You Cant Fight Fate / Video Games

Times where the idea that You Can't Fight Fate comes up in Video Games.

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• Bayonetta 3: The Big Bad Singularity has blown up more than two thousand universes through destroying that world's Bayonetta, using an ability best known as phenomenal affirmation to alter fate, making sure he always wins at the end and whatever universe he's targeting will be destroyed. In one of these universes, he uses it to deliver a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle against one of the Bayonetta and kills her off at the start of the game, and he's convinced that he's completely invincible and unstoppable thanks to this power. Unfortunately, when he tried this against Arch-Eve Origin a.k.a our Bayonetta, she proves him wrong instead.
• Zig-zagged in BioShock Infinite: a prominent them of the game is "constants and variables", applying the idea of there being countless divergences throughout parallel realities, but even if one is to mingle or merge with each other, they will always have a set of constants that keep them identifiable, summed up as "There's always a man, a lighthouse, a city." Where this actually factors in with the main plot is that our Booker DeWitt is merely one of many that exist and will cross through the multiverse in some path of their own — even the villain turns out to just be an alternate Booker who chose a really bad one. However, while there are infinite possibilities for what Booker can become in the grandest of senses, all of their fates are set in stone as is — our Booker's past, present, and future and the various consequences they leave across time and space cannot be corrected unless he himself is erased from his place in the multiverse entirely — it takes the help of the reality-warping Elizabeth to assist Booker in a Heroic Sacrifice from before the time he became Comstock in order to undo his atrocities. This is also lightly foreshadowed in the start of the game where the Luteces, fully omniscient of the state of the multiverse and knowing our Booker as just one of over one hundred others they've interacted with before alone, test a few constants about him: in no reality does he help them row the boat to the lighthouse, the coin they ask him to flip always lands heads, and he always ends up drawing #77 in a raffle even after they specifically warn him not to.
• Braid: There are mistakes even Tim can't erase with his time powers, to wit...
  • Green sparkling items and creatures cannot be manipulated by any sort of time travel.
  • You can't fix attempting to use a key on the wrong door by rewinding time.
  • A secret star cannot be gotten if you solve the World 4 jigsaw puzzle too early.
  • Time can no longer be rewound once you see the ending.
• In Call of Duty: Zombies, this is essentially what ends the Aether arc in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. 3 seemed to end the story on a neat, paradox-free Stable Time Loop, but 4 clarifies that such means any actions taken within the loop do nothing but prolong the cycle, and as such are meaningless. The Apothicons may lose the Great War to the Keepers but, as pointed out in this review of Tag Der Toten, they will always put the MPD and Divinium into countless realities, kicking off the events of the mode from "Nacht" to "Revelations" before starting again, and there's nothing Primis can do about it. The Apothicons lose the battle, but always win the war. Both Richtofen and Monty believe in this trope via a deep fear of life after death, and as such keep the cycle going; it takes Nikolai taking over and realising this folly to finally break the cycle via the killing of Primis and their alternates, plunging the multiverse into the Dark Aether and closing the loop for good.
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has Gabriel Belmont attempting to Screw Destiny, but no matter how hard he does, he cannot change it, and he cannot avoid it. Not only does he fail to save his love from death, but he also becomes Dracula as the prophecy plays out; he also falls victim to Satan's Evil Plan all along...
• In Chrono Cross, you fight fate, or rather, FATE. Things don't exactly go smoothly afterwards...
  • You get several opportunities (and multiple playthroughs) to try and avoid the stabbing scene which was foreshadowed in the opening sequences. It doesn't work.
• Chrono Trigger (pictured above) has the Bad Ending where you fail to defeat Lavos, followed by it ultimately destroying the earth. Sleep tight, kiddies.
  • (SNES Version) But... The Future Refused to Change.
  • (DS Updated Re Release) In the End, the Future Refused to Change.
• It seems that fate is quite determined to have Alexander, main character of Cirque De Zale, become the hero who will save the world. Once Alexander accomplishes his goal of getting a circus together, he is kidnapped by the sorceror he was supposed to stop. Once he escapes and ends up on a deserted island, he decides to just stay in the fancy mansion that another inhabitant of the island built, resulting in said mansion getting destroyed. In the end, Alexander destroys the device of destruction, but claims that he just did it because he wanted to, not because he was destined to.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series: In spite of the Time Travel, Allies will always win.
