History ShootTheShaggyDog / VideoGames

** Even better; the ''protagonist'' of the first game? Takes the protagonist of the [[Videogame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords second game]] and goes on a foolhardy run against the Sith Emperor without making ''any'' provision to warn the Republic the Sith ''[[WhatAnIdiot still existed]].'' The Exile ends up stabbed InTheBack and killed, lingering on as a babbling Force ghost. Revan ends up as a chew toy for the next 300 years, goes nuts, tries a couple of genocidal and incredibly stupid plans, and ends up being put down like a rabid mutt to prevent him from ''resurrecting'' the villain.

* ''VideoGame/{{Inscryption}}'' ends with [[spoiler:Grimora making a final attempt to keep the OLD_DATA from spreading by deleting all of the game files - including herself; her fellow Scrybes; and the souls of the dead that she's been preserving. Once the deletion is complete, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the player is left face-to-face with the unharmed OLD_DATA with nothing left to prevent them from opening it]]. The attempt to kill P03 to keep the game from being uploaded appears to have also failed [[ForegoneConclusion considering that in RealLife it is now widely available for purchase online.]]]]

* ''VideoGame/ElementalGearbolt'': [[TheHeroDies Bel Cain himself is dead]], along with the rest of his kingdom, and Tagami, having planned the whole incident, is unable to leave World 4 in the aftermath. To top it all off, [[ForegoneConclusion you already know what happens at the end]] [[LateToTheTragedy due to the entire game being a flashback]]. Needless to say, this game is not for the faint of heart.

* This is part of James Vega's backstory in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. On a mission against the Collectors (the big threat from the previous game) gone FUBAR, he had to choose between keeping his team alive or getting out with intel the Alliance could use to stop the Collectors once and for all. He chose the intel, only for Shepard's team to take out the Collectors themselves before any good could come of it.
** This serves as the inspiration for the animated movie, ''Anime/MassEffectParagonLost''. While not cruel enough to let us see the ultimate DownerEnding where it turns out the information that James Vega saved was useless, it's still wince-inducing to watch for anyone who's played the game it serves as a prequel to.
** The original, controversial Mass Effect 3 ending shot the shaggy dog in the [[FridgeHorror fridge]], as it included the destruction of the Mass Relays. Problem is, earlier games established that destroying a Mass Relay causes an EarthShatteringKaboom, and everywhere you've been in the game probably had one handy.. so ''everything you've done in the game? It's all just been destroyed.'' The ending rebrand changed this to just ''damaging'' the Mass Relays, so the planets aren't destroyed.. well, not instantly, as they're probably doomed to slow death due to the loss of their critical trade network.

* ''VideoGame/Persona4'''s [[BadEnding Bad Endings]] also count. Towards the end of the year, the team corners [[spoiler:Namatame, who has kidnapped and thrown every one of the rescued playable characters into the TV as well as taking [[EveryonesBabySister Nanako]] into the TV world, as a misguided attempt in saving them from murder.]] However, [[spoiler:the fog from the TV world causes Nanako to fall ill and lapse into a coma, and starts to seep into the real world.]] At some point, [[spoiler:Nanako dies]], and the player has the choice to [[spoiler:throw [[UnwittingPawn Namatame]] into the TV in retribution, or choose to spare him]] and get to the bottom of what's really going on. If you take the first choice, [[spoiler:Nanako stays dead]], while if you fail to find the truth, [[spoiler:Nanako is revived--but either way, she and everyone else will eventually die, either being killed by Shadows or becoming Shadows]]. And then there's the ending where [[spoiler:you figure out who the killer is and destroy the evidence that incriminates them, letting them free and leaving you to be blackmailed by them anytime they feel like it-- destroying evidence is a crime after all.]]

* ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami2WrongNumber'' is all about the futility of vengeance and violence. None of the cast members achieve anything of significance, most of them are killed by one another, and [[spoiler:events taking place entirely off-screen result in [[KillEmAll the remaining characters being killed]] in a full-scale nuclear war.]] With the futility of violence being a core theme, it was already expected things would end [[DownerEnding poorly]], but just ''how'' incredibly wrong it all goes still packs a punch.

* ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'', being a CosmicHorrorStory, naturally has most characters' chapters end this way. Special mention goes to Anthony and Paul Luther's chapters. Anthony reads a cursed scroll intended for Charlemagne, and rushes to warn him of the attempt on his life. [[spoiler: Not only does he get to Charlemagne ''just'' in time to see him die, [[AndIMustScream but the cursed scroll is slowly turning him into a mindless zombie]], and it takes ''hundreds of years'' before he finally gets a MercyKill. (Incidently, by Paul)]] Paul Luther is a Franciscan monk who had the bad luck of working at a cathedral taken over by an evil cult, and he ends up falsely accused of a HeKnowsTooMuch murder. He manages to find the evidence to clear his name and implicate the ObviouslyEvil head of the cult (who is actually the game's DragonInChief in disguise), but [[spoiler: he's forced to indirectly sacrifice the one person who trusted him, the leader plans to have him killed anyway and as he pursues him to "put and end to the heresy forver", he is instantly (and brutally) killed by the Black Guardian, making everything he went through essentially pointless.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Outlast}}''.[[spoiler: Despite [[TheDeterminator Miles Upshur's best efforts to]] [[EvilInc prove the Murkoff Corporation was hiding some horrible things from the public]] and despite not giving up even after [[FinGore getting two of his fingers amputated (and possibly infected, due to the 'equipment' being in a bidet)]], being hunted and attacked by many horrid monsters, losing his camera at some point and going to great lengths to get it back, [[TraumaCongaLine AND doing everything in his power to finish Billy/The Wallrider despite getting tossed around like a ragdoll and wounded...]]just when it seemed like he was going to get out, he gets shot to death by the special forces and dies. [[SubvertedTrope Arguably subverted when we consider he has turned into the new Walrider,]] but even so, chances are, Miles's mind is already dead, and anyways, after all his hard work and effort, his camera is either lost and/or broken, and all that he filmed will probably never see the light in the end.]]

** The events of the classic Kotor series are essentially this. Revan and the Exile might have successfully dismantled the Sith Empire, but said Empire is nothing more than the rogue scouting force of Vitiate's True Sith Empire. When the pair set out to defeat Vitiate once again, they get defeated once again and accomplish nothing in their wider struggle against the True Sith Empire.

* This trope is biggest source of the DarknessInducedAudienceApathy afflicting the ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' series, as many of the things done by the protagonists are used as openings for the villains [[FromBadToWorse to make things worse]]; in particular, there is not a single damn thing Ragna the Bloodedge (the series' main protagonist, we should inform you) has ever accomplished that wasn't used to hurt him in turn. He attempts to defeat Nu in Kagutsuchi? She impales him anyway and drags into the cauldron. Noel stops him from falling in and ends the depressing timeloop that would have resulted, but Yuuki Terumi uses that to kickstart his plans to destroy the Master Unit. Ragna tries to fight Terumi? Terumi jams Ragna's Azure Grimoire and puts him at a disadvantage. Ragna beats the shit out of Terumi after Lambda's HeroicSacrifice? Terumi ''[[ThanatosGambit wanted to die]]'' so he could infiltrate and lobotomize Takamagahara, and Relius finishes him off so he can. Ragna fights Mu-12 and reverts her to her "incomplete" state as Noel? The window of opportunity Terumi needed to do the job. [[spoiler:Ragna fights Nu at Ibukido and holds his ground without the Azure Grimoire? Izanami uses Takamagahara to jam it and push the fight to a stalemated deathmatch. Ragna, Jin and Noel decom Take-Mikazuchi with Ragna later beating Nu with the Grimoire turned off? Izanami reanimates Nu, merges her with Ragna (like what Ragna was trying to avoid in Kagutsuchi), and he can only keep himself from outright killing his two colleagues, with Noel injured and Jin beaten to an inch of his life.]] And that is ''not'' including all the crap he goes through on the way, like getting bodied by Carl and Ada, being conned out of what little money he has by Tao and Platinum (the former has no idea the meaning of money, to her only credit), [[spoiler:getting pwned by Kagura with Celica in proximity, getting smacked down by Jin, and nearly losing control over his Azure Grimoire when facing Azrael.]]

* The twentieth and final ending of ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' introduced in the ''Afterbirth+'' DLC confirms that [[spoiler: the entire game was a DyingDream and none of it really happened. [[RealityEnsues Isaac's mother didn't really try and murder him because God told her to (and may not have actually been abusive), a falling bible didn't save him from her wrath, he didn't escape through a secret cellar, he didn't fight legions of horrible monstrosities, and he didn't defeat Satan]]. What really happened is that Isaac blamed himself for the failure of his parents' marriage and gradually going insane from self-loathing, came to believe he was the devil and committed suicide by locking himself in a chest. The whole game is just hallucinations resulting from oxygen-deprivation, with the TrueFinalBoss Delirium representing the Isaac's final delusions before suffocating to death.]]

* ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'' has its PlayerCharacter V plug a biochip obtained during a heist into their brain, which ends up slowly overwriting their own personality with that of a dead rockstar. The rest of the plot has V pursue any possible lead to remove the biochip and save themselves, [[spoiler:only for the end of the game to reveal that the biochip has damaged V's brain to the degree that even if they remove Johnny Silverhand from their brain, they'll only have months to live at most.]]

** And then comes ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''. Before being killed by Shao Kahn, Raiden sends a message to his self from ''[[VideoGame/MortalKombat MK1]]'' in order to prevent the Armageddon, thus making the game to clear every event and effort of each of the past games, barring ''VideoGame/MortalKombatMythologiesSubZero'' and ''VideoGame/MortalKombatSpecialForces'' for being prequels.

* In ''VideoGame/RadiantSilvergun'', our heroes are powerless to stop the Stone-Like from [[GaiasVengeance wiping out human kind]]. The Creator robot creates clones of Buster and Reanna, but dies before he can warn them of the future. Thus, humanity is doomed to [[GroundhogDayLoop repeat the cycle]], and will never learn the error of their ways...[[spoiler: unless one were to take ''VideoGame/{{Ikaruga}}'' into account, where the Stone-Like is eventually destroyed (though not without [[HeroicSacrifice cost)]].]]

* In ''VideoGame/RadiantSilvergun'', our heroes are powerless to stop the Stone-Like from [[GaiasVengeance wiping out human kind]]. The Creator robot creates clones of Buster and Reanna, but dies before he can warn them of the future. Thus, humanity is doomed to [[GroundhogDayLoop repeat the cycle]], and will never learn the error of their ways...[[spoiler: unless one were to take ''VideoGame/{{Ikaruga}}'' into account, where the Stone-Like is eventually destroyed (though not without [[HeroicSacrifice cost).]]

* In ''VideoGame/RadiantSilvergun'', our heroes are powerless to stop the Stone-Like from [[GaiasVengeance wiping out human kind]]. The Creator robot creates clones of Buster and Reanna, but dies before he can warn them of the future. Thus, humanity is doomed to [[GroundhogDayLoop repeat the cycle]], and will never learn the error of their ways.

** Thankfully, this is all resolved in the sequel, where [[spoiler:Joseph either ends up dead or having to deal with the guilt of what he’s done.]]

* The two {{bad ending}}s of the story mode of ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate'' ''World of Light'' end as such if you don't meet the conditions to [[spoiler:face both of the {{big bad}}s at once]] by the end of the game: [[spoiler:If you defeat just one of the two villains at the end of the game (whether by just facing one of them or letting one side take too much foothold on the final map), the one who survived will violently finish off the defeated one and then take out the heroes (and the rest of the universe) for good (Galeem using his light attack on the heroes once again, this time making sure not to miss anybody, Dharkon drowning the universe in darkness, killing everyone in the process).]]

** Since Mira is the only character to have a cross-over cameo in [[Series/GameOfThrones the TV series]], the cynical player might almost think she was more there to give the developers a reason to set part of the story in King's Landing (and therefore facilitate marketable guest appearances by Creator/LenaHeadey, Creator/PeterDinklage, and Creator/NatalieDormer) than to advance the plot in any significant way...

* The 2015 sci-fi/horror FPS ''Solarix'' starts off dark enough with you being stranded on a far away ruined base on an alien planet being all but decimated by a rampart infection, but goes full on STSD by the end. By the end of the game, [[spoiler: not only do you fail to synthesise a cure, but [[BigBad EYE]] openly mocks you for thinking that there was ever any hope. Your other companion Betty is revealed to not only be nothing more than a [[EnemyWithin voice on your head]], but a women you killed in a mental breakdown. Literally every other person, named or otherwise either dies from the infection or gets turned into a feral zombie. The only reason you survived for so long is because you were in stasis from the aforementioned incident and were the only other person your AI companion AMI could turn to for help (she even states in an audiolog that she greatly fears you). Your attempt to stop EYE fails miserably because not only does AMI senselessly sacrifice herself to try and take out EYE from within, EYE even tells you that there are thousands of copies of him below the surface of the planet, meaning that you were doomed from the start. At the end of the game, everyone is dead, the ship is destroyed and you neatly conclude the game by committing suicide by jumping off the ruined ship and into the endless void of space.]] But hey, [[EsotericHappyEnding at least you prevented the infections from getting to Earth right?]]

** ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' has several moments like this. At the end of the first chapter, John dramatically rescues a marine who trips and nearly misses the last lifeboat; unfortunately, all the marines on board die in the crash anyway. In the third mission, you have the objective the objective of finding/rescuing Captain Keyes; you do so, only for him to become a part of the proto-Gravemind later. The goal of the second chapter, plus side-objectives several times throughout the rest of the game, is to rescue groups of marines so that they can be evacuated to a safer part of the ring, which is destroyed at the end of the game leaving no survivors (later retconned in ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike'' to a single dropship of survivors).

** In ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', Jorge sacrifices himself to destroy the Covenant carrier... only for an entire fleet to emerge from slipspace. In the mission before that, you lead an attack on a Covenant base and have a ship destroy a spire that has some unknown purpose. As the pieces of the spire are raining down, a Covenant Supercarrier destroys the ship rendering the whole mission pointless. Also note as the game itself is a ForegoneConclusion, this was all bound to happen anyway.

** The option where she survives isn't much better: she's locked away in a forced marriage that is basically no better than prison, so she ''still'' can't do much to help out House Forrester, let alone actually get herself home. Due to the difficulties of scripting such intricate branching paths, she probably wouldn't have played a large role in the sequel either way. It's sort of easy to see why over 70% of players just chose to kill her off at this point.

* ''VideoGame/TelltalesGameOfThrones'': If the player chooses to have Mira reject Lord Morgryn's proposal in the final episode, she will be executed for the murder of the Lannister guard earlier in the season. That means that Mira spends six full episodes just failing over and over to contact her family or win over any allies in King's Landing. Since she's the only playable character not to have any direct on-screen contact with any of the other main characters, her story could almost be removed from the season without disrupting the plot, and her death curtails any possibility that she'll be able to actually achieve something in the (now cancelled) sequel.

* ''VideoGame/TelltalesGameOfThrones'': If the player chooses to have Mira reject Lord Morgryn's proposal in the final episode, she will be executed for the murder of the Lannister guard earlier in the season. That means that Mira spends six full episodes just failing over and over to contact her family or win over any allies in King's Landing. Since she's the only playable character not to have any direct on-screen contact with any of the other main characters, her story could almost be removed from the season without disrupting the plot, and her death curtails any possibility that she'll be able to make a comeback in the (now cancelled) sequel.

** Since Mira is the only character to have a cross-over appearance in [[Series/GameOfThrones the TV series]], the cynical player might almost think she was more there to give the developers a reason to set part of the story in King's Landing (and therefore facilitate marketable guest appearances by Creator/LenaHeadey, Creator/PeterDinklage, and Creator/NatalieDormer) than to advance the plot in any significant way...

** The option where she survives isn't much better: she's locked away in a forced marriage that is basically no better than prison, so she ''still'' can't do much to help out House Forrester, let alone actually get herself home. Due to the difficulties of scripting such intricate branching paths, she probably wouldn't have played a large role in the sequel either way.

** Since Mira is the only character to have a cross-over appearance in [[Series/GameOfThrones the TV series]], the cynical player might almost think she was more there to give the developers a reason to set part of the story in King's Landing (and therefore facilitate lucrative guest appearances by Creator/LenaHeadey, Creator/PeterDinklage and Creator/NatalieDormer) than to advance the plot in any significant way...

* ''VideoGame/BattleTech'' is, somewhat oddly, one for the ''bad guys''. The Aurigan Directorate have seen themselves as {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s, and committed atrocities for what they believe is the greater good of the Aurigan Reach, and firmly believe that once they can get their policies in place and improve people's lot, history will absolve them of their crimes. However, as the Arano Restoration gains momentum it becomes increasingly clear that this is not the case, that the Directorate will be remembered as nothing more than butchers and terrorists, and that whatever good might have come of their actions will simply not materialize. At least one of the leaders chooses SuicideByCop.

** In ''Videogame/DragonAgeInquisition'', if you [[spoiler:sent Isabela to the Qunari]], Varric reveals that the Arishok's story ended like this. [[spoiler:Somewhere along the way, he winds up losing Isabela and the Tome of Koslun once again and returns home to find the Qunari equivalent of a court martial awaiting him, who strip of him of his rank.]]