Death is commonplace in video games, but its impact and meaning can vary wildly. It can be a lesson to teach you how to get through a level. It can be a consequence, like when you have to choose to save one person or another in an RPG. Though the a medium often treats death as inconsequential, letting you rack up body counts that number into the thousands, video games still know how to make us feel a loss deeply when they want to. These are our picks for the most meaningful death scenes in games, the ones that have really stuck with us over the years. If you’re worried about spoilers, here, in order, are the games we’ll be covering:
- Brothers; A Tale of Two Sons
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Aerith from Final Fantasy VII
To this day, Aerith’s demise is still considered the quintessential video game death. The florist is a party member for a relatively short time in Final Fantasy VII, but her murder at the hands of Sephiroth is so unexpected the first time you play through Square Enix’s RPG that it almost doesn’t feel real. Back in 1997, losing a beloved party member that early on was practically unheard of. Aerith’s death was so devastating that schoolyard rumors about being able to bring her back from the dead or finding her ghost persisted for years after the fact. Sephiroth’s crime is so prominent in the canon of video game moments that it feels like the Final Fantasy VII Remake series is still struggling with what to do about it, existing in a non-committal state where Aerith is both dead and alive. But before Final Fantasy VII became a multiverse, we had to sit with the harsh reality that Aerith was gone, and we couldn’t bring her back. Her wish to stop Sephiroth persists long after her passing, though, and her impact is felt long after Cloud lays her to rest. — Kenneth Shepard
Mordin from Mass Effect 3
You could easily plug another half dozen potential ends characters can meet in Mass Effect 3 into a list of memorable video game deaths, but since we’re trying to keep this roundup as concise as possible, we had to go with Mordin Solus. The Salarian scientist can survive the end of BioWare’s science fiction trilogy, but it’s far more likely that he meets one of two ends. Mordin’s life has been defined by his scientific breakthroughs which have, by and large, caused a lot of pain. He spent much of his career ensuring the Krogan species stayed infertile after his people unleashed a sterility plague on their home planet, Tuchanka. After surviving a suicide mission in Mass Effect 2, he’s looking to atone, and when he’s able to distribute a cure on their planet, it becomes clear that it will be a one-way trip. If you’re playing a particularly shrewd version of Commander Shepard and don’t want to see the cure spread across Tuchanka, you can shoot Mordin in the back, and he’ll die crawling toward a console, unable to make up for his life’s work. However, if you choose to let him release the cure, he will boldly walk into the fire to send it into the atmosphere. If you heard him sing Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” in Mass Effect 2, he’ll sing it to himself as he types away at the keyboard. He’ll finish what he started, but he won’t finish the song. Damn you, BioWare. You know what you did. — Kenneth Shepard
Dom from Gears of War 3
I played through the original Gears of War games with my real-life brother. Each time a new entry would arrive back during the Xbox 360 days, we’d both play together through the game’s campaign via split screen. I was always Marcus. He was always Dom. We’d sometimes play through the games again, or replay favorite sections. But I was always Marcus and he was Dom.
So it made the shocking late-game scene in Gears of War 3 when Dom sacrifices himself to save his team a brutal moment. My real brother and my digital brother were doing something heroic to save us and the planet. He then yelled, “Ahh, now I’m going to be stuck playing a loser!” and ruined it. But for a bit there, it was a really hard video game death to suffer through. -Zack Zwiezen
BT from Titanfall 2
We love a big goddamn hero moment, don’t we, chat? BT-7274, the primary titan the player pilots in Titanfall 2’s campaign, has three important protocols in his programming: Link to Pilot, Uphold the Mission, and Protect the Pilot. When it becomes clear that to fulfill the third protocol, he must sacrifice himself, he does it in a badass scene that is totally befitting of him.
