10 Video Games Where The Bad Guy Won

Every hero goes on a journey, battles a villain and saves the day. It's the happy ending we've all come to expect and though the actions going through these stages may differ, the majority of video games tend to follow this reliable routine.

This is the natural law of video game stories most players have gotten used to, as you guide a character through a large mission in order to restore balance to a corrupted world.

Your goal at the beginning of the game is usually firmly established and it almost always involves taking out some unlikeable person with an agenda that doesn't benefit anyone but themselves.

However, there are those games that have bucked the trend of having a nice, cushy climax to their narratives, and instead, inject a big heaping dose of reality into the proceedings by having the bad guy get what he wanted.

These ten games all decided to go down the dark alternative route of the evildoer claiming victory, be it for a bigger emotional gut-punch, turning what you knew on its head, or it just made sense for them to claim the victory.

It goes without saying, but spoiler warning ahead.

Singularity is a standard shooter with a major boost in appeal due to its fun use of time manipulation powers. It is also unique in that you have three choices to make during the ending, and every single one ends up with the villain winning and taking control of the world.

After a lot of time-travel antics, at the climax, there's the scientist Demichev who made the time manipulation device (TMD), a military man named Baritov who wants the device for himself, and you with a gun pointed at them.

If you shoot Demichev, you go back in time and make it so you never saved him earlier in the game. Baritov ends up finding the TMD anyway and rules the world with an iron fist.

However, if you choose to fire a bullet into Baritov, you end up ruling the world alongside Demichev until you both grow paranoid of one another and a new cold war breaks out over who will gain power over the other.

If you're selfish and shoot them both down, the protagonist Renkov watches as the world falls into chaos, then seizes power with his use of the TMD, basically becoming a new Hitler.

It's a lose-lose-lose situation that means you never get a chance to be a hero, and no matter what way you pull the trigger, a bad guy wins.