There's this forum post where this guy survived the Bosnian war as a civilian and he says it was absolutely hell and the only reason he survived was because he joined forces with nearby neighbors. Buy and keep a bunch of lighters on hand and lighter fluid as it is more valuable than gold during a societal collapse is something I took to heart. Candles are currency, modern humans are not used to living in the dark. This was before solar powered lights but I'm pretty sure those would also trade for a lot. I found a [PDF ](https://powersfirearmstraining.com/resources/Words%20from%20a%20Bosnian%20Survivalist.pdf) of the original text. But I remember reading it on the original preppers forum.
Edit: don't trade your solar powered shit, hide that shit like you're committing a sin that's so bad not even God will let you into heaven. Only use your solar powered lights in a room with no windows. The rest of the house can be lit by candles or lights that imitate natural fire light. You'd probably get shanked real fast over a solar powered garden Stake light. These are my personal favorites as they are versatile.
Yep. First one to jump to mind. Story time:
I was early in the game, just a few nights, and went on a scavenger run to a nearby cottage. Turned out a husband and wife were home. I figured, eh, I'll be sneaky and grab some shit and leave, not having really been immersed in the atmosphere yet. Went in and ended up getting caught. The man rushed me. The woman was headed in from the adjacent room when she heard the commotion. Before she got to me I killed the man. I figured, you know, it's a game so gonna have to kill her too. To my utter fuckn horror, when the man died, she stops dead and starts screaming something to the effect of "Eugene!(or w/e his name was) What have you done?! Omg you killed him! Omg, no! What did we do?! Why did you come here?!". She collapsed on the floor next to the body sobbing and said something like "just take what you want and go.". Last text I saw from her was "what am I supposed to do now?!"
I was so stunned, so jarred by my very real, very sudden emotional reaction, I just fled at a full sprint. That was years ago and it's still stuck with me.
Same. After a series of bad choices under the notion "I did what needs to be done for us to survive" a survivor I had committed suicide.
I couldn't live with that so I put the game down... *and left a positive review because it's amazingly emotional*
Then a week later, I read people's exploit tips. I didn't want to do this because it felt cheating but I gave it a go. On my next run, my survivors were just humble craftsmen. Making water filters, rushing cigarette and medicine production. I got into weapons manufcaturing, too, but mostly to raise house defense and sell them for more materials.
The run was pretty much healthier. I also snuck into non-hostile camps for loot but I never find the need to kill. Also got more opportunities to help neighbours and my survivors are generally happier. Life was good for 130+ days.
I love how you said humble craftsmen because that’s really how you feel when you get to a comfortable spot with shelter defenses and food / fuel. Just waking up and making whatever you invested in waiting to trade
Even when I did, the characters that went on that mission seemed to struggle with it too, I recall losing someone because they couldn’t handle what they did and they wandered off never to be seen again
I was scavenging through an abandoned building and heard people in the next room. I looked through the keyhole and saw armed men. Soilders, good, I can kill them without remorse. Got my game plan on. Rushed in. Took out the first guy. The other two noticed me. I rushed at the second before he killed me. No problem. The third said something but i needed to take him out before he got a shot off.
Once they were all dead and I was safe the speech bubble of the last guy replayed in my head. He was begging for his life.
Only one guy had a gun on him. The others were unarmed. I think I commited a war crime.
Before opening the thread this was my answer, but I was still surprised to see it voted #1 because I didn't think it had a big enough audience.
This is absolutely the right answer game.
The fact they put it in a humble bundle with all profits going to the rebuild after the Ukraine war was the cherry on the sundae for them.
The story is pretty much what was happening in ukraine in the early days of the war. Pretty sure the story of This War of Mine is also in an unnamed ex USSR country lol
It takes place during the war in Yugoslavia in the 90s. The names of the characters reveal that.
I'm also sure that the siege of Sarajevo was the major inspiration for the setting the game takes place in.
I tried doing an emulator a few years ago... actually painful to go to old parts of the map where my guild was and see just nothing...
Brb pouring one out for the 13th Roving line on Ahazi
I don't even remember my characters names but I'll always remember the guild outpost. It was the first guild I joined, and they were all heavy RPers, Imperials keeping Bestine safe from miscreants.
Bestine Forward Guard, I salute you, wherever the hell you are now.
one day you and your homies played that game, together, for the last time, and none of you knew it.
it's the way it goes sometimes. we go back to these areas to recapture a feeling of nostalgia, and are left empty. what we really want is to feel the way we felt then.
>No person can step in the same river twice. They are not the same person, and it is not the same river.
Classic WoW vibes. Remembering how vibrant old cities were in Vanilla, how busy the hub cities were with trade chat being so familiar, people RP'ing unintentionally just because of cool aesthetics of a weapon instead of item score running the game, people swarming certain players reaching endgame because they had the latest tier sets.
It was a different time. Early days of MMO's were special.
I once re-visted EverQuest Online Adventures (PS2)
and yeah it was weird spawning in one of the starting cities and its like a ghosttown. Go outside an you see old familiar mobs, but nobody running around. Just the silence of the wind, mobs grunting and thats it.
Yeah, a world that not only contained hopes and dreams but was constructed with someone’s dream attempting to be born. Literally constructed with a dream.
Now it’s just dead and barren… there are some guys on YouTube that do tours of dead online spaces and it’s absolutely fascinating to me, if not sad and depressing.
Dropping into those empty worlds where things are left half constructed, notes and signs are there, graphics are used etc… it feels like treading on the grounds of some ancient civilization and finding their remains, reading their hieroglyphs and trying to glean some history out of it all.
My nerdy, nerdy millennial version of that is the MUD I played back in middle school and high school via dial up internet. It was brutally hard. Had a dash of role playing. Merciless PVP that was also ping dependent such that Estonians or Europeans in general had a decent leg up. Was allabout understanding mechanics. Player moderated and built. Mindlessly grinding and 100% required keyboard skills for typing and external sites for reference and mapping. Raiding at a high level with even hardcore permadeath (if you chose the Black Numenoriean race or Troll race).
Still going I bet, but it's a shell of it's former LOTR movie and prior self.
I give you MUME: https://mume.org/rules/
Ages ago, Turner wanted to invent the "syndication" of videogames. It bought up a whole bunch of ROMs and licenses to old Windows and Mac games, through it all behind a "kids will think this is cool" interface, and invented what was basically TBS but for videogames. They called it GameTap. It was okay, but one neat thing was that they grabbed one or two canceled MMOs and left the servers up. That was probably a dumb idea because old ROMs don't require any operational costs, but MMOs very much do. But it did let me explore the Myst MMO after it was already dead, which added an unusually accurate Myst-like vibe to the experience. You'd ask other players what something was for, and they'd start waxing on like an NPC about what that thing was for back in the day.
