"So, one of the unique aspects of Pyre is how you are never forced to lose progress. Whether you prevail or fail, your journey continues."
Most of the time in video games, failure isn't an option. If you lose at any point, the game simply rewinds to the last save point so you can try again. And until you succeed, the story will not advance, and the protagonist will repeat the same scene until they come out victorious. But occasionally, game developers put in a challenge that you can move on from even if you fail.
It may be that the challenge is unbeatable, such as a Hopeless Boss Fight. In these cases, failure isn't just an option—it's the only option. Other times, a quest is programmed to continue the game regardless of whether the player succeeds or fails. If the stakes are low, like many a Justified Tutorial, the player character might just move on from their slip-up. Or maybe there's a powerful opponent who normally defeats the party, but isn't actually unbeatable—though if you manage to beat them, they'll probably declare that The Battle Didn't Count and wipe out the party in a cutscene anyway.
When success and failure are both options, they may have different consequences down the line. Losing battles might make a party member leave because they find The Hero incompetent. Or the Final Battle arrives, and your failure to protect Aliceville means that Alice's army won't aid you, making the battle all the more difficult. If a player is particularly cruel, they may find themselves in a heap of consequences for every innocent bystander they failed to assist. In games with Multiple Endings, it's common for failures to lock the player out of the Golden Ending.
Or it's possible that failure means nothing; the story plays out exactly the same whether you win or lose the battle. This can be a not-so-subtle form of Railroading in games where the plot is more important than the combat, allowing the player to continue the story no matter their aptitude for game mechanics.
If failure has negative consequences for gameplay, this may lead to an Unstable Equilibrium: Failing early on will result in punishments that make the game harder later on, making you more likely to fail again and again, while players who get only victories will have an easier time.
This does not cover Irrelevant Sidequests where the only result of failing is the player not getting paid. (Though such a sidequest can contain a point where Failure Is an Option, if you can fail a task and still continue the quest.)
This might happen if there's Death as Game Mechanic, because then death isn't Game Over.
Subtrope of Story Branching and a supertrope to Open-Ended Boss Battle. See also Non-Standard Game Over, for when a unique Game Over is given, but without the plot progressing; and Neglected Sidequest Consequence, for when failing to complete a side quest results in bad things happening later. Could lead to a Bittersweet Ending if the failure means you neither win nor lose, especially if a total loss is just a Game Over. Contrast Unlosable, where it's impossible to fail at all, let alone continue after a failure.
Warning: This trope usually marks moments that have a great impact on the story’s direction. As such, unmarked spoilers abound.
Examples:
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Action-Adventure
- In A Cadet's Adventure (an online game based on Star Trek: The Next Generation), Data gives you a quiz, but you can still continue even if you fail the quiz.
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (EA) lets you lose fights, but you never die or get a game over, the plot just continues as is, even if it didn't go that way in the source material.
- In L.A. Noire, it is possible to fail every possible case and you will still continue. Strangely it won't influence the story and even if you mess everything up, you will still be promoted. This is mainly because the story-important cases (the first case, the last cases in traffic and homicide, and the cases of Jack) are unfailable.
- Mega Man:
- Mega Man X:
- Mega Man X2: Zero's death in the previous game ends up having him seperated into three parts, with the X-Hunters retrieving them sometime after. Whether you're forced to fight him or he destroys a black duplicate of himself right before the Sigma fight that he intended for X to fight depends on whether you manage to gather all the the parts or not.
- Mega Man X6: At one point you have an alternate mission of rescuing injured Reploids from the Nightmare Virus. If you can't do it, they're infected and converted into Mavericks you have to destroy.
- Mega Man Zero 1: The option of dropping the current mission you are doing. By doing so you may lose access to useful abilities and cyber elves, and if you quit/fail two missions of the same area the resistance base will suffer an enemy attack earlier than it should, which is not something you want to happen unless you are doing a Speed Run.
- Mega Man X:
- In The Simpsons Hit & Run, failing a mission enough times lets you skip the mission and move on to the next one.
- Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation: Halfway through the "Temple of Semerkhet" level, the player must play a game of Senet (a real, ancient Egyptian board game) against the spirit of Semerkhet. If the player wins, they get a short and relatively easy route to the end of the level. If the player loses, they get a longer and more complex path to the end — but they can pick up several extra secrets along the way.
