When it comes to the zombie in the attic from The Walking Dead: Season One, I like to play it a certain way for the most impactful story arc. When Kenny's son Duck turns, I spare Kenny the trauma of having to put down his own son and do that service for my friend. But later when we come across the boy in the attic, I support Kenny and encourage him to mercy kill that boy as a way to work through losing Duck. Then I wipe away the tears as I get ready to bury a kid in his dog's grave... (Video games are fun!)
The first time I played through TWD I was antagonistic towards Kenny because I didn't like his personality and felt like he was going to get everyone killed (though I still spared him the heartbreak of finishing off Duck). When revisiting the games after playing the whole series, I protect Kenny at all costs.
I'd actually argue any zombie from Dying Light and Dying Light 2 as the virus is only a form of rabies so the person is still inside the zombie, we even see when Crane is about to turn that zombies see the humans as the threat due to hallucinating and paranoia, although it's even worse for Screamers as they're turned children
Hanbei the undying in Sekiro man. The guy was literally your sparring bro and offered himself as a punching bag to "kill" him over and over because he would rise again. At the end it's relief for him because he can finally rest as soon as you get hold of the mortal blade to kill him terminally on behalf of his own wish . But I missed him dearly once he was gone.
The main reason why I loved Telltale's The Walking Dead is how it doesn't pull punches at all like many other modern games under the excuse of "It's not nearly as bad as you may think" You come across many tragic situations where the right choice is always the most difficult part to do, especially whenever it comes to the infected or already turned. In many cases its easier to just leave, but the right choice is to get your hands dirty no matter how much it mentality hurts to do.
Not gonna lie, I never should have played the game while going through Post partum depression. Once I got to the kid... I stopped. I killed him with the wrench and was like "I'm Done. Next checkpoint, I'm done for good." I could go back now and finish it, but... at the time, I was just all sorts of fucked to do it.
I've always felt bad for the first DOOM 3 zombie you kill. The guy tried so hard to stop them from ripping a hole open to hell but by then the administrator was already contacted by the forces of hell and he was all on board for sending the entire mars base to hell with him. RIP Chen, you tried man... I'm sorry for having to shoot you.
@@Ahrpigi You knew the game was going to be good right from that moment. Not really a good Doom game, granted, since it was a huge wrench in the formula, but nonetheless a great game taken by itself.
@@ledumpsterfire6474 it's a much slower, spookier game than Doom 1 & 2, but I liked that. Playing alone in the dark with headphones was a great time. Plus, in 2016 when the Slayer starts taking them apart with his bare hands, it feels that much cooler after experiencing a regular guy alone in the dark against the demons.
Honestly I felt having to kill Jade in Dying Light hit much harder than the scene with her brother. After everything she went through, even just since you showed up on the scene. Not to mention her character was infinitely more likable.
Rahim only had himself to blame. He was an idiot who didn't listen and got himself killed. So of course even if you like him, it's not so depressing to kill his zombie self. His sister on the other hand, did things to the best of her abilities, and only turned into a zombie so she can save you to begin with. 100% more tragic
I didn't feel bad for either of them. Rahim ran recklessly to his death and gave us a armed bomb. And Jade is the one who got the bombs with us(granted to keep it out of the hands of Kadir) along with running off instead of staying around to talk about this knowing fully that it was everyone's fault in keeping the bombs around an secured from Rahim. With top priority to get the doctor back from Kadir that literally happened just seconds later when she ran from the conversation about her brother being dead. In which she just avoids us all the way to when we find her, nearly about to turn.
Lisa actually survived that fall. later in The Umbrella Chronicles you have to fight her several times as Wesker. She finally died when the Mansion explodes while she was buried under a chandelier after your last battle with her
Myla messed me up dude. I would ALWAYS stop by her after every big event cause she said she loved hanging out. In my first playthrough I hate that I had to kill her. I know it's for the best though I wouldn't want her living that way. She deserved better.