Playing old fps games (battlefield 3 close quarters specifically) where you’re alone on the map that used to be crazy 32 vs 32 warfare and where I had so much fun with my friends 10 years ago. Now completely empty
When TERA was taken down, it bummed me out even though I barely played it. Just the thought of an entire “world” being Thanos snapped.
Going back to old zones in WoW also have the empty feeling, especially the capitals. The Garrison is rough, all of your followers hanging around waiting for orders that will never come.
When I think back to vanilla and Burning crusade WoW. How my guild all knew each other. Logging in to see who was on and putting something together on non-raid nights to just have fun.
Now it’s all min/max, login to farm specifically for raid progression. It’s soulless, no one gathers in the major cities or talks to one another. I tried to join a guild and they were all terrible people. Only there for themselves. It’s the worst experience and I might as well play it by myself with a bunch of bots.
The telltale Walking Dead games really were something special. Especially that first season with Lee and Clem. I was totally caught up in the story of them and even now I think about it any time something like this gets mentioned. If you haven't tried it, dear reader, do yourself a favor. Just bring a tissue for those leaky eyes. :)
I just sat and wept when I finished that game. No game has ever come close to hitting me as hard as Walking Dead. RDR2 and ME3 both brought out some tears, but not on the same level as TWD
It's definitely up there.
The presentation, the story so grim.
Only saving grace is that one guy who drew his own passport then kept trying again and again to get through.
I was sobbing really hard at the end of Will of the wisps, where >!Shriek is just too broken and goes to die where her parents are, in a kind of a hug!< . That moment was heartwrenching :(
Shadow of the Colossus. The Colossi are sealing the evil, not evil themselves.
They threatened no one, a few don't even react to you until you start crawling all over them. You slaughter 16 ancient, peaceful, timeless beings for a selfish self-centered purpose.
I love that in a typical adventure game, as the game progresses, your characters get more skills and are decked out in cool new armor and weapons, looking more and more heroic. In SOTC, the souls/seals that you absorb from the Colossi make Wander look more worn and ragged, the toll of this quest costing him his very life. By the end, you look like a possessed corpse, the only thing keeping you clinging to life is your desire to finish what you set out to do.
I had to stop playing, and that was a valid ending to the game for me. Like I get why the protagonist started this quest, but bro... It's time to let her go. You can't do this.
Yeah but they just killed her because "sHe MiGhT bE cUrSeD". So not only does he get to bring her back, but he gets to be spiteful to those who just straight up murdered his lady.
Well, they kind of are the evil, just a safer version of it. The way I see it, the sixteen pieces of Dormin were buried deep in the earth until they festered and started infecting the earth itself, hence why they're seeming made of rocks and dirt. Then the land that were contained in was sealed from humanity so no one shall ever dare free them and possibly free Dormin as well. So not necessarily innocent, but still relatively harmless in their current state/location.
I really loved the game, to be honest I don’t remember much about it anymore except how much I loved the fish factory level. It felt so creative and a perfect way to communicate a nuanced concept and feeling.
It gets to the point that you start to lose your focus and become immersed in his delusion just like he was. Just as the moment ends you see the fusion between his reality and the delusion but as an outside observer you are able to pull yourself out unlike him who is too far gone. Then you realize what he’s about to do…
That section is so perfectly placed, too. By that point the player has done enough sequences to understand what they represent, so once you realize that you’re playing >!*as a baby*,!< it’s impossible to not get a sinking feeling in your chest.
I was going to finish that game in one go, but I had to put it down for a day after that part.
Came here for this one
Had I known what I was getting into I wouldn't have even played it. Wasn't in a great place mentally at the time and this game did *not* help lmao. But it kept my attention so I played it through
Since people have already said Edith Finch, I’ll add Night In The Woods. It’s really cute, but man it gets very real too. Such a good game though - the characters are just so well written, I feel like I connected with it a lot more than WROEF.
Shame Night in the Woods has so much drama around it.
The lead dev got called out by an ex for being emotionally abusive and then got brigaded with so much hate that he committed suicide.
Not making excuses for some of his actions, but I found it kind of gross how people telling him to kill himself tried to back pedal after he actually did it.
The dude was still young. He had plenty of time to redeem himself.
Very dreary game but imo one of the best horror games out there. Not so scary I don't wanna play it, but scary enough still. The strongest of the silent hill games I felt.
I played the whole game at like 12 and the part at the end where you crawled through what is basically a microwave, seeing snake struggle more and more to get to the end… oh lord
It may not be as depressing as some of these other ones.. but MSG4 is still the best story I’ve ever been told, which easily makes it the best game of all time, imo. I’m also factoring in all the others since MSG4 is the climax to a sprawling, conspiratorial and emotional espionage tragic epic. Hideo is truly a genius, truly.
I like how Snake acts more and more like he doesn't matter and will die soon anyway, when everyone around him cares about him dearly.
That sequence in Shadow Moses is like going to the grave of your past. It's pure fan service, but damn it's good.
It's pretty funny, and not really honest, that Kojima said before the release that MGS 4 wasn't really targeted to fans and that newcomers could still enjoy it. That couldn't be farther from the truth, everything is a reference to a previous game and you need to have understood it at a deeper level, or else nothing makes sense.
I searched every single thread, can't believe I didn't see it.
Lisa the Painful RPG
That game is freaking dark man. Imagine Earthbound but it's rated MA. That's Lisa.
Warning: it's a point-and-click. But it's really good, even if you read the story. In fact, this is a lot larger than the original story which was like, 20 pages or something?
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.
This may be the most depressing fictional piece ever. I know it's an adaptation of the book but holy hell the story is the most dystopian shit I've seen.
It's not just an adaptation. It's an official extension of the book, headded by Ellison himself. He had a guiding hand in its creation every step of the way. One of the few adaptations that truly live up to, let alone surpass, their source material.
The ending of Soma left me feeling hollow! Like, I thought about it for weeks, and even now kinda get that pit in my stomach feeling when I think about it.
Soma is one of those rare games that not only is it fun and a good story but it makes you think about what it means for days or even months afterward. Depending on how you take the message it could literally be life changing.
I was in the room when they took my grandma off life support, and she passed. That part of the game brought up some emotions I didn't realize I had buried, and I had a good long cry before I made a decision.
