Which Videogame Characters Have the Most Tragic Stories?

[BrotherRool]

The guy and girl from To The Moon have a heartbreakingly tragic story which would be utter spoilers to describe. They spent their whole lives an inch away from perfect happiness but never able to get there

Spoiler

because life had made them unable to really communicate with each other

.


And then you can pretty much just pick any person you like from the Metal Gear series and it's pretty much guaranteed they're pretty darn tragic. Big Boss, raised a soldier, kills

Spoiler

his mentor and mother

and lets the obsession with stopping it from happening overtake him until he nearly destroys the world by trying to save it, until once again it's just him and an old man with nothing left. All the enemies tend to have their homes burned down, their families killed, their lives controlled and manipulated from a young age, raised to kill and spread Fear, Pain, Joy, killing comrades and enemies alike until forced into a battle they often know is pointless but are willing to go through with anyway and will lead to their death.

Otacon who has pretty much everyone he loves ever

Spoiler

die

and unwittingly unleashed a horror onto the world whilst trying to build up nuclear deterrence.

etc

 

[Auron225]

Cloud from Final Fantasy 7?

I felt a LOT worse for Zack than I did for Cloud.

Crisis Core Spoilers;

Spoiler

His mentor Angeal abandons him, and then later Zack has to kill him on his own. He kinda gets a new mentor out of Sephiroth, who eventually goes nuts and also trys to kill him. He stops him as well but in the effort, gets taken hostage by the very organization he worked, and risked his life, for and used a guinea pig in Hojo's experiments. He escapes with Cloud who is comatose the whole time and gets hunted down relentlessly by Shinra. They send his own friends after him. After he escapes, time and time again, he manages to save the world singlehandedly where Shinra screwed up who take advantage of his fatigue to send an entire batallion after him to make sure he dies. Oh, and his girlfriend broke up with him since he just "disappeared". She was likely told he was dead and did try to reach him with the letters but that's the tragic part of that bit - he can't blame her since she tried. He never saw his parents again either.

At least Cloud lives and is recognised as a hero in the end. Whether Zack was considered a failed experiment or a criminal is uncertain but in any case he is forgotten.

 

[Zhukov]

Jack, Mass Effect 2.

Like I said, a wee bit overboard. Although half the reason I like her character was that instead of becoming a "broken bird", her response to all that was to shave her head, get tattooed from head to toe and tell the galaxy to bring it the fuck on.

Her entire M-O just screams broken bird though; "I have a very obvious tragic past which I hide behind a tough ***** exterior, but nothing your masculine but sensitive disposition can't cure." Everything about her felt so blatently designed for ManShep to crack open and reveal the fragile girl inside who just wants to be loved.

I'm not sure that the typical broken bird habitually cracks skulls against walls with her mind, but yeah, you definitely have a point.

I'm ambivalent about her romance thing. One the one I thought it was kind of sweet and it was interesting to learn more about her, but on the other hand there was a definite element of the mystical healing-by-penis in there. Oh, and the end scene was just plain awkward. I mean Shep, dude, hand her hanky or something for God's sake!

On the other hand, her character progression works just as well with a Femshep or a just-friends Dudeshep. Apparently a bit of trust, being needed and a chance to be part of a team without being screwed over works just as well as a masculine but sensitive disposition. I always found it satisfying to see her find her place in ME3 regardless of romantic involvement or absence thereof.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Jack, Mass Effect 2.

Like I said, a wee bit overboard. Although half the reason I like her character was that instead of becoming a "broken bird", her response to all that was to shave her head, get tattooed from head to toe and tell the galaxy to bring it the fuck on.

Her entire M-O just screams broken bird though; "I have a very obvious tragic past which I hide behind a tough ***** exterior, but nothing your masculine but sensitive disposition can't cure." Everything about her felt so blatently designed for ManShep to crack open and reveal the fragile girl inside who just wants to be loved.

I'm not sure that the typical broken bird habitually cracks skulls against walls with her mind, but yeah, you definitely have a point.

I'm ambivalent about her romance thing. One the one I thought it was kind of sweet and it was interesting to learn more about her, but on the other hand there was a definite element of the mystical healing-by-penis in there. Oh, and the end scene was just plain awkward. I mean Shep, dude, hand her hanky or something for God's sake!

On the other hand, her character progression works just as well with a Femshep or a just-friends Dudeshep. Apparently a bit of trust, being needed and a chance to be part of a team without being screwed over works just as well as a masculine but sensitive disposition. I always found it satisfying to see her find her place in ME3 regardless of romantic involvement or absence thereof.