Respawn’s use of Titanfall 2‘s UI in this scene is pretty clever. After BT’s systems are shut down, he gradually reboots, and you’re stuck inside his core, watching the process happen on the screen. As you gradually make your way into a cannon to fire yourself into an unstable core, BT’s protocols gradually appear on screen…until all the digital noise goes away and you see Protect the Pilot in big bold letters. BT reaches inside his frame and throws you to safety as he plummets to his death. It’s brief, it’s effective, and in classic Titanfall fashion, you don’t even get a second to take a breath before you’re barrelling toward another objective. I’d say the post-credits scene that seems to imply BT’s consciousness survived undermined the whole deal, but considering Respawn seems deadset on never making another Titanfall game, it barely counts. — Kenneth Shepard
Joel from The Last of Us Part II
The Last of Us Part II is structured around the possibility that different people might feel differently about the death of Joel Miller. In the first two hours, Naughty Dog puts the main protagonist of its first post-apocalyptic survival game through one of the most violent, unrelenting deaths in video games, and then makes you act out the aftermath. It denies fans the nostalgic satisfaction of watching Ellie grow old with her father figure, and it does so in the early hours of what will go on to be a long, drawn-out video game. By the time you’ve reached the end of The Last of Us Part II, Joel’s death at the hands of Abby feels like it happened so long ago, but it’s a wound that festers throughout the entire game because Ellie refuses to bandage it up. Conversely, it can be satisfying to see Joel die, and plenty of people will argue that he deserved what he got after the events of the first Last of Us. There’s a whole other character for you to embody if that’s what you’re feeling, but The Last of Us Part II doesn’t let those players revel in what’s happened either. The sequel is a constant exercise in how even what seems like catharsis in the moment requires a heavy price, and it all begins with Joel’s death in the opening chapter. — Kenneth Shepard
Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea
Part of me gets a bit annoyed that Elizabeth dies in Bioshock Infinite’s Burial at Sea DLC, because as cool as it is to see the underwater city of Rapture again, there’s a compelling argument to be made that the expansion is a self-indulgent bit of fan service that connects two worlds it never really needed to. Elizabeth, the universe-hopping heroine from Infinite, ends up being the connective tissue between Rapture and the skybound city of Columbia, setting in motion all the events of the original 2007 game. However, Irrational Games also perfectly closed the loop by killing Elizabeth off in the very end. It was nice to believe that she got out of this terrible cycle after the end of Infinite, and now we find out that wasn’t true, actually. Is it worth it? It’s hard to say. But my god, if this was the path Irrational Games was going to take, the studio sure fucking nailed it.
As Burial at Sea gradually plays its hand, it becomes clear that Elizabeth, despite having once been an almost omnipotent being in this multiverse, has lost all her powers and won’t be able to stop what’s coming. Rapture will descend into chaos, and Atlas will set the events of the first Bioshock in motion. However, because she once saw all the possibilities, she was able to open a door for someone to eventually save the Little Sisters spread across the remnants of the broken city. All it took was her life. Whether or not it was necessary to take Elizabeth off the board is totally debatable, but once you buy into its premise, Burial at Sea closes the loop beautifully. — Kenneth Shepard
John Marston from Red Dead Redemption
Red Dead Redemption is a game about…well, redemption. It’s in the title. And Rockstar’s open-world western spends most of its duration forcing protagonist John Marston to deal with his past when it catches up to him and threatens his family. And then, after hours and hours of missions and gunfights, you do it. You are free. John returns home to his ranch, wife, and son, and you get to live the life he fought so hard for.
But you can never really escape your past. Eventually, the government shows up with an army to kill John. After helping his family escape, John stays behind to distract them and to end things once and for all. The game gives you one last moment to go out guns blazing before John Marston is gunned down brutally. A sad ending for a man who worked so hard to overcome what he’d done and who he was.
