End Of An Age / Video Games

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• The backstory of Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura has both magic and technology being far more powerful 2000 years ago, in the time called the Age of Legends. In the present, Arcanum is undergoing an industrial revolution which is clashing with its history that was largely ruled by magic over the millennia. The two being fundamentally incompatible isn't helping matters.
• Asura's Wrath has the final ending via DLC be the end of an era for the Shinkoku race.
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag features the end of The Golden Age of Piracy as a major part of the story, and Edward's Character Arc. As the events of the game progress, Edward witnesses as each of his fellow pirate captains die off one by one, and their "pirate republic" in Nassau is overtaken by the British Navy, until Edward is the only one left, driving him to abandon the pirate lifestyle for the Assassin Order. This bittersweet line of dialogue in the game's last scene sums it up quite well:
  Jenny: [excited] Do you think we'll see any pirates?
  Edward: [sadly] No... There's not much chance of that anymore.
  • It's also the last time (at least to date) that players get to directly play through Desmond Miles's genetic memory - listening to Desmond's last messages through the Abstergo files is almost like him speaking to the player as much as his father.
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum sees the titular mental institute destroyed during the events of the game and part of the backstory involved a fire at Blackgate forcing its inmates to be housed in Arkham.
  • Batman: Arkham City sees a large section of Gotham, including Crime Alley, the Iceberg Lounge, and Harvey Dent's old campaign office, get walled off and become a prison to replace Arkham and Blackgate. Additionally, the game ends with the death of the Joker.
  • The storyline of Batman: Arkham Knight deals with this, as it opens with the line "This is how it happened. This... is how the Batman died." Batman himself recognizes this, as a major part of the end of the Riddler and Penguin side-quests is Batman making it clear that this will be the last time he'll see Catwoman and Nightwing, respectively, even if you complete those sidequests before the finale of the main plot, which ends with his identity as Bruce Wayne outed to the world, and Wayne Manor blowing up, seemingly with Bruce and Alfred in it. It can also be considered the end of much of Batman's Rogues Gallery as well, what with the villains having depleted their resources in hiring the Arkham Knight and preparing his army.
    • The game's DLCs hammer the point home further by ending the stories of much of the villains. Riddler, Penguin, Two-Face, and Black Mask all make attempts to rise again, only to be respectively foiled by Catwoman, Nightwing, Robin (with Oracle's help), and Red Hood (in the latter case, Black Mask ends up dead). "In From The Cold" puts an end to Mr. Freeze, with Nora being released from cryogenic stasis and convincing her husband Victor to give up his criminal ways so they can spend their final days together peacefully. In "Shadow War", if the player chooses to destroy Ra's Al Ghul's Lazarus machine, Batman takes Ra's into custody at GCPD to spend his final days and finally die peacefully.
• The storyline of Chrono Trigger features this. A long time ago, there was the Kingdom of Zeal, inhabited by people with incredible knowledge and powers, and all of this is absent in all subsequent epochs.
  • Being time travelers, your Characters are around to see why. Specifically, it gets knocked out of the sky by Lavos, and the survivors ultimately reform into different kingdoms.
• In Dark Souls, the Age of Flame was brought about by the Lord Soul's triumph over the dragons, and is currently fading into nothingness. The player's mission, eventually, is to Link the First Flame and allow the age to continue. If the serpent Kaathe is to be believed, this is to the detriment of mankind as a whole, as Lord Gwyn's torturous and futile persistence as the fuel of the flame is delaying the Age of Dark, which might be mankind's golden age, to the benefit of the gods. Upon defeating Gwyn, the player may choose to take his place and prolong the Flame for a while longer or begin the Age of Dark.
  • Even more prevalent in Dark Souls III, which takes place millenia later, near the very end of the Age of Fire. The Age has clearly been stretched past its breaking point, with even many of the scant traces of life evident in the first game being gone. Its world is one very softly and very quickly fading away. In the end, you have the choice to either futilely link the First Flame again, which burns ever softer regardless, or to intentionally snuff it out, bringing an end to the unnatural cycle of linking the Flame and allowing Dark to finally settle.
    • The game even offers two options for how the age of dark comes. Either you usurp the fire and rule the age of dark as a dark lord, letting the new age come on your terms, or you summon the Fire Keeper and you sit with her while the fire slowly goes out, leaving nothing but two people taking comfort in each other.
