Your Saddest Video Game Moments

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Video Games, ever since they began having more and more plot have been home to some of the most heart breaking and tear inducing scenes out there and this thread is for discussing those moments. I will only ask that you guys please put spoilers around these moments as to not spoil the game for anyone.

 

To begin, here's the Last of Us. 

 

 

I'm gonna say Sarah's death in the opening chapter of The Last of Us is one of the most heart breaking scenes in a video game. Naughty Dog expertly crafted an opening sequence to the dangerous, heartbreaking world of The Last of Us by putting us in the shoes of Joel's daughter Sarah during the first outbreak of the clickers.

 

This works in various ways. Firstly, it gives us a contrast between Sarah (A normal girl before the outbreak) and Ellie (A normal girl forced to grow up in the toughened world of The Last of Us). Throughout the game, Joel gives us hints to what kind of girl Sarah was (For example, he talks about being dragged to see chick flicks about Werewolves in a reference to Twlight). But in this opening chapter, we get to see a really great family bond between Joel and Sarah, with them having a loving and fun relationship.

 

Then we get to the moment where a soldier shoots at a defenseless Joel and Sarah. Joel luckily manages to escape without being killed but Sarah is fatally wounded and as Tommy kills the soldier, Joel runs over to Sarah and holds her in his hands and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

 

Sarah dies in Joel's hands as Joel breaks down into tears, begging Sarah not to die on him and telling her to stay with him all to no avail. We then cut away from the scene to 20 years later.

 

 

 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Transistor and Bastion's endings. I don't want to reveal anything else, just that they make me laugh, cry, and...do that thing you do when something is epic (I hate this word) enough to make you do something that you can't really explain what it is you're feeling all at the same time. The atmosphere in these two games is incredible.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

I'll bring out Klonoa as my first choice

 

 

Spoilers, Klonoa was never supposed to be in the game's phantomile. To him, all of the characters he met, all of the places he's been, and all of the things he did were merely a dream. However, from the start, Klonoa was simply believed to had a simple life with his friend Hewpoe. And Hewpoe was responsible for this as he put fake memories into Klonoa for this to be the case.

 

 

Well, that didn't go so well didn't it.

 

 

 

 

The game (Notably towards the end) gave a lot of context clues that Klonoa (Surprisingly) is out of place in the world and is merely a dream. Naming the levels "visions", Ghadius referring to Klonoa as a "Strange Dream", and Hewpoe begging to Klonoa towards the end of the game to help him until after Ghadius is defeated to tell him the truth. When the end draws, Klonoa refuses to accept it (Given he had very little time to fully understand), and when Songstress Lephise begins singing her song of reborn, Klonoa gets teared apart from the world without much warning.

 

It was geniuely so sad to just see Klonoa's emotions tear apart even when the game gave really obvious context clues that something was going to happen to him at the end.

 

 

 

Entire ending: 

 

 

Another sad (but more silent I have no words ending) was Halo Reach's ending, in which

 

 

You, Noble Six, was the last one alive and your last objective was to simply survive. It's virtually impossible though although you'll see a final cutscene from a first-person view where you take off your helmet to make one last stand. It then led to a scene similar to the beginning of the game, where you see your spartan's helmet on the ground.

 

The whole story of the Noble Six was geniunely depressing, seeing them slowly die one by one instantly assured me that this wasn't your traditional Halo tale of a immortal spartan fighting alienes like a badass. It's why I consider Reach to be one of the best Halo games in term of storytelling, because it went above a lot of Halo's story arcs and gave us vulnerable heroes who sacrificed everything even in certain doom in order to allow the events of the original Halo to occur.

 

 

[MightyRay]

I gotta say the final battle in Mother 3 was the first time any game made me cry. Put is spoilers cause it's an ending.

 

[Oh Noes]

Aw, somebody outmatched me at making this topic. But thanks for doing it, I'll sure join this.

 

I don't a have a enormous culture on video games in general, so there's not a lot of moments I can talk about. But it there's only one that NEEDS to be talked about on this topic, it's Mother 3. Oh god, Mother 3.

