At the end of most games, the events of the story are wrapped up in a neat, happy little bow. Which is nice and all, but sometimes the subversion of expectations with the main character suddenly dying can be enjoyable too. Although, it really depends oꦦn the game.
In some cases the protagonist dying can be a thumb in the eye of an already bad experience, in others a satisfying and sombre way to end some climatic series of events. A lot of different games have tried this over the years with some absolute🌄ly nailing it. So for those looking for a grim end to their stories, here are some of the best games where you die at the end.
10 💛 Dying Light
Say what you will about Dying Light, where it suffered in storytelling it more than made up for in gameplay. The parkour was a great addition and you could lose hours doing your free-form runs between mission points 𓄧or just being chased by Volatiles.
Though the protagonist Kyle Crane has a somewhat open-ended finale in the base game. The DLC sent him out on a controversial note. For those not aware, at the end of The Following old Kyle has two choices, die in a nuclear explosion that wipes out Harran, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the infected, and thousands of people in the nearby area, or drink an elixir that turns him into a semi-sentient Volatile. Whatever the decision it’s a pretty ▨final and fatal ending for Crane. It didn’t sit well with fans, but the gameplay before it was solid enough to make it passable.
9 Tekken 7
Tekken is an iconic franchise that's been around for a couple of decades by this point. Everyone has interacted with at least one of them in their lifetime. Whether a stand-alone, cross-over, or Tag Team version and the story it tried to tell is frankly often convoluted and a little hard to follow. One, in particular, is notably worth mentioning and that's Tekken Seven.
The game was mostly good, but the story was utterly out there. It FollowedHeihachi Mishima (for the most part), finally settling the score with his son Kazuya. That is until he dies at the end when his son Devil Gene kicks in and stomps the floor with him. But the ending is the real highlight. In a mirror of the very first Tekken where Heihachi tossed a weakened and barely conscious Kazuya into a Volcano. In Tekken seven, this scene is reversed as it's Heihachi that's getting tossed into natures barbecue pit. It's a cool moment that fans got a kick out of because it reflected how far these two characters had come over the years and how their relationship as father and son but also bitter rivals evolved through each game.
8 Amn🔜es🅠ia: A Machine For Pigs
A solid introduction to the horror genre for first-timers and a decent challenge to those experienced in spooky games, the Amnesia series is a cult favorite for a reason. Its Machine For Pigs tale is the most noteworthy though because just like every other title here, the protagonist dies at the end. But it's for a good reason.
You play as Oswald Mandus. An eccentric well-off industrialist with a dark secret. That's revealed in a twisting tale of terror and brutal ritual sacrifice. It all culminates in Oswald throwing himself into his own machine, destroying it and the dark entity within for good. Though this act absolutely eviscerates our main character, it was deserved as his actions before the events of the game are revealed to be quite monstrous. Plus, this last sacrifice puts an end to the terror that was unleashed in the town above, sparing countless more people from being slaughtered by the device and its mutant minions.
7 ꦑ Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach is not one of the best Halo games, but it’s up there. Like how ODST put a fresh spin on things, Reach teamed you up with a colorful gang of Spartans during the cataclysmic fall of the planet Reach and the first proper engagement between humanity and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the Covenant.
Featuring a solid story, spectacular action-packed setpieces on and above the planet, and an entertaining multiplayer and co-op campaign, Halo: Reach had a lot going for it. And the finale is probably one of the best in the entire series, as you alone face off against an entire Covenant Army without end, with the game's final mission only stopping once you die, the credits rolling shortly after. It was incredibly fitting to the timeline because at that moment the Covenant were seemingly unstoppable and though Master Chief comes back time and time again, you’re not him. You’re Noble Six, who is incredibly vulnerable and it helped put a more human side to the tale.
6 Outlast
A stellar horror experience set within a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:spooky asylum, the mystery at the heart of Outlasts tale was a great driving force through one scary set piece after another. With no means to defend yourself, each encounter with the inmates was a tense cat-and-mouse game around a rabbit's warren of buildings and underground labs.
