Some times ago I was working on a project (now dismissed - or rather, waiting for my current project completion) which was designed to end badly, with the death of every character in the party (this was however related to the plot).

I've seen quite a few RPG with a default (i.e. not optional) bad ending (FFXIII-2 / KH Birth by Sleep - if we can call their ending bad), so I wonder if it's a taboo to make your game ends in a tragic way, or simply players prefer an happy ending to every game they play, since they are playing not to think to their problems...

What's your point about it?
Would you play/create a game with a tragic ending (not optional - main ending)?

If so, why?

That's a feature I've never found in a RPG Maker game (excluding maybe survival horror...)
If you know some link 'bout that, I'd be pleased to give it a look.

Maybe my project will resurrect, who knows?

Jens

I like feeling accomplished after beating a game. Saving the world is a great feeling, even if it's only make-believe! I cannot think of any commercial RPGs with tragic endings off the top of my head, though the RM game Finding Eden has a pretty tragic ending from what I remember. In that case the tragicness of the ending didn't take away from the game because it's a short, plot-driven game. Most of the God of War games and Zone of the Enders (not RPGs) have pretty tragic endings. With every tragic ending, whether be in game, book or film (but especially in a game), I think there always needs to be some pay-off. If the hero dies, the villian has to die harder.

One thing I DESPISE is when games tease the death of the hero at the end, only for them to ride by on a chocobo and everyone is like "Oh look! They're not dead! Hurray!" To me it just seems like a cheap attempt at suspense for like 5 minutes.

I've played Finding Eden and remember the ending. I think tat was... touching more than tragic.
Anyway, what I'm going to say it's a truly tragic ending, in which the main characters ACTUALLY dies and there's no scene in which you saw him/her again riding a Chocobo or whatever.

I'll provide some more details. The project I dismissed something like two years ago was called Countdown to the End and was set on Earth's last seven days, before the Sun become a red giant star. Whoever could leave the planet did it, leaving about two billion people on the Earth, condemning them to a sure death. You should have taken control of one nameless character, following a flebile hope tied to the existence of a spaceship, the Ark, which should be fast enough to leave the planet in time. During this search, you should have encountered many characters and, according to your choices, take some of them in the party. However, to sum up, in the end you should have reached a old hangar with the Ark inside, discovering it has no engines and therefore it can't fly. It contains a sort of church, since it is not a spaceship at all, a church were you should have found old books and documents, forgotten by time, which talk about the immortality of souls and the Other World Beyond The Death. After a scene of discourage, when one of the party members commits sucide and other one fall to the floor crying and weeping, the main character decides to believe to these documents, since there's no other way out, and smiles looking at the sun, which is gradually becoming brighter.

This was, in sum, the plot of the project I left before being struck by Tryadine Effect idea. I wondered how would have a player received such ending, since there's no evidence that those books were right and the one sure thing is the player is gonna die.

Do you think an ending like that could be too much rude, for a player who employed hours and hours to reach the game's end?
Or would you appreciate something like that?

I'd like to know sincere opinions about the whole topic.
Bad ending theory is something that fascinated me...

Jens

The frustration of having the characters die at the end is the fact that through the entire game you've been working so hard not to have the characters die. It just kinda makes you wonder if it was really worth it.

I agree with the others.

However, endings with some tragedies isn't so bad. Like one or two characters dying to help others, you know, stuff like that. But if everyone dies and the world crumbles at the end of the game, I feel like playing the game was not worth it; going through the boss battles, saving characters sometimes, etc etc, what was the point? I invested time in it, in the characters, in the story and in the world for everything to be lost?

The whole story sounds great. I'd play it (even though I know how it ends ) Seems like games follow different rules than other art because of their interactive nature. I think that plot could work for a game, however, since it sounds like the major theme is the inevitability of death and destruction. If the characters were well developed and got some joy out of the journey itself, I wouldn't feel cheated. Also, a playable character committing suicide has interesting psychological implications for a game; I'd take that a lot harder than if it happened in a film or book. My point about death teasers not working is that they always just seem tacked on with no greater impact on the overall story.

