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.