Darkest moment in gaming you've played.
 

For me it's hands down a player initiated train robbery in Red Dead Redemption 2.

The gameplay mechanic in RDR2 that has loot on every dead body is partially to blame here, along with the inexplicable behavior of the NPC passengers in an otherwise exceptionally immersive game.

So RDR2 if you're not cheating can be grindy as hell to make money. One of the fastest ways is to rob the Annesburgh train as it passes into the tunnel heading west. With the train stopped in the tunnel, RDR2'S magically appearing lawmen do not function as they do out in the open, and you can rob the passengers at your leisure once you've killed the few armed guards on the train.

It's very dimly lit if the train has lighting, and pitch black if it doesn't, so the only light source is your lantern or your miners hat, which I prefer.

You then can systematically move passenger to passenger, robbing them of their money, as they sit terrified and begging for their lives.

You can get good money from this, but the aforementioned looting mechanic makes it more profitable to murder the npc after you rob them, as you will loot valuable items to be used in trinket crafting, selling for money, or used as health items.

This mechanic makes every NPC on this train that you're robbing, a liar. You ask for all the money, they say this is it, you kill them and loot as much if not more than they gave you.

So now, this train robbery has evolved into a robbery and mass murder, because you're trying to get the money you need as fast as possible.

The second element that makes this so dark is that the rest of the passengers do not run when the first passenger is robbed and murdered. They react horrified, crying out, begging for their lives, but they don't run.

They just sit and wait for what happened to the first to happen to them.

I remember it being enough that when I saw my girls were watching this, I turned the game off immediately.

I'm not a games make kids into killers type person, as I let my kids play gta 3 with the gore code on, exploding cartoony pixelated heads and giggling all day.

This though, this was actually disturbing. Moving through the dark, robbing them, hearing them beg for mercy and just blowing half their faces off with a sawed off shotgun, and slowly moving through the train looting headless corpses in the dimly lit train, and these character models are pretty detailed.

I was actually not willing to let my kids watch that gameplay.

I've played a lot of crazy things, like Manhunt, Punisher, tge "No Russian" airport slaughter in Call of Duty, none of it ever really move the needle for me to be like oh hell no, my kids shouldn't look at this.

Just something about them begging for mercy and my kids seeing the response to that being pull the trigger, and the passengers never ****ing run.


Like, that sequence could be extremely lessened in dark factor if after you murdered the person you robbed, no items were on the body, and if you did murder someone, the rest of the passengers should instantly run and try to escape the train.

Great game, but you can do some really disturbing things with it.

I'll note for anyone that's never played, the game never makes it an objective to do this. This us just something you can do to get money on your own. In fact, I think if you kill a passenger in the missions to rob trains, the mission will fail.

The airport in COD.
You could hear the blood in your footsteps.

Followed by that scene in FFVII where Cloud had to be a hooker.

Not spending enough time with my kids outdoors

Thought you were going to say Andy Reid playcalling in Madden.

No Russian

Not super dark but a weird emotional reaction in a Cyberpunk quest called "Dirty Biz."

A father and son run a ****ed up shop where they record memories of horribly tortured victims and sell them on the black market.

I decided to kill the son first. Chopped his head off with a katana for all his sins.

His dad proceeded to drop to his knees and just ****ing wail and cry shit like "My boy! You killed my boy!"

I couldn't help but feel a little bit of guilt despite knowing what an utter piece of shit monster I just disposed of.

Of course I killed the father next and walked right out, but still... what a weird emotional reaction that quest elicited.

That was immediately came to mind for me as well.

There's some pretty dark stuff in Silent Hill 2 and 3 but it's more subtle.

The evil ending of Jade Empire immediately came to mind. Jade Empire was similar to KOTOR, only set in ancient China. Throughout the game your character is aided by some sort of benevolent spirit dragon that has been damaged by the baddies. At the end, you can either restore her strength or destroy her and take all the power for yourself. I played through that game several times and only did the evil ending once. It was like killing puppies evil. I pretty much grimaced and shook my head throughout the entire sequence.

I tend to play these games as I would if it was really me doing stuff. I'll gleefully kill pirates, thieves, evil corporate types and douchebags, and happily take their shit, but when it comes to storylines that require me to pillage and murder decent, normal, non-threatening folks, I don't enjoy it, and that's kind of the point of playing these things.

There's something kind of dark in Ark Survival Ascended where you kill the mother of some dino babies and only then can you claim the babies and raise them.

You knew something was up when on the initial install you had to check the box for the violence forth coming.

Any of the execution scenes from the Manhunt games. Straight murder porn.

Spec Ops: The Line is this thread.

