Doomed Hometown / Video Games

No! My beloved peasant village!: The hero's home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.

— The Grand List Of Console RPG Clichés #2

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• Downplayed in the first Alphadia title, the heroes have their hometown invaded and occupied by the Evil Empire not 10 minutes into the game.
• Alphadia Genesis 2 plays it perfectly straight as the hero's hometown is razed to the ground and everyone in it killed not 10 minutes into the game, again by the Evil Empire.
• Arknights has Chernobog, where several of your operators are born from and where the main story starts. Catastrophes have all but destroyed the city, but what really makes it unlivable is the power Reunion holds over the city and the harsh treatment of infected.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has Ezio fighting and failing to prevent a Templar sacking of Monteriggioni at the start.
• The first level of Asterix & Obelix XXL takes place in the infamous Gaulish Undefeatable Little Village deserted and on fire after the Romans finally succedeed to capture the indomitable Gauls.
• In Baldur's Gate you are forced to leave your hometown, and cannot get back until much later in the game. As it's a fortified monastery defended by a startling number of priests, mages, and soldiers considering its size, it's perfectly fine. Later in the game however, just about everyone you know there is killed and replaced with evil doppelgangers. Some dialogue and where they are suggest it might be a subversion, however — at least some of the doppelgangers appears to still be preparing for replacing their target when you come in and disrupt the entire scheme.
• In Banjo-Tooie, not only Banjo's House gets destroyed by Gruntilda, his whole homeworld is trashed after Grunty's sisters decide to leave their troops to raid the place.
• In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Kain's hometown of Coorhagen has been overrun and ravaged by The Plague by the time he returns to it; dead bodies litter the streets, several carts loaded with bodies block Kain's path. The few surviving citizens Kain finds lament their fate and urge him to leave the city before the Plague claims him as well.
• In Blue Dragon, Shu, Jiro and Kluke's hometown of Talta Village is rendered unliveable by yearly attacks from Nene's Land Shark. Nene seems to get off on this Trope, as most of the human villages you find have something wrong with them, from their inhabitants being frozen in ice to being cut off from the rest of the world by a forcefield. The only village that's unaffected is Kelaso, and it's underground in the Arctic.
• Bound by Blades: After defeating the fourth Ilcyon, the Bound returns to their village, Ashmyr, only to find out Ilcyon forces have destroyed it. Their only choice is to travel to Fangsfate City to seek more allies.
• Bravely Default: Tiz is the sole survivor of Norende Village, which was swallowed up by a gigantic chasm. Unlike most victims of this trope, Tiz decides to roll up his sleeves and start rebuilding the village himself, which is done via a minigame of sorts.
• In Breath of Fire, the Dark Dragons attack and burn down much of the hero's home town. This is partly used to explain the poor selection of items in the town, and the abduction of the hero's sister in the course of this leads to him searching for her and fighting against the Dark Dragons.
• The Big Bad torches your hometown in Castle of the Winds once you progress far enough in the local dungeon. The trigger is reading a letter the first boss is carrying (or deciding to spontaneously read it if you exit the local dungeon with it in your possession). Which leads to the ludicrous situation where you can drop it just before the exit and go visit your hometown then go back to the dungeon, pick up the letter and exit in 3 moves to find a smoking wasteland.
• At the beginning of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (and its remake Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles) Richter's girlfriend's hometown is attacked by Dracula's forces and several maidens kidnapped. Interestingly enough, one of the later towns encountered is from Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest.
• Chrono Cross: Lynx burnt down the orphanage that Kid lived in as a child, providing her motivation to both steal the Frozen Flame from him and kill him.
  • Serge suffers from this in a both less and more extreme sense. His hometown of Arni Village is still around, but he can't go back because he's Trapped in Another World. Even if he opted to stay in Arni in this alternate universe, the people of Another World don't know him because he died as a child years ago. By the time he's able to return to his Home World, he has new motivations to continue the adventure.
• Dark Cloud: Norune Village suffers this fate, being blown up at the end of the opening cutscene. Happens to every other city the player visits as well. This is mitigated, however, by the fact that not only does everyone survive, but rebuilding each town/city is a central part of the game's plot.
• Averted in Darkstone, as the player's hometown is the only completely safe place in the entire game. After the appearance of the eponymous rock, the residents do start being affected by it, but the town itself remains a safe retreat for the player character to rest, eat, learn skills, and offload valuables.
• In the first Dawn of War game, Captain Gabriel Angelos begins the game recently having returned from a campaign where he had to request an exterminatus on his own home planet. It'd probably be best to not mention it around him.
  • Planet Aurelia, in Dawn of War 2. Furthermore, Sergeant Thaddeus insists that he join in on your attack on the Chaos forces in Spire Legis specifically to avert this trope. (If you don't deploy him he'll become corrupted, potentially leaving your team and becoming That One Boss in the penultimate mission.)
• Inverted in Dead Rising: the US Government destroys the village that Carlito lived in after zombie-virus infected wasps escape from a secret lab. They send in special forces units to kill anyone still left and keep the bioengineering operation a secret. You finish up the story by confronting The commander of the special forces unit, who was sent in to do the same thing to Willamette.
• Deus Ex: Invisible War begins with Chicago being destroyed by a nanological terrorist attack.
• In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Dante wrecks his shop with a sneeze in the second mission, making it impossible to go back inside for the rest of the game. Played for laughs given its ridiculousness, especially since the shop's been torn to hell by the fight with the invading demons from the previous mission, and the sneeze is just the last straw.
• Diablo:
  • The original game has Tristram, which you spend all of the first game trying to save (and is pretty much a shadow of its former self already, having been ravaged first by Leoric's madness and then by Lazarus' betrayal), and which gets destroyed by demons come the second game.
