Oh My
Really it's just easier to say "THEY FUCKING KILLED EVERYTHING", but specifics...Specifics be damned though. I CAN'T BE ASSED TO REMEMBER THIS SHIT. IT AIN'T DRAGON QUEST OR LUFIA.
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
Every Siren game.
They've got your standard horror movie death count with the twist that you play as just about everyone that dies.
edited 1st Jul '11 9:09:44 PM by Hashil
Wait, did someone seriously put Ghost Trick in spoiler tags? It's shown on the cover of the box.
Jackass Detector
The Sims. At least, they usually do under my command.
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.
Two-bit blockhead
Super Mario examples:
- Super Mario Galaxy Well, the entire universe is destroyed, Mario included. Of course, the universe gets better, but still.
- Super Paper Mario: Dimentio kills Bowser, Peach, and the Mario Bros. And the next part of the game involves escaping from the afterlife.
Telltale Games Examples:
- Max dies at the end of Sam And Max: The Devil's Playhouse.
- Chapter 4 of Tales Of Monkey Island ends with Guybrush's Tear Jerker of a murder. The majority of the Grand Finale involves, like Super Paper Mario, escaping from the afterlife.
- In The Curse Of Monkey Island, Guybrush has to fake his death at least twice (complete with an extravagant off-screen funeral both times). Doesn't really count, though, does it?
edited 1st Jul '11 10:02:39 PM by DrFurball
Weird in a Can (updated M-F)
Touch The Sky
bitchy queen
Protagonists can die in Heavy Rain. This is avoidable, however.
"Without a fairy, you're not even a real man!" ~ Mido from Ocarina of Time
Long Live the King
Every party member, save for two, in Dragon Age Origins can be killed...
Almost the exact same thing can be said about Awakening(only one party member, the Warden Commander, cannot die).
Whether anyone who has died stays dead is another story...
Tidus in FFX. He can get better in X-2, though. And it is somewhat arguable if he lived at the end of X anyway. Pino in the best ending for Wonder Project J. Activating the J circuit causes him to be reborn as a human boy in J-2, so though the original is "dead", his goal to become a live boy is realized by the second game. And should we count tutorial death characters? Because poor ol' Trask in KOTOR would count, even though his only role is to tell you how to play and then die. Speaking of Bio Ware, both KOTOR and Jade Empire give you opportunities on the evil path to murder some of your teammates. And speaking of Jade Empire, Sagacious Zu is a storyline death. Saga Frontier 2 guns straight for the Downer Ending on Gustav's path by killing him and having you control another character for the finale. Haven't played all of them, but apparently many games in the Arc The Lad franchise like doing this.
So I'll keep spoiler tagging, but I must say that a topic that is by its nature one giant spoiler should just not bother with spoiler tags. A big giant "SPOILERS!" warning should be enough, because otherwise it's a pretty pointless list if we can't read it.
A) The game
and
B) The character
A sentence in which I write "Puppies like to drink tea with peppermint leafs and a side of asparagus" is as meaningful to the discussion as
GUY in GUY'S GAME dies.
Let's just say that if you are dumb enough to enter a topic with the title of "Video games where the main character dies" and are upset at getting spoiled...you deserve it.
edited 1st Jul '11 11:19:15 PM by Rebochan
Decemberist
At the end of Age of Mythology, Arkantos dies and ascends to Olympus.
edited 2nd Jul '11 10:37:31 AM by MilosStefanovic
The sin of silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
The Final ECW Champion
I don't know. Does player character who dies but you get to play as as a ghost really count? Nintendo published at least two such games. Does player character who gets better really count? Like You Would Really Do It, and kill off Sonic The Hedgehog.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Sight of Eternity
There's also Dreamfall: EVERYONE DIES. Okay, some are presumably dead/alive but it was such a Downer Ending I really couldn't see it any other way. 
Micromastophile
While Baten Kaitos doesn't kill the main character He does turn evil.
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
I like how Final Fantasy II handles it—3 permanent character slots, and one rotating slot for guest characters who have a tendency not to make it. Odium does the same trick.
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
[Obligatory Demon's Souls joke]
But seriously, you die as part of the tutorial.
For Fire Emblem 4: I should mention that not every character dies in the first half. Aideen is confirmed to be alive and well in Chapter 6, Levin (or at least his body) is still around in the 2nd half, Tiltyu survives but dies from abuse in the 2nd half, Lachesis survives but does die later in the desert, etc. etc. The only character that we know for sure to be dead iirc is Sigurd, though it's safe to assume that most of the characters that the game doesn't say what happened did die.
edited 1st Jul '11 8:34:39 PM by Barrylocke
Taking a break from FE1, for the FE8 draft instead