Stories in games: Tragedies.

[Jang]

I was having an argument with a friend the other day. It was a chat about videogame stories, and I don't remember how we got into this exact topic, but he said that games never tell tragic stories. As in, stories with a sad ending.

I replied that you probably couldn't. At least not well. If the story has a sad ending, the protagonist has failed his task. Essentially, this means that all of his trials were for naught, and the player is left wondering "What the hell was all my effort for, if the bad guys won anyway?".

He argued that I was thinking to narrowly. Stories are not always bad guy vs. good guy.
Memento spoiler:

Spoiler

Memento ends with a plot were there actually isn't a definitive bad guy. If there is a villain it is actually the protagonist himself

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And even if we are talking good guy vs. bad guy "The Dark Knight" is another example of a sad ending, where the hero still has quite a level of achievement.

So here I ask you, the escapians.
Is there a game with a sad ending that follows the following criteria:

- There are no multiple endings (If there were it would not be a definitively bad ending, as it is only *possible* to get a sad ending rather than certain as in actual tragedies)
- The *entire* story of the franchise has a sad ending. (If we have a trilogy were the first game has a sad ending, but everything ends up swell in the last game, then we are not looking at a tragedy in the big picture).

Supposing you can't think of any, do you have any suggestions for how a game could overcome this issue?

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Nier is a recent game with nothing but sad endings. I'm not sure if it counts as a reversal of fortune though since it was pretty messed up from the start. The main character certainly achieves something but the costs of his actions are significant.

In story terms it is easy, you just have to make villains more interesting than good guys to make the tragic downfall of a villain compelling. But if in a game you make playing a villain compelling it is still not as much fun to play a losing game. But there are ways of making losing interesting. In a historical strategy game people play a losing side who simply cannot win to see if they can do better than the historical generals. In other sorts of games you can create objectives like, this other character must survive. In Deus Ex, as you play, despite none of the endings being good or happy exactly, many players might think that they did well because they saved just two characters who would have died if they failed to act.