Even if it got horrible scores, I love that game, the whole dark tone of it is one of the reasons why I loved it.Riobux said:
"And they actually didn't live happily ever after"?
- Thread starter Jang
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Shadow of the Colossus is a pretty famous game with a sad ending.
It's not a total loss, but from the very beginning of the game you can hear the train coming and at the end it's finally time to stand on the tracks.
There are plenty of games with sad endings. There just aren't many famous games with sad endings, by which I mean big, AAA titles in the vein of MGS, Modern Warfare, or Final Fantasy. If you want to find a few sad endings, you have to step away from the center stage; sad endings just piss most people off. It turns out people like to get endings where everything they worked for doesn't come crashing down and everyone they liked dies. Go figure.
The most gut-wrenching ending I can think of at the moment was the end of Fatal Frame II. A worse one would have been ICO, but they turn it around at the last moment. ICO had left me all but despondent through the credits, though.
There are even games with 'happy' endings that seem awful only if you think about them too long. At the end of Ace Combat 5, you've stopped the war and blown up the SOLG and the Belkan aggressors, which is good... But millions of people have been killed in a pointless proxy war, and both countries are still infiltrated head-to-toe by Belkan traitors who have nothing left to lose and will probably seek to sabotage every industry and government body and assassinate every political figure and war hero they can, including Nikanor, Harling, Anderson, and you and your squadron. The war won't be 'over' for another decade at least, and the climate of fear and paranoia it will create will last for decades.
How's that for a sad ending?
It's not a total loss, but from the very beginning of the game you can hear the train coming and at the end it's finally time to stand on the tracks.
There are plenty of games with sad endings. There just aren't many famous games with sad endings, by which I mean big, AAA titles in the vein of MGS, Modern Warfare, or Final Fantasy. If you want to find a few sad endings, you have to step away from the center stage; sad endings just piss most people off. It turns out people like to get endings where everything they worked for doesn't come crashing down and everyone they liked dies. Go figure.
The most gut-wrenching ending I can think of at the moment was the end of Fatal Frame II. A worse one would have been ICO, but they turn it around at the last moment. ICO had left me all but despondent through the credits, though.
There are even games with 'happy' endings that seem awful only if you think about them too long. At the end of Ace Combat 5, you've stopped the war and blown up the SOLG and the Belkan aggressors, which is good... But millions of people have been killed in a pointless proxy war, and both countries are still infiltrated head-to-toe by Belkan traitors who have nothing left to lose and will probably seek to sabotage every industry and government body and assassinate every political figure and war hero they can, including Nikanor, Harling, Anderson, and you and your squadron. The war won't be 'over' for another decade at least, and the climate of fear and paranoia it will create will last for decades.
How's that for a sad ending?
I actually like sad endings better than happy endings. When a game ends happily, I put down my controller and think "What, and everything turns out just fine? That's lame." In fact, in games with multiple endings, I usually end up liking the "bad" one the best. Maybe I just enjoy watching people suffer...
But that's not an ending. That's a significant event in a long, continuing story.TheRocketeer said:
Turning Point has a really bummed-out ending.
I don't mind "sad" endings at all. Not everything must reach a perfect conclusion, and I like for a game to be unexpected, even if it means the fight is ultimatelly futile.
Such as in Starlancer.
And then there's Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
You stow away on a german zeppellin rigged with a nuke on board, headed for N.Y., and you have to disarm the bomb. You manage to slow the airship down, but when you finaly reach the bomb, turns out it's mere seconds from detonation. Your character slumps down, defeated, and the nuke goes off within sight of the Statue of Liberty.
I don't mind "sad" endings at all. Not everything must reach a perfect conclusion, and I like for a game to be unexpected, even if it means the fight is ultimatelly futile.
Such as in Starlancer.
You spend the entire game fighting the Coalition across our solar system as the underdog, going against the odds and finally putting them on the run. Turns out that regardles of what you do, you lose the war, the Alliance flees the solar system, leaving it to the victorious Coalition, and you presumably die in shame.
And then there's Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
You fight the Emperor... and lose. And then you die.
Not often that I'm ninja'd on something that I want to put Drakengard down on, and yes the first four endings for it are increasingly worse as far as how depressing they are, the last one is just anti-climactic (not to mention a pain in the ass to get).Stormz said:
I think both STALKERs had pretty bleak endings. And HLep2 was pretty grim too, but it was tempered byCowabungaa said:
the rocket launch.
