8 Happy Game Endings That Are Actually Really Depressing

Sad endings in games can be really tricky. After all, you as the player are the protagonist, so it's natural to want everything to go right for your character. Because of that, for a long time, games tended to stay clear of overtly depressing endings, for fear of alienating players who were invested in seeing their characters win in the end. Some games however, despite how happy their ending seemed, were actually hiding some pretty depressing stories. Here are 8 of our favorite examples of that. 1. Halo 3: Humanity as we know it is basically over. By the end of Halo 3, Master Chief has defeated the Covenant, the Flood, and prevented the destruction of the entire galaxy. Seems like a good ol' fashioned happy ending right? Well... that is if you ignore the fact that an estimated 23 billion humans died during the course of the war, multiple colony planets were rendered completely uninhabitable, and nearly all of Earth's military forces and fleets were wiped out. Good luck humanity, you're going to need it. 2. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: You save the day, but abandon your friend. Majora's Mask is a pretty dark game throughout, with the constant specter of imminent death looming over Link at all times (literally). The game opens with Link searching for his missing friend Navi, before being swept up into a conflict against a villain named Skull Kid, and the cursed mask that controls him. Skull Kid's plan? Crash the goddamn moon into the world in three days. Yikes. Good ultimately triumphs though, and Link saves the day by purifying the evil mask, liberating Skull Kid from its control, and stopping the descent of the moon before it destroys the world. Sounds like a happy ending for everyone involved. But wait a minute, what was Link doing before all of this happened? Oh yeah, looking for Navi. Things get pretty depressing when you realize that Navi has yet to appear in another Zelda game, which seems to indicate that all of this Majora's Mask business prevented Link from ever finding his friend. To this day, he still doesn't even know why she left him in the first place. 3. Final Fantasy VII: Everyone dies Sure, Final Fantasy VII may have broken players' hearts when it killed off Aerith, but that event doesn't hold a candle to how depressing the actual ending is. By the end of the game, the villainous Sephiroth has summoned a meteor to crash into the planet, space-murdering everyone. Cloud and friends manage to defeat Sephiroth, but sadly, this does nothing to stop the meteor's descent. But wait! That counter-spell that Aerith was casting when she died kicks in... but it isn't enough. Luckily though, the planet itself, Lifestream, gives Aerith's spell a boost to save the day. Hurray for a happy ending! Except for the fact that the last time the planet was hit by a meteor spell, Lifestream had to kill every single person on the entire planet in order to heal itself. Whether or not that actually happens is left vague, as the screen simply goes to white. But, in the epilogue (set 500 years later), we see a devastated Midgar (the setting of the game) with no humans in sight. Granted, the game eventually got a movie sequel called Advent Children, which explains that everyone didn't actually die, but within the context of the game itself, it sure seems that way. 4. Mother 3: Everyone dies (again) It aint easy being Lucas, the main character of Mother 3. His mom is dead, his twin brother is missing, his father abandoned him to find said twin, and a mysterious masked man is trying to break the seal to the "Dark Dragon," a force that is capable of destroying the entire world. Lucas and his party of heroes eventually manage to kill the masked man though, only to find out that he was Lucas's twin all along. If that isn't depressing enough, the Dark Dragon gets revived anyways, and the game proceeds to show us the entire world being violently destroyed, all to some horrifyingly cheery music. The game heavily hints towards the idea of Lucas using the Dark Dragon to remake the world again, but even if that's true, he had to cause everyone he knew to die horrible, painful deaths before that happened. 5. Shadow of the Colossus: You save your love, doom her to a horrible life. In Shadow of the Colossus, you play as Wander, a man on a mission. Your only goal is to resurrect your dead love, Mono. To do so, you enter the Forbidden Land with her body, and are told by the mysterious spirit Dormin that you must kill the 16 giants, known as colossi, that inhabit the area. Things get super depressing towards the end of the game when your horse dies, who was pretty much your only friend. To make matters worse, it turns out that Dormin was an evil demon, and that the colossi you were killing were actually protecting pieces of its essence. After killing the final colossus, not only does Wander die, but Dormin possesses his body, turning him into a monster. You, as Dormin now, are then defeated by the actual "good guys." As it turns out, your efforts weren't completely in vain though. Mono does get brought back to life, and your horse turns out to have survived as well, which makes this feel like a happy ending. That is until you consider the fact that in the final battle, the only bridge to the Forbidden Land was destroyed. You've essentially brought your loved one back to life, only to strand her in a god forsaken wasteland all by herself. I give her two days before she ends up eating that horse. 6. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: You might be working for the bad guys. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 pits you against Raul Menendez, a ruthless arms dealer and militant who's been waging a war against the United States and its interests for almost 40 years. His plans come to a head when he takes control of America's drone fleet, raining destruction down on the city of Los Angeles. Eventually though, you're able to defeat Menendez and stop his rampage, imprisoning him for life or killing him outright. Good job Team America, let's call it a day. But wait, why the heck was this guy so obsessed with destroying the US for almost four decades straight? Maybe it has to do with the fact that his sister was horribly burned during an act of arson by American businessmen for insurance money. Then the CIA decided to assassinate his father. Then, in an attempt to kill Menendez himself, one of the game's main characters kills Menendez's sister with a grenade. Woops. Turns out, Menendez has a pretty good reason for hating America. And if that's not enough, he's also the leader of a movement that's fighting against economic inequality, a problem that's gotten way worse in the near-future setting of Black Ops 2. It turns out, people around the world are pretty fed up with the government your character works for, and Menendez's group is so popular that it has over a billion supporters. It is worth noting that in some of the game's multiple endings, Menendez does get some closure. In one case, he gets his vengeance before committing suicide, and in another, his death incites a full-on rebellion against the US government, who burn down the White House in the process. 7. Metal Gear Solid 3: The world is safe, but you kill the actual hero of the game. Metal Gear Solid 3 isn't too far off from the previous games in the series. Sneak past the enemy, stop the nuclear weapons from ending the world, you know the drill. To do so though, your character, Naked Snake, has to kill his former mentor, The Boss (Hideo Kojima is not the best at naming characters), who had defected from the US to work for the Russians. After killing her though, it turns out she was a double agent all along; and even worse, she had been helping Snake the entire time. Basically, The Boss is the only reason Snake was able to save the world, but to do so, she had to make all of her former allies believe she had betrayed them. After ultimately sacrificing her life to allow Snake to complete his mission, The Boss was buried in an unmarked grave, with the rest of world remembering her as a traitor to her country. It's a fantastic ending, but not so great for making you feel like a hero. 8. To the Moon: Everyone gets a happy ending, except it's all meaningless. To the Moon follows two employees of the Sigmund Corp., a company that uses a futuristic technology to fulfill the last wish of people on their deathbed. In the game, you are tasked with helping a man named Johnny, whose last request is to go to the moon. That's a lot easier than it sounds, because Sigmund Corp.'s machine doesn't actually fulfill wishes. Instead, their operatives use it to plant false memories in the patient so that they remember doing the thing they wanted to do. That's already kind of dark, but that's just the tip of the sadness iceberg. It turns out that Johnny doesn't actually want to go to the moon, he wants to reconnect with his dead wife River. The two met as children and promised each other to meet at the moon if they ever got separated. Unfortunately, Johnny's twin brother died shortly after that (told you it was depressing), and to spare Johnny the horrible memory, his mother gave him medication that induced memory loss, causing him to forget both his brother and his meeting with River. Johnny and River would later reconnect as adults and fall in love, eventually marrying. Decades later though, River falls ill, and due to the fact that she has Asperger syndrome, she has difficulty communicating her feelings to Johnny. She instead spends the last few years of her life trying to remind Johnny of their first meeting, and their promise to meet each other on the moon. Johnny never catches on because of the memory loss, and River dies discontented. Luckily for Johnny, the Sigmund Corp. employees save the day just before he draws his dying breath, implanting memories of a happy life; one where his brother didn't die, and instead goes on to become a famous author, and where Johnny and River both become astronauts, and go on a mission to the moon together. What a happy ending right? Well, it's not for River and Johnny's brother, who both still died under tragic circumstances. It's also not that happy for Johnny when you think about it, considering he spent the last few moments of his life remembering things that never happened, with people who never existed. They might've been happy memories, but that doesn't change the fact that they were completely fake. Have any we forgot? Share the stories with us in the comments section!

1. Halo 3: Humanity as we know it is basically over.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Related Articles

Eight Years Later: Dreamfall Chapters First Impressions

Five Nights at Freddy’s 4: The Story So Far

Watch a Teaser for Star Wars: Battlefront’s Battle of Jakku

Assassin’s Creed with Kittens Is Adorably Deadly