It all culminated in a showdown with what was thought at first to be an otherworldly beast k🐬nown as the Wallrider, but turned out to be a nano-machine fuelled super weapon. And the reason Outlast makes this list is that after a showdown with this creature, you get executed by a clean-up squad and end up possessed by it, unleashing an unstoppable monstrosity on the world above. It’s a suitably grim ending for a pretty dark settin🥀g, but it’s a satisfying way to tie off the story in a neat bow.
5 🌸 ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ Red Dead Redemption
The original Red Dead Redemptions ending caught a lot of people off guard, but it was still a pretty aweso⛄me way to go for John Marsten. After following him trying to get redeemed for so long, getting his family back, a place of his own away from everyone only to ﷽see his past still catch back up with him was an emotional gut punch that had no right to hit that hard.
Surrounded by U.S Governme♛nt soldiers outside of his barn, you’re given the perceived chance of being able to Dead-Eye them all at once, but they’re much quicker on the draw and John is ultimately brutally gunned down. His family watching from the nearby homestead unable to help. Though this story beat would be repeated in Red Dead Redemption 2, the ori🥀ginal was still the favorite for how thematically it fits and how badass it was. Sorry Arthur, but gunfight beats TB.
4 Scorn
Scorn is quite the mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s a love letter to Geiger, a mish-mash of puzzles and underwhelming combat, and one of the goriest games to be put out since the last Mortal Kombat. But on the other, there&rs⛄quo;s a lack of story, immediacy, and general context to what’s going on at any given moment. Plus there’s the end🦩ing.
Throughout the game there’s a general🐻 feeling that you’re escaping to, somewhere. Whilst some creature that’s grown within tries to take control. It all culminates in a grisly moment at the end where our protagonist is seemingly attacked by it and then consumed by a nearby organic plant mutation. This apparently kills or at least absorbs the poor creature we’ve been with exploring as for so long and then the game just ends. It caught a lot of people off guard and left a lot of questions, but despite all that at least the ride to get to that point was somewhat enjoyable thanks to the surreal alien art style.
3 ꧟ Spec Ops: The Line
Spec Ops: The Line has a ﷺlot of endings, all of them pret♓ty grim and most of them involving the protagonist dying. Either by their own hand in the last mission or from friendly fire in a post-finale closing scene. There’s four of them in total and most of them involve Martin Walker ending up dead.
For example, after confronting his hallucinatory nemesis in one finale he commit⛦s suicide. In another he goes rogue, attacks friendly troops, and gets gunned down. Regardless of which ones chosen, all are great ways to cement just how much the horrible events that preceded them changed Walker. With even the surrender option ending with the main char🐽acter questioning if he even metaphorically survived since so many lines were crossed until that point.
2 Asura's Wrath
There are going to be some naysayers when it comes to Asura's Wrath, but the story and cutscene fights were intense and the sheer scale of some of the story-beats and set pieces were genuinely impressive for the time. It portrayed a sorrowful tale of a father ostracized from his daughter by his former compatriots in a narrative that spans literally thousands of years.
Though there was issues with the true ending being locked behind DLC, the path to get there was still pretty entertaining. We follow Asura, a member of a hyper advanced race known as the Eight Guardian Generals of Gaea, who are tasked with destroying a dark species known as Gohma. In the finale, Asura sacrifices himself to give the humans on the planet below a chance to finally live in peace. It's a long road to get there, with some great crossover DLC worth trying (Akuma and Ryu from Street Fighter) and the aesthetic of this continually evolving universe is compelling enough to keep you going until its gigantic climactic finale.
1 ꧅ STALKER: S☂hadow Of Chernobyl
One of many installments in the ever-so-popular Stalker series, Shadow of Chernobyl had some unique and interesting endings. Most of them featuring the protagonist getting killed, or left in a state that might as well be death or at least more vulnerable to it. There's seven endings in total, five "false" and two "true".
The true endings are the real finale, but the false ones all involve the wish-granting sarcophagus in some way. For example, asking to be rich squashes our hero in a rain of gold and collapsing building parts, whilst asking for immortality encases him in metal as a statue forever. They're all pretty bleak, but it's a fitting thematic Monkey's Paw as nothing in the Zone is ever what it seems.