Games Where The 'Antagonist/Villian' Wins (Or Was Right)?
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Tropico series...Kinda, maybe? You can play it straight as an evil dictator, enact all the oppressive regime options and keep your people in line by throwing entire families into prison (tropico 3/4 anyway, not sure about 5), bribe and ruin the lives of people all to keep your own ass in power.. Yeah you can play it benevolent dictator style too, but it's possible to be the cruelest of Tyrants and defeat the perfectly justified rebels+end up having a negative influence on the world at large in certain story missions.
Mordheim. People already mentioned Warhammer stuff, but in Mordheims case it's particularly evident.
We know that none of the warbands ultimately succeed in their goals, Mordheim continues being one of the worst places in the Warhammer World right up to the end times, with factions like Sisters of Sigmar failing catastrophically in redeeming themselves and the ones that don't end up dieing horrible deaths will end up becoming turned by the Lahmian Vampires (Sisters being the closest you come to a "good" faction I think since they are the only warband not in it for profit or self gain). Heck even the other Human faction, the Rheiklanders, are doomed to fail, no matter what their Count will never end up becoming Emperor. Same for the recently added Witch Hunters, Mordheim will be a den of heresy right till the end times with adventurers and warbands still fighting over it whilst the Warhammer world gets destroyed.
Ultimately the only winner is chaos and the forces of corruption,and even then it won't be your chaos warband or your eshin warband, they are doomed to fail too.
Diablo 1, dunno about the rest. None of the heroes from Diablo 1 end up living happily in retirement after winning the 1st game, ultimately they fail to achieve what they aimed to do and Diablo end ups taking over one of the heroes and using him as a vessel from which to do the events of Diablo 2. Haven't played Diablo 3 so don't know if the protagonists of D2 fare any any better.
Between the massive amount of people who have asked for refunds to the point that the devs have been in significant debt for a while, and the amount of stress on the coder starting to show as it seems he has kinda cracked based on the responses (at one point the other dev member couldn't even get hold of him for a good 2 weeks or something, and only finally resumed communications with him recently, drama is still ongoing and last I checked the forums, people were in full panic mode as they find it curious that despite said coder saying he was making progress, he has yet to even show screencaps of what he is doing).
If it comes out That Which Sleeps is going to be amazing if it does half the things the KS campaign said it would do, but right now it's going through some shaky times.
Mordheim. People already mentioned Warhammer stuff, but in Mordheims case it's particularly evident.
We know that none of the warbands ultimately succeed in their goals, Mordheim continues being one of the worst places in the Warhammer World right up to the end times, with factions like Sisters of Sigmar failing catastrophically in redeeming themselves and the ones that don't end up dieing horrible deaths will end up becoming turned by the Lahmian Vampires (Sisters being the closest you come to a "good" faction I think since they are the only warband not in it for profit or self gain). Heck even the other Human faction, the Rheiklanders, are doomed to fail, no matter what their Count will never end up becoming Emperor. Same for the recently added Witch Hunters, Mordheim will be a den of heresy right till the end times with adventurers and warbands still fighting over it whilst the Warhammer world gets destroyed.
Ultimately the only winner is chaos and the forces of corruption,and even then it won't be your chaos warband or your eshin warband, they are doomed to fail too.
Diablo 1, dunno about the rest. None of the heroes from Diablo 1 end up living happily in retirement after winning the 1st game, ultimately they fail to achieve what they aimed to do and Diablo end ups taking over one of the heroes and using him as a vessel from which to do the events of Diablo 2. Haven't played Diablo 3 so don't know if the protagonists of D2 fare any any better.
*sniff* I don't know if you've been keeping up with news of that, but things ain't looking rosy for That Which Sleeps.DoPo said:
Between the massive amount of people who have asked for refunds to the point that the devs have been in significant debt for a while, and the amount of stress on the coder starting to show as it seems he has kinda cracked based on the responses (at one point the other dev member couldn't even get hold of him for a good 2 weeks or something, and only finally resumed communications with him recently, drama is still ongoing and last I checked the forums, people were in full panic mode as they find it curious that despite said coder saying he was making progress, he has yet to even show screencaps of what he is doing).
If it comes out That Which Sleeps is going to be amazing if it does half the things the KS campaign said it would do, but right now it's going through some shaky times.
Aww, man, that sucks. And no, I hadn't kept up with the news - I spend a long time not remembering what the game name was and finally this thread prompted me to go and find it again. Well, it turns out googling "game evil god awaken" found it...but I didn't really check anything aside from "is there a release date yet".Frankster said:
That's sad. I really hope they manage to pull through the tough times.