Chloe from Life Is Strange
A lot of Life Is Strange players never saw Chloe die. Well, not permanently, at least. Max Caulfield’s punk rocker (girl)friend can meet an early end multiple times in the time-traveling adventure game. That’s the whole reason Max rewinds time so much; she’s doing her best to keep Chloe alive as the very fabric of reality seems to be conspiring against her. The constant push and pull against time itself is why Chloe’s death is so painful. You’ve spent the entire game in a non-stop tug of war with inevitability. Letting Chloe go requires inaction when you’ve spent the entire game doing everything in your power to keep her safe. When you finally make the choice to trade Chloe’s life for the rest of her hometown’s, all Max can do is rewind to the first time Chloe nearly died and cry in the corner of her school bathroom as it happens. Doing so erases everything Max and Chloe have been through in the game, but it gives her a chance to prevent all the other suffering that befell the town of Arcadia Bay. All she has to do is let go. — Kenneth Shepard
Lee from The Walking Dead
Lee is only in one of Telltale’s The Walking Dead games, but my guy is haunting the narrative for every subsequent season. He’s the protagonist protecting his surrogate daughter, Clementine, but when he gets bitten by a walker and knows he’s on borrowed time, all he can do is hope that the knowledge and wisdom he bestows upon her is enough for her to survive without him. Lee’s death in The Walking Dead is one of the few on this list involving a player character for whom you make dialogue-based decisions. Nothing you say in these final moments will change what’s happening, but they will change what Clementine remembers of you in your final moments together. Do you want to give her fatherly advice, or use what precious moments you have left to express the love you’ve grown to have for her in these few months? Lee’s last words are all Clementine will have to take with her as she tries to survive in this world. Make them count. — Kenneth Shepard
The Stygian from Sword & Sorcery
Since at least 1986’s original The Legend of Zelda, I’d thought of heroic quests as things that make you stronger. With each boss vanquished, each dungeon conquered, little Link gained an extra heart of health, becoming ever more capable and resilient. But it’s not always that way in truth, is it? Sometimes things take a toll. Sometimes our most valiant efforts exact a price.
2011’s stunning Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery is clearly riffing on Zelda in some ways, but it’s also exhilaratingly fresh, poetic, and poignant. Some of its power comes from the way its heroine, with each victory over a chapter-capping boss, becomes not one heart stronger but one heart weaker. Her triumphs don’t come for free. Her woeful errand is not one of empowerment, but one of sacrifice. And oh, how I sobbed when the end finally came, an end the Stygian must have known was coming but willingly took on her terrible task anyway, so that others might go on living in peace. What makes it so much sadder, so much more moving and cathartic, is the way that composer Jim Guthrie’s beautiful music that plays as the Stygian’s body is carried down the river isn’t sad. It’s emotionally complex; triumphant and mournful all at once, as transcendent as the Stygian’s great sacrifice itself. – Carolyn Petit
Conway in Kentucky Route Zero
He doesn’t die a dramatic on-screen death. You could even argue that what happens to Conway isn’t a literal “death” at all, I suppose. But make no mistake: There’s no saving Conway, and his fate is no less devastating for not being seen. If anything, the lingering, unresolved grief we feel as a result of the way he exits the story is more troubling than anything a clean death might have left us with.
I remember seeing some people express disappointment when the grand epic that is Kentucky Route Zero came to an end and Conway wasn’t there to share in the hard-fought possibility of a better world some of its hardscrabble characters find in the end. But this is crucial to the game’s truth. Kentucky Route Zero, perhaps the greatest game of the 21st century, is deeply concerned with how American capitalism chews people up and spits them out. Yes, some of us find comradeship in the margins. Yes, some of us come out of it okay. But not all of us. Some of us are swallowed up by despair, by economic disadvantage, by alcoholism or drug use as we seek to escape the hopelessness of our situations. I understand feeling disappointed that Conway isn’t there in the end. He deserved better. But then, so do so many of us. – Carolyn Petit
Naia in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons spends most of its duration solidifying that the two brothers the player controls need each other to survive. Both Naia and Naiee bring different skills to the table as they travel through a dark, dangerous fantasy world. When Naia, the elder brother, is killed by a spider creature, it might not even occur to you that you have to navigate the rest of the game without his skillset. The game makes you go through the agonizing process of dragging Naia’s corpse into a grave, and even then, you still have a job to do. The brothers left their home in search of the Tree of Life in hopes of healing their sick father, but only one of them will return home.