• In Corpse Party, anyone who dies in Tenjin Elementary is destined to die in any and all future time loops. What's more, the method of death will get progressively worse and worse with every loop.
• In Dark Souls, no matter how many Chosen Undeads relinked the fire, the prolonged Age of Fire will eventually end, and the Age of Dark will inevitably come. Until Dark Souls III, at least, which has a decently well hidden ending where you Take a Third Option to link the Fire with the Dark Sign, creating an "age of humanity" separate from the Age of Dark, whether this ends up being a good thing or a bad thing for the world... well, who knows?
• Devil Survivor 2:
  • The Anguished One eventually reveals that the Akashic Records exist and that everything is written in them, ranging from small events to bigger events. Nicaea attempts to prove the Akashic Records wrong by handing out the Death Videos and seeing if people can prevent the foreordained deaths.
  • The Triangulum Arc reveals that after defeating Polaris and its Septentriones, the next batch of higher existences arrives in the form of Arcturus and its Triangulum, out to destroy the world and mankind, instead of merely testing them. And the Triangulum already appeared twice. One of the endings even includes realizing this trope and deciding to fight a never-ending war with every Administrator coming to earth and trying to destroy humanity, with the party out to defend the world and regressing it over and over, until every Administrator is defeated. This ending is even implied to eventually not end well.
• In Diablo III the Scroll of Fate dictates the fate of everything in existence. The only ones who can fight fate are the Nephalem (the player characters) since the Scroll of Fate doesn't mention them. Their fate is unwritten. This is good news for Heaven, since the Angels are otherwise destined to fall to the Prime Evil.
• Dragon Quest V: In the Faerie Palace, the Hero goes through a portal to the past, meets his then-living father and warns him he will end up dead if he goes to Coburg. Unfortunately, Pankraz does not believe the Hero is his time-travelling grown-up son, and writes his warnings off as silly prophecies.
• In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Physical God Vivec gives this as his reason for persecuting the Nerevarine. He actually appears to have believed the Nerevarine prophecy himself, and knew that when the real Nerevarine came along, all attempts to stop him/her would fail, giving proof of his/her legitimacy.
• Enderal begins with a prophecy that a great cleansing will occur, slowly devouring millions of lives, because the Abusive Precursors order it. And that it cannot be fought because the cycle of world destruction has happened endless times. Seeing as they also created the heroes of each iteration and manipulated their journey to the point they can make each generation speak the same exact fallacies word-for-word, it was practically inevitable. No matter what you do, even when one of their servants goes Off the Rails and gives the player a second chance, Enderal is destroyed.
• Fear Effect. The second game strongly gives off this message, if the things the Eight Immortals say are anything to go by.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The Stable Time Loop in Final Fantasy VIII involves some elements of this trope. Ellone repeatedly sends Squall's consciousness into the past in an effort to change it, but concludes after repeated failures that changing the past is impossible. The Big Bad also mucks around in the past in an effort to change it, but although the meddling causes quite a bit of trouble for everyone involved, it ends up causing the very results it was intended to prevent.
    • Squall himself also catches some You Can't Fight Fate; he doesn't want to be in charge of anything and takes it very badly when he's summarily appointed leader of SeeD thanks to Cid's knowledge of the Stable Time Loop, but not only does he grow into and accept the role as his destiny, he also gives Edea the information which she and Cid use to found SeeD and put him in charge in the first place.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, the main plot of the big bad is to win the power of the gods to control humanity's own history.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 focuses on Time Travel to avoid a Bad Future. Despite going into various decades, centuries, alternate centuries or even obtaining the paradox endings, it always ends with Etro dying, time itself being destroyed and the Caius achieving his goal.
    • Many people see Final Fantasy XIII as the same thing: The party resolves to fight fate by saving their world and escaping the curse of the L'cie (turning to crystal or turning into a monster), however while they do save their home, they are only saved from the curse by the intervention of one of the Gods (Who's intervention causes the events of the sequel to take place).
  • Happened for the Big Good in the backstory of Final Fantasy XIV. She's known the future from more than 12,000 years ago to the present. She's spent the intervening time trying to prevent the seven Rejoinings/Calamities she knew were coming, but failed - fortunately she made backup plans for that, plans that would only kick in if her foreknowledge came to pass and the Stable Time Loop that gave her the knowledge closed. The Player Character is also warned in Endwalker that they would be unable to change the past when they are sent back in time to learn what kickstarted the Final Days. In a variation, the events were already in motion and things conspire so that only they and the Big Good are the only ones who know what happened.
