Top 10 Video Games With the Saddest Endings

The Top Ten
1 Red Dead Redemption

John sacrifices himself for his family! A thousand salutes for this true hero!

John fought so hard for his family and sacrificed his life for them.

2 The Last of Us

It's incredibly heartbreaking and can make you almost hate Joel.

3 Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
4 The Walking Dead: Season 1
5 Heavy Rain
6 Grand Theft Auto IV
7 Mass Effect 3
8 Nier
9 Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky

The same goes for the other two, Darkness and Time.

We're not talking about an overall sad story, alright, because this wouldn't really make it onto the list. This is one of those dungeon crawler games where you do tasks and get stuff. But this one's in the Pokemon universe (there's that), and YOU are the Pokemon (there's that too).

You work your way up with your partner. The first few hours of mission completing made IGN rate this game 4.9 because, yes, AT FIRST (AND ONLY AT FIRST) it feels repetitive. But after progressing through the story, it gets much richer and deeper. As a Pokemon game, it's heavy with life lessons and morals. The ending, though...it scars my heart. In a good way, not a bad way. It's really sad and heartbreaking.

Being a game targeted mainly at younger gamers, this would be one of those "first games" you play that actually makes you cry. While Mother 3 also had a similar graphical system, it's not really advertised as heavily as PMD. Being a Pokemon game, this game most likely arrives to you first before Mother 3, and thus delivers you the first taste of a truly sad ending. Play it until completion if you want to know why. Or read the spoiler below if you're the type that just wants to know.

Below is the full story, rewritten by me as much as I remember.

(spoilers below)

The story builds up as you're woken up on the beach as a kind of Pokemon, which is determined based on your answers to the intro questions. There, you meet your soon-to-be partner. After joining the guild, you become a team of rescuers, along with your partner. You settle up for some missions while getting used to being a Pokemon.

After a while, you explore more and more terrains, get more money and items, etc. But then, something happens. The time in one area completely stops, leaving the area dead without any single inch of anything moving. This causes an uproar and panic, but the guild still tries to do their best. You and... more

10 Red Dead Redemption 2

This whole game is an emotional ride. You'll see the people you care for die one after another, until the main protagonist, Arthur Morgan, faces his inevitable fate. Probably the saddest ending in a video game, and the way Rockstar presented it is heartbreaking.

Arthur Morgan is my favorite video game character ever. Why did he have to die? I hope that in RDR3 (if they make one), it shows a younger Arthur.

The Contenders
11 Life is Strange
12 Undertale

Okay, the pacifist ending is not sad, and the world is completely destroyed in the genocide ending. But in my opinion, the saddest endings are in neutral.

At the end of a neutral run, Sans calls you and tells you how things are going in the underground. In one ending, Papyrus becomes king (yay!), but he thinks all his friends (who you murdered) are on vacation. He just wishes they'd send a postcard. Sans doesn't have the heart to tell him what you did.

Or if you kill Toriel, in some endings, Sans says, "I wonder how the lady from the ruins is doing. I haven't seen her. I wonder how she's feeling. *silence* Or maybe she's not feeling anything at all."

Super dark and sad.

13 Mother 3

You end up fighting your own brother while your dead mother tries to get him to snap out of it (he was killed in the first chapter and made into a cyborg). Once he does, he kills himself to be with your mother. Afterwards, you pull the needle, and a cataclysmic chain of events takes place, restoring nature in the Nowhere Islands. Good thing everyone survived.

14 A Way Out

Saddest game ever. The ending blew me away.

15 The Last of Us Part II
16 Shadow of the Colossus
17 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
18 Halo Reach

It's a bit gut-wrenching at parts, like the deaths of some main characters and the overview of the city New Alexandria. But the ending is the saddest. You are alone. No one is friendly. No escape. The only way out is dead.

Damn that zealot who stabbed you! Damn him!

When the title card read "there will be another time," I nearly cried.

19 Super Mario Galaxy

It was so sad, with the Luma sacrificing himself for the world and the story behind all of this. This truly deserves to be the most emotional game of all time.

20 Final Fantasy X
21 Doki Doki Literature Club!

One of the darkest and saddest games of all time, hands down. Monika sacrifices herself to destroy the game, knowing no happiness can be found.

22 Spiderman Ps4

Heartbreaking and human-filled ending.

23 Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Knowing the real history of WWI hurts, and it's painful to realize that this really happened many times. This game is only a representation of one story. I think everyone who finished the game cried at the final mission. Who knew simply walking forward would be so hard?

24 Bioshock Infinite
25 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
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