10:15 I remember getting to this section after meeting with her a few times. When the enemy came close, I just assumed they replaced the regular NPC... But when I landed the final blow and heard that death shout... I froze. I froze and couldn't move for 2 straight minutes. I then saved, turned my game off and tried not to think about the virtual bug friend I had to put down and proceeded to sob
@@vault29a Ah yes the "... how much longer... KILL IT... how much longer... DANGEROUS... how much longer... KILL IT... how much longer... KILL THE EMPTY ONE... ...how much longer... must I dig...?"
It’s also possible to save her during the series, basically kill the minimum amount of bosses then kill the hollow knight boss, and she won’t get infected.
Actually Umbrella Chronicles shows us that Lisa survived the fall in to the pit and attacks a resurrected Wesker as he escapes the mansion. Wesker ends up trapping Lisa under a chandelier whilst he escapes and she presumably dies when the mansion explodes
I think every Hollow Knight fan, upon seeing it in the spoiler list, knew where it was going, and was not happy about it. Honestly Broken Vessel is the one that gets me. It's literally your sibling, after all. It reaching out always hurts a little.
What about Leandra, Hawke's mom in Dragon Age 2? You're investigating the murder and mutilation of a number of women, only for your mother to fall victim too. The next time you see her, she's a shambling thing pieced together by a blood mage and only truly dies after you reunite with her. Very sad.
Leandra's death always hurt me so much. She wasn't the perfect mother, but you can tell that she honestly tried her best to do what she could for her surviving child(ren) depending on your choices. I've replayed DA2 way too many times and her death will always be one of most horrific ones. It just shows how strong Hawke is to continue living after that. I'm honestly not sure if I could ever sleep after that. The nightmares alone would be horrible.
@@Philliwolf5 That's basically the story of DA2. It just proves that you can try your hardest to do good, you can make the best decisions, help as many people as possible, and things can still go to hell in minutes. DA2 may not be a fan favorite when it comes to gameplay, but it's one that keeps me coming back for it's storyline and characters.
9:47 It’s not coming back a few times- it’s based on progression. She gets partly infected when you get desolate dive and fully when you get crystal heart. I don’t know when she remembers the words- mothwing cloak?
If you beat the game without getting Crystal Heart, Myla never turns... So you can sorta save her. Or if you kill The Radiance without killing her infected form, she should revert to normal after as well, we just don't get to see that happen. I tried to do a run that saves as many people as possible... Like, if you kill the Traitor Lord before saving Cloth, she goes back to Dirtmouth instead. If you never talk to Tiso, he never leaves Dirtmouth. I managed to get the Monarch Wings without Crystal Heart, but needed Isma's Tear to get to Monomon, and I didn't manage to do that. It's possible to do... It's super hard though.
If you play the Dalish elf origin in Dragon Age: Origins, the friend you spent the first part of the game with comes back as a thrall when you’re ambushed at camp after completing the Temple of Sacred Ashes (I think). He says he’s tormented, he doesn’t want to hurt you, but he can’t stop himself and then attacks you forcing you to kill him.
As Lara stands there waiting for the giant-kin zombie to rise up and roar at her, poised to shoot it in the face, I wonder to myself "What exactly is she waiting for?" Does she think things are going to get better on their own?
Well it's chained. It looks to me, someone who hasn't played the game so bare with me, like she was hoping the giant wouldn't be a problem and she wouldn't need to waste ammo.
In the first few minutes of the original Dark Souls the player meets Oscar of Astora who helps your character the chosen undead escape their cell in the undead asylum. Later he's found seriously wounded, but before he succumbs to his wounds he gives you your estus flasks and tasks you with finding both bells of awakening. Later in the game when the chosen undead returns to the undead asylum Oscar has turned hollow and tries to kill the chosen undead.
