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Shelter & Shelter 2
You play as a wild lynx, and go through the whole life cycle, ending with having kittens and eventually dying.
Then you play as one of your kittens, and the cycle continues.
Firewatch has some interesting twists, but the ending left fans wanting more
Well, technically (old game with recent remake):
Spoiler
Link's Awakening
Everything happens in a dream, and when you finish, the MC wakes up. I'm sure there are plenty of others with that format.
But I think that's a copout, so here are a few where either the world resets or plot progression is basically "good job, do it again":
Spoiler
- Slay the Spire - yeah, there's a separate ending if get to Act 4, but no real closure; many roguelikes/deck builders count here
- Minecraft - you slay the end dragon, but that doesn't really change anything
I would say Dwarf Fortress, but when you replay in a world, the world's stats remain.
And the cop-outs:
- most city builders (and tycoon games, etc) - cities generally don't interact and there's no end goal
- "board" games - Civ, EU4, etc, there's no plot beyond what you create as you go
- games like Smash Brothers, Tetris, etc
- Mount and Blade and other sandbox-y games
- many puzzle games
These are good examples but you've done your spoiler tags wrong.
::: sp0iler 'visible text'
'hidden text'
:::
replace the 0 with an o
linebreaks matter, the closing ::: should be on its own line, and you should have empty lines above and below the hidden body text, created by hitting return/enter.
you also have to have a 'visible text' even if its just a space, ' ', on the first line, otherwise what you probably intend to be your 'hidden text' will instead be your 'visible text', and your spoiler box will open to just being empty.
Thanks, I always screw those tags up.
Np, they tripped me up for a bit until I figured it out as well, lol
Ah, double post, but your first one is till wonky, you've got the 'visible text' as the 'hidden text' and the 'hidden text' as just entirely outside the spoiler box!
Really? It looks fine to me on the website (via my phone):
Oh!
Ok, You are right, I am wrong, it looks like that for me as well... I just assumed that visible text underneath the first spoiler block was meant to be hidden.
Derp.
No worries, and thanks for the callout, I usually get it correct but it's been a while since I used a spoiler tag and failed hard. :)
Well today we both did an oopsie doopsie, hahah!
The Witness just starts right back off at the beginning unless you figure out the secret ending.
Returnal does this with several of its "endings", but I haven't been spoiled on all endings so I can't say if it strictly fits.
One of Bastion's two endings is a global reset.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist plays with this in some interesting ways.
Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 both have maintain the status quo endings.
I guess the assassin's creed games mostly fit your criteria. The plot largely takes place in the past so has already happened and is effectively fixed. The current day plot moves at a glacial pace for most of the first 3 games but does have some development gradually to something bigger.
Can't really speak for the meta/ modern day plot of the later games as I stopped playing them.
There is at least 1 metal gear game where the premise is it's a training simulation. I don't remember the title, I think it's a spin off of MGS2.
I'd have to guess that's MGS3
No its not MGS3.
MGS3 takes place in the 1960s, entirely in the real world, computers are not really generally a thing yet, the ending is a twist, but not a 'it was all a dream and none of this really happened' kind of twist.
MGS2 starts with virtual training, but ... then the actual plot happens, in the real world.
There are also additional VR challenge levels... but they are clearly demarcated as such, they were designed with a scoring system so people could compete over high scores.
And also character development happens in the virtual world, in the early tutorial levels.
MGS games are like the perfect opposite of 'nothing happens', a whole fucking lot happens and it is so wild and intricate and absurd that if you wanted to understand the entire 'plot' of all of MGS, you're looking at bare minimum a 4 hour lore video.
Also, there is apparently some confusion from a 20 year old Kojima quote about the Big Shell all being VR in MGS2.
So, for starters, if you take that very literally, well then its obviously been retconned, other games and characters treat it as if it did actually happen.
But, if you are a bit more expansive with your understanding of a 'virtual reality'... well that means a world constructed by computers.
Not to spoil too much, but uh, some computers orchestrated the real world to cause much of Big Shell to play out the way it did.
Thus, in a sense, it is a virtual reality, sort of like how if you live in a digital information silo or hugbox of some kind... then you are also experiencing a virtual reality of a kind.
To be honest I've only played MGS3. I thought you were playing as a clone of the boss, reliving the original's life? It might have just been a theory video I watched. I do remember dying in one of the later boss fights and the fail screen rearranged itself to say "time paradox".
Uh... oh god, time to attempt to correctly remember Metal Gear lore...
But before all that, broadly, no, in MGS 3 you are not a clone reliving the life of an original, ala some kind of Assassin's Creed type mechanism, nor is there anything like 'lol it was all a dream you were in a coma'.
In MGS 3 you are just a dude, a US spec ops dude... eventually many clones are made from 'you', Naked Snake/Big Boss, but no, 'you' are not a clone, you are not just literally in a dream/coma or anything like that.
Your confusion, if you've only played 3, may be from... throughout basically all of MGS 3, 'you' are Naked Snake, and another character is 'The Boss'.
Yeah.
And then, Naked Snake later becomes, changes his name to 'Big Boss', out of respect for 'The Boss'.
Confused yet rofl?
.........
The 'time paradox' thing is something that happens in a lot of MGS games when you die... because the games did not come out in the same order the actual story line takes place in.
