10 Most Powerful Game Endings

Table of Contents

• 10 Most Powerful Game Endings
• "Would you kindly...?" - BioShock
• "And if the truth is undeniable, you create your own." - Spec Ops: The Line
• "Keep your hair short" – The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series - Season One
• "The price you pay may be heavy indeed" - Shadow of the Colossus
• You don't send a man to do a woman's job... - Metroid
• My name is Snake, Snake... uh, wait a second... - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• "She radiated fury" - Braid
• "I held John's hand while he was drowning" - Heavy Rain
• Join me, on... whichever side of the Force! - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

"Keep your hair short" – The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series - Season One

We have seen it before in TV series - in Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, but in 2012 we've only seen their early seasons and the effect still retained its shock value. We are obviously talking about the principle called "anyone can die", commonly used in these franchises, even the audience's favorite positive characters. In video games, something like that was unthinkable. At best, the princess could wait in another castle or you just loaded another life, another saved game.

In the fifth episode, last episode, the adventure game version of the zombie apocalypse survival story - The Walking Dead - hit us like a truck full of bricks. The increasingly better narrative and addictive storyline made us bond with the two main characters during the four episodes: the heroic Lee and little Clementine. We cheered them on every step of the way, because the devs showed us a special relationship between two people, comparable to that of Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us.

And I guess we would be relieved to see an ordinary, good, cliché ending after everything that happened to them on the way. In the meantime, the creators have prepared something vastly different for us - a heart-wrenching death of the main character with an even more painful choice at the end. As if that were not enough, the whole scene is really long, taking the form of a natural, painful conversation of two people close to each other, more and more saddening with every minute. The creators finish us off with a matching song, Take Us Back, in the credits, making the finale of The Walking Dead one of the most emotional or downright depressing experiences in the history of video games.

1. More about The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series - Season One