecoming'', one ending sees the hero turned into a walking symbol of evil, one ending sees him drowned by his own father, one reveals it was all due to electroshock therapy at BedlamHouse. Oh, sure, the series has a couple of happy endings, somewhere... |
| 205 | ** And then, the joke endings traditionally show the protagonists make it through all that only to be abducted by [[FlyingSaucer UFOs]], rendering the whole nightmare they went through moot. |
| 206 | * The 2015 sci-fi/horror FPS ''VideoGame/{{Solarix}}'' starts off dark enough with you being stranded on a far away ruined base on an alien planet being all but decimated by a rampart infection, but goes full on STSD by the end. By the end of the game, not only do you fail to synthesise a cure, but [[BigBad EYE]] openly mocks you for thinking that there was ever any hope. Your other companion Betty is revealed to not only be nothing more than a [[EnemyWithin voice on your head]], but a woman you killed in a mental breakdown. Literally every other person, named or otherwise either dies from the infection or gets turned into a feral zombie. The only reason you survived for so long is because you were in stasis from the aforementioned incident and were the only other person your AI companion AMI could turn to for help (she even states in an audiolog that she greatly fears you). Your attempt to stop EYE fails miserably because not only does AMI senselessly sacrifice herself to try and take out EYE from within, EYE even tells you that there are thousands of copies of him below the surface of the planet, meaning that you were doomed from the start. At the end of the game, everyone is dead, the ship is destroyed and you neatly conclude the game by committing suicide by jumping off the ruined ship and into the endless void of space. But hey, [[EsotericHappyEnding at least you prevented the infections from getting to Earth right]]? |
| 207 | * ''VideoGame/SonicErazor'' pulls this one off evilly. The game itself is a short PlatformHell [[GameMod ROM hack]], so what's the ending? Sonic runs around GreenHillZone like in [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 the original game]]... before he runs off a cliff and dies. |
| 208 | * ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' starts out with the protagonist and his squad looking for survivors in Dubai after it's savaged by massive sandstorms, and a military battalion led by his former commander, John Konrad, disappears. Unfortunately, Walker finds himself making things worse by [[WrongGenreSavvy acting like your typical modern military shooter protagonist]] a la ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' in a game that serves as a vicious {{Deconstruction}} of the genre. In the end he's personally killed civilians with white phosphorous mortars (and possibly gunned down a few more,) single handedly massacred the battalion, doomed the survivors to death by dehydration by destroying their water supply, led his squadmates to their deaths, and then discovered that the former commander that he thought was responsible for everything was DeadAllAlong and that he was merely hallucinating him. He then dies in 2 of the 4 endings, with a third one dooming him to certain death anyway, and the final one leaving him alive but a broken shell of a human being. |
| 209 | * In ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'', there's the Romulan character Taris (who was only seen in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Contagion"). After being (supposedly) tricked by Hakeev in using a device that ended up triggering the [[Film/StarTrek2009 Hobus supernova that destroyed Romulus and Remus]], she goes to great lengths in order to find the Iconians with the intent on getting them to go back in time and stop it from happening. In the mission "Uneasy Allies", Sela confronts Taris and calls her a bigger fool than she thought for the idea, pushing her off a ledge and declaring as she falls that the Iconians would never do that and that, even if they could, time travel fries their minds. |
| 210 | * ''Franchise/StreetFighter'': Poor, ''poor'' Charlie... His death was a ForegoneConclusion (in ''Street Fighter II'', Guile's motivation was that Bison killed Charlie. Charlie's debut game was a {{Prequel}} with no Guile in sight). Charlie can never win. In ''Street Fighter Alpha'', he thinks he's defeated M. Bison, but Bison comes from behind and kills him. In ''Street Fighter Alpha 2'', a {{Remaquel}} of the original Alpha, he gets knocked off a waterfall in Venezuela, but only after getting shot by a Shadaloo helicopter. In the non-canon ''Marvel Super Heroes VS Street Fighter'', he's been given a FaceHeelTurn and works for Shadaloo. Somehow, in ''Street Fighter Alpha 3'', he's alive and well. This time, he actually manages to beat M. Bison...but Capcom fixed that by adding Guile to the home ports of the game and declaring his ending canon. In his ending, Charlie infiltrates M. Bison's base with Guile and Chun-Li, and while Guile and Chun-Li escape, the base self-destructs, killing Charlie and Bison both. What's worse is that Bison came back, while Charlie has been KilledOffForReal (or not, since Capcom loves {{Retcon}}ning this series). |