  • Every Demon Hunter in Diablo III is a survivor of some village or other settlement ravaged by demons, which usually results in the deaths of every one of their family.
  • Furthermore, Barbarian characters in Diablo III also invoke this trope as the events of Diablo II is revealed to have caused the eruption of Mt. Arreat; destroying much of the Barbarian homeland.
  • The Necromancer in Diablo III has this happen twice over. The comic detailing their backstory shows they were born in a normal village before being taken as an apprentice, returning years later to find the village destroyed. In-game, the Necropolis which houses their order is attacked by Reapers resulting in the death of most of the priesthood, leaving the Necromancer to lead the rebuilding.
• Doom:
  • Doom II: The anonymous "Doomguy" is told in an intermission screen that "the alien base is in the heart of your own home city, not far from the starport."
  • The Doomguy of Doom (2016) is revealed to be the last survivor of the vaguely-medieval world of Argent D'nur, which was absorbed into Hell. Doomguy was a member of the Night Sentinels, an elite force tasked with safeguarding the Wraiths, godlike beings which supplied Argent D'nur with magic. A traitor in the Night Sentinels' ranks allowed the Wraiths to be subverted by Hell and used to power the Well, a font of limitless power that allowed the demonic horde to invade countless other dimensions.
• In the Dragon Age series:
  • In the games' Backstory, the Dalish elves lost their homeland when they tried to cut off ties to the Tevinter Imperium—the Imperium invaded and enslaved most of the race, going so far as to sink their capital city beneath the earth. After winning their freedom, they built a second homeland in the Dales... which was then destroyed when the Chantry led an Exalted March against them.
  • Averted for most of the Player Character backgrounds in Dragon Age: Origins. The City Elf's Alienage suffers riots and a vicious reprisal but remains standing, the great bulk of Orzammar is much as you left it for dwarves, the Dalish tribe doesn't even have a home, and the decision to make the mages' tower a doomed hometown is entirely in your hands. The only one that holds true is the Human Noble origin: Highever falls to Howe's men, you're the only survivor, and you'll never see it again in the game. Your brother, however, survived, and retakes it after the game ends.
  • In Dragon Age II, Hawke's hometown of Lothering is destroyed by the Darkspawn. This already happened in the first game; it's just that the player is seeing it from a different perspective. Also, depending on your dialogue choices, Hawke and your Dalish elf party member Merrill may be forced to kill Merrill's clan in self-defense.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition:
    • The town of Haven acts as your home base for the first part of the game. You're forced to destroy it to stop the Big Bad from killing everyone via dropping an avalanche on it and him. You can also lose citizens if you don't manage to save them before the avalanche.
    • There are multiple ways to get a Dalish Inquisitor's clan killed if you choose the wrong options during War Table missions. Life sucks for the Dalish.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest: The novelization of the game gives some additional backstory as to just where the Hero came from. That utterly demolished city, Damdara; the high-level monster den where the Knight Aberrant stands guard over the hero Erdrick's Auroral Armor? That also happened to be this Hero's home, and his road didn't begin until the Dragonlord had it completely destroyed to lock down all of Erdrick's armaments.
  • In Dragon Quest IV, the main character (who you only get to play after all the other characters have their chapters) has his/her humble hamlet destroyed simply because they are The Chosen One and the Big Bad's minions found out.
  • Also in Dragon Quest IV, the second chapter ends with the heroes returning triumphantly to the castle where they started the chapter... only to find the place utterly deserted and eerily quiet. Returning in a later chapter, the heroes find that the castle is now inhabited by monsters.
  • Santa Rosa/Whealbrook in Dragon Quest V may not be where The Hero was born, but it's the place he lived since he can remember, and it gets destroyed between the Time Skip thanks to the evil Queen using his father as a scapegoat for Prince Henry's disappearance.
  • In Dragon Quest VIII, the kingdom of Trodain is engulfed by vines before the game starts due to a curse laid on it by the villain. Only the hero, the king, and the princess escape, and the latter two were cursed into other forms before the kingdom was hit.
  • In Dragon Quest XI, it happens twice to the Luminary. First his home was destroyed by monsters trying to kill him while he was still a baby, so he ends up orphaned and grows up in Cobblestone. Later, King Carnelian believes he is a Doom Magnet and orders Cobblestone sacked for housing him.
• Dragon's Dogma: This game is a rare aversion. The player's home town is attacked by the Dragon at the beginning of the game, but the player's actions prevent the Dragon from destroying your home town. It also convinces the Dragon to eat your heart and pin you as this generation's Arisen. However, if you killed the Dragon towards the end, it's Gran Soren that gets destroyed instead. As the city collapses, it reveals the Everfall, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon beneath the city.
• The prologue for Dragon Valor shows Clovis's hometown burning down, and him setting to avenge it.
• In Dragon's Wake the player character is a young orphan dragon that is adopted by a village of Lizard Folk. This village is later destroyed by the same Black Knight that killed his parents.
• Drakan: Order of the Flame: Rynn crawls out of her burninating village filled with marauding orcs. No survivors except her and her abducted little brother, so she has to go rescue him.
• The opening chapter of Drakengard is a War Sequence in which the protagonist is trying to hold off The Evil Army from capturing his sister's castle. He fails, but he does rescue her before the castle falls completely. Later flashbacks and exposition show that the kingdom the protagonist grew up in was also a Doomed Hometown for similar reasons.