 

*SPOILERS UP AHEAD*

 

This game is a masterpiece for EXTREMELY good reasons. You begin in a lovable world with lovable characters, but then things starts to get nasty. Just in the first chapter, tension builds up as you progress through the forest, and you start to understand what happened. But you don't want to believe it. And after the scene when Flint goes rogue when Hinawa's death is revealed, not only you feel hearthbroken because you just lost one of the characters that you got the most attached to in the very beginning of the game, but you understand that nothing will be the same in Tazmily. Nor will be the whole game. First hearthbroking scene.

 

Then there's the Drago fight. After an intense battle, Flint ends up wanting to kill the poor Dinosaur, but the baby Drago jumps in, trying to protect its dying Mother, as Alec stops Flint, and tells him the sad reality that rage isn't going to change anything. Then you see the Mecha Drago releasing a tear before going away. And bam, you now feel hearthbroken for the Baby Drago, but also for Flint who just lost one of his sons, and realize just how cruel is going to be this game's plot. Then it's silence, and you see Claus of the cliff, leaving a touch of suspense in all this sadness. Second hearthbroking scene.

 

Then there's the Sunflower Field scene. Althought this isn't a "sad" scene for most players, it's a scene that's really intense and, most of all, full of meaning. With your character being slown down on purpose, you just follow the ghost of Hinawa, which is already pretty shocking to see, but then you arrive at the end of the cliff, and Lucas jumps, hoping to catch his mom and to be with her again... And you wake up, having landed on pile of hay that prevented your fall from being fatal. Finally, Alec tells you that Hinawa's ghost visited him during a dream, and told him to take this action. This, added to the fact that the entire scene is a single chapter, lets you guess that Hinawa wanted to reunite with Lucas one last time, so that he understands the harsh reality that his mother's gone forever, and gives him hope. Though that's only my interpreation of it: the scene is a bit confusing for most players, so it's really left to interpretation. But in any case, it really leaves a lasting impression.

 

And finally, the ending. God, the ending. You start in a battle with all your buddies fainted, with a psychedelic background, and with an intensly immersive background music. As you realize that you can't attack, Hinawa intervenes, and the action is only described through the textbox, while the background and the music do everything else in immersion. As the battle progresses, the text is displayed slower and slower, and Hinawa intervenes more and more often. Then the flashback occurs. And from here, it just goes nuts with emotions. First of all, you just feel sadder and sadder, seeing what was supposed to happen in a happy future for the twins, but just ended up in them beating eachother. Second, Lucas's (in)actions shows that he can't do anything anymore, just wants this to stop, while Claus go, like him, crazy, realizing who he truly is. Third, that one line is said. "Come to your mother. You must be so exhausted." And then Claus reveals himself, with a deep, emotional musical background right behind him. You think everything is going to end, to go for the better. But then, Claus uses that one bolt of lightning, and you end up here, shocked, and just crying as he is fading away, getting the true purpose of that one line, and as the two brothers and the whole family reunites one last time. Claus's death marks the end of Lucas's family, as well as the final part of his quest to save the world.

 

After he passes away, Lucas now got the weight of the world on his shoulders. You have to take the ultimate decision for him, and as he pulls out the Needle, you assist to the destruction of the Nowhere Islands, A.K.A. the world you just travelled through during the whole game and the home of everyone, followed by a sad cover of "Going Alone" (Or "Happy Town?"). Follows the "ending" where you talk to all the characters and see the credits roll, which puts out all the tension and sadness you had accumulated. Final hearthbroking scene.

 

All of those are accompanied by BGMs made by the incredible Shogo Sakai and his comrades, and...I'm sorry, this isn't video game music. This is just like a soundtrack from a movie. And I never, EVER got so immersed in a video game with those. The writing of Itoi is amazing, but the game would be nothing without Sakai's mastery of feelings through music. Everytime I play these tunes again, I can litteraly REVIVE the moments and the emitions that I felt. And especially in the final battle, he plays so much with background noises, sounds, that goes with the background of the fight as well (Just a reminder: you're fighting your chimera, hearthless brother at the center of the world, just on the top of the head of a frigging dragon that could destroy it or save it), which builds up incredibly high tension, and then lets the Love Theme parts slowly play, which just messes more with your emotion, and breaks you apart by making you cry like a little baby. And then comes the writing of Itoi, and you nearly run dry on you tears supply.

