Back From the Brink: Difference between revisions

 

----

 

* The beginning of ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' informs you that the forces of Cosmos, goddess of harmony, have pretty much lost the war with Chaos, god of discord, with the ten playable heroes being Cosmos's last soldiers.

** This thematic element [[Gameplay and Story Integration|carries over into the gameplay]], as well. The Cosmos Judgment ruleset allows a filled Ex Gauge when HP is drastically low and opponent's is very high and can restore a losing character's summons, thus allowing a losing character to come Back From the Brink. There are abilities and accessories whose effects only activate when a character is in a losing position, allowing that character a chance to come Back From the Brink. The auto versions of many summons, such as Odin, Phoenix, and Bahamut, activate when a character has been put at a disadvantage—sometimes a very severe one—allowing that character a chance to come Back From the Brink. And with proper timing, entering [[Super Mode|ExMode]] will free the character from any attack short of an opponent's [[Limit Break|ExBurst]]—potentially allowing a character to free themselves from an attack that would kill them and gain the benefits of the ExMode, thus allowing an opportunity to—you guessed it. This game is a fan of Back From the Brink in general.

*** Contrast the Chaos Judgment rules, which subvert this by punishing players who ''aren't'' on the brink for not pushing it for all they're worth.

 

* In the original ''[[Halo]]'', the game begins with your ship fleeing from an enemy armada that just wiped out an entire human fleet and the planet it was protecting... then you go on to annihilate most of that fleet (okay, the Flood helped, too). It's not mentioned much in-game, but it's [[All There in the Manual]]. Or rather, All There in the Novelization, anyway.

** Then the Covies annihilate most of Earth's population between ''2'' and ''3''.

* ''[[Resistance]] 3'' starts off with 90% of Earth's population either killed or converted by the Chimera. It's the player's job to ensure that they don't wipe out the remaining 10% with their terraforming plans.

 

* Somewhat [[Justified Trope|justified]] in ''[[Drakengard]]'', as the main reason [[The Federation|the Union]] comes back from the brink of destruction despite your character having been around the whole time and [[Badass Normal|whooping ass]] is that he's just gained the allegiance of ''a dragon.'' The second level which you play involves [[Kill'Em All|killing the entire besieging army with the dragon.]] Not content to be one-upped, [[The Empire]] deploys some interesting [[Schizo-Tech]] during a later [[Battle Royale With Cheese|climactic battle]], and when even that fails, just [[Death From Above|screws everyone over.]]

 

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]: Wrath of the Lich King'' basically has the good side start with a few cities where the player (almost singlehandedly) takes back huge sections of regions and fights and kills thousands of overratedly-overpowered undead, all the way to the Lich King's throne.

** Furthermore, when you fight and get the Lich King down far enough in health, he instantly kills your entire raid, at which point the LK's ghost father conveniently comes out of nowhere, resurrects everyone, and then stunlocks the Lich King long enough for your raid to leave, have tea and biscuits, and finish him off.

 

* ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Red Alert 2'' - the first Allied mission.

* ''[[Command & Conquer]] 3'': The first GDI missions (excluding the intro).

** Played straight in the Alin campaign, however, where the Alin Kingdom has been pushed back to the city of Azar Harif by the Dark Alin by the time [[The Hero|Giacimo]] gets there.

 

* The [[Roguelike]] [[Freeware Game]] ''Chess Rogue'' is a most extreme example - the player is the White King, the only surviving white piece, who must overcome an entire army of black pieces.

 

* In ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'', The Returners have a stronghold of sorts in the mountains east of Figaro—however, it's about the time that you start the game that the Empire starts occupying cities to build their own power, but also to try and stamp out the Returners. This is a slight aversion of the trope, as your objective as the player is not to win back control of the cities, but, eventually, to solve the issue diplomatically. {{spoiler|Just a shame that Kefka has to stab everone in the back to become the Ultimate World Overlord}}

** It sort of happens ''again'' in the second half of the game. It becomes Up To You to {{spoiler|reassemble your broken, scattered, and largely disillusioned team, inspire hope in the world, and defeat Kefka, after he's been a god for a full year}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy III]]'' does this ''a lot'', first with saving the last crystal from the forces of darkness and then bringing back stability to the world.