  • Present for the Big Bad in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. Larkeicus's plan is to stop an event that's about to happen from causing crystals to disappear from the world 2,000 years in the past (...somehow). He calculates the exact time and location of the event, which is in the middle of the air. So he builds a tower to reach that point. After you defeat him, Sherlotta tells him something along the lines of, "If there wasn't this tower, what could have possibly happened, all the way up here?". She then follows up by essentially stating this trope.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Discussed, but ultimately subverted in Fire Emblem: Awakening. Lucina travels back in time from a Bad Future where the Fell Dragon Grima was resurrected and destroyed most of humanity, hoping to stop his resurrection by changing history. When she only manages to change the circumstances of events leading up to its return like Emmeryn's death rather than outright preventing them, she begins to fear this is the case. Eventually, however, it's revealed that the Grima from her timeline followed her back (in its human form) and has been subtly manipulating events to ensure its resurrection.
  • Played straight in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. After what looks like a victory, Jeralt is killed at the hands of Kronya after disguising herself as a hostage. Byleth sees this right in front of their eyes and attempts to turn back time using Divine Pulse. However, this too is fruitless, and they are forced to accept the inevitable with a heavy heart.
• God of War:
  • Kratos was able to fight the Sisters of Fate, but in the game itself, and the more recent ones, it was revealed Kratos was fated to destroy Olympus. The implication being even the Sisters were bound by some higher power they could not control.
  • Discussed and Played for Drama throughout God of War Ragnarök, whose plot is largely based around Kratos and Atreus attempting to subvert a prophecy that would bring about Ragnarök, only for things to derail in unexpected ways that leaves Mimir questioning if "we're breaking fate, or fate's breaking us." As it's revealed by the Norns, it turns out there is no such thing as fate, at least insofar as there being a predestined grand design. Rather, the prophecies are built on the excellent understanding of Kratos and the other gods in relation to their various paths in life, including their various flaws and stubborn refusal to change anything that would steer them away from their inevitable self-destruction. In this sense, Kratos was only "destined" to destroy Olympus and lead to The End of the World as We Know It because he blamed the Olympians for all his problems and refused to consider that, just maybe, most of his misery was his own damn fault, and pursued Revenge Before Reason, while the Olympians themselves solidified their own demise by mistreating Kratos's family out of fear of the prophecy. Turns out, the only way to Screw Destiny isn't to blindly accept it or defy prophecy, but to accept the consequences of your actions and change for the better, so you don't make the decisions that lead you to ruin. Kratos gets it, and as such is able to defy his fate of dying in Ragnarok by going out of his way to prevent civilian casualties, while Odin runs headlong into his destiny on the road he took to avoid it by angering various other factions to the point where they wanted to kill him and destroy everything he made.
  • God of War Ragnarök reveals through Angrboda that this was a prevalent view amongst the Jotnar, who generally felt that the futures they saw could not be changed and instead strove to find beauty in accepting their purposes. This causes friction with characters who believed that this peaceful acceptance was blinding them to finding better options. Angrboda nearly alienates Atreus by telling him the true Ragnarok prophecy (which involves Kratos dying) and encouraging him to think of it as a good thing; sure, he dies to save the realms, but she just told a young teenager to be happy about his dad's death, and unsurprisingly, it doesn't go over well. It also turns out that Kratos's wife Faye had a major argument with the other giants because she wasn't okay with sending her husband to his death. Atreus manages to convince Angrboda by giving her back the giant souls that she was prophesized to give him, both showing her that prophesized events could be altered and assauging her fears of lacking purpose after her role in his story is over.
• In the world of Grim Fandango, you must pay off the "debt" you accumulated in life by staying in the Eighth Underworld for a certain amount of time, before being allowed to leave and reach the Ninth Underworld - the "true" eternal rest. If you haven't paid off your debt, you can't cross the gate. If you try to cheat the system by stealing a Double N Ticket (which are reserved for good souls) or use a fake one, the Afterlife Express will jump into Hell instead of crossing the gate. The Gate Keeper says it best, "Your destiny...cannot be purchased."