The tricky part of the the question is "wins." Am guessing the OP meant something other than the manny games that have moral choices, the player character the "bad" one, morally grey exploration where nobody wins...but an actual antagonist winning against the established ingame protagonist? Not so easy to find. Perhaps that would not go down so well for the customer base that looks to find a challenge and defeat it. To flat out show the gamer that all their effort went into them still losing, well, did anybody remember Mass Effect? People can take these things very personally. I am having trouble thinking of any example that would be considered worthy of this.
Editiboo;
Editiboo;
That has just initiated a thought, would Half Life 2: episode 2 count? As it pretty much ends with the one person identified as a big player in the messy catastrophe ending your progress and showing you (or Freeman, like it matters) the that you have no power or control as you helplessly endure his rambling during the extended bombshell. He evidently had the situation under much more control than you could ever imagine. Though whether that is "winning" for him, seems imprecise. None of us know the fate of any of the game's characters ever since. Damnit, Valve... you have to tie this up at some point!Dalisclock said:
Technically speaking, just about any old-school RTS where they had completely separate campaigns for the various factions (not the "play the campaigns in order because they tell a story" such as Starcraft or Warcraft III) had "antagonist wins" endings.
As someone mentioned, God of War. Kratos basically destroys the planet to get revenge.
Diablo I, turns out the antagonist wins.
In Sacred 2, most of the characters have good or evil campaigns, so you can go with evil there.
As someone mentioned, God of War. Kratos basically destroys the planet to get revenge.
Diablo I, turns out the antagonist wins.
In Sacred 2, most of the characters have good or evil campaigns, so you can go with evil there.
Mass Effect 3.
No, not really. He gets his goals done, and as for the destruction of the old world, it was portrayed as beneficial, with God of War II even prophecising Jesus' birth after the old world is done with. Also, it's about the "antagonist" winning, not even necessarily a bad guy, but a person who opposes the main character. If the protagonist is evil, he is still the protagonist.Gekidami said:
You weren't paying much attention to those games, were you? He stops being the villain in Soul Reaver 2 where he becomes a sorta-mentor to Raziel and in Defiance he does turn out to be the hero all along, prophecised to bring balance back to Nosgoth and his actions in Soul Reaver 1 and 2 being all done so he could fulfill that prophecy.Meiam said:
The sequel to the Longest Journey, Dreamfall, pretty much ends with the hero PCs either dead or incapacitated, one of the most powerful beings in the universe(and a presumptive ally to boot) is assassinated, the rebellion(against Nazi-like invaders in Marcuria) on the edge of defeat and the villains plans in both worlds were merely delayed by your actions, not stopped. What makes it even worse is that is was a cliffhanger ending that wasn't resolved for nearly a decade.
star ocean: till the end of time was like that. semi-non-spoilerly summary, heroes try to kill the creator of the universe because fuck da police amirite. only succeed in pissing him off enough to destroy the whole thing. good job guys.
I don't think people understand the difference between "villain" and "antagonist." Those words are not interchangeable.
In Guild Wars: Nightfall, a lesser villain is a huge beneficiary of your actions in combating the greater villain, and you fight alongside his forces on several occasions. By the time of Guild Wars 2, it's become clear that this has had dire consequences in the proceeding 250 years.
Which would you dispute in this thread? The former is often a matter of perspective.canadamus_prime said:
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watRealRT said:
That doesn't happen.
Unless, y'know, your trigger finger gets twitchy during the choice.
The first Crackdown game. Essentially, the group the player is working for is clearing out all the gangs in the city so that they can have complete control. Pretty much you were working for Hydra the whole time.
Illidan winning isnt good news. Its the Burning Legion getting the powers of the Lich King and having a second go at destroying Azeroth as the frozen throne melts and Illidan wins KilJadens favor and becomes a true demon.Joccaren said:
Now afterwards, I have to admit you're right. They do win.RealRT said:
But it's a win with no losers. Everybody wins.
And honestly, the "fuck you" was something that was talked a lot about on forums prior to the change.
There were plenty of people who wanted to be able to not make any choice, and fight it out.
Only, I reckon in their heads they'd somehow win the fight. Which would've made no sense.
Well the Rejection ending does make all sorts of sense and yet it still sucks because it makes all three games ultimately pointless.ZeDilton said:
While I'm not nearly as bitter about the endings in general, I despise Rejection to the core. Also, Drew Karpyshin's original plans were far better.