The image of a main character staring into the sun after coming to terms with the fact that their mission has failed and that they are going to die is actually an old literary trope: See the end of Deuteronomy from The Bible and The Epic of Gilgamesh. The "moral" (ugh, I hate that word. Someone should write a post on themes v.s. morals) of these stories is that life should be more than a simple struggle against death - you should enjoy the journey and accomplish great things in life to obtain immortality in the minds of future generations.

Let me muse for a second on the other games I mentioned and why their endings "work", in my opinion.







So again, I emphasize, if an "everyone dies" ending adds relevance to the theme, that can be really powerful. But if it's just thrown in for the sake of surprise, it pisses me off.

I am going to start this reply by mentioning something that you should never do if a character dies...and for this I reference, once again, Final Fantasy X and X-2


I love a bad ending...as long as it's done right. You need to literally bring people to tears. Once again a brilliant example is Finding Eden...I have shamelessly played the game so many times and every time I am devastated when

Now normally I would harp on about how Voice Actors can bring the characters to life...however in this case the way that FE was written was so amazing, that you could hear the characters, even though it was a 30min microgame. The development that went into it must have been outstanding due to the amount the characters were developed throughout the game. The close-ness of the main characters, and then the disaster that occurs. (read spoiler...)

But once again I digress...The point is, if you want to kill the main characters, or cause a disaster that basically renders the entire game pointless then be very smart. Develop your characters to the point of exhaustion; that way when they die. You devastate the player, but it's good devistation because they know that they have done something that helps the world that they have come to love, which is of course the world of your game

TL;DR: Go ahead and do it, there is too many happy go lucky stories around. But remember to develop your characters and world so much that the player can become eveloped in the world...so much that WHEN it happens. The player can really feel it. and do not under any circumstances bring the player back to life, in a equal...or later in the game. It's just stupid. Plain and simple stupid.

I agree with both of you. I'd have never planned to revive (urgh!) a character (it's something I actually HATE too! A dead character is dead.)
Again, I didn't intend to use a surprise for surprise's sake. I just thought to give some hints during the game, hidden here and there, something mostly ignored by the characters as pointless news and facts, which, if read in a different way, could give the true key to understand the game.

I found another example ofgame filled with bad endings: 999, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. There's only one "happy" ending.
However, there are something like three "you die" bad endings, one "everyone dies" bad ending, one "some character die ending" and a "to be continued" fake ending.
Yes, I felt frustrated while finding the "you die" and the "everyone dies" endings, but this made me play that game another time to obtain the true ending.

Maybe I could do something similar...
Thanks again for your comments, I really appreciated every replies.
Thanks MagitekElite and MEands too. You are right 'bout that, but I'll probably take that idea back and develop a short game when I complete Tryadine Effect.

Jens

I realize that there are a lot of answers to this already, and most say that once a character is dead they should stay dead. While I agree with that for the most part, there are games and stories where the character is brought back to life through valiant effort and dedication by his loved ones. A prime example is Chrono Trigger.



I say that this is just as powerful as having a character stay dead, and maybe more so. Who in life has lost a loved one and had not wished to see them 'just one more time'. It's tragic, and tragedy is hard to deal with. So, while this is not really within the topic of the conversation, I felt like I had to bring my own counterpoint to all this discussion.

I agree. Chrono Trigger has I think 14 endings? It's one of my favorite games because of the tightness of its story. I think it only works because the whole game is about time travel though, and making it optional enforces the theme of the power of small decisions. Also:

To Jonnie: Why couldn't Tidus have been modeled after Shuyin? Eh, the world may never know.

I'm a sucker for sappy, happy, Hollywood endings, but I also enjoy a decent tragedy when done right. When it comes to gaming, it's a good idea to have a proper balance. I want to feel like I accomplished something, even if at great cost, otherwise I wonder what was the point.

