10 Most Tragic Characters In Horror Games

Players of the first game in the series would be forgiven for simply considering the Highwayman to be a violent rogue. He’s one of the best damage-dealing Heroes, eschewing any supportive skills for the ability to deal a lot of both ranged and melee damage with his pistol and knife.

Here, there’s only one of each class, making them individual characters rather than simple archetypes. They also have backstories that players are gradually introduced to chapter by chapter as they visit Shrines of Reflection. Being the macabre series Darkest Dungeon is, everybody’s story is tragic, but the poor Highwayman’s may be the worst of all. 

It begins with him escaping prison, but seemingly resolving to put his criminal past behind him. Hiding from the guards, he’s forced to (barely) survive on rats beneath the city streets. In this sorry state, he’s coerced, ill and starving, into turning back to crime and robbing a stagecoach, offered a handsome prize for doing so. The player takes control of him during the battle with the guards and the stagecoach itself. On approaching the coach afterwards, he discovers that a child and its mother were killed by stray shots during the attack. Specifically, his shots. 

“He felt the cold chains of remorse tighten around his heart,” the story’s narrator tells us. “Guilt was a pursuer he could never outrun, a prison he could never escape.”

In a twisted world of Lovecraftian horrors, the Highwayman’s tragedy is all too human, all too real.