The ones that immediately come to mind:

-Sephiroth killing Aeris in Final Fantasy VII

-There’s this ship captain in the very first God of War who ends up being swallowed by a Hydra along with Kratos. At some point, the ship captain has clawed his way to the top and is nearly able to escape the Hydra’s mouth, if only Kratos would lend him a hand. Kratos lifts him up and dude’s all “thank the gods you came back to save me!”. Then Lratos steals the key from around his neck and just throws him back down the Hydra’s throat for no reason lol

That one definitely leaned a bit more to the comedic side just because it was so cartoonishly over the top. Still dark though.

-Killing Paarthunax. If you’ve never played Skyrim, there’s this dragon who’s a total bro. He helps you build up your dragon shouting skills and gives you guidance throughout the story. There’s this faction who wants all dragons dead and they task you with the mission to kill this dude. If you do, you end up killing an innocent bro and absorbing his soul. Pretty ****ed up.

-The Kendo Gun Shop owner’s zombie daughter. In the Resident Evil 2 Remake you run into a gun shop owner whose young daughter is clearly infected and about to turn. The little girl asks for her mommy and the dad says “I told you mommy’s asleep.. let’s go inside and I’ll put you to sleep too”.

-Finding out how the fayth sacrifice themselves to become the final aeon to defeat Sin

-Joel’s daughter’s death and waking up to the little boy having turned in the middle of the night in The Last of Us

-Anything to do with uncovering the truth about Ted Faro in Horizon: Zero Dawn. If you haven’t played this one, it’s a long ass story. To try to sum it up as quickly as possible, the world is ending after this guy Ted Faro created some machines that were corrupted and began feeding on any and all biological organisms. They were out of control and couldn’t be stopped so they crested the Zero Dawn protocol to basically restart civilization hundreds of years after everything was wiped out on the Earth’s surface. They had the greatest minds get together to preserve humanity’s science, art, etc. Ted Faro ends up sabotaging the process which leads to humanity basically having to restart civilization with zero knowledge of the previous world. He’s a huge a-hole.

Of course, the true darkest moment in a game I’ve played probably comes from the Fallout series. Pick any one. The holotapes, journals and lore in those games is some depraved shit.

I can’t think of any one in particular because the games are littered with them.

Manhunt's sound design was certainly disturbing. The weapon sounds and the yells, screams, gurgles of the guy getting merc'd, but visually both games just looked so shitty that it was impossible to take it seriously.


Soldier of Fortune, Gold Edition for the PS2 falls into this category also. Same blocky character models to shoot at, but full body dismemberment, and the most spine chilling screams possibly ever recorded for a video game.

Haha that vault that ruled that the overseer would have to sacrifice themselves to the vault every year, or the air/water would be shut off for everyone was pretty awful. Only to find out after the massive war broke out over who should be next, the last few survivors refused to sacrifice anyone, and the Vault responded with "Congratulations! You are a shining example of humanity. Your air and water won't be shut off as you were told, instead, the vault door has been unlocked. You are free to come and go as you please "
.

I must have had some shit audio setup or just not paying attention. I didn't realize that sound design was so good. Of course, I didn't really stop to smell the roses on that particular scene either.

I found that on a replay of that mission, you can actually complete it without ever firing your weapon, so I found that particularly interesting.

Sort of a "you didn't have to shoot anyone, but you pulled the trigger anyway" kind of moment.

The Last of Us when Sam and Henry went out. Yeesh.

The telltale walking dead series had plenty!

Oh, man. I totally forgot about those games.. Lee is one of my favorite video game protagonists of all time too.

Clem being around when he died was pretty dark.

It’s been a while so I don’t remember all the particulars but Kenny’s kid Duck had something tough happen as well.

/thread

No Russian is def. right up there...

White Phosphorous from Spec Ops: The Line has to near the top as well.

Darkest? You mean scariest? Or cheated?

I played in a Doom tournament, long ago with a 1200 baud modem where I was in KC and the tournament was in CA. The person started the tournament with a different map than the one we were playing and at a different level. I felt cheated because he went to all of the powerups and wiped me out.

The other was when I was playing Quake on a 56k modem vs someone playing on a T1. Wow, talk about unfair. By the time I tried to move, it was over. Deathmatch... right.

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Last of Us II, nothing happy about that game from start to finish, outside of a flashback or two. The turn that franchise made was the darkest moments in video game history for me, not just the catalyst that happens in the first hour.

I was coming to say the same thing. When they make you press square multiple times in the hospital basement is twisted. I didn't want to keep doing it but you have to in order to progress. That's the point I started second guessing Ellie.

