Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You in Video Games.
- Another Code:
- In Two Memories, Ashley's father Richard faked his death, leaving Ashley to be raised by his younger sister Jessica for over a decade, in order to complete work on ANOTHER, a memory research endeavor that is he and his wife Sayoko dedicated their lives to completing.
- In A Journey Into Lost Memories, Richard ended up leaving again during the two year Time Skip, with the start of the game being their first conversation in over six months. By this point, Ashley has written him off as a deadbeat dad, and she's only mollified when he reveals that this second round of abandonment was because he was trying to investigate the circumstances that led to his wife being murdered by one of their best friends.
- In Arc the Lad, Arc's father had a good reason to leave his wife and son for more than ten years He tried to Set Right What Once Went Wrong after the elemental spirits granted him the ability to time travel. But, because Arc the Lad is... well, Arc The Lad, he failed to save the world and only came back to die in front of his son and let him angsting.
- In Baldur's Gate II, Cernd left his wife and unborn son to pursue his calling as a druid. He thinks his commitment to maintaining the balance of nature is a good reason for abandoning his family. Nobody else does. Even the evil wizard who is about to sacrifice the baby to a lich calls him out on it, asking if Cernd even knows the kid's name. To be fair, he didn't know his wife was pregnant at the time.
- Really bites Cernd in the ass: in Cernd's epilogue, his constant favoring of his druidic calling over his son leads to his son becoming an evil wizard, leading an army, and eventually forcing a showdown that results in a Mutual Kill.
- Airi's father in Devil Survivor 2 had a very good reason — his investigations had ferreted out a highly dangerous Ancient Conspiracy (JP's), and it's implied that had he not faked his death and disappeared, JP's would have killed him. Airi never learns this, though, and her father dies for real during a failed demon summoning. He asks the protagonist not tell his daughter about his 'second death'.
- Subverted in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories with Adell's parents. They left to defeat fake Overlord Zenon and failed. The subversion is in how they intended to return (assuming they won).
- In EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound (1994), your father is only seen at the other end of the phone providing you with money and gifts the entire adventure. Mother 3, on the other hand, has a father who is present throughout the story and is even the main protagonist of the first part of the game. Unfortunately, what he goes through completely breaks him, forcing his son to mature and strengthen himself on his own.
- Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water has Miku Hinasaki tell her daughter why she left her to be raised by a friend at the age of three. Miu is a Shadowborn — a child of a human mother and ghost father. Since giving birth to a Shadowborn puts huge strains on the mother and reduce her lifespan drastically, Miku realized that her time was going to run out soon. She wanted to spare her daughter the sight of watching her mother die, since Miku had to see her mother's corpse herself years ago, and ran off to perform the Yuukon, a ghost marriage, with her spirited away brother and was put into a Black Box. Said Black Box sustained Miku over the years, allowing her and her grown daughter to reunite and explain things.
- James in Fallout 3 had what he thought was a pretty good reason for abandoning the main character. However, it turns out he made a grave miscalculation: his disappearance sends the Vault into anarchy and gets his son/daughter marked for death by the Overseer. Of course, James makes a fairly impressive series of well-meaning miscalculations as the game goes on...
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy X has Jecht, who spends most of the game a distant and apparently horribly abusive father to Tidus, who's reasonably pissed off that his father abandoned him and his mother. Turns out that Jecht was swept to another world and sacrificed himself for the hope of peace. Since Tidus is, at the time, in a similar situation... They reconciled (sort of) and Tidus Mercy Killed him because he was in a Fate Worse than Death.
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time has an unusual case, in that they actually DIDN'T have a good reason, as far as we know. However it's pointed out multiple times that, had you not been abandoned, it would certainly mean The End of the World as We Know It.
- Final Fantasy Legend II opens with a scene where your father is last seen leaving through your bedroom window. Throughout the game, you wind up bumping into him repeatedly, finding out he's trying to save the universe just like you are. (And you try to convince him to come home more often.)
- This is discussed during one cutscene in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia. Laguna and Galuf argue that they had to do it to keep their loved ones safe, and Laguna used the thought of his waiting family to get himself through many deadly situations. Krile and Yuri take the opposite view because it's denying them to chance to help and making them sick with worry.
- Fire Emblem: Awakening brings this up a few times with the children from the future. Cynthia laments that her mom Sumia broke her promise to finish the spear that they were making together due to future Sumia getting killed in battle, and Yarne fears that his father will break his marriage vows to Panne similar to when Yarne's father in the future broke his promise to return when Yarne's father was killed in battle. Similarly, all the other children's parents were killed in some way.
- In Hades, Zagreus's motivation for leaving the Underworld is to find his mother Persephone and learn why she abandoned him. The first time he reaches the surface and finally meets her, he learns she had a very good reason: Zagreus was stillborn, and Persephone left Hades and the Underworld in her grief. It wasn't until much later that Nyx was able to revive Zagreus, but by then Persephone was long gone.