Yeah, it does kind of pay off when you her in ME3. Where you can tell she has some major scars, but she's learned not to let it hold her back. I actually quite liked her in ME3 and was bummed out I couldn't bring her along this time. Also her design looked way better. It's amazing what a little hair can do.

 

[InaquiTheArgentinian]

There are plenty of tragic stories in games, if i would have to pick 1 i couldn't put my finger on any one(uranus), but some that really make me fell bad were, Clementine of TWD( the very first time i cry, really cried with a game),Zack Fair (ff 7 compilation), Cole Mcgrath (infamous) Max Paine, And the list goes on and on.

I really think that any good story needs a little bit of tragedy.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm gonna go either with James Sunderland or Wander from Shadow of the Colossus. Wander seems to be every bit of the classy Greek definition of tragic... acting out on some shadowy hubris, no pun intended, and for that offending the god(s?) and being punished for it. I suppose the player is the Choir to Wander's Hero. Weren't we all wary and wincy of what our hero was doing as he slayed all those colossi? Same thing with James... except we find out what he did in the end, giving the whole journey a renewed sense of gloom and tragedy.

 

[Virgilthepagan]

And the protagonists from Dark/Demon's Souls. You know why

To be honest, I think most of the boss characters in Dark Souls have more tragic stories than your own character.

"Snip"

Just a few of them there

Agreed. Just about all of them have a tragic story the game hints at. The worst of them won't even fight you unless you provoke her, and just asks you to leave her prison/home. It's hard not to feel horrible after some of these.

 

[Ashadowpie]

FFIX Princess Garnet.

she finds out that queen Brahne is destroying their neighboring friendly kingdoms for greed and power. the queen then tries to kill Garnet for her summoning powers and then Garnet finds out Brahne isnt even her actually mother because she died trying to save her child. worse even Brahne dies shortly after by the psycho maniac Kuja because it amuses him! the icing on the cake is once Garnet is crowned a queen, Kuja blows up her kingdom. soap opera enough she ends up no able to speak so she cant fight along side her friends anymore. its really really sad.


my god thats a shitty life right there.

 

[Anachronism]

The Nameless One from Planescape Torment. A guy whose good ending is an eternity in hell, and his life (well, lives) to that point hasn't been exactly better quite often?

Though all the party characters in that game could probably qualify.

Yup, it has to be the Nameless One. He can't stay dead, loses his memory every time he dies, and has gone through - and caused - a hell of a lot of suffering in his (possibly) millennia of existence. Given that the goal of the game is to die, it gives you an idea of what his life's been like. There is, after all, a reason it's called Torment.

That said, I didn't actually think the ending was that sad. Sure, he's damned, but he has been for a long time now. Given that his final actions are to pick up a mace, nod determinedly, and remember "what can change the nature of a man?" before continuing his journey, it's pretty clear that he's accepted his fate and is ready to finally atone for all the terrible things he's done. He's undeniably a tragic character, but his story ends pretty well. Or at least, as well as it could have.

The "bad ending" in the game's vision statement, which didn't make it into the game, is much sadder, if also pretty appropriate.

Spoiler

Black Isle originally planned for you to be able to let the Transcendent One kill you, causing the Nameless One to lose his memory again. The game would end with the Nameless One waking up in the Mortuary, and a sad Morte greeting him and beginning the cycle again.

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, well, given the tendency to avoid anything upbeat or just straight out heroic nowadays it's hard to really say when you have so many angst tormented emos dropping out of the trees. Nowadays having a character who has literally had everything they once loved or cared about destroyed, oftentimes horribly, and had bad things happen to them as well, is pretty much par for the course. The big differance is in how much time they spend focusing on the emo aspect of the entire thing through flashbacks and in depth explanation. In general it seems people tend to rate "most tragic backstory" with how much time and effort is spent explaining it. Since they all tend to retread the same basic stuff, it's hard to really give one character an edge over another.

I'll also say that it all comes down to the style of storytelling. To put things into perspective John Marsden pretty much retreads the same material as "Xena: Warrior Princess". Both were horrible criminals who slaughtered tons of innocent people, and were out to redeem themselves. The differance is that Xena tends to be more upbeat about it by focusing on who she is now, and actually turning the one character connected to her past into such an utter psychotic (Callisto) that it's nearly impossible to empathize with her after a while. It's something that a lot of people might not think of, but as I said, it's all about how the story(s) are told.

