Crapsack World/Video Games: Difference between revisions

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Crapsack Worlds are common in videogames, because they give a player a great justification for the large number of enemies they typically have to deal with and the conflicts they find themselves in.

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* Go on, just pick ANY [[Shin Megami Tensei]] game. The first one starts fairly nice for the first hour or so, then promptly gets doused in nuclear fire, leaving a pockmarked hell, and even before that happened, demons were attacking damn near anything, and after the world goes to hell, [[It Got Worse]], courtesy of a replay of The Great Flood. By the end of first game and by the time of the second, it seems to have gotten slightly more tolerable, only to utterly crush your hope when it get revealed that YHVH HIMSELF is planning to destroy everything the demons haven't raped to extremes that make the first game seem like Sunday school, and regardless of ending, a hell of a lot of dead people/demons pile up trying to save what's left of the planet. In [[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne]], the world is reduced to a demon filled embyro like state, and most options you have to fix things still leave it mostly crappy or can make it even worse. [[Strange Journey]] takes place in a [[Crapsack World]], and depending on what ending you get, the whole planet can join in on the fun. In short, if its a SMT game, pack a lunch, cause the crapsackiness is gonna be around for awhile.

** [[Word of God]] is that all of this is because the universe itself is somehow broken, and YHVH's insanity is a symptom of the problem.

** And then there's ''[[Digital Devil Saga]]''. Imagine a vast battlefield populated by soulless automatons. Each of the warring factions has to kill all others [[There Will Be Cake|to reach Nirvana]]. ''Then'' add human emotions and the [[Superpower Lottery]] into the mix. The rigidly imposed order breaks down into a [[Social Darwinist]] society, and ''then'' a Tribe ''succeeds'' in killing all major competitors and breaking the final rules. '''''Then''''' it's revealed it's all an AI simulator... and the real world's blasted beyond recognition, corrupted and twisted... due to a [[Humans Are Bastards|human attempt to study God and harness his power]].

** [[Devil Survivor]] takes everything about Pokemon (already a [[Crap Saccharine World]] if you look at it hard enough) and deconstructs every trope it was built on for as much horror as possible. For one, handing civilians the ability to summon [[Eldritch Abominations|demons]] is shown to have sickeningly high level of abuse and potential for disaster. Second, the mons running around ''ARE A VERY REAL AND DEADLY THREAT'' to mortals and each other, and if you don't have the ability to fight them, they will kill you without an ounce of pity. This is also a universe where supernatural forces can literally decide ''THE VERY INSTANT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DIE'', and speaking of supernatural forces, did we mention [[The Powers That Be]] are in the middle of kicking off [[The End of the World as We Know It]] even before the game starts?

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** [[Memetic Mutation|They're more like giant cherries.]]

*** [[Word of God|Delicious Fruit.]]

* ''[[Super Robot Wars Alpha]] Gaiden'' sends the good guys to a crapsack alternate future, where mankind was really screwed three times over. First, a gigantic gravity wave devastated the planet, then the Dinosaur Empire from ''[[Getter Robo]]'' beat up on the survivors, and THEN a full fledged war broke out between the Earth bound [[Xabungle|Innocent faction]] and the Space bound [[Turn a Gundam (Anime)|Moon Race]] that totally set back civilization for a good, long while. By the time your heroes get there, the ocean level is about 45% what it used to be, over half the world is a wasteland, the politicians on all sides are scheming, technology hoarding assholes with power complexes, and did we mention the Dinosaur Empire wants to turn the planet into the Mezosic Era, killing us all off, or that some creepy mechanically mutated humans called the Ancestors also want to kill us and literally redefine the world by their terms? It should also be noted that it's implied all the space colonies are destroyed, and whats left of the planet is valiantly struggling to heal from centuries of nukes, biomechanical destructive nanomachines, and more than a few [[Colony Drop|Colony Drops]]. In an interesting aversion of SRW's idealism, even if you do give the alternate future Earth the ability to have a second chance and change history, that does NOT activate the [[Reset Button]], and the Earth is still shown healing from all of the damage it has taken.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars Alpha]] Gaiden'' sends the good guys to a crapsack alternate future, where mankind was really screwed three times over. First, a gigantic gravity wave devastated the planet, then the Dinosaur Empire from ''[[Getter Robo]]'' beat up on the survivors, and THEN a full fledged war broke out between the Earth bound [[Xabungle|Innocent faction]] and the Space bound [[Turn A Gundam (Anime)|Moon Race]] that totally set back civilization for a good, long while. By the time your heroes get there, the ocean level is about 45% what it used to be, over half the world is a wasteland, the politicians on all sides are scheming, technology hoarding assholes with power complexes, and did we mention the Dinosaur Empire wants to turn the planet into the Mezosic Era, killing us all off, or that some creepy mechanically mutated humans called the Ancestors also want to kill us and literally redefine the world by their terms? It should also be noted that it's implied all the space colonies are destroyed, and whats left of the planet is valiantly struggling to heal from centuries of nukes, biomechanical destructive nanomachines, and more than a few [[Colony Drop|Colony Drops]]. In an interesting aversion of SRW's idealism, even if you do give the alternate future Earth the ability to have a second chance and change history, that does NOT activate the [[Reset Button]], and the Earth is still shown healing from all of the damage it has taken.