 

* ''[[Zero Wing]]'' opens with CATS [[All Your Base Are Belong to Us|capturing all your base]], [[Someone Set Up Us the Bomb|setting up you the bomb]], and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|asking how you gentlemen are]]. You must move ZIG for great justice and prove you have chance to survive make your time.

** What you say!?

** Dying repeatedly without killing your opponent on multiplayer results in respawning with the Demon Launcher, basically a [[BFG]].

 

* This trope is a staple in the ''[[Ace Combat]]'' series, present in almost every game.

** ''[[Ace Combat 04 Shattered Skies]]'', ''[[Ace Combat Zero]]'' and ''[[Ace Combat X]]'' start with the player defending the allies' last remaining airbase from enemy attack.

* Every game in the ''[[Naval Ops]]'' series opens with the player's faction on the ropes. And yet they never have to really worry about fuel and ammunition supplies.

 

* ''[[Gears of War]]'' starts off with Marcus Fenix the player character getting out of prison because The Cog is just that desperate for soldiers. The locusts have pushed the humans back to their last city.

 

* ''Nectaris/Military Madness'' - The game takes place on the moon. Before the opening mission, the entire moon has been taken over and, in the opening mission, the player commands the last survivors of the Union army (little of this is mentioned in game though; mainly, it's [[All There in the Manual]]).

* In the second half of ''[[Fire Emblem]] 4'', the player takes control of Celice and a ragtag band of rebels, starting in an obscure corner of an entire continent that the villain took over during the first half of the game.

** Extra points because the first enemy you fight is a glorified warrior unit called "Warlord," who is the weakest spell-caster and summoner out of all the enemy generals.

 

* ''Advance Wars DS'' - The first mission (aside from the training one) has the player defending Omega Land's last HQ.

* The ''[[Jagged Alliance]]'' series has a sort-of-justified version of this trope. Being that your troops are a band of mercenaries - essentially a new infusion of ace personnel into a war presumably already won - the enemies start out easy because they're routine patrols that get surprised by people who can actually shoot them. In Jagged Alliance 2 specifically, [[Big Bad|Queen Deidranna]] is a [[Bad Boss|vain, cruel, and egotistical dictator]] who nevertheless keeps a goodly portion of her guard around the things that actually do matter - her gold mines, her towns filled with either smarmy sycophants or cowering subjects, and her SAM sites. The first secures the economy and allows her to maintain her expensive and well-equipped army, the second secures her status as ruler and dissuades open rebellion, and the third forces any would-be saviors to hoof it unless they can destroy or take over the sites.

* In [[Sengoku Rance]], when [[Rance]] becomes the secret ruler and takes control over the once powerful Oda Family, it has been reduced to only one territory. Then after Rance starts his [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]] tactic he somehow manages to rapidly conquer the other factions.

 

* [[Uchuu Senkan Yamato]] (aka [[Space Battleship Yamato]], aka [[Star Blazers]]) starts off this way, with the Earth a radioactive wasteland, what's left of its population living underground, and its space defenses destroyed.

 

* [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s novel ''[[Sixth Column (novel)|Sixth Column]]'' starts off with the United States completely conquered by technologically superior invading forces. The only remaining resistance is a secret underground U.S. Army laboratory which was almost completely depopulated by an experimental accident. Through tremendous effort and quite a bit of luck, the remaining soldiers and scientists manage to whip up several superweapons, create a secret army (masquerading as a religion) and defeat the invaders.