  • Exacerbated even further in Dark Souls III's last DLC, The Ringed City, which takes place far in the future, at the end of all things. Even the mighty ruined kingdoms from the previous games are seen reduced to rubble and thrown together, as the world meets its end.
• Devil May Cry 5: This game marks the end of Dante and Vergil's story, or, at least, the focus on their story. It reveals the complete story of their origins, including the moment when their mother died and Vergil's Start of Darkness. The prologue sees Dante's signature sword, the Rebellion, destroyed by Urizen. The Devil Sword Sparda, the major artifact of the series, meets its end, too, absorbed by Dante along with the remains of the Rebellion, being reborn as the Devil Sword Dante. The ending sees Dante and Vergil concluding their series-long feud and finally rekindling their bond as brothers. It also marks the end of Vergil's run as an antagonist, as he finally comes to terms with his human side and ends his aggression towards humanity. At the same time, it ends Dante's run as the series' major protagonist, with Dante Passing the Torch to Nero as he and Vergil descend into the underworld to destroy the Qliphoth tree, seemingly sealing themselves in the demon world forever. A few weeks after this event, Morrison reveals that Dante passed on ownership of his Devil May Cry branch to him, with Lady and Trish now working for him, making the transition official.
• In the trailer for Dragon Age II, Flemeth mentions that those who face destiny head on and seize control of it are the ones who change the world forever. By the end of the game, Hawke's personal rise to power and the choices he/she makes do change the status quo. For better or for worse, the uneasy stalemate between the Mages and the Templars has been shattered by Hawke's actions, and the world stands on the edge of ruin.
• Dwarf Fortress starts with a golden age of legends, which gradually gets worse as great civilizations are destroyed by such disasters as carp, kamikaze elves, overpopulation of cats, nobles,...
  • Development marches on — as early as .14, it takes the efforts of Fortresses and Adventurers to go from Age of Myth to Age of Legends, and then to Age of Heroes, an effort which involves slaying the humongous rampaging beasts. v.21 introduced a class of Night Beasts to be slain before all fantastical creatures could be considered extinct.
• Jin's story mode in Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8 is this for the Three Kingdoms period of China. It's set the farthest in the series timeline, when the old guard of all three kingdoms are dead, and the Sima clan, sick and tired of the continuing warring between the imbeciles left behind, decide to seize control of Wei and put an end to the fighting themselves. While the series has only gotten as far as the surrender of Shu (with Wu still holding out,) historically the Sima clan and the Jin dynasty they create does ultimately win out in the end... until, after decades of peace, they too split into fragments.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Morrowind marks the end of the way of life for the Dunmer (Dark Elf) people as it had been for the previous 4000 years. By the end of the main quest and the Tribunal expansion, the Tribunal (a trio of ascended Dunmeri Physical Gods) have lost their power and two are dead. As later works reveal, events (both natural and supernatural) over the following centuries devastate the Dunmer people, making them the heaviest-suffering race during the 4th Era.
  • Oblivion, though it ends on a somewhat hopeful note, marks the end of the 500 year-old Septim Dynasty and with it, the 3rd Era of Tamriellic history. As later works reveal, the 4th Era is one of extreme strife and turmoil compared to the relative peace of the 3rd Era.
  • Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC offers a smaller-scale example. On Solstheim, there is only one silt strider remaining. Its caretaker explains that when Red Mountain exploded, almost all of them were wiped out. Now, they are extremely rare and the one the player encounters is one that happened to be discovered by chance, protected in a cave and is now dying of old age. For players used to Morrowind and the almost ubiquitous use of silt striders as a form of transportation, this can come as a huge shock.
• Europa Universalis takes place at the end of the Middle Ages and European Feudalism, with many in game events hammering this point in. Knights and castles slowly lose relevance as Europe enters the Renaissance and the Americas are discovered. This is directly referenced in the Flavor Text for "The Last Jousting Tournament'."
  "We can feel it in the wind. Soon our equestrian elite will be nothing more than a dream remembered, as the chivalrous tradition dies out before the onslaught of modernity. The world is changing, but for now, for one last time: Let the Knights of X ride!"
  • This is especially poignant if you import a save from Crusader Kings - slowly, you'll see the cavalry that dominated combat in that game gradually fall behind infantry, with both eventually being done in by cannons. It also makes the Flavor Text above even more meaningful, as hosting a Grand Tourney was a fairly rewarding decision for players in that game.