** ''[[Super Robot Wars 64]]'' has the Earth completely taken over by [[Dancougar|Muge Zolbados' Empire]]

** ''[[Super Robot Wars Destiny]]'''s [[Big Bad]] essentially is feeding off the fact Earth became one due to the events of ''Shin [[Getter Robo]] Armageddon'', [[Chars Counterattack]], and [[Mobile Suit Victory Gundam|Victory Gundam]], and wants to continue the misery in perpetuity. Thankfully, since this is [[Super Robot Wars]], the fact it has good guys who won't stand for that upgrade the [[Crapsack World]] to a potential [[A World Half Full|world of possible hope.]]

** In general it's safe to asume that world in any ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' game is going to be pretty crappy with vairous anime bad guys invading the Earth, conducting their plans, joining forces of fighting against each other with the original vilains on the top of all of it. And it's up to heroes to fix things up.

* ''[[Castlevania]] II: Simon's Quest'' shows what kind of world you saved in the previous game. The land is barren and lifeless, gravestones are everywhere, people are too poor to afford anything but unfurnished brick rooms, most will lie to you or tempt you with sin, expensive mansions once owned by the rich have signs of torture and enslavement, and creatures don't even bother to inhabit areas that people have long since abandoned and left to crumble. Blame this all on "Dracula's Curse" if you want, but there's a reason why most of the games take place inside Castlevania -- who's to say things are better on the outside?

** Um, yeah. The curse is causing all this. And you're trying to break it. That's the whole point. ("Tempt you with sin"?? You're reviewing this game for the Family Research Council or something?)

** Made a ''little'' better in later games, particularly ''Order of Ecclesia'', where the [[Hub Level]] is a small, well-kept village (well, well-kept once you save the villagers). Still, being attacked by Dracula and his monstrous hordes every few decades earns the world a few points in the "crapsack" column.

* ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'', a series of fantasy games where time traveling Vampire lord Kain clashes with his soul-eating undead son Raziel across the ages. The world of Nosgoth the series takes place in is host to massive web of [[Ancient Conspiracy|ancient conspiracies]], and over the course of the series experiences poverty, political warfare, extra-dimensional invaders, vampire empires, and due to the way the forces of nature are governed during it all the very ecosystem is slowly getting worse. It gets so bad that in ''Soul Reaver'', which takes place the furthest down the timeline, the humans of the world are confined to one city up in the mountains, the vampires are scattered and going hungry, and the world has become a desert wasteland.

* The ''[[Resistance]]'' games appear to be built purely on this concept. Over the course of the game, every single thing you attempt ends up either failing or blowing up in your face. On top of that, at the end of the second game {{spoiler|[[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|you singlehandedly manage to bring about the end of the world that the entire goal of the games was to prevent]]}}. i.e., [[The Bad Guy Wins]]. It appears to be a [[Foregone Conclusion]] that mankind will be annihilated in the third installment.