* That part of the ''Lensmen'' universe which features Kimball Kinnison and his colleagues starts like this - the enemy has massive superiority in ships and is plundering the spacelanes with impunity; his ships are faster than anything stronger and stronger than anything faster; Galactic Civilization is on the ropes. It's down to Kinnison, newly graduated, to take an untried and experimental ship, capture an enemy vessel and learn its secrets. And even when he's done that, his worries have only just begun...

 

* ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' starts as humanity has been reduced to a single [[Domed Hometown|sealed]] city by killer robots, and the robots keep getting through the walls. They win in the season finale and start recolonizing the planet ([[The End - or Is It?|or do they]]?), although the global ecosystem is pretty much shot to hell.

 

* In ''[[Erfworld]]'', Wanda mentions early on that their side used to hold eleven cities, and at the beginning of the story, they only have their capital. Which is what gets them desperate enough to summon Parson.

 

* [[Truth in Television]]: In World War 2, Russia had almost no weapons or ammunition, its three major industrial cities were under attack, much of the remainder of Europe was under the control of the Axis powers, with Britain was being bombed constantly. Only after Russia started winning the battle of Stalingrad did the tide finally turn in the Allies' favor. Having the world's largest industrial economy join the fight in 1942 didn't hurt either.

** World War II from 1939-1941 is a subversion of the trope; the German blitzkrieg strategy ensured that any enemy army that started losing would be divided and cut off from communications and supplies, meaning that most countries simply surrendered rather then carry out a valiant (and possibly successful) counterattack.

*** This was lampshaded in a sketch on ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'', where an SS commander [[Heel Realisation|came to the realisation he was on the evil side]] because there are very few movies where the good guys start out doing really well but then almost lose after the baddies counter-attack, but quite a lot of movies where the opposite is true.

* Another [[Truth in Television]] example: [[World War One]]. By early 1918, the [[German Empire]] had practically conquered Eastern Europe, were about to come to a permanent peace settlement that would give them most of their conquests, all the Central Powers were- while shaken- still in the fight, and the Balkans front had been effectively pacified with the fall of Romania and Serbia. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians were shifting forces for two massive simultaneous assaults to try and destroy the Western Allies by striking both in France and Italy- and would drive so far that they began minting medals in preparation for the falls of Paris and Venice, all while the Entente could not even divert needed units from Africa because of Von Lettow's actions and the Senussi rebellion. The only GOOD news for the Western Allies was that the US had now entered the war, but it was stuck with a seriously under-strength, under-equipped, undertrained, and under-experienced force on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean. Then came the Balkan offensive, the Turkish surrender, Diaz's reforms and "three great campaigns" to anihilate the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Belleau Wood, Amiens, the Hundred Days, and finally the October mutiny that struck at the heart of the Kasierreich.

** This war swung both ways, too. When the Chinese intervened, it was explicitly because the UN had reached from the DMZ all the way to the Yalu River. The very same Yalu River that serves as the Korean northern border, in fact - last stop, final destination, end of the line. The Chinese proceeded to demonstrate every guerilla and mass warfare tactic they learned in their Civil War to retake all of North Korea and reach shelling range of Seoul before their offensive was finally stopped, with the final result being...[[Shaggy Dog Story|the border ending up right back where it started]] (plus or minus a few kilometres).

* Another [[Truth in Television]] with the reinstatement of Admiral Yi Sun Shin. After several dramatic victories against the Japanese invasions (1592-1598), he was rewarded in 1597 with accusations of treason, arrest, torture, and demotion to foot soldier. His successor proceeded to lose the entire Korean navy in a single battle through startling incompetence, leaving only 13 ships that had withdrawn rather than fight (none of which were the famous turtle ships). After being restored to command and rallying what was left of his fleet, Admiral Yi proceeded to fight a fleet of 133 Japanese warships and over 200 support craft, routing his foe while destroying 31 enemy ships outright and crippling over 90 more, with no losses. Japanese morale was, fairly understandably, crippled by this, and the Koreans would win every naval engagement until the end of the war.