There’s ample context, more so if you read/play the Japanese original (the man named “High Priest Funeral” is “The Pope” in Japanese, to name just one example). Besides that, the game comes with an on-line encyclopedia to help you decipher what’s going on. As for offense to religion–the game may certainly be construed as blasphemous, but it’s not blasphemy just for the sake of being crude. I’m religious myself, and while I wouldn’t play the game in church, it’s got a better message than Grand Theft Auto, at the very least.
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Don’t mean to turn this into a hijack, but I have to refute your view . While the end is open to some interpretation, I think the main characters do die. Although they are seen near their graves (ghosts, maybe?), another character in the same scene asks about the death of his father, who was with your party in Hell. One presumes that this character’s father would have sent some sort of message to his son if he had survived, especially given his role in the bizzare political climate resulting from the game’s events. Anyway…
Return to topic: the end to Metal Gear Solid 2 is pretty depressing. It’s a bit too complicated to explain if you’re unfamiliar with the game, but suffice it to say that the main character finds at the end that his mission, and indeed his entire life is largely a construct, and he has little idea who or what he is fighting for (or against). American democracy proves to be a sham, merely a fiction generated by Matrix-like forces. He winds up with the girl, but never mind the fact that she was brainwashed into (and possibly genetically engineered for the sole purpose of) falling in love with him and gaining his trust.
All that, and then Konami makes a second version of MGS2 because most fans didn’t like the main character. How’s that for a downer? Poor Raiden…
The sadly underrated HARVESTER ended with you given a choice. Kill your girlfriend with a baseball bat and become a serial killer and do our cult’s bidding, or we’ll kill your girlfriend and then kill you. Such a moral dilemma.
Hmm… Not so much a downer ending, more as a lacking one. Morrowind. You go through the whole game, doing all these quests and tasks, get to the big bad guy, kill him, destroy the “god”, and run like hell to get out of there… At which you get a 15 second cutscene of Azura saying “Gee, thanks,” a ring with enchantments that most characters could have gotten the equivelant of about month ago in game-time, and a +1 or so reaction from the people of the world (Which does, effectively, nothing, except for the common “Hey, you’re the nerevarine, aren’t you? Thank you for saving us!” followed by “I don’t talk to people I don’t like, so f-off.”). I was kinda disapointed, because there wasn’t exactly much sense of victory. It was like just one more fight, with a little bit of special effects added in…
I remember Loom (1990 game, IIRC…I think it was the second or third computer I’ve ever owned). Much of the story was a little confusing, but I was able to get to the end. The ending really didn’t strike me as much of a downer…if anything, it looked like a setup for a sequel. (Chaos’ final words: “Fly away, young Threadbare. And know that we will MOST assuredly meet again.” Can’t get much more blatant than that.) Never happened, and the whole universe is left hanging.
Anyway, what really happened was that Bobbin had to destroy the Loom to prevent Chaos from using it; if she did, the whole universe was doomed. Afterward, Chaos was now free to torment half the univers (she even taunts Bobbin about it), but he remains firm and vows to someday return to stop her evil. It’s a good, solid cliffhanger ending, and I’m kinda sad that nothing ever came of it.
Myst’s ending was a bit ambiguous, but Atrus doesn’t just blow you off in the end. The experience of visitng these strange new worlds is supposed to be the reward. Now that your task is done, you’re free to return home (I guess…read my Myst story for my take on this). So while things aren’t all quite right, this is far from a downer.
My big, big beef with sad endings is that, almost without exception, they tell you that you’ve completely wasted your time. I don’t care if the hero is doomed or fated or whatever; when I go through all that effort, I expect to be rewarded, even if my character isn’t. In all my years of playing fighting games, I’ve yet to see ONE unhappy/unfortunate ending that wasn’t horribly forced and nonsensical (cf. KOF '01 “Edit Team” ending).
Misery for its own sake is lunacy. Way I see it, if you gotta have a downer, at least let it build to something. Play through Klonoa 2 and you’ll see what I mean.
Hmmm. I think Max Payne is kind of a downer for a number of reasons. First of all, they kill off interesting femme fatale type Mona Sax after a mere two encounters, both of which are not in actual fame play. She has NO effect on the game, really, which is shameful. So, we get this cool character. Ooh, a teammate sweet! WAIT A MINUTE! She’s DEAD!? DAMN! That pretty much sucked.
Also, you’re arrested at the end, of course. What happens then is ambiguous, but it was an interesting lead-in up to that. Though the whole Alfred Woden/Council thing was pretty farkin’ bizarre.
In Psychic Force and its sequel Psychic Force 2012 (a couple of semi-obscure fighting games from Taito.) pretty much every ending is a downer. There’s not much point to typing them all out, but they can all be divided into general catagories anyway. I’ll put who got which ending in which game at the end, for references sake.
The person you’ve been fighting for all this time dies/is about to die (usually because of you.) or you die/are about to die. (PF: Burn, Emilio, Wendy, Sonia. 2012: Burn, Regina, Carlo, Might, Patty, Setsuna, Keith, Genshin.)
There’s nothing in your way now, so you can go and be evil all you want. (PF: Brad, Wong, Gemma. 2012: Gudeath, Emilio, Wong.)
You go insane/forget everything that happened. (Gates, both games.)
You’re reunited with your other friend, but you killed the first one. It’s still the cheerfulest ending in both games. (2012: Wendy.)
Max Payne: I don’t consider this a downer ending. Max got the revenge that he wanted (sweet, sweet revenge), and was able to finally let go of the Pay–* er, pain that tormented him. Further, he was arrested, but it also implied that Woden (anyone ever notice that he was Odin?) would manage to get him away from all that.
Anyone remember the old Ghostbusters game, the one that tied into the first movie? AFIK, that game was impossible to win so I guess it would go on this list.
Silent Hill 1 and Silent Hill 2 both had downer endings,
ranging from “Not too horrid” to “Awful”. Mostly, the character looks confused in any case. SH2 seemed to have a bit more closure than SH1.
I doubt anyone remembers the TG-16/TurboDuo game Vasteel. The end, no matter what you do, is the death of both characters. As the the guy who brought it over to the US said “Thus ends the morality play that is Vasteel”.
From the same platform SplatterHouse was a downer ending. Not sure exactly what happened, but I get the impression that your girlfirend is dead, and now so are you, having defeated the monster under the house.
Sure you could win it–it showed essentially the last scene from the movie where you shut the big doors on the temple of Zuul. We are talking about the same game, right?