• Ecco the Dolphin features a Doomed Home Bay; everything and everybody in it is taken away by a storm, starting Ecco's quest to reunite with his family.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In the series' backstory, this is the case for Aldmeris, the lost continent homeland of the Aldmer, ancestors to all of the modern races of Mer (Elves). It is said that Aldmeris came under an unknown threat in the earliest Era of history following the creation of the mortal world and the Aldmer were forced to flee, settling in Tamriel. It is said to be "lost," and whether it still exists (or ever existed at all, as other theories claim that Aldmeris was simply Tamriel before the races of Men arrived) is unknown.
  • Yokuda, the original homeland of the Redguards, was mostly "sunk beneath the sea" in the 1st Era. There are many stories as to why it happened, ranging from the natural (earthquake, tsunami) to the fantastic (a rogue group of Ansei using their Dangerous Forbidden Technique Fantastic Nuke) with the truth likely lost to history. There are some indications there are still some Yokudans living there, but the once continental land of Yokuda has been reduced to a few small islands.
  • Done from the outside in Oblivion. Early in the main quest, the Player Character is sent to rescue the Emperor's last surviving heir from the burning remains of his hometown.
• In Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Trip and Monkey finally reach her village... to find everyone brutally murdered by Pyramid mechs. According to Monkey earlier on in the game, this sort of thing is common.
  Monkey: Oh, I've seen it all before. Scattered tribes, coming together under one visionary leader. It's never long before they attract the attention of the slavers, which obviously has already happened.
• In Fable, the main character's hometown of Oakvale is ransacked by bandits, and he's the only survivor. Later in the game, however, he gets to return to the rebuilt and repopulated town. Then it gets destroyed AGAIN between the first and second game and people finally give up trying to resettle it. Lampshaded when a schoolteacher starts to read an in-universe book with a similar story and discards it as "unoriginal tosh".
• Fallout:
  • The Chosen One's hometown of Arroyo in Fallout 2 — ironically, the village is destroyed just as the hero finds the item that was supposed to save it. In the ending, the village is rebuilt after freeing the survivors from the Enclave, and the Chosen One becomes the new leader.
  • Fallout 3's story really begins when the player is forced to leave the Vault to search for their father. Later on, as part of a Sidequest, the PC is able to return and see what has happened in their absence — however, they choose to resolve (or completely ignore!) matters, they don't get to stay. One of these "resolutions" results in our "Hero" dooming the hometown himself!
  • The other hometown, Megaton, can also be doomed by the player by setting off the nuclear bomb it is named after. Refugees will occasionally appear and will be hostile.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, the Courier can doom their own starting town of Goodsprings by siding with the Powder Gangers in the first quest. They are also responsible for inadvertently turning the Divide, a prospering community that they once called home, into a nuclear hellhole.
  • In Fallout 4, after being thawed out from cryogenic suspension, the protagonist's first stop in the main quest is their hometown of Sanctuary Hills, which has been devastated by nukes. Of course, they can rebuild the town into a new community.
• Comes up twice in Falskaar, a Skyrim mod. The ruined wood-elf settlement of Pinevale is revealed to be this for Kalevi, who was rescued as a baby and then Happily Adopted, though she finds out the truth as an adult. This is also the case for Jarl Valfred, whose hold and city of Borvald is razed halfway through much to his horror; unlike the Pinevale incident, he doesn't last much longer than his home.
• Fate/stay night: Shirou had to live through a large portion of his hometown burning down around him at the age of eight — he was one of only a few people who survived the inferno, and the trauma of having lived through it while everyone else he saw died is one of the base pillars of his current mindset. Note that it's technically only a part of the town; for most, life goes on as before, but it's enough to count, as it cost Shirou his family and apparently any friends he had before.
• Fear & Hunger: Termina: Levi and Marina grew up in the town of Prehevil, which has fallen into complete chaos by the events of the game. Parts of the town have been destroyed during the Bremen occupation, and all of its residents have been mutated into otherworldly monstrosities due to Rher's influence.
• Final Fantasy has as the whole of it here.
• Fire Emblem cannot help itself. Since every game focuses on a royal brat reclaiming their home and throne. However only one game really fits this trope to a T. Fire Emblem 7 is slightly less grand on the usual cataclysm scale of Main lord hero losing home kingdom in Fire Emblem games. Lyn has only lost her tribe and her whole family at the start of the game due to bandits. When the Player incarnate arrives she's alone fending off bandits.
  • Hell, Super Smash Bros. Brawl has fun with it - Marth's castle ate a Subspace Bomb in Adventure mode.
  • There are a couple of characters from the latest Fire Emblem title, Fates that suffer from this trope:
    • Mozu, an optional playable character on all 3 routes (Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation) falls victim to this trope in her recruitment chapter. Unlike her Awakening Expy, Donnel, Mozu herself is the Sole Survivor of the Faceless attack on her Hoshidan village.
    • In the Revelation route, it is revealed that Gunter's hometown was destroyed by King Garon and his army, and like Mozu, everyone Gunter knew in his hometown were murdered, including his wife and child.
• Forever Home has the protagonist's hometown of Ellea, which is wiped off the map by cannons in the first hour of the game. Parelin is Kina's doomed hometown, which was attacked a second time while they tried to rebuild the town after the first attack.
• Your hometown in The Game of the Ages is plagued with "The Shadows." You defeat them in the game's final scene.
• Geneforge 3 does this with the Wizarding School you start out in — swarms of monsters slaughter all but six of the people there while a creepy glowing woman rants about "fires of justice." You, a mere untrained apprentice, are the only one available to inform the nearby fort about the attack.
• In the God of War series, Zeus destroys Kratos' hometown of Sparta. Sorta' subverted considering how Kratos goes back in time and attacks him first. So, even though Sparta is technically still standing, as it was literally never destroyed at all, Kratos still holds Zeus responsible well into the third game.
• Subverted, then partially inverted in Golden Sun. The game opens with a (mostly successful) attempt to keep it from happening, then the hometown is destroyed in the ending to the 2nd game.