Action RPG
- CrossCode: At various points, Emilie will challenge Lea to a race, to see which of them can get through the dungeon they've arrived at first. It's nothing more than a little friendly competition, so losing to Emilie has no effect on the plot, with the only reward for winning being an achievement if you come in first in every race.
Adventure
- In Beyond: Two Souls, your failure can get Walter, Jimmy, Paul, Cole, and Ryan killed. Your own death will result in a Game Over though... until the last part of the game. Failing to shut down the black sun will kill you and consequently everyone in the world. This is one of the game's possible endings.
- In Conquests of the Longbow, you can fail at things like saving innocent peasants from the corrupt guards, recapturing the Baron's stolen treasure, or saving Marian from being burned at the stake. However, it will not look good when King Richard puts you on trial at the end of the game. If you consistently acted like a vicious, selfish outlaw and failed to help your allies, you'll be hanged.
- In Detroit: Become Human, one of the three viewpoint characters can be killed in her first playable section, and if that happens the game goes on without her. Many other supporting characters can die as a result of various actions, choices, or failed quick time events, and the the plot will be altered and branch off accordingly. Most notably, a second of the three viewpoint characters can be killed off before the end despite being probably the most vital character to the plot and the one who, depending on your choices, may be leading either a violent revolution or a peaceful civil rights movement, and events will simply go on, with realistic outcomes like others taking his place at the head of the movement.
- One of Heavy Rain's gimmicks/selling points/distinctive... things is that if one of the characters dies, the story continues without them instead of giving you a Game Over.
- Life is Strange (2015): Generally, the game forces a rewind before any hard "failure", such as Max or Chloe dying or getting hurt. Not so when it comes to saving Kate from suicide in the second episode. By the time she reaches the roof Max has exhausted her rewind powers, and she has only one chance to talk Kate down. It is quite possible to fail to do so, and for Kate to jump to her death. If you do fail, Kate’s death is irreversible and looms over Max, her classmates and teachers, and the player.
- The first puzzle in Myst IV: Revelation is secretly optional. If you manage to calibrate the crystal imager, you get a brief glimpse of the worlds of Haven and Spire before it overloads and blows up, and Atrus tells you to turn the power back on while he goes to collect parts to repair it, leaving you alone in Tomahna when the plot breaks loose. If you give up, however, by turning away from the control panel to talk to Atrus twice, the imager explodes anyway. This is fortunate, as the crystal imager is one of the most notorious puzzles in the franchise.
- In Omikron: The Nomad Soul, you can lose either (or both) of the first two fistfights against demons; if you die, you'll just take over a passerby's body and the game will continue. The only difference is that certain portions of the Security Headquarters are only accessible to your starting character, Kay'l—so you get locked out of some side content if you let him die. (And if you do keep Kay'l alive, he dies anyway in a bout of Cutscene Incompetence later.) On the other hand, losing any of the later demon fights will just give you a regular Game Over.
Eastern RPG
- In Dark Elf Historia, most of the quests can be failed, and the story will be advanced. Of course, the downside is that failing a quest usually results in something terrible happening to Freylia.
- In Devil Survivor, on the 5th day of the game, there is a chance for a previous party member who left the group, Keisuke, to die. If you are able to save them, they join your group. However, even if you are not successful in saving them, you can still continue on your quest, although the remaining cast is obviously saddened by their loss, and you lose a potential party member.
- Final Fantasy X:
- An early cutscene has Tidus fighting off auditory hallucinations of his dad being an ass by kicking blitzballs at them. If he gets them all, he masters the Jecht Shot, an extremely potent skill for the blitzball minigame (especially the plot-important first tournament), if not, he learns it later by levelling up.
- Winning said Blitzball tournament only affects one cutscene, where Wakka is carrying the trophy if he won.
- Golden Sun (2001): If you lose at Colosso (during the final stage, the first two stages are All Just a Dream and if you lose them you get to continue), the only difference in cutscenes is that Babi doesn't give you the Lure Cap, an otherwise unobtainable hat that increases Random Encounters.
- The Logomancer: Losing a battle will only increase regret (and wake the party up if they're in the Mindscape). There is a game over screen; however, it appears to be a failsafe for the possibility of players reducing everyone's willpower, a.k.a HP to 0 through the eyes of greed/despair of Maximum HP Reduction.
