As a Death Trope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Sacrificial Lambs in Video Games.
- This is a tradition in RPGs made by BioWare:
- Mass Effect:
- Mass Effect: Corporal Richard L. Jenkins. He has all the potential abilities of a Soldier character, except he's killed by the first enemies in the game in a cut-scene before the fight actually starts. Nihlus, Shepard's appointed mentor, is killed moments later by Saren.
- Mass Effect 2: Wilson — unlike Jenkins, he actually lasts throughout the entire introductory mission working alongside Shepard. Then it turns out he's a traitor and he's shot in the head by Miranda.
- Dragon Age:
- Dragon Age: Origins: Jory and Daveth, your peers in the Grey Warden new recruit group, die during the deadly Initiation Ceremony. To a lesser extent, your commanding officer Duncan who dies in battle shortly thereafter.
- Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening: Mhairi is introduced like any companion character would be, with even a little bit more character detail given because you meet her first, but then she dies during the initiation.
- Dragon Age II: The sequel features Bethany and Carver, who are inversions of the trope. While one of them always dies depending on your chosen class, the other sticks around as a regular party member... until they, too, either die or are Put on a Bus for some time.
- Mass Effect:
- If playing as The Dark Urge, Baldurs Gate 3 has this in the form of Quill Grootslang, who is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Alfira. Quill Grootslang will only appear if the player either kills Alfira first, or KO's her to prevent her death from happening. If this happened, Quill Grootslang will appear instead and be promptly killed by The Dark Urge, if not, Alfira will be killed instead.
- Call of Duty has this as a time-honored tradition, usually paired off with a Sacrificial Lion later on for added oomph. In order, we have Yasir Al-Fulani from Modern Warfare, Joseph Allen from Modern Warfare 2, Andrei Harkov and Leonid Pudovkin from Modern Warfare 3, Erik Breighner from Black Ops 2, Baker, Kyra Mosely, and Ajax from Ghosts, Will Irons from Advanced Warfare, and Dan "Wolf" Lyall from Infinite Warfare.
- The first person to die in Catherine is Paul... who is quickly revealed to have been friends since childhood with Vincent and his pals. His death is also treated as a huge shock when it's first brought up, but then quickly forgotten.
- Toroko in Cave Story. Sacrificial Bunny, more like.
- Conviction (SRPG): Snow's father, Ubaldo, is killed early in the game to show that many innocents are going to die in the group's conflict with the Abyss Empire.
- Crysis does this with two members of the player's squad. Aztec dies before you even get a good look at his face, and Jester gets offed by a giant alien squid at the end of the first level.
- Divinity: Original Sin II: The courtroom encounter in Act I has a nameless captive who's Purged and transformed into a Silent Monk before the protagonist's eyes, demonstrating the fate that awaits them if they can't escape Fort Joy. It's the captive's only appearance and the event is scripted to occur even if the purger is incapacitated.
- The horse thief Lokir is the very first character to die in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. He is shot down by Imperial archers after he tries to escape execution, establishing that people can and will die in this game.
- Fallout 3 has the Lone Wanderer's mother Catherine, who dies in childbirth at the beginning of the game; Jonas, whose death jumpstarts the LW's escape from Vault 101; and later, Initiate Reddin, who is crushed by a Super Mutant Behemoth shortly after you first meet the Brotherhood of Steel.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy III: Elia/Aria fits the trope perfectly. She's the first character to appear once you leave the Floating Continent (starting the game properly), gets about half an hour of character development, and is killed by the first boss you encounter.
- Final Fantasy VI: Wedge and Biggs' death serves to show us how powerful the Espers are.
- Final Fantasy VII: Wedge and Biggs get offed like this again. After a charming couple of hours of introduction where they're presented as fellow members of the terrorist team, interesting conversation partners and potential future party members, they are killed fighting alongside Barret in an attempt to stop Reno from blowing up the Sector 7 Pillar. A third member of AVALANCHE, Jessie, is the most shocking death of this scene — she isn't doomed to being a Mauve Shirt by her name, gets the most Character Development of the three, and is presented in the opening act as a Rescue Romance love interest to Cloud and a rival to Tifa.
- Final Fantasy XII: Vaan's older brother, Reks plays hand-in-hand with Decoy Protagonist in this trope. Reks exists to die in the introduction and demonstrates clearly this game will not be shy about killing off important characters.
- Final Fantasy Type-0: Izana Kunagiri and his chocobo Chichiri perish, fueling some rage in his brother blaming Class Zero.
- Fire Emblem:
- Throughout the franchise, it's traditional for a major parental figure to die early on to provide motivation for the hero to righteously avenge them. While most have enough characterization and die close enough to the midpoint to qualify as Sacrificial Lions, Hectornote , Fado, Mikoto, and Lumera are only around for a chapter or two before biting the dust.
- Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War has Annand, the only squadron leader of Silesse's pegasus knights to remain loyal to The High Queen. She is competent, steadfast, the admired older sister of Erinys, and a good friend to the prodigal Prince Lewyn. Then, her squadron is ambushed by archers and the traitorous pegasus knights, and are all mercilessly slaughtered. Her death not only cements the somber tone for the rest of the first half, the manner of it (where the player would be able to help if they weren't halfway across the map at the time) foreshadows the way Quan and Ethlyn die in the next chapter.
- Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon adds a new character, Frey, early on that isn't in the previous versions. It also adds a prologue segment, where, in an object lesson in necessary sacrifice, you have to send one of your units to certain death. Frey has little to no plot relevance and exists solely so you can send someone off without losing one of the starting army from the previous versions. However, you can defy canon and send any current member of Marth's entourage in his place. New Mystery of the Emblem reveals that Frey is indeed the canonical decoy, but he survived after all, albeit with memory loss.
- Gears of War: Carmine is the first squad member killed. He's also the only one without a unique face, just wearing a helmet. His name is a shade of red, no wonder he's a Red Shirt. His Backup Quadruplet brother shows up in the sequel only to get killed off too.
- Ghost Recon: Future Soldier: The Decoy Protagonist Joe Ramirez and his squad are killed by a dirty bomb during the tutorial.
- Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars: Ling is a very odd case of this, where she is on the cover of the game box, and the poster inside the game is practically a pin-up of her, and then she dies the second mission in.
- Half-Life: The scientist in the chapter "We've Got Hostiles", who rushes to the first appearing military soldier, happy that the marines have arrived, and is gunned down in cold blood. He serves the purpose of letting you know that the military is not on your side. He actually can be saved though, if you act fast enough.
- Heroes of Might and Magic IV: Gauldoth, a Noble Demon necromancer, saves the life of a priest named Alana and brings her with him on a quest so he can have someone to debate philosophy with. She's initially set up as a Morality Pet who believes she can turn Gauldoth to Good, but when Gauldoth realises the dangers involved in activating the MacGuffin, he tricks Alana into activating it instead, killing her.
- Lie of Caelum: At the end of the prologue, Shiro kills the Exodus rookie, Ten, because the latter got possessed by a demon. This is to show that even promising graduates of Kazuri can easily die in the line of duty if they let their guard down.
- Medal of Honor: Underground: Jacques Batiste is killed at the end of the very first mission, which involved escorting him.
- Mega Man X: Zero fits this to a T, including being the Ensemble Dark Horse and returning in the sequel ASAP. Of course, Zero's character design was actually the original rejected design of X himself.
- Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Every single family member, even the dog, can be rescued. Every one except Rebecca, who's also literally sacrificial.
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker: In the opening scene, fifteen or so people gather to answer a noble's call for warriors. Half are the Player Party, and the other half are unnamed "Adventurers" who proceed to get mowed down offscreen by the Starter Villain's thugs. Your very first fight of the game is against these thugs, and you can go into the dead adventurers' rooms to hear your teammates express sympathy or scorn. After that, they're never spoken of again.
- Persona:
- Persona 3: The bulk of the game's boss fights come from the Full Moon Shadows, extremely powerful Shadows that each represent a different Tarot Arcana. You fight them all... except for Magician, the first Shadow to appear, who is quickly killed by the protagonist in a cutscene.
- Persona 4 has Saki Konishi, 3rd year student and potential love interest of the Main Character's new buddy Yosuke. She hangs out with them for a bit, gives them info on the first murder, and seems to be set up to be the wise Sempai to the team much like Akihiko and Mitsuru in Persona 3. Then she becomes the 2nd victim of the murder case, there are no upperclassmen to help you out in Persona 4, instead you are the upperclassman and in charge. To make matters worse, when the team finds the place where she died, lingering thoughts of her inner self reveal she always found Yosuke annoying and was only acting nice because he was her bosses' son. Despite knowing that inner thoughts aren't a total representation of a person, due to interaction with his own inner self Yosuke becomes convinced she loathed him for the rest of the game.
- Resident Evil introduces Joseph Frost, the vehicle specialist of the S.T.A.R.S Alpha Team. He is killed by a Cerberus in the intro cutscene, and is quickly forgotten about once the rest of the team reaches the mansion.
- Super Robot Wars: Original Generation: Lamia Loveless is turned into a Sacrificial Lamb to add suspense in OG Gaiden. So you get acquainted with her a lot in the OG 2 portion. Then in the bonus segment... she's shot down dead. Of course, when OG Gaiden comes out, it turns out to be just a set up for Cliffhanger and she came back... well enough. She's not an Ensemble Dark Horse like Zero, though.
- The Walking Dead: Mark sort of just... appears... in between Episode One and Two, is unceremoniously killed and turned at about the midpoint, and never mentioned again. He's a particularly glaring example because he's the only character to join the player's group off-screen between episodes in the entire Telltale Walking Dead series.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Earthblood: Ludmila, Cahal's wife, dies in the prologue, both to set up Cahal's subplot where he abandons his daughter and pack for five years and to show that even the likable side characters can be killed.
- The World Ends with You: Rhyme serves this purpose. From up until then, the game was fairly lighthearted, if not slightly confusing. But that one event opens up a whole can of worms and is the final push to set the rest of the plot into motion.
- Just about every grand-strategy level game set in World War II will have entire countries get this treatment just to show how dangerous the Nazis with Gnarly Weapons are. Poland is usually their first and most prominent victim. There is usually no way to save it, and even if the Poles somehow do hold back the Nazis, they'll get attacked from behind by the Soviets. France can also get this treatment since it will almost invariably be the first major power to fall to the Axis — usually it will not last longer than one year after war is declared.
- X3: Reunion: In Terran Conflict, Jesan Nadina is a mercenary pilot who hired on with a private space force called Operation Final Fury that seeks to drive the Kha'ak completely out of the Community of Planets. He brings the player character into the plot, then has a bridge dropped on him offscreen two missions in.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 both have a scripted tutorial mission where all but one of your soldiers are wiped out. This serves both to establish how difficult the war against the aliens is, and to teach you about defensive game mechanics (using full cover, not getting flanked, etc.)
