The idea that a video game can make players grow emotionally attached to the characters involved in its story is incredible on its own, add to that the ability to punch fans in the gut with a story so overwhelmingly depressing and meaningful that gamers can’t help but wipe a tear from their eye.
Still, they enjoy the journey every step of the way. While some games have their share of depressing aspects, others genuinely get more and more upsetting the longer one thinks about them. These are some video games with the saddest storylines.
Updated on January 9, 2021, by Reyadh Rahaman: Tragedies are often more appealing to people than comedies. This is as true in classic forms of entertainment like theater and literature, though this trend proliferates into the video game world as well. Sad twists in tales are meant to evoke empathetic responses in players that will stick in their memories long after playing the game. For that’s what storytelling is all about: leaving an impression upon both the mind and heart.
15 Spiritfarer
What at first seems like a chill art game turns out to be an emotional rollercoaster about coping with loss. The most notable feature is the gorgeous art style and visuals that make Spiritfarer feel like playing a painting at times. However, the stories found are enough to bring many to tears, although in the best way possible: cathartic rainfalls from relieved eyes.
One takes the role of a ferryman who collects and looks after lost souls so that they may pass on to the afterlife properly. Players can upgrade their boat in a numerous variety of ways as well as fish, craft, and mine to their heart’s content while they care for these lost souls, which makes for diverse and interesting gameplay. Each lost soul must pass on, however, so be sure to let them know that they matter while they’re around.
14 Fallout 4
Most Fallout games start off with some sort of catalyzing event, though Fallout 4 does so with a tragic one. Immediately after creating their character, the player witnesses the atomic devastation that turns the world into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the death of their spouse, and the abduction of their child.
The player’s life isn’t the only one to change for the worst, however, as the decline of the United States due to immense radiation poisoning of the land has left nothing unscathed. In quests across The Commonwealth, the Sole Survivor will encounter those who fall prey to bandits, organized faiths, and even nature itself.
13 Dark Souls 3
Steeped in an ominous tone laden with themes of death, despair, and darkness, the climactic conclusion to the Dark Souls trilogy leaves a lasting impression like a mental burn from many embers upon the minds of players. The Ashen One must go forth and return the Lords of Cinder to their thrones, one way or another.
The decline of the world can be found through the tremendous amount of tombstones and mostly empty cities. This realm is dying, which will become apparent when Dark Souls 3 players reach the Kiln of the First Flame or visit certain desolate, ash-drowned landscapes in The Ringed City DLC.
12 Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor
It is inevitable that a game featuring a nearly slain ranger and an elf-become-wraith would full of doom-laced tones. Talion, the player’s human stand-in, witnesses the forces of Sauron butchering his family before his eyes. Celebrimbor, the player’s other half in the form of an elf-wraith, faced a similar demise at the hands of the dark lord, though he also lost his life.
Throughout Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, the player enacts brutal vengeance upon Sauron’s forces, aiming to cripple his army in any and every way possible. From guerilla tactics to open warfare, Talion and Celebrimbor together bring a wave of despair to the orcs, trolls, and other fouls fiends of the eastern burning wastes.
11 Shadow Of The Colossus
When an open-world is void of NPCs, common foes, and quests, it feels more like an empty-world game. Although, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Shadow of the Colossus puts a simple swordsman and his faithful steed up against colossal beasts of earth and stone. To slay each colossus, the player must climb them and find their weak points in which to stab for huge damage.
This is an oddly intimate and brutal way to slay a giant: getting to know their body before ending their life, usually with a stab to the head, back, or chest. All this in order to bring back the protagonist’s dead lover using forbidden magic and making a pact with a supernatural force with ill intent.
10 To The Moon
To The Moon isn’t necessarily a tear-jerker of a game. Instead, the sadness one feels is based on a much more personal level. In the story of a man named Johnny, it is your job to help alter his memories to allow him to feel as though he has accomplished his dream of going to the moon.
While the story is well developed, it’s the interaction between the various characters and the brilliant soundtrack that carries the emotion on their shoulders. It is depressing, yes. However, it serves as a beautiful lesson about our dreams and how significant events in our lives connect us to them.
9 Firewatch
Offering some absolutely stunning visuals and a deep sense of isolation and mystery, Firewatch is a melancholic journey from start to finish. You play as Henry, a fire lookout in Wyoming who left behind his life due to his wife developing early-onset dementia.
