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Downer Beginning / Video Games

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In many video games, you have to start from the bottom and work your way up until you reach your ultimate goal. These examples below take it further than most.

  • American McGee's Alice starts with Alice's home destroyed by fire; she survives, but her family doesn't, and she's now in an asylum, in a comatose state.
  • Arkanoid opens with the destruction of the eponymous mother ship, and your Escape Pod Vaus gets "trapped in space warped by someone". Breaking a bunch of bricks will probably solve that, somehow.
  • Assassin's Creed starts with an introductory mission where the Player Character, the master assassin Altair, is sent to slay the grand master of the Knights Templar and retrieve a powerful artifact. Because of his excessive pride and negligence, he fails miserably, barely escapes alive and leaves his teammate for dead. Then he confesses his failure to his master and explains that there was no way he could have succeeded... when his former teammate arrives, seriously wounded, with the artifact, and accuses him to be a traitor and a coward. His master then condemns him to death and stabs him with a knife. It turns out his master does not really kill him, but he is still stripped of all his weapons, ranks and privileges and has to start again as a new Assassin initiate as a punishment for his failure and incompetence.
  • The prologue of Astebreed. It starts with Grato and his team in a hopeless fight against the alien forces. Both of Grato's teammates bite the dust while he narrowly escapes the onslaught. Unfortunately, he dies before making it back to Earth.
  • The prologue of Bahamut Lagoon is called "The Fall of Kahna", after the kingdom The Good King rules over and The Empire, having conquered the rest of the main sky lagoons, has set their eyes upon next. Guess what happens.
  • While Baldur's Gate gives you a nice comfortable tutorial before throwing you to the wolves, the sequel starts with the player character imprisoned and tortured in an unknown dungeon. Some of your former companions are there with you, but you find out that others have been Killed Off for Real (at least it was the ones nobody liked). When you finally escape the dungeon into an unfamiliar city, your childhood friend is snatched away by some mysterious wizards for violating the local anti-magic laws, and you have to come up with a hefty sum of gold to find out what happened to her. Things kinda go downhill from there.
  • Baldur's Gate III opens with the mind flayers flying over the titular city and abducting several citizens to transform into more mind flayers, you among them.
  • In Banjo-Tooie, the first two things Grunty does after being freed by her sisters is to kill Bottles and leave some monsters overrun Spiral Mountain. Not too long after, Klungo challenges the main characters to an Opening Boss Battle, and King Jinjaling is zombified by the witches' life force sucker. This is a darker prologue than that of Banjo-Kazooie, which merely starts with Tooty's capture.
  • Bayonetta 2 opens up with the titular protagonist doing some shopping and meeting up with her best friend Jeanne, only to be interrupted by an angel assault. Bayonetta hops onto a fighter jet and later a train to do battle with them; pretty crazy by traditional video game standards but practically business as usual for the duo. She finishes off a boss fight with one of her Finishing Move demonic summons, and that seems to go fine...until the demon in question, Gomorrah, breaks free from Bayonetta's command and tries to kill her, knocks Jeanne's soul out of her body, and drags said soul off to Inferno. All of this, by the way, happens in the prologue, before Chapter 1 even begins. The bulk of the game is then spent trying to get Jeanne's soul back from Inferno before Inferno no longer makes it possible.
  • The BioShock games:
    • BioShock starts with Jack's plane exploding, leaving him a castaway swimming to a mysterious lighthouse.
    • BioShock 2 starts with your main character, Subject Delta, being beaten, getting his Little Sister taken, and forced to commit suicide.
  • Call of Duty: Ghosts begins with the Federation hijacking the U.S. ODIN satellite and firing its weapons on its cities. The player character and his brother are now running away from the attack, and can do little as their home gets destroyed.
  • Chained Echoes: The playable prologue ends with the Player Character activating a device without knowing its true purpose. It's a Fantastic Nuke which destroys the surrounding city and kills tens of thousands of people.
  • Chronomaster starts with a pirate attack on a defenceless colony. They seem to take no prisoners. After the game proper starts, you can read about "Pasqua Wipeout" in Encyclopedia Exposita: pirates killed everybody, then strip-mined the planet making it uninhabitable; two decades later they are still at large. It's pretty obvious the victims you are ordered to save are the pirate leaders targeted by a survivor of the attack.
  • The Closer: Game of the Year Edition begins when the titular Closer is called to the pitcher's mound to finish off the World Series for the New York Yankees. However, that would-be victory is nullified when Carlos "The Machine" Rodriguez steps up to bat for the St. Louis Cardinals. What follows is one of the most humiliating events of the Closer's career as The Machine easily slams his slider out of the park to tie the series and send it to a decisive Game 7. That failure (and finding out his slider got cracked) is what propels our hero to go on his epic quest to remake himself before that final game.
  • Dark Souls: The game starts with you being tossed into what's essentially a waste pit, because you just contracted a zombie virus.
  • Darksiders starts with the apocalypse being called in earlynote , resulting in demons and angels invading Earth, killing everyone and ruining the planet.
  • Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten opens with Azra revealing that not only is she infected with a plague that has turned most of the inhabitants of her homeland into zombies, but she's been tossed into a pit to die. Luckily for her, it turns out that she's immune to the zombification, and she has certain abilities that enable her to fight back against the zombies.
  • Demon's Souls: The real part of the game starts with one death: yours. And it's not like the world was a bright cheery place before you die.
  • Detroit: Become Human opens with a tense hostage situation in which Connor, an android who investigates others of his kind who become "deviant", is sent in to rescue a young girl who is being held captive by her family's android. While the survival of Connor and the hostage depends on the choices you make, the deviant android cannot be saved.
  • Devil May Cry 5 opens with Dante, Nero (who is shown in a subsequent flashback having his arm ripped off), and the mysterious V fighting Urizen, who proves too powerful for them to contend with. Dante is forced to hold Urizen at bay while Nero and V escape, leaving his survival in question.
  • Dragon Age:
    • In Dragon Age: Origins, all of the eponymous origin stories end with the player character being forced to leave their old life behind to join the Grey Wardens. Oftentimes, there is no more old life to which they could return. This is followed by the Battle of Ostagar, which ends in a catastrophic betrayal which results in the death of the King of Ferelden and all but two of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden. Since the Wardens are the only ones capable of defeating the Blight, by the time the sandbox opens, Ferelden is considered to be on the verge of destruction.
    • Dragon Age II in spades. The Framing Device has main character Hawke missing and possibly dead and being blamed for starting the Mage-Templar war. The actual beginning of Hawke's story isn't much better. Doomed Hometown, dead sister or brother, Deal with the Devil, and being forced to eke out a living with mercenaries/smugglers in the slums of a Wretched Hive while trying to hide either Bethany's magic (if she survives) or Hawke's magic (if she doesn't). And that's the prologue.
    • Dragon Age: Inquisition isn't much better: the game opens with an explosion seemingly killing a religious leader who may have been the one person who could stop the Mage-Templar War, as well as dozens of others. Said explosion creates tears in the fabric of reality that allows demons to pour in from the Fade. As for you: you were found at the epicenter of the explosion, inexplicably alive and branded in a way that links you to the breaches. If not for the fact that you may be the only one capable of sealing the breaches, you would surely have been scapegoated as the cause of the explosion and put to death.
  • Dragon Quest Builders starts out after the Dragonlord has thoroughly conquered Alefgard and somehow muddled the minds of the few survivors so only the protagonist (who slept through the disaster) can build anything. The goal of the game is to reverse the fall of civilization — one step at a time.