As for multiple endings, I don't like to refer to them as "The Good Ending" and "The Bad". What may be good in my mind may not be to somebody else and, unless one is more canonical than another, both should be written as a good ending, even if one is more tragic.

The thing to avoid, probably, is a complete and utter mess where nothing is resolved. While this may work on a Shakespearean level, for many gamers it will just feel empty and incomplete. That's not to say you need the perfect happy love story where everybody lives, either, but finding that balance between resolution and incompletion is vital.

Yes a bad ending is disappointing for the player after all their work in the game. A good alternative is to add optional endings good and bad so that way they can play it again and get the good ending they worked hard for. Also another thing to do is make the game end in several ways which aren't really true endings just cut-scenes that show them die when they fail at various parts in the game. This can be really cool as it shows evil conquering good had good not succeeded in the battle. It also makes the player want to get the good ending more after being beaten by evil so many times seeing the same depressing cries and brutal crushing of the heroes they've been drawn into. I liked this effect in resident evil 5 when Chris would or Sheeba or whatever that girls name was would get owned and ripped apart by the mutants. Made me think what, awesomely cool when she'd shout out "Chris!" and he was screaming in agony. This has an effect on the player and keeps them in tuned wanting to play more.

I wouldn't mind a tragic ending to a videogame, but I feel like there's two keys to making that kind of ending work.

1) There has to be at least a glimmer of hope or something good that happened because of the players actions. For example, if your game is about the end of the world, then maybe the ending involves the main characters pursuing/fulfilling their final wishes before they die. Tragic, but there's still something worthwhile about going through the painful experience. It doesn't even have to be a "happy" ending, as long as there's SOMETHING good that comes out of it.

2) Especially in videogames, the audience (player) generally goes in with the expectation that there will be a happy ending, or at least not a bad ending. In movies and books, audiences have now accepted tragic endings because enough books and movies have gone against the norm that readers and viewers will at least accept it as a possibility. However, the massive majority of mainstream AAA games have stuck to happy endings, so the average player will never even ponder the possibility of a "bad" ending. I feel like that means, for video games, we need to at least warn the players ahead of time that the ending may be "bad". Unless your goal is to truly shock your player (which is fine), I recommend that you hint at the fact that the ending will be bad beforehand. An example of this is Halo: Reach. Everyone dies, but you know it within the opening seconds of the game. That way when each character death comes, the players are dealing with the emotion of the scene, rather than the shock.

And now, to be a truly pretentious douche about it, I'm going to tell you what I did in MY game.



"Bad" endings are still good. Romeo and Juliet wouldn't be a classic if everyone lived and there was a wedding at the end. Bad endings just require a lot of care so that the player doesn't feel they wasted their time.

I'm generally not for mainstream games, but you guys are right.
There should be some hint of the ending and give the player some reward, like you said.
A bad or tragic ending could be really disappointing, but I prefer a tragic ending which has a minimum of significance to a happy ending which actually is set just to end the story in a good way.

Happy ending is the general rule, but I think game canons can and must be overcome.
Putting something new everytime, breaking the rules... well, it a sort of victory of fantasy on the mass produced games.

I love this forum, since there are lots of different opinions and many people who are tired of emulating mainstream games and instead create their own, unique world.

I feel I'll keep on my way, but I'll consider this discussion and the points emerged in these posts.
Now I know how to do that,

Thanks everyone.

Jens

Because he's much better as a whiny bitch..."Ah..ha ha ha ha..." I WANT TO PUNCH HIS FACE IN, He could at LEAST fake laugh like less of a dickhead.




That is something you've gotta remember. Make sure the death makes sense. You cannot just kill the character for a shock factor. Kill the for a reason...That doesn't necessarily mean give an obvious reason...but you've gotta give some "clue" to why they die!

