Games with sad endings
Okay, you're going to need to be pretty blasé about spoilers to read this, because obviously it's going to spoil the endings of lots of games. Furthermore, if you see a game you don't want spoiled and stop reading, you now know that it has a sad ending, which is still a spoiler. Catch-23, eh?
(No, it's not Catch-22, because that is a rule about being in a bomber crew. This is different.)
There was a time when games were designed to be nigh-on impossible to beat. This allowed developers to put less effort into the ending sequences. We now live in more enlightened times, of course. We can look forward to the end of a game because it will show our avatar being praised and rewarded for his/her good deeds, and we can bask in the reflected glory. Hooray for me, and for what I have achieved!
Except... sometimes, instead of this, the game chooses to simply punch you in the metaphorical gut. Your deeds go unrewarded. You discover you have been fighting for a lie. You die to save the world in some trite Christ metaphor. Whatever actually goes down, you are left wondering why you put in all the effort.
And it's good. Some of the best endings are suffused with melancholy. Wall-to-wall happy endings are a sign of an immature medium, right? I mean, just... just look at fairy tales. Um, I mean, just imagine I came up with a better argument there.
Anyway, on with the sadness:
Loom
The dead have been awakened from their graves, lead by Chaos, the villain with surely one of the greatest introductory scenes ever ("I am Chaos," it says to the archbishop. "Join me." Then it kills him horrifically.)
The protagonist does his best with the situation, but in the end the only solution is to unmake the loom and split the universe into two - thus saving one half, but dooming the other to oblivion. This is, it has to be said, fairly harsh.
Another World
(Known to some as Out Of This World.) The premise of the game is that you are a scientist who has been thrust into a baffling alien dimension by an unfortunate accident involving an electrical storm and a particle accelerator. You spend the entire game fleeing from beasties and aliens who are out to get you. Finally you escape their clutches, along with an alien who has become your sole ally, and fly off into the distance on some sort of pterodactyl thing.
Which is nice and all, but... you're still trapped in this baffling alien dimension forever, aren't you? I mean, we're not exactly talking best-case scenario here.
Oh, also apparently he dies. I mean, it's like Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie here.
Flashback
A quasi-sequel to Another World, Flashback sees the player travelling via a roundabout route to a far-flung planet in order to deal with an alien threat to Earth. In the closing scenes of the game, you plant a bomb deep in the heart of the planet, blowing it to pieces while you escape in a convenient spacecraft.
And then... you just drift indefinitely through space in suspended animation. You don't know the way back because you got to the planet by some kind of teleport. So you just... you just sort of drift. In the vain hope that someone will find you and take you home. Presumably forever. Was it really worth it?
Walker
You have battled across time in your badass walking tank. (NB: the premise as described in the manual is that you are interfering with the outcomes of historical wars in order to effect a victory in the future. It doesn't say what this future war is about, what the sides are, or what you are fighting for. You're just sent back in time in a walking death-mobile with instructions to kill every damned thing. I suppose the fact that you fight Nazis could indicate that you are on the good side, but with chaos theory being what it is, you can't be 100% sure, right? This is good.)
Anyway, having defeated the final boss you leave the Walker in your ejector pod, which immediately explodes. Really. It only lasts for a few seconds.
Monkey Island 2
I'm maybe pushing it a bit here, because it's not exactly sad, but it certainly is baffling. You've spent two entire games as a pirate in the 17th century Caribbean; now, suddenly, you are a child in a theme park being scolded by his parents? The great treasure of Big Whoop clearly isn't all it's cracked up to be. "This is weird. What's going on here?" says Guybrush, and I agree with him.
The mystery of MI2's ending is enhanced by creator Ron Gilbert's non-involvement in its sequels. The explanation offered in The Curse of Monkey Island is fine if you're prepared to accept that sort of thing, but as far as I'm concerned it isn't the 'real' answer. What was really going on? Is Guybrush really under a spell? Was it all a dream? What is the ever-elusive Secret of Monkey Island? Must these questions haunt me for the rest of my days!? I fear this may be possible.