* The ''[[Oddworld]]'' is also a [[World Half Empty]]. The first three games center on industrial excesses taken to such an absurd degree that no-one bats an eye at a meat packing plant planning to make their slave laborers into their next product line, while ''Stranger's Wrath'' takes place in more of a [[Crapsack World]] of a Western, where the townsfolk are so exaggeratedly helpless and cowardly they're ''literally'' chickens.

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** It's implied in the games (and outright stated by [[Word of God]]) that the Combine has zero interest in Earth's infrastructure; their interest begins and ends with raping the planet of any usable resources (and stealing our teleportation technology, which is by some aspects superior to theirs). Supposedly, ''Half-Life 2'' was supposed to feature a plant designed to remove the oxygen from the planet's atmosphere; this got taken out because of time constraints. Various types of aliens, such as the antlions (insectoid aliens which are extremely aggressive towards any other lifeform), headcrabs (which the Combine actually seems to breed for biological warfare), and ocean-faring leeches which make even [[Border Patrol|wading out a short distance into the ocean a suicidal endeavor]].

*** Actually [[Air Ex]] (Air Exchange) was removed because they wanted to take the story in another direction, its removal had nothing to do with time constraints. It was actually cut 2 years before ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' was released, with the last [[Air Ex]] map having been modified in 2002.

* Pretty much all of Earth in ''[[Command ~~and~~ Conquer]] 3: Tiberium Wars'' is a [[World Half Empty]]. There's the politically unstable hellholes of the Yellow Zones, which are ravaged by war, disease, famine, and Tiberium. Then there's the Red Zones, which are completely uninhabitable by human (or any carbon-based) life, and filled with the horribly lethal Tiberium. The only nice place to live is the Blue Zones, which are clean, healthy, pristine, and.... wait, what are those [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] doing here? ''...oh, crap.''

* Pretty much all of Earth in ''[[Command & Conquer]] 3: Tiberium Wars'' is a [[World Half Empty]]. There's the politically unstable hellholes of the Yellow Zones, which are ravaged by war, disease, famine, and Tiberium. Then there's the Red Zones, which are completely uninhabitable by human (or any carbon-based) life, and filled with the horribly lethal Tiberium. The only nice place to live is the Blue Zones, which are clean, healthy, pristine, and.... wait, what are those [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] doing here? ''...oh, crap.''

** And this was an ''improvement'' from ''Tiberian Sun'', where the atmosphere and oceans had been contaminated enough to leave the human race months from extinction, with the few safe population tucked away in the arctic.

** [[It Got Worse]]. In between CNC 3 and CNC 4 Tiberium infestation reaches the point where only 2% of the world is inhabitable at all.

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** And here's more for the crapsackism. So if you remove that totalitarian institution, everything will be all fine and dandy, right? WRONG. You still have to deal with the fact that the world is ravaged, and the Black Beast left poisonous fumes in the world that linger in high concentrations even 100 years afer its death. Also, said totalitarian institute? It is actually a case of [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Extremism]], and if they disappeared, random people would be able to start picking up dangerous [[Artifact of Doom|Artifacts Of Doom]], enabling seeds of further war and chaos to spread in this world that is already teetering on the edge of destruction. So it's either totalitarianism, or a world in utter chaos. Yeah. Hang in there, bro.

** But if said [[Complete Monster]] [[Troll]] is defeated, things will at least make it to a [[World Half Full]] status, right? Well, they might and, frankly speaking, that is probably your best bet here, but considering the fact that said Monster Troll is [[Evil Genius|highly cunning,]] [[Crazy Prepared|intelligent,]] [[Game Breaker|powerful to extreme]] ([[SNK Boss|it also seeps to gameplay]]), and frankly speaking, [[The Battle Didn't Count|unfair levels]], ''and'' [[Sliding Scale of Villain Effectiveness|is approaching Infinite levels of effectiveness]], [[Karma Houdini|no known weak spots for Karmic Hammer to hit]], making his opposition look inefficient even when "[[Xanatos Gambit|beating]]" him <ref>Can we say [[Villain Sue]] yet?</ref>, not to mention the fact that [[Big Bad Duumvirate|he's accompanied with a taciturn, but equally monstrous]] [[Mad Scientist]] whose powers are ''also'' off the scale... [[Running Gag|Good luck]] [[Rule of Three|with that, mate]].

