8 Heroic Video Game Characters Who Didn't Actually Affect