Spoiler alert! Vague Eternal Darkness spoilers in this post. You should still play it, though, I don't go into specifics.

After my last posts, the commenters mentionned that games never have you fail at the end, or die at the end, since that would piss off the player and be unsatisfying. Mostly, I agree, but writing a satisfying ending where your player accomplishes what they set out to do, perhaps in the moment of their deaths, can be done, too. I'm not so sure about the inverse.. a satisfying ending where you survive the ordeal, but are not able to complete what you apparently were setting out to do in the start. Maybe there'll be a game where, right at the end, you choose to either win and die in the process, or save yourself and fail at your mission in the process.

Anyway, like I said, games aren't able to have the main character die, I'll agree for the most part, which is unfortunate. But I can also think of one example where it worked pretty well to have your character die or fail. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.



In Eternal Darkness, you played as a progression of people throughout history, who have had dealings with the evil force that made up the antagonistic element of the game. Several of these characters died or failed in their quests, but they served to educate the main character, who was reading (and playing through) their stories. It was shocking when your current avatar would fail, die or end up in an asylum (the best part), but it was done very well, in that in the end, you used the combined efforts to vanquish the evil. I'll never forget the way that one guy gets.. well, I won't spoil that one for you.

This also left you bereft of that comfy notion that: 'I'm the main character, I can't die, haha!' Because after playing for a little while, you weren't too sure what might happen to you. Which is what helped make it that much scarier at times. In Resident Evil, you pretty much know you'll get out alive, in the end, since the point is to 'survive the horror'.

Of course, when you 'won', you have a vision of the next bit of evil in line succeeding, and you've failed once again, ultimately! Only by playing through and failing at the end of the game 3 times or so, setting up a rock, paper, scissors cycle of the 3 forces of evil destroying each other, could you truly defeat all of the darkness and "win" the game.

I think it was an awesome game, failing characters and all. Not to mention that your first character fails, dies and winds up an earthly avatar for the evil you spend the rest of the game trying to kill. That was classic, utterly.

After I finish playing 'The Darkness', I'll probably play 'Eternal Darkness' again. No, I don't see a pattern there. It's just a coincedence! Anyway, I'd like to see how many people out there played Eternal Darkness and maybe agree with me? Anybody? Everybody?!