| 211 | ** At this point it seems likely, but definitely don't bet the dojo on it. Don't forget that Gouken, who was killed ''before the first game'', and whose death was a huge turning point and defining moment for no fewer than three major characters, was brought back. And Rose. And shouldn't Gen have gently shuffled off long before now? |
| 212 | ** Come ''Street Fighter V'', made seventeen years after ''Alpha 3'', Charlie is back but things are still far from happy for him. Now going by the name Nash, he was [[CameBackWrong crudely]] brought BackFromTheDead by an unknown group, implied to be TheIlluminati (who are even ''worse'' than Shadaloo). He's LivingOnBorrowedTime due to his decaying body and has new dark powers that give him a much more brutal fighting style. He's abandoned all idealism and morals in pursuit of getting revenge on Bison and is willing to kill anyone that gets in his way, up to and including his old friends and allies. And to top it all off his HeroicSacrifice in ''Alpha 3'' was retconned away in place of the CavalryBetrayal he suffered in ''Alpha 2''. However, the cinematic story mode has him go out on a high note. He eventually reconciles with his old friends, gets back some of his idealism and goes out in a meaningful HeroicSacrifice that weakens Bison enough for Ryu to finish him for good. |
| 213 | * In stark contrast to the rest of the ''VideoGame/{{Suikoden}}'' series' normal endings, the normal ending for ''VideoGame/SuikodenII'' ends with Riou losing everything he ever cared for (his hometown, his sister and his best friend, the latter ''by his own hand''), all his victories rendered hollow, and forced into a position he may have never asked for nor wanted as a figurehead ruler. The game ends with the not so subtle implication that Riou may become a broken, bitter man whose status will likely be taken advantage of by ambitious advisers and generals...after all, what point was there to stop Luca and the Beast Rune, if in the end you become far worse off than you were before? |
| 214 | * ''VideoGame/SuikodenTierkreis'' doesn't ''require'' the death of this particular Dog, but it certainly tries to bait the player into it. All but two {{Dialogue Tree}}s in the game end with you [[ButThouMust taking the same path you would anyway]], one repeats endlessly until you make the right choices . . . and one lets you determine whether or not to CombinedEnergyAttack the BigBad, risking the lives of those who participate in the attack, with a "yes" answer being the default option, and a "no" answer being a declaration that there must be some other way to defeat him, with no indication you're doing anything more than denying what's necessary. Choose "no," and you'll later discover that he made the same choice against a similar foe, and every single one of the participants except him died. He was warped and twisted into becoming the villain he is now, and if you choose "yes," you'll [[HereWeGoAgain follow in his footsteps, over the bodies of a hundred and seven of your allies (all of whom have previously been given names and personalities, and many of whom have had side quests centering on them!)]] |
| 215 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Super Robot Wars Original Generation}}s'', we have a mechanical dog who eventually develops and feels like an actual dog. After spending through hardships that affirms that it has emotions and is like a real person, er, dog, it is captured and was about to turned back into a mindless machine again. Thankfully, the dog gained an iron will and it was able to escape that predicament and was on the verge of being rescued... only to be shot down dead. ''What's the point of having an iron will and all those hardships if in the end, it just dies like that?'' It seriously makes her whole development, and the buildup that leads to its iron will escape completely pointless. That dog's name? Lamia Loveless. Thankfully, OG Gaiden dealt with the continuation, and ended up resuscitating that dead shaggy dog. |