  • And the fact that the 2 antagonist-couples where motivated by the fact that their hometown (and by extension, the entire world) was hanging on the verge of destruction, effectively making them Anti Villains.
• Midway through the timeline of Gorogoa, the protagonist's hometown is ravaged by an unknown calamity. Subverted as it is later rebuilt, and even then it is clear that the destruction is among the many incidents the protagonist suffers after his failed offering to the dragon.
• The tutorial area of Guild Wars: Prophecies begins in the player character's Doomed Home Kingdom, before switching to a ruined version (in the main game world) once the tutorial finishes. Even the opening narration clearly warns the player what is coming.
• Halo:
  • Reach was the planet where all the Spartan-IIs (including the Master Chief himself) were raised and trained; the first game begins right after the Covenant have taken Reach, with the Chief being one of the few to escape the planet's fall. The actual events of the battle of Reach are covered in Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: First Strike, and Halo: Reach.
  • Edward Buck decided to become an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper after his homeworld of Draco III was razed by the Covenant.
  • The Spartan-IIIs are all war orphans who lost their homes and families to the Covenant, and initially joined the program to get revenge.
  • Though the precise timeline is still kind of iffy, much of Gabriel Thorne's determination to become a great Spartan is clearly born from the loss of his entire hometown of New Phoenix.
• In the first three levels of Homeworld it's not only your hometown that is doomed but your entire civilization. The game starts with the first hyperspace test drive ever, which is only to the edge of the solar system, but when the sublight science ship you are supposed to meet with is found destroyed by aliens, you immediately turn back to your planet, only to find it a burned out husk with all orbital stations and satelites destroyed. With the planet being dead and your entire species located on your (admitedly massive) ship, you have to find a new planet to settle.
• A variation of this trope happens in Hype: The Time Quest, as Torras has been invaded and put under the rule of the tyrannical Barnak, while the hero has been brought 200 years in the past. We spend most of the game going forward in time in the past, lively Torras knowing full well that a desolate and oppressed Torras awaits in Hype's era.
• Icewind Dale: The starting town is also blocked off for most of the game. Of course, seeing how the game is fairly linear, and practically characterless, it doesn't bother you much.
• inFAMOUS: Cole MacGrath unknowingly activates a bomb that destroys six blocks of Empire City, killing countless people.
  • This is taken further in inFAMOUS 2, when the Beast destroys the rest of Empire City, forcing Cole and other survivors to flee to New Marais.
• At the end of the first chapter of Jade Empire, the little town of Two Rivers is destroyed and almost all of its populace wiped out by Imperial forces.
  • And that was just his/her adopted hometown. His/her real hometown was destroyed 20 years earlier. The main character seems to have pretty bad luck with hometowns.
  • And played with in that your mentor was responsible for both, knowing that it would give you the motivation to kill his brother, the Emperor, and let him take the throne.
• Hero's hometown in Jitsu Squad was destroyed in a fire, with his entire clan massacred by the traitorous Dash - the same villain who killed Hero's father. Dash actually appears as the first boss, fought in the ruins of the village, where he takes delight in taunting Hero over the massacre.
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance opens with the player's hometown of Skalitz being razed to the ground by Emperor Sigismund of Hungary's Cuman army, as well as his parents' murder at their hands.
• In Kingdom Hearts, Sora, Riku and Kairi are all from the Destiny Islands, which are vaguely snuffed out by the Heartless and later restored.
  • The Land of Departure in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep eventually becomes Castle Oblivion, to prevent it from being destroyed by darkness, and is later restored in Kingdom Hearts III.
• The King of Fighters 2000: South Town, the home of many original Fatal Fury characters, gets nuked from orbit.
• After a fashion, this happens twice in Knights of the Old Republic. The very first section of the game takes place on a spaceship which gets shot down, and the next section takes place on a planet which gets bombarded to oblivion just as the protagonists are leaving. It actually happens three times as the Jedi Academy on Dantooine (the planet visited after the aforementioned "planet bombarded to oblivion") is attacked and destroyed by Darth Malak after a certain number of Plot Coupons has been collected. You meet some survivors though.
  • Also, the home planets of two party members were destroyed in events prior to the game.
• This occurs in The Legend of Dragoon to the main character Dart's adopted hometown Seles in an almost stereotypical fashion during in the intro. Not only that, we later find out that his actual birthplace Neet was also desolated years prior the game.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky has Joshua's real home, Hamel, Erebonia, razed to the ground as a Pretext for War against their neighbor Liberl. This then spills towards the rest of the series with The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel where it's revealed that Rean's home before being adopted by the Schwarzer's was razed to the ground by the same people who did the Hamel Incident.
• Although his hometown of Ordon Village is left intact, Link gets pulled into the action of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess when some of the Big Bad's goons invade the village and abduct him and all of the resident children.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time the Kokiki Forest got overtaken by monsters after the Deku Tree died.
  • Played With in Breath of the Wild: Link awakens to a devastated Hyrule at the beginning of the game and later learns that he once served as Princess Zelda's personal knight in the heart of the ruined kingdom. Played straight in the prequel, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, where Castle Town and Hyrule Castle are seen in their prime before being destroyed when Ganon emerges halfway through. Due to this game taking place in an Alternate Timeline, the rest of the kingdom is spared, though its major fortresses are still damaged in the battle.
• The hometown that gets doomed in Lennus II is an entire underground world.
• Lost Sphear has a two-for-one deal in the opening. The opening cutscene shows a king whose kingdom vanishes, and shortly after, Kanata's entire hometown vanishes.
