10 Bleak Video Game Endings You Can't Escape From
5. It's Destroy The World Or Make It Worse - Dark Souls 3
The original Dark Souls is quite ambiguous about the true meaning of its two endings, but if you bother to look into them, it turns out it's all really bleak stuff!
The entire game, your character's goal is to fight the Lord of Cinder Gwyn and then reignite the flame that keeps the entire world alive.
However, as you progress through the story, you can eventually learn that keeping the flame alive doesn't actually reset the world back to its original state. Rather, it keeps everything and everyone inside of it slightly worse for wear and significantly more insane from the fact that they have to constantly repeat the cycle.
That's when you are given an alternative—instead of perpetuating the cycle of madness that will inevitably deteriorate the world completely, you can choose to extinguish the flame forever and usher in a new Age of Man.
In this ending, your character puts a stop to Gwyn's mad world and becomes the ruler of a new one. However, without the flame, the new era is tainted with dark influence and quickly proves to be just as miserable as its predecessor.
Even the endings in Dark Souls have that "Prepare to Die" quality to them, don't they?