The Most Soul-Destroying Deaths In Video Games

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Get the tissues ready.

Tanja Haimerl

Gaming - June 23rd 2024, 13:00 GMT+2

Fable Guildmaster — 5. Fable: The Guildmaster

In Fable 1, you lose your family as a young child, and are then taken in by the Hero's Guild as an orphan. This is where you do all your training, and where you first meet the Guildmaster. He's wonderfully kind and becomes a kind of father to the main character.

Right before the end of the game, the final boss - Jack of Blades - kills the Guildmaster. But you do at least get to say goodbye before the fight. Tragic. | © Lionhead Studios

TLOU Tearjerker — 4. The Last of Us: Sarah

The Last of Us – the best video game on planet Earth and I will die on this hill – has several instances that made me bawl my eyes out and continue to do so over a decade after I played it for the first time. Still, Sarah's death in the prologue easily takes the cake. | © Naughty Dog

Life is Strange Chloe — 3. Life Is Strange: Alternative Reality

It's been a while since Life is Strange, hasn't it? Still, the alternative reality Max finds herself in after trying to make everything right with her time traveling powers still hits pretty hard.

In an effort to save Chloe's father, Max changes the past, changing the very threads of reality. Her father might live in this world, but Chloe ends up paralyzed instead and asks Max to end her suffering. What choice did you make? | © Square Enix

TWD Clementine Lee — 2. The Walking Dead: Lee's Death

A blast from the past: in Telltale's first season of the Walking Dead, you play as Lee and take care of little Clementine, forming a beautiful bond and showing that family means more than just being related.

Tragically, Lee gets bitten, and his death is sealed. But he still does everything in his power to make sure that Clem's safe – knowing full well that he won't be there for her. And as if the protagonist dying wasn't bad enough, it gets even worse because Clementine is the one to end his misery. | © Telltale Games

Arthur Morgan Last Ride — 1. Red Dead Redemption 2: Arthur's Last Ride

In Red Dead Redemption 2, we meet the best Rockstar character known to man: Arthur Morgan. His journey with the Van der Linde Gang meets a rather violent end, and obviously Arthur's last scene is absolutely heart-breaking, but who didn't shed a tear when mounting the horse one last time and riding to the last showdown? The music, the voice-over, the memories of an epic adventure – it's perfect, and it made me cry for thirty minutes straight. | © Rockstar Games

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Video games are supposed to be fun, you say? I beg to differ! Well, obviously, fun is nice and all, but have you ever played a video game that hit you with such a gut punch that you simply couldn't supress tears? Because I certainly have. And I live for those games.

Video games are so much more than what they used to be – what started out as a bunch of pixels to stack in Tetris or a hungry yellow guy on the run from ghosts in Pac-Man has since become a form of entertainment that evokes all sorts of emotions. So here's our Top 5 of games that made us cry like a little baby.

Obligatory spoiler warning: none of the games are particularly new, so you should be good if you're up to date with games up until 2021!