• In Lunar: The Silver Star, Burg is conquered by evil forces just as it looks like Alex will be welcomed back there. Averted in the remakes, however, where the town is left alone.
• If you pick the colonist background in Mass Effect, Shepard's homeworld was Mindoir, a tiny farming colony that is located in the Attican Traverse, where the batarians fought against the humans for territory rights. When Shepard was 16, the batarians razed the planet, killed almost everyone in the colony except a couple of leftovers who were dragged in chains for slavery, while Shepard was lucky enough to escape from their clutches. An Alliance patrol found him/her, but all of Shepard's relatives and friends died from the raid. As the result of that, Shepard was motivated to join the military two years later. Dialogue throughout the series reveals the colony was eventually rebuilt, but "It wasn't the same".
  • Mass Effect 3 begins with the Reapers invading Earth. Which is then followed by: Palaven, Tuchanka, and Thessia, the homeworlds of the turians, krogan, and asari respectively. Palaven and Thessia don't fare well, but Tuchanka proves to be a bit more than the Reapers bargained for - it's seen worse, after all.
• Metroid: Poor Samus Aran gets orphaned twice by the Space Pirates. Once after they destroy the mining colony K-2L, killing her biological parents, and then again with the homeworld of the Chozo who adopted and raised her. It's no wonder that she spends the rest of the franchise getting her revenge on them.
• Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven: Sweet Water, the hometown of the main characters, is destroyed during the Night of Shooting Stars, and your characters are forced to flee from a devil attack during the intro. Much later, it turns out the devils set up their main hive just a little outside the ruins of Sweet Water.
• Done uniquely in Mother 3, wherein the quaint little town the game begins in is not destroyed, but abruptly abandoned by all but the mayor, protagonist, and his father.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, the (playable) prologue is a fair in the protagonist's home village, West Harbor, which is invaded and burned in the beginning of the main game. There is a subversion, however, as West Harbor is not quite destroyed and can actually be visited later at almost any point in the game, although the player can't do much there, and a double subversion as it is much later invaded again and destroyed during the player's absence.
• Nintendo Wars: In Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, the mission "Toy Box" takes place in Olaf's hometown, which has been torn apart by one of Lash's inventions. It's a major Tear Jerker moment, with Olaf visibly struggling to hold back tears. Furthermore, in an example of Gameplay and Story Integration, Olaf and Lash have a Tag Power penalty due to this in Dual Strike.
• Partial example in No More Heroes III: Mr. Blackhole razes a portion of Santa Destroy, but Travis successfully kills him before he can cause any further casualties.
• Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny opens with Nobunaga burning Jubei's village to the ground.
• The main motivating factor of the character from Panzer Dragoon 2 was that his home was snuffed out by the empire for him raising a mutated beast of burden with the potential to grow into a dragon.
• Peasant's Quest starts with Rather Dashing's thatched-roof cottage being burninated by TROGDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR!
• In the Ultima-clone Questron, your character's home town of Geraldtown is destroyed ("ALL ARE DEAD!") whenever one of several conditions occurs (get more than 1 holy water, advance the game time too much by using up food during travels, etc.). This cannot be avoided if you wish to win, and is permanent.
• Resident Evil series, especially Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles which shows from the start Jill Valentine's city (where she works as part of SWAT-like police outfit STARS) being infected with a virus made by an Evil Corporation (turning everyone into zombies and worse) before being obliterated with a tactical nuclear strike by the US government as a safety measure for the rest of the country and her fighting the corporation from then on.
• Romancing SaGa has this happen to one of the heroes: Poor unlucky Albert. The others generally manage to avoid this, although it's possible for Barbara to lose the closest thing she has to a hometown, the Frontier, to the Jewel Beast. Also, part of the endgame involves racing to defeat Saruin before his forces destroy Estamir, making the stakes especially high for Jamil, Farah and Dowd.
• Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden sees your titular hero leaving his uncle's farm to embark on a quest in the first few stages. He returns halfway through, only to find out in horror that it's been destroyed by orcs.
  Protagonist: Oh, Uncle... it's my fault. I brought the orcs here...
• In SaGa Frontier, Riki's entire quest focuses on saving his doomed hometown that turns out to be a Evil Plan on the part of the Big Bad.
• A variation of the trope happened in Sands of Destruction. Barni, and its residents, was turned to sand by the awakening of Kyrie's Destruct powers.
• In Secret of the Stars, Ray's entire home island is destroyed. Of course you never see the destruction as Ray is spirited away to a new area.
• Seedship: Earth is destroyed at the beginning of the game, starting the plot.
• Stinger's hometown of Port Lochane in Shadow Madness. The few survivors are driven insane and the town quickly falls under attack by monsters, to boot.
• The Shining Series:
  • In Shining Force, the characters return to their home town after their first mission to find that the town has been razed in their absence.
  • The first Granseal Kingdom in Shining Force II for Genesis where the main character lives. After the first few missions, the whole area is literally swallowed in a giant chasm.
• Pirate Isle in Skies of Arcadia, though it's rebuilt not long after with little explanation.
  • Much later in the game, your new base gets destroyed just like Pirate Isle, but rebuilt after one quest. The only Doomed Hometown that stays doomed is Valua, Enrique's home country, which gets completely bombarded and only rebuilt after the end of the game.
• Star Control II starts out with Earth under an Ur-Quan slave shield, which only the Ur-Quan (and also the Chmmr after you get them out, which happens at the end of the game) can penetrate.
  • As if that wasn't bad enough, returning to the protagonist's actual home (a distant colony in the Vela system) reveals that it was also placed under a slave shield.
  • Vela subverts this though, as under the Earthling's surrender agreement the Ur-Quan were within their rights to simply destroy the colony rather than slave shield it. It is in a sense a twisted act of mercy.