  • Dragon Quest Builders 2 begins with the player, an apprentice Builder, on a slave ship under the command of the Children of Hargon, who have destroyed civilization on a cluster of islands and enforce their rule by banning the act of building and capturing any Builders they find.
  • Dragon's Dogma: As the story begins, you're just an average person in a cozy seaside fishing village, but that all ends when the dreaded dragon lands and starts wreaking havoc. You try to fight the dragon, but are soundly defeated, after which the dragon rips out your heart and eats it in front of you.
  • Dragon's Dogma II Cold Opens to you, the Arisen, returning to claim your throne as Vermund's rightful Sovran, only for you to get drugged, knocked out, robbed of your memories, and subsequently Made a Slave. All this on top of the dragon having ripped out your heart and eaten it in front of you months prior.
  • Dropsy opens with a literal nightmare, as the titular clown relives a tragic event. It's soon revealed that the event was a fire at the circus where he lives and works, a fire that killed his adoptive mother and several audience members. Everyone in the nearby city thinks that Dropsy caused the fire, and so the game begins with Dropsy despised by nearly everyone he meets, faced with no prospects and an ailing father.
  • The Elder Scrolls series seems to be particularly fond of this trope, and plays it Darker and Edgier with each episode:
    • In Arena, the Emperor and his top general are trapped in another dimension by the Imperial Battlemage. You and the Battlemage's apprentice are the only two to see this and know the truth, so the apprentice is killed and you're thrown in a cell in the city dungeon.
    • In Daggerfall, you are an agent of the Emperor sent on an official mission, but your ship wrecks in a storm and you start the game shipwrecked in a dungeon.
    • In the spin-off Dungeon Crawler An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire, when you enter the Battlespire, you find it having already been taken over Dagon's forces with most of your allies dead and your partner captured.
    • In the prologue comic of the spin-off Action-Adventure Redguard you kill your sister's groom, forcing you to flee and also ruining your country's last chance to avoid a civil war. The game starts with your country conquered by The Empire, who aided the enemy faction and then disposed of them too. The royal family is missing, presumed dead, and so is your sister.
    • In Morrowind, you are a prisoner but are quickly granted release on direct orders from the Emperor. However, your "release" more or less amounts to deportation to the backwater island of Vvardenfell, which is currently plagued by the Blight and is full of Dunmer who are hostile to outlanders.
    • In Oblivion, you are a prisoner again, and this time there is no mention of you being pardoned. It just happens that the Emperor is fleeing from an assassination attempt using a secret escape route, and your cell is on the way. And this time, the Emperor doesn't make it...
    • In Skyrim, you are a prisoner yet again, and when the game starts you are sentenced to death and on your way to be executed. You arrive to a small village and one of your fellow prisoners is actually beheaded in front of you, with another getting arrowed to death for trying to run. When your head is on the chopping block, a dragon appears from nowhere, kills the guards and utterly destroys the whole place.
    • In Online, you are killed, and your soul is taken, but you somehow escape from your prison in Coldharbour and begin your quest to get your soul back.
  • The Korean animated RPG Epic Seven begins with a great war by Ras and his friends to stop the archdemon Anghraf and its demons. After you finish the tutorial, the cutscene shows that Anghraf annihilates (Judge) Kise, Ruelle, and Guardians which Ruelle has summoned. Ras gets hit by its attacks, but survives although he falls into coma for 20 years. Thanks to Diene, the archdemon was defeated and the protagonists won, although Diene's action isn't shown onscreen.
  • Eternal Sonata begins with a cute young teenage girl talking herself into letting herself fall off a cliff. Then, a scene culminating in the conversation that probably lead her to do that. Next, a man in a coma, with the doctor saying that he might not live through it. And, if you want to count the beginning as going all the way to the preliminary credits, you see this girl being feared because she can use magic, even if it's used to heal, and a pair of boys who steal bread for children who have found homes in the sewers, from whom we learn that the cost of living is high due to taxes, and that the girl from the beginning wouldn't have long to live, anyway.
  • The Evil Within 2 opens with Sebastian witnessing the house fire that he believed killed his daughter, Lily, which then promptly cuts to him drinking away his life in a bar before being found by MOBIUS.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: The game begins with the Shakun Star already conquered, and the invasion of Earth begins soon after.
  • Every game in the Fallout series starts off with a brief recount of the global thermonuclear conflict that left the world in the desperate state you find it in. Typically more bad stuff happens before you get to start playing, and more still after you do — it takes a while for things to start going in any sort of positive direction.
    • Fallout has your vault's water chip, the device which regulates the vault's water purification systems, malfunction with no way of repairing it, forcing you to go out into the wasteland to find a replacement.
    • Fallout 2 has a colony of humans who, after decades of underground segregation, prepare to leave the vault after radiation levels have somewhat subsided to start civilization anew. They're ruthlessly cut down by minigun-toting soldiers before they even step out of the door.
    • Fallout 3: Your mother dies during your birth, your father flees the vault as a criminal for unknown reasons, and you are cast out of the only home you have ever known into an irradiated wasteland.
    • Fallout: New Vegas:
      • At the start of the main campaign, you are shot in the head and buried alive, with Benny, the backstabbing bastard who did this to you, taking the Platinum Chip you were supposed to deliver.
      • In Dead Money you wake up in a city full of killer mutants, with deadly traps, and clouds of noxious gas everywhere. And you have a bomb around your neck.
      • The Honest Hearts DLC starts with you joining a caravan's expedition into the new location, only for said caravan to get ambushed and murdered by a local tribe the moment they arrive.
    • Fallout 4: The game opens up to you, your spouse, and your barely-a-year-old son on the day the global nuclear war starts. You're thawed out an unknown number of years later just in time to see your spouse shot to death, and your son stolen from their arms by two mysterious figures before you are refrozen. When you thaw out for real, you then emerge from Vault 111 after 210 years of slumber, with the fate of your son unknown. In the thoroughly blasted-out remains of what you once called home.
    • Double subverted in Fallout 76: the dwellers of Vault 76 (one of the precious few "control vaults" where Vault-Tec did not conduct inhumane experiments) emerge into an Appalachia that has barely been touched by the ravages of war, the surrounding area flush with greenery and intact infrastructure. There's just one little hair in the soup, though: there's no one around. No emerging societies, no Brotherhood of Steel, not even raiders! Turns out a new plague in the region has completely depopulated West Virginia!
  • Far Cry 5 opens with an attempt by the US Marshal and local law enforcement in Hope County to arrest cult leader "Father" Joseph Seed. Their attempt fails when Seed's followers latch onto the helicopter as it tries to leave, with one throwing themselves into the helicopter's blades to send it crashing down and letting Seed escape, while you find yourself trapped in Hope County with nowhere safe to run.
  • Fatal Frame III: The Tormented starts with the aftermath of a car accident. Rei crawls out of the car without noticeable injuries... before seeing her fiance's dead body within the car. Things quickly go From Bad to Worse when she becomes afflicted with a deadly ghostly curse that she must break before it kills her.
  • Final Fantasy:
  • Fire Emblem:
    • In several games, the start involves a formerly friendly nation invading the main character's country, taking their capital and killing most of their retainers as well as family members, forcing them into exile until they can reclaim their land, while in the meantime the invaders will rule like tyrants.
    • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 begins with imperial soldiers storming Fiana in search of Leif and capturing Nanna and Mareeta.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening begins with the player character (the Avatar) getting possessed by Grima, and murdering Chrom after seemingly defeating Validar. It turns out to be a premonition of things to come (in Chapter 23).
