Games Where The 'Antagonist/Villian' Wins (Or Was Right)?

[Chaos Isaac]

Final Fantasy XIII.

The bad guys get exactly what they want. The protagonists are a bunch of idiots who do exactly what the bad guys do.

 

[Mangod]

I can throw Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong into the ring here, but it comes down to player choice in the end. But a game where the player straight up loses in the end? I can't think of any.

Games where the villain wins? Sure, there's plenty of them, but those are usually games where the protagonist is the villain. A... "villain protagonist [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist]", if you will. But a game where the antagonist wins? Can't think of a single one.

 

[ZeD [taken 0]]

Mass Effect 3.

wat

That doesn't happen.
Unless, y'know, your trigger finger gets twitchy during the choice.

No matter what you choose, you choose it on their terms and should you reject their offer, you get what's basically a "fuck you" from developers for not liking what they gave you.

Now afterwards, I have to admit you're right. They do win.
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.

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.

It makes sense the way they made it. Not the way some fans expected it to, though.
And what's to despise, really? Don't choose it.

I don't know any details about the original plan other than it had something to do with.. dark materia and whatnot?
Related to that quest in ME2 with the dying star.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Certain endings in Drakengard 1, 2, and 3. Spec Ops: The Line. Certain endings in The Bard's Tale (2004). FFIX (Kuja always wins, even when he loses). FF Tactics. Portal 2. Certain endings to The Stanley Parable.

 

[lacktheknack]

That feeling when naming the game spoils it. D:

Darkest Dungeon.

 

[CaitSeith]

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 (extended ending)

Mass Effect 3 (extended ending), if you refuse to make the choice, or you shoot the "god-child", you get an ending where the Reapers win, and the only vestige from your crew is a beacon and Liara's recording with the Crucible blueprints.

No matter what you choose, you choose it on their terms

That too (if you see an awful tri-flavor Deux Ex Machina as the antagonist).

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

I can throw Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong into the ring here, but it comes down to player choice in the end. But a game where the player straight up loses in the end? I can't think of any.

Games where the villain wins? Sure, there's plenty of them, but those are usually games where the protagonist is the villain. A... "villain protagonist [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist]", if you will. But a game where the antagonist wins? Can't think of a single one.

Bet on Soldier and Iron Storm.

 

[FalloutJack]

And nobody mentions the Destroy All Humans series. Wow. Could there be a more blatent example, apart from games that feature you as the actual Dark Lord of an army of evil minions?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

And nobody mentions the Destroy All Humans series. Wow. Could there be a more blatent example, apart from games that feature you as the actual Dark Lord of an army of evil minions?

As posted above you:

Games where the villain wins? Sure, there's plenty of them, but those are usually games where the protagonist is the villain. A... "villain protagonist", if you will. But a game where the antagonist wins? Can't think of a single one.

Unlike that poster I can think of a few, but the point is that Destroy All Humans doesn't count because you play as the alien rampaging around and you win, thus the antagonist doesn't win.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I remember that happened in Crackdown.

Kinda sorta in Senran kagura what with the evil shinobi school students as playable.

Demon King Box, i reckon.

Disgaea?

Assorted fighting games where you go through the story as the bad guy? Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat come to mind.

 

[Kyle Winston]

I might be stretching it a bit, but Link to the Past, the Oracle games, Awakening, and the first two Zelda games all take place in the timeline where Ganondorf wins in Ocarina of Time.

 

[Voidrunner]

I'm going to second Divinity Two, though when I bought it was Ego Draconis rather than the Dragon Knight Saga, so I'm not sure if the expansion changes anything. But yeah, the villain wins in the end and you were playing into his hands the whole time. You feel like such an idiot after that. You could have literally done nothing and the world would have had a better outcome.

 

[Trunkage]

Yeah, the answer you're gonna get repeatedly is that in lots of games with evil choices, such as for example KOTOR or Bioshock, you get to win as the bad guy, but I suspect this isn't what you mean - you want to know in which games the antagonist wins, right?