- Persona 5 Royal: In the Third Semester, Maruki rewrites reality so everyone's wishes would come true and nothing bad ever happened, and repeatedly offers Joker the choice to accept the new world or continue to reject it and return everything to normal. If Joker refuses, the Phantom Thieves will go to fight Maruki and win, but if Joker gives up there will be no more fights and instead a series of scenes of the characters living in the new reality with altered personalities and memories. Neither ending is designated as a 'true' ending, but not making a choice altogether will cause a game over.
- Pokémon Reborn: You're meant to lose the first fight against Shiv in the Darkrai quest during the postgame — while his team is nothing to write home about, all of your Pokemon are reduced to level 1 for the duration of the fight and you can't use Mega Evolutions, Z-Moves or bag items. You can beat him with Cheese — specifically, FEAR
. All you get, however, is some different dialogue, and the quest continues as normal afterwards.
- Pokémon Yellow: The outcomes of two battles with your rival (one at Oak's Lab and an optional second battle on Route 22) will determine what your rival's starter Pokémon, an Eevee, evolves into. Specifically, if the player wins both battles, the Eevee will evolve into Jolteon; if the player wins at the lab but loses or avoids the Route 22 battle, it will evolve into Flareon; and if the player loses at the lab it will evolve into Vaporeon.
- Unlimited Saga: The battle against Dagul Bos in Laura's Story. It's a Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight that hits you with the absurd penalty of only being able to send one person out...against a boss that can cast Paralysis. With some planning, you can actually win and change who you fight during the final quest. Most new players however will lose and the story goes on anyway; with a rematch later on.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: You can lose the fight against Ghondor and her bodyguards while in prison, but the story will still go on anyway.
First-Person Shooter
- Battlefield 1: The opening text to "Storm of Steel" outright tells you that you're going to die and when you do you're simply given control of a different soldier. This happens a minimum of three times as you need to die in order to advance the mission, but during the mission's final act, you can be killed repeatedly before the ending trigger actually happens.
- Crops up quite a bit in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, especially regarding Chloe "Karma" Lynch. If she's not rescued in the mission she's introduced in, the game would provide a Strike Force mission for another attempt to rescue her, and there are few points within the campaign that could lead to her demise depending on some other actions, even after which the game's story could still carry on. Her survival is vital for the best ending.
- In Deus Ex you at some point go to rescue Tiffany Savage, who is held Hostage for MacGuffin. If guards spot you, they will kill her. In any other stealth-based game, it would be mission failure, but here you will go forward anyway with a slight difference.
Licensed Games
- Sesame Street Licensed Games:
- In Sink or Float, you're given an object and asked to guess if it will sink or float when placed in the water. If you guess wrong, you're still able to progress to the next level.
- In Super Salad Diner, if you fail to feed every customer at the eponymous diner, you're still able to progress to the next level (albeit having to wait while Bert processes his frustration).
MMORPG
- Star Trek Online: Several Story missions will often change outcome based on the player class. For example, the first story mission features you saving the crew of a freighter from a pirate raid. While you will always save the crew of the ship, saving the physical ship itself can only be done with an Engineer class (containing the warp core breech), a science officer can medically help the dying crew members, thus adding to crew saved, and a tactical officer can prevent the ambush that is coming when the surviving crew are escorted back to the transporter. Either way, you will advance the story, but the only way to avoid all three is to team up with additional PCs and run the mission together.
Real-Time Strategy
- In Crusader Kings II, every kind of war declaration will exactly show you what happens if you lose, if you win, and if you make white peace. Usually, victory for the attacker means getting new land, while losing means that he needs to pay a hefty sum for reparations. White peace usually means a small prestige hit for both sides.
- Dawn of War 2: In all games, losing a mission triggers an "Emergency Extraction" screen where your team is teleported to safety, letting you keep any found gear. In some, one of your teammates will tell you that even if you didn't accomplish all your objectives (killing the boss/every enemy), you managed to do some damage.
- In Stellaris, both sides in a war can set fixed war goals that they want to achieve. These range from ceding planets, to "liberating" them from the old regime, to humiliating the enemy. Usually, however, it is impossible to fully swallow another empire unless it is much smaller than you. This means that the loser can continue to play and try to get back on his feet... until the now stronger enemy comes back.
