I am surprised no one has said Golden Sun, because near the beginning of the game after you get through Sol Sanctum and you talk to the old guy in the sanctuary he asks if you accept this quest (to save the world) and you say no, and if you do and walk out the door it says "and the world slowly drifted to its destruction". I mean come on how much worse can an ending get if you get it at the beginning of the game?
Super Paper Mario had something like that as well. If you repeatedly say no to the guy who asks you to go and save the world, you get an automatic game over.
If your goof around in the game, don't sacrifice any of the treasures you collect to Odin, or don't save any souls, Freya comes over and lays the smackdown for your assholerific failing of Valhalla and seals your soul away.
Alien Front Online for the Dreamcast. You can play a campaign as either the army or the aliens, and there are 5 different "tiers" of endings for each. The more missions you lose, the closer you'll get to the bottom tier. There are some interesting endings in the middle tiers, like the humans and triclops having a truce, or the triclops establishing a stronghold in Siberia.
There is no winning, there is just taking longer to lose than other people. The cruel twist of fate is that I always make my most ambitious or creative projects in Minecraft in Hardcore mode.
Its a tough one to explain without spoilers, but I'd say you prettymuch lose by default in Dragon DOGMA (My bad, I put age here, woops)
You either go back in time to loop around again, or you become an invisible ghost that no one can see wandering the world until the next Arisen challenges you
In Arkham City when you are playing as Catwoman you can decide to leave instead of saving Batman which leads to The Joker taking over the entirety of Gotham.
In Myst you could break either brother out of their book prison which would then result in your imprisonment and the end of the defacto end of the game. There is also a "win" ending, although the game itself never stops you from continuing moving around the island after that.
Dreamfall ended like that, although it's more of a cliffhanger than actual loss. Basically the bad guys do whatever the fuck they wanted to do the whole game, despite your best efforts to the contrary and all the main characters are either incarcerated, in a coma or stabbed in the stomach.
EDIT: Oh, we are talking about multiple-choice games...
Then Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Yeah, the endings are horribly executed and rushed, but you can "fail" the original task given to you. You can choose to stop the augmentation program everywhere, if you send a broadcast on TV that the augs were responsible for the tragedy that occurred just hours before.
I think pretty much any game with time limits would fit your description. Best examples I can think of are the Dead Rising games and maybe Majora's Mask.
Golden Sun. I remember in the beginning when the village elder asks you if you're willing to go save the world, and if you say no the game ends and the world is engulfed in darkness. Clears the game in about 10 minutes.
The first Disgaea. If you lose to Mid-Boss (at least Early on) it's treated as a complete failure. Not to mention it officially counts as an ending, because doing so unlocks plenty of New Game + content (prinny commentary comes to mind).
arkham asylum when you finish the cat woman campaign yuo have a choice to leave him for dead, you then get a message talking about how people are dieing and that the joker has won
Well, true, but the good ending has things being a lot more civil. In the bad one, basically everything goes to hell and almost everybody around the girl dies. Except for Corvo who probably killed most of them and she knows that. With the good one, at least she knows murders are not the only way.
I still think it's a bit stupid either way, though.
Seth Carter said:
Its a tough one to explain without spoilers, but I'd say you prettymuch lose by default in Dragon Age.
You either go back in time to loop around again, or you become an invisible ghost that no one can see wandering the world until the next Arisen challenges you
If you mean have some type of consequence like deleting all your saves so that your death is ultimate, then all roguelikes apply. Faster than Light. As well as things like The Witcher 2 insanity mode, Mount and Blade with save on quit only option turned on. I think Sid Meier's Pirates! applies as well.
If you mean animated endings only then I'm pretty sure you can still fuck up most games that allow divergent choices.
Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Arcanum, Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout NV, Vampire Bloodlines, KOTOR, The Walking Dead, Alpha Protocol to name a few. Reasons, spoilered.
Mass Effect 2 you can bone that evil asari and die. You can get yourself killed on the suicide mission.
Mass Effect 3, you can pretty much have everything practically annihilated if you don't have a high prep score.
Arcanum lets you pretty much devastate all the kingdoms by killing important characters and inciting mass riots, you can even return to the world as an evil god. You can murder bates, Willoughsby, and make the orcs riot, plunging Tarrant into chaos. Murder the entire town of Stillwater. Murder Arland's king. Let the mountain dwarves all die one by one without the return of their stronger king. Leave Cumbria with their rightful king trapped on the isle of despair, and watch them waste away under his idiot brother. Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout New Vegas all do the same to lesser degrees..
Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines has a lot of animated ending variations where you are killed by those you helped. Helping LaCroix gets you blown up. Helping the asian vampires gets you dumped to the bottom of the ocean.
KOTOR lets you conquer the galaxy as a super evil sith lord.
The Walking Dead has a pretty bleak ending, though what you'd consider 'losing' to be in a zombie apocalypse might vary. But I'd say pretty much everyone dying and Clementine being on her own to be pretty bleak.
Alpha Protocol lets you join with Haliburton.. er 'Halbech' to go do evil things for them. Or you can pretty much annihilate everyone and run away with the sociopath, the assassin, or the person who betrayed you at the start of the game.
Xaio30 said:
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura (aside from having a long name) let you...
...side with the bad guy at the end if you wished, and thus going on a murder spree throughout the world before finally turning on each other.
That isn't really losing. That's just winning on the side of evil. He who shall not be named, fights you 1v1 and you win. Sure everyone else is dead, but you definitely didn't 'lose,' given your stated goal.
Also, nitpick, it's: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
Mercenaries.
Final mission, you can choose wether to stop or not the North Korean nukes. Or you can simply suck and go over the timer. Like 5 million people are killed in Seoul. + Probably others I do forget the numbers.
Having finally won Dark Souls, it may count as one.
No one can seem to agree on which ending is less grim for the future.
Tragedy said:
Dreamfall
Dreamfall ended like that, although it's more of a cliffhanger than actual loss. Basically the bad guys do whatever the fuck they wanted to do the whole game, despite your best efforts to the contrary and all the main characters are either incarcerated, in a coma or stabbed in the stomach.
It felt like the last stretch of the game went out of its way to screw over as many good people as it could. Will Zoe wake up? Is the White Dragon alive? Will Roper Klacks ever make a comeback as an author?
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