- In Growlanser III, one of your party members had a father who disappeared one day; being half human and half Featherian, this lead to some Fantastic Racism among her relatives. (You eventually learn that the Big Bad killed him.)
- In Jade Cocoon, Ricketz leaves his family and abandons his position as Cocoon Master of his village, because staying on would cause his wife to eventually die of a magically-induced cancerous disease, as the wives of all Cocoon Masters are women of the Nagi tribe who have a sacred duty to purify the demon-capturing cocoons their husbands inevitably accumulate in their role as magical protectors of their villages. He also tries to discover a cure, in the process becoming the catalyst for the entire plot of the story.
- The Legend of Dragoon: one would think that being possessed by the spirit of a near-12,000 year old megalomaniacal Wingly dictator and forced to set off a series of events that would lead to The End of the World as We Know It is a good reason for Parental Abandonment.
- In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II, though the reason why he was abandoned at the snowy field was never brought up, Rean manages to finally confront his dad. Said dad turns out to be the Evil Chancellor, Giliath Osborne although in the flashback, he was very reluctant to abandon Rean, even asking for the goddess Aidios to take care of him.
- Mass Effect 2 gives us Thane Krios who left his son Kolyat, Thane didn't want Kolyat to be influenced by his father's job as an assassin, either by becoming one himself or being connected to him for his enemies to find. Also, he found everyone involved in his wife's murder and killed them. Slowly.
- In Mortal Kombat X, Takeda's father, Kenshi Takahashi, left him to be trained by Hanzo Hasashi and the Shirai Ryu after his mother's death when he was eight years old. Kenshi asked Hanzo to tell Takeda that his mother died in an accident while in reality, she was the victim of an assassination attempt by the Red Dragon clan and Kenshi left to hunt down her killers.
- In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire/Emerald, the player's dad seems to live in his gym (he never comes out, does he?)
- And don't forget Palmer, the Tower Tycoon from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Platinum. He is the rival's father and while he claims to remember you as his son's friend, he is never once seen outside of Battle Tower.
- In the Celebi event in Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver we're informed that Giovanni supposedly had a good reason for abandoning Silver after disbanding Team Rocket, but we never find out what it is.
- In Quest for Glory IV, the Burgomeister's grandfather disappeared shortly before he was to marry the Burgomeister's grandmother, leaving her alone and pregnant. This resulted in the child and grandchild becoming rather bitter individuals. When playing as a paladin, you end up finding the grandfather's sword in a wraith's barrow, proving that his abandonment was not intentional — Piotyr had been killed before the wedding.
- Tales Series:
- Tales of Destiny: Hugo Gilchrist knew he was hearing voices and going mad, and after killing his wife he sends Rutee away to Cresta, where she's raised in an orphanage. Before he could send Leon away as well, he went completely insane and instead tried to raise him as a Tyke Bomb.
- In Tales of Graces, Aston Lhant sends his son Hubert off to another country to be raised by the military-based Oswell family. Aston does so in order to avoid a messy Succession Crisis between Hubert and his older brother, Asbel. It's ultimately deconstructed when Hubert returns to Lhant years down the road. Not only did Aston's attempts to avoid a succession crisis only delay the inevitable, they actually made it far worse than if he'd done nothing. Hubert now has taken multiple levels in badass and in jerkass, promptly curb-stomping Asbel and exiling him from Lhant, then telling off their mother when she tries to intervene.
- Tales of Symphonia has a couple.
- The reason Kratos abandoned Lloyd was because he saw him, Noishe, and the monster version of his wife fall over a cliff, and after fending off the nearby Desians, found nothing but half-eaten corpses at the bottom. He thought they had died.
- Genis and Raine got abandoned because Raine was so intelligent, the Imperial Research Academy wanted to kidnap her and keep her imprisoned with other half-elves to work on science projects for them. Their parents sent them through a magical portal to the "mythical land" of Sylvarant, where they hoped the children would be safe from Fantastic Racism. They had no way of knowing that Sylvarant was poor and mana-starved, and suffered from just as much racism as Tethe'alla...
- Tales of the Tempest: Due to Leimenorean persecution, Caius was sent off to the Leimen capital with his mother, the Leimen Queen, while Lukius lived with his father, the Pope. Unfortunately the capital was attacked and razed a year later. Both the Pope and Lukius thought Caius was dead, and so didn't try to reclaim him from his adoptive father.
- In the case of Kyle and Julian Brennan in the X-Universe series, it's because Mom took Julian halfway across the galaxy after the divorce and never told Kyle where they went.
- In Xenogears, Jessie claims to have a justifiable reason for abandoning his wife and children. In the game itself, the trope is subverted, as the explanation is not very thorough and the player is left with the impression that he's making excuses. After reading the explanation given in Perfect Works, though, it becomes clear that he had to leave in order to protect them and the trope is played straight.
