20 Video Game Villains You Never Realised Got The Last Laugh

Darkest Dungeon is a hopelessness-inducing roguelike, set in a hopelessness-inducing world, with a hopelessness-inducing villain—the Heart of Darkness.

If this sounds like too much hopelessness for one sentence, rest assured, it is not an overexaggeration, especially when it comes to the sense of despair that the final boss of the game will give you, and we’re not just talking about the fight being hard.

The Heart of Darkness is a Lovecraftian entity from outer space that the Ancestor has summoned beneath his manor as part of his quest for eldritch powers.

The Heart is responsible for most of the awful things happening in and around the Hamlet and the entire game revolves around you trying to banish it in the final assault on the titular Darkest Dungeon.

Now, whether you struggle with fighting the Heart or not, in terms of the story and lore, any victory against the entity actually just makes it stronger.

After the final fight is complete, the Ancestor explains to you that the Heart has always been a part of the world and cannot be permanently removed from it. In fact, every time it appears in reality, it grows stronger with the sacrifices people make to banish it, so by defeating it, you’ve only made it harder to kill when it inevitably comes back.