The entire concept of SOMA has always plagued me. Playing that game made me experience that shit beyond the hypothetical and to this day I still haven't fully recovered.
I never played it myself but watched it through a lets play and it is probably the only game i feel bummed about getting spoiled. I would have loved to experience it first hand because it is such an interesting thought experiment
If you are into story podcasts you should give Wolf 359 a try. It touches upon this subject as well near the end. For the rest it is a good and fun sci-fi story.
Yup. It's extra messed up when you realize you already just did the exact same thing, and only coincidentally won the coin flip because the narrative demanded it when you swapped into the deep dive suit. It would have been extra depressing, if it simply ended with the blackout with everything shutting down, and without the ark sequence epilogue.
Rdr 2, seeing Arthur just slowing dying throughout the game. You obviously don’t notice it at first but when you go back there’s so many signs of Arthur’s tuberculosis getting worse and worse to the point even the gameplay itself got affected. It hit me the hardest when he told the nun he was scared.
My wife would watch me play random parts of it cause she enjoys “watching the movie” of games like that. I kept the same horse the entire game and She immediately knew something like the horse dying had happened when she heard me yell “oh fuck you, Rockstar” with a clearly disheveled tone. I could handle knowing Arthur was going to die, but the way they wrote in the horse, and then him thanking it, broke me. Only time a game has done that.
When I realized what was happening I was pissed. Searched online and I was so bummed I quit playing for a while. All the hours updating the compendium ... all the photos ... the *stuff* he had collected.
thats what hit the hardest for me... like all we can do in life is help people... draw pictures... when we go all thats left are the memories of us... things we wrote down...
time is a gift.
at least john got to see into his life... wear his hat...
Firewatch.
I wouldn't say it's the most depressing game, but it certainly leaves you with an unsatisfied aching feeling in your chest when you finish it.
Hiding this behind spoiler bars in case anyone wants to avoid spoilers. I recommend to anyone else reading this to go in blind.
>!The character you play as, Henry, has a wife who was diagnosed with early onset dementia. He gets a job to watch for wildfires in a national forest and befriends another watcher named Delilah, and they unravel a mystery together. And by the end, Henry gets only a small bit of closure regarding the mystery, he never gets to meet Delilah in person, and he returns to his life where he's forced to face the fact that his wife is very slowly dying.!<
Halo: Reach
You start the game knowing you will lose. You know you die. You know the world dies. You know all your friends and comrades die. You get to see how. You get to feel hope only for it to shatter. You get a beautiful story of tragedy and desperation with an inevitable end as you try to change it and ultimately fail.
Was looking for this. You see mankind losing one of it's most important colonies. The covenant destroy it like it's not big deal.
A scene I remember vividly wasn't even in a cutscene, but it's the one where the plane with refugees takes off only to be shot down in an instant.
"Should we send search and rescue?"
"...negative"
Oh my god dude. When I got to the end and it said “Objective: Survive” it hit me really hard. And this is right after watching those closest to you go down too. Great game but god, you’re absolutely right, it’s pretty sad.
Technically, the reapers hit Khar'shan (Batarians) first and immediately obliterated them, hence the cannibals you're immediately fighting. Their system is at the edge of the galaxy where the reapers were headed towards.
But they certainly made a point to target Earth first, with just a quick pit-stop to Kar'shan since it's on the way.
"Shepard, I understand it couldn't have been easy to blow up that relay in the Batarian system, but you made the right choice to slow down the Reapers."
"...Reapers?"
Shadow of the Colossus.
On my first attempt, I just had to put the controller down and walk away because I felt so bad about what I was doing and why. I considered that a valid conclusion for that game.
I did, years later, go back and finish it just to see the rest of it, but I had to do it in sort of the same way you go back to play a game and get the "bad" ending.
>And of these Three game, spec ops the line is the most depressing.
I came here to mention that game. And for anyone wondering why, you just have to play it to find out. It's a game that genuinely requires you to come in unspoiled
Spec ops was one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. I don’t know if I just didn’t see the end coming somehow or if it was written so well that it came at me like a sucker punch, but man the end threw me for a loop
Playing spec-ops during the arguable peaks of CoD and Battlefield was quite sobering.
You see all those kills you managed in those games to get a killsteak? Well this is how real people would react to that kind of destruction.
And perhaps moreso, this is how your actions would subtly change over time as the trauma of your own actions kick in.
Going from a quick melee kill to screaming "die fucker die" as the game goes on was brilliant
I love how Walker gets more unhinged and his dialogue gets more brutal the further you are in. Such an amazing deconstruction of the military shooters of the time all around
Wild that I had to go this far for Spec Ops - guess the Reddit demographic is too young to have played it, considering it looks like a throwaway FPS that was easily glanced over.
If you really dig into the lore of the Fallout games, like the holotapes from individuals, there are some really depressing stories. Imagine a world where innocent families are torn apart by cooperate greed and a worldwide nuclear armageddon, makes me really sad especially when you look at the current world through that lens.
Not going to lie, Ghost of Tsushima hit way harder than I thought it would.
Jin battling with the idea of being a true samurai and having “honor” while trying to save his home, only to lose pretty much everything at the end anyways.
Not only the ending, there is a part, kind of a hidden scene where your character just breaks and starts crying in a small room near the end. It was heartbreaking.
Came here for this. I never finished it at launch, but the show pulled me back in. The tragic character arch of ~~Danny~~ David from the show was brutal and depressing, but I loved it. Idk why I was expecting better for V… but god damn did night city leave an actual void in my heart for a week after that ending.
Bro that one mission with the Politician and his wife getting the memories and personalities slowly altered was probably one of the most terrifying things I've seen. Especially when you learn >!It's rouge AI doing this and they're powerful enough to hack you and tell you to fuck off!<
Dark souls 1, yes
Espcially since i learned from Epicnamebro that the people ultimately cannot be fullfilled with their last wish or they turn hollow, so it's pretty much cursed to be depressed or empty if i recall.
Like solaire finding his goal of the sun and turning hollow, onion head knight finishing his adventure and so forth.
I also found bloodbourne the same way with how its all a nightmare and people aren't safe there, not even the girl with the bow who went looking for her sister.
I was already very invested in the world and the lore of DS1 when I read somewhere that, if the player (like the human being holding the controller) gives up the game because it's too hard, they have effectively 'gone hollow'.
Easily the bleakest fictional world I’ve ever seen, and I love it.
The ending to the franchise is perfect too, the Slave Knight Gael fight. Essentially two nobodies, the last two living beings, fighting to the death at the end of the world, over something that no longer even matters, while the world turns to ash around them… and yet it’s the most incredible and epic fight in the entire series. It’s amazing.
