7 Video Game Villains You Didn't Realise Actually Won

6. The Patriots - Metal Gear Solid 2

Few Metal Gear Solid games end on a totally happy note, but none award the player with a victory quite as hollow as the one at the end of the second release. Though you do ostensibly "win", killing Solidus and uncovering the Patriots' conspiracy, while allowing Raiden to escape his child soldier past, you don't really achieve anything tangible.

The world is still as bad as it was at the start, only now you're aware that you're battling against a corrupt system far grander than a single man. Likewise, Arsenal Gear gets away and Olga's child is still being held hostage, with the only proper victory being that Snake planted a tracking device on the Metal Gear, and might be able to stop it in the future.

Even worse, this was supposed to be the finale of the story, painting a rather downbeat picture of Snake's constant battle against an evil he could never truly conquer. If that wasn't bad enough, MGS 4 even retroactively stripped away some of 2's happier resolutions, showing that Raiden wouldn't be able to escape war at all, and would was literally transformed into an artificial killing machine after the credits.