Summary
Many different kinds of stories have been told in the video game world. Yet, most of them share one thing in common, and that’s you ending the game victorious. This may mean that you kill the main villain, save the planet, or simply survive. Whatever it is, the conclusion to your story is typically a happy one.
It makes sense, as after putting hours into a game, you expect your effort to be worthwhile. However, not every developer believes a worthwhile conclusion has to include a triumph. There are several games where you actually fail in your final moments. These are some of the most notable examples.
Updated on Jul 02, 2025, by Dennis Moiseyev:Sometimes games just like to leave you with the bleakest endings that don’t seem rewarding for the amount of time you invest in their story, and that’s okay. It’s a bold move by the developers, and it does make for a more memorable ending than one where everyone lives happily ever after. Here are a couple more games to consider if you prefer these kinds of conclusions.
The Callisto Protocol wasnot the successor to Dead Spacethat many were cheering for it to be. While the scares, atmosphere, UI elements, and story do give you that similar feel, the melee combat is atrocious, to put it lightly. If you do make it through to the end,which should be better on easy mode, you may be in for the surprise of your life with the finale.
The base game ends with a cliffhanger not too different from the ending of the original Dead Space, with Jacob staying behind to escape before getting jumpscared by Leon Ferris' monster form. In the Final Transmission DLC, you seemingly continue from where the game left off, Jacob getting new weapons and fighting new bosses.
However, a final twist reveals that the entire DLC was all in Jacob’s head. In reality, Jacob is in a horrible state, the bottom half of his torso missing, his arms torn apart, and the right side of his face horribly disfigured, and then he dies. During the final moments,the game breaks the fourth wall, and Jacob wakes up as his actor Josh Duhamel, who asks, “What the f*ck happened to my legs?!”
With the official launch of Alan Wake 2, a direct sequel to the first game, you now know for certain that 2012’s American Nightmare was a game you really weren’t meant to win in the end.The game is still canon to the overarching storyline, but all it depicts is an attempt by Alan to escape the Dark Place through a Night Springs episode he wrote, which ends up not being successful, as he’s still escaping the Dark Place in Alan Wake 2.
American Nightmare puts you directly into the made-up town of Night Springs, Arizona, based on the fictional show for which Alan Wake worked as a writer. To defeat Scratch and help Alan get out of the Dark Place, you’ll need to go through a series of time loops and complete a sequence of objectives, which entail a satellite, an observatory, and fighting lots of Taken.
In the final loop, it seems like Alan won and erased Scratch. Wake even reunites with his wife Alice for a warm embrace and kiss on a beach, but then the episode’s narrator reflects: “Are these actual events, or merely a dream? A memory, or a glimpse of what is to come?” In Alan Wake 2, you learn Alice is still trying to help her husband escape the Dark Place,even visiting the Federal Bureau of Control, and Scratch is still alive.
The Last of Us Part 2 ends just about as well as it starts. The sequel’s ending couldn’t be a starker contrast to the ending of the original game, where at least Joel wins and gets to make it back out with Ellie. It certainly didn’t end well for Abby, whose surgeon father got killed by Joel in the Firefly massacre at the hospital, and that triggered the chain of events in Part 2.
Abby kills Joel at the beginning of the game, sending Ellie on a relentless warpath to find herwhile taking revenge on all of Abby’s WLF friends along the way. Ellie and Abby have a final hand-to-hand showdown and knife fight on the shores of a beach in Santa Barbara, where neither party wins. Ellie goes back on her vow and decides to let Abby live. She then returns to her farmhouse only to find it empty; no Dina, no JJ, no family for Ellie.
In Monolith and Warner Bros. Interactive’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, you journey througha gameplay world inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novelsas a ranger named Talion, who’s tethered to an elven wraith named Celebrimbor (who appears in the Amazon Prime show Rings of Power). But in the end, Talion is not the hero like Frodo is. Talion instead becomes the Nazgûl wraith who hunts Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.
What happens is that Celebrimbor loses the boss fight with Sauron, and the two fuse into one to create the Eye of Sauron. Talion ends up ruling Minas Morgul until the game’s true ending reveals Talion’s downfall. Talion gives in to the Ring of Power and joins the Nine. The narrator then describes how Talion would accompany the Nazgûl in the Shire years later “in pursuit of the new ringbearer.”
Following the events of LOTR: The Return of the King, when Frodo casts the Ring of Power into the volcano at Mount Doom, Talion perishes along with the rest of the Nazgûl. However, his spirit walks free in the afterlife, so there is that, but you still don’t get closure on whether he reunites with his fallen wife and child.