There's a version of this in the Witcher 2.

Spoiler

In the epilogue, before you leave Loc Muinne, Geralt gets to confront Letho, Foltest's assassin. You get to decide whether to fight him, or to let him go. Now, the only choice that makes sense to me, is to let him go. First, because you kinda owe him - he took care of Yennefer while you were missing. And on top of that, you can't stop him anymore. He's accomplished his mission. Nilfgaard crosses the Yaruga and invades the North. Apart from revenge, there's no reason to kill him. And even revenge is a pretty weak reason, Geralt is neutral on principle, it isn't like Foltest was a personal friend or anything. So Letho wins, Emhyr wins.

Geralt says he's neutral but is anything but. I'm not just talking about how you make decision in the game. You don't select a girlfriend (two actually) that are sorceress and stay neutral anymore.

 

[Trunkage]

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 (extended ending)

Mass Effect 3 (extended ending), if you refuse to make the choice, or you shoot the "god-child", you get an ending where the Reapers win, and the only vestige from your crew is a beacon and Liara's recording with the Crucible blueprints.

No matter what you choose, you choose it on their terms

That too (if you see an awful tri-flavor Deux Ex Machina as the antagonist).

Like Deus Ex (or 2 or HR)

 

[vashthblackseed]

F.E.A.R. 2 -

Spoiler

After the final boss fight you get a cut scene showing Alma pregnant. Essentially, a dead psychic woman raped you while you where fighting the hallucination of your fellow soldier.

Diablo 1 - The hero wins the battle, but ends up becoming Diablo in the 2nd game.

Diablo 2 - You might have killed off several major and minor Evils, but the World Stone is fucked.

Half Life (1, 2, ep1 & ep2) - The G man is clearly the villain behind all the shit going on. You don't do a single thing to effect his plans in the slightest. All we ever succeed at accomplishing is brief glimpses of him after he has checked off another task accomplished.

 

[joshuaayt]

Basically every old game was technically like this. The enemy firing missiles at you in missile command always wins. The ghosts always end up punking pac-man, and you cannot hunt every duck.

Other than that, yeah, I can't think of a whole lot.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Hate to be a picky one, but isn't that antagonist one who simply opposes the protagonist, the main character, thus any game where the main character is evil and wins still doesn't mean the antagonist won.

This is true. The pedant in me was having fits reading through the thread.

OT: Do game overs count? I could think of an awful lot if game overs count. In DK64 K. Rool wins if you even so much as exit the game, I think it was the same for Banjo Kazooie as well.

 

[Dalisclock]

Final Fantasy XIII.

The bad guys get exactly what they want. The protagonists are a bunch of idiots who do exactly what the bad guys do.

What's worse is that they're told by the bad guy that this is exactly what's gonna happen, and they do it anyway. The world is pretty much saved by Deus ex Machina.

Oh, and to go even more blatant, FF XIII-2, where Caius gets what he wants no matter what you do.

 

[votemarvel]

The Reapers win every ending in Mass Effect 3.

Control: The Reapers are still out there policing the Galaxy. It's just now they are under the direction of Shepard AI instead of Kid AI.

Synthesis: Hologram kid achieves the goal he was searching for and the Reapers now live in peace with the rest of the Galaxy.

Destroy: Yes they die in doing so but the Reapers goal of protecting organics from synthetics is achieved, at least in the short term at any rate.

Refuse: The Reapers win and carry on the cycles.

There isn't a single ending in ME3 where the Reapers don't achieve a victory of some sort and a complete victory with Refuse. Yet there is also no ending where Shepard achieves a clear victory. So Bioware gave the antagonists a clear win but not the protagonist.

I never realised how much that annoys me.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I never realised how much that annoys me.

I got the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod (PC) which changes how the game ends. Shepard lives, wins, and kills the Reapers (but no other synthetics). And since Andromeda ignores the ending of ME3, head-canon wins.