When Naiee makes it back to his village, it’s not quite as sunny as it once was. It’s raining and flooding, which poses a problem for Naiee: he used to rely on his brother to get them across bodies of water because he didn’t know how to swim. Brothers uses a unique control scheme in which the player moves both characters independently with each side of the controller. For much of the game’s final stretch, the left side that once controlled Naia does nothing. You can move the analog stick or press the triggers, and the game won’t even acknowledge it. That is, until Naiee has to perform feats his brother used to do. Naia struggles with swimming and acts of strength, but he watched his brother pull them off throughout their journey, and in order to see it through, he has to step up and do what he once relied on his brother for. And as he draws on the strength to do what his older brother once did, that thumbstick and those buttons begin working again. Years later, the trick still hits. — Kenneth Shepard
Kaede from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Death is more than just an inevitability in the Danganronpa series; it’s the lifeblood that fuels the entire franchise. The murder mystery series is predicated on you watching your friends kill each other off one by one, all in hopes of escaping the trap that Monokuma, the despair-fueled animatronic teddy bear, has laid before you. How do you continue to make death impactful when it’s all players have come to expect? Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony managed to pull this off with an exquisite twist in its first chapter.
Kaede Akamatsu, the false protagonist of the game, is portrayed as a hopeful young girl who believes in the best of humanity. When she and her friends are told that they must kill each other to leave the confines of the Ultimate Academy they’ve been locked inside, she is vehemently against it. As her drive to get all her friends out alive grows, a plan starts to hatch in her mind. If she can kill the mastermind behind this sick game, she can save everyone. In theory, right? This eventually leads to her setting a trap for the mastermind, all within the gaps of an unreliable narration that hides her true intentions from the player. However, when another student is the one who falls victim to her scheme, the entire thing starts to unravel. It’s not until you begin solving the mystery that it becomes clear what Kaede has done, and while she may have been misguided, she only had the best of intentions. Kaede’s execution as punishment for her crime is the first of many twists Danganronpa V3 has in store for the player, and as hopeful as she was, her “betrayal” of the rest of the group is a reminder that the player can trust no one in this killing game, not even themselves. — Kenneth Shepard
Noble Six from Halo: Reach
A lot of people die in Halo: Reach, a prequel to the original Halo trilogy. And that makes sense. The fall of Reach is a tragic tale in which few get out alive. The death of Noble Six at the end of Halo Reach is perhaps the hardest death because, well, it’s your own. The final section of Reach gives you limited ammo and health and tells you to fight until the end. You will die here; it’s just a question of how long you hold out. It’s a sobering conclusion to one of the best Halo games ever made. -ZZ
The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
I’m not going to even pretend to be able to effectively summarize MGS3’s story in a short blurb. Suffice to say, The Boss is perhaps the most interesting, tragic, and complicated villain in the franchise.
