Summary
- Video games showcase diverse depictions of the end of the world, from bleak to beautiful settings.
- Games like Xenogears, Death Stranding, and Majora's Mask provide unique takes on the Dying Earth genre.
- Player choices in games like The Banner Saga lead to impactful consequences, making the end feel real and immersive.
Everything with a beginning must have an end. Some stories like to extrapolate this idea out to its most maximal possible version: the end of everything. Many video games feature cataclysmic disasters or near-apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic settings. There are a handful that take the player's hand and lead them to the edge, providing video games' own speculative vision as to what the end of the world might look like.
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Post-apocalyptic games aren't rare nowadays, but these games add a layer of realism that keeps players immersed.
The result is a fantastically diverse array of games with visuals ranging from the bleak to the beautiful, some are all action with big implications and others focus on the minutiae such as talking and walking. Certainly, none of them shy away from the fact that the importance of beginnings is matched by their ending.
8 Xenogears
Rise Of The Kung Fu Machines
Xenogears
A mysterious organization is turning the tides of a century-long war with ancient technology - giant combat robots known as Gears. A failed attempt to steal one of these powerful mechanized weapons places it in the unwilling hands of a young Fei and his dubious allies. Now he is pursued by military governments, royal pirates, spies, the emperor, and his own forgotten past.
- Released
- October 20, 1998
- Developer(s)
- Square
- Platform(s)
- PS1, PlayStation 3
- Genre(s)
- JRPG
A setting so far-flung into the future that advanced technology has been lost and rediscovered, much of it appearing akin to magic rather than science for many of the world's inhabitants. Mutated pockets of humanity, God (sort of), a story and lore that encompasses millenniums in the telling and is quite hard to comprehend the first time through; the list of Dying Earth genre hallmarks on display goes on.
There is so much in here that most of the second disc is really the game sitting the player down and asking, "Do you see?", as it forces a long series of slides and scenes presented like amateur theater as it attempts to convey... A lot. However, it was well ahead of its time and even playing it today the sheer scope and experimentalist ideology of Xenogears is mind-boggling.
7 Death Stranding
A (Final) Day At The Beach
Death Stranding
- Released
- November 8, 2019
- Developer(s)
- Kojima Productions
- Platform(s)
- iOS, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Action
Hideo Kojima has always been known for his unique stories and the bizarre yet heartfelt cast of characters populating them. His take on the Dying Earth genre presented within Death Stranding is no different. The only game on the list explicitly dealing with extinction on Earth and, as is so often the way with Kojima games, whilst being absurdly fantastical, it manages to be eerily prophetic. The irony of playing a character who is rarely in proximity with others and dislikes being touched wasn't lost on anybody playing it through the COVID-19 pandemic.
With gameplay focused on traversal through the terrifying version of Earth's extinction: bereft of animal life, devoid of company, where death causes huge explosions called "voidouts," and even the rain ages anything caught in it by years, it can be a somber and scary affair. Yet, at other times, slowly journeying across mountains as an ethereal track by Low Roar kicks in just as the destination comes into view, it can be painfully beautiful.
6 The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Experience The End, Again And Again
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
- Released
- October 26, 2000
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo EAD
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo 64, GameCube
Like many children's classics, The Legend of Zelda series isn't afraid of handling mature and dark subjects, none more so than Majora's Mask. Considered an S-tier Zelda game and also the series' darkest entry, Majora's Mask wastes no time in setting the scene. Link is stuck in a Groundhog day like scenario except at the end of each cycle the moon will crash into Termina and the player must restart the game; thus, truly making it feel like everything that was just there has gone.
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Of course, this fate can be avoided. Link's quest is to stop this world-ending event from occurring and while this is the endgame accomplishment, it certainly isn't the lasting impression left on the player. There is an inescapable knowledge of the inevitable and a mistrust of the Moon while playing through this game.