| 216 | * ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate'': The two {{bad ending}}s of the story in ''World of Light'' end as such if you don't meet the conditions to face both of the {{big bad}}s at once by the end of the game: If you defeat just one of the two villains at the end of the game (whether by just facing one of them or letting one side take too much foothold on the final map), the one who survived will violently finish off the defeated one and then take out the heroes (and the rest of the universe) for good (Galeem using his light attack on the heroes once again, this time making sure not to miss anybody, Dharkon drowning the universe in darkness, killing everyone in the process). |
| 217 | * Leon's Side in the remake of ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny''. You get to play through the story as [[EnsembleDarkhorse Leon Magnus]], work through his trust issues, and finally get Marian's full approval, only for Hugo to still manipulate him with ease and force him to steal the Eye of Atamoni ([[AbusiveParents and beat him into a coma), then have him betray the rest of the party. And he still dies for all the character growth he's been through.]] In fact, it's probably even ''more'' of a PlayerPunch than fighting Leon was in the first place, because now the game makes an actual effort to make you like the guy. |
| 218 | * ''VideoGame/Tekken8'': The Despair ending results in Jin's journey to overthrow his father Kazuya's worldwide dictatorship, [[TheAtoner repent for his own crimes]] and end the twisted legacy of the Devil Gene culminating in Kazuya killing him and stamping out all remaining resistance to his rule. |
| 219 | * ''VideoGame/{{Tenchu}} 4''. Gohda castle burns, Kiku and Sekiya are dead and [[BigBad Onikage]] has (possibly) infected Ayame. |
| 220 | * ''VideoGame/{{Terranigma}}'': The main plot turns out to be one big EvilPlan on part of a dark god that made the hero revive a previously dead world, complete with human life... [[TakeOverTheWorld So that the dark god and its associates could conquer it]]. Once he finds out he's been the UnwittingPawn the main character is reverted to a baby for trying to stop it, nearly killed by his own love interest and ExpositionFairy, and just barely avoids death due to the sacrifice of his love interest. ''Then'' comes the part revealing that the new world and his own world exist in a cycle of death and rebirth where the rebirth of one world means the destruction of the old one: Foiling the plot and saving the new world from the dark god means he, and everyone he knows and loves from his own world, must die along with said god (and yes, [[ButThouMust thou must]]). This isn't the part that makes it an example of this trope, though. That would be the part where the hero turns out to be the ChosenOne by the PowersThatBe who run the worlds: ''[[CosmicPlaything He is reborn to do the exact same thing]] [[GroundhogDayLoop over and over again every time the cycle is repeated]]''. And the cycle would only ever be broken if he ''failed''. The game tops this off with the mother of all MoodWhiplash endings, where the protagonist is 'rewarded' with a final day in his pre-heroic existence together with all his friends and family, all blissfully ignorant of the fact that they will die at the end of it. |
| 221 | * In the end of ''VideoGame/ToTheMoon'', one of the main characters, River sacrificed her life for nothing. She denied treatment hoping that Johnny would eventually remember how they met by using the money to finish building the house. When given the chance to help him remember, Eva instead decided to wipe all of Johnny's memory of his wife, turning every effort and sacrifice River made to remind him utterly pointless. |
| 222 | * In the fighting game ''VideoGame/TongueOfTheFatMan'', every contender you defeat gets SwallowedWhole by [[TheBigBad Mondu]]'s green shark-like monster. In the Genesis version, ''you'' get eaten by the monster when you defeat Mondu to win the game. |
| 223 | * In ''VideoGame/TransformersFallOfCybertron'', win the last fight as Megatron and you both get sucked into a vortex that leads to Earth, along with your respective ships. Win the last fight as Optimus and you... both get sucked into a vortex that leads to Earth, along with your respective ships. The entire animation is the same. Yup. Doesn't matter who kicked whose ass; the war goes on. It's fairly symbolic, and not unexpected since the game is a prequel, but still kind of an 'up yours'. |
| 224 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNDiFCK-Zgo The ending]] of ''VideoGame/TheTreasureOfUsas'' (for the {{Platform/MSX}}) involves the two protagonists placing the four jewels they [[NintendoHard painstakingly fought to obtain]] on the forehead of the statue of the titular goddess only for it to obliterate our protagonists with a giant explosion coming out of nowhere. |