Kenny (his dad) or you (the player), has to kill duck after he's bitten.

That’s it. Been a while since I’ve played those earlier seasons.

I did recently watch the latest season with Javi and thought it was of similar quality to the others. That’s a really good series.

Loved the first game, the leaks ruined any chance of me playing part 2.

I refuse to play as Joel's killer.

I was just about to mention Soldier of Fortune. the white phosphorous grenades melted faces off.

If I'm assuming by dark you mean made you rage, then I have a few. If it's as in pitch-black level... then I' dunno.

Lately is probably the Underworld dungeon in Age of Calamitous for Conan Exiles. The gargoyles they put in that bitch made me rage like I've never raged in my life. Pretty sure I ****ed up my mouse wheel pretty good on that one.

Otherwise, maybe Life of the Party from Thief 2. That level was so incredibly long and taxing in full stealth on hard difficulty. I want to say 3-4 hours of playtime to just go through it and do it right. One of the hardest game levels I've played to date.

Agree that No Russian on COD is a definite bitch.

Madden franchise mode is more depressing than dark. Greed really is the root of all evil so I guess it qualifies.

As an aside, imagine letting the braindead CPU call your plays. Hilariously enough, if you do select to do this on 3rd and short, it is all plays that will probably work, so the game comes nowhere near an accurate simulation of Andy Reid.

To do that it would have to just override your playcall to something completly low percentage for the situation, and at least once a game burn one of your timeouts automatically in any first and goal situation. It burns two if you're at the 1. Any close ball spots for the opposing offense will be automatically challenged in the first quarter, as well as if your defense is struggling to get stops late in a half, timeouts will automatically be taken to give the opposing offense more time to fist you with a patented Madden play where the guy breaks 5 tackles on his way to a long td.

Dark as in, I'm not sure I want any kids watching me play this, as well as anyone that might think I'm mentally disturbed for engaging in this gameplay.

The RDR2 train robbery is just straight systematic mass murder with realistic headshot effects. The pleas and cries of the passengers, as well as the lines spoken by the player character while doing this add to the situation.

It's fully explainable that this is the fastest way to make money, but if you're watching someone just move person to person, systematically robbing and blowing their heads off through several train cars of passengers, you might start to wonder if that person is all there.

Most FPS these days is pretty graphic, take your pick with those.

The Sniper Ghost Warrior series is pretty much all head-popping all the time.

GTA5 isn't exactly child material.

I can never play a low honor run with Arthur

These come to mind immediately, but surprised no one has mentioned John Marston getting shot at the end of RDR1. I think these 3 stand out above the rest.

On top of that, Arthur learning that he has TB in RDR2. Once you learn that, the rest of the game just had a feeling of inevitable doom.

They're leaning REALLY hard into that scene in particular and what's going to happen during Rebirth for Aerith.

That boat captain scene actually gets addressed during the recent Ragnarok Valhalla DLC.

AC: Valhalla had a mission where one of the results was the village leader being burned alive in a Wicker Man to ensure future crop harvests. You definitely hear him burn.

Pretty gnarly.

Yeah the latest trailer for Rebirth with the last shot being Aerith praying and a black feather coming onto the screen I'm like damnit... that's how they're going to end it.

They've teased so much that it's not going to happen this time around. So it probably is just to catch us off guard.

See, I don’t even remember this one.

That’s super ****ed up and probably wouldn’t even make the top 25 darkest Fallout moments lol

There was a side quest in one of the new GoW games that referenced the ship captain. Kratos mentioned that he was a total dick.

And, man, I still haven’t played the FF7 Remake yet. Crazy ‘cause the original FF7 might be my favorite game of all time.

Oof. Well, going to delete all that and hope you didn't read it.

Too late, bitch!

Jk, I’m not worried about it. I will still enjoy it when I play.

Dammit

I didn't find that dark. It was expected, and much to the chagrin of all the drama club reject reactors out there, crying over these scenes for views on twitch and youtube, deserved.

John Marston and Arthur Morgan were first ballot hall of fame pieces of shit people. They kidnapped, murdered people. They were thieves and outlaws.

Now because he's decided he's bored of ventilating people for their hard earned money and wants to be a farmer, I'm supposed to be sad when Ross shows up with the army and on behalf of everyone John has killed or wronged, delivers a **** you via firing squad? Nah. Dude had every bit of that shit coming.

The only thing I didn't like about John Marston dying was having to play as his son with the terrible voice actor, so I just play on a save where I don't do the boring Beechers hope faming missions. Unlimited bounties in rdr1 is sorely missed in 2.