• The collapse of EVE Online's titular Eve Gate, a reinforcing mechanism to a naturally occurring wormhole between two galaxies, caused one in the game's backstory. It has been at least 10000 years since then, and the various empires formed from the colonists stranded in New Eden are only now starting to get back up to tech levels remotely approaching what they had before. ^note To put this in perspective: manufacturing military starships in a few hours, casual FTL, universally-compatible modular starship equipment, and weapons systems capable of causing planetary mass extinction events at a whim are considered Tech Level I. Variants of the above constructed with exotic minerals and hyper-specialized components are considered Tech Level II. Fully modular, rapidly-reconfigurable starships based on the technology of several long-dead but highly advanced human civilizations are Tech Level III. Pre-collapse Terran technology is reckoned to be Tech Level X.
• Evolution: The World of Sacred Device as set in a world where humanity was only just reaching modern-day standards however there were ruins left behind with powerful artifacts remaining. A couple of the characters wield said devices as weapons.
  • The sequel elaborates. And by elaborates, we mean reveals that Linear is one half of the instruments that wiped the previous civilization out, and the other half has just convinced her to come along to do it all over again. The Power of Love prevents this.
• Fable: The Journey marks the end of the Heroic bloodlines and with them the Age of Heroes. However, Gabriel's victory over the Corrupter heralds the dawn of a new age where heroes are not born, but made.
• Fallout: New Vegas shows that the world of Fallout (at least in the west coast) is no longer a radioactive Scavenger World, but starting to rebuild itself into a new civilization.
  • Arcade Gannon's companion quest takes this in a different direction. It shows the Enclave Remnants, a retirement-age squad of former Enclave soldiers. The Enclave were the Big Bad of Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, and were, quoth Arcade, "a Fascist paramilitary organization." They were also the descendants of the pre-war United States government and elites, and considered themselves the last vestige of real America. Orion Moreno tells the story of the evacuation of Navarro, the last Enclave base, a few years after the destruction of the main off-shore base that ends Fallout 2, saying, "Kiss America goodbye, boys and girls." And it's true; the Enclave are the last organization that existed before the nuclear war, even if they did so in secret.
  • This also applies to the Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel, and possibly the entire west coast Brotherhood by proxy. The same group that helped you destroy the Master in the first game, stop the Enclave in the second, and preserved a lot of nifty weapons technology gets nuked if half the factions get their way, and the other two aren't particularly keen on preserving the shrunken remnant hiding in a pre-war bunker, either. It's mostly their own fault, but that doesn't make it any less difficult for most players.
• Nasuverse: In the Age of Gods, True Magic, Miracles, and Mystery were as plentiful as the air we breathe. Over the course of many millennia however, The rising influence of the Human Order and the various defeats handed to them by Sefar, Gilgamesh's rebellion against gods, and the death of King Solomon led to the complete decline of the Age of Gods, and gave rise to the Age of Man. This also has the side effect of Mystery and True Magic declining over the generations, due to the many scientific and technological advancements of humanity weakening the Mystery inherent in many forms of True Magic to near nothing.
  • Fate/stay night shows this, as the power behind her basic spells used by the servant Caster (who lived in the Age of Gods from the Ancient Greek legends) would take a modern-day magi around a month of to accomplish, and her multi-word spells are seen as bordering True Magic. She casts in one word spells that would take an excellent magus around a full minute of casting. Even the two known True Magicians in the setting, Kishua Zelretch Schweinorg and Aoko Aozaki, would not be capable of defeating Caster in a Wizard Duel.
• Several of the Final Fantasy games:
  • Final Fantasy VI ends with the death of the last Espers and the fading of magic... not to mention the entire world being a scarred ruin of what it used to be, although that happened at the game's halfway point.
  • Final Fantasy X ends with the end of the thousand-year oppression of Sin. While on the whole this was a very good thing, as people didn't have to worry about their towns being wiped out if they exhibited too much technological advancement (or sometimes just at random), the Fayth had to sacrifice themselves to allow this to happen, meaning the powerful magic of summoning was lost forever.
  • Final Fantasy XII saw the end of the rule of its so-called "gods" Occuria. This left mankind able to determine their destiny from now on. Strangely enough, it was the goal of the Big Bad all along, and he succeeded.
  • Final Fantasy XIII sees the end of the fal'Cie, who had ruled over Cocoon for a very long time. Like the above examples, this too left humanity free from supernatural forces. While it should have meant the end of magic since only l'Cie could cast magic, the sequel, Final Fantasy XIII-2 may prove this to not be the case.