• StarCraft:
  • The Protoss homeworld of Aiur was ravaged by the Zerg invasion and were forced to retreat to Shakuras, home of the Dark Templars. However, in Legacy of the Void, the Protoss mobilized to retake Aiur from the Zerg and later Amon's force, and recaptured their homeworld.
  • In Legacy of the Void, This happened to Shakuras when Amon's Zerg brood and hybrids overrun the entire planet and the Protoss were forced to destroy it. Subverted in that despite Shakuras being their home, the Dark Templars still considered Aiur to be their true home.
  • In the original StarCraft, Korhal was this to Arcturus Mengsk when the Confederacy nuked the entire planet to suppress a rebel movement. After becoming emperor of the Terran Dominion, he organized a reconstruction of Korhal.
• Star Ocean:
  • Star Ocean: The Second Story has a version of this where the planet your journey starts on is destroyed. Later on in the game, the bad guys show off their uber-powerful weapon by destroying Ronyx's ship, just because they can. Jerks. The planet is restored by a Heroic Sacrifice; while not explictly stated, it's implied Ronyx's ship is brought back as well.
  • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has the resort planet of Hyda IV, which is attacked when the main character is chillin' out on it. Earth (along with most of the galaxy) gets destroyed midway through the game. The galaxy is restored at the end due to its inhabitants having the sentience to believe they are real and thus become real. Why this doesn't work for the planet Earth or anything else that was "deleted" in the exact same manner is never explained.
• In Star Trek Online, playing as part of the Romulan Republic starts you out as a villager in a Romulan colony on Virinat before it gets nuked to hell by the Tal Shiar and the Elachi. And if you happen to play as a Romulan or a Reman, this trope goes double for you as the game takes place in 2409, 23 years after the Hobus supernova and the destruction of Romulus and Remus as depicted in Star Trek (2009).
• In Stellaris, the Doomsday origin causes an empire's homeworld to suffer increasing devastation over the course of 40 years before finally exploding. Early gameplay for this origin focuses on evacuating the planet's population to colonies before it's too late.
• In Stonekeep, the titular castle that is the childhood home of the protaganist is consumed by a devouring darkness. Drake is saved by a mysterious cloaked figure who teleports them both to safety and returns years later to reclaim the fortress.
• Thanks to its use of multiple view points, Suikoden III both plays this trope straight for one character, then inverts it as another main character is responsible for destroying the home town in question during her own story's first chapter.
• Occurs repeatedly in Summoner: First, you accidentally destroy your beloved peasant village of Ciran in an attempt to defend it with your fledgeling powers, killing your friends and family; after disowning your powers, you settle down in Masad, which years later gets burned to the ground by the Big Bad's invading army in their search for you; you then resolve to confront your past and defend the nation of Medeva, which you accidentally end up destroying as well after a suitable Big "NO!".
• Captain Kayto Shields' home town is nuked immediately following the first battle in Sunrider.
• Very common in the Tales Series:
  • In Tales of Phantasia, Cless' and Chester's initial motivations are revenge for the evil knight Mars burning down their hometown and killing their families.
    • In addition to this, Arche joins the party after being possessed by the spirit of her best friend, whose parents were killed in the destruction of said spirit's hometown. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • In Tales of Eternia, the main pair is banished for the heinous crime of finding an alien girl, whose presence gets the elder's house attacked.
    • Better example from the same game: said alien girl's hometown gets destroyed somewhere during the middle of the game. Arguably the first thing that made Reid realize not caring is not the answer to life.
  • Tales of Innocence has the main character able to enter his hometown, but unable to enter his house, since it's under surveillance because he has special powers.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, the hometown of Lloyd, Colette, Genis and Raine is partially burned down by Desians. Lloyd and Genis are banished for being partially to blame and forbidden from returning until Disc 2. But even after that, Genis decides to travel the world with Raine to help half-elves fit in, and Lloyd decides to set out with a companion of his choosing to destroy the Exspheres.
    • Dawn of the New World, on the other hand, has two: Palmacosta and (nearly) Luin (which, if you recall, both got wrecked in the first game already). They both get better, though.
  • Tales of Destiny averts the trope by having the player see the main character's hometown (which is notably NOT doomed) for the first time in the middle of the game, and when you arrive, he is welcomed home by his two living parents.
  • Downright inverted in Tales of the Abyss — it happened to the villain during the backstory and is his main motivation for his Well-Intentioned Extremist ways.
    • Though one of the protagonist's companions comes from the same town and was only able to get past the "wanting revenge" thing due to the friendship of the protagonist. The story's Deuteragonist is also technically from that town, but was born a few hours after its destruction, so she doesn't have the same emotional response as the other two.
    • Ditto in Tales of Hearts. The villain is attempting to restore his dead planet. Unfortunately, not only does he plan to do this by stealing the life energy from the main characters' planet, but his plan isn't even going to work.
  • Tales of Vesperia continues the tradition with Rita's hometown, Aspio. But this happens near the end of the game. And no one dies since the one who destroyed it needs as many human lives as possible to power his superweapon.
    • Zaphias, the Imperial Capital and home to both Yuri and Estelle, becomes the target of a massive aer overgowth that decimates the city near the climax of Act II. The Lower Quarter, where Yuri is from, is noted to be completely overrun. However, it later turns out that the area was evacuated by the Inspector Javert and his cronies, and the city is rebuilt before the end of the game.
  • Every time a town is attacked by an enemy force in Tales of Graces, its always Lhant. "Save Lhant from <insert enemy here>" is regularly recurring objective in the game. Every military in the world attacks it at some point, plus the Big Bad's monsters of course.