 

There's no contest. The evolution, directing, and deepness of those sad scenes are incomparable to anything I have even saw in video games, not only using the game's plot as an excuse to write a absolutely excellent novel, but also blending it perfectly with visual and sound effects and interaction with the player that can be used in a game. Mother 3 is, and will stay to me the game that made the perfect plot, for a perfect use, and the greatest representative of how a story can be important in video games.

 

Its predecessor, Mother 2/Earthbound, was also a very emotionnal game and was full of sense, but is nowhere near as hearthborking as Mother 3. Just very strange, funny, and emotionnal. And that's the magic recipes of Mother games.

 

EDIT: Dernit, gotta go fast! Mightyray outmatched me too...But well, I've done a massive fanboy explination on how much I just adore Mother 3, SO I'M KEEPING IT.

[The Pit of Mystic Cave]

Mother 3 of course, but seeing as it was mentioned twice already, I guess I'll pick another one.

 

As uninteresting as Gears of War is, there was one scene from the second game that really got to me good...

It was of course the scene where Dom finally finds his wife after two whole games of searching. 

 

This is one of those things that gets sadder the more you think about it, especially considering that Dom kills himself during the third game.

[Lisbon]

Well, there's this one part of Mass Effect 3 that I found particularly hard hitting, and I'll toss it in spoilers to be safe as major plot points are involved.

 

I generally don't like this trope, but this is one of the few exceptions for me. It was executed differently than most (not being the very end of the story and not being the protagonist/main hero immediately comes to mind) and it was honestly a tearjerker for me.

 

 

[Polkadi~☆]

If there was anything that jerked a tear out of me, it's a certain scene midway through Half-Life 2.

You have just escaped from the horror that is Ravenholm, and you are on the way to your next objective. You find a Resistance base where the Combine are attacking the station. While you could take them out (and was required to), a brave refugee ran forward to save his teamates, to draw attention away from you and the other rebels so that it was easier to kill the enemies in the area.

At the end of a short firefight, the rebels step forward to his fallen groaning body, scan him and call out: "Winston's been hit," as he starts his death march.

The atmosphere, the way it was placed, the soundtrack and his sacrifice made such a minor death so emotional. It definetely brought a tear out of my eye. You are to continue forward, ignoring him, but you feel that you really want to help him. But you can't.

Who knew Valve could make such a minor death something that gave you more motivation to kick Combine ass?

And the soundtrack played in the scene was to be cut, too. But this one scene made it worth keeping the one song. It used to be called the Path of Borealis, but had it's name changed to Triage at Dawn, and it is a beautiful piece too.

[GamerGirl54321]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers pls

 

WARNING: SPOILERS. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE SPOILER TAGS, SORRY.

 

Grovyle. Like... Granted, in Sky it's revealed that everyone in the future lives, but... He's gone. He's seriously gone. Forever. Not coming back to the present. Ever. The hero is in the present permanently as well.

 

Dusknoir turning good in the future was also kind of heartbreaking, because no one from the present (past?) is going to know. He's going to go down in history as a villain. His help is going to go unnoticed. He'll always be known as that guy who wanted to destroy everything, and nothing more. A traitor.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Kiah
Implemented the spoiler tags; Please don't put spoilers down anyway if you don't know how to make spoiler tags.

[shdowhunt60]

The ending of the first Fallout game.

 

After all the fighting you do to keep your home safe, the overseer kicks you out, saying that you're too dangerous.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG_P086L5LU

[Autosaver]

Xion's death in 358/2 Days

 

I loved Kingdom Hearts 2 so when Square Enix announced 3 more titles in the Kingdom Hearts line I was really excited. This was back in Middle School. I remember getting the game Day 1 and playing it my entire afternoon after school. I liked Roxas as a character. I thought it was pretty depressing to see a character leave his home and pretty much kill his best friend. Then at the end, lose the battle as he gets defeated by Riku.

 

Because of the fact that this game's plot is constantly brought up in future titles and remixes, I don't think a spoiler is needed for any Kingdom Hearts spoiler.