Okay, now it's time for some pointless speculation. (Who doesn't love pointless speculation?) The voodoo lady tells Guybrush that Big Whoop is the gateway to another world, and I choose to believe this. The moment Big Whoop is opened, Guybrush escapes from his highly-fictionalised swashbuckling world into someplace rather more mundane. Furthermore - and this is where I get really overanalytical - I believe that such is the power of Big Whoop that its effects are felt back in time. The encroachment of this new reality is a gradual process (the underground tunnels, pipes and storage rooms lead gradually to an inescapable conclusion,) and it has been happening throughout both games. How else does one explain the humorous anachronisms? Take the Grog machine at Stan's Shipyard. It sticks out like a sore thumb, but nobody thinks it odd or even mentions it. "Well," you might say, "that's because it was just drawn into the scene by Steve Purcell as a sort of joke, and they decided on a whim to keep it there." And that may be true. But it is also true that that Grog machine is there because Guybrush is going to open Big Whoop.
The Dig
Okay, not only does this game not belong on the list either, but it's also not even the last Lucasarts adventure game on it. I guess it turns out I have fairly narrow tastes.
Everything in The Dig is leading up to a depressing, bleak ending. You're stranded on a long-dead alien planet. One of your colleagues has gone completely and utterly insane. You find out that the race that used to live here became so advanced that they discovered a way to transcend space-time itself - but that doing so turned out to be VERY BORING. When you revive one of their leaders and explain how you were brought to the planet by a sort of ambassadorial asteroid, his paraphrased reaction is "Oh, crap - another one of our really bad ideas." Things aren't looking hopeful.
Your only hope, it transpires, is to follow the aliens into their cursed dimension, and lead them all back. But if such an advanced species were all trapped by its allure, what possible hope do you have? How can you ever negotiate this impossible obstacle?
Well, as it turns out... with great ease. You just go and do it. Just like that. There isn't even a puzzle to solve. Then the aliens magically revive your dead crewmates. Then you get to go back home. And you all live happily ever after. The end.
This game was conceived by Steven Spielberg, the director of A.I. and Minority Report.
Silent Hill
There are a number of endings on offer, depending on your actions. In the worst one, it turns out you died in the car crash at the start of the game.
Planescape: Torment
This is at once happy and sad. Your character, The Nameless One, has been questing to discover the reasons for his amnesia and immortality, and has discovered some unpleasant truths. It turns out that his selfish decision to cheat death has been causing untold suffering, as indeed have many of his subsequent actions. Eventually he travels to the centre of the Fortress of Regrets, defeats his antagonist, and is finally, cathartically, killed. He awakes to find himself on the infernal fields of the Blood War where, with a grim resolve, he joins the battle.
And, in the context of the game, this is a good and satisfying ending. But that doesn't stop it from boiling down to "You die and go to hell."
(I will take this opportunity to add that Planescape: Torment is fantastic, and that Final Fantasy games wish they could address philosophical themes or make you care about characters like this. You should play it. Also, you should not read the last two paragraphs.)
Grim Fandango
(See, I told you.) As Manny Calavera, you embark on a four-year adventure through death with the aim of exposing a grave* injustice being perpetrated in the afterlife. Anyway, Grim Fandango is at times profoundly affecting. You eventually triumph and enter Heaven, of course, but at the cost of many of your allies. And their deaths in this game resonate much more than they would in any other. They suffer a "death within death", being permanently incapacitated in the afterlife the game takes place in. So, having established in the game that there is indeed a Paradise, these characters are denied the chance to ever get there. That's depressing. When I think of the sacrifices they made... Also, your best friend and companion throughout the entire game can't even come with you. Sigh.
*Sorry, but it's the only word that fits there.