• The villains in the House of the Dead frequently use this as a part of their Hannibal Lecture.
• A good part of the common backstory of the Kusanagi, Yasakani/Yagami, and Yata/Kagura clans in The King of Fighters relates to how they cannot escape from fighting the Orochi clan.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts χ, the Master of Masters could see into the future and wrote what he saw down in the Book of Prophecies. The last page of the book foretells of a great battle in which darkness will prevail and the light will expire, the end of the world. When one of his students, Ira, asks if there's any way to prevent this future, the Master tells him it's not possible and they need to plan for what comes After the End. The Master is proven right, and the events he saw play out in what is known in the franchise as the Keyblade War.
  • There is the matter with Young Xehanort. He is one of the few things the Guardians of Light simply can't do jackshit about due to the rules of time travel that, while preventing someone from accessing their time travel memories, still allow them to have precognition about what is to come. Whether they defeat him or not, Young Xehanort will return back in time and gain an urge to leave the islands and become the Xehanort as we know today.
• In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, this was the case since the dawn of time. The Fateless One is special because he/she is Immune to Fate, and thus is the only person in existence who can Screw Destiny. Everyone else, even gods, can't change their fates.
• Half of the Legacy of Kain series revolves around this trope. The other half revolves around Screw Destiny. It's...complicated.
  • In Soul Reaver 2 despite rampant time-travel, different versions of the Reaver existing at the same time, and killing himself with his own soul, at the end Raziel realizes that he never escaped his terrible destiny; he had merely postponed it. History abhors a paradox.
  • Finally in Defiance, Raziel finally realizes that he can alter the timeline and thus his own fate. But he ultimately embraces it anyway because he believes it's the only way to defeat the true villain behind all of Nosgoth's suffering.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:
  • In the third game, it didn't matter what Rean and Class VII do in their attempt to prevent the Great Twilight. There is no way to prevent the Nameless One from dying just like according to the Black Records prophecy and unleashing the curse all over Erebonia and the continent. What's worse is that Rean does the deed himself when he loses it in his Unstoppable Rage.
  • In the fourth game, Rean and Class VII defeat Arianrhod, but attempt to use Valimar's power to keep her alive and recruit her. Like with the Nameless One, Arianrhod is fated to die according to the Black Records, and sure enough, defeating her makes her vulnerable to being ambushed and killed by Rufus.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, King Rhoam attempted to stop Calamity Ganon's reawakening after hearing a prophecy of it. His efforts to revive the Guardians and the Divine Beasts, funding a massive military, assembling the Champions and getting Zelda to unlock her powers quickly were all done to prevent the Hyrule kingdom's fall. It fell nevertheless, as it was foreseen 10,000 years ago. The towers and shrines did not activate during the king's reign. It was not the right time. It would not occur until well after the fall of Hyrule.
• Mega Man X5 has a Branch-and-Bottleneck Plot Structure, where the Boss Battle in the penultimate stage will always be X vs. Zero, their prophecy finally being carried out.
• The Armageddon in Odin Sphere. You can't stop it, but you can make it even worse if you don't fulfill the prophecy exactly.
• In Ōkami, the guy making the 'prophecy' (that Issun would become a Celestial Envoy) didn't have as good an idea of the big picture as he thought he did. Ishaku always pushed Issun to be perfect, and eventually Issun got fed up and left to wander the world. Which is good because Amaterasu awakens in Kamiki, miles away from the Poncles' village, and serendipitously Issun is right there to help. Turns out Amaterasu doesn't care about an Envoy's artistic skill so much as his willingness to accompany and speak for her.
• In Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, you are chased by an unstoppable monster sent to kill you because you changed the timeline and it was bad. It is implied that it was sent by the gods. So, what do you do? In the alternative/proper ending you find a magical mask that lets you exist in two places at once. You let your other self get killed to free yourself from destiny and then you stop destiny again using a magical sword to destroy the monster.
• In the crossover Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney features a girl whose fate as written in the 'storytellers' book' is to die. The girl thinks that her death is her fate while Phoenix is sure that she will not die.
• In Radiant Historia, all the things that happened were The Plan from the twins to, not only save the world, but also to make Heiss accept his fate of being the sacrifice.
• Randal's Monday: It seems more and more like this is the case as the game goes on. Randal has to make a deal with demons to subvert this.