Roguelike
- Streets of Rogue: In each level, you're given a set of missions, and have to finish them all before you're allowed to move on to the next level. In this context, "finish" doesn't necessarily mean "complete." If you fail a mission, you forfeit its rewards, but your run doesn't end. For example if the hostage in an Escort Mission dies, you can still move on to the next level (this means you're allowed to kill the hostage yourself if you just don't feel like doing the mission). You can also ignore your character's Big Quest, with the consequence being that you won't get their Super Special Ability in the final level or unlock it for use in later runs.
Simulation
- The Cute Knight series:
- Cute Knight 1: Normally a run is supposed to end by aging out at 21, but there's the Stat Death route by hitting 0 Dream, and that just leads to usually Downer Endings which are still valid endings.
- Cute Knight Kingdom: You have to experience how Death Is a Slap on the Wrist by being mysteriously teleported to safety, by losing a battle, in order to make progress on the Star Princess because it indicates there's something special about you. Except if you lose to the Demon Spider, then you get the Minion ending.
- Cute Bite: Losing to the Vampire Hunter is a Non-Standard Game Over that leads to a bad ending. Non-standard since Saule would save Buttercup after every other combat loss.
- Football Manager: If you do a bad enough job to get sacked, you can just wait for one of the AI managers to get sacked, apply for the vacant position (or, if your reputation is high enough, have it offered to you), and get right back to managing.
- In Sidewinder Max, the game will let you continue the story even if you fail the mission objectives. As long as you win the handful of story-critical missions and avoid running out of pilots in the final chapter, the story will proceed, though failing missions will affect your relationship with other pilots in the intermission segments.
- The Wing Commander games continue even when the player fails missions. The war effort goes better the more you succeed; failing too much will earn you a bad ending.
Stealth
- Hitman 3: In the Freelancer game mode, failing a normal mission will cost you half your Merces (currency) and every item in your inventory, as well as turning some missions into alerted territories, making them harder. However, you can continue the campaign as usual from then on. This doesn't apply to alerted territories and showdowns, where failure will scare the enemy syndicate's leader into hiding, causing you to fail the campaign.
- The torture sequence in Metal Gear Solid. Whether you resist it or not, the game continues... except it determines whether or not Meryl survives.
Survival Horror
- In Aliens: Infestation, when one of your Colonial Marines dies, you go on without them. Once you lose all four, then it's game over. There are about 12 spare marines scattered throughout the map to accommodate the movies' Dwindling Party tradition.
- FAITH: The Unholy Trinity: The end of Chapter I provides numerous alternate Downer Endings for the player to take down after acquiring the Rifle; ranging from being jumped by Michael Davies to being mauled by deer. In only one ending does John survive; however regardless of the one taken, the player will always be able to continue into Chapter II.
- In Until Dawn, it is entirely possible to not Press X to Not Die or make choices that will lead to characters being killed off, forcing the remaining characters to deal with the consequences. In fact, it is entirely possible to get the entire group killed off by making enough bad choices or screwing up enough times.
Turn-Based Strategy
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown:
- You can lose missions by either losing all your soldiers, failing the objective, or deciding to evacuate. This will be a black spot on your monthly report but won't stop you from continuing to play. How this will affect the game varies based on what mission you were on, which soldiers you used and how badly you failed. Losing a handful of rookies with lasers on a small UFO raid can be annoying, but losing your entire elite squad with all your Power Armor and plasma weapons during a terror mission can easily mean Game Over in the next few months.
- Subverted with the base defense and the final mission. Losing will give you the option to reload — even on ironman mode!
Western RPG
- In Disco Elysium there are two kinds of skill checks you can attempt. White checks can be retried and in plot-relevant cases, it is necessary to succeed to move the plot forward. Red checks can only be tried once but failing one does not usually lock you out of conversations or certain quests but moves the story forward in a slightly different way. In some cases, failing them can even lead to a more favorable outcome, depending on how you want to play the main character.
- In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, it is possible to kill someone essential to completing the main quest. You'll get a pop-up message of the Thread of Prophecy, Severed variety but can continue to play. In fact, there is a very well-hidden "backpath" method to completing the main quest that only requires one living NPC (who jury-rigs the Wraithguard for you). Defeating the Big Bad and completing the main quest by this method changes the dialogue of some key characters who acknowledge your achievement.