** Exacerbating the matters is the fact that the cast, aside from the [[Big Bad Duumvirate]], is quite disorganized. Here's a rundown on why: <ref>The aforementioned [[Anti-Hero]] shuns company, though winds up tolerating a clearly [[Cloudcuckoolander|mentally underdeveloped]] [[Catgirl]]. The aforementioned angelic doctor is on the wrong side of the tracks, all for the sake of an amorphous [[Eldritch Abomination|aberration]] who she once knew, and said abberation, when human, was instead a glory-hound, self-serving, fame-seeking man with gigantic inferiority complex and constantly rejected her help and support (and he's not showing any signs of fixing that ego of his after what happened to him), and while she still cared on other people that do cared about her, a love from a hammy ninja of justice goes unrequited as said ninja of justice got designated into the role of [[Joke Character]] and [[Butt Monkey]] (though with some... things, he's working on that), while attempting to defend his country rather than saving her (granted, he's not aware). There's a werewolf butler who serves a vampire, but he's only as modest in attitude as she allows, and she is too haughty for good's sake ([[Character Development|she's working on that]]). The son of one of the major villains has a mechanical custodian who's actually his sister, who he was forced to service on his own due to daddy's abandonment of them, aaand he's got a knack on killing you with a polite smile on his face in case you're holding some information that he wants ([[Character Development|he's working on that]], thanks to said angelic doctor and hammy ninja of justice). The iron knight patrolling the land is quite aloof and easily driven to violence under the wrong circumstances, and his idea of 'justice' would be "This world is corrupt, I'm gonna cleanse EVERYTHING there, innocent or not!"... and does NOT trust humans at all. And then there's the [[Magical Girl]] who harbors three personalities, two of which are literally childish while the third is sealed away 99% of the time. Under the NOL banner, we have a determined, if psychotic, young man with ''severe'' brother-complex with the [[Anti-Hero]] ([[Character Development|he's working on that]]), a warm young lady who goes cold when she's on the battlefield ([[Dark Secret|don't ever ask why that is]]); and said psychotic young man just plain HATE HER for no reason; and another young lady dedicated to upholding justice ([[Knight Templar|most]] [[Brainwashed and Crazy|vigorously]]). There's a resistance movement, which are also no better than the totalitarian institute in general practice, its three members of note include a [[Mad Scientist]] whose nuclear arsenal vastly outweigh her temperament and is so hell bent in exacting vengeance on that [[Complete Monster]] [[Troll]] with her own hands; so much that nuclear arsenal is a viable option for her, and she would neglect on the pleas of help from that angelic doctor, who was once her student, thereby setting her off to the wrong road in the first place when she could've prevented that; a well-mannered and capable scientist/cyborg who is loyal to the aforementioned to a fault, programmed to do so and he's not fixing it for the moment, and a ([[Obfuscating Stupidity|normally]]) ditzy agent playing under the resistance banner while also paying lip service to NOL, but cares for the young lady with a [[Dark Secret]] to the point she's willing to betray ''just about anybody'' in the name of keeping her safe. Aside of that, there's also an actually wise badass cat who may actually be the candidate for goodness and unity, only to mostly fail to unite and be cryptic, not to mention having a grudge to said [[Complete Monster]] [[Troll]] for killing his human wife... which may be that dark, mysterious magician under the Troll's employment, who doesn't speak. EVER. Not to mention that if you walk somewhere wrong, you may meet up some robotic girl with tons of swords ready to cut you down, and if that [[Anti-Hero]] was nearby... God help you if you get between them because [[Yandere|she'll get so jealous even on sight alone, and kill you for getting in between them]].</ref> TL;DR, rather than realizing the threat and working for a better future, everyone else is minding their own business. [[Overly Long Gag|Here's to unity, chap.]]