| 225 | ** ...Or so it was in the International release. See, in the original Japanese version, the ending cutscene was followed by a bit of narrative text, explaining that the goddess' statue was, in reality, the fuse for ''a nuclear bomb'' built by an ancient civilisation, and the jewels were its activation switch. Said narrative was axed from the international version without any logical explanation. |
| 226 | * In the ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal'' series, competitors fight in a massive demolition derby with missiles, blowing up opposing cars, monuments, and cities with abandon. The prize? A wish granted by competition organizer Calypso, who wavers between LiteralGenie and JackassGenie. It rarely ends well, though occasionally someone ''will'' wise up and turn down the wish. Or, on other occasions, the person will instead take Calypso out- for example, in the second game, if the ghastly Mortimer, driver of the hearse Shadow, wins, he will summon the spirits of those who died in the tournament and they will carry Calypso away. |
| 227 | * The entire ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' series can be considered this, if you take the events of ''VideoGame/UltimaIX'' as canon (which many fans don't). The Guardian, an interdimensional conqueror and your nemesis, is revealed to have been created from the Stranger's rejected evils as he/she underwent the Quest of the Avatar, meaning that countless worlds would have been spared if the quest had never been undertaken, and in the end you have to sacrifice yourself to finally defeat the Guardian. Also, Lord British admits that the quest itself failed in its purpose - the idea was that the Avatar would be a paragon inspiring others to lead virtuous lives, but instead the Avatar became a legend only appearing when some great evil was afoot, leaving people to lead their ordinary, petty lives since the Avatar wasn't someone they could relate to. |
| 228 | * The ending of the Hierarchy Campaign in ''VideoGame/UniverseAtWar''. Orlok is betrayed and killed, his rebellion accomplishing absolutely nothing except getting the Masari prince captured -- even the major characters he apparently killed during his campaign turn up alive and well when it switches over to the Masari. |
| 229 | * The "Relinquish" BadEnd in ''VideoGame/VacantSky'', which requires completing the final dungeon without your other party members and minus a few skill upgrades you'd normally get right before entering, a task far harder than obtaining either of the "good" endings. Auria kills the villain in a cutscene, but not before he uses his power to make her perceive that she dies immediately afterward, despite being immortal. Nothing is done to stop Halo Locks from being restored and killing countless people; not only is this the only ending where that happens but it would in fact fail to happen had you lost the game anywhere except the final boss, as the villain's plan hinged on getting Auria to the bottom of the final dungeon. But wait, there's more! This is also the only one of the three main endings in which Vastale does not die and nothing at all is done to even slow down the Virad menace, and it's likely that Vel never wakes from her coma. That's what you get for intentionally violating the story's {{Aesop}}. |
| 230 | * ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume''. Admittedly it's the BadEnd, but still- the hero devotes his entire life to taking revenge on the Valkyrie for killing his father, making a DealWithTheDevil and crossing the MoralEventHorizon to do so. Ignore for a second the fact that the Valkyrie only [[MisBlamed escorts the souls of those already dead to Valhalla]], the Norse warrior's heaven. He finally achieves his goal, but then Freya shows up and reveals that the Valkyrie will reincarnate eventually, rendering Wylfried's victory pointless and his revenge impossible. He then gets sent to hell per the terms of his contract, having accomplished nothing but bringing the kingdom he was trying to protect to ruin. To add insult to injury, the epilogue reveals that the Valkyrie took a dive in the fight as an act of repentance, as she felt that Wylfried's FaceHeelTurn was her fault. |
| 231 | * In Adam Cadre's ''VideoGame/{{Varicella}}'', PlayerCharacter [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Primo Varicella's]] goal is to become Regent to the royal prince. Most players will need many, many [[NintendoHard playthroughs against a frustratingly tight]] [[TimedMission time limit]] to eliminate Varicella's [[AssholeVictim homicidal rivals.]] Your reward for pulling this feat off is victory! Except the prince grows up to be more AxCrazy than all of the rivals put together, and sentences Varicella to torture and death. There are other endings, all grim, save for an EasterEgg. Given the [[CrapsackWorld dreary setting]], in which everybody's some combination of "evil," "crazy," and "victim," the shaggy dog's death might have been inevitable. |
