10 Video Game Deaths You Were Powerless To Stop

3. Sarah - The Last Of Us

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us makes the player feel the weight of every character death like few games in history, and none more so than the opening demise of Joel's young daughter Sarah.

What's truly brilliant about the game's chaotic prologue is how efficiently it makes the player empathise with Joel and informs his mission throughout the rest of the game.

In that opening 15 minutes, the player desperately scrambles to get Sarah to safety, but fails when she's accidentally shot by an enemy.

A more traditional game would've had it happen off screen or relegated it to an entirely non-interactive cutscene, but by making the player live through the horror, their own protective instinct for Ellie is immediately activated from the start of the game proper.