Metal Gear Solid 3
The twists and revelations in the Metal Gear series sometimes have a tendency to render impassioned speeches delivered by characters earlier in the game virtually meaningless. But that's maybe a subject for another time. Anyway, one such twist occurs right at the end of MGS3: Snake Eater, also known as the DARK GENESIS of Big Boss.
So, having killed your former mentor for defecting to the Soviet Union, and thus saving the world, you return to America where you are lauded as a hero. But then it is revealed that your mentor never really defected, and was acting as a double-agent the whole time. There was no practical need to kill her, and you were ordered to do so merely as an exercise in diplomacy, necessitated purely by the insane actions of the game's main villain earlier on. Also, the part she played in the aversion of disaster must remain a secret, and thus she must go down in history as a traitor for all eternity. Oh, man. You begin to see why Big Boss decided to try and plunge the world into nuclear chaos, although I have to concede he may have overreacted slightly.
By the way, I'd love to see a game set in the 90s, dealing with the DARK GENESIS of Liquid Snake. Man, why'd all those Snakes end up so messed-up?
Shadow of the Colossus
It's made clear from the start that what you're doing in SotC is a profoundly bad idea. The entity you make a deal with is very up-front about it. But narrative imperative insists that you do it anyway, striking the deathblow on each consecutive colossus, trying not to think too much about the significance of the flow of dark energy that transfixes you each time.
The ending is sad, but it's beautiful sad. There's something about the unfortunate trio - the resurrected girl, the lame horse, the cursed baby - making their unsteady way up to the temple roof that etches itself into my consciousness. One one level, it's beautiful. The garden they find is an Eden, populated by cute animals that have learned no fear of humans. The wanderer swore that he would bring the girl back to life no matter what the cost, and perhaps this resolution would have satisfied him. But at the same time, there seems little hope. They are trapped in the forbidden lands, forever. What will they do, cut off from all civilisation? There was reference to the girl having a 'cursed fate'. Is this it?
In the final images of the game, we follow a bird of prey as it soars above the secret garden. It flies out over the landscape, into the rain. Grey clouds and thunder dominate the sky. The bird is flying to a place far from Eden. But at least it is free.
(No, it's not Catch-22, because that is a rule about being in a bomber crew. This is different.)
There was a time when games were designed to be nigh-on impossible to beat. This allowed developers to put less effort into the ending sequences. We now live in more enlightened times, of course. We can look forward to the end of a game because it will show our avatar being praised and rewarded for his/her good deeds, and we can bask in the reflected glory. Hooray for me, and for what I have achieved!
Except... sometimes, instead of this, the game chooses to simply punch you in the metaphorical gut. Your deeds go unrewarded. You discover you have been fighting for a lie. You die to save the world in some trite Christ metaphor. Whatever actually goes down, you are left wondering why you put in all the effort.
And it's good. Some of the best endings are suffused with melancholy. Wall-to-wall happy endings are a sign of an immature medium, right? I mean, just... just look at fairy tales. Um, I mean, just imagine I came up with a better argument there.
Anyway, on with the sadness:
Loom
The dead have been awakened from their graves, lead by Chaos, the villain with surely one of the greatest introductory scenes ever ("I am Chaos," it says to the archbishop. "Join me." Then it kills him horrifically.)
The protagonist does his best with the situation, but in the end the only solution is to unmake the loom and split the universe into two - thus saving one half, but dooming the other to oblivion. This is, it has to be said, fairly harsh.
Another World
(Known to some as Out Of This World.) The premise of the game is that you are a scientist who has been thrust into a baffling alien dimension by an unfortunate accident involving an electrical storm and a particle accelerator. You spend the entire game fleeing from beasties and aliens who are out to get you. Finally you escape their clutches, along with an alien who has become your sole ally, and fly off into the distance on some sort of pterodactyl thing.
Which is nice and all, but... you're still trapped in this baffling alien dimension forever, aren't you? I mean, we're not exactly talking best-case scenario here.
Oh, also apparently he dies. I mean, it's like Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie here.