| 232 | ** Even the happy EasterEgg ending is a combination of it's AllJustADream with a TomatoSurprise. Typing 'wake up' at any point reveals that the whole game was a college student's dream, an AlternateUniverse inspired by falling asleep while reading a history textbook. |
| 233 | * ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDeadTelltale'': |
| 234 | ** Season 1 has Lee go through so much. His wife cheated on him with a senator and he apparently killed him in retaliation, which has Lee arrested and being hauled away to jail by the sheriff. He gets caught up in the ZombieApocalypse and meets an 8 year old girl named Clementine whose parents went missing when the walkers attacked. Every survivor Lee meets is either crazy, hotheaded, hates his guts, or puts everyone in danger. Lee eventually runs into his brother, who had become a zombie and has no choice but to kill him in order to get a key. True to ''The Walking Dead'' formula, most of the survivors Lee meets will wind up dead sooner or later. Clementine is put in danger several times (something another survivor points out to Lee to criticize him), causing Lee to go through hell and back just to keep her safe. Did you not side with Kenny whenever he got too hotheaded with Lee or another survivor? He'll make things harder for Lee in crucial moments out of spite. The van Lee's group uses to get away from the motel invaded by bandits? It's either stolen by a survivor in the group that snaps or the engine fails. Kenny's idea of finding a boat in the heart of the city? Yeah, there ain't any boats by the time Lee's group arrive. And just to seal the deal, Lee gets bitten by a walker and will become one himself in a matter of time. Even if you choose to have Lee's infected arm amputated, it doesn't slow the infection at all. In the end, Lee dies and the only thing you can have Clementine tearfully do is either leave Lee handcuffed to the radiator so he'll turn while restrained or have her shoot him so that he can [[DyingAsYourself die while still human.]] |
| 235 | ** Kenny goes through so much crap that he may as well be a CosmicPlaything. By the third episode in season one, his only son, Duck, is infected and is slowly becoming a walker. His wife commits suicide for she is unable to bear OutlivingOnesOffspring and Kenny can either kill Duck himself for a MercyKill, have Lee do it, or just walk away to leave Duck to become a zombie alone in the woods. When Kenny and the rest of the group finally reach Savannah, all the boats in the river are broken and can't be fixed. Kenny is about to give up hope, but his group does find another boat that's locked up in a shed. The hope of using the boat to escape is crushed when another party that Kenny's group met earlier steal the boat. By the end of the first season, Kenny is seemingly ambushed by the walkers and his fate is left unknown. |
| 236 | ** Season two shows that he's alive and well and has gotten a new girlfriend, Sarita. Things quickly go sour for Kenny and his group when they are captured by [[BigBad Carver]]. Kenny mouths off to Carver, causing the latter to repeatedly bash Kenny's eye with a walkie talkie until Kenny goes blind in that eye. Clementine escapes with Kenny and the others, but Sartia is caught and bitten by a walker. Whether you have Clementine chop off Sarita's arm to save her and prevent the infection from spreading or attack the walker itself to have it let go, she dies anyway and Kenny will blame Clementine for it. By the season finale, the group is reduced to Kenny, Clementine, Jane, and newborn AJ. Jane wants to prove that Kenny is unstable and a danger to the group, so she lies to Kenny by saying AJ is dead. Kenny goes into a murderous rage and attacks Jane. Depending on how you have Clementine act, she can kill Kenny or kill Jane. If you keep Kenny alive, season three shows him dying during a flashback. Kenny basically suffers two whole seasons by losing everyone he loved and his plans of escaping being shattered before biting the dust. |
