Sequels That Assume The Player Failed In The Previous Game (Spoilers?)

So I just started X-Com 2 (seems very cool)...Something I find interesting about it is how it's premise is based on you having ''failed'' in the previous X-Com. I'm finding this super neat and was wondering, is there a wiki entry here for that sort of thing? Can you duders and dudettes think of any other games that does something similar?

Well the Nier games were based on a joke ending of the Drakengard games. I dont know if that's considered a fail though. A few games with choice had grim outcomes that became canon but arent really failures. (KOTOR: Revan turning back to the dark side. Deus Ex: JC Denton merging with an AI)

EDIT: Just thought of another one that I consider to be a fail. Dishonored 2. (The game assumes you seal the main antagonist in the first game's DLC but you could just as easily kill her so that none of the events of the second game happen)

Not really a sequel, but the set up for Dragon Quest Builders is based on the bad end to Dragon Warrior/DQ1

Really good question / idea for a wiki concept!

To be honest nothing comes to mind right away other than XCOM / XCOM2. I will think on this though, I'm sure there are some examples.

There is the infamous Zelda Timeline:

The Legacy of Kain series was predicated upon choosing the "naughty" ending in the original Blood Omen.

Shadow Hearts Covenant follows the bad ending of the first game (where the main character's love interest takes on his curse and dies in his place as opposed to the good ending where he overcomes his curse and they both live)

I'm not sure it 100% applies, but Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap (along with the recent remake) start with the player character re-enacting the final level of Wonder Boy in Monster Land...except instead of the original ending where you win, you get cursed and turned into a monster. I guess that's more of a "retcons the previous game's ending into a bad ending" more than "assumes that you got the preexisting bad ending."

As I recall, Shin Megami Tensei 2's premise was built off the idea that the SMT1 hero tried to build a true neutral society but it ended up being a failure and Law won in the end. Although I believe that happens after the events of the game, so maybe it doesn't count.

Steins;Gate 0 is definitely off of a "bad end", although that's kind of an odd one given the nature of that story.

@dixavd said:

There is the infamous Zelda Timeline:

It's still super funny that they just couldn't find any way to make it into one coherent timeline. "Look guys, we know a bunch of shit in all of the pre-Ocarina games contradicts Ocarina, so uhhhhhhhhhh...those games are in the bad timeline."

The only one I can think of is XCOM 2, although I saw that is what inspired this category. I'm not super familiar with these games, but I watched a couple of videos that talk about the lore with NieR and Drakengard. I am by no means an expert, but I think some of those games are based on endings to specific games. Like Game A is the sequel to this bad ending in Game B. This might be a good wiki concept page.

@killnger: To be fair, the "good ending" of Blood Omen would have made it hard for a sequel.

Do the Resistance games count? AFAIK the Chimera were never stopped and kept taking over the world.

Condemned 2 assumes you shot the serial killer at the end of the first game (which would make the killer's uncle shoot you in retaliation, but that's a different issue entirely) which was technically the 'bad' ending. In the sequel the main character is now an alcoholic drug abuser no longer working for the FBI (or whichever department) and in a bad state.

@wheresderrick: It has been a while but that is not what happened in Condemned when I shot the killer in the face.

@bisonhero said:

@dixavd said:

There is the infamous Zelda Timeline:

It's still super funny that they just couldn't find any way to make it into one coherent timeline. "Look guys, we know a bunch of shit in all of the pre-Ocarina games contradicts Ocarina, so uhhhhhhhhhh...those games are in the bad timeline."

The split timeline had been a thing within Zelda theory communities for well over a decade before Nintendo officially confirmed it. Also, they developed games with the idea in mind well before the release of the official timeline. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess both explicitly reference events of Ocarina of Time as part of the game worlds' history, yet the two worlds themselves were entirely incompatible with each other. Those games were clearly meant to be two different possible timelines branching off from Ocarina of Time.

I won't argue that Nintendo likely adopted the split timeline from the fans as a way to reconcile a lot of the games developed before anyone gave it any thought, but it's not as though they just randomly threw it together to appease their audience. They'd been deliberately making Zelda games that support the idea for a while well before revealing the timeline.

Just watched a clip, you get threatened to be shot but it never shows it happening. Been a loong time since I've completed that game.

I don't know if it counts as assuming the player failed, but it does assume the player went with the bad ending in Metro: Last Light.
In Metro 2033 you can get the destroy ending, which basically means you don't pick up on any of the signals the Dark Ones, have been sending you about what you need to do, and you wind up killing all but one of them. This is the bad ending of the game, and this is the one Last Light goes off of.

@wheresderrick: Yeah, that sounds right. What I mostly remember from the two endings was that it kind of goes more or less the same way (you are possessed in a bathroom).

Portal 2 kinda. Didn't Chell originally escape at the end of Portal and then they retconned a different ending right before Portal 2 came out that she got dragged back inside?

@zolroyce: And honestly that's the most common ending. I picked up on the idea of there being a good and bad ending as soon as it showed the screen flashing, but some of the things they factor into that ending seem entirely unrelated (though it all makes sense once you consider the kind of character that is being silently built around those actions), and I totally super got the ban ending despite trying my best to pluck guitars and shit.

All the Halo

Quite a few of the Mortal Kombat games post 3 or 4. Definitely 9/the Reboot.

It's not the ending so much, but the default save state in Mass Effect 2 (and then in 3) assumes you had a pretty terrible time in the ME1 (and then ME2). I don't remember all of it, but one of the big ones is that Wrex is dead; killed on Virmire.

I don't know enough about the series timeline to know if it really applies but Wolfenstien: The New Order being set in a world where the Nazis won is a similar concept.

I suppose the new Wolfenstein games, maybe? They ostensibly take place in the same universe as the older games - except that nothing you did mattered if the Nazis take over the world anyway.

Pretty sure Tactics Ogre assumes that the heroes of Ogre Battle failed. But with how obtuse the systems of OB were its kind of weird to *not* get the bad ending.