** Exacerbating the matters is the fact that the cast, aside from the [[Big Bad Duumvirate]], is quite disorganized. Here's a rundown on why: <ref>The aforementioned [[Anti-Hero]] shuns company, though winds up tolerating a clearly [[Cloudcuckoolander|mentally underdeveloped]] [[Catgirl]]. The aforementioned angelic doctor is on the wrong side of the tracks, all for the sake of an amorphous [[Eldritch Abomination|aberration]] who she once knew, and said abberation, when human, was instead a glory-hound, self-serving, fame-seeking man with gigantic inferiority complex and constantly rejected her help and support (and he's not showing any signs of fixing that ego of his after what happened to him), and while she still cared on other people that do cared about her, a love from a hammy ninja of justice goes unrequited as said ninja of justice got designated into the role of [[Joke Character]] and [[Butt Monkey]] (though with some... things, he's working on that), while attempting to defend his country rather than saving her (granted, he's not aware). There's a werewolf butler who serves a vampire, but he's only as modest in attitude as she allows, and she is too haughty for good's sake ([[Character Development|she's working on that]]). The son of one of the major villains has a mechanical custodian who's actually his sister, who he was forced to service on his own due to daddy's abandonment of them, aaand he's got a knack on killing you with a polite smile on his face in case you're holding some information that he wants ([[Character Development|he's working on that]], thanks to said angelic doctor and hammy ninja of justice). The iron knight patrolling the land is quite aloof and easily driven to violence under the wrong circumstances, and his idea of 'justice' would be "This world is corrupt, I'm gonna cleanse EVERYTHING there, innocent or not!"... and does NOT trust humans at all. And then there's the [[Magical Girl]] who harbors three personalities, two of which are literally childish while the third is sealed away 99% of the time. Under the NOL banner, we have a determined, if psychotic, young man with ''severe'' brother-complex with the [[Anti-Hero]] ([[Character Development|he's working on that]]), a warm young lady who goes cold when she's on the battlefield ([[Dark Secret|don't ever ask why that is]]); and said psychotic young man just plain HATE HER for no reason; and another young lady dedicated to upholding justice ([[Knight Templar|most]] [[Brainwashed and Crazy|vigorously]]). There's a resistance movement, which are also no better than the totalitarian institute in general practice, its three members of note include a [[Mad Scientist]] whose nuclear arsenal vastly outweigh her temperament and is so hell bent in exacting vengeance on that [[Complete Monster]] [[Troll]] with her own hands; so much that nuclear arsenal is a viable option for her, and she would neglect on the pleas of help from that angelic doctor, who was once her student, thereby setting her off to the wrong road in the first place when she could've prevented that; a well-mannered and capable scientist/cyborg who is loyal to the aforementioned to a fault, programmed to do so and he's not fixing it for the moment, and a ([[Obfuscating Stupidity|normally]]) ditzy agent playing under the resistance banner while also paying lip service to NOL, but cares for the young lady with a [[Dark Secret]] to the point she's willing to betray ''just about anybody'' in the name of keeping her safe. Aside of that, there's also an actually wise badass cat who may actually be the candidate for goodness and unity, only to mostly fail to unite and be cryptic, not to mention having a grudge to said [[Complete Monster]] [[Troll]] for killing his human wife... which may be that dark, mysterious magician under the Troll's employment, who doesn't speak. EVER. Not to mention that if you walk somewhere wrong, you may meet up some robotic girl with tons of swords ready to cut you down, and if that [[Anti-Hero]] was nearby... God help you if you get between them because [[Yandere (disambiguation)|she'll get so jealous even on sight alone, and kill you for getting in between them]].</ref> TL;DR, rather than realizing the threat and working for a better future, everyone else is minding their own business. [[Overly Long Gag|Here's to unity, chap.]]

** With all these you may think that perhaps there will be some good God to handle divine punishment if that [[Complete Monster]] gets too out of hand... wait, said 'God' is 'dead' by the [[Complete Monster]]. And there's this term 'World Antibody', which may be our last bet in place of the dysfunctional cast... except said 'Antibody' is that brother-complex-suffering psychopath, and even if he's working on it, who's designed as the world's enemy by that term? Your resident [[Anti-Hero]], not the [[Complete Monster]]. Yes, just to rub the salt to the wounds, the world ''hates you'' and would prefer to keep the [[Complete Monster]] to exist rather than designating it as an enemy so he could be stopped. [[Sarcasm Mode|What a wonderful world,]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|fellas]].