| 237 | * The heroic prince Arthas of ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'''s human campaign is forced to destroy one of his own kingdom's largest cities and kill all of its population in order to slow the spread of the plague of undeath and save the kingdom as a whole. Infuriated at having to do this, he uses this momentum to begin a military campaign that successfully all but eliminates the Scourge off the face of the planet. However, in the process of doing so his soul and free will are lost to a cursed Scourge artifact and he falls under their control. When he arrives home, he kills his own father, the king, and personally destroys the entire kingdom over the course of the undead campaign as well as murdering his beloved mentor and numerous human and elven heroes. |
| 238 | * ''VideoGame/{{Wick}}'' pretty much becomes this after 5 am when it's revealed that you didn't survive the last six hours. |
| 239 | * The UsefulNotes/RPGMaker game ''VideoGame/TheWitchsHouse'': |
| 240 | ** A ''literal'' shaggy dog story in an optional storybook the protagonist can read, in which a grave misunderstanding causes a hunter to kill his loyal dog. This is a foreshadowing to the True Ending, because thanks to a truly insidious case of GrandTheftMe, [[TheBadGuyWins the player has actually been playing as the villain the entire time]]. |
| 241 | ** Which makes the [[EasterEgg "wait" ending]] even worse in retrospect. You're just waiting for the victim to pass out from her wounds, disease and poison without her being able to do anything to reach you. |
| 242 | * An In-Universe example happens in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' - Neku wins his first Game, Shiki is picked to [[ItWasHisSled come back to life]], and everything is happy.... but, really, you didn't expect the game to be ''that'' easy to win, did you? Not only can Neku not come back to life because only one person may be reborn each Game, [[BigBad The Conductor]] explains that because Shiki became the most important thing in the world to Neku, she's been taken as his Entry Fee. Everything Neku worked for during the first Week is negated. It gets even worse when, at the end of the second Week, The Conductor uses an equally trumped-up excuse to not only take away Neku's victory, but ''make it as if the second Week never even happened.'' When Neku learns, at the end, that these were all created because ''Kitaniji literally '''could not''' bring anyone back to life'', and everything he ''thought'' he was playing for is a lie, he is, understandably, upset. Neku even lampshades this at one point during the third Week, where he's given up on the Game entirely - he tells Beat that even if he won, [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption Kitaniji would just come up with a stupid excuse to disqualify him.]] When, after the last events of the game, TheReveal (and a doozy it was), and his apparent loss and (second) death at the hands of Joshua, he believes everything to have been in vain, he wakes up in the exact manner he does at the beginning of each Game, in the Scramble, leading to believe he has to play ''again''. His literal "What the HELL!?" is big enough to have almost become a meme in itself. Of course, the game itself ''isn't'' an example, and in fact, is the complete opposite - if it weren't for Neku, his growth as a character, and all of his and his partners' actions, Shibuya would either be destroyed, under the complete control of Kitaniji, or ruled by Minamimoto, and he does get to come back to life at the end and reunite with all of his friends... [[GodWasMyCopilot Except one.]] |
| 243 | ** Then again, when the chips are down, actual good people got killed ''twice'' because of his whims, he assassinated the person he was supposed to trust ([[ItMakesSenseInContext for a good reason, but still]]!), and to top it off [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking guy's a backstabbing two-timer even after having some humble pie]], so yeah screw trusting [[PalsWithJesus Him]]!]] |
| 244 | * ''VideoGame/YumeNikki'': After all the work and presumably hours exploring the same areas of the dream world, Madotsuki collects all the effects. And then Madotsuki jumps off her balcony. The best interpretation of the game: The whole game was a dream and you completely wasted your time. The worst interpretation? Madotsuki kills herself. You just wasted your time, or directly caused Madotsuki to kill herself. |
| 245 | * In the Final Decision of ''VisualNovel/ZeroTimeDilemma'', the only way for the group to save themselves is to swap places with a version of themselves in an alternate timeline where they escaped Zero's hellish puzzle box unscathed. They'll escape, but the only version of themselves that actually had a happy ending will be doomed to a horrible death in their place and never understand why. To drive the point home Zero shoots TeamPet Gab -- a literal shaggy dog. |
| 246 |
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