10 Gaming Endings That Get Worse The More You Think About It

There's a good reason why most video games have happy endings - people want to roll credits on a game with a big smile on their face, rather than being left utterly drained and disturbed at what they've just witnessed. Looking at you, The Last of Us Part II.

But sometimes a less-than-sunny ending is simply unavoidable where the dramatic integrity of a story is concerned. A bleak ending can itself be poetic and gratifying, even if it perhaps doesn't leave us feeling warm and fuzzy inside.

Then there are times where an ending may seem happy at first, but upon closer inspection is suffused with a sly grimness which makes it decidedly more complex than it first appears.

These 10 video game endings range from incredibly haunting to deceptively cheery, but each only grows more unsettling and horrifying when you've had time to stew on it and consider the wider-reaching implications.

In each case, these endings leave lots for fans to think about long after the end credits have rolled, and much of it really isn't good for the characters, the world, or really even your own psyche...

Red Dead Redemption ends with the heartbreaking demise of gunslinger protagonist John Marston, before an epilogue shifts the perspective to his young son Jack a few years later.

Jack, now greatly resembling his late father, tracks down the Bureau of Investigation officer responsible for his death, Edgar Ross, and promptly murders him.

On a superficial level it's a satisfyingly cathartic post-script to the main story, albeit one that also spells out a likely nasty, brutish, and short future for young Jack.

Though there's no denying that Jack was forced to toughen up after losing his father and then his mother, he's hardly become the calloused outlaw that John was within a mere three-year time skip.

After all, we can assume that Jack spent much of that time caring for his ailing mother rather than chewing toothpicks and shooting bottles.

It's pretty reasonable to assume that Jack, hardly cut out for this life, would come to a violent end one way or another, most likely gunned down by one of Ross' family members or associates.

That or he'd otherwise end up on the business end of a rogue's gun through sheer lack of preparation, given his father's absence in his most formative and important years.

While an Easter egg in Grand Theft Auto V - a book called "Red Dead" by "J. Marston" - suggests that Jack may have gone on to become an author, there's no guarantee that this is canon.

It's surely far more likely that Jack tragically continued down the violent path his parents tried to dissuade him from.