Myla's is even worse when you hit her with the Dream Nail, begging with the infection, the voice in her head to stop digging, only for it to respond with *⁕KILL... KILL IT... KILL THE PALE ONE!!!⁕*
@@Gentleman_Orangethe player character is an offspring of a character known as the Pale King, sworn nemesis to the thing controlling the zombie bugs. So that’s why.
honestly the "zombified stalkers" from the s.t.a.l.k.e.r. series are the saddest.. yes they shoot at you on sight with surpring accuracy, but when you translate their slavic mumblings, they're actually saying really tragic things. "i just want to go home" "my sweet child, daddy will be home soon". really breaks your heart with every bullet you put into them. they didnt ask to have their brains fried and be left as empty husks. tragic.
Darkest Dungeon 2 Gaunts (aka zombies) are common people who got so sad with the coming of the apocalypse they turned into zombies. The worst is the lumberjack, who keeps using abilities like Carve the Toy and Protect the Child, implying he turned zombie by losing his child during the apocalypse.
Not sure if Darkspawn ghouls from Dragon Age count, but the shriek encounter in Origins hits so much different when you're a Dalish elf and you have to mercy kill your childhood bestie slash potential love interest Tamlen because he's gone ghoul. Gets me every time.
Not quite as sad, but still terrifying is the Broodmother encounter, built up by finding out that a Dwarven expedition basically 'sold' most of its people to Darkspawn to distract them and one woman was selected and essentially tortured and fed the remains of her friends and family until the Taint transformed her.
I think there's... one... tragic zombie kill in Telltale's Walking Dead that I'd rate as much worse than the starved little boy. Because at least the little boy was a stranger and he was put down by an adult who was emotionally prepared to do so.
FFXIV: Tam Tara deepcroft hard. You end up fighting the reanimated severed head of a tank who died after his healer couldn't save him. That healer went mad and tried to bring him back to life by sacrificing the party members who blamed her. It's a tragic story that you watched unfold as you played the main story - that party was outside the first dungeon you went into, and you can find them later on after the tank died.
Additionally, the healer was in love with the tank and he only ever treated her like garbage. So now she can marry his zombified head and he will never talk back at her 😊😊😊😢
Ah yes, Edda. And she's then put to work in the Palace of the Dead. The Palace of the Dead is rough in general, actually. A lot of the later levels feature dead NPCs from both 1.0 and ARR, including those Livia's team slaughtered in the Waking Sands.
Two more examples, this time from the Borderlands series: First it's Hank Reiss, Wereskag, from the first Borderlands's Dr. Ned DLC. At the beginning of the DLC you collect five audio logs where it details how Hank became a wereskag: he worked on the Jakobs Cove lumber camp, until one day the titular big bad began giving him and his coworkers a "vitamin". Then the dead rose from their tombs and Hank volunteered to be test subject of an antidote. Far from healing him, the antidote turned him into a wereskag. The Vault Hunters find him halfway through the DLC. As a boss. The other is Cassius Leclemaine in Borderlands 2's DLC "Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary". In the DLC, Commander Hector and his army began spreading spores throughout all of Pandora, turning people into zombie-like mutants. Unfortunately, it was Cassius himself who developed the original spores and got betrayed by Hector. You find audio logs detailing how things came as they did in one of the final levels, and when you finally reach Cassius... He mutates into one of these plant-like beings. He's the last boss to fight before Hector. For the record, Cassius originated from a spinoff, Tales from the Borderlands, which was also developed by Telltale Games, who did the The Walking Dead adventure game.
Lollipop Chainsaw makes it a point to tell you there's no way back and afaik you've no meaningful connection with the zombos, so at least that's one 100% guilt-free game. I think you guys mentioned that in the old video.
"FRIENDS" in big air quotes for that Doom Revanent one, remember you can frequently just come across the Demons openly trying to murder each other without any hesitation. The Demons don't care one iota about each other, they just want to kill.