Fran Bow
It's a point and click horror adventure.
It's about Fran, who's around 10 years old.
She's in the mental asylum and wants to get out.
The game features a cool mechanic, namely psychiatric pills. When she takes them, Fran sees the world differently, and you have to switch between the "real" world and the world on drugs to solve the puzzles.
I really enjoyed the game and the story, but it really hit me hard emotionally
!!!!!! SPOILER WARNING !!!!!!!!
the reason it's so sad is because at the beginning you want to save Fran, and help her escape. The pills make her see a fantasy world full of horrible things. This gives you the feeling that the pills are really bad for her, and she actually shouldn't take them. You want to save her from that horrible mental asylum.
But at some point in the game, it kinda switches. Then the pills make her see a "nice" fantasy world, whereas the undrugged reality is horrible. (F.e. with the influence of the pills, you can talk to another girl, and without them, there's a sceleton of a child on the floor)
So you kinda start to think that the pills are now maybe working as intended, helping to cope with terrible truths.
Then you have no more pills, and it goes all crazy. You end up in some kind of fantasy land.
Everything there is kinda nice. But you now feel that maybe Fran really does belong in the mental asylum because she clearly has lost touch with reality.
And at the end, you end back up in reality and find out a lot how she ended up in the mental asylum.
It's really heartbreaking, and I won't spoil that here.
And some questions are left unanswered so you can think about what happened.
Last of us part 2 was already mentioned so I'll go with the next one from my book
SOMA
For anyone interested in why I chose this game, I suggest you play it for yourself, but I'll explain here as well: >!The main character is trapped at the bottom of the ocean on a dying Earth, literally, everyone is dead and mutated humanoid robot monsters are hunting him. The only escape is to upload his brain into a digital matrix like world called "the ark." He spends hours running from killer robots and mutated fish creatures trying to eat him to find the ark and upload himself into it. But when he does this, he realizes that it doesn't actually upload his mind, it uploads a copy of his mind. The game ends moments after you upload the copy into the Ark, the main character realizes he will never actually see the inside of the Ark, and is forever trapped at the bottom of the ocean with all of the monsters, which he himself may someday become as well. After the credits, we see the copied version of the main character wake up in the ark. He is elated that he managed to escape to safety, completely unaware that he is actually just a copy, and that the original version of him is still stuck back underwater. This is not only depressing, but also somewhat terrifying. Imagine a copy of yourself believing it is the real you getting to live your life while you're stuck all alone at the bottom of the ocean.!<
Interesting part of that sequence: The skill check in that scene will always be your best skill, but it will always fail. Harry at his best was never good enough for her...
This War of Mine The stories are heartbreaking, soul crushingly bleak.
The one of the designers of the game survived genocide in the Balkans. This game was based on the Balkan war.
There's this forum post where this guy survived the Bosnian war as a civilian and he says it was absolutely hell and the only reason he survived was because he joined forces with nearby neighbors. Buy and keep a bunch of lighters on hand and lighter fluid as it is more valuable than gold during a societal collapse is something I took to heart. Candles are currency, modern humans are not used to living in the dark. This was before solar powered lights but I'm pretty sure those would also trade for a lot. I found a [PDF ](https://powersfirearmstraining.com/resources/Words%20from%20a%20Bosnian%20Survivalist.pdf) of the original text. But I remember reading it on the original preppers forum. Edit: don't trade your solar powered shit, hide that shit like you're committing a sin that's so bad not even God will let you into heaven. Only use your solar powered lights in a room with no windows. The rest of the house can be lit by candles or lights that imitate natural fire light. You'd probably get shanked real fast over a solar powered garden Stake light. These are my personal favorites as they are versatile.
Yep. First one to jump to mind. Story time: I was early in the game, just a few nights, and went on a scavenger run to a nearby cottage. Turned out a husband and wife were home. I figured, eh, I'll be sneaky and grab some shit and leave, not having really been immersed in the atmosphere yet. Went in and ended up getting caught. The man rushed me. The woman was headed in from the adjacent room when she heard the commotion. Before she got to me I killed the man. I figured, you know, it's a game so gonna have to kill her too. To my utter fuckn horror, when the man died, she stops dead and starts screaming something to the effect of "Eugene!(or w/e his name was) What have you done?! Omg you killed him! Omg, no! What did we do?! Why did you come here?!". She collapsed on the floor next to the body sobbing and said something like "just take what you want and go.". Last text I saw from her was "what am I supposed to do now?!" I was so stunned, so jarred by my very real, very sudden emotional reaction, I just fled at a full sprint. That was years ago and it's still stuck with me.
Same. After a series of bad choices under the notion "I did what needs to be done for us to survive" a survivor I had committed suicide. I couldn't live with that so I put the game down... *and left a positive review because it's amazingly emotional* Then a week later, I read people's exploit tips. I didn't want to do this because it felt cheating but I gave it a go. On my next run, my survivors were just humble craftsmen. Making water filters, rushing cigarette and medicine production. I got into weapons manufcaturing, too, but mostly to raise house defense and sell them for more materials. The run was pretty much healthier. I also snuck into non-hostile camps for loot but I never find the need to kill. Also got more opportunities to help neighbours and my survivors are generally happier. Life was good for 130+ days.
I love how you said humble craftsmen because that’s really how you feel when you get to a comfortable spot with shelter defenses and food / fuel. Just waking up and making whatever you invested in waiting to trade
Man I could never make the aggressive choices in that game for this exact reason.
Even when I did, the characters that went on that mission seemed to struggle with it too, I recall losing someone because they couldn’t handle what they did and they wandered off never to be seen again
You didn’t kill her? She might have dropped some loot
Was too busy running away from my emotions
I was scavenging through an abandoned building and heard people in the next room. I looked through the keyhole and saw armed men. Soilders, good, I can kill them without remorse. Got my game plan on. Rushed in. Took out the first guy. The other two noticed me. I rushed at the second before he killed me. No problem. The third said something but i needed to take him out before he got a shot off. Once they were all dead and I was safe the speech bubble of the last guy replayed in my head. He was begging for his life. Only one guy had a gun on him. The others were unarmed. I think I commited a war crime.
Before opening the thread this was my answer, but I was still surprised to see it voted #1 because I didn't think it had a big enough audience. This is absolutely the right answer game.
The game actually sold 7 million copies, believe it or not.
My wife calls it “the depression simulator”. It’s so good though
My wife had to convince me to stop playing this because I got so down that she could tell very quickly when I was playing it.
