Video games can be emotional affairs. Most of the time they make us angry, then after everyone is dead by our hands, they make us happy. But they can also make us sad. Oh so very sad. Here we take a look at these moments that appeal to our softer sides, that might even bring a tear to our manly, manly eyes.
Since most of these moments take place quite some time into the respective games, be warned that there will be spoilers! A lot of spoilers! All the spoilers! So don’t complain that we didn’t warn you. Though at this point everyone should know that Aerith dies, right?
Aerith (or Aeris) dies. The first time many a gamer shed a tear in his life, at least in my generation. Sephiroth swoops in, and that’s it. No phoenix down can bring her back. Her pearl necklace falls to the ground, that iconic music starts playing, and boys and girls in their late teens start to weep uncontrollably.
Aerith’s death has achieved cult status at this point. It’s the ultimate non-spoiler spoiler. I have never played Final Fantasy VII (so I never learned to cry, the only emotion known to me is pure hatred!), but still I know everything surrounding this event. It defined a generation of gamers. To this day it’s heralded as one of the most emotionally impacting moments a lot of gamers have experienced. Whether that is warranted or not doesn’t matter, its impact has been long lasting, making it the saddest event in video games.
That game wasn’t the happiest game to begin with. When you eventually find out at the end that, well, you’re dead and stuck in limbo for eternity, it doesn’t necessarily makes things better. Limbo is a depressing game. A sad game. A game about sadness. Sadness and depression distilled into game form. Why people love such a dreary, sulky piece of grey is beyond me.
But still they do. I guess finding out that you’re playing as a dead kid makes this into a work of art. Art has to hurt I’ve heard, and that Limbo does quite well. It’s hopeless, rock bottom, you’re dead and there is no way out of it, unless you just stop playing. Makes you wonder what happens with the kid when he dies in game due to player failure though.
And it has all been for nothing. Throughout the process of the game, Link helps the people of the island getting their lives in order, fixing the island up, but eventually when the game is over, the Wind Fish awoken, the whole island starts to disappear, since the entire game was nothing but a figment of Link’s comatose imagination after getting shipwrecked.
It’s funny that such a small game can have such a long lasting emotional impact. After the final boss is defeated, the game shows you, the player, all the cute little characters you have interacted with during the adventure. And then they start dissolving into nothingness as Link is waking up. Joke’s on us I guess, it was there in the title all along.
What, the manliest of manly games that is made out of pure testosterone has an emotional sequence? Surely I must be mistaken. The only setting Gears of War knows is full chainsaw to the face! All the time! Oh right, there was this thing where Dom discovers his wife deep down underground and she’s all screwed up. And because she can’t be saved any longer, Dom has to take her behind the shed and shoot her.
Apparently this scene touched many gamers of the younger generation as being very tragic and very sad. Also it is a scene that advocates euthanasia. And the absolute worst misogyny. Shoot your broken wife like a horse with a broken leg? It’s a sad scene all right, but not for the reasons you meatheads think it is.
John Marston’s story wouldn’t end well. That much was clear from the start. But then the game lulls the players in a false sense of security. Yeah, let’s just get settled in on the farm. Everything will be all right. Just John, the wife and the kid. And the world is a happy place.
Until the feds show up, and all the bullet time in the world won’t save Marston from ending up as a human swiss cheese. Then a few years later his son picks up the guns and goes after the traitors, the killers, and has himself some good old fashioned revenge, ending the game on a blood, sweat and tear filled bang. Also the song for the credits helps with the whole tears bit.
Animal cruelty is the worst kind of cruelty. When Wander’s trusty steed Agro falls of a cliff and (seemingly) dies before the final Colossus, that was a horrible scene to behold. Not that Shadow of the Colossus would have been too much of an happy game to that point, what with Wander starting to rot alive more and more with each subsequent Colossus.
And then when all is over, Agro comes back. And the girl is alive too! Just... Wander is dead. Or reduced to a horned infant. And Agro has a broken leg. Everyone is sad. And the players confused if this is now a good ending or not. Spoiler, it’s ambiguous.
Just when you thought we had won and all was fine, those fat maggots show up and ruin the day. Again. Over the course of Half-Life² and the two expansion episodes, everyone had grown fond of good old Eli Vance. And then they go and suck his brain out. Just like that.