• Game Mod Red Alert 3: Paradox plays with this trope by having it in its motto: "You can't change the universe without repercussions...", as in "Time Travel can only make the universe worse".
• The Big Bad Dierker in The Saboteur said to Devlin in the Zeppelin "You should have died under my knife. Not like this.". Despite Dierker's Devil Luck to survive every ambush and attacks Devlin throws at him throughout the game, ultimately Devlin gets to kill him for good in the ending, showing Dierker can't fight his fate of dying.
• Sailor Moon: Another Story is about you teaching bad guys about this. Well...yeah.
• The main plot of Summoner. The evil emperor Murod is told that his reign will be brought to an end by a summoner. So he spends his life finding the summoner, causing the destruction of his village, and later of the kingdom the summoner is from. This causes the summoner to fight and eventually kill Murod. Ironically, had he done nothing about it, said Summoner would have lived a happy life as a mere farmer.
• A variation in Sonic Frontiers: Sage, being an AI, initially foresees no hope of the world's survival if Sonic frees his friends from Cyberspace, since doing so would unleash THE END, which would destroy the world. Over the course of the game, however, Sage's observations of Sonic and his friends causes her to explore more possibilities, including convincing her creator, Dr. Eggman, to set aside his feud with Sonic long enough to help him. While the chances of saving the world were still very remote, Sage begins to believe that any chance to stave off oblivion is worth exploring.
• Sunset Over Imdahl is particularly evil about this trope, since the entire plot is the main character's attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong (and his supposed ally's successful attempt to make it go wrong in the first place.) There's only one apparent change: while in the beginning the hero was the last survivor, in the end he gets a decent burial and a tombstone, while others are dumped in a mass grave.
• Tales Series:
  • In the ending of Tales of Destiny 2, Kyle STILL ends up meeting Reala in the very same place they did before despite what happened after the final battle. Coincidence? This trope is zigzagged in the game in general; Reala coming back at all was a case of Screw Destiny, as was Judas maybe coming back.
  • Kratos from Tales of Symphonia tends to mention fate a lot in his battle quotes, such as saying "You can never escape fate." Considering what happened to him, it might be very justified.
• In The Tree of Life, The Temple of Trials shows the protagonist that their ship will crash in the arctic during their return journey. This does indeed come to pass. However, it never said they would die in the crash.
• Combined with Prophecy Twist in Um Jammer Lammy: In the original version of Stage 6 ("Vital Idol"), Lammy avoids getting hit and run by an out-of-control car so as not to end up in hell (as Chop Chop Master Onion has foretold in her dream). As she keeps running, she doesn't notice the Banana Peel that PJ Berri has left because she is in too much of a hurry, then slips on it, falls down, breaks her neck and dies, thus fulfilling Chop Chop Master Onion's dream prophecy.
• In The Walking Dead, regardless of alternate choices made, the outcome of certain events; such as Doug's or Carley's death will exactly be the same.
• In The Whispered World, the main character Sadwick is shocked and bewildered when he receives a prophecy from a forest oracle, foretelling that he will be responsible for the end of the world. As Sadwick is actually the subconscious of a comatose boy, and his world is just a figment of his imagination, this comes to pass at the end of the game.
• World of Warcraft:
  • This is a large part of the character of Nozdormu, the Aspect of Time; he was shown the exact moment and cause of his death when he was first given his powers, but can do nothing to change it because of his role as leader of the Time Police. Plus, he knew about the betrayal of his friend Neltharion and subsequent transformation to Deathwing, and that Malygos would snap when the Blue dragons nearly went extinct. The best example of this, though, is that Nozdormu also knows that he will eventually become Murozond, the leader of the Infinite Dragons who are screwing with history. And he accepts it, even if the thought terrifies him. He got better about it as of Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects, deciding to only focus on the here and now, even if he knows for a fact what the future holds. "All that matters is this moment."
  • In Warlords of Draenor, after being deposed as leader of the Horde on Azeroth, Garrosh Hellscream escapes to an alternate version of Draenor several decades in the past. He initially prevents the orcs from making their pact with the Burning Legion and supplies them with Azerothian technology, allowing them to form the Iron Horde, but they eventually turn against his father Grommash and side with the Legion, becoming the Fel Horde. This only applies to the corrupted orcs, however, as Grommash remains uncorrupted and Draenor itself escapes its main universe counterpart's fate of being split into Outland.

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