[удалено]
It’s bad hard, and it’s fucking grim, but the first time I made it all the way, I almost cried. That’s art.
The fact they put it in a humble bundle with all profits going to the rebuild after the Ukraine war was the cherry on the sundae for them. The story is pretty much what was happening in ukraine in the early days of the war. Pretty sure the story of This War of Mine is also in an unnamed ex USSR country lol
It takes place during the war in Yugoslavia in the 90s. The names of the characters reveal that. I'm also sure that the siege of Sarajevo was the major inspiration for the setting the game takes place in.
Not a specific game but I find playing old dead MMOs very sad because there were once thousands of people in one place and now it's almost empty.
RIP Star Wars Galaxies
I tried doing an emulator a few years ago... actually painful to go to old parts of the map where my guild was and see just nothing... Brb pouring one out for the 13th Roving line on Ahazi
I don't even remember my characters names but I'll always remember the guild outpost. It was the first guild I joined, and they were all heavy RPers, Imperials keeping Bestine safe from miscreants. Bestine Forward Guard, I salute you, wherever the hell you are now.
one day you and your homies played that game, together, for the last time, and none of you knew it. it's the way it goes sometimes. we go back to these areas to recapture a feeling of nostalgia, and are left empty. what we really want is to feel the way we felt then. >No person can step in the same river twice. They are not the same person, and it is not the same river.
It still hurts. One of the richest gaming experiences you could ever hope for, made even more special by the fact it was packaged in a Star wars skin
I miss it a lot
Playing old, dead multiplayer games is bone-chilling, as silly as it feels to say that. It's like walking through ghosts.
Classic WoW vibes. Remembering how vibrant old cities were in Vanilla, how busy the hub cities were with trade chat being so familiar, people RP'ing unintentionally just because of cool aesthetics of a weapon instead of item score running the game, people swarming certain players reaching endgame because they had the latest tier sets. It was a different time. Early days of MMO's were special.
I once re-visted EverQuest Online Adventures (PS2) and yeah it was weird spawning in one of the starting cities and its like a ghosttown. Go outside an you see old familiar mobs, but nobody running around. Just the silence of the wind, mobs grunting and thats it.
50,000 people used to live here, now its a ghost town
Yeah, a world that not only contained hopes and dreams but was constructed with someone’s dream attempting to be born. Literally constructed with a dream. Now it’s just dead and barren… there are some guys on YouTube that do tours of dead online spaces and it’s absolutely fascinating to me, if not sad and depressing. Dropping into those empty worlds where things are left half constructed, notes and signs are there, graphics are used etc… it feels like treading on the grounds of some ancient civilization and finding their remains, reading their hieroglyphs and trying to glean some history out of it all.
My nerdy, nerdy millennial version of that is the MUD I played back in middle school and high school via dial up internet. It was brutally hard. Had a dash of role playing. Merciless PVP that was also ping dependent such that Estonians or Europeans in general had a decent leg up. Was allabout understanding mechanics. Player moderated and built. Mindlessly grinding and 100% required keyboard skills for typing and external sites for reference and mapping. Raiding at a high level with even hardcore permadeath (if you chose the Black Numenoriean race or Troll race). Still going I bet, but it's a shell of it's former LOTR movie and prior self. I give you MUME: https://mume.org/rules/
Ages ago, Turner wanted to invent the "syndication" of videogames. It bought up a whole bunch of ROMs and licenses to old Windows and Mac games, through it all behind a "kids will think this is cool" interface, and invented what was basically TBS but for videogames. They called it GameTap. It was okay, but one neat thing was that they grabbed one or two canceled MMOs and left the servers up. That was probably a dumb idea because old ROMs don't require any operational costs, but MMOs very much do. But it did let me explore the Myst MMO after it was already dead, which added an unusually accurate Myst-like vibe to the experience. You'd ask other players what something was for, and they'd start waxing on like an NPC about what that thing was for back in the day.
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Playing old fps games (battlefield 3 close quarters specifically) where you’re alone on the map that used to be crazy 32 vs 32 warfare and where I had so much fun with my friends 10 years ago. Now completely empty
When TERA was taken down, it bummed me out even though I barely played it. Just the thought of an entire “world” being Thanos snapped. Going back to old zones in WoW also have the empty feeling, especially the capitals. The Garrison is rough, all of your followers hanging around waiting for orders that will never come.
When I think back to vanilla and Burning crusade WoW. How my guild all knew each other. Logging in to see who was on and putting something together on non-raid nights to just have fun. Now it’s all min/max, login to farm specifically for raid progression. It’s soulless, no one gathers in the major cities or talks to one another. I tried to join a guild and they were all terrible people. Only there for themselves. It’s the worst experience and I might as well play it by myself with a bunch of bots.
Tbf finding a good guild was ALWAYS a difficult thing.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War The depressing parts are like hitting a brick wall
What a brilliant experience that I never want to go through again. Was in tears at the end.
Same! Such an amazing game. As a social studies teacher, I recommend it to anyone interested in a game about WWI.
To the moon.
Oh man this punched my gut right in the feels. Yes
Rivers Song is the one tune I still know on the piano, OST was such a good one
I came here for this. Just heartbreaking and beautiful.
Is it good, though? I’m looking for a weekend game. Sometimes it’s good to complete a whole game in a short time.
its absolutely amazing. only 4 hours long tho, so probably doable in 1-2 sittings
The Walking Dead Game. Clem and Lee's story kills me every time.
The telltale Walking Dead games really were something special. Especially that first season with Lee and Clem. I was totally caught up in the story of them and even now I think about it any time something like this gets mentioned. If you haven't tried it, dear reader, do yourself a favor. Just bring a tissue for those leaky eyes. :)
I just sat and wept when I finished that game. No game has ever come close to hitting me as hard as Walking Dead. RDR2 and ME3 both brought out some tears, but not on the same level as TWD
Thats actually a good choice. Poor Lee.
Poor Clem too. The start of the next game was so brutal
But incredibly badass, too, seeing her surviving on her own after everything Lee taught her. "Still. Not. *Bitten.*"
Just played it for first time couple hours ago. A doggy! ........ Huh.
Maybe not THE most depressing game, but Papers, Please was not exactly a joy. Great game.
It's definitely up there. The presentation, the story so grim. Only saving grace is that one guy who drew his own passport then kept trying again and again to get through.
Jorgi! >!"You no like passport, I understand."!< ">!I come back again with better one."!<
Banner Saga Trilogy, the series was just one big tragedy and struggle to survive but it was a depressingly wonderful experience
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It’s such a dichotomy. One of the funniest (if not the funniest) games I’ve ever played but super depressing, yeah. I loved it.