Honorable mentions: Edward Dewey in Resident Evil 0, Forest Speyer in Resident Evil 1(Director's Cut Advanced Mode and the remake), Brad Vickers and Marvin Branagh in Resident Evil 2, and Steve's father in Resident Evil: Code - Veronica. Ori and the Will of the Wisps has two: Shriek, a mutant owl orphaned since birth due to the Decay and shunned by the rest of her kind, leaving her to embrace the darkness, and Kwolok when he gets possessed by the Foul Presence/Stink Spirit and you are forced to fight him, resulting in his death. Silent Hill has Cybil meet this fate if you don't figure out how to save her with the Aglaophotis, as well as Cheryl/Alessa herself in the bad ending, which you get if you didn't find the second Aglaophotis vial in the motel.
Brad Vickers, aka Chicken Heart, is the reason Marvin is infected in the first place. And he also REGULARLY abandons Alpha team, which lead to his nickname.
I think one underrated one for "tragic zombies" is Black Mesa. Black Mesa being a remake of Half Life, improved a lot of things, including the story and characters. The second chapter Anomalous Materials is a great example of that. quoting one of the scientists, the lab is abuzz with excitement! It feels so lively, and the guards and scientists are so charming. There are many interesting witty scenes to see play out or be a part of, and interesting people to listen to. But, for anyone who's played Half Life and/or Black Mesa, you know what happens. The experiment goes wrong, and you have to traverse back through the lab, encountering the majority of your former colleagues who you just talked to and passed by dead or dying, a large portion of them that were turned into headcrab zombies, you even witness a headcrab latching onto someone, unable to help them. Imo it feels pretty sad to go back through it especially in black mesa, instead of them all just being rando security guards and scientists they all have character, and Black Mesa set's up their NPC's so that they can be memorable and recognizable on your trip back.
I loved the Walking Dead as an experience. Some of the best characters I ever interacted with and some really memorable moments. For the people that only played the first season for various reasons; you've missed out! The first season is probably the best one out there, but I would really recommend people to give the second season a try at least for some more moments you won't ever forget about. Don't be afraid to feel sad about a game sometimes; I take it any day over most games that won't make you feel anything.
Speaking purely for myself, those games don't feel like games, they feel like a choose your own adventure book where all the choices lead to basically the same place. It's depressing and feels like a waste of time.
@@levilandes1719 It's not a great game yes. It's generally why Telltale went out of business. But I would still say the quality of the story and characters is very high if you're willing to consider it to be an interactive movie.
@@FCGroningen1987 Hey, I'm happy people can enjoy them, I just couldn't get behind it. I feel like the real problem was feeling like choices were ultimately meaningless, but that's just my perspective, to each his own.
The survivor mechanics in State Of Decay 2 means that if the character you're playing as gets got then they're almost certain to turn. And if you want their stuff back, well... you better get hunting.
That was such a sleeper hit for me. I just wish the multi-player had more to it! I wanted to build a base with my friend, not just have them replace an ai companion and not get to do anything
How about Oliver Collins from Code Vein? Technically, all characters in Code Vein are already undead (having been brought back to life through a parasite), but there's another stage of the parasite's infection where the parasite spreads throughout the entire body and destroys most cognitive functions. This is known as "Frenzy" and a revenant who completely frenzies becomes one of the Lost. Oliver specifically gets his mask damaged when guiding you through the tutorial section of the game, taking the blow from an unexpected frenzied revenant. Once you finish that section, he becomes the tutorial boss, demonstrating his frenzy status.
Maybe it's just me but I've always felt bad for Calder from dead rising 4 now he's no good guy sure, but when you find out he's in this state of constant pain and anguish after getting stung a million times by zombie bees does make me feel bad for them
Jasper Gunns - House of the Dead: Overkill. The guy just wanted to save his sister. He turned himself into a monster for power and lost control of himself.
The bicycle zombie from the Ep1 of the TWD has a tragic back story too. She sacrificed herself to save her kids. She was eaten in half. Rick going back and killing her was a mercy.
