Many choice-based games earned praise from fans and critics alike because of how they impact the overall story, as well as the fates of characters. However, there are some games out there that simultaneously broke the hearts of fans and critics, no matter what choices they made.
These games ranged from DRAMAtical Murder's numerous tear-jerking endings to how characters personally interacted with the player in Undertale. No matter what choices players made in these games, they were always guaranteed moments where the tissues were sorely needed and fans shared their collective grief on social media.
10 DRAMAtical Murder's Multiple Endings Will Repeatedly Break Fans' Hearts
DRAMAtical Murder is a visual novel with multiple endings; both good and bad. Some of the bad endings result in the protagonist, Aoba, dying or losing his sanity or limbs, if not both.
There are some endings that worked better for characters other than the main protagonist, but not as well for others, much to the fans' grief. The game's anime adaptation, much to the relief of some fans, gave everyone a much happier ending.
9 Undertale's Choices Affect How Characters Personally Interact With You
It's well-known in Undertale that the choices you make can affect how other characters will see and interact with you. For example, killing every enemy you come across makes NPCs in town afraid of you, and even hostile in some cases. However, if you choose to spare them in battle, other NPCs will respond more amiably to you and be friendly.
These choices led players to three endings that were entirely based on their choices: a Pacifist route where you could spare everyone, a Neutral route where the player could kill some characters, but spared others, or a Genocide route where the player could kill anyone and everyone possible. All three routes had some tearjerking parts to them, but this especially rings true in the Genocide route for players, especially if they played through Neutral or Pacifist routes beforehand.
8 Until Dawn's Deaths Choices Can Quickly Lead To Tragedy
Until Dawn was a massive tearjerker for many fans who played this game. This is due to the multiple choices the player makes that affect all the other characters. Depending on how well the decision-making goes, it's possible that every character dies or just some characters die. It's also possible that every main character survives, but it's extremely difficult to attain that goal.
However, the choices do not just guarantee whether a character lives or dies, but also affect their relationships with each other. Players can choose whether to agree or disagree during characters' arguments, for example. All of these little choices actually resulted in a larger outcome for how characters later interact with each other, and can even lock in future outcomes of death or life by the end of the game.
7 Fire Emblem: Three Houses Locks In Tearjerking Deaths Depending On What You Decide
In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the route you play through first depends on which house you teach; the Blue Lions, the Golden Deer, or the Black Eagles. Fans quickly learned that to achieve the least amount of tragic deaths of students and also gain as many support conversations as possible, one had to recruit students to their chosen house before the game's five-year time skip occurred. It's still possible for players to recruit some characters if they didn't get to them before the time skip, but it's much harder. Additionally, serving a specific house sometimes guaranteed the deaths of the leaders of other houses.
What makes playing the game more difficult is that there are also optional paralogue quests. If one doesn't complete some of these paralogues before the time skip, it's possible that the characters involved in these paralogues won't even reappear after the five-year time skip. Despite these tearjerking outcomes, players wished this game was an anime where each of the routes could be explored.
6 Dragon Age: Inquisition's Multiple Decisions Can Lead To Some Tragic Outcomes
Dragon Age: Inquisition, like the other games in the same franchise, carries many decisions that impact almost everything around you. These decisions' outcomes range from what happens in sidequests, the ultimate fate of the Inquisition, the approval of your companions and other characters, and even those who end up in various positions of power by the end of the game.
Some of these decisions are harder to make than others, and a few of them even potentially lead to the deaths of specific fan-favorite characters, much to the grief of fans and characters in the universe.
5 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's Choices Made Some Fans Cry With Its Outcomes
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has a large breadth of choices that the player makes throughout the entire game. This ranged from sidequest decisions to larger ones impacting the main storyline. The game frequently demands the players, controlling the main character Geralt, to make many morally charged decisions, and some of these decisions lead to happier outcomes than others.
Many of the sidequests, however, have endings that, no matter which decision you choose, always end up in tragic outcomes. The sheer amount of opportunities for angst made many fans' hearts break as they played this game.
4 Chrono Trigger's Decisions Lead To One Of Twelve Endings, Some Sadder Than Others
Chrono Trigger is another game that heavily relied on the player's decisions. Depending on what happened thanks to those decisions, the player could access one of twelve different endings. This was impressive at the time, considering that this game came out in the mid-1990s.
A thirteenth ending was later released, though this was exclusive to the DS, IOS/Android, and Windows versions of the game. The bad ending, as well as several of the other endings, made fans cry at what happened to each of the main characters they followed.
3 Dishonored's Routes Contain Tragedy In Their Multiple Endings
Dishonored follows a bodyguard, Corvo, who is wrongly framed for the assassination of who he was supposed to protect. The choices players made in this game, whether they be merciful or hostile, affected how other characters interacted with them later on in the game. It's similar to Undertale where the player's decisions on what Corvo does can take a very hostile, or very peaceful route, despite the different gameplay styles between both games.
Players found out that there were three endings that could happen, depending on how hostile Corvo was; High Chaos, which happens if Corvo killed almost everyone and anyone possible, Medium Chaos, where Corvo has killed people but not enough to reach the High Chaos rating, and Low Chaos, where Corvo avoided killing both enemies and civilians (animals do not count).
2 Life Is Strange's Final Decision In The Game Split The Fandom
Life Is Strange was released in a series of five episodes that players played through, with the final ending being in the fifth episode. Each episode's storyline was impacted heavily by player decisions, and this impacted the characters' fates in turn. Players found out, in the final episode, that there were two main endings; one of them involved saving Chloe, and the other meant leaving her to die.
Fans of the game were torn between these decisions. No matter what decision the players made in the end, they were guaranteed a chance to grab some tissue and watch how things played out afterward.
1 Westerado's Multiple Endings Gave Multiple Chances For Grabbing Tissues
Westerado is a game where the main player character must find out who murdered their family. It takes place in a Wild West setting, and depending on what choices the player chooses, they can unlock one of five endings.
Some endings, such as the Horde Ending, are sadder than others due to the player being required to kill almost everyone possible. Others, however, lead to happier outcomes, much to the fans' collective relief. However, the choices players can make leading up to finding the murderer made fans shed tears, regardless of what ending they got.