    • Fire Emblem Fates also starts with a premonition, this time of the player character being forced to choose between their Nohrian and Hoshidan families.
    • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia begins with a cutscene of Alm killing Celica. It turns out to be a very reluctant Mercy Kill in context (and Celica is brought Back from the Dead soon after thanks to some Divine Intervention courtesy of Mila), but that doesn't lessen the sting much from Alm's side.
    • Fire Emblem Heroes Three Hopes opens with Shez and their mercenary company locked in battle with another group of mercenaries. Unfortunately for Shez's team, they are fighting against Byleth. Shez ends up the Sole Survivor of the encounter through divine intervention.
  • The God of War series is no stranger to this:
    • God of War: The opening cutscene shows the player character, a former Spartan general named Kratos, lamenting how the gods of Olympus have abandoned him before throwing himself off a cliff. The entire game after this is a flashback leading up to that point.
    • God of War: Chains of Olympus: A prequel set before the first game, Kratos is beginning to grow disillusioned with his servitude to Olympus. While helping to repel the invading Persian army from Attica, the chariot of the sun god Helios falls out of the sky, plunging the world into eternal night and allowing Morpheus, the god of sleep, to start spreading a fog that threatens to consume everything.
    • God of War II: Now the god of war after killing Ares, Kratos is leading the armies of Sparta on a bloody conquest of Greece, which the rest of Olympus is not thrilled about. While attacking Rhodes, Zeus tricks Kratos into giving up his godhood and subsequently kills him, only for to Kratos to climb out of the Underworld and vow revenge against Zeus.
    • God of War: Ghost of Sparta: Taking place between the first and second games, Kratos, still settling into his position as the new god of war, is still haunted by visions of his mortal life when he receives a vision of his mother alive in Atlantis. Setting sail for the island, Kratos finds her and she attempts to tell him who his father is, but she's been cursed to turn into a monster and Kratos is forced to kill her.
    • God of War III: Picking up immediately where the last game ended, Kratos leads the Titans in sieging Mount Olympus, having sworn to kill Zeus and every god who tries to stop him. After brutally murdering Poseidon, whose death triggers a cataclysmic flood that drowns most of Greece, Kratos and Gaia confront Zeus and get blasted back down the mountain, and the Spartan is left to die, falling into the Underworld again.
    • God of War: Ascension: Set before any of the other games, Kratos has been imprisoned by the Furies for breaking his blood oath to Ares after he tricked Kratos into killing his own family. The game cycles between Kratos navigating the Furies' prison in the present and the events that led to him being captured.
    • God of War (PS4): Kratos, now Older and Wiser and trying to atone for his violent past, is now living in Norway and has a son named Atreus. Atreus' mother, Faye, has just died, and the game opens with them building her funeral pyre and cremating her, her dying wish being to scatter her ashes from the highest mountain in the realms. Kratos initially thinks Atreus isn't ready for the journey, but they are forced to leave when a tattooed stranger (later revealed to be the god Baldur) shows up at their home and goads Kratos into a fight, the old Spartan soon realizing the Norse pantheon is hunting him for unknown reasons.
    • God of War Ragnarök: Three years after the previous game, Kratos and Atreus, while closer than they've ever been, are trying to survive the Endless Winter which heralds Ragnarök, and this game opens with Baldur's mother, Freya, attacking them in retaliation for Kratos killing Baldur at the end of the previous game (and judging from their dialogue, this is not the first time it's happened). After they fend her off and make it home, Atreus is then forced to magically euthanize Fenrir, one of his pet wolves, who is sick and dying. The grief causes Atreus to awaken his shapeshifting powers and involuntarily turn into a bear, attacking Kratos in a mindless rage before his father is able to pacify him. And all of this happens within the first half hour of the game, before Thor and Odin even show up at their house.
  • Geneforge starts off rough more often than not:
    • The original Geneforge begins with the player discovering an island marked as Barred, designating the location as highly dangerous and inaccessible by law. Immediately afterwards, a mysterious boat destroys their craft, leaving them stranded on the island with little equipment or training and no clue of what could lie on it.
    • Geneforge 3 opens up with the Shaper academy the player is training at being attacked by an unknown group, leaving several students and all but one of the teachers dead. And the surviving teacher is likely an accomplice.
    • Geneforge 4 starts with the player being recruited to the rebellion and sent to one of two major rebel bases, Southforge Citadel. They get a chance to speak to their fellow apprentices, Tyrol and Magda, who are built up very similarly to Alwan and Greta from the previous game, giving the player a chance to discuss their abilities and ideals before they arrive at the citadel. What goes wrong? The Shapers show up. Tyrol and Magda are slain one by one, leaving the player as the only living apprentice, and in a panic knowing that the Shapers have discovered one of the rebellion's remaining safe havens, the player is forced regardless of their own wishes to use the Geneforge.
  • Ghost Trick opens with Sissel realizing that he's dead and that a woman is going to be killed in front of him. He then tries to use his ghost powers to save her, only for it to be in vain and her to get shot anyway (though he does find another way to save her). Then he finds out that he's lost all of his memories, and then he learns that he'll vanish when morning comes.
  • In Golden Sun, your hometown is almost completely destroyed by a rockslide and Felix barely makes it alive out of the river he falls into.
  • Grand Theft Auto loves having its beginnings start on a downer:
    • Grand Theft Auto III begins with the player character robbing a bank with his girlfriend, Catalina, and another henchman. As they make their escape, Catalina shoots the henchman dead and then shoots you, leaving you to bleed out while she steals all the money. You're then captured by the police and are in a transport truck being moved to a prison. Things start to turn around when the Colombian Cartel ambush the convoy and frees everyone before blowing up the bridge behind them.
    • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has Tommy Vercelli being released from prison after fifteen years and heads down to Vice City on Sonny Ferrelli's behalf to do a drug deal. It goes sour when a gang ambushes the deal by killing everyone and stealing both the drugs and the money while Tommy barely escapes with his life. Tommy is now tasked with getting the money back and it won't be easy...
    • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has Carl Johnson return to his hometown of Los Santos after being away for five years. He returns for his mother's funeral and is picked up by a pair of crooked cops that force him to do jobs for them later unless he wants to be pinned as the murderer of a cop that they themselves killed. The cops steal CJ's money and dump him in a neighborhood that's run by the Ballas, who are enemies of his home neighborhood of Grove Street.
      CJ: Ah shit, here we go again...
    • Grand Theft Auto V has Michael and Trevor robbing a small bank and they succeed, but things start to go downhill as they escape. Their getaway driver is shot dead by the police during the chase and while Michael does manage to take control of the wheel, the crew eventually spin out and crash. The crew then enter a last stand against the police where Brad is shot dead and Michael gets shot and critically wounded, forcing Trevor to flee and believe Michael is dead. The game then jumps ahead five years later, showing Michael (now in witness protection) absolutely miserable with his life before the player is introduced to a new character, Franklin.
  • .hack//: you log into The World for the first time and go on a pleasant little dungeon run. Once you finish, however, you and your friend, who got you into the game, are blindsided by a bizarre monster which one-shots your friend and leaves him comatose in the real world.
  • .hack//G.U.: Haseo logs into The World R:2 for the first time and meets two other players who seem friendly enough. Then when you get to the end of a dungeon, they turn out to be sadistic player-killers.
