Darkest moment in gaming you've played.

[Wallcrawler]

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.

[kccrow]

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.

[Wallcrawler]

Originally Posted by Pasta Little Brother

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

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.

[Wallcrawler]

Originally Posted by kccrow

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.

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.

[kccrow]

Originally Posted by Wallcrawler

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.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Wallcrawler

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.

I can never play a low honor run with Arthur

[ToxSocks]

Originally Posted by Katipan

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

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

The ones that immediately come to mind:

-Sephiroth killing Aeris in Final Fantasy VII

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.

[ToxSocks]

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.

[Sassy Squatch]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

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.

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.

[Skyy God]

Originally Posted by Wallcrawler

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 "
.

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.

[Gravedigger]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

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.

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.

[Sassy Squatch]

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.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Wallcrawler

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 "
.

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

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

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.

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.

[Sassy Squatch]

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

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

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.

[Sassy Squatch]

Dammit