Sorta like how Episodes 1 2 3 of Star Wars came out after Episodes 4 5 6, but they are all prequels.
So if Anakin died in Episode 3, welp thats a time paradox because now 4 5 6 don't have a Darth Vader anymore.
Chronological timeline of Metal Gear games:
MGS 3
MGS Peace Walker
Ground Zeroes (MGS 5 prequel / demo / teaser)
MGS 5
Metal Gear
Metal Gear 2
MGS 1
MGS 2
MGS 4
... The two Metal Gear games, before the 'Solid' got added on, were 2D, top down/isometric, not 3D.
Solid = 3D or something, I don't know, Kojima is a madman.
.........
What you are describing sounds more like MGS5.. but... yeah you're going with some person's theorycrafting, not the... actual things that happen.
Ok, here goes an attempt at explaining MGS 5/V, apologies if this sounds insane, blame Hideo Kojima.
MGS V spoilers
So, very broadly, in MGSV/5, you start the game in a coma. You are apparently Big Boss, from MGS 3, same character, roughly 20 years later.
But... you actually aren't Big Boss.
You are literally a random medic who was part of Big Boss's crew.
Both of you were sent into comas by the same explosion roughly 9 years ago, both of you woke up at around the same time, and the real Big Boss was actually a guy fully wrapped in bandages, who helps you escape the hospital you wake up in in the first act or intro to the game.
But also, whilst comatose, you, the player character, actually had plastic surgery, to make you into his doppleganger... and basically this works, your prior memories are fucked, everyone from Big Boss's outfit thinks you are Big Boss, and treats you as such, and you thus basically believe you are him, and thus act as... your conception of him / new identity dictates.
But at the same time... you do still do all of the shit you do, basically everyone other than the bandaged guy... thinks you are Big Boss, so, you are, lol.
Thus, its not a 'it was all a dream' fake out... its a ... call it a meditation on the power of illusion/delusion, as well as the potential to become or do really anything, should you believe in yourself strongly enough.
More mechanistically, this 'solves' a 'plot hole' in the MGS timeline, that of Big Boss being killed by Naked Snake (who is actually a clone, but again, does real things) before the time of MGS 4, which is set in the... 2030s I think?
So, uh, nope, Naked Snake did not actually kill Big Boss, he killed MGSV/5's not-actually-Big-Boss-but-everyone-thinks-he-is... and that is how the real Big Boss is able to be alive at the end of MGS4.
... I did try to warn you how fucking bonkers MGS is lol.
Do you get why the game's secondary title is 'Phantom Pain', lol?
Kojima loves to do this shit, double meanings, nested metaphors, etc.
Yeah, you literally have 'phantom pain' because you lost a limb. But you are also literally a phantom, a fake, unreal but also real person, who has to just... live with that pain, because your whole team is counting on you.
And also the real Big Boss more or less disappears into becoming another kind of phantom, to escape from his life as a super soldier... and he has to live with the pain of knowing what he did, to you, the player character, to allow that to work... both he and 'you' can never discuss any of this, with anyone.
I seem to remember it had something to do with twink Ryden and the child solder training he got rather than the cold war of MGS3.
2017 first person action RPG
Prey 2017 - it’s a simulation based on memories
Spoilers are better when you can see what you'd be spoiling before you click on it, for the record.
In general, yes, but like the original list, the name of the game is the spoiler. I’ll add some more info though.
I never finished it because it kept crashing like 90% of the way through. Now I know, I guess.
And it's an absolutely fantastic game, too.
It’s so good! The story cop-out also adds to replayability. I played it twice over with minor reloads for about 4 or 5 different endings.
I think I've done like three playthroughs, two I finished. It branches a lot with the dialogue and everything, there's a lot of room for replay value considering it's a relatively linear action RPG.
I basically played good guy, reloaded a save to try a couple of alternatives near the end (including turning bad) then played full bad guy on New Game + which, let me tell you, was a wild ride, still reloading towards the end for a few more options.
All in all, something like 6 or 7 different endings. I love that the bad guy route doesn’t eliminate some sections but gives you alternative challenges instead.
spoiler
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (fantastic visual novel with an insanely complex story until you find out...)
The game's time-traveling events, all the locations you can go to, and the biomechanical enemy kaiju and your giant sentinel mecha fighting them don't exist; all the high-school staff and students have simulated bodies in a virtual world and are actually continually, rapidly rebuilt DNA goop in a cryoship whose computer got infected by a virus that involves an invasion of Japan by colossal, unmanned Martian terraforming machines-gone-rogue from a fictional, in-game manga, whose victories against the kids keep causing the computer to go haywire and resetting the simulation, repeatedly melting down the protagonists' half-formed bodies and restarting their bodybuilding cycle hundreds of times—until the start of the game, which is when you together finally break the loop in this last iteration, land on the new planet, and restart humanity post-Earth (which has been environmentally annihilated by ourselves, obviously).
Talk about a run-on sentence! And I don't know if "bodybuilding" is normally used in this literal way, lol.
Bioshock Infinite
Nothing happens anywhere in that game. It's a walking simulator without the fun parts.
Hah! Did I ever tell about the time I played Bioshock Infinite on my Xbox 360 in Chinese? Talk about getting nowhere. I had to gather stuff from cut scenes, something something something a woman's finger was cut.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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