And when she squares off against Naked Snake, the person she trained and cared deeply about, in a field of flowers at the end of Snake Eater, it’s a gorgeous and sad conclusion. Naked Snake has to kill his mentor, despite her actions being understandable and how much he cares for and respects her. And she knows that this is going to end one of two ways: She kills a close friend and former student, or she dies at his hands. Ultimately, she is defeated in a bittersweet victory that has larger ramifications across the series and gives Big Boss his name. —ZZ
Aunt May in Marvel’s Spider-Man
I didn’t expect to cry at the end of Insomniac’s Spider-Man. The game is mostly a fun comic book adventure, with some moments of sadness sprinkled in like any good comic movie. But then, at the very end, Spider-Man is forced to choose between saving Aunt May or saving thousands of people. He knows what he’ll choose. And she knows it, too. In that moment, she gives Peter comfort and lets him in on a secret. She’s known he was Spider-Man for a long time and she’s so proud of what he’s done. I’m tearing up writing this. Damn you, Insomniac. – ZZ
Ghost in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Ghost was presented to fans ahead of Modern Warfare 2 (the original one) as the cool dude in the cool skull mask who did cool stuff. He wasn’t the main character, but more like a Han Solo figure. Someone that had skill and was badass. And then, towards the end of the game, he’s betrayed and shot dead with no warning or cool fight. He’s just shot dead in front of you and that’s that. It’s a wild moment because it upends what you expected. The stoic badass in the skull mask isn’t allowed to make it to the end. For many CoD players, it was a shocking and surprising moment that gave them a great reason to hate the bad guy. —ZZ
Eli Vance in Half-Life 2: Episode 2
After years of waiting for Half-Life 2, and then Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and then finally Episode 2, fans, myself included, were desperate for some answers and some closure. And at the very end of Episode 2, it seems like it’s finally coming. Eli Vance, a fan favorite who first appeared in the OG Half-Life and whose daughter, Alyx, had been your faithful companion through many missions, shares a secret with you. He seemingly knows about the G-Man. This was a wild revelation and his promise to tell you more lingers in the air as you play through the final moments. And then, it all goes to shit when a large alien grabs Eli Vance and kills him. The episode ends with Alyx crying and…then fans had to wait 13 years for a resolution. I won’t spoil how Half-Life: Alyx ties into this ending, but it’s very good. —ZZ
Brok from God of War: Ragnarok
It’s a shame how a family can take years to build, and only seconds to break apart. Brok’s death is uncharacteristically quick for a God of War game. The dwarven blacksmith is the only one who sees through the malevolent Odin’s ruse, as the All-Father has been disguising himself as Tyr, the Norse God of War, for most of the game. He’s been a double agent the whole time, and as Ragnarok nears its climax, Brok is the only one who catches on that his stories aren’t lining up anymore. As he berates the disguised god, Odin finally reaches the point where he has had enough of this barrage of questioning, letting the mask fall and stabbing Brok. In his final words, he tells his brother Sindri that he knows this isn’t the first time he’s died. Sindri revealed earlier in the game that he revived his brother once, and this feels like Brok telling him he has to let go this time.
The fallout of Brok’s death never quite resolves in Ragnarok. Sindri lays his brother to rest in a Viking’s funeral, but he is unable to forgive Kratos and Atreus for putting him in harm’s way. He leaves bitter and angry toward the people he once considered family. Maybe we’ll see him again in the next game, and hopefully, he’s found some peace. — Kenneth Shepard
Gustave from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
When Gustave bit the bullet in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, my immediate thought was, “Oh, that’s why voice actor Charlie Cox hasn’t been that present in the promotion of this game.” The charming gunslinger is presented as the main character for the RPG’s first act, and is at the heart of so much of the early game’s sentimentality that it seems unfathomable that he wouldn’t be joining us for the whole expedition. Misdirection is just as much a part of Clair Obscur‘s DNA as grief. Gustave’s death is a drawn-out segment, and it lasts just long enough that you’re fooled into thinking you might be able to stop it. He takes what should have been a fatal shot to the chest from a mysterious white-haired man, then the game puts you in a turn-based battle in which you can straight up just heal Gustave back to full health and survive long enough to “win” the battle, but as he bleeds out, he uses the last of his strength to protect the rest of the expedition before he’s finally put down with one final blow. Everyone leaves on the expedition prepared to never come back, but after so much carnage in the first act, losing your protagonist is a final twist of the knife. It turns out Gustave was never the hero of this story, but at least he gave his life to make sure it reached the next page. “For those who come after, right?” — Kenneth Shepard
