10 Bleak Game Over Screens That Crushed You
3. Fallout & Fallout 2
When it comes down to depressing tones and unrelenting misery, few can match the Fallout franchise. Starting in 1997, it took the PC platform by storm at the time and one year later, the sequel expanded things further.
What made the first two games so engaging was their setting. Thanks to its unique blend of fifties culture and post-nuclear destruction, the series was able to reach strong popularity right out of the gate. Fallout's place in the gaming landscape isn't as strong as it was previously, but its identity in role-playing remains well known.
Fallout's unforgiving and sombre wasteland has always been one of its biggest stars. Few humans can survive the hellish wastes loaded with radiation, hostile creatures and violent factions. Yet in the first two releases from Interplay and Black Isle Studios, the atmosphere was piled on much more.
Dropping to zero health points, your character's skeletal corpse lies in the desert with the narrator highlighting a depressing end. In the case of Fallout 1, it's even worse.
Choosing to join The Master results in your character being transformed into a Super Mutant, followed up by your vault being savagely slaughtered by the monsters. It's a seriously bleak conclusion to an already downbeat world.