5 The Banner Saga Series
Consequences, Consequences Everywhere
The Banner Saga
- Released
- January 14, 2014
- Developer(s)
- Stoic Studio
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Strategy
The set-up here is similar to a lot of dark fantasy stories: an ancient evil thought long gone has returned, turmoil between species (and the factions within), the gods are dead and the world seems soon to follow. However, it differs in three main areas. For one, it uses Norse inspiration but creates a completely unique world and lore, so the story is new to everyone. Two, it has a gorgeous art style reminiscent of Ralph Bakshi movies. Third and most importantly, how the story unfolds depends massively on player choice.
6 RPGs With The Most Player Freedom, Choice, And Consequence
Western RPGs often aim to be a blend of power fantasy with life simulation, but few, like Fallout: New Vegas and BG3, have offered true freedom.
Many games have boasted to have impact through player choice but few deliver so well and to such a scale as The Banner Saga. Characters may live or die, plot threads are revealed or remain hidden and the world may end or not, all depending on choices made by the player.
4 Elden Ring
The Game Of The New Sun
Elden Ring
- Released
- February 25, 2022
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
Even Death is dead in The Lands Between. The player character, one of the "Tarnished", is a being resurrected by "Grace". Much of the world and populace of Elden Ring gives the feeling of something dead, passed its time but forced to go on and remain in some sorry state or another.
The first entry in the list directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and undoubtedly the closest in parallels to The Book of the New Sun, a series of classic novels of the Dying Earth genre written by Gene Wolf. The slow reveal that the Lands Between is as much of a sci-fi setting as a fantasy one is masterfully integrated through the little details given away in item descriptions and progressively otherworldly foes.
3 Outer Wilds
Houston, We Have A Problem
Outer Wilds
So often, the instigator of the dying Earth within the Dying Earth genre is the oncoming death of the Sun. Outer Wilds shares this scenario but expands the concerns of the player beyond the end of one measly planet to an entire solar system. Making space travel feel both comforting in one moment and terrifying in the next is already quite an achievement but even more impressive is just how much feeling is injected into such a large explorable area.
8 Games With the Most Realistic Space Exploration
These games allow players to venture into the stars, providing a great sense of immersion with the depiction of space exploration and travel.
Like Majora's Mask, the protagonist of Outer Wilds is also stuck in a time loop, only 22 minutes long, before the Sun becomes a supernova absorbing the entire system. The player must learn to make the most of each cycle and is given total freedom as to how they go about it, becoming an adept spacefarer in the process.
2 Nier
All The World's A Stage
Nier
Nier focuses on relationships in the end times: siblings, parental, romantic, and alienated. Even the weapons acquired by the unnamed protagonist have a tale to impart. This is a truly thought-provoking action RPG where the setting is the plot and the characters are the story.
Nier uses its limited assets to the utmost, delivering tidbits of information through the scenery and side characters and then providing completely different takes on events through the subsequent replays necessary to see the different endings. There isn't really a straightforward "happy/good" ending, which is very fitting, as the same can be said for the characters and world.
1 Dark Souls
You Died
Dark Souls
- Released
- September 22, 2011
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Platform(s)
- Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG, Soulslike, Adventure
Dark Souls is the perfect example of the Dying Earth genre. A beautiful but fading world and the desperation to hold onto that, to hold onto something, is all pervasive. Everyone has needs, a quest, and a purpose. Without it, only hollowness awaits. In the end, everyone succumbs. The horrific holds a sense of tragedy and sometimes sensitivity, whereas nobility and extravagant beauty are often proved to be cruel and ostentatious. Everything once unquestionably true and solid is unraveling, laid bare for the player's eyes.
Though there were two sequels, both striving to deliver the same message, nothing takes away from the feeling that this world is ending and that ultimately no matter the character build, which ending is chosen or that the player will not be there to experience that very final moment where the world no longer exists, that is still what will happen. It's all there for a moment, unlike any other, and then gone, forever.
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