Main ending must never be bad. Bittersweet, maybe, but not bad. Imagine this:

Player finally grinded his way to the final boss. After hours of playing he got heavily invested with plot, defeated countless enemies and faced great satisfaction, because he knows: he got to the end. He will beat Big Bad and save the world!
But in the ending all his party dies.
"WHAT THE F*UCK IS THAT SH*T?!" screaming player "I WASTED TWENTY HOURS OF MY LIFE FOR THIS? F*CK YOU, AUTOR, F*CK YOU!"

Allow me to show you the song on what player reeeeaaaallly wants.

So, that's my opinion on downer endings. I hate these VEEERY much.

Romeo and Juliet is probably the best known Ending where almost the whole cast of the Main people in the story die. That's one story that I both Loved and Hated because of how well it was told.

I don't much care for Bad end games that have pointless deaths (if any death could truly have a point) much if the Story escalates to the point that death is the only possible outcome or Best possible outcome, it could work if the Story is well written. This could work in books and movies but yeah, like it's been said, it would be hard for something for a player to handle...

And pray that anyone who does play it does not have any personal demons of their own; that may take such a game a little bit personal.

I also can't stand the bad endings, but the point is that an ending is perceived by us based on our feelings.

I know many of my friends who hate the positive end because the world according to them and "ugly and bad."

To me, however, the positive end will not displease any because basically I don't care a realistic storyline will make the cynic who wants to be a bad man.

There is also to say one thing though, the final, often must be consistent with the same plot and try not to force the events at your own convenience, but to get to those that are the obvious consequences of actions.

Let me explain: If one tells the story of a villainous character, nihilist who rapes the female character and betray everyone for their own gain and eventually even it redeems for his actions ...
It is not possible that in the end, this character has a happy ending where his friends "betrayed" consider still a great friend, or his lady love him despite everything.

The ending should take this into account.

Bad ending CAN be acceptable in prequels, where all characters are doomed by canons. And dramas. Otherwise they are pretty frustrating

I can't tell you how many times I watch an adaption of Romeo and Juliet, and even knowing what will happen, hoping for a completely different outcome.

Just to clarify, by bad ending we are referring to a sad ending. Even a sad ending can have a lot of impact if done right, but there is a big difference in bad/sad endings in the movies, and a bad/sad ending in a game. When it comes to games you need to ensure the player is going to feel satisfied, primarily because a gamer is more engaged and has more invested than just an observer.

My thought, the player's goal should be achieved, but the way the goal was expected to be received can be altered. For example, the player may have to destroy a superbeing. The main character responsible for this could be a shallow unlikable person at first, but slowly learns what it means to have compassion. He falls in love with one of the other characters. The player assumes the hero will combat the evil and wind up with the other playable character, as typically happens in a lot of other games. However, unexpectedly, the hero realizes that there is no time to stop the evil force, or they are not powerful enough. He realizes that he can sacrifice himself and that will destroy the evil creature. His love interest is upset, and so are the players, but it's also very touching at the same time.

Actually an XBOX360 series of turned based strategy games handled this pretty well, IMO, Record of Agarest Wars. Now, this is advertised in the games, so no worries about spoilers. It's a multi-generational game, and each 'chapter' is a generation, in it your main character must choose a wife, have a kid, then die to save that area from corruption.

This is sad, also the fact that any human or non-long lived character doesn't go with you to the next generation as they obviously die. The game really builds up every character and it is pretty sad to lose a lot of them, but the story is so intense and they die for such a good reason that it's something you can cope with.

I think it's an excellent way to handle 'sad endings' even though it's not actually the end of the games, though you do have multiple endings so I'm sure there are some 'sad endings' too.

I haven't a problem with human death of old age. I just feel for it to be a good ending, their hopes and dreams can't die with them. They should have a kid or something who will then take up the new quest, or is assumed to.

A bad ending is good if it's so much a downer it forces you to think. Which is why there's a distinction between downer endings and bad endings. A downer ending can be the best ending, if it adds depth to the series. Or it can add to the horror of the situation. Or if played for dark humor, can even be funny.

