10 Most Tragic Characters In Horror Games

Cult classic survival horror epic Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is largely remembered for two things: it's ingenious sanity meter and the sanity effects that befall the player if it fell too low, and its brilliant time-hopping narrative. Granted, those are three things really, but we’re just too sad about Anthony’s fate to be picky about that.

Protagonist Alex Roivas discovers the Tome of Eternal Darkness in her murdered grandfather’s mansion. The book tells the story of the select few from across the centuries who have battled the encroaching darkness. One chapter, featuring Anthony, takes place in the year 814 AD. Anthony is a messenger who is given a vital missive for the Emperor Charlemagne, which turns out to be a magical curse that was intended to kill him. The suspicious Anthony opens the package and is afflicted by the curse in his stead.

The player then searches through Oublié Cathedral as Anthony, steadily decomposing as a result of the magic. He battles undead horrors and Lovecraftian nightmares as he does so, despite the fact that he’s scarcely able to walk later into his chapter. He succumbs as he finds Charlemagne deep in the cathedral, already dead. 

His harrowing ordeal all for nothing, Anthony is forced to rise again in a later chapter, where the player must fight the tormented messenger as the monk Paul Luther.