8 Video Game Heroes Who Doomed THEMSELVES
The Last of Us' Joel was asking for it.
Most video games follow the Hero’s Journey to the letter for good reason - players generally don’t want to spend potentially dozens of hours playing characters who’ve got nothing but a bad time waiting for them.
It’s a basic expectation that most video game heroes will eventually triumph over evil, make a better life for themselves, and hell, maybe even get the girl or guy at the end.
But sometimes developers have other plans, to offer up more nuanced and complex hero arcs which end up going a very different way from what most surely expected.
Case in point, these eight heroes all ended up suffering bleak fates which they quite soundly set themselves up for. You might even say, yes, that they doomed themselves.
Even if players were sad about the outcomes for these heroes, it doesn’t take much work to see how they led themselves to their grim end, no matter how noble their intent might’ve been.
One way or another, these characters all ensured they were taking an express train to the grave - or at least, a deeply unpleasant future…
8. Arthur Morgan - Red Dead Redemption 2
When Red Dead Redemption 2's protagonist Arthur Morgan went to reclaim a debt owed by Thomas Downes, he could've never anticipated that Downes would end up sputtering red, fiery death all over his face, right?
When Arthur pays a visit to a noncompliant Downes, he quickly loses his temper and things get violent, ending with him beating the already grim-looking Downes to a bloody pulp.
As Arthur brings Downes to his feet, the guy coughs violently, expectorating blood and mucus all over Arthur's face, much to his understandable disgust.
Yet Arthur is blissfully ignorant of the fresh hell he just inadvertently wrought upon himself in picking a fight with the wrong man - a man dying from tuberculosis.
Indeed, Downes dies before Arthur revisits his home to collect the debt, and before long Arthur himself starts hacking up a lung, having contracted the illness from him.
More to the point, given that the game takes place an entire half-century before TB was cured, Morgan has no chance of recovery, leading to his death at the end of the story.
Now in fairness, Arthur is an anti-hero at best, yet there's a profound irony that despite his violent line of work seeing him frequently dodging bullets and raised fists, it was nothing more than a defenseless guy coughing on him that ultimately confined him to his fate.