    • XIII-2 results in the destruction of Pulse.
  • The original version of Final Fantasy XIV ended very much with a bang, as Bahamut levied its powers against the Eorzean civilizations, resulting in the end of the Sixth Astral Era and the beginning of the Seventh Umbral Era. The relaunch, A Realm Reborn, had a more hopeful take on this: with the 2.0 story ending with the defeat of the Garlean Empire's XIVth Legion, the leaders of the Eorzean city-states declare that the Seventh Umbral Era is over and the world is henceforth entering the Seventh Astral Era.
    • Endwalker is this for both the plot and on a meta-level; it concludes the 10 year Ascian plotline started back in Legacy/1.0 and marks the start of a whole new story.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, the end of game has the death of Noctis, ending the Lucis line. And also, the deaths of Luna and Ravus, ending the line of the Oracles and the House of Fleuret, meaning the ability to speak to the gods is gone forever.
• The end of Chapter 5 in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War is mourned as such, as the 111-year-long reprieve from The Empire is ended with the deaths of the last nobles preventing its return... Most of whom Sigurd got killed, whether through killing them himself (because they were out for blood) or by inspiring them to acts of heroism that didn't end well. Houses Dozel, Freege, and Jungby are left to ill-taught or half-taught fools without an ounce of moral integrity, Houses Chalphy and Edda are put down, and the countries surrounding Grannvale are completely spent. It's possible for Seliph to at least redraw the borders to what they once were, but he's just as likely to end up as the only noble left in Jugdral, left to try to be The Benevolent Emperor of an entire continent. It also marks the end of the first generation of the game- all of Sigurd’s army is wiped out by Alvis, who used him as part of his plan to unify the contents.
• By the end of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fódlan will be united at the cost of two major countries and even possibly the main religious organization ceasing to exist. Members on your side will express remorse at wiping away centuries of history after annexing an enemy country, especially those in the Leicester Alliance. Leicester in particular had no real stake in the war and simply only wanted to survive from being swallowed or destroyed by either Faerghus or Adrestia.
• In God of War III, Kratos finally and personally ends the reign of the Greek pantheon and Greece as a setting.
  • God of War Ragnarök: Kratos and his army kill Odin and destroy Asgard itself - but rather than purge the remaining Asgardians, the combined forces choose to accept their surrender and work together to rebuild, indicating that the age of constant grudges in Scandanavia is finally over.
• The Golden Sun series has this, done on purpose by mankind. The two major options are a world brimming full of magical alchemy but with the potential of evil people going on a dictator spree, or cutting off the source of alchemy which results in the world slowly dying over the course of millennia.
• This seems to be a running theme in Grand Theft Auto IV and one of its sidestories. Most of Niko Bellic's employers are either dead or in prison by the end of the game, and he is told repeatedly that with the feds closing in, organized crime as they know it is on its last legs. "The Lost and Damned" sees the dissolution of the Lost MC, and hardcore, all-American biker gangs in general.
• Agent 47 puts an end to the ICA in Hitman 3, his employers since the very first game. The mission in which he does this is appropriately named "End of an Era".
• At the end of The Jedi Masters, the death of or victory by the Greater-Scope Villain of the KOTOR series ends the KOTOR era. If the Big Bad wins, the galaxy is consumed or conquered by the D'arth Syyth. Otherwise, the death of the Big Bad and Freedon Nadd's ghost broke the Sith so thoroughly that they will not be able to rise again for a long time.
• The King of Fighters 2000 has a more meta example. Being the last game from the original SNK team before the company's bankruptcy, they ended it by destroying South Town, one of the most long-standing and important locations in the entire SNK Verse, to symbolize the end of the old guard. Once said old guard tried to regain control of their old IPs, they made a show of South Town being rebuilt in King of Fighters 2003, to symbolize the company slowly coming back from the ashes.
• Subverted in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, in that Kain's empire is a Golden Age from a vampire's perspective. Kain later invokes this word for word when his empire has collapsed.
• In Legend of Legaia, you've defeated the Big Bad, freed the world from the clutches of the Mist, and brought peace to Legaia. However, the Seru-kai is dead, your Ra-Seru have given their lives to save Rim Elm, and according to Dr. Usha, most Seru will die off in the next year, possibly bringing Legaia back to the stone age. But human spirit is strong and there is hope with people to follow the heroes and carry out Tieg's will.
