10 Saddest Heroic Sacrifices In Video Games

Apart from being a fun way to while away the hours, video games have a tendency to drum up a variety of emotions through dramatic storytelling and character development.

After we've spent several days running, jumping, shooting and climbing our way through hordes of angry villains, we start to grow attached to the supporting characters around us, and when they are taken away, it can be okay to feel some sadness watching them fade off-screen.

It can be even more emotional when the character's death was the only way for you to succeed.

Mission completed, onto the next level... but at a cost.

We're the heroes, after all. It should be us who take the longest and riskiest steps, but when it's characters we can't control, it can be devastating.

That's why every now and again it's good to raise a toast to those who we've played with (or as) and pay tribute to the sacrifices these characters made in service to the story. We've gasped, and we've cried, but we've also appreciated and understood the heroic sacrifices these characters have made.

The Batman Arkham games will most certainly be remembered in video game history. With evolving game play, sprawling maps and three-dimensional storytelling and writing, they were innovative stepping stones in 21st century gaming culture.

Developers Rocksteady treated the source material with such care and respect, that it's in the third instalment (fourth if you include Batman: Arkham Origins) when everything is on the line, it was fitting to see farewells and deaths treated with such sincerity.

Poison Ivy as a villain wasn't always the bank robbing kind. Instead, as a fighter for mother nature, we can't help but sympathize with her and see her as something akin to Chaotic Good, even when she was mind-controlling dudes through pheromones and smooches.

When The Scarecrow infects Gotham with a fear toxin, and Poison Ivy is discovered to be immune, Batman is forced to team up with her to and together to stop the toxin for good. In order for the plan to work, Poison Ivy uses all her life-force to disperse a cure for the toxin.

It's one of the few deaths in the game that really sticks, and holds up even after five years.