Why should I have a sense of accomplishment and success if the planet was destroyed?

[KissofKetchup]

I was reading the Wikipedia article on Halo Reach and in it it said that the article that the developers were trying to give the player a sense of accomplishment and success even though the planet you're going to be defending is destroyed at the end of the game. This got me thinking, will there ever be a game where you don't get a feeling of accomplishment or success from beating. The only game that comes close in my mind is FarCry 2 when

Spoiler

you choose which way you kill yourself for the greater good.

I mean, in Halo: Reach's case, YOU FAILED DEFENDING THE PLANET! Why should you have any feeling of accomplishment!? I feel almost babied by the gaming industry because I can not think of a single game where there wasn't a happy ending with the exception of FarCry 2. Give me an ending like the one in Platoon every once in awhile. Hey, it could even give you a good excuse to make a sequel.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I think there needs to be games where you don't feel like "I did it!" when you beat them
EDIT2: What I'm asking for is a game that maybe makes you feel sad, or angry, or any other emotion than happy. Something like that

 

[Nouw]

It adds the feeling of sorrow for the Spartans. You'll die knowing you made a difference. Kind of...

 

[Dark Knifer]

You could have a feeling that you did the best you could in very dire situations and did make a difference, even if it was a very minor one.

 

[KissofKetchup]

People use this arguement against the idea of being able to play as the Germans in a WWII game.
It's not about the ending, it's about the content.
Also in Halo: Reach's case, the destruction of the planet may make players experience sadness, which adds to the emotional content.

I don't think that you got my point, There needs to games where you don't get that feeling of "I did it" every now and again

 

[Luke5515]

It would have been nice if you put some spoiler alerts before the paragraph and not ruined the entire story for me.

 

[Kelbear]

People use this arguement against the idea of being able to play as the Germans in a WWII game.
It's not about the ending, it's about the content.
Also in Halo: Reach's case, the destruction of the planet may make players experience sadness, which adds to the emotional content.

I don't think that you got my point, There needs to games where you don't get that feeling of "I did it" every now and again

Yes. But I don't think Halo is the franchise to do it.

 

[Ze_Sapper]

Well in Dragon Age Origins you can

Spoiler

choose to sacrifice yourself to end the Blight.

 

[KissofKetchup]

People use this arguement against the idea of being able to play as the Germans in a WWII game.
It's not about the ending, it's about the content.
Also in Halo: Reach's case, the destruction of the planet may make players experience sadness, which adds to the emotional content.

I don't think that you got my point, There needs to games where you don't get that feeling of "I did it" every now and again

Hmm?
I don't understand you, what do you mean by "I did it"?

The feeling of accomplishment that you usually get after beating a game.

 

[KissofKetchup]

People use this arguement against the idea of being able to play as the Germans in a WWII game.
It's not about the ending, it's about the content.
Also in Halo: Reach's case, the destruction of the planet may make players experience sadness, which adds to the emotional content.

I don't think that you got my point, There needs to games where you don't get that feeling of "I did it" every now and again

You'll get the feeling of "yes, I accomplished it" whenever you beat a game. The only time you don't get this, or get this to a lesser extent, is when a videogame has multiple endings, and some are worse than others. In this case, you wouldn't get the full extent of "yay, I did it" until you got the good ending.

Saying there needs to be games that don't give you a "yay I did it" feeling is like saying there should be a movie that's just a single static picture. Not having a feeling that you accomplished something defeats the purpose of a game.

I'm saying that the story should take something away from you like the ending of Platoon for example

Spoiler

Yeah Charlie Sheen's character survived, but he lost a piece of his humanity during his tour

Something like that is what I'm asking for

 

[Lucane]

You could stop them long enough to save the people(alot of them or a few of them or hey just a ship full or kids or the extact opposite of the CoD MW:2 "No Russian" mission) Or stop the Covanent so much that they do still take the planet but it wasn't without heavy losses on thier side.

 

[KissofKetchup]

People use this arguement against the idea of being able to play as the Germans in a WWII game.
It's not about the ending, it's about the content.
Also in Halo: Reach's case, the destruction of the planet may make players experience sadness, which adds to the emotional content.

I don't think that you got my point, There needs to games where you don't get that feeling of "I did it" every now and again

You'll get the feeling of "yes, I accomplished it" whenever you beat a game. The only time you don't get this, or get this to a lesser extent, is when a videogame has multiple endings, and some are worse than others. In this case, you wouldn't get the full extent of "yay, I did it" until you got the good ending.

Saying there needs to be games that don't give you a "yay I did it" feeling is like saying there should be a movie that's just a single static picture. Not having a feeling that you accomplished something defeats the purpose of a game.

I'm saying that the story should take something away from you like the ending of Platoon for example

Spoiler

Yeah Charlie Sheen's character survived, but he lost a piece of his humanity during his tour

Something like that is what I'm asking for

How the story ends, and the feeling of accomplishment you get from the ending are separate things. You might feel sad about the way that things turned out, but that doesn't mean your feeling of accomplishment disappears, just because the developers didn't take their story in a happy direction.

You did everything right during your play through, which is why you beat the game, meaning that if the story got screwed up, it wasn't your fault, and there's nothing you could have done about it, so why lose your feeling of accomplishment?

Oh, and there are plenty of videogame stories which are ridiculously depressing, just go plat Shadow of the Colossus.

But what's not to say that you HAVE to have a sense of accomplishment? It would certainly shake things up in this industry that is currently largely creatively stagnant in my opinion.

 

[Meggiepants]

There are more than a few ways to get a depressing ending in Dragon Age: Origins. You can also get really depressing endings in Fallout 3.

And a poster already mentioned Shadow of the Colossus. I played that game through and can't say I felt like, "Yay! I did it!" after I finished that game.