I felt so bad about having to do Jade in, I screenshotted the moment she lunges at you with your hands up. it makes regular appearances in my desktop background carousel
I felt like shit playing through the walking dead game, first you lose duck and then you basicly need to kill another zombie who looks just like him. Truly heartbreaking
They're not exactly tragic, but I do feel bad when I got the ghoulfriends in the Bloodborne DLC to follow me a la Luke and then ended up killing them when they got in the way of the actually aggressive enemies. I'm still fighting Laurence and every boss run to him I make sure to sprint past them so they don't follow me up the stairs to meet the rolling ball of fiery death.
@@vivekkparashar They're just about the only enemies in the game that you can walk up to and they won't do a thing, but then they follow you around shying away a bit if you turn to see them.
@@SolaScientia though not a zombie but Gascoigne's daughter is pretty pitiful as well , specially if we tell her to wait at Chapel and not the clinic ...
I feel like the majority of the side missions (if you can call it that) in TLOU and TLOU2 could be made into a whole list. Majority of the ‘infected’ have backstories you can piece together by picking up notes. Pretty sad
I know it's technically not a zombie but in the game "Half Minute Hero" You meet a girl named Sasha near the end of the game. After going on a sorta of a date, she admitted to being a monster and was only there to distract you and told you how to lift the spell but promises to still be friends. When you had to fight the monsters in the village, all the monster attacks you except one...
In the game when Lee heard the name his immediate question was "Dodging or quacking?" Kenny responded with "Quacking!" Then Duck went "Daaaaaaad!" Which Kenny said "See?"
8:37 I personally choose to believe that you can actually save Myla, though you'll never get to see it because it involves sacrificing yourself to defeat The Radiance, since Myla had only JUST fallen to the infection, there's a chance that when the infection goes away she's still sound of mind enough to recover her sanity
Not really a zombie, but kinda zombified, Mark Meltzer in Bioshock 2. I didn't play the browser game thing, only knew him in the audiologs. When I see his name on the big daddy I just killed I was like: "omg, what I've just done?" Good thing I was doing a good guy playthrough and saved his little girl.
In Zombie Army 4 during the the 1st stage of the Venice level, you can find 2 zombies having a romantic spaghetti dinner date with the words zombie love etched into the wall behind them. Never had the heart to shoot them
In TWD the one that stuck out to me IN TRUTH was episode 4 at the every end where it's ACTUALLY "RJ" whom if you've played the series a specific way had to shoot his friend to save everyone. Another boy about his own age. An then speaks aloud an alone about it. Almost like RJs deceased friend could still hear him. Before giving you the option of putting him out fully an ending his misery. An I felt kinda guilty about ending Raheim an then NOT being able to save his sister later either. Even IF dude deliberately sent me away so he'd be alone an not a threat to the cause when he died
@@dlord96301 an think your either confused OR talking to someone else cuz I've played THAT scenario an TWD the mobile (mostly) series featuring Lee starting out an then Clementine the other 3/4ths of the time is what I'm talking about.. which IS in that series as I've played both. An there's not even a little kid IN Dying Light one
@@robertagu5533 wait do you mean AJ? because RJ is a character that only exists in the show, AJ is Alvin and Rebeccas kid who clem takes care of after there deaths
@@dlord96301 oh okay, yeah that was it. Typo an slight confusion but yeah, no kids as major characters in "...Light" but honestly it only bout Led in that one only about half of Ep 1 of the game. Which is ALSO available for Xbox 1 an on live too
Lisa doesn't die from the fall. She runs into Wesker after he wakes up after getting mauled by the Tyrant as seen in the Umbrella Chronicles game. I would expect Andy to know that being the resident, uh, Resident Evil fan of OX.
My list would just be a play by play of every Zombomb in Battle for Neighborville, mostly because they die at the hands of their own zombie friends. Just watching Gossimp Gill, Cookies, or the specops team at Preserve Pastures banter makes me feel bad for escorting them to their own undeaths.
