History LighterAndSofter / VideoGames

* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' is far more comedic than its predecessor ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings''. While the original starts with a poltergeist invading the hero Ninten's house and centers around a very tragic backstory involving his great-grandparents and the final boss, the second game plays things for more humor barring a few moments. It only really gets as serious as the first game in the final battle, in which the tragic final boss from the first game is reduced to an insane, all-powerful EldritchAbomination.

* ''[[VideoGame/SuperMarioStrikers Mario Strikers: Battle League]]'' is this compared to the original on the Gamecube and ''Charged'' on the Wii, which were DarkerAndEdgier takes on the Mario universe. While the art of the games is still highly stylized, Mario and his friends dropped their JerkassBall personalities and are back to their usual bright and cheery selves.

** ''VideoGame/Persona4'' is a considerably more cheerful game compared to its predecessors. While the story is about tracking down a serial murderer while being confronted with the party's darkest secrets and deepest fears, it has a fairly positive attitude about the whole thing. It makes for a nice change after the seriously {{Bittersweet Ending}}s of ''VideoGame/Persona3'' and ''VideoGame/Persona2'', and though it has a lighter feeling to it, it still contains some really dark subject matter.
*** The main cast's character arcs tend to be lighter in ''Persona 4'' than in ''Persona 3''. Just to compare the first two party members you get in both games, Junpei's arc is he feels like he has no future ahead of him since he's mediocre at best in just about every thing he does, and everyone else he knows is headed to big things. He's also afraid of turning into his drunkard, waste-of-space father. Yosuke's main character arc in comparison is dealing with his feelings about both living in the country instead of the city and the death of the girl he was in love with. Yukari's arc is that she can't stand people who can't stand up for themselves, like her mother who throws herself at boyfriend after boyfriend. Later on she has to deal with the fact that [[spoiler: her father is probably partially responsible for the whole mess they are in]]. In comparison, Chie just feels jealousy towards her best friend and later just wants to be able to protect people.

** The port of ''VideoGame/{{Mortal Kombat|1}}'' to the UsefulNotes/SuperNES [[Bowdlerise/VideoGames removes the blood and some of the more graphic fatalities]].

* [[VideoGame/CandyCrushSaga King's]] MatchThreeGame, ''[[https://apps.facebook.com/bubblewitch-two Bubble Witch Saga 2]]'', has cutesy graphics (including chibis on the map screen), and the only hazard is [[FogOfWar fog]] that obscures some of the bubbles already on-screen. Mission objectives range from the usual clearing the top of the screen to freeing an adorable ghost or rescuing animals. Compare this to the original ''Bubble Witch Saga'', where the overarcing plotline involves evil spirits overrunning the land. This actually ties into some of the hazards, like the infected bubbles. Other hazards involve bubbles becoming encased in crystal, bombs start counting down when exposed and end the level if not removed within the time limit, poison bubbles that kill off your spiders (that's a bad thing; having spiders helps your score immensely), and death bubbles that end your game instantly if you hit them.

* ''VideoGame/SamuraiShodown 6'' in comparison to the rest of the series. It uses a festival setting, has no blood or killing moves, and introduces several new fighters who are intentionally designed to be comical or lighthearted.

* The ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' series has partially fallen into this, with the amount of blood sprayed around being reduced from enough to paint the walls purple (or blue, or orange, or red) to barely enough to fill a shot glass. Averted in that the storyline maintains its position halfway down the cynicism side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism. This got to the point that ''Halo 5'' ended up with a T rating instead of M, but since the series has always been at the low end of the M rating, most people didn't care too much.
** The continued T ratings with ''Halo Infinite'' had plenty of fans clamoring for a return to the M rating. However other than the toned down blood and the lack of the Flood, both ''Halo 5'' and ''Halo Infinite'' had campaigns very much in the same style as their M rated predecessors. With ''Halo Infinite'' also heavily mimicking the art style of the classic Bungie games the similar tone was especially apparent. Where the T rating ''did'' impact ''Halo Infinite'' notably though was when it was revealed 343i had been removing several fan made Forge maps from the game's file share service due to graphic depictions of blood and corpses in them.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2'' is this, big time. The body count is almost non-existent, everything is more cheerful, and the music is much more upbeat. Hey, the end of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' [[spoiler: had an ultimate force of death and destruction wiped off the plane of existence]], it's needed.

* The ''VideoGame/IkariWarriors'', moved in this direction regarding games that featured ol' Ralf and Clark. Their first game was essentially the [[Franchise/{{Rambo}} First Blood series]] as a video game and then their second game might as well be VideoGame/{{Contra}} with a bird's eye point of view - you know things are getting grimdark when your hero starts off with a flamethrower {{BFG}} just to survive. Then things start lightening up, the third game had them kung-fu fighting to save the President's kid and their franchise ends shortly after this. But now they show up in other game franchises where they really get lighter and softer. Ralf and Clark are no longer John Rambo clones and now have distinct characters and looks, they go [[VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters chilling at martial art tournaments]] while making a ton of new friends and then they're also showing up in [[VideoGame/MetalSlug cartoony run and gun games involving cutesy tanks]] and ThoseWackyNazis of the StupidJetpackHitler type.