I suppose if I REALLY had to pick I'd have to choose "The Nameless One" from "Planescape: Torment", or maybe "Kaim" from "Lost Odyssey". The reason being that for most characters you can only really pack one lifetime of horrible crap into it, with those characters you get to multiply the eventual emo factor by hundreds or thousands.

In a literary sense (which has little to do with video games) I'd actually give the cake to Moorcock's "Champion Eternal". A guy called John Daker who was pulled accross time and space, given the whole epic hero role (magic sword, beautiful princess, nearly unbeatable fighting abillity) and sent out to save the world. He decides what he's sent to do is wrong, switches sides, misses the big picture (which was never explained to him), and winds up spending the rest of eternity battling against the concept of free will as he constantly incarnates as cheery fellows like "Elric". But this tends to go into the same basic territory as "The Nameless One" just defined a bit differantly (and arguably it was part of the inspiration FOR The Nameless One, though far from an exact parallel). The Champion Eternal is a guy who could basically meet a tormented god chained to the very bottom of the pit of eternal pain and subjected to the worst torments an angry pantheon could device looking for answers, and then get them because "wow dude, I thought I was totally F@cked until I met you, you really are cosmically screwed... just meeting someone who has it worse than me has given me the strength to carry on for another millenium or two, realizing I really don't have it all that bad... here let me help you, you poor, pathetic SOB". That's not from the stories, but just how things occasionally tended to go.

 

[Dfskelleton]

Seeing as he's been around for about 10 years, I don't think I can say anything about James Sunderland that hasn't been said already. While he's probably the most depressing, and one of my favorite characters ever, I'll go with a more recent choice that deserves a little more recognition:

Spoiler

Walker's tale is more or less a modernized take on a classical tragedy, in my eyes. He isn't really an evil character, but out of his blind desire to be a hero, he ends up becoming a monster. The part at the very end where Walker's delusions shatter and he comes to realize that everything is his fault is probably one of the most memorably tragic moments of this game generation.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Artorias the AbyssWalker from the Dark Souls DLC. Prepare to Cry Edition is more like it.

Spoiler

Protagonist wise, John Marston. He seemed so innocent, then through the course of the game you find out what he is truly fighting for, and the outcome he gets from it all.
Such an phenomenally written character. Side Note: Play. Red. Dead. Redemption... Now.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I feel kinda sorry for whole cast of Persona 3. Almost all of them had pretty tragic background. On top of that, during game they lost a team member, had to face a betrayal and after all the struggle

Spoiler

their leader, best friend and world savior dies for unknown reasons leaving them completely devastated.

I'm in clined to agree, but I'll always try to one up and say the protagonist of Persona 4 because if played the right/wrong way
he loses his little cousin.
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081220102012/megamitensei/images/7/75/NanakoDojima.jpg
she dies. the game ends as she dies, her father (a borderline alcoholic detective) is unable to cope witht he loss of never seeing his little daughter again. the fog of death and apathy is never lifted and the protagonist leaves with his head hung in shame

screw you clem, you got to grow up and have closure. and you know, live.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Wander. A deep, flawed character who struggles through to the end on a journey to bring his love back to life and pays a hefty price. Love this guy, even though he barely says a word.

But I have no idea how anyone would be able to tell anything about his character. I was going to post about Wander. I actually hated this story, but loved playing the game. Played it once and never picked it up again. Wander is a moron. Tragic, but dumb. I was strung along thinking that we'd see that he had some kind of plan, but alas...he was blinded by love.

On that note...if Wander IS Ico, then that would be wicked cool, and I might revisit that game.

 

[BartyMae]

Has anyone said Jon Irenicus and Bodhi yet? If not, them. Maybe not the most tragic, I'll grant, but to lose all that they did, all that they were because of what? Hubris? Greed? Love? I don't know, but they are tragic; you feel for them even knowing that they have to be stopped.

Irenicus AND Bodhi? Irenicus, definitely: if I recall correctly, he was tricked, (so to speak), by Bodhi into doing what he did, which eventually lead to one of the most horrible, unethical punishments I could ever think of to be inflicted upon someone: total destruction of the soul. But Bodhi? Well, sort of, I guess, if only by virtue of her punishment... I still think it's horrible you have to kill either of them, (I really wish there was a way to spare both of them: if I had had actually control over the events of the story, I would've fought my absolute best to take back my soul...but I would've...tried to help them - perhaps attempt to do what is done for Sarevok. For the audacity of the gods to do such a thing, (and for the Wall of the Faithless), I think I'm always going to have a grudge...).