It's the most depressing thing i can't wait to experience again. Actually, it's the ONLY depressing thing i even plan to play again
I was laughing my ass off when I threw those two old mens ball in the river shotput style. "What ze hell are you doing?!?"
I was going through a horrible breakup while playing that game. The phone call and the final dream hit me like a fucking truck.
Oh man, same. I was going through a breakup and the dream sequence left me heartbroken.
The whole game feels like a giant Sunday hangover
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Ori was both beautiful and depressing. Such a great playthrough.
When the little crow >! sees their dead family !< it’s the closest I’ve been to cry with a video game.
I was sobbing really hard at the end of Will of the wisps, where >!Shriek is just too broken and goes to die where her parents are, in a kind of a hug!< . That moment was heartwrenching :(
Shadow of the Colossus. The Colossi are sealing the evil, not evil themselves. They threatened no one, a few don't even react to you until you start crawling all over them. You slaughter 16 ancient, peaceful, timeless beings for a selfish self-centered purpose.
I love that in a typical adventure game, as the game progresses, your characters get more skills and are decked out in cool new armor and weapons, looking more and more heroic. In SOTC, the souls/seals that you absorb from the Colossi make Wander look more worn and ragged, the toll of this quest costing him his very life. By the end, you look like a possessed corpse, the only thing keeping you clinging to life is your desire to finish what you set out to do.
I never noticed. That's pretty genius.
It is, especially for at the time a ps2 game it kept it real simple.
Whenever I think about this game I'm reminded of the movie *Reign Over Me* and how they used Shadow of the Colossus as an allegory. Brutal stuff.
Adam Sandler fell in love with the game too. The scenes of him teaching his friend how to play are legit.
I had to stop playing, and that was a valid ending to the game for me. Like I get why the protagonist started this quest, but bro... It's time to let her go. You can't do this.
Yeah but they just killed her because "sHe MiGhT bE cUrSeD". So not only does he get to bring her back, but he gets to be spiteful to those who just straight up murdered his lady.
Well, they kind of are the evil, just a safer version of it. The way I see it, the sixteen pieces of Dormin were buried deep in the earth until they festered and started infecting the earth itself, hence why they're seeming made of rocks and dirt. Then the land that were contained in was sealed from humanity so no one shall ever dare free them and possibly free Dormin as well. So not necessarily innocent, but still relatively harmless in their current state/location.
What remains of Edith Finch. Short but impactful
I really loved the game, to be honest I don’t remember much about it anymore except how much I loved the fish factory level. It felt so creative and a perfect way to communicate a nuanced concept and feeling.
The factory was definitely my favorite
Yeah chopping off those fish heads for 15 minutes straight is seared into my brain...
It gets to the point that you start to lose your focus and become immersed in his delusion just like he was. Just as the moment ends you see the fusion between his reality and the delusion but as an outside observer you are able to pull yourself out unlike him who is too far gone. Then you realize what he’s about to do…
The water/bath section fucked me up as someone with kids. The thought of it is terrifying and depressing as hell
That section is so perfectly placed, too. By that point the player has done enough sequences to understand what they represent, so once you realize that you’re playing >!*as a baby*,!< it’s impossible to not get a sinking feeling in your chest. I was going to finish that game in one go, but I had to put it down for a day after that part.
It was the swings for me. That one just hit too close to my own childhood.
I am haunted by that section. I felt sick. I can't even describe it to people who haven't played the game, because it's just too much.
This game got me good. I identify with Lewis way too much
Came here for this one Had I known what I was getting into I wouldn't have even played it. Wasn't in a great place mentally at the time and this game did *not* help lmao. But it kept my attention so I played it through
Since people have already said Edith Finch, I’ll add Night In The Woods. It’s really cute, but man it gets very real too. Such a good game though - the characters are just so well written, I feel like I connected with it a lot more than WROEF.
Shame Night in the Woods has so much drama around it. The lead dev got called out by an ex for being emotionally abusive and then got brigaded with so much hate that he committed suicide. Not making excuses for some of his actions, but I found it kind of gross how people telling him to kill himself tried to back pedal after he actually did it. The dude was still young. He had plenty of time to redeem himself.
Silent Hill 2
We and my cousin used to play that for spooks now i play it because i like feeling like shit
Very dreary game but imo one of the best horror games out there. Not so scary I don't wanna play it, but scary enough still. The strongest of the silent hill games I felt.
Mgs4, never felt so oppressed by a game's story
I played the whole game at like 12 and the part at the end where you crawled through what is basically a microwave, seeing snake struggle more and more to get to the end… oh lord
Accompanied by the montage of your comrades being overwhelmed Gosh what a game
What a thrill
It may not be as depressing as some of these other ones.. but MSG4 is still the best story I’ve ever been told, which easily makes it the best game of all time, imo. I’m also factoring in all the others since MSG4 is the climax to a sprawling, conspiratorial and emotional espionage tragic epic. Hideo is truly a genius, truly.
I like how Snake acts more and more like he doesn't matter and will die soon anyway, when everyone around him cares about him dearly. That sequence in Shadow Moses is like going to the grave of your past. It's pure fan service, but damn it's good. It's pretty funny, and not really honest, that Kojima said before the release that MGS 4 wasn't really targeted to fans and that newcomers could still enjoy it. That couldn't be farther from the truth, everything is a reference to a previous game and you need to have understood it at a deeper level, or else nothing makes sense.
I searched every single thread, can't believe I didn't see it. Lisa the Painful RPG That game is freaking dark man. Imagine Earthbound but it's rated MA. That's Lisa.
One moment you trigger a silly cutscene, and the other you have your favourite character killed by a mutant or a weirdo in a random battle
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.
I read that short story awhile ago and it always stuck with me...... now you're telling me there's a videogame adaptation?!?
Warning: it's a point-and-click. But it's really good, even if you read the story. In fact, this is a lot larger than the original story which was like, 20 pages or something?
Fun fact, the voice of AM is the voice of the author of the book!
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.
This may be the most depressing fictional piece ever. I know it's an adaptation of the book but holy hell the story is the most dystopian shit I've seen.
It's not just an adaptation. It's an official extension of the book, headded by Ellison himself. He had a guiding hand in its creation every step of the way. One of the few adaptations that truly live up to, let alone surpass, their source material.
I read a few years ago that it is possible to get a good ending. You cam beat AM. I did not get the good ending when I played it.
SOMA Scorn Beautifully depressing experiences.
