Most video games have started veering away from the classic good-beats-evil story that had populated the industry for so long. The audience for video games has evolved quite a bit, and it only makes sense that the stories now need to target older people as well. As a result, games started sporting darker aesthetics and edgier stories, with many players loving the maturity brought to the table by certain titles.

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However, people might argue that certain games go too far in their effort to make their games as bleak and sad as possible. This reaches a point where certain players simply cannot enjoy any good endings of their own, and are forced to watch all of their beloved characters go down a dark path with no hope of ever securing a happy ending of their own. Here are some titles where almost no character gets a happy ending.

10 Dark Souls

dark souls 3 knight

Miyazaki's patented brand of storytelling is present throughout Dark Souls for everyone to see. Almost all portions of the lore are pretty well-hidden and not of it is particularly happy either.

The fact that the final boss' theme is so tragic shows just how sad the fate of the world's denizens is. Even characters that players encounter in the game have to go through their own tragedies, showing just how futile living in the world of Dark Souls really is.

9 Bloodborne

Bloodborne - The Doll Holding The Hunter After They've Turned Into Kin

Bloodborne is arguably the greatest game Miyazaki has ever made. The haunting Victorian aesthetic coupled with the encroaching Lovecraftian themes makes this game quite riveting indeed.

Suffice to say, almost no one in this game gets away without going completely insane after staying in this plague-stricken world for too long. The three different endings that players can achieve are all pretty cryptic, and none of them elicit any feelings of happiness given the subtext of the world.

8 Oxenfree

Oxenfree

Oxenfree's time-bending narrative is absolutely riveting the first time around, exploring the story of Alex and her friends as they decide to explore the mysterious Edwards Island. The plot starts out simple before branching out into something truly breathtaking.

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Oxenfree's strength lies in the depth of its characters and the engaging story they tell along the way. Unfortunately, a playthrough of the game reveals that the teenagers are caught in a time loop with no escape unless players decide to go through a round of New Game+ instead.

7 Limbo

Limbo Game Spider Boss

Limbo is a truly captivating title, serving as an atmospheric side-scroller with simple yet engaging gameplay. Most people would want to mess around as little as possible simply because of how visceral the deaths of the main character are.

The ending of the game is left open-ended on purpose, and none of the conclusions are joyful in any way. Most people agree that the boy and his sister are dead, with the former making his way through hell and reliving the abuse he endured as a child.

6 Inside

Inside - title art

After the release of Limbo, Playdead was hard at work developing a game that would capture the feelings of Limbo while also modernizing its mechanics. The end result was a game titled Inside.

What starts out as a story of a young boy trying to escape the authorities turns into a mind-bending tale of control, with the "boy" perhaps not even being sentient in the first place. The game has both a main and alternate ending that are pretty cryptic and make it clear that the world and its characters are in a pretty bad state.

5 Spec Ops: The Line

Spec Ops: The LIne

Spec Ops: The Line subverts expectations brilliantly, initially making players believe that this was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill shooter. However, it's only when players explore the intricacies of the story that the truth is brought to light.

Spec Ops: The Line serves as a great commentary on the desensitization of violence and how players cope with their trauma. Walker finds it better to just blame an invisible force for everything instead of taking accountability for his actions, with every ending making it clear that neither he nor his squad will enjoy a happy ending.

4 Max Payne

max payne bullet time

The first Max Payne starts out on an incredibly bleak note, detailing the moment when Max came home only to find his wife and child murdered. This leads the video game cop down a path of vengeance where he's hunted by everyone from the cops to the local mob.

Even though Max clears his name in the end, it's obvious that his fate will be anything but happy. The death of his family still leans heavily on him, and most players will have already noticed how hopelessly addicted he is to painkillers now too.

3 Dead Space

Dead Space Remake Isaac Firing

Most horror games shy away from having happy endings to maintain the integrity of their atmosphere. Such is the case with Dead Space, where the conclusion is pretty final but feels rather hollow given how much Isaac Clarke has lost over the course of his journey.

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The voice of his girlfriend turns out to be a hoax, with her actually having been dead long before the game's events ever began. On top of all this, the game ends with a vision of Isaac hallucinating his dead girlfriend, who then moves to strike him.

2 System Shock 2

System Shock 2

The System Shock series is one of the most underrated sci-fi series around. With the first game getting a modern remake, it's only a given that many players will be stoked to get into this series either as newcomers or long-time fans.

However, System Shock is another game in which the ending is anything but happy. Pretty much everyone in the Von Braun is dead, and SHODAN still lives and is infecting humans even now.

1 Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 Cityscape

Cyberpunk 2077 features the patented brand of emotional storytelling that CD Projekt Red is so famous for. Despite its turbulent development period, the game is in a pretty stable state right now and is very much worth the time of most players.

Players who invest a ton of time into V and the other side characters will definitely be bummed by the many endings that Cyberpunk 2077 has to offer. Regardless of what options a player takes, V will eventually die if he goes back to his own body, with the only solution for his body to stay alive is by placing Johnny into the biochip instead. So, players can either spend the limited time they have with the people they love or let V enter cyberspace while Johnny takes hold of his body. Either way, both outcomes are pretty saddening in their own right.

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