I was wondering if you played a game with a tight story and kind of indentified with the character that you are playing (or maybe not), would you be disappointed and call it a "bad game" if it ends without a happy ending? Thanks.

Depends. If you mean an ending like "ha ha the whole world is gone the end" then yes, I'd call that bad.

On the other hand, if you mean a dark, sad, and/or twisted ending (character dies, goes insane, kills everyone he knows, etc.)... go for it. A lot of people may not like it, but there's plenty of us out there who get tired of the Hollywood fairy tale "everyone lives happily ever after" rubbish.

I thought more of the latter one.
A not all too happy end focusing on the character...

You should check out this thread:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=322502

I played Mafia and at the end of the game, the main character(me) was killed, it made me alittle sad. but I consider it as a good game.

so my opinion is that it doesn't matter if the game is really good.

play Shadow of the Collussus (probably spelt horribly wrong)

That's a good link :)
I found another post earlier which was also quite good, but didn't give me a satisfying answer.

I should point out, that the game I mean is more adventure/action like and one might not have that much of an identifying feeling as in an FPS for instance.

Quote:

Original post by l3mon I was wondering if you played a game with a tight story and kind of indentified with the character that you are playing (or maybe not), would you be disappointed and call it a "bad game" if it ends without a happy ending?

I use to think games which I want to play again after having completed them are good. So if the story is involving I'm more than fine with an unhapppy ending as long as the ending is not too offensive or something like that. If there are alternative endings which are affected by how you play the game a sad ending can certainly make you want to play the game again, although then the sad ending is not "definite".

I think that's interesting in a way, if you have an opportunity to affect the ending, do you care as much when the ending is reached because you know there's sort of another chance?

A sad game with a happy ending leaves a strong impression, so does a happy game with a sad ending because it is an unexpected turn of event. I thought the game 'Zone of the Enders' was most of the time quite sad and the ending was both happy and not. Both the main character and the bad character survived, however, one of the less bad characters died so I'm not sure how to categorize the game, but it made me remember it in a good way.

There are many games where the ending is not all good or all bad. 'Final Fantasy VII' had a pretty good ending because the big things were successfully taken care of and things returned to a normal state. But other things (like Aeris's and Zack's deaths) were never really compensated so it felt like something was missing although the good ending and involving game.

Something else, many heroes throughout history are remembered as heroes because they died a brave death. So if it's an adventure game with a hero that might be something to go for although the hero is not someone you easily identify yourself with.

\Dim_Yimma_H

it really depends. mio, i've noticed that as long as the game ends with some goal accomplished, then it doesn't really matter who lives.

Hell no. Both Fallout and Mafia had endings that were pretty much downers and they're two of my favourite games of all time. Neither of the Max Paynes had what you would exactly call a happy ending either - the people he cares about are still as dead at the end as they were at the beginning - and I still enjoyed the both of them too.

I'd say that a negative ending has to be appropriate though. None of those games were exactly cheerful in tone and a happy 'everything's great' ending would not have fit them at all. For example, Max Payne is basically a revenge story - a happy ending would have been horribly out of place.