• Behind the cheery cartoony graphics, this was the theme of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker — the end of the era of the war between Hyrule and Ganondorf, with both of them in the end lying crumbling and forgotten, slowly eroding to nothing by the unending force of the waves, all their magic departed and memory forgotten.
• In Lunar: The Silver Star, it is declared at the game's finale that the age of magic has ended and shall be replaced with an era of technological advancement. Make way for Steampunk! The sequel reveals that a thousand years later magic is still around, but fewer people can use it and it has to coexist with advanced technology instead of being the dominant power in the world.
• Mass Effect 3 has this trope connected with Dawn of an Era. The game consists of Shepard cleaning house and tying up all kinds of galactic-scale loose ends in preparation for the final battle against the civilization destroying Reapers. It's possible to cure the thousand-year Depopulation Bomb inflicted on the krogan, and the centuries-long animosity between the quarians and the geth will come to a head one way or another. The endings of the game either result in Shepard taking control over the Reapers, him/her destroying the Reapers or causing organic and synthetic live to merge together. Two of the three endings result in the Reapers turning into some sort of benevolent guardians, but the overall result is that the galaxy is now free of the Reaper threat, allowing civilizations to flourish without being destroyed after reaching a certain point in their development.
• The final two games of the Mega Man Zero series are this for both the Zero and Mega Man X series. Zero 3 ends with the deaths of the Four Guardians and X's spirit finally fading out of existence, bringing an end to X's legacy, while Zero destroys his original body to stop Omega. Zero 4 ends with Zero pulling his final Heroic Sacrifice to defeat Dr. Weil and save Area Zero, finally bringing an end to the centuries-long conflict between humans and reploids. Though Mega Man ZX brought back all of these characters in the form of Biometal, they're clearly not the same as they used to be, and their power is mainly used by others instead of being used for themselves.
• Occasionally discussed throughout the Metal Gear series, with characters predicting the end of the "age of heroes" as warfare becomes increasingly mechanized and a bred-for-war Super-Soldier like Snake starts to become a thing of the past in favor of elevating regular soldiers to his level; the battlefields in Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Rising barely even resemble one another despite being set only four years apart, with tanks and nanomachine-boosted foot soldiers being taken over for entirely by AI-controlled mecha and cyborgs.
• The world of Enroth, the setting of quite a few of the Might and Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic games, is destroyed in the intro to the fourth Heroes game when two incredibly powerful swords collide, an event that is built up throughout the third game and its expansions. The theme of the fourth game is rebuilding and rising from the ashes with each campaign revolving around attempts to build new lives on a different and unfamiliar world. This had a bit of real-life subtext, since Heroes IV and its expansions would be the last games 3DO produced before it went under and the franchise was bought by Ubisoft.
• Might and Magic 7 reveals that the Silence mentioned throughout this and the previous game was exactly this, if you complete the "good" path.
  • Might & Magic 6 and 8 make it clear that a) this was closer to a full-blown After the End, although with some added disasters thrown in to help it to that state, and b) this happened to many, many more worlds than just this one.
• Odin Sphere: This trope takes full effect big time as the main timeline is doomed to occur in the Ragnarok of Norse myth. And that's the good ending.
• Phantasy Star II: At The End Of The Lost Age. The subtitle is not just for show. At the end of the game, Mother Brain has been destroyed, destroying the technological civilization of the Algo system and sending Mota into a technological dark age. As for Palm, the throneworld of the system? It went away in the middle of the game.
• Pentiment:
  • The game marks the end of the Medieval era with the background of social unrest and the Protestant Reformation.
  • Andreas' occupation reflects this, as the printing press would make his job as an illuminator obsolete in short moment. By act two, he's switched over entirely to painting.
  • Magdalene invokes this trope in her mural, which reflects the distinct eras that Tassing and Kiersau have went through.
• The ending of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire involves this: Eothas destroys Berath’s Wheel and kills himself in the process, irrevocably demolishing the system Eora has operated on for thousands of years. The gods will no longer be powered by mortalkind and the reincarnation cycle will grind to a halt. The results are currently ambiguous; either the decline and end of civilization has begun, or Eothas was correct in his belief that mortals will create a new system and a golden age is on the horizon. Either way, an era has ended and Nothing Is the Same Anymore. The game ends there, with the Watcher returning home as an uncertain future begins to unfold.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army takes place during the time period where Japan was furiously modernizing into the 20th century, yet hadn't left behind the old world yet completely. This gives the game a very unique flavor and appearance. There's one important mission involving a vengeful rickshaw puller who's out of work because of automobiles, for a start.
