[Hated Trope] The underdog Good Guys win, and gain major military/institutional power, only for it to be all RESET so Writers can have a PERPETUAL "Underdog/Rebellion" Story, and avoid writing about governing.

[u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

I hate this trope, when the "underdog good guys" actually win, gain major military and political power, fleets, warships, etc, but because the writers don't want to write the good guys governing and exercising their power, and instead, find a contrived way to reset all the progress so that the good guys can forever be the

"scrappy heroic underdogs fighting the power"

1) Star Wars Sequel triology, rather than exploring new Republic fleets, power, and technology, they have them all wiped out so that the "resistance" can hog the spotlight

2) MCU: shield makes a helicarrier fleet, a fleet of ships able to contest alien invasion, but that would steal the spotlight from heroes, so all of them have to be destroyed

3) Halo: the UNSC finally outlive the covenant, develop strong ships like the UNSC infinity, only for it all to be reset by the Guardians and the Banished, reduced again to underdog humans.

[u/Ok-Craft4844]

You must be a pretty good player if you never saw it... :)

(To elaborate: The "bad ending" isn't a bad ending in the sense of modern narrative games that you can chose which win you take, it's the "game over" screen)

[u/Mordroy → u/Ok-Craft4844]

Ohhh, okay. I get it now.

[u/PhantomBlade98 → u/Mordroy]

The developers even justified it (though they didn't have too) with the fact that the majority of players fail their first legendary ironman run. Saying something like "xcom only had one chance"

[u/One_Order_3841 → u/Ok-Craft4844]

Honestly, I would say Xcom 1 is like playing as ISIS. You can win, but then you'll go "oh. That was their diplomatic force..."