Stealth Bastard - though your protagonist is a series of clones, and “you” die hundreds of times throughout the game (it’s unavoidable), so the protagonist that actually makes it to the end could be a whole “new” character that just jumped in!
Karoshi Suicide Salaryman - of course, dying is entirely the point.
You can totally make it to the jump point; You can even do it while protecting most of the transports if you’re good.
And given that it’s implied that the Shivans’ goal is basically the eradication of civilizations, harassing fleeing civilians is well within their operational parameters, and hell, they are already sacrificing a bunch of ships in this crazy plan, that’s never stopped them before.
Tales of the Abyss confusingly almost-kills the protagonist, or maybe doesn’t. The ending is frequently considered to be ‘ambiguous’.
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
Oh, that’s also a mechanic in *Destroy All Humans!
*You start off as Cryptosporidium-137, but every time you die your numbers ups by one. The sequel stars Cryptosporidium-138, which implies the main character canonically died once.
I’m amazed. As I said, I had rather a few issues with bugs, so for me it wasn’t possible despite numerous attempts. In fact, I don’t think the transports ever worked right.
The Shivans had no coherent goal, at least not that we could tell. Further, the end of the game doesn’t really make sense in this respect.
It’s not all that easy, though. It’s hard to kill off a good guy viewpoint character in any fiction. It’s even harder when you’ve spent the entire game keeping that person alive. It’s hard to keep the balance where it feels like the character is dying but not the player/reader. The player still has to feel like they accomplished something, and that keeping the character alive was not just a waste of time. The reader/player needs to feel that the journey itself was worth it.
I’d say it’s a lot more doable now than in the past. It’s even easier that it was back when this thread was created. Videogame storytelling is in a boom right now, to the point where people are starting to take it for granted even in genres that didn’t used to have it.
I dunno; I’m not sure what you’re basing that on. The ‘mythology’ indicates that they were ‘the destroyers’ who had eradicated multiple ancient civilizations once they became starfaring. Clearly, that’s their objective.
There’s a loose end with Admiral Bosch, who has apparently succeeded where no one else has, in communicating with them, but that’s just something we don’t know, and not something that doesn’t make sense.
A recent example, I guess, would be The Last of Us in which an early viewpoint character, umm, doesn’t make it very far. (Trying my best not to spoil anything.)
I know i’m a few years late on this thread but at the end of Persona 3 the protagonist dies and well it also tells you literally in the opening of the game
I’m surprised it didn’t get mentioned, since the game was released not long after the thread start (and was well-known by the time of the first zombification) but in Fallout 3your character can die heroically saving Project Purity from a radiation meltdown by entering the radiation flooded control room to enter the activation code.
Too late to ETA, but I see that Scumpup mentioned it in post 68.
Nevermind.
I see the first Mafia was mentioned in Post 44. The latest one will also go this way if you have Lincoln kill his lieutenants.
Surprised I didn’t mention it already in this long-ago thread, but in one of the expansions, “Resistance”, to one of my favorite games, “Operation Flashpoint”, the protagonist dies in his team’s efforts to stop the Soviets from firebombing the island they invaded. In a cutscene, he gets cornered by tanks in a box canyon, and is killed. Nothing you can do, albeit the other characters in the game are grateful for your efforts to throw the Soviets off your island. And if you don’t go on the mission, or really botch it, there is a cutscene of Frogfoots napalming everything in sight.
I’d highlight and add links but it looks like the highlighting text bug in Chrome is still here. What a pain in the ass.
Anyway, it’s a very old game (late 90s early 00s IIRC), with dated graphics, but it’s an interesting story. Brutally unforgiving, as you’d expect from that franchise.
L.A. Noire ends this way, too.