• Red Dead Redemption takes place in 1911, in the final years of the Wild West. The encroachment of Federal control is a major theme in the third act. All of which is foreshadowed during the opening cinematic, when John Marston gets off a ferry at the same time as a brand-new automobile is being unloaded^note Recalling a similar scene in The Wild Bunch, before he boards a train, all in order to reach a place where horses are still the primary means of transport.
  • Dutch van der Linde saw himself not as a criminal, but a man fighting back against a corrupt system to liberate the Old West. He has a dream in his mind - to be an outlaw to the very end, and to force civilization back from the "purity" of the West. By 1911, he is a man clinging to false hope and belief as the West has been settled. When John finally confronts him, he simply accepts that the Wild West era is over and he commits suicide.
  • Poignantly, with the deaths of John Marston and Landon Ricketts, Jack Marston may well be the very last gunslinger by the time of the epilogue.
• Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens marks the end of Ikki Yoneda's career as commander of the Imperial Combat Revue, a title which he has held since the first Sakura Wars game. Yoneda passes that title on to Ichiro Ogami, thus bringing an end to the latter's career as captain of the Revue.
• Skies of Arcadia had six ancient civilizations which were all nearly wiped out in a massive meteor storm. One of those civilizations were Abusive Precursors. The Big Bad's goal is to harness that power and bring an end to the current era.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The background lore first mentioned in the classic games and finally explored in Sonic Adventure established that there was once a powerful Echidna civilization that used the Chaos Emeralds for prosperity. It all came to an end overnight when they attempted to seize them for selfish purposes, prompting the rage of the Emeralds' guardian, Chaos. His retaliation resulted in the destruction and collapse of their civilization, the scattering of the Emeralds, the creation of Angel Island, and the eventual extinction of the Echidna race.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog acts as this for its titular character, being the conclusion of his character arc, which began with Sonic Adventure 2 and continued in Sonic Heroes. It revolves around Shadow learning the truth of his origins and finally putting his Dark and Troubled Past behind him. In a Meta sense, this game was the last Sonic game to be released for the Nintendo Gamecube, marking the series' transition to 7th-generation consoles.
  • Sonic and the Black Knight has this being the reason for Merlina's Face–Heel Turn as she refuses to let Camelot fall and seeks to entrap it and the world around it in stasis. Sonic is adamantly opposed to the idea and has to battle her as Excalibur Sonic to get it through to her. In a Meta sense, this game is also the end of its era of Sonic games. It was the final game to be dubbed using the 4Kids voice cast, the only 4Kids actor sticking around being Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman. From Sonic Free Riders onwards, the series transitioned towards Lighter and Softer plots and more comedic writing, as opposed to the more dramatic, serious plots that had become prevalent in the series by then starting from Sonic Adventure.
  • Sonic Frontiers: This game deals with this for the Sonic series on multiple fronts.
    • One of the ongoing themes of the game is how much Sonic's friends have been entrenched in their ways for so long and deconstructing that fact, what with Knuckles sticking to his guardianship of the Master Emerald despite wanting to see more of the wider world, Amy in her infatuation with Sonic despite wanting to do more good in the world, and Tails in sticking as Sonic's sidekick despite having already proven himself before. In the latter case, it's used as something of a Take That! to how Tails' characterization became inconsistent throughout the years. At the end of the game, Knuckles, Amy, and Tails all decide to go on their own individual journeys to grow in their own ways, making this game the Dawn of an Era in addition to an end.
    • This is also shown to have occurred in the backstory of the game, which revolves around the mysterious Ancients of the Starfall Islands. The Ancients were an alien race from another world, the world where the Chaos Emeralds originally came from. Their homeworld was destroyed by THE END, forcing them to flee, taking the Chaos Emeralds in tow. The Master Emerald on Angel Island then reacted to the Chaos Emeralds, causing the Ancients to land on Sonic's world in prehistoric times, where they rebuilt their civilization on the Starfall Islands. When THE END came to wipe them out once more, they managed to seal it away, at the cost of much of their new civilization. From there, they moved on to Angel Island, where they found the Master Emerald. What happens after that is unclear, but the Ancient species eventually became no more. According to Dr. Eggman's notes, however, exposure to the Master Emerald mutated the Ancients, eventually turning them into new species, namely the Chao as well as Chaos' species.