 

[IllumInaTIma]

I feel kinda sorry for whole cast of Persona 3. Almost all of them had pretty tragic background. On top of that, during game they lost a team member, had to face a betrayal and after all the struggle

Spoiler

their leader, best friend and world savior dies for unknown reasons leaving them completely devastated.

I'm in clined to agree, but I'll always try to one up and say the protagonist of Persona 4 because if played the right/wrong way
he loses his little cousin.
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081220102012/megamitensei/images/7/75/NanakoDojima.jpg
she dies. the game ends as she dies, her father (a borderline alcoholic detective) is unable to cope witht he loss of never seeing his little daughter again. the fog of death and apathy is never lifted and the protagonist leaves with his head hung in shame

screw you clem, you got to grow up and have closure. and you know, live.

Well,

Spoiler

Nanako's death is a big and stinky IF, while whole shit that happens to Persona 3 cast is kinda canonical (maybe with the exception of Shinjiro's death in Female Protagonist route and revival of Chidori in FES), but yeah, just the thought of Nanako dying leaves me in tears

 

[blaize2010]

Master Chief. Now, before everyone starts flaming me for that, hear me out. True, his backstory isn't explored a massive amount in the games, but the books and comics do give a big insight, and in Halo 4 a large part of the backstory comes into play. There are also plenty of references in Halo 4 to the backstory of all the Spartan-IIs as well. SPOILERS BE HERE FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED IT, ANYONE WHO DOES CARE WILL ALREADY KNOW THEM THOUGH, BY THIS POINT...

Kidnapped aged six, forced against his will into an intense training program to turn him into what effectively amounts to a child soldier. Fighting against other humans, by the way (this was long before the Covenant turned up), he witnesses half his adopted 'family' (i.e. fellow kidnapped child soldiers) killed in horrific surgeries that would make even Dr Steinman think twice (well, maybe not) for the purpose of making the surviving kids even more powerful as soldiers. Also, bear in mind the entire project is run by the government's military arm, and overseen by a young (at this point only in her mid twenties) woman who has a reputation for being distant and mildly sociopathic, as well as being an obsessive control freak. Of the survivors, about half disappear, spirited away by the intelligence services on black ops, over the next 30 years while almost all of the others die in various missions - about 90% of those survivors die on the guys last op before the games begin, meaning as far as Master Chief knows he's the only survivor of all those kids he was raised with and trained to fight with. Oh, and his very first mission where he killed fellow human beings? One death on his team, where he was team leader. And he was only 15 years old.

Also, he has a childhood friend who he meets while fighting in New Mombasa - he can't tell her it's him because the government/military won't let him. Not to mention that although he finds he isn't the last one of his kind left after all, those who are still around are seperated from him again on further ops, and another half of them die just after he finds they're still alive. The next time he meets the woman who raised and trained him and his fellows, she's in custody for war crimes and kidnapping one of his comrades. And finally, the one constant for the past 5 years of all this, starts to slowly go more and more insane and finally 'dies' in a self-sacrifice which still fails to stop an entire city being massacred.

Yeah, given the sheer amount of pent-up PTSD here, I think John-117 is pretty damn tragic.

It does sound pretty damn sad but I'm kinda blocking out all the media that wasn't made when Bungie still owned the series.

An interesting counter point to that is he did have a family of sorts in the other Spartans and Doctor Halsey and Chief Mendez. They were his emotional support and the main reason why he stayed sane for so long.

And the fact that he spent nearly 30 years either fighting or going to the next fight brings up another point: he didn't really spend much time thinking about it. He's either in cryo or to damn busy. He doesn't have PTSD because he really didn't think about it too much and the times he does, he knows his actions are saving humanity so he doesn't feel too bad.

Oh man, I bet the instant he gets a few seconds to himself he's going to turn into a bigger, angrier Walter Sobchak

"I did not watch my buddies die face down in the muck on instillation 3 so that this little strumpet..."

 

[The Madman]

Does Calhoun from Wreck-it-Ralph count?

She was programmed with the most tragic back-story ever.

Damn, I was going to say that. Just spent five minutes on youtube trying to see if the clip of her ultra tragic backstory was on there.

So tragic.