As if that wasn’t enough, your only emotional outlet is with a woman named Delilah, who keeps in contact with you from the other side of your handheld radio. The feeling of walking around the forest having personal and often intimate conversations with Delilah makes the atmosphere grow more somber by the day.
8 Gris
Gris is a great example of a game in which players are tasked with interpreting the meaning behind the art and gameplay themselves. Using carefully-crafted color schemes and level design, along with a chilling soundtrack, we experience Gris’ emotions as she loses herself and her voice.
Themes of depression, anxiety, and defeat wash over players as they follow Gris through her journey to get over her grief and works to reform herself. This is genuinely a game worth a playthrough, or two, or three.
7 This War Of Mine
Moral choices in games are something that has shown to consistently darken the mood over the years. In This War of Mine, players control a group of civilians struggling to survive amid a war zone. Each member of one’s group has different backstories, skills, and moral alignments.
Some survivors refuse to do wrong to others, even if it means saving their life or the lives of others, while others will turn a blind eye to such actions or commit them on their own. The balance between the day-to-day struggle to keep everyone alive in your group, and thinking over the morality of your actions is surely a gut-punch every time.
6 Always Sometimes Monsters
Adulthood can sometimes be a disaster, and there is not a better game that lets you live out the feeling of hitting rock-bottom quite like Always Sometimes Monsters. Gamers play as an ordinary person, simply going through a very tough time in life. It is a rollercoaster of emotions that players will find it as hard to come back from as if it were happening to them in their actual life.
The way that the game mixes things up varies from putting the player through intense, dark choices that force you into feeling selfish, bitter, and guilty, to traveling back and forth between different periods in the character’s life that ultimately affect the outcome.
5 Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Mental illness being a mechanic in video games is not a new concept, but the form that it takes on in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is undoubtedly unmatched. A journey through the mind and heartache of protagonist Senua sees the player traveling across different landscapes coping with the loss of your loved one. Experiencing Senua’s mental psychosis is completely harrowing.
There is no tutorial or menus, no upgradable items or loot, and no help for when you’re stuck beside a persistent string of voicing that echo within your headphones. Hardly anything is explained to the player, but all one ends up understanding is how quickly you fall to darkness after each death. Her story of suffering and search for purpose is one that makes players burst out in their ugliest cry.
4 Gone Home
In recent years, walking sims have seen a steady increase in popularity. The concept consists of a focus on storytelling and narrative rather than exciting gameplay.
In Gone Home, you play as Kaitlin, who returns home after a year of backpacking through Europe. You discover your house is empty, and you embark on a mission to find out why. The experience of the game is far more interesting than one would expect, with a very large theme of secrets and personal conflict. It is an emotional story that allows players to feel connected to the entire family and relate to the struggles that they faced.
3 What Remains Of Edith Finch
Another game in the walking sim genre, yet without a doubt no less significant, What Remain of Edith Finch tells another story of a family and how they all met a terrible fate. While walking around the family’s home, you discover each members’ rooms, journals, and memorabilia, which all trigger memories of how they passed.
While some focus on narrative and subtlety, allowing the player some room for imagination, others are rather bold and dark, such as witnessing the drowning of a toddler through a first-person perspective. One could picture with that example that this game would cause a few, or rather, a few hundred, tears to be shed.
2 The Last Of Us
There’s not too much to say about The Last of Us that hasn’t been said already, and that’s what allows it to be on this list. The story of Joel forming the relationship with Ellie, attempting to make up for the relationship he will never get the chance to have with his daughter, is a heartwarming one.
However, the sadness within the game rests within just how Joel actually begins to care for her. While there are standalone moments that fill us with anxiety and leave us sighing with relief, gamers will never forget the feeling of sadness that washed over them with the ending of this fantastic game.
1 Telltale’s The Walking Dead
Fans of Telltale Games wouldn’t be surprised that Telltale’s: The Walking Dead made the list about games with sad storylines. In a game that is an emotional ride from start to finish, you are constantly faced with important choices. Each choice, in some way or another, has a large effect on everyone.
This game has made players weep for the loss of characters they have grown quite attached to. In the end, some things cannot be avoided no matter which choices are made, and that sense of inevitable loss is what makes the story all the more depressing. It is truly impressive when a game can make players cry just as hard as the ending of a movie could.
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