  • Half-Life 2 kicks off with earth in even more dire straits than it was at the end of the first game. A mysterious alien force known as the Combine have invaded earth and conquered it, killing off most of its inhabitants and forcing the rest to either live like zoo animals ruled over by cyborg slaves or submit to be turned into cyborg slaves themselves.
  • Halo:
    • Halo: Combat Evolved opens with your starship, on the run from the Covenant fleet which has just obliterated the last major human colony standing between them and Earth, getting shot down by said fleet.
    • Halo 2 appears to start on a high note, only to quickly spiral into a downer, when Earth is found and attacked by the Covenant, something humans have worked hard to avoid.
    • Halo 3 opens with the Covenant launching a full-scale assault on Earth. (All we had in 2 was the personal fleet of one of the Prophets.)
    • Halo 4: After being left drifting in unknown space for four years, your AI companion is forced to awaken you from your long cryo-nap after a Covenant splinter sect boards your ship, with no fellow humans in sight. It becomes quickly apparent that said AI, who accompanied you for the entirety of the original trilogy, is on the verge of going rampant and can barely hold it together.
    • Halo: Reach: Begins with a burning planet, and your cracked helmet lying on the desolate surface. Here is your story.
    • Halo Infinite: The game opens with a massive battle on the Infinity near the Zeta Halo, where it is clear the Banished are wreaking havoc and Master Chief himself gets overpowered by Atriox and thrown out into space. Chief's armor put him into stasis, where he is found and revived six months later and it is made completely clear that they lost the battle for the ring.
  • Several entries in the Haunted Hotel series start off badly and go From Bad to Worse before the mystery is solved. Special mention must go to the installment The Thirteenth, which begins with the murder of the player character.
  • Hero Must Die begins, appropriately enough, with the Hero dying. The good news is that you managed to defeat the Big Bad before dying, and God has seen fit to let you live. The bad news, however, is that you are only given five more days to live.
  • In Homeworld, things start out rather hopeful: Your species has discovered the true origin of their kind and, despite the best efforts of some terrorist zealots, finished construction of the Colony Ship to bring everyone home. However, The Mothership quickly finds itself under attack and returns home to see Kharak, and all of its three hundred million inhabitants, incinerated, with the last (defenseless) survivors under bombardment.
    • Similarly, Homeworld 2 starts with the Vaygr beating back the Hiigarans all the way to their homeworld, besieging it. The new Mothership isn't even fully operational yet, and the first few missions involves desperately getting the final modules into place and protecting the transports that are bringing the ship crews.
    • In the same vein, the prequel Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, starts with the massive Operation Khadiim being nearly wiped out by a sudden attack by the Gaalsien fanatics. What was originally supposed to be five of the newest carriers sent out to find the Prime Anomaly (the previous Operation Skaal Brii, involving only one carrier, was a failure) has only two of the carriers survive the attack and flee into the great desert. Also, the background information states that the Northern Coalition is aware that more of the planet is being desertified with every year, which means that it will eventually become uninhabitable.
  • Infamous opens with Empire City getting nuked by a mysterious device that kills off a lot of people, infects many more with a mysterious plague, and grants Cole his electrokinetic powers. Not long after, martial law is declared and the city falls into anarchy.
  • Infamous 2 starts with the Beast, a nightmarishly powerful conduit Kessler warned Cole about, showing up much earlier than predicted. Even though Cole puts up one hell of a fight and even blows the Beast's head off, he's drained of most of his powers and left in a weakened state for most of the game. Even worse, the Beast just pulls itself back together and wipes Empire City off the map.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us begins with the aftermath of the Joker destroying Metropolis with a nuclear bomb after having tricked Superman into killing his wife and unborn child, and Superman killing the Joker in a rage despite Batman's best efforts to stop him, in what proves to be the starting point of Superman becoming the supreme tyrant of his world.
  • Injustice 2 opens with the destruction of Krypton at the hands of Brainiac's forces, and Kara Zor-El not only watching her mother die before her eyes, but being separated from her infant cousin Kal-El as they make their escape. And to make things worse, this is the Injustice-verse where Superman goes evil, so poor Kara is not going to have a good time.
  • Iji begins with an Alpha Strike that wipes out the D.C.M.F.P.R. Research Facility and most of Iji's family, and hostile aliens taking over what's left. She doesn't awaken until six months later.
  • Killzone 3 begins this way as it picks up after Killzone 2's Downer Ending and frankly it's not getting much better for the ISA.
  • Kirby games tend toward relatively light versions of this as a result of Villains Act, Heroes React, but the standout example is Kirby Mass Attack, where Necrodeus (the sort of villain who usually doesn't show up until the end of a Kirby game) kickstarts the game by splitting Kirby into ten copies and killing off nine of them.
  • The Last of Us opens with the beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse, with the main character losing his daughter Sarah during the first hour of the game (daughter who was the playable character until her tragic death). Cue Time Skip.
  • Like most modern Zombie Apocalypse media, Left 4 Dead starts off with the zombie plague already well underway, and the four protagonists among the few that remain alive and well. And about a million zombies to worry about if they want to stay that way. Each successive campaign starts with them once again abandoned in the middle of nowhere, often for reasons that go unexplained.
  • The Legend of Dragoon starts off with a cinematic of Seles, the main character Dart's hometown, being burned to the ground. To make matters worse, Fruegel, the head of Hellena Prison, decides to utterly destroy the village for the heck of it. And if that wasn't enough, as soon after he returns, Dart learns that his childhood friend Shana has been taken to Hellena, a literal Hell to those who defy Emperor Doel. Ouch.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask begins with Skull Kid turning Link into a Deku Scrub and stealing his horse and the Ocarina of Time. As Link chases him, he reaches the land of Termina, where it's revealed that the Moon will fall in three days.
    • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker opens with a prologue outlining the events for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time where Ganondorf almost claimed the Triforce and took over Hyrule, but was stopped by Link. The prologue takes a more somber tone when it reveals Ganondorf escaped the Sacred Realm and, because Link wasn’t there to save the day like before, the gods of Hyrule flooded the land.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild begins with Link waking up after a century-long slumber in the Shrine of Resurrection to find that the Kingdom of Hyrule has been destroyed by Calamity Ganon, who is starting to leak out of his prison in Hyrule Castle to finish the job.
    • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity starts during the calamity from the backstory of Breath of the Wild, with Hyrule being razed to the ground, the king and champions dead, Link mortally wounded, and Zelda having awakened her sealing power far too late to do anything but run damage control.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ups the ante on Breath of the Wild's opening by having Link and Zelda encounter the source of Calamity Ganon, the Demon King Ganondorf, who promptly unleashes a devastating attack that corrupts Link's arm, drains his lifeforce, and snaps the Master Sword like a twig. He then causes the surrounding area to collapse, with Zelda plummeting into darkness and Link failing to catch her before she disappears in a burst of light and he falls unconscious. It's after this Curb-Stomp Battle that Link awakens on the Great Sky Island without Zelda or his sword, and a new arm in place of the one Ganondorf corrupted.
  • Like a Dragon:
    • Yakuza: Kazuma Kiryu, an up-and-coming member of the Dojima yakuza family, takes the fall for the murder of his superior (who was actually killed by his best friend after said superior attempted to rape their mutual friend/love interest). He spends the next ten years in prison, with his only visitor being a fellow yakuza to tell him he's gotten kicked out of the clan. The game proper starts as he leaves prison, with no real prospects ahead of him, save for an invitation to meet with his former mentor...