** While ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has your standard dark and gritty plot, the Hidibrand side quests about a bumbling IronButtMonkey buffoon detective who routinely gets blown up (or buried in the ground from the head to the torso) while sporting a hilarious UncannyValley smile breathes the trope. The developers stated that the Hilidbrand quests were made to instill some hilarity and comedy in the game without affecting the grit of the main story. Gilgamesh becoming involved only serves to make it even moreso, with him serving a FriendlyEnemy[=/=]BumblingSidekick role that provides many opportunities for even further laughs.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'': The game is in the middle between the darker styles of its predecessor ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' and successor ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild Breath of the Wild]]'' and the lighter style of ''The Wind Waker'', which is evident by both the visual style and the storyline.

** Oddly enough, it also manages to be DarkerAndEdgier when compared to ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' itself, with such concepts as [[spoiler:the Wither Storm, which when compared to the already EnemyToAllLivingThings version in-game is [[UpToEleven upgraded]] to a PersonOfMassDestruction, acting like a living natural disaster and destroying entire cities merely by being present. As an extension of that, this game's version of Wither Sickness is an IncurableCoughOfDeath that literally causes a person to rot away to nothing.]]

** There's also the [[WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfZelda cartoon series]] and [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaCDiGames the first two CD-i games]]. Everything, including the character designs, dialogue, and boss deaths, is much more comical and cartoonish than in any of the canon games.

* While the Core Design ''Franchise/TombRaider'' games weren't exactly graphic, they did have some pretty dark content like Lara getting impaled on spikes if you fall into a spike pit and Lara being framed for murdering Werner von Croy in ''VideoGame/TombRaiderTheAngelOfDarkness''. When Crystal Dynamics took over the franchise and gave it a reboot, Lara's deaths in game and failures in quick time events have none of the gory details that would have been shown. The games reducing the violence was done in order to keep the games rated T. ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'' would swing the other way into DarkerAndEdgier territory.
* Developer commentary for ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeonII'' has indicated that it's going to be shifting the bleakness down a bit compared to ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon'', although it's still a downplayed example: what it's offering is EarnYourHappyEnding compared to the original game's DownerEnding, but it's still going to be a dark, difficult game.

** This trope occurs over the course of ''VideoGame/Persona5.'' The game starts with the protagonist being arrested for an assault he didn't commit and is promptly sentenced to probation, forcing him to change schools. Right from the start, the atmosphere at school is gloomy, due to the influence of the volleyball coach Suguru Kamoshida, who spreads rumors about you, physically abuses his team and sexually harasses the female students, which everyone keeps quiet about due to the reputation his team brings to the school due to him being a former Olympic athlete. Once the protagonist and his friends dispatch his shadow in the Metaverse and take his palace's treasure, Kamoshida undergoes a change of heart, confesses his crimes and turns himself in. Once he leaves the story, the game's tone brightens considerably. [[spoiler:Then it's subverted on the later arcs, with child abuse and death galore.]] The UpdatedRerelease ''Persona 5 Royal'' then [[spoiler: plays this trope straight, as while Dr. Maruki's reality warping plans are unnerving, he's still a good person in his wish to genuinely see others free from pain, as opposed to the made false God Yaldabaoth.]]

* Bizarrely for a FirstPersonShooter, the AlternateContinuity of ''VideoGame/TronTwoPointOh'' is ''much'' softer and upbeat in tone than the canon built around ''Film/TronLegacy''. This despite Flynn going MIA in both timelines, Lora Baines-Bradley being StuffedIntoTheFridge, and swapping AIIsACrapshoot for HumansAreTheRealMonsters. Killing civilian Programs instantly nets you a NonstandardGameOver, the Programs who are ''not'' actively shooting at Jet tend to be very friendly and helpful (and one of the factions who ''do'' shoot at Jet call it off when they realize he's on their side after all). Contrast with ''Legacy'', where ''every'' Program is trying to get Sam killed in a messy and painful way, or ''WesternAnimation/TronUprising'' where the protagonist is [[HeroWithBadPublicity openly hated]] by most of the citizens. [[spoiler: Furthermore, Jet is able to rescue his father and save {{cyberspace}} from the Datawraith mercenaries and viral threat. Of the ''Legacy'' canon, Anon stops Abraxas and dies horribly. Sam has to watch his father die in front of him, and Beck's DoomedByCanon.]]

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsCoded'' is probably the cheeriest game in [[Franchise/KingdomHearts the entire series]]. The plot is light--"let's make a data-Sora and have a nostalgic romp through a bunch of worlds from the first game while he fixes some inconsistencies in Jiminy's Journal!"--and there's a bigger focus on fun gameplay than in other installments of the series. The game has its sad and scary parts, for sure, but it's still more optimistic than its contemporaries, ''[[ShootTheShaggyDog Birth by Sleep]]'' and ''[[RetGone 358/2 Days]]''. And while the saga itself isn't particularly lighter and softer than anything, its take on some Disney stories is, such as ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'', though ''WesternAnimation/{{Cinderella}}'' and ''Film/TronLegacy'' [[DarkerAndEdgier both go in the opposite direction]].