A bad ending is just bad. It can be bad simply by being a bland and predictable happy ending.

The 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet with Leoanardo Decaprio and Claire Danes is AWESOME! It is set in modern times but the dialogue is still 16th century, and it begins with a shootout at a gas station.

Back on topic, I think stories about death help me cope with death better. Seeing other people (even if they're video game characters) deal with the emotions that come with losing someone makes me feel less alone when it happens to me. In real life, everyone guards their emotions to some sense, but as a player/viewer you get to actually see the characters at their best and worst (if it's an interesting story). I just accept that when I watch/read/play something it might make bring up some repressed emotions of mine...but isn't that the job of good stories? To make the player feel?

<Jens emerges from shadows again after having solved a circuit with Kirchhoff's laws>

I completely agree with rewells. Why should not a game end with the death of any characters? RPG games, as well as novels, can express emotions as well. I'm not for a statement like "the world is an ugly place, so we must suffer and die, and...". I'm just saying that sad ending can be actually good if they're able to bring up emotions.
Whoever told that the player has to be rewarded for his/her playthrough, well, had a good point.
You should reward the player a little in the ending, just to make them feel they accomplished something... or at least, give the player a hope that that won't be the real ending, though in your mind that was exactly so...
something like deceiving who play to make them comfortable with the ending

<Jens come back to shadows again, attempting to finish his third issue for his degree>

Corpse Party is a good example. In the final chapter, all the endings has something "bad" in them by design. Even in the best case scenario, survivors are tortured by the fact that nobody remembers those who died in the closed spaces. In one of the endings where sequel was based on basically led to fact that they repeat the same mistake which happens at the near beginning of the story and only one remembers the previous time.

Problem is that I didn't find the intended ending as the best one.

A lot of this is Game As Fantasy vs. Game As Drama.

If your game is designed primarily as a fantasy (by fantasy I mean make-believe, I'm not using the word to talk about magic) then the player is putting himself in the shoes of the hero. The player is living out his fantasy of becoming a hero and saving the world. In these kinds of games, to not allow the player to actually save the world in the end would be kind of horrible - you would be failing to create the kind of game the player came wanting to play.

If your game is designed primarily as a drama, however - the player is watching a story unfold, and though he can influence it and control things in the world by playing the game, none of the characters actually represent the player - then you can do pretty much anything in your story that you think makes it a better story. If you're crafting a tale for the player to watch, rather than an identity for the player to assume, you shouldn't feel constrained to allow the player to achieve total success at everything he does. The player has a different mindset - what he's trying to do isn't "save the world," it's "direct this team of heroes to save the world." There's a big difference. He's not the hero. He's the player.

Almost any game where you control a party of characters falls into the "game as drama" category. Most single-hero games where the hero has a pre-defined personality also do so. To actually step mentally into the shoes of the protagonist in the game, it often needs to be a blank slate to a degree - though if it were truly a TOTALLY blank slate, there'd be no fantasy to step into. When playing a game like Fallout, World of Warcraft, Zelda, Dragon Warrior, Call of Duty, Rock Band, etc., you either go in with an expectation of what role you get to play as in this game, or you develop a sense very early on as to what that role is. If you're making a game like this, don't yank the carpet out from under the player at the last minute, and tell them, "Oh, sorry, you got 99% of the way there, but you can't actually be a hero." The equivalent of that in a game as drama would be getting almost to the end of the game, and then showing a message saying "For the rest of the game, just imagine the plot as whatever you want." In both cases, you're not following through.

to reply to the OP, it don't matter to me as long as it goes along with the story line, I mean if you make it blend and they don't all die at once it would be fine with me.

And Mass Effect 3 did both of those at once. Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

As for the topic in question, I think when the player has any significant amount of choice in the game, forcing them into a single tragic ending is conveying the message "Screw you. No matter what you do, these people will die. And you can do nothing to prevent it. Loser.". Which is, frankly, the last thing you would ever do to your audience. Not even games with downright Lovecraftian settings get away with that unscathed: almost every Megami Tensei game (Persona 3 is an exception but Atlus indeed backed off with P4) so far has at least one ending where the hero gets the chance to be a hero and save his/her comrades (mostly the neutral ones).