  • Tales of Berseria continues the tradition with Velvet's hometown, Aball, which suffers from an outbreak of daemonblight as part of an event that would go down in history as the Advent. Everyone except Velvet and Artorius succumbs to it. For extra fun, because the townsfolk were turned into Always Chaotic Evil daemons and Velvet was turned into a daemon who feeds on other daemons Velvet had to eat her entire village to survive. Three years later, the party visits the village, looking as if nothing had ever happened to it, though it turns out to all be an illusion; Aball has remained uninhabited for those three years.
• The Azuma village gets torched in Tenchu 2.
• Alicia, Welkin and Isara from Valkyria Chronicles are forced to abandon their hometown, Bruhl, because of The Empire's invasion. You get to take it back later though.
• In The Walking Dead: Season One, Lee's hometown of Macon, Georgia is already zombie-infested and fallen apart at the start of the game. The group abandons it in Episode 3 when bandits attack.
• Warcraft:
  • Argus, the home planet for the Draenei, then called the Eredar, is corrupted by Sargeras, turning about 2/3s of the population into demons. The remaining, uncorrupted 1/3 is forced to flee for their lives. What's more is that it's implied that every planet they tried to make a home on afterwards were destroyed or corrupted. This happens about 30,000 years before the start of even the first Warcraft game.
  • On Draenor, the home planet of the Orcs and the second-to-last home planet of the Draenei, is corrupted by Kil'jaeden, uniting the separate Orc clans and setting them on the Draenei, with whom they lived in peace for the previous 200 years. The massive amounts of fel energy used by the shaman-cum-warlocks tainted their once verdant planet making large portions of it unliveable. This forced the Orcs, now calling themselves The Horde, to take up a mysterious figure up on his offer to invade another planet filled with fertile lands and weak citizens. This happens just before the first Warcraft game.
    • Later, Ner'zhul, the orc largely responsible for this turn of events, destroyed Draenor further by opening so many portals to other places, it wreaked havoc on the stability of the planet. This happens in the expansion for the second Warcraft game.
  • The orcs invade Azeroth killing just about everyone they find and looting and/or razing towns, villages, farms, etc. They destroy the capital of the kingdom of Azeroth, Stormwind, after the King had been murdered. The survivors, including Prince Varian Wrynn, flee north to the southern coast of Lordaeron. This is the first Warcraft.
    • Stormwind later gets rebuilt. But it gets (partially) destroyed, again, in World of Warcraft's third expansion, Cataclysm.
  • The Horde, under new leadership, decide to make a preempitive strike against the human kingdoms to the north so they can make their home on this new planet without worry of retribution for the sacking of Stormwind. Second Warcraft.
  • The Kaldorei, or Night Elves, draw the attention of The Burning Legion (demons) due to the use of powerful magics by the Highborne (nobility). Under demonic influence, the highborne facilitate an invasion by the Burning Legion. This lead to a war so big, it destroys much of the Kaldorei kingdom and those of smaller races before the end. The resistance manages to to stop the invasion, but the recoil from the portal used in the invasion is so powerful it splits the continent into two! As a result, the surviving Kaldorei turn from arcane magics and focus more on the druidic arts.
    • The Quel'dorei, or High Elves, ended up splitting off from the Kaldorei due to this new attitude. They headed east and settled in the very north of the Eastern Kingdoms.
  • The Scourge, an army of undead, sweep through the northern human kingdoms, destroying all of Lordaeron. They then head north and destroy the majority of the High Elven kingdom. The source of high elven power, the Sunwell is also destroyed. These events led the majority of those survivors to rename themselves the Sin'dorei, or Blood Elves. Warcraft III.
    • Shortly after these events, a good number of Scourge members, including Sylvanas, former Ranger General for the High Elves, gain free will from the Lich King. That means there are two entire factions who gain their motivation from one war.
  • The Darkspear Trolls are forced to flee their home, three times! First, when the Troll Empires collapsed, the Gurubashi Trolls forced them out of Stranglethorn Vale. Then, during the third war they are forced out of Darkspear Isle by Naga and Murlocs, where they met the Orcs and settle in the Echo Islands. Later, they are forced out of their new home due to a troll witch doctor trying to take over; there were probably some Naga involved that time, too.
  • The Gnomes were forced to flee Gnomeregan, their home city, after the High Tinker was tricked into irradiating the entire city to get rid of invading Troggs.
  • After the Cataclysm, the Forsaken invade other areas of Lordaeron, including Gilneas, forcing the Gilneans to evacuate to Darnassus, while the Gilneas Liberation Front tries to push the Forsaken back.
    • Darnassus itself is later destroyed by Horde forces during Battle for Azeroth's pre-launch event, killing many night elf and worgen citizens and leaving the now-homeless survivors on the streets of Stormwind.
  • At the same time, Kezan is attacked by Deathwing, who sets off Mt. Kajaro, forcing the Goblins to flee.
  • Zandalar, the Zandalari homeland, is slowly sinking into the ocean after the Cataclysm. They've now resorted to allying with the Mogu and other trolls in an attempt to find a new home before their people all drown.
  • All examples are just playable races. Needless to say, most lore characters and player characters have this trope as a big part of their motivation.
• A third of the way through Watch_Dogs, Aiden's motel room is destroyed by mercenaries sent after him to prevent him from accessing sensitive information, as well as Aiden triggering his own countermeasures in response.
• Adlehyde in Wild ARMs for Cecilia, the attack on the city by demons kicking off the events of the game (though the player can help rebuild it throughout the rest of the game.) Arctica, meanwhile, is Jack's personal Doomed Hometown, getting destroyed in the same manner before the start of the game.
• Ciel in Wild ARMs 4, which could also double as a Floating Continent.