- Fallout: New Vegas: Some missions after you kill Benny and get involved with the Mojave's power struggle (assassinating or saving Kimball for example) can be failed without changing the grander scheme of things. On a broader level, one of the endings (Wild Card) is tied to an NPC that can't be killed, which means that you can finish the game even if, for some reason or another, you've failed at helping other available factions.
- The "Loyalty Missions" in Mass Effect 2 give you a chance to secure the loyalties of your squad members, giving them additional powers and increasing their chances of surviving the Suicide Mission endgame. While most loyalties can be obtained by simply finishing the corresponding mission, some can be forfeited by blatantly disregarding a particular squad mate's desires and motivations, either during their mission (e.g. revealing Tali's father inadvertent crimes against the Flotilla) or after it (e.g. siding with Jack or Miranda in their post-loyalty confrontation instead of defusing it). Even though you still get the normal mission rewards, forfeiting the loyalty is effectively a mission failed, since it means your team will be considerably weaker in the endgame—which is bad but not fatal.
- Pyre involves a cast of characters who have been exiled from the Commonwealth, and they compete in Rites (basically a fantasy sport akin to basketball) to determine who gets to return from exile. Losing a Rite simply sends you down a different branch of the game's story, and losing a Liberation Rite means an opposing team member returns to the Commonwealth rather than one of your team members, but neither gives you a game over.
- In Steambot Chronicles, every single battle against a named character can be lost (or tied) without affecting progression (with one exception where a character is guarding the door to an area). Even losing to the last bosses triggers different bad endings, but losing other fights really doesn't mean much.
- Underhero has 2 mandatory minigames that you only get one shot at unless you reload your last save, although you will miss out on achievements for each of them if you continue after failing.
- The first one is a race against one of the Mooks in the Moth Queen's tree in order to get the key needed to progress. Lose the race and you'll have to fight her for it instead. Win the race and you'll still have to fight her for it.
- The second one is an ice skating competition where you'll have to press certain buttons at certain times, with the prize being an artifact that you need to progress. If you lose the competition, you end up asking the winner if you can have the artifact instead.
Wide Open Sandbox
- In one of the text quests of Space Rangers you play Rock-Paper-Scissors with shaman of native tribe. Your victory or failure determines how the plot will advance, but any of two radically different plotlines will end with success anyway.
Non-Video Game Examples
Literature
- Armies of Death: The final confrontation between your army and the army of chaotics begins with them sending their army of Chaos Warriors. You're given the choice of sending dwarves or knights. Choose the former and the Chaos Warriors utterly obliterate your dwarves in a Curb-Stomp Battle before leaving. Choose the latter and, depending on if you have the White Knights with you, will have your knights fighting until five men remain, or the White Knights destroying the Chaos Warriors in another Curb-Stomp Battle, one that's in your favour. But then the game continues as normal, and it's possible to gain a good ending even after sacrificing your dwarves.
- Howl of the Werewolf has the five enchanted silver daggers, Gotta Catch Them All MacGuffins obtained from the Cadre Infernal that allows you to vanquish the Wolf Demon after defeating Count Varcolac at the story's ending. But if you didn't have all five daggers with you or you failed to destroy the Cadre Infernal, you can still fight the Demon using normal weapons and obtain a happy ending, even though the Cadre Infernal is still at large.
Tabletop RPG
- In Arkham Horror: The Card Game, each scenario has several possible resolutions, at least one of which is failure, usually achieved if all the players are eliminated and/or choose to give up before things get worse. You still carry on to the next scenario, but each failure generally makes things more difficult later — a monster left to roam loose might come back to torment you again, a challenge might be significantly harder without an ally you failed to rescue, and so on.
- In The Forge school of RPG design, this is known as "failing forward", particularly in association with Vincent Baker, the author of Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World. The idea behind "failing forward" is that any dice roll must move the story along, so even failed checks change the in-game situation, usually by putting more heat on the players.
- Shadowrun. In early published adventures, at the end of each chapter, there was a section called "Picking Up The Pieces". It told the game master what to do if the runners completely screwed up and the GM had to figure out how to let the adventure continue.
- Star Trek Adventures: The starter set campaign has an option to start Mission 3 in a holding cell if the PCs lost the fight at the end of Mission 2.