*** It's even worse since this implies that the [[Anti-Hero]] might actually become a greater threat to the world than the [[Complete Monster]]. And he very well might be, since he possesses a horrific power within him that nobody, not even the [[Complete Monster]], can control.

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* Another parody example that actually has a story of why the world is that way is the PC game ''Pyst'', which is supposedly what the world of ''[[Myst]]'' ended up looking like after millions of tourists wandered through it.

* The ''[[Postal]]'' series. In ''Postal 2'' at least, every townsperson is a jerk, the cops are mean, and the town of "Paradise" is portrayed as very corrupt and broken beneath the surface. All this is played up for humor, and also makes your [[Heroic Sociopath]] the most sympathetic character by comparison.

* The world at the start of ''[[Breath of Fire I]]'' is practically under the control of [[The Empire|the Dark Dragons]], with most of the towns being screwed over by them either [[For the Evulz]] (Gant, Prima), [[For Science!]] (Gust) or for particular [[Revenge]] (Tantar/Tuntar, Carmen). Those who can don't even try to stand up to them, as anyone who did ended up either dead (or close to, like Wyndia's king) or captured (Tantar's chief, Ox and Mogu's tribe).

* The world of ''[[Breath of Fire II]]'' looks funny and slapstick, right? Except for the cheap circus with the freak show, the children crying from hunger in Whale Cove {{spoiler|after you personally take away the family's source of income}}, the face-huggers, the witch's tower filled with beautiful men turned to stone, and the whole {{spoiler|men being seduced to evil and turning into monsters, in service of a dark god you thought was really Saint Eva}} thing.

* ''[[Breath of Fire IV]]'' opens in a world which has gone through 4 centuries of world war, with fears of a fifth breaking up soon. Most of the East Continent's towns are in varying levels of ruins and poverty, with the less fortunates being victim of the [[Fantastic Nuke]] owned by the Western Empire, which has left ''entire patches of them'' contaminated and unusable until they are cleansed, which in the best scenario can take up to several years.

* In ''[[Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter|Breath of Fire V]]'', the entire population of the world lives underground due to the surface having been rendered uninhabitable. Not too bad, until the logistics of proper air control is brought into question. Their solution? Genetically engineer little girls to suck up the pollution (Who then die). Oh, and everyone has a D-Ratio, essentially an unchangeable classification of how valuable you are as a person. A 1/8124 is doomed to a life of menial labor. And the main character has a Dragon inside him, just waiting to bust out like something out of ''[[Alien]]''. And this is not a story element, the player can cause this to happen in an irreversible way to force the game to be restarted. There's a reason the New Game+ option in this game doesn't require the player to beat it.

* The world of ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', anybody? Sure, the characters all look like they're from a Pixar movie, but they are all pretty much amoral mercenaries who are killed in massive amounts every day. The only other option to this seems to be a life of submitting to bureaucracy. And it's all [[Played for Laughs]].

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*** [[It Got Worse]] by the time of ''Cataclysm''. [[Big Bad]] Deathwing has turned Azeroth into a [[Shattered World]] simply by reemerging.

** Lets put it this way, the actual heads of the faction tend to be reasonable, but nearly every number 2 is [[The Starscream]]. Garrosh Hellscream will likely take control of the horde, and wants nothing more than to charge at the enemy with the entire horde in a fuel of rage, and literally wants to just charge and ignore anything that smacks of tactics. King Wrynn is equally as crazy and determined, and arguably in charge of enough of his faction to force a war no matter what. The few races that aren't burned from a history of dark magic and demons have done other spectacular things to either doom themselves. Only the Taurens lack a significant fraction of their race that's trying to doom the world, and their leader is on his last legs

*** Then Wrynn and Garrosh really did get put in charge.

*** And one of them {{spoiler|becomes the [[Big Bad]] of the fourth expansion.}}

** [[Fridge Logic|The effect is somewhat dulled]] [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|when you wonder why can't your faction leaders just go out and single-handedly take care of many of the problems by themselves.]]