Flashback
A quasi-sequel to Another World, Flashback sees the player travelling via a roundabout route to a far-flung planet in order to deal with an alien threat to Earth. In the closing scenes of the game, you plant a bomb deep in the heart of the planet, blowing it to pieces while you escape in a convenient spacecraft.
And then... you just drift indefinitely through space in suspended animation. You don't know the way back because you got to the planet by some kind of teleport. So you just... you just sort of drift. In the vain hope that someone will find you and take you home. Presumably forever. Was it really worth it?
Walker
You have battled across time in your badass walking tank. (NB: the premise as described in the manual is that you are interfering with the outcomes of historical wars in order to effect a victory in the future. It doesn't say what this future war is about, what the sides are, or what you are fighting for. You're just sent back in time in a walking death-mobile with instructions to kill every damned thing. I suppose the fact that you fight Nazis could indicate that you are on the good side, but with chaos theory being what it is, you can't be 100% sure, right? This is good.)
Anyway, having defeated the final boss you leave the Walker in your ejector pod, which immediately explodes. Really. It only lasts for a few seconds.
Monkey Island 2
I'm maybe pushing it a bit here, because it's not exactly sad, but it certainly is baffling. You've spent two entire games as a pirate in the 17th century Caribbean; now, suddenly, you are a child in a theme park being scolded by his parents? The great treasure of Big Whoop clearly isn't all it's cracked up to be. "This is weird. What's going on here?" says Guybrush, and I agree with him.
The mystery of MI2's ending is enhanced by creator Ron Gilbert's non-involvement in its sequels. The explanation offered in The Curse of Monkey Island is fine if you're prepared to accept that sort of thing, but as far as I'm concerned it isn't the 'real' answer. What was really going on? Is Guybrush really under a spell? Was it all a dream? What is the ever-elusive Secret of Monkey Island? Must these questions haunt me for the rest of my days!? I fear this may be possible.
Okay, now it's time for some pointless speculation. (Who doesn't love pointless speculation?) The voodoo lady tells Guybrush that Big Whoop is the gateway to another world, and I choose to believe this. The moment Big Whoop is opened, Guybrush escapes from his highly-fictionalised swashbuckling world into someplace rather more mundane. Furthermore - and this is where I get really overanalytical - I believe that such is the power of Big Whoop that its effects are felt back in time. The encroachment of this new reality is a gradual process (the underground tunnels, pipes and storage rooms lead gradually to an inescapable conclusion,) and it has been happening throughout both games. How else does one explain the humorous anachronisms? Take the Grog machine at Stan's Shipyard. It sticks out like a sore thumb, but nobody thinks it odd or even mentions it. "Well," you might say, "that's because it was just drawn into the scene by Steve Purcell as a sort of joke, and they decided on a whim to keep it there." And that may be true. But it is also true that that Grog machine is there because Guybrush is going to open Big Whoop.
The Dig
Okay, not only does this game not belong on the list either, but it's also not even the last Lucasarts adventure game on it. I guess it turns out I have fairly narrow tastes.
Everything in The Dig is leading up to a depressing, bleak ending. You're stranded on a long-dead alien planet. One of your colleagues has gone completely and utterly insane. You find out that the race that used to live here became so advanced that they discovered a way to transcend space-time itself - but that doing so turned out to be VERY BORING. When you revive one of their leaders and explain how you were brought to the planet by a sort of ambassadorial asteroid, his paraphrased reaction is "Oh, crap - another one of our really bad ideas." Things aren't looking hopeful.
Your only hope, it transpires, is to follow the aliens into their cursed dimension, and lead them all back. But if such an advanced species were all trapped by its allure, what possible hope do you have? How can you ever negotiate this impossible obstacle?
Well, as it turns out... with great ease. You just go and do it. Just like that. There isn't even a puzzle to solve. Then the aliens magically revive your dead crewmates. Then you get to go back home. And you all live happily ever after. The end.