    • With the reveal that THE END was the reason the Chaos Emeralds ended up on Sonic's world, as well as the reason for Chaos and the Chao species eventually emerging, THE END being defeated in this game would mark this game as an end for the ongoing story started since the very beginning of the Sonic game series, or, at least, the end of the ongoing series-wide plot introduced in Sonic Adventure, having revealed the origins of Chaos and dealing with the evil that led to the destruction of his ancestors.
• Starcraft II Legacy Of The Void ends with this for the Protoss, as the Khala, revealed to be a tool of enslavement devised by the Xel'Naga who uplifted them, is abandoned in favor of diplomatic relations with age-old enemies, the Purifiers (robots) gain status as equals in Protoss society, the Daelaam return to Aiur as heroes, and the Tal'darim (mostly) forget their bitter war grudges in favor of finding a new home.
• The Suikoden series had the Sindar, a highly advanced civilization that has ruins left all over the world. Not much is known about them, or why they fell.
  • The legends say that their leader was the bearer of a True Rune, the Rune of Change, which compelled them constantly abandon their civilization and reestablish it elsewhere, hence the ubiquity of Sindar ruins. Which might mean that the Sindar still exist somewhere, but unless Konami revives the series we'll never find out.
• The end of Tales of Vesperia had the protagonists forced to destroy all blastia, a material people are dependent on for magic and everyday life, in order to prevent the world's destruction. However, the tradeoff is that they create Mana and Summon Spirits.
• After the hero defeats Typhon in Titan Quest, all the greek gods (and presumably the egyptian and chinese too) leave the world behind, ending the age of gods... and beginning the age of man.
• Some of the entries in the Total War series involve the end of certain eras in history, whether it's the twilight of Rome in Barbarian Invasion or the Meiji Restoration in Fall of the Samurai.
• The entirety of Total War: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai is the end of the samurai reign in Japan, as Westernization marches in and the old ways are no longer viable in facing the foreign threats. Bye bye swords, welcome Gatling guns. You can be one of the Shogunate clans and try to preserve the regime, but no matter how you achieve that, the old days are over. See also the Japan entry in the Real Life, below.
  • You can take this up a notch— you can declare that Japan doesn't need either Shogun nor Emperor, and turn the land ruled by your clan into an independent Republic. Be prepared for the onslaught, though. Historically, only Satsuma Domain and Republic of Ezo attempted it. They ended very badly.
  • In the Medieval II: Americas expansion, this is a subtle overlying theme if you play as one of the Mesoamerican factions, like the Aztecs or the Mayans. You could completely change history and prevent European colonisation, but things definitely wouldn't be the same for these factions ever again...
    • And the Teutonic expansion campaign details the last remaining pagan people of Europe, the Lithuanians, and their grim war for survival in the face of relentless Christian expansionism. Converting provides a number of powerful bonuses such as access to knights, cannons and arquebus, but clinging to the Good Old Ways is possible.
  • Empire: Total War marks the beginning of The Enlightenment at the year 1700, as the petty kingdoms of feudal Europe have become a distant memory and many of them seek to become vast, intercontinental empires. The opposite is true for the Mughals, who have controlled nearly all of India for centuries but now have outdated armies and an incompetent ruler, and they usually get steamrolled by the Maratha Confederacy or by The British Empire. The last remaining free native American nations find themselves surrounded by European colonists and lack the numbers and technology to fight back and prevent the take-over. Portugal is reduced to a struggling Vestigial Empire as the once-backwards nations of Britain and France politically unite and technologically catch up, and Poland-Lithuania, an ancient Eastern-European kingdom famed for the Winged Hussars, will likely fall to the imperialist ambitions of their Prussian neighbours to the west.
  • Total War: Attila shows the flaming final days of the Roman Empire, as an Ice Age descends upon the world, bringing starvation to their tribes, the Huns pillage and burn everything in sight, and Barbarian Tribes pour over the weakening borders to claim their remaining fertile lands. Even if Rome survives, its cultural identity will be irrevocably transformed; they abandon much of their construction technology, their roads and their bathing culture, the West reorganizes its society around the Church and sows the seeds for the feudal system, and a new bureaucratic and imperial system develops in the East.
• Touhou Project:
  • Gensokyo is a last-ditch attempt to preserve the existence of the supernatural. Supernatural beings began to fade from this world as technology arose and humankind no longer believe in the fantastic. This theme is played heavily in Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith, as the Moriya Shrine entered Gensokyo due to lack of faith in the Outside World.
