If we’ve already told you about the hardest video games of all time, we haven’t yet mentioned those that play with another kind of difficulty: the permanent death of the characters. It’s not really the most complex or the most punishing, it’s the ones where everyone can caner at one time or another, which brings a particular tension if you want to go to the end of the adventure, or which completely cancels the end of the adventure since everyone is dead.
1. Mass Effect 2 (and incidentally Mass Effect 3)
Mass Effect 2 remains a completely cult game and its latest mission left its mark on many players. And for good reason, all your fellow travelers with whom you bonded during the first two games can completely die because of your choices, which leaves you with a tear in your eye in front of the end credits, making you realize that even in games you make shitty choices. You are solely responsible.
2. Persona 4
One of my dear colleagues has already told you about the great series of Persona games and it enters this top also with Persona 4. The game being in real time you won’t have time to save everyone to put it simply, and if you lose too much time before finishing a dungeon you will have the bad ending, the famous “fog ending” in which everyone world is dying, but like really the whole planet.
3. Detroit : Become Human
I study them Quantic Dream knows how to do with narrative games where the characters evolve while being able to die quite easily. Detroit : Become Human makes you control three androids in a futuristic world where the border between humanity and robots is increasingly thin, your choices influence your survival and you understand it as the story progresses: it is entirely possible to not reaching the end of the adventure and dying before. A little gem.
4. Fallout : New Vegas
Aaaah Fallout, cities in ruins, polluted air, mutants trying to butt you at every corner and multiple visits to fallout shelters. Whether Fallout 3 had a way to warn you when you had killed someone too important, New Vegas leaves you completely free. You can kill the most important people in the game at your leisure without necessarily realizing the fallout, like never being able to reach the end because you killed too many people.
5. Until Dawn
What’s better than a good old video game slasher? Here, you play a gang of young people who are going to spend a weekend in the mountains and have to face several very serious threats. Obviously, the eight characters can die quite violently with each of your bad choices, which is very pleasant for lovers of films of the genre. Creepy, addictive and fucking stressful, a little smack just the way we like them with a multitude of endings to try.
6. Any game from the “Fire Emblem” saga
Addressing the topic of permadeath in video games without talking about Fire Emblem it’s like talking about French gastronomy without addressing cheese, it would be indecent, insulting and unwelcome. You control several characters, but if one of them dies, it’s over for him, you will have to keep moving forward without him, even if he was super important. Punitive? Certainly. Does it make you want to start over and add interesting replayability? Totally.
7. “From Software” games
We were telling you about the latest game from the Elden Ring studio not so long ago, and if there’s something quite interesting with the majority of games from this studio, it’s that you can kill everyone, even the quest givers, sometimes (often) by mistake. Happened to me in the good old days Demon’s Soul when a friendly NPC was helping me in combat and I inadvertently stabbed him with my sword, he got mad and I stabbed him saying “no big deal, he’ll reappear “. But no, it was over for his little face. What a fucking game.
8. Elder’s Scroll : Morrowind
We could even put the game Skyrim from the studio since a player has already managed to kill everyone on the map. But Morrowind allowed the same kind of madness by giving the player the possibility of killing the givers of quests and important characters of the game before letting him understand that his game was no longer useful. At the same time, don’t expect another result if you screw up every character you meet for no reason.
9. La saga “Dark Pictures”
As Until Dawn or Detroit : Become Humanto the saga Dark Pictures puts you in control of five characters per game in a creepy narrative story where everyone can go bust at any moment, to our delight or frustration. Be careful, behind you, it wasn’t just a rat, but a disgruntled ghost who wanted to scratch your face with his badly cut nails.
10. The Quarry
In this game, you play a gang of nine young summer camp counselors who find themselves alone at the end of the summer to have one last big party that goes completely nuts in a slasher version. You control the nine characters and absolutely each of them can survive the horrible night or die, your choices are decisive and generally we all do the same: the bad ones.