Now, giving a choice between having one person or another die, that's fair game if it doesn't completely come out of left field. For example, in Chrono Trigger, which was ultimately a cheerful and optimistic romp through time, forcing the player to either kill off Marle or Lucca permanently at the 80% mark in the game would have been an unnecesary, sadistic choice that disregards the game's spirit. The same in Mass effect 1 with killing either Ashley or Kaidan, however, only drives the message home, that yes, this is war and you can't save them all. It fits into the game.

What I'm planning on doing in my game is having a main character with his own personality but giving some degree of control over his actions to the player. Over the course of the game, many tragic events happen to this character (death of friends, family, rejection and lack of recognition for his genuinely heroic deeds), and the only way he can have good things happen to him if he acts villainously, such as manipulating people, choosing to murder defenceless and defeated villains in cold blood and even committing the game world's equivalent of rape (however, to keep some moral standard, the last one immediately pushes him over the moral event horizon and prevents getting the good ending unless extra-difficult special conditions are met.).
Now, how the protagonist acts is mostly determined by the player. Play too altruistically and not demand anything, and you'll end up with the protagonist having less power (in-game!) due to apathy or getting fed up with being the hero and betraying the party (leading into the bad ending). Conversely, acting evil and demanding a reward for being a hero too many times, while boosting power, leads him into villainy as well (same bad ending).
Even if the protagonist betrayed the party, the player can save him by first getting the bad ending (which involves the seemingly main villain defeated, but hints at the party's demise and keeps the world in a devastated state, with the protagonist dead), and then unlocking and completing an optional dungeon, meeting a plot-important figure and then fighting the final boss again. This eventually leads to the good ending (with the protagonist alive and finding the reward for his courage and heroism).
My intention with these endings are to give a sense of consequence to the player and remind them of the importance of the "Aurae Mediocritas", the golden balance.

As far as how bad endings go in Video Games, I know a lot of is based on more than just the Good Guy vs Bad Guy thing where you are either all the way good, or all the way bad.

When it comes to a bad ending, you have to make it clear throughout the game that if you do not take a certain action, consequences will be met. Gamers never take this seriously at first, so it has to be reinforced.

Say, for instance, you were playing a game where you had to pilot a mech through a warzone to defeat the big boss. You are told at the beginning "Maintaining and upgrading your mech is essential. Without doing so properly, you will fail."

Then, about maybe halfway through the game, a person asks you, "Have you been maintaining your mech? I hope so. I hear the enemy will wipe you out if not."

Then a couple more times before the end, have someone say something along the lines of, "I hope you've been upgrading your mech. We are going to needs it's increased firepower to take out the enemy."

Then, at the end, say something like, "Before you fight the enemy, is there anything else you want to do to your mech?"

This way, if the player bombs the boss fight and gets the bad ending, it's their own fault.

I think some people are misunderstanding what this topic is about. It is not so much about a 'bad ending' as you fail and get an alternate ending as it is more about a 'tragic ending' in which the hero does not win, does not live, does not rescue the princess.

I believe this can be portrayed well and it can be a very moving story. The key element here is to enforce the telling of the story. For example I just went and saw Les Miserables for the first time, it is very tragic and you see that throughout the story, but it is still really good and the ending, while tragic as well, was acceptable and made sense for the story.

What I would say, is basically that your ending must match your story. If it is a sad story, a sad ending is acceptable. If it is a happy go lucky, the hero saves the princess story and at the end you kill him...it is a nice twist, but the player will be very angry.

Right, the OP was just about this. I was thinking of a game with a tragic / apocalyptic setting in which the player is given a hope... and in the end the hope he was looking for is completely different from his expectations. In addition, in the ending the whole party is going to die due to natural phenomena on which the player has no control.
In practice, I've planned a game in which you can expect a bad ending from the beginning and I wondered if this is actually against some unwritten rules about RPG games...