The two main characters in Life Is Strange are Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. The two lifelong best friends re-unite at the start of the game and quickly get wrapped up in an investigation about some twisted goings-onat Max’s school, Blackwell Academy. Together, they manage to get to the bottom of that.
Yet, that isn’t their only problem. Their town of Acadia Bay is also in trouble as Max has a premonition that the place is going to be wiped out by a giant storm. This is somehow linked to the rewind power that she acquires at the beginning of the story.
In the end, she and Chloe discover that the only way to save the town is to return to the time before she first used her rewind ability. The problem is that she first used it to save Chloe’s life. Thus, you’re forced to decide between sacrificing Chloe or the whole town. So, you’re guaranteed to lose something.
Throughout Mafia, you play as Tommy Angelo, who begins the tale as a cab driver, but quicklygets pulled into the criminal world. You work your way up to become a key member of the Salieri crime family. Yet, things eventually go sour. Tommy and his best friend Paulie realize that they aren’t getting what they feel they’re owed. But when they try to do some business behind the don’s back, Paulie is murdered.
Tommy gets a bit of revenge by killing the murderer, but to truly keep himself and his family safe, he works with a detective and testifies against the Don. As a result, he gets a reduced prison sentence.
And in the epilogue, you see an older Tommy enjoying life in witness protection. That is until two members of the Mafia arrive at his house and kill him on behalf of Salieri. Therefore, he never truly got away like he wanted.
The protagonist of Spec Ops: The Line is Captain Walker, who, at the beginning of the game, makes it to Dubai with his squad. They’re on a recon mission to see what’s happening in the country after it was buried by a sandstorm. It turns out the situation isn’t great as the place has been taken over by the 33rd infantry of the United States Army, who were supposed to help with relief efforts. Leading them is Walker’s hero, John Konrad. So, the protagonist group tries to find the man.
Along the way, they witness and cause many horrors, including accidentally slaughtering a bunch of civilians with white phosphorus. Walker feels Konrad is responsible for all of it, which makes him more determined to stop the man. However, in the end, Walker finds out Konrad has been dead for some time.
The protagonist had unknowingly imagined Konrad being alive because it meant there was someone else to blame for the things he’d done since he arrived in Dubai. After the revelation, Walker can kill himself. Alternatively, an Army convoy can arrive, giving you the chance to kill them, get killed by them, or surrender. None of the conclusions feel like a win.
The story of Far Cry 5 revolves around you stopping a doomsday cult and apprehending its charismatic leader, Joseph Seed. When you come face-to-face with the guy toward the end of the game, you can choose to either fight the man or walk away. Neither option leads to a successful ending for the protagonist.
By walking away, you never get the chance to stop the cult - you get a similar result if you refuse to arrest Joseph at the beginning of the adventure. In contrast, the fighting option does lead to you arresting Joseph. Yet, it turns out the doomsday the cult always talks about isn’t entirely nonsense, as nuclear bombs start detonating in the distance.
In all the commotion, your allies die in a car crash, and you get knocked out. When you wake, you see that Joseph has dragged you to a nearby bunker. So, the main villain remains alive, all your friends are dead, and the world is in a nuclear war.
Partway through the original Portal, you discover thatthe hilarious AIguiding you through all the puzzles isn’t exactly on your side. You are merely a test subject to her, and she intends to get rid of you at the end of the experiment. When you learn this, your objective becomes escaping the dangerous Aperture Science facility before she can burn you alive and kill you with nerve gas.
In the end, you create a massive hole in the ceiling and float through it. You end up on the ground in the Aperture Science Facility parking lot. In the original version of the game, this is where your adventure ended. Yet, when Portal 2 was announced, the conclusion was slightly altered. Now, while lying in the parking lot, you start getting physically dragged back towards the facility, meaning you don’t successfully escape.
The original 2006 Saints Row sees your created protagonist join the street gang known as The Third Street Saints. Then the crew attempts to increase their status in the fictional city of Stilwater by damaging the criminal syndicates that run the place. This mission ends up being a success, as the Saints take over the entire city. Yet, the game doesn’t end there.
Afterward, the main character gets roped into helping the soon-to-be Stilwater Mayor. Then, when he meets the politician on their private yacht, the entire thing explodes. At the time, it isn’t clear who caused the explosion, as it’s left as a cliffhanger. But future games prove that the attempt on the protagonist’s life was made by one of their closest allies and mentors, Julius.