    • Yakuza 0: Kazuma Kiryu, a fresh recruit into the Dojima yakuza family, is implicated in a murder taking place on a prime piece of real estate that the Tojo Clan had its sights on. He resigns from the Tojo Clan in the hopes of sparing his mentor and surrogate father (currently serving a prison term) grief, but is still on the hook for a murder he didn't commit. At the same time, Goro Majima is forced into slavery by the Omi Alliance after disobeying his superiors in the Tojo. The good news is that he may have a way back into the good graces of the Tojo Clan: all he has to do is a little wetwork. The bad news is that he is assigned to murder a defenseless young blind woman, and he is unsure if he can go through with it...
    • Yakuza 6: following the events of the previous game, Kazuma Kiryu is sent to prison. By the time he is released, Haruka has gone missing, running away from home to spare her siblings any grief because of the media coverage surrounding her.
    • Yakuza: Like a Dragon opens with a young Masumi Arakawa finishing a play before being forced to give his hard-earned money to his abusive mother. His father, a far kinder parent, then takes him out for dinner, only to be shot by a yakuza assassin. Fast-forward to 2001: our hero, Ichiban Kasuga, agrees to take the fall for Arakawa's right-hand man for the sake of the family. Come 2019, Kasuga is released, only to find no one waiting for him, the Omi Alliance having invaded Kamurocho, and Arakawa having turned his coats before shooting him. When Kasuga comes to, he's in a completely different city with no clue how he got there and no idea what is happening...
    • Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth opens on an uplifting note (after as assassination in Hawaii) with Kasuga gainfully employed at the same agency that helped him get back on his feet after his arrival in Yokohama, using his position to help other former yakuza find work after the simultaneous dissolutions of the Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance. His friends Adachi and Nanba, similarly, have found good paying jobs, and everything is looking up. Then one day, Kasuga learns that he's been fired, and Adachi and Nanba also lose their jobs, after an unscrupulous Vtuber spreads rumors about them being involved in shady dealings, leaving Kasuga, once again, at rock bottom.
    • Judgment begins three years prior to the present day as Takayuki Yagami's career as a defense attorney hits a remarkable high after getting a client acquitted, something of a miracle in Japan's legal system. Not long after, however, his career as a lawyer is destroyed when said client is arrested again, this time for murder.
  • Lufia & The Fortress of Doom prologue begins with the death of the hero's ancestors Maxim and Selan after Selan is mortally wounded and Maxim is trapped on , the sequel would eventual serve as an entire build up of Maxim's journey to defeating the Sinistrals, also making it count as a Downer Ending.
  • Mad Max (2015) begins in a very similar vein to Mad Max: Fury Road: Max is ambushed by War Boys and has everything stolen from him, including his car (which is scrapped), his shotgun, his family portrait, and even his jacket and the shirt off his back.
  • Marvel's Avengers opens with "A-Day", which was supposed to be a day of celebration as the Avengers open a new base in San Francisco. A sudden attack by mysterious assailants, however, turns the event into a catastrophe: the Helicarrier is destroyed, its Terrigen reactor sabotaged; San Francisco is devastated in the explosion, leaving countless dead including Captain America, it would seem; and the Avengers are blamed for the tragedy and forced to disband.
  • Mass Effect:
    • Mass Effect 2 opens with the Normandy being destroyed, unable to put up a fight. Worse, Shepard dies making sure Joker gets off the ship. Then they're rebuilt by an enemy of theirs because human colonies are being harvested by the same bastards that killed them.
    • Mass Effect 3 begins with the Reapers, whose arrival Shepard spent the first two games delaying, finally appearing en masse and invading Earth (having already blown through both batarian space and most of the human Alliance's defenses). Shepard has no choice but to get the hell out of Dodge and start rallying their allies, but not before watching helplessly from the Normandy as a shuttle carrying a little boy they tried to help earlier gets vaporized, setting the tone for the rest of the game.
    • Mass Effect: Andromeda begins promisingly enough with you awakening on the Hyperion when it arrives at its destination in the Andromeda galaxy. Things begin to go downhill not long after; a collision with the Scourge damages the Hyperion and leaves your twin sibling comatose, and when you and your squad go down to investigate a nearby planet, you end up getting your helmet cracked during a fight with the kett, exposing you to the planet's toxic environment. The only reason you survive at all is because your father sacrifices himself to save you. It is then revealed that the other Citadel races that came before you have been struggling to get by; it would seem the Andromeda galaxy is a far way away from being hospitable.
  • Medal of Honor: Underground: The first mission ends with Manon's brother Jacques KIA in a German ambush and Manon herself forced to flee Paris empty-handed.
  • Mega Man:
    • The Mega Man (Classic):
      • Mega Man: Dr. Wily, the Big Bad, forces Doctor Light's Robot Masters to help in world domination.
      • Mega Man 2: Doctor Wily makes his own set of Robot Masters and sends them on a rampage.
      • Mega Man 3: In the first act, the eight Robot Master bosses get their hands on the Energy Elements, and the second act has Wily hijack Gamma.
      • Mega Man 5: Proto Man seemingly has a Face–Heel Turn, and kidnaps Doctor Light; it's later revealed to be a Frame-Up by Dark Man (disguised as Proto Man).
      • Mega Man 6: The robot fighting tournament was revealed to be a sham, and its host Mr. X reprograms its competitors to conquer the world.
      • Mega Man 7: Four new Robot Masters have been activated because of Wily's absence, and cause rampage in the city until they free Dr. Wily.
      • Mega Man 8: Two Robots crash land from space, and Dr. Wily discovers "Evil Energy".
      • Mega Man 10: The Roboenza epidemic spreads to several robots, including Roll.
      • Mega Man 11: Doctor Wily begins his new world domination plot by kidnapping several Robot Masters, forcing them to use his "Double Gear" system, and sending them on a rampage.
      • Mega Man & Bass: King decides to take over the world with his robot army.
      • Super Adventure Rockman: Ra Moon attacks the world with an electromagnetic pulse, which also affected Roll, leaving her in near death.
    • Mega Man Zero:
      • Mega Man Zero: A small La Résistance cell is being chased by Neo Arcadian forces, with several of the Red Shirts getting slaughtered. Ciel is the Sole Survivor, and only because the team finally manages to find and awaken Zero, an act which succeeds only through the Heroic Sacrifice of Ciel's personal Cyber-elf Passy.
      • Mega Man Zero 4: After the Opening Scroll, it shows a scene unlike the first game, with refugees escaping Neo Arcadia. This time around, however, they were humans, and after Zero and friends rescue them they learn what a hellhole Neo Arcadia has become now that Dr. Weil's in charge.
  • Crops up in Metal Gear occasionally:
    • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty opens with what was supposed to be a simple investigation mission by Solid Snake. By the end, Ocelot has the new Metal Gear, the tanker that held it is sunk, and Snake himself is presumed dead, setting up the events of the main game.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater starts with Naked Snake going on a mission to extract a scientist named Sokolov. Heading back to the chopper, Snake's own mentor, The Boss, appears and reveals she's defecting from the US to Russia, before pummeling Snake and almost killing him. As The Boss leaves, Volgin then fires a mini-nuke, causing major diplomatic damage to the US-USSR relations.
    • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance starts with Raiden helping an African Prime Minister in rebuilding a nation recovering from a civil war... only to be attacked by a group of terrorists, who murder the Prime Minister and almost kill Raiden.
    • Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is this by premise — a prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the game is set right before Big Boss ends up in a nine year coma, waking to find his left arm missing and his army disbanded. As an added downer, the player gets to see Militaires Sans Frontieres destroyed before Paz, who wasn't really dead, dies in a bomb blast.
    • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain doesn't let up even after Big Boss's awakening. Before long, the hospital he is staying out comes under siege by a paramilitary group looking to snuff him out. It is only with the aid of the mysterious "Ishmael" that he escapes with his life. The first mission after entails rescuing Kaz from Soviet captivity, and he's been through a lot, himself.
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • Mortal Kombat 3 begins with Shao Kahn invading Earthrealm after his Evil Plan to resurrect his queen, Sindel, within Earthrealm itself comes to fruition. Billions of people lose their souls, and the survivors (whose souls are protected by Raiden) are being hunted by Shao Kahn's extermination squads, and have to fight for survival. In the meantime, the Lin Kuei, Sub-Zero's ninja clan, have gone cyber-crazy, turning a good number of their ninjas into cyborgs to survive Shao Kahn's soul-ripping Depopulation Bomb at the cost of their souls, with Sub-Zero himself (one of the warriors protected by Raiden) being the only one who escaped the program and being hunted by his former brethren for it.
    • Mortal Kombat 9 picks up where Armageddon left off. Everyone is dead with few exceptions; Taven ascended to godhood (as seen in his Arcade Ladder and Konquest Mode endings), the Shinnok seen in battle was a clone sent by the real Shinnok, Liu Kang's spirit is somewhere, and Raiden and Shao Kahn are seen dueling on top of Argus' Pyramid in a battle where Kahn clearly has the advantage. With Shao Kahn poised to rule all the realms and his allies dead, Raiden sends a telepathic message to his younger self from the first game in the hopes that Armageddon can be prevented.
    • Deadly Alliance and Deception. The former has Shang Tsung (with the help of Quan Chi) killing Liu Kang and the latter has Raiden slowly defeated by the aforementioned sorcerers, only for Onaga, the previous ruler of Outworld before Shao Kahn, to burst in upon the scene. Neither Raiden, Shang, and Quan Chi's temporary Enemy Mine nor Raiden's Heroic Sacrifice kamikaze work to any noticeable effect, leaving Onaga with the one item he needed to rule the realms: Shinnok's Amulet.
    • The first chapter of Mortal Kombat 11 focuses on Cassie Cage as she and her mother, Sonya Blade, mount an assault on the Netherrealm. While they succeed in crippling the revenant Liu Kang's army, Sonya dies during the mission. And then Kronika shows up and undoes the damage to Liu Kang's fortress, rendering Sonya's sacrifice a senseless one.
  • Mother 3: The game starts off by introducing you to the protagonist and his family (Sans father, who's still at home), who are enjoying a peaceful day at their grandpa's house. By the end of the first chapter, his mother is dead, his home is on fire, the woodland creatures have been turned into bizarre half-robots, and his brother has gone missing.
  • Ni no Kuni starts with the main character's mother having a heart attack and dying after saving him from drowning.
  • Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom opens with the main character being caught in an explosion before being transported to Ding Dong Dell, and the king's father has been killed in a coup by the main villain. The entire first chapter of the game firmly establishes the stakes and how it will be an uphill battle to reclaim the throne and restore peace to the kingdom.
  • NieR. The prologue takes place in the snowy ruins of an abandoned city. Nier is forced to make a Deal with the Devil to protect his sister/daughter Yonah from the Shades that are hunting them. Only after driving them off does Nier realize that Yonah also tried to make the deal to help him — but in her case it failed and she is now slowly dying. The prologue ends with Nier desperately screaming for someone, anyone, to help. A plea that is only meet with silence.
  • NieR: Automata opens with YoRHa launching a raid on a base of machine lifeforms that ends with 2B and 9S heavily damaged, surrounded by giant murder machines, and left with no choice but to self-destruct to halt their advance. Thank goodness for memory backup and spare bodies!
  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle opens with Travis's best friend, Bishop, being murdered by hitmen after he rejoins the ranking battles. The following morning, the assassins deliver Bishop's severed head to Travis's motel room.
  • No More Heroes III opens with Travis Touchdown, Shinobu Jacobs and Bad Girl fending off the advance force of an alien invasion with relative ease. Things don't go south until after Travis gets inducted as Rank 10 of the Galactic Superhero Rankings, as the aliens' leader FU decides to pay him a visit at the No More Heroes motel. He proceeds to beat up Travis, maim Shinobu and kill Badman, with Bad Girl traumatised by the experience when she arrives too late. This leaves with Travis as the only one in a position to stop the aliens for a significant portion of the game.
  • Ori and the Blind Forest begins with Ori being torn from the Spirit Tree by a great storm, whereupon he/she/it is adopted by the bear-like Naru. While attempting to call back Ori with its light, the Tree accidentally kills the young of the dark bird Kuro, driving her into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in which she abducts Sein, the light and eyes of the Spirit Tree, plunging Nibel into darkness and decay. Naru's fruit supply runs out, and she is unable to reach the higher-hanging fruit, resulting in her dying of starvation and Ori having to set out into the forest on their own, where they themselves collapse from exhaustion and starvation before being revived by the Tree's residual power, commencing their quest to restore the light to Nibel.
  • The Outer Worlds opens with the Hope, a colonist ship, left adrift on the outer reaches of the Halcyon system, with the Halcyon Holdings Board of Directors writing the ship and its passengers off as a loss and being none to eager to try to save them. Enter Dr. Phineas Welles, an outlaw trying to save the people aboard the Hope in defiance of the Board's will. With the Board's forces bearing down on him, Welles only has enough time and resources to revive one of the colonists in cryostasis — you — before fleeing.
  • Path of Exile: You are a prisoner who has been exiled to a prison continent called Wraeclast (An Expy for Australia's prison continent history.). You and another prisoner are the only exiles from your ship who survived being dumped on the shore, and he promptly gets eaten by a zombie.
  • Persona 5 has a double example: the game starts out In Medias Res with the hero committing a heist in a casino, only for it to go wrong and ending up being taken in custody by the police, who torture you for information and inform you that one of your allies betrayed you. The game then flashes back to the proper beginning of the story, where we see the hero try to rescue a woman being assaulted by a drunk man, only for him to turn this around and accuse our protagonist of assaulting HIM, leading to him being arrested, disowned by his family, forced to move to Tokyo and go to a school where everyone thinks you're an untrustworthy criminal.
  • Phantasy Star I: Meet Alis Landale! Alis is having a very bad day, because her big brother, Nero, was shot in the streets by the tyrannical King Lassic's robot cops! Now, Alis is out for revenge!
  • Phantom Brave opens with Ash, Haze and Jasmine being brutally murdered by a monster. Only Ash manages to come back as a Phantom, and looks after their daughter, Marona. She was five when they died. Due to her powers, she's subjected to constant All of the Other Reindeer treatment, even from the Ungrateful Bastards hiring her to do jobs for them, with the implication they hire her just to stiff her on the payments!
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The first case opens with the players seeing Cindy Stone being killed by the Thinker statue. And right at the beginning of the second chapter, his mentor Mia is murdered and he has to take the stand alone. And he has to defend Mia's sister Maya, mistakenly accused of being the culprit.
  • Project Zomboid starts off the tutorial with your things getting stolen, no food, a wife with a broken leg, and zombies everywhere.
  • Radiant Silvergun's first level takes place a year after an artifact called the Stone-Like destroys all life on Earth, which is depicted in an introductory cutscene in the console ports' Saturn/Story mode. The protagonists happened to jump away from Earth before they got caught up in the kill radius, but had to return due to running short on survival supplies.