Jens

It kind of is against the rules, is the thing. There are tons and tons of games where the hero fails. You know what happens when he or she fails? The game says "Game over. Would you like to load your most recent save?" And the player gets to try again, and do things differently. You had a goal, and didn't accomplish it; according to the rules of the game, that means you lost and must try again.

If you're going to break that rule, you need to not only have a very good reason for it, but you probably also should do it in such a way that the player becomes trained to understand that "if you fail, you go back and try again" is actually NOT one of the rules of your game. You would need to reinforce this idea repeatedly over the course of the game somehow. So that it doesn't seem like the game is just acting unintuitively bizarre and inappropriate at its most critical point. Perhaps have the player control a number of different characters during the game, who all inevitably die. Perhaps let the player control the manner of these characters' deaths, let him choose whether to fight or flee, but make it clear that death is inevitable - build this into the theme of both the plot and the gameplay. Perhaps have autosaving, so that those deaths can't be undone, or perhaps allow him to see both ways, via time travel or via forcing him to reload until he's done every possibility (and seen that they all fail). I'm imagining free will vs. fate being the major theme of a game like this.

Or perhaps you could simply shift the player's perspective and control to whichever side wins. Warcraft 3 does this excellently. You play as the humans and win some battles, but when the human kingdom falls, the player takes control of the undead army and fights against the humans. Then the player controls the orcs as they become demon-corrupted and destroy the Night Elf homeland, but when the elves regroup and start to turn the tide, the player controls the elves. Then you play as the blood elves and the naga as they join together under Illidan, and help him build a new home. Ultimately, Illidan attacks the undead army and fails - but at that point you're controlling the undead army again. The game ends with the failure of the mortal races of Azeroth to stop the Lich King - but it was the player's success that caused this tragic ending.

@LockeZ

Okay, what I meant to say is: during the game, your characters have a hope. This hope is the main point in the whole story, a hope to escape a dying planet. In the end, the hope does really exist but is totally different and the one way the characters can leave is by means of a spiritual ascemption (or something like that) - i.e. they have no chance to survive.
The game I had planned was based on the fact that the player is conscious that the search is desperate and has just a thin thread of hope to follow, a hope which becomes everytime thinner.
I'll be more precise.

The characters are on the Earth, while the Sun is going to explode. Their last hope is the Ark, a said starship located somewhere near the city they took shelter in. You'll notice that even if they find a starship, what can they actually do, since the whole Solar System is to collapse?

I think these premises would make the player understand that said "hope" is purely fictional... but the ending was planned to be rather surprising, though almost bittersweet (more bitter than sweet).

Jens

Ah, hmm. The thing about an ending like that is, I have to wonder why dying before I get to it is a game over. Because it seems like it's no worse than getting to the ending. Losing at the beginning doesn't change anything. If a zombie kills me in the tutorial dungeon, should you show the end credits and act like I won? I actually kinda think maybe you should. Because shit, I accomplished every goal in the game that's possible to be accomplished.

For that reason, I feel like a pure shakespearean tragedy is not really appropriate for a video game. But what about a partial tragedy? Even a 99% tragedy could let you accomplish SOMETHING at the end.

In my old RPG Maker 2003 game, the hero gives up all but one of his goals and dies in the ending, but he saves his daughter's life in the process, who's been kidnapped by demons for the entire second half of the game. It's not done very well, but at least you feel like you beat the game. (Plus, the rest of your party was really trying to stop him anyway.)

I don't think the exploding sun thing strictly needs a different ending. I do think it could strongly benefit from a secondary goal which does get achieved. Perhaps the space station does not have a ship, but it has a communications device. So even though in the end your characters all die, they can transmit one final piece of information to Federation Command that will save other planets from destruction or help them catch the terrorist who blew up the sun.