Eli’s death is one of the heavier hitters in recent gaming history, especially since we’ve not been allowed any true closure. You hear this, Valve? Where is Episode 3? Where is our chance to kick those fat maggots’ collective butts for killing off Eli? This is a tragedy! We need our sweet revenge! Or is that Valve practicing the good old “dish best served cold!” thing? In any case, Eli’s death took most players by complete surprise. And Half-Life 3. That better come out soon.
A game that starts with a future assassin having a family. Well I guess it doesn’t bode too well for the family. Assassin’s Creed 2 of course ends up killing them all in an effort to provide additional motivation for youn Ezio to take up his dad’s blades and go all sneaky killy around renaissance Italy.
Ezio’s dad and brother were all right people who hadn’t done anything wrong. Plus they end up being betrayed by a former ally, all while Ezio is watching. And then hung publicly. The shame! The anger! The sad! All the motivation a proper assassino needs.
All throughout the game, Solid Snake is slowly dying. Nobody truly knows why, the cloners botched the job, and nobody can reverse it. Rapid aging. Snake is doomed, and takes on one last mission to take on mad man Liquid Ocelot, possessed by Snake’s brothers... Severed arm. Yeah that makes not too much sense. Video games! And then at the very end of the game, Snake goes away to kill himself because he doesn’t die fast enough for his taste.
And then he doesn’t die, but Big Boss comes along and talks him out of it. Nice job daddy. Too bad the final exposition dump turns half of the game’s events upside down, and robs us of the telegraphed death of Snake, taking away so much of the game’s built up pathos around the hero we were all sure would die at the end. He would have deserved this. Now he’s doomed to linger on. And that’s the actual tragedy.
It’s a sad game all around. Little guy ICO, singled out because of his telltale horns, gets deported into some faraway castle, as a sacrifice to the old gods (or the new?). But something goes wrong, Ico gets free and takes ghostly girl Yorda along for the ride.
Eventually there is a somewhat happy ending in there for them all, but stil they’re outcasts in a grey, drab, hopeless world. Even if there’s watermelons. Uh. Wherever those came from.
Bioshock games rarely end well for the protagonists. Just ask Mr. DeWitt. Bioshock 2 also doesn’t, no matter how well behaved of a Big Daddy the player was. Best case, he gets liquified and turned into memory goo to live on within his beloved daughter. And it only goes south from here.
The happy ending of the game is dreadfully melancholic to begin with. All the other endings have Delta die in one way or the other without being preserved through Adam. Hell, the game’s beginning was a tragic affair, what with Delta being forced to kill himself. Delta’s entire story was sad and tragic, just like the story of the rest of Rapture.
Oh, Reach. The big tragic moment of the Halo saga. Even before the game started, fans of the series knew this would not end well. And so with the progressing game, more and more members of Noble Squad got offed. One Spartan at the time until only Noble Six is left.
The important thing Noble Squad had to do was ensuring Cortana’s survival, and then ensuring the Pillar of Autumn’s safe launch. The squad itself was expendable, especially since the Covenant was winning the attack on Reach, each mission essentially being a losing battle, fought back against the wall.
Oh Max. You have to go through a lot of horrible things. First they kill your family. Then you find a new love, and of course they end up killing her too, no matter how hard you try keeping them from doing it. And then the pattern continues in the third game, but this is Max Payne 2 we’re talking about.
Throughout the game, Max has been falling head over heels for beautiful assassin lady Mona Sax. Then in the last missions she ends up captured by Max’ former buddy Vlad. And then she ends up with a bullet in her belly so she can die in Max’ arms. Poor guy really can’t catch a break. Also, uh... Poor woman, being dead and all.
This is a cheery one from start to finish. First protagonist Ethan’s favorite son gets run over by a car, then his other, formally not so favorite, son is all depressed, Ethan is all depressed, his wife is all depressed and divorces him, everybody is sad. Big, bad frowny face. And then, adding insult to injury, some madman kidnaps Ethan’s left over son, forcing Ethan into mutilation and murder.
But it’s especially the sad scenes at the beginning of the game that get you. The quiet, solemn feeling of Ethan just being lost, of his life having spiraled out of control that get to you.
Two things really. You have to murder your companion cube. I was a wreck for weeks after that. And then there wasn’t even cake. Portal is the saddest game ever.
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