Well, both Bioshock games have multiple endings, some of which are happy, and others sad, but they're a bit different. First off, there aren't any truly canon endings, so the good one isn't necessarily the correct one. Second, in Bioshock 2...
All the endings have a touch of sadness to them. You can't stop Delta from dying, and your only hope to continue in any way is through Delta. It actually seems that there are happy, sad, and evil endings, really. The differences between the good and evil endings are really only the status of the little sisters and Eleanor's intentions. These endings really should fit with your intentions, and satisfy you regardless of which one you got.
No, sad endings are just more realistic, so you can relate to them better, whcih means you're more immersed(sp) in it. which is always good. I often find sad or "in between" endings the best. I think it's because when we watch a movie/game with a happy ending a voice in the back of our head goes like "so that's it? they went through hell and back without so much as a scratch?"Rainbowloid said:
course, that's just my own 2 cents
Actually, it probably isn't that, either. Despite their 'war is hell' swagger, Namco seems to take the Return of the Jedi approach to game endings, ie, the SOLG (Death Star) was blown up and the Gray Men's (Emperor's) immediate plot was stopped, so the Belkan infoltrators (the Empire) give up and go home. They're great sports. We're told that none of the Razgriz ever had to fight again, so we can take it that, at the very least, nothing evolved into armed conflict. So it looks like things are relatively okay, or at least better than they are on the Erusean continent, which apparently didn't stop fighting long after AC4.Georgie_Leech said:
So Osea's apparently safe. Until NOGI evolves into General Resources, Ltd., that is. Then God help us all.
Fable had a pretty sad ending either way.
And yeah FF10. Even with the 'fix' in 10-2 it's still not exactly a happily ever after...
you lose both your parents, spent a year in prison being tortured, potentially lose your sister, your guild is destroyed and in Fable 2 we find out that your kind is eventually hunted to nigh-extinction in the aftermath.
And yeah FF10. Even with the 'fix' in 10-2 it's still not exactly a happily ever after...
You never played Persona 3: FES did you?
The expansion story "The Answer" softens the blow slightly, but only after twisting the knife.
I hadn't played Lufia I though (never released in Australia) so that was a really tragic ending. God, I REALLY want to see how they're going to do that scene in the DS remake!
You save the world from the god of death, but all your party lose their memories of the entire battle. 1 month later Aigis the robot girl, the only member of the party who remembers, comes to school to keep the promise you all made to meet up after graduation and your party suddenly remembers what they went through together and run to the roof. Aigis is up there cradling the main character's head on her lap while she tells him how, now the battle is over, she will live to protect him. And... then he dies just as his friends all arrive, having expended all his life to save the world a month earlier.
Well yes, but Lufia II WAS a prequel. You KNEW how the game ended from the very beginning of Lufia, which opened with a flashback to the ending of Lufia II.Georgie_Leech said:
I hadn't played Lufia I though (never released in Australia) so that was a really tragic ending. God, I REALLY want to see how they're going to do that scene in the DS remake!
A game with only one ending and it being a bad ending would be another world (its known as something else in America and other places but i dont know the name).
and well if your looking for bad endings in games with good endings, just look at some vns, i would mention one in particular (a big named one, with pritty much all bad endings, even the good ending is bad) but i wont out of well wanting to keep some shred of dignity, and some people cant get over the implied theme of it.
and well if your looking for bad endings in games with good endings, just look at some vns, i would mention one in particular (a big named one, with pritty much all bad endings, even the good ending is bad) but i wont out of well wanting to keep some shred of dignity, and some people cant get over the implied theme of it.
That is depending on how you interpret that ending, not in the mood to go to off topic. But i agree it is different from most ive seen.armaina said:
While many people won't consider indie flash games to be considered "Games", one I really enjoyed was Vorago (http://armorgames.com/play/4201/vorago)
Its a nice little point and click adventure game with a few interactive action bits thrown in. Damn good storey and characters with a superb ending which isn't all smile. If you got some spare time I advise checking it out.
Its a nice little point and click adventure game with a few interactive action bits thrown in. Damn good storey and characters with a superb ending which isn't all smile. If you got some spare time I advise checking it out.