  • In the manga Touhou Ibarakasen ~ Wild and Horned Hermit, the subject is brought up again. Even within Gensokyo, the old ways are starting to fade. Youkai are starting to no longer be feared, unknown entities, but are acting more like occasionally dangerous eccentrics.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron sees the collapse of Cybertronian society as Megatron assassinates Sentinel Zeta Prime and corrupts the planet Cybertron with Dark Energon, forcing the planet itself to shutdown and forcing most of the population to flee to outer space.
  • The decline is shown in detail in the sequel, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, which basically boils down to rats biting each other as they flee a sinking ship. The Transformers have gone from immortal masters of technology to a pack of violent refugees.
• Ultima has gone through a number of ages. There were the three Ages of Darkness, brought to an end as the first three Big Bads were defeated. Then, the coming of the Avatar heralded the Age of Enlightenment, which came to an end upon the Guardian's arrival, ushering in the Age of Armageddon.
• Vandal Hearts mentions an ancient, technologically advanced civilization in passing, that's where the train comes from. Vandal Hearts II's world is actually a post apocalyptic wasteland.
• Pretty much the standard ending of the World of Mana series is the destruction of the Mana Tree and the loss of the world's magic, until the new Tree (grown from the ruins of the old) is ready (in about a millennium or so).
  • This is universally presented as a good thing, or at least preferable to the alternative, with the exception of Secret of Mana
  • In addition, Legend of Mana eventually reveals the artificer's purpose: the revival of the Mana Tree. Complicated somewhat by the fact that the previous Mana Tree burned to ash as an indirect result of the Mana Goddess being unable to contain her Superpowered Evil Side.
• In World of Warcraft, at the end of the Cataclysm expansion, the Dragon Aspects tell you that they have forfeited their powers in their efforts to destroy Deathwing, and now walk among you as (sterile) mortals.
• The apocalyptic Terran/Argon war in X3: Albion Prelude caused the Ancients to shut down the X-Universe's gate system to prevent the races from wiping each other with artificially intelligent warships (also because the war was diverting forces that had previously kept the wild AI race, the Xenon, in check; the Ancients specifically called it a firebreak). They did not do so lightly, knowing full well that the shutdown would and did effectively destroy galactic civilization, isolating every colony and all the races from each other, including allies. X: Rebirth takes place several decades later, and things still haven't gotten better for most systems, with the hulks of the warships from the war being used as power sources by isolated colonies.
• Ys, the seemingly trendful paradise, pulled from the height of its prosperity into the abyss of infinite isolation. How could such a land simply vanish from the face of the earth?". The real Gotterdammerung in that series happened when the Eldeen civilization got submerged in water due to humans' trying to control Weather-Control Machine for their own ends. Comparatively, the titular Ys was a minor case as it was a small empire built by the two survivors of the Eldeen civilization with the power of the Black Pearl.
• Yakuza 6 in game and for the series as a whole; the old Yakuza clans are slowly crumbling from the combination of souring public opinion and encroachment of new, more dynamic forms of organized crime that aren't as steeped in the Good Old Ways. Numerous powerhouses in the previous games such as Daigo Dojima and Goro Majima are arrested and imprisoned, and by the end of the game the once vaunted Tojo Clan is practically on life support and eventually dissolves between 6 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon, with its chief rival the Omi Alliance following not too soon after. On a meta level 6 acts as the final chapter for Kazuma Kiryu's story as he fakes his death and goes into hiding to protect his adoptive daughter Haruka and her family, leaving room for a new protagonist to take over in Like A Dragon.
• Continuing from the previous game, Yakuza: Like a Dragon represents another end of an age on a larger scale with the official, and simultaneous, dissolution of the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance. With Japanese laws making it harder for yakuza organizations to operate, the leaders of the two biggest powerhouses in the criminal underworld come to the conclusion that there are only two paths ahead for the yakuza: prison, or becoming government pawns (as is happening with the Omi). Thus, they decide that their time has officially passed and put their organizations to rest, with the hope that other criminal groups will follow their example and also dissolve, while also founding a legitimate security company to act as a safety net for other now-former yakuza. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth shows it to be a gradual process as smaller yakuza groups continue trying to hang on, their ranks bolstered by those who fell through the cracks of the Great Dissolution due to harsh laws and social stigma surrounding even former yakuza. This leads to many major players in the Great Dissolution planning of a second Great Dissolution, which would see these smaller groups dissolve, thus ending the yakuza for good and all.

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