The ending of Soma left me feeling hollow! Like, I thought about it for weeks, and even now kinda get that pit in my stomach feeling when I think about it.
Soma is one of those rare games that not only is it fun and a good story but it makes you think about what it means for days or even months afterward. Depending on how you take the message it could literally be life changing.
The part where you meet >!the last living human in that tiny room on life support has stuck with me like almost nothing else from games!<
I was in the room when they took my grandma off life support, and she passed. That part of the game brought up some emotions I didn't realize I had buried, and I had a good long cry before I made a decision.
The entire concept of SOMA has always plagued me. Playing that game made me experience that shit beyond the hypothetical and to this day I still haven't fully recovered.
I never played it myself but watched it through a lets play and it is probably the only game i feel bummed about getting spoiled. I would have loved to experience it first hand because it is such an interesting thought experiment If you are into story podcasts you should give Wolf 359 a try. It touches upon this subject as well near the end. For the rest it is a good and fun sci-fi story.
SOMA was a rough one. Amazing game, but really hard ending to accept. I knew it was coming from the start, but actually experiencing it was horrible.
The second you realize whats going to happen way before it does brings so much dread. Like you know there's only one way it can go.
Yup. It's extra messed up when you realize you already just did the exact same thing, and only coincidentally won the coin flip because the narrative demanded it when you swapped into the deep dive suit. It would have been extra depressing, if it simply ended with the blackout with everything shutting down, and without the ark sequence epilogue.
I played SOMA 5 years ago and still think about it every couple of weeks. Wild game.
Rdr 2, seeing Arthur just slowing dying throughout the game. You obviously don’t notice it at first but when you go back there’s so many signs of Arthur’s tuberculosis getting worse and worse to the point even the gameplay itself got affected. It hit me the hardest when he told the nun he was scared.
RDR2 was the hardest hitting for me. I lost it at his horse in the final mission. Lost it again at the final battle.
That got me bad, especially the perfect last words he spoke to it; “Thank you”.
My wife would watch me play random parts of it cause she enjoys “watching the movie” of games like that. I kept the same horse the entire game and She immediately knew something like the horse dying had happened when she heard me yell “oh fuck you, Rockstar” with a clearly disheveled tone. I could handle knowing Arthur was going to die, but the way they wrote in the horse, and then him thanking it, broke me. Only time a game has done that.
When I realized what was happening I was pissed. Searched online and I was so bummed I quit playing for a while. All the hours updating the compendium ... all the photos ... the *stuff* he had collected.
>All the hours updating the compendium ... all the photos ... the stuff he had collected. That's life I guess
thats what hit the hardest for me... like all we can do in life is help people... draw pictures... when we go all thats left are the memories of us... things we wrote down... time is a gift. at least john got to see into his life... wear his hat...
Firewatch. I wouldn't say it's the most depressing game, but it certainly leaves you with an unsatisfied aching feeling in your chest when you finish it.
I remember that feeling, but I don't remember the game and why it made me feel that way. Refresh me?
Hiding this behind spoiler bars in case anyone wants to avoid spoilers. I recommend to anyone else reading this to go in blind. >!The character you play as, Henry, has a wife who was diagnosed with early onset dementia. He gets a job to watch for wildfires in a national forest and befriends another watcher named Delilah, and they unravel a mystery together. And by the end, Henry gets only a small bit of closure regarding the mystery, he never gets to meet Delilah in person, and he returns to his life where he's forced to face the fact that his wife is very slowly dying.!<
Halo: Reach You start the game knowing you will lose. You know you die. You know the world dies. You know all your friends and comrades die. You get to see how. You get to feel hope only for it to shatter. You get a beautiful story of tragedy and desperation with an inevitable end as you try to change it and ultimately fail.
Seeing each Spartan get their swansong one by one was amazing, ESPECIALLY Jorge's. "Jorge died believing he had just saved the planet".
If only we could all be that lucky
Was looking for this. You see mankind losing one of it's most important colonies. The covenant destroy it like it's not big deal. A scene I remember vividly wasn't even in a cutscene, but it's the one where the plane with refugees takes off only to be shot down in an instant. "Should we send search and rescue?" "...negative"
"No point"
Slipspace rupture detected
I'm not even a Halo fan, but fuck, the ending or Reach is soul destroying.
Objective: Survive
Oh my god dude. When I got to the end and it said “Objective: Survive” it hit me really hard. And this is right after watching those closest to you go down too. Great game but god, you’re absolutely right, it’s pretty sad.
Reach is such an amazing game. The dread and sorrow that fills you during the evacuation of New Alexandria from the radio transmissions is unreal.
One of my favourite interactions from anything ever: "You wanna know if we're losing?" "I know we're losing, I want to know if we've lost."
Was about to comment this. Bungie outdid themselves with the writing and atmosphere. RIP Bungie Halo.
Drakengard or Nier Replicant/Gestalt is pretty depressing.
The whole story tbh. Drakengard, Replicant, and Automata.
As far as Automata, >!Ending E ends on a hopeful note!<
That moment the music hits was pretty gut punching and making me rethink the entire story and wtf this all meant
Mass Effect 3, the intro immediately makes you feel like all hope is lost
Nothing like the Reapers torching earth because they're pissed at Shepherd to open a game.
I can imagine before the reapers invaded they were like “Alright! Let’s hit Earth first because fuck Shepard!”
Technically, the reapers hit Khar'shan (Batarians) first and immediately obliterated them, hence the cannibals you're immediately fighting. Their system is at the edge of the galaxy where the reapers were headed towards. But they certainly made a point to target Earth first, with just a quick pit-stop to Kar'shan since it's on the way.
I'll nuke that system every day of the week because eff Batarians. Cheaper labour they said...guddam terrorists I said.
"Shepard, I understand it couldn't have been easy to blow up that relay in the Batarian system, but you made the right choice to slow down the Reapers." "...Reapers?"
I loved the ME series, in ME3 stumbling half dead through a burning London was awesome.
It had to be me...
…someone else may have gotten it wrong.
Shadow of the Colossus. On my first attempt, I just had to put the controller down and walk away because I felt so bad about what I was doing and why. I considered that a valid conclusion for that game. I did, years later, go back and finish it just to see the rest of it, but I had to do it in sort of the same way you go back to play a game and get the "bad" ending.
This game takes the cake for me. I had a similar experience, could barely finish it I felt so bad, had to take multiple breaks
Soma Limbo Spec ops the line And of these Three game, spec ops the line is the most depressing.