  • Rebel Galaxy Outlaw: Juno Markev's husband has been murdered, the killer almost kills her too, her ship is totaled (leaving her with only a run-down garbage scow), and she has no credits.
  • Red Faction: Guerrilla: Alec Mason arrives on Mars to work alongside his brother, Dan, and quickly learns that Mars is a Crapsack World where the Earth Defense Fleet lords over the miners with an iron fist. Not long after arriving, Dan is killed by the EDF due to his connection to the Red Faction, and Alec becomes a wanted man by association, leading to him joining the Red Faction.
  • In Rayman 2: The Great Escape, Rayman and his world have been captured and enslaved by the Robo-Pirates.
  • Resident Evil dabbles in this for some of its games:
    • Resident Evil: S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team goes to investigate what happened to Bravo Team after they go silent investigating Arklay Manor. Unfortunately, they get attacked by zombified dogs, one of the team members runs off in fear, and another is killed.
    • Resident Evil 2: Leon Kennedy comes to Raccoon City to start his job as a police officer, and Claire Redfield has come in search of her brother, Chris. Unfortunately, when they arrive in Raccoon City, they find it overrun by the walking dead.
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis: Jill Valentine gets caught up in the chaos in Raccoon City, and if that wasn't bad enough, she has Nemesis breathing down her neck. The remake doubles down by starting off with a Nightmare Sequence where the shell-shocked Jill dreams of becoming a zombie.
  • Resistance 2 begins with the destruction of an U.S. Army base in Iceland, only to get worse by each level. Resistance 3 also begins with your hometown getting wiped out.
  • Distant Prologue of Reunion (1994). Day of the Jackboot turns Utopia into a Crapsack World. You play for the colony of escaped loyalists about to reconquer Earth 300 years later.
  • Saints Row:
    • Saints Row 2 starts off on a positive note, with the main character of the previous game turning out to be alive. Then you find out they've been in a coma for 5 years in a high-security prison's medical wing. Things only get worse from there, as you discover that the plan to destroy the Row in the name of urban renewal and gentrification that was seemingly thwarted at the end of the last game was instead pulled off by Ultor, and the Saints have collapsed — and in their absence, three gangs even worse than the original set have sprung up to take their place. Finally, it becomes quickly obvious in this game that Ultor is the same one from Red Faction — they're just getting started, and they're already easily worse than all the gangs from both games combined. So... yeah. The game really doesn't start off cheerfully.
    • At the beginning of Saints Row: The Third, Johnny Gat (the only remaining member of the original Saints besides you) is killed ensuring your escape from the Syndicate. You land in an unfamiliar town with little weapons, little money, surrounded by a hostile crime syndicate and only a single safe haven. You know the place is supposed to be bad when Shaundi describes it as 'Bangkok's abusive father'. Bizarrely, this is quickly inverted; most of Act 1 is spent getting a very strong foothold in the city, and you get an extensive armoury by the end of the second mission.
    • Saints Row IV starts on an upbeat note, with the Boss taking down a terrorist cell trying to nuke America and getting so popular as a result that they become President of the United States. Then Zinyak and his goons come and abduct you and your homies. You escape from Zinyak's custody, only for Earth to get blown to space dust not long after.
    • Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell starts with the Boss getting Dragged Off to Hell, forcing Johnny Gat and Kinzie to mount a rescue in the Underworld.
  • Sands of Destruction opens with you controlling Naja, a Half-Human Hybrid who's the unfortunate subject of much Half-Breed Discrimination. He defends a town against Morte, a known terrorist who intends to end the world, but this does little to raise his standing in the eyes of his fellows. Control then switches to The Hero Kyrie just in time for his Destruct powers to be activated, killing the kindly beastlord Ursa Rex and leveling Kyrie's hometown of Barni Village. Kyrie is devastated, naturally, and while he's deep in denial about his role in the destruction, he's too shocked to offer any resistance as he's dragged off to jail. Kyrie is then broken out of jail by Morte, who insists he's going to help her end the world.
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: Within thirty minutes of booting up the game, the world ends and you summarily get a demon bug shoved down your throat.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse starts with a few tutorial quests, and then throws you into a Hopeless Boss Fight, with two of your higher-ups getting murdered in the process before you suffer a bloody and humiliating defeat while your childhood friend Asahi watches helplessly in horror. Fortunately, Dagda gives you a second chance at life, at the cost of becoming his personal Person of Mass Destruction.
  • At the beginning of Skylanders: SuperChargers, Kaos has successfully taken over Skylands and most of the game is you liberating it.
  • Sniper Elite III: The opening level, "Siege of Tobruk": Despite Karl Fairburne killing dozens of German troops and disabling their artillery overlooking the Libyan port city, it still falls when German reinforcements in the form of Panzer IIIs and Stuka dive bombers arrive. And he's also the Sole Survivor of the British garrison stationed there, as the other soldiers he had been fighting with only minutes before were either killed in action or were captured when the city fell. This is also a Foregone Conclusion, since the city historically did fall around the time of the story's first level.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Shadow the Hedgehog: Shadow is struggling with amnesia and haunted by visions of a young girl dying. And then the Black Arms appear and lay siege to Westopolis.
    • Sonic Unleashed kicks off with Eggman draining Super Sonic of his energy and using it to firing a gigantic laser at the Earth resulting in awakening an Eldritch Abomination and splitting the Earth into several pieces.
    • Sonic Generations begins with Classic Sonic romping through Green Hill, only to run into the Time Eater, who then crashes Modern Sonic's birthday party and sucks all the guests into a limbo.
    • Sonic Forces: Sonic goes to confront Eggman, only to face off with the mad scientist's new ally: Infinite, who beats Sonic effortlessly. Sonic is captured, and Eggman goes on to conquer 99.9% of the world.
  • Soulcalibur VI opens with a retelling of the events between Soul Edge and Soulcalibur: Siegfried finds Soul Edge, takes the cursed sword in his hand, and is instantly transformed into Nightmare, who unleashes the Evil Seed across Europe and Asia. The first chapter of the game sees Kilik's fellow Ling-Sheng Su monks, including his surrogate sister Xianglian, fall under the influence of the Evil Seed.
  • Star Control 2 starts with your arrival at Earth, where you learn that the Alliance of Free Stars lost the war to the Ur-Quan Hierarchy and that Earth has been enslaved by the Ur-Quan.
  • StarCraft: Brood Wars picks up where the first left off, the Overmind is dead but the Zerg are running rampant across Aiur forcing the remaining Protoss to escape their Homeworld.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Paper Mario: What better way to open than being defeated by Bowser as you are trying to do the usual thing?
    • The intro to Super Mario Galaxy: Bowser bombards Toad Town with meteors and lifts Peach's Castle into space, and Mario gets blown away by Kamek when he tries to follow.
    • In the beginning of Super Mario Odyssey, Bowser defeats Mario for the second time and escapes with Peach, also destroying Mario's hat in the process.
  • At the start of Third Super Robot Wars Z: Tengoku-hen, Sidereal invades the Blue Earth and conquers most of it. They proceed to establish the "Gaia Empire".
  • Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Gaiden had a 'preview' contained in the bonus section of Super Robot Wars Original Generations, which detailed the 'first arc' of the game. It adapts the 3-episode OVA, but it ends with a downer conclusion: Instead of successfully saving Lamia, she was instead shot down and presumed KIA, and then it turns out that the Big Bad of Super Robot Wars Reversal was still at large and blatantly manipulating Lamia's killer (and Raul has yet to find his missing, presumed dead sister Fiona). To make matter worse, a bunch of fight-happy race, the Shura, decided to make its appearance just at this moment and start their invasion to Earth, and one of them has been seen and kidnapping the little sister of your newest, promising Super Robot pilot Kouta Azuma, who's understandably pissed. All of these while the heroes' morale were in an all time low due to losing Lamia, and Kyosuke was in a real deep Heroic BSoD that may be dangerous for the whole world, if his Alternate Universe self is to be trusted. And that's it for the preview, Cliffhanger. It gets much better once the actual game rolls out, but that was one of the lowest points the heroes could ever reach to start a story, for an overly idealistic series.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's World of Light mode opens with the new enemy Galeem instantly destroying every fighter in the game as well as the rest of the universe, with Kirby as the Sole Survivor.
  • Tekken 8 opens with Jin slugging it out with his Archnemesis Dad Kazuya in the hopes of stopping him...and getting completely overpowered and blasted into the ocean. As Jin's fate is left in question, Kazuya proceeds to raze the city he was fighting in, then announce a new King of Iron Fist Tournament, with the promise of not only death for the losers, but the nations the losers represent being subsequently annihalated.
  • No matter which protagonist you choose in Trials of Mana, they have a rough time of things at first:
    • Duran sees his fellow soldiers defeated by a powerful magician, and then gets defeated himself, leaving him the only survivor of the attack. To add insult to his injury, that magician even insults the king in front of him. After his humiliation, he spends most of his time at a bar for a short while.
    • Angela was chosen by her mother to be sacrificed due to her lack of prowess, seeing her as a failure of a magician. It is only when faced with certain death that her magical powers finally manifest, but she is now a wanted fugitive in her homeland.
    • Kevin was attacked by his best friend and pet Karl, and his werewolf blood caused him to kill Karl. Then he learns that it was all a setup by his father, the Beast King, to force him to awaken as a beastman.
    • Charlotte left the safety of her home because she wanted to look after Heath, only to find him being kidnapped by Goremand. Even worse, he exposed himself and went down protecting her, so she feels responsible.
    • Hawkeye had to fight his brainwashed friend Eagle, who was then killed by Belladonna. He was framed for Eagle's death and the Thieves Guild wants him dead. And Belladonna tells him that he cannot reveal the truth to anyone, lest a cursed necklace kill his friend Jessica.
    • Riesz sees her kingdom being infiltrated by the Nevarl Thieves Guild, has to watch her father die, and is forced to flee. She also learns that her younger brother was kidnapped.
  • TimeShift begins with the protagonist warping back to an alternate 1939 where the villain has set up a fascist regime and is annihilating the remainder of the local resistance. The first level ends with the resistance's leaders being blown away, prompting the protagonist's time suit to look for an alternate insertion point and warp him back to an earlier portion of the timeline, setting up the rest of the plot.
  • Unicorn Overlord begins with the kingdom of Cornia under assault from Valmore, a traitorous knight of the crown who has his sights set on reviving the long-dormant Zenoiran Empire. When Cornia falls and its queen dies, the other nations of Fevrith fall under Zenoiran control in the ensuing decade, with only small pockets of resistance standing against Valmore's (who has since renamed himself Galerius) massive army. Before her death, Ilenia leaves behind a ray of hope — her son, Alain, who takes up the task of leading La Résistance against the Empire and freeing the conquered lands from its influence.
  • Unreal Tournament III starts with the main protagonists' hometown being raided and destroyed by a Horde of Alien Locusts. The Player Character even got obliterated before being taken to a private Izanagi hospital in order to be rebuilt.
  • Valkyrie Profile begins with two kids barely into their teens running away to avoid being sold into slavery, only for them to wander into a field of poisonous flowers and for the girl to die while the boy mourns. This sets the stage for the game nicely, as it's based around recruiting the spirits of people who have died in tragic circumstances.
  • Viewtiful Joe 2, right off the heels of the first game's ending, begins with GEDOW taking over Movieland and remodeling it into Movieworld. Captain Blue is transformed into one of the seven Rainbow Oscars (artifacts containing the essence of a movie's happy ending) that the Black Emperor is trying to collect. Joe and Silvia briefly lose their Henshin powers and are deposited in a prehistoric jungle. Joe, despite being Genre Savvy (or perhaps because he's Genre Savvy), takes this all in stride.
  • Warriors Orochi 3 starts with every main character on the side of humanity dead with the exception of the three you start with, and things are not looking good for them.
  • Wattam begins with an explanation that long ago, the world was happy and everything in it existed until one fateful day when everything was lost. Then the game opens with Mayor crying and lamenting how alone he is. Things get better extremely fast.
  • Wolfenstein:
    • Wolfenstein: The New Order begins with a particularly gut-wrenching one — it's 1948, the Third Reich has become a technological superpower, and the Allies are losing horribly. The prologue is set during a last-ditch Allied mission to hit Deathshead's compound and assassinate him - failure is not an option, as it would mean the complete loss of Europe to the Nazis. Guess what happens?
    • Wolfenstein: The Old Blood opens with Blazkowicz infiltrating the eponymous castle to get intel that could turn the tide of the war back in the Allies' favor. For his trouble, he gets captured and imprisoned.
    • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus opens with your player character being forced with a Shoot the Dog choice in a flashback; and the opening mission involves the same character in the present having to fight their way out of the infirmary as it's being invaded by the soldiers of the Third Reich. While he manages to help the other members of La Résistance escape, the group's leader, a close friend of BJ, is killed.
  • World in Conflict starts with the USSR staging a surprise invasion of the American West Coast.
  • X-Universe:
  • XCOM:
    • The Bureau: XCOM Declassified starts with a full-scale attack by the Outsiders on the Groom Range base. At the end of the level, the base is completely destroyed, including the Elerium mine under it, with only 6 survivors.
    • The tutorial for XCOM: Enemy Unknown has 3/4 of your squad wiped out. There's nothing you can do about it; the events are scripted. Of course, if you skip the tutorial, then the result of the mission is entirely up to you.
    • XCOM 2 reveals that (due to the game taking place in an Alternate Timeline) the events of the previous game are actually an illusion given to the Commander in a Lotus-Eater Machine after XCOM suffered a devastating Curb-Stomp Battle and Earth was quickly conquered by the aliens. And they've been using you as a tactical computer to help deal with the stragglers too. The tutorial begins with the resistance liberating the Commander, but you will lose half of your squad in so doing.
  • Xeno:
    • In Xenogears, Fei's hometown Lahan is caught in the crossfire between two armies using Gears, setting it aflame. And then Fei falls into the cockpit of the prototype Gear both sides are fighting over and accidentally nukes what's left of it after having a mental breakdown over the death of his friend.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 1 starts with humanity's best chance at survival being crippled, and ends its first chapter with Shulk's closest friend dead.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles X: Earth is caught in the crossfire between two warring alien armies and destroyed. One of the ships that escaped the planet's destruction is chased down by one of the alien armies and forced to crash-land on a nearby planet.
  • Every game in the Yomawari series begins with some sort of bad thing befalling the main characters. Yomawari: Night Alone begins with the protagonist's dog getting run over by a truck. Yomawari: Midnight Shadows begins with Yui burying one of her dogs and committing suicide. Yomawari: Lost in the Dark begins with Yuzu getting bullied at school and jumping off the roof.
  • Zork Nemesis Unlike past, relatively jovial games, the intro cutscene starts off with a video of a man killing himself, followed by a voiceover narration about how sometimes a single act can be so evil it can curse the world, narrated by a dead person.

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