10 Most Tear-Jerking Deaths In Video Games

10. Final Fantasy VII - Aerith

It had to be here, didn't it?

Aerith's death is essentially the "Vader is Luke's dad" of videogames. Even if you've never played Final Fantasy VII, it's likely that you know that the lovable healer dies at the hands of gaming's most famous albino (and good God there's a lot of competition for that accolade).

A beneficiary of the technological advancements brought about by the PS1, the cutting-edge (for the time) CG combined with Nobuo Uematsu's iconic soundtrack to create a memory that still resonates nearly 25 years later. (Square knew exactly what they were doing when they had Sephiroth gloat "You can't save anyone" in last year's remake)

This wasn't the first time a video game had killed off a party member - it wasn't even the first Final Fantasy to perform such a trick - but FF VII's hitherto-unprecedented popularity meant that Aerith's death is the one that permeated the public conciousness.

Sephiroth's callous impalement of the sweet, kind-hearted flower girl who the player had spent the previous 20 hours befriending was a seminal moment in video game storytelling, and for that reason alone it deserves a place on this list.