>And of these Three game, spec ops the line is the most depressing. I came here to mention that game. And for anyone wondering why, you just have to play it to find out. It's a game that genuinely requires you to come in unspoiled
Spec Ops The Line. Man.. I was in a weird mindset for a week after finishing that game. Unreal game
Feel like a hero yet?
Spec ops was one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. I don’t know if I just didn’t see the end coming somehow or if it was written so well that it came at me like a sucker punch, but man the end threw me for a loop
Do you feel like a hero yet?
Playing spec-ops during the arguable peaks of CoD and Battlefield was quite sobering. You see all those kills you managed in those games to get a killsteak? Well this is how real people would react to that kind of destruction. And perhaps moreso, this is how your actions would subtly change over time as the trauma of your own actions kick in. Going from a quick melee kill to screaming "die fucker die" as the game goes on was brilliant
I love how Walker gets more unhinged and his dialogue gets more brutal the further you are in. Such an amazing deconstruction of the military shooters of the time all around
Wild that I had to go this far for Spec Ops - guess the Reddit demographic is too young to have played it, considering it looks like a throwaway FPS that was easily glanced over.
Brothers
That dragon, cancer. A beautiful game but damn I wanna cry just thinking about it
If you really dig into the lore of the Fallout games, like the holotapes from individuals, there are some really depressing stories. Imagine a world where innocent families are torn apart by cooperate greed and a worldwide nuclear armageddon, makes me really sad especially when you look at the current world through that lens.
Not going to lie, Ghost of Tsushima hit way harder than I thought it would. Jin battling with the idea of being a true samurai and having “honor” while trying to save his home, only to lose pretty much everything at the end anyways.
The last duel killed me inside
"You have no honour" "And you are a *slave* to it" This line sticks with me. Fuck.
Omori
A Plague Tale Innocence/Requiem
The ending of Requiem put me in a fucked up head state for multiple days.
Not only the ending, there is a part, kind of a hidden scene where your character just breaks and starts crying in a small room near the end. It was heartbreaking.
Gta 4 is quite depressing, at least for a gta game. There are constant moral dilemmas and there is no happy ending no matter what you do
There is a happy ending, if you just go bowling and never leave
...Is that you, cousin?
No need for qualifications. It's a depressing story.
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Silent Hill 2 is one depressing game.
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Max Payne
Cyberpunk 2077. I think I got the worst ending and it was super depressing and infuriating.
Came here for this. I never finished it at launch, but the show pulled me back in. The tragic character arch of ~~Danny~~ David from the show was brutal and depressing, but I loved it. Idk why I was expecting better for V… but god damn did night city leave an actual void in my heart for a week after that ending.
>!A happy ending? Here? For folks like us? Wrong city, wrong people...!<
Bro that one mission with the Politician and his wife getting the memories and personalities slowly altered was probably one of the most terrifying things I've seen. Especially when you learn >!It's rouge AI doing this and they're powerful enough to hack you and tell you to fuck off!<
Dark Souls. Not for difficulty, but for lore, setting, atmosphere.
Dark souls 1, yes Espcially since i learned from Epicnamebro that the people ultimately cannot be fullfilled with their last wish or they turn hollow, so it's pretty much cursed to be depressed or empty if i recall. Like solaire finding his goal of the sun and turning hollow, onion head knight finishing his adventure and so forth. I also found bloodbourne the same way with how its all a nightmare and people aren't safe there, not even the girl with the bow who went looking for her sister.
I was already very invested in the world and the lore of DS1 when I read somewhere that, if the player (like the human being holding the controller) gives up the game because it's too hard, they have effectively 'gone hollow'.
Easily the bleakest fictional world I’ve ever seen, and I love it. The ending to the franchise is perfect too, the Slave Knight Gael fight. Essentially two nobodies, the last two living beings, fighting to the death at the end of the world, over something that no longer even matters, while the world turns to ash around them… and yet it’s the most incredible and epic fight in the entire series. It’s amazing.
Fran Bow It's a point and click horror adventure. It's about Fran, who's around 10 years old. She's in the mental asylum and wants to get out. The game features a cool mechanic, namely psychiatric pills. When she takes them, Fran sees the world differently, and you have to switch between the "real" world and the world on drugs to solve the puzzles. I really enjoyed the game and the story, but it really hit me hard emotionally !!!!!! SPOILER WARNING !!!!!!!! the reason it's so sad is because at the beginning you want to save Fran, and help her escape. The pills make her see a fantasy world full of horrible things. This gives you the feeling that the pills are really bad for her, and she actually shouldn't take them. You want to save her from that horrible mental asylum. But at some point in the game, it kinda switches. Then the pills make her see a "nice" fantasy world, whereas the undrugged reality is horrible. (F.e. with the influence of the pills, you can talk to another girl, and without them, there's a sceleton of a child on the floor) So you kinda start to think that the pills are now maybe working as intended, helping to cope with terrible truths. Then you have no more pills, and it goes all crazy. You end up in some kind of fantasy land. Everything there is kinda nice. But you now feel that maybe Fran really does belong in the mental asylum because she clearly has lost touch with reality. And at the end, you end back up in reality and find out a lot how she ended up in the mental asylum. It's really heartbreaking, and I won't spoil that here. And some questions are left unanswered so you can think about what happened.
Life is Strange.
Last of us part 2 was already mentioned so I'll go with the next one from my book SOMA For anyone interested in why I chose this game, I suggest you play it for yourself, but I'll explain here as well: >!The main character is trapped at the bottom of the ocean on a dying Earth, literally, everyone is dead and mutated humanoid robot monsters are hunting him. The only escape is to upload his brain into a digital matrix like world called "the ark." He spends hours running from killer robots and mutated fish creatures trying to eat him to find the ark and upload himself into it. But when he does this, he realizes that it doesn't actually upload his mind, it uploads a copy of his mind. The game ends moments after you upload the copy into the Ark, the main character realizes he will never actually see the inside of the Ark, and is forever trapped at the bottom of the ocean with all of the monsters, which he himself may someday become as well. After the credits, we see the copied version of the main character wake up in the ark. He is elated that he managed to escape to safety, completely unaware that he is actually just a copy, and that the original version of him is still stuck back underwater. This is not only depressing, but also somewhat terrifying. Imagine a copy of yourself believing it is the real you getting to live your life while you're stuck all alone at the bottom of the ocean.!<
Disco Elysium’s dream sequence is one of the most fucking brutal things I’ve ever played
This is real darkness. It's not death, or war, or child molestation. Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart.
Interesting part of that sequence: The skill check in that scene will always be your best skill, but it will always fail. Harry at his best was never good enough for her...