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* [[Wild Arms|Filgaea is a very, very, very unfortunate planet]]. Some [[All There in the Manual|ancilliary media]] indicate that all the games- at least five at last count- take place on the same world, separated by millenia. If this is true, it has had at least three invasions by time-traveling robots, invading alternate universes, invading aliens, etc... and throughout it, most of the time, the entire planet is a resource-poor desert wasteland. Generally, every time they start repairing the environment enough for life to not suck royally all around, they get another bunch of would-be conquerors up in their grills, and, in the process of fighting them off and/or sealing them, ruin it again.

** It is near impossible for the Filgaias of the various games to be the same planet. For example, humans are natives in 1 and foreigners in 3, Elw were technological gods in 1, turning to nature later whereas in 3 they were always hippies. And extinct. This isn't even going into the various incarnations of Zeikfried and such. It's sufficient to say that each Filgaia is a crapsack in its own right.

* Sera in ''[[Gears of War]]''has been rendered a truly awful place by decades of nonstop war. The Locust Horde has been waging a campaign of genocide against the human race since their sudden assault on Emergence Day. The human government (COG) had to resort to using the Hammer of Dawn WMD system simply to stall the Locust and prevent them from using COG's own resources against them, which had the side effect of killing millions more humans and rendering most of Sera a desolate wasteland. By the start of the series, only a minority of the human race survives in the handful of remaining cities or living as Stranded, many of whom are hostile to the COG. Finally, the COG itself has a fascist/communist feel to it.

** Made worse on Gears of War 3, where the Sera is so screwed and uninhabitable they ''have to go live on giant boats'', with no Government over humans and with not only one, but TWO races trying to kill everything.

** Even the hailstorms on Sera are doing their best to kill you by dumping razor sharp shards of ice on your head. Any creature that steps out of cover during a razorhail storm is reduced to ground meat in seconds.

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** Hell, the original ''[[Drakengard]]'' universe counts itself. When a party made up of a murder-happy psychopathic mute, a cannibalistic elf woman, a pedophile, and a religiously racist old man [[Mission Control]] are meant to be the ''good guys'', you know you're in a [[Crapsack World]].

* [[Airforce Delta]] Strike: Earth is under constant, unrelenting assault from the OCC, who use just about every cool, technologically advanced weapon imaginable from artillery-wielding rolling tires, to [[Cool Airship|giant flying battleships]], to multi-shot [[Wave Motion Gun|rail-guns big enough to ''fly into'']]!

* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' seems to make the world absolutely ruthless for anyone who is a survivor in the zombie apocalypse. Most of humanity is either dead, a cannon fodder zombie, or a special zombie with hideous deformities. Any survivors you do happen to meet will be paranoid of your immunities and will call a horde of zombies on you just to prove whether or not you are immune.

** The sequel makes it a whole lot worse where every rescue attempt ends in failure, forcing you to trek your way to your next rescue attempt and the military in the final campaign is bombing New Orleans to wipe out the zombies and they ask the survivors if they are carriers. It's shown on the graffiti on the walls that some people think carriers are dangerous to non infected people and the military decided to kill anyone they thought were carriers. Nick comments about this a few times and is greatly worried about their own fate.

** The Sacrifice comic reveals that carriers are people who are immune to changing into a zombie, but can still spread the virus to others unwittingly, which is what the survivors in both games have been doing! On top of this, when the military "saved" the survivors in Left 4 Dead 1, they only saved them to see if they can develop a cure for the virus and planned to kill them if they couldn't get a cure. The survivors barely manage to escape (with the help of a few soldiers who were wise enough to listen to them) and get on a train heading south as Bill explains his plan to get them to the Floria Keys, where they can live in peace without zombies (they can't swim) or the military trying to kill them. So in a nutshell, if you aren't a carrier, you will become an infected and if you are a carrier, the military will try to kill you. The world be fucked.