• Robin "Flint" Peters' homeworld of Locanda IV, in Wing Commander III, though while she's not the hero, she does assist him depending on your wingman choices.
  • It is possible to save Locanda IV (without breaking the game), but canonically Locanda IV was destroyed.
• World of Horror has the players investigate what's happening in Shiokawa before the paranormal destroys it.
• World of Mana:
  • In Secret of Mana the main character is banished from his adoptive hometown. He's let back in at the end.
  • Half of the protagonists of Trials of Mana (Duran, Riesz, and Charlotte) get their hometowns invaded by one of the three factions vying for power. The other three protagonists (Angela, Hawkeye, and Kevin) come from the countries doing the invading.
  • The Evil Empire invades Keldy's hometown in Dawn of Mana, as it's sitting on top of both the Sealed Evil in a Can and the Sealed Good in a Can.
• The Xeno series (Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade Chronicles 1) makes a habit of this trope. Game-by-game, we have:
  • Xenogears:
    • The main character, Fei, unintentionally destroys his hometown, Lahan. Fei's attempt to pilot a giant, top secret, crash landed, military robot ("gear") in the middle of a firefight leads to the town's destruction. Also a prime example of devastating Lost Technology and a deconstruction of Falling into the Cockpit. Lahan's theme music is named "Our Village is Number One." It never stood a chance.
    • Not only is Lahan toasted right off the bat, but later Fei-as-Id destroys the capital of Solaris, the country where both Elly and Citan came from.
  • Xenosaga:
    • Shion's home planet Miltia is devastated some time before the beginning of the game in what is referred to as the "Miltian Conflict". On top of that, it gets disconnected from the UMN network, making it inaccessible by FTL means. For all intents and purposes, most consider it destroyed. The game actually plays with this in a rather interesting way, as this damnation of the hometown had apparently been planned by one of the villains in order to get the hero going.
    • At the beginning of Episode I, the Woglinde (the starting area of the game) is blown up.
    • In Episode III we learn that Kevin's homeworld was also destroyed before the start of the "gameline," while Earth itself has been "lost" for centuries already, if not more.
    • The Kukai Foundation, a giant floating city-state and home to Jr. and his peripherals, is also attacked and partially evacuated during the game.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
    • The game keeps the tradition, but subverts it in regards to Colony 9. Although the town is attacked by the Mechon at the start of the main quest, the damage turns out to be minimal and aside from a few casualties (most notably, Fiora), things return to normal almost immediately afterward.
    • It turns out Colony 9 got off easy compared to Colony 6 (Sharla's hometown), which was also attacked and razed to the ground before the events of the game. One of the game's larger side-quests involves gathering supplies to rebuild the town.
    • A very long time before the events of the game, Agniratha, the capital of Mechonis and the hometown of all of the Machina, was attacked by an army of Telethia from Bionis. All the Machina except for Egil and Vanea moved to the Fallen Arm, leaving the city abandoned.
    • An even longer time before that, Zanza (or rather, his human form, Klaus) destroyed his and Meyneth's entire home universe (implied heavily to be our universe), turning both of them into Physical Gods and obviously killing everyone and everything else.
    • About two-thirds of the way into the game, Melia's hometown, Alcamoth, is doomed when all the pure-blooded High Entia are transformed into Telethia and the other residents are forced to evacuate. The game puts a very large Interface Spoiler on this event by labelling every single quest you get from the town as time-sensitive.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
    • While nothing bad happens to the Leftheria Archipelago where Rex hails from, he does lose his house when Azurda regenerates into a larval form small enough to fit on Rex's back instead of the other way around. Since Rex is something of a wanderer already and can always go back to his aunt's house in Leftheria, he takes it in stride.
    • Played painfully straight in The Golden Country, as if you've played even partway through the main game you'll know that the entire continent of Torna you've been spending most of the side-game on is doomed to be sunk during the Aegis War. Not to mention that the act of destruction itself is a giant parallel to Xenogears; it happens because Mythra loses control of her powers while piloting Artifice Siren and fighting Malos.
  • Exaggerated in Xenoblade Chronicles 3:
    • The entire main party except for Taion comes from one of these, as colony destruction has become just a matter of course in the Forever War between Keves and Agnus. While Noah, Lanz and Eunie are stationed at Colony 9 when the game proper begins, they started out at Colony 14 before it was destroyed in an Agnian attack. Mio and Sena meanwhile are stationed at Colony Gamma but went through two other colonies before it; the second of which (Colony Omega) was destroyed in a mechanical accident which was actually a cover-up for Consul Y's brutal science experiments.
    • In the backstory, the worlds of the first two Xenoblade Chronicles games are set to collide with each other, which results in Origin - a giant moon-sized supercomputer with the information of every being from both worlds - being built to reboot both universes and merge them as one. However, the data of everyone collected led to the formation of Z, a Demiurge Archetype that is a personification of the collective fear of both worlds being rebooted and the desire for things to stay the way they were before. The result is that not only do both worlds collide, but end up merging to create Aionios, a world ruled by Z and his underlings, the Moebius, where the denizens of both worlds are forced to fight each other in the above-mentioned eternal war.
    • The Future Redeemed expansion begins in the first City, which, like Torna, is Doomed by Canon to be destroyed by Consul N, leaving the expansion's protagonist Matthew as a refugee.
    • And at the end of Future Redeemed, Colony 9 finally meets the fate it avoided in the first game when Origin crash-lands on top of it and the rest of the Cent-Omnia region (which is why it's an oceanic crater in the base game). Fortunately, the Liberators had time to evacuate everyone, and quickly get to work building what would become the second City.
• Zero Wing: Somebody set up us the bomb, and you are on the way to destruction. You know what you doing and move "zig", otherwise you have no chance to survive make your time.