10 Beautiful Video Game Endings That Made Us Cry

The ending of Red Dead Redemption is legendary at this point. Everyone knows how it goes, everyone knows why it's brilliant. But the bit with Jack at the end catches flak from some fans for taking the wind out of the sails of what was otherwise a perfect conclusion - overlooking the fact that the Jack sequence is vital for understanding what makes Red Dead Redemption such a brilliant piece of Western nihilism.

To sum up, years after John Marston's betrayal and death at the hands of Edgar Ross, Jack Marston returns to continue the cycle of hatred by killing Edgar right back. As it turns out, for all of Edgar's self-importance about being a Big Man of the Government, that government shuffled him out the second he stopped being useful. Jack finds him fishing by a river, no longer a big fancy man with a big fancy suit and car, instead now scrounging for scraps in rags.

That's the most satisfaction you get out of this ending, however, as Jack unceremoniously kills him in an insultingly easy dual. He then walks off as we close out with a title card.

All John Marston really wanted was for his son to lead a better life than he did. Instead, his son turned out exactly like him. Nothing was learned. Nothing has changed.