This game was conceived by Steven Spielberg, the director of A.I. and Minority Report.
Silent Hill
There are a number of endings on offer, depending on your actions. In the worst one, it turns out you died in the car crash at the start of the game.
Planescape: Torment
This is at once happy and sad. Your character, The Nameless One, has been questing to discover the reasons for his amnesia and immortality, and has discovered some unpleasant truths. It turns out that his selfish decision to cheat death has been causing untold suffering, as indeed have many of his subsequent actions. Eventually he travels to the centre of the Fortress of Regrets, defeats his antagonist, and is finally, cathartically, killed. He awakes to find himself on the infernal fields of the Blood War where, with a grim resolve, he joins the battle.
And, in the context of the game, this is a good and satisfying ending. But that doesn't stop it from boiling down to "You die and go to hell."
(I will take this opportunity to add that Planescape: Torment is fantastic, and that Final Fantasy games wish they could address philosophical themes or make you care about characters like this. You should play it. Also, you should not read the last two paragraphs.)
Grim Fandango
(See, I told you.) As Manny Calavera, you embark on a four-year adventure through death with the aim of exposing a grave* injustice being perpetrated in the afterlife. Anyway, Grim Fandango is at times profoundly affecting. You eventually triumph and enter Heaven, of course, but at the cost of many of your allies. And their deaths in this game resonate much more than they would in any other. They suffer a "death within death", being permanently incapacitated in the afterlife the game takes place in. So, having established in the game that there is indeed a Paradise, these characters are denied the chance to ever get there. That's depressing. When I think of the sacrifices they made... Also, your best friend and companion throughout the entire game can't even come with you. Sigh.
*Sorry, but it's the only word that fits there.
Metal Gear Solid 3
The twists and revelations in the Metal Gear series sometimes have a tendency to render impassioned speeches delivered by characters earlier in the game virtually meaningless. But that's maybe a subject for another time. Anyway, one such twist occurs right at the end of MGS3: Snake Eater, also known as the DARK GENESIS of Big Boss.
So, having killed your former mentor for defecting to the Soviet Union, and thus saving the world, you return to America where you are lauded as a hero. But then it is revealed that your mentor never really defected, and was acting as a double-agent the whole time. There was no practical need to kill her, and you were ordered to do so merely as an exercise in diplomacy, necessitated purely by the insane actions of the game's main villain earlier on. Also, the part she played in the aversion of disaster must remain a secret, and thus she must go down in history as a traitor for all eternity. Oh, man. You begin to see why Big Boss decided to try and plunge the world into nuclear chaos, although I have to concede he may have overreacted slightly.
By the way, I'd love to see a game set in the 90s, dealing with the DARK GENESIS of Liquid Snake. Man, why'd all those Snakes end up so messed-up?
Shadow of the Colossus
It's made clear from the start that what you're doing in SotC is a profoundly bad idea. The entity you make a deal with is very up-front about it. But narrative imperative insists that you do it anyway, striking the deathblow on each consecutive colossus, trying not to think too much about the significance of the flow of dark energy that transfixes you each time.
The ending is sad, but it's beautiful sad. There's something about the unfortunate trio - the resurrected girl, the lame horse, the cursed baby - making their unsteady way up to the temple roof that etches itself into my consciousness. One one level, it's beautiful. The garden they find is an Eden, populated by cute animals that have learned no fear of humans. The wanderer swore that he would bring the girl back to life no matter what the cost, and perhaps this resolution would have satisfied him. But at the same time, there seems little hope. They are trapped in the forbidden lands, forever. What will they do, cut off from all civilisation? There was reference to the girl having a 'cursed fate'. Is this it?
In the final images of the game, we follow a bird of prey as it soars above the secret garden. It flies out over the landscape, into the rain. Grey clouds and thunder dominate the sky. The bird is flying to a place far from Eden. But at least it is free.
posted by Solid Jim at 9:50 PM
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