10 Video Games With Little Hope For Humanity

The vast majority of video games are escapism above all else, designed to help us forget our daily troubles and kick back by diving into a world quite unlike our own.

But games come in all shapes, sizes, and moods, and there are absolutely many that prefer to tackle more relatably human concerns, and in some extreme cases, remind you of humankind's worst collective traits.

As much as we are capable of so many great things, human beings are also responsible for so much suffering, both against nature and each other, such that the long-term forecast for our survival, er, isn't that encouraging.

This is palpably felt in these 10 video games, which whether examining the destructive power of guilt, our desire to watch the world burn, or our general inability to not fight one another, offer little in the way of hope or optimism for the human race.

Though there are certainly reasons to be hopeful for our future, true progress can't be made without confronting our problematic collective past and also those traits which hold us back from true peace and prosperity. These video games all stepped in to deliver some chilling reminders...

Hit video game franchises don't get more oppressively bleak than Silent Hill, which in its masterful second outing delivered perhaps gaming's ultimate meditation on the destructive power of depression and guilt.

There's not a single happy or outwardly redeemable character to be found in Silent Hill 2, a game that confronts themes as cheery as euthanasia, mental illness, trauma, sexual abuse, punishment, and suicide.

To say that the game encompasses many of the ugliest aspects of human nature is an understatement, the titular town's pervasive fog serving as a metaphor for the toxic miasma from which humanity itself cannot escape.

While Silent Hill 2 does at least have multiple endings that culminate in varying degrees of "happiness" - relatively speaking, anyway - the most commonly accepted canon ending sees protagonist James drowning himself in order to be reunited with his dead wife.

Though there's no 100% canon ending, this is one that members of the game's dev team have most often pointed to being so, which is about as hopeless an ending as imaginable.

Silent Hill 2 gains much of its power through its personal, existential themes: James isn't The One or a particularly remarkable person, but simply a man going through a hellish personal odyssey.

Anyone who's ever dealt with overpowering grief or guilt will find it discomfortingly relatable.