Same deal with Arthur. This career scumbag is trying to save a few other career scumbags in his gang from answering for what they've done, so now all of a sudden it's sad when he dies? I've seen all the endings, and the high honor one where he essentially drowns in his own bodily fluids as the sun rises was him getting off easy.

I much prefer the low honor ends where he's either shot in the head or stabbed to death by Micah.

Like, just because you went out and picked flowers and helped some stranded ladies get home after their horses died while you were controlling them for a bit, it doesn't change the fact that these guys are thieves and murderers that had every ounce of horrific violence that ended them coming.

Especially the John Marston and Arthur Morgan I was playing as. Jesus that train robbery shotgun decapitation spree, I mean if someone had really done that, there's really nothing you could do to that person and feel bad about it.

LMAO Just another example of Gameplay and Story Segregation. Because yeah, the player probably has a kill count of well over a thousand by the time you get to the end but it's supposed to be an appalling event when Dutch kills a random or drowns Bronte and feeds him to the gators.

What's up with you taking this game and character so literally, when you're the one who's making the in-game decisions? This is kinda weird, bud. Arthur didn't stall the train in the dark tunnel, and shoot all those poor folks in the face.

https://media.tenor.com/_W9W9xK9wTIA...ilip-j-fry.gif

Maybe not, but he sure as hell killed half the town of Strawberry busting Micah out of jail, it's quite literally unavoidable as Micah dies pretty quickly if you're slacking off on the slaughter.


Sure, there's some extra salty antics outside of the story I got up to, but story mode Arthur is every bit a first ballot hall of fame murdering piece of shit. No getting around it. The amount of lawmen killed in the trolley station setup, and subsequent revenge kidnap of Bronte is enormous as well.

I just don't get the sadness when either of these guys get what's coming to em.

Aside from John as I said, because the voice actor for Jack is atrocious. John ceasing to be playable ruins the rest of the game.

Joel's death in The Last of Us 2

The end of The Callisto Protocol

Is the gameplay as oppressively poor as what was bitched about? I loved Dead Space and it was just so unbelievable that the guy who was behind that would create such a piece of shit as described by so many dumping on it.

I enjoyed it. And I played that right after the dead space remake.

Enjoyed both, and honestly, I thought the controls/movement was better in Callisto.

Back on the hype list then. I was pretty excited for it before I saw the review bombing.

Glen Schofield comes up with some dark twisted scary shit. Luke I said I ****ing loved Dead Space. I wanted to try it but just never had the spare money to waste if it sucked.

Only complaint I had - and minor - it was relatively short, compared to Dead Space remake.

Though I believe they have 1-2 DLCs that I havent touched yet.

Bioshock.

Golf club.

Totally forgot about "Would you kindly?'

That was pretty messed up lol.

Heart sank watching the third and final part of Alice Wake's video art project in Alan Wake 2

The Witcher 3, tricking the Hym by pretending to throw a baby into an oven.

That's a good one.

Never figured out how Cerys pulled it off, though.

The Witcher 3 during the Bloody Baron story when you have to choose between helping save his wife or not. Both choices suck and there is no good way to manage it.

Old-school wtf moments was Final Fantasy 3 (US) on SNES. Terra talks about suicide and Ceres actually attempts killing herself if you feed Cid slow fish and he dies.

**** them orphans. They're assholes and what the hell would surviving do anyway? That part of the map is ****ing miserable and if not due to a monster attack they'll probably die from lack of resources.

LMAO I guess that’s one way to look at it.

I would say that pretty much the entire story line of Far Cry 5 is rather dark. Not necessarily the individual missions, though certainly a couple of them with the brainwashing thing going on but, just the overall plot carried out in the cut scenes and then the ending, which apparently no matter which choice you make the ending is dark and depressing.


“Only you can make this world seem right…”

For real though. It's actually been a bit of a nitpick of mine for that game that Velen remains in the shape it's in even after the epilogue. You'd figure SOMEBODY would get around to trying to restore it somewhat given a bunch of branching plots of the game were folks fighting over that land.

JFK reloaded was a fun little game

The Telltale Walking Dead games had some pretty dark moments. Lee dying legitimately made me cry.

I also HATED what happened to the dog in Season 2. That.shit was messed up.

Torturing that poor Azerbaijani sonofabitch in GTA V got pretty damned dark, but I'll admit that I enjoyed it.

Yes it is. Actual shame but, the story is real good though.

This was mentioned earlier, but some of the Fallout vaults were straight up 'wtf moments' for me. Some were funny, but some were downright dark as hell. There was also a town in FO3 (I think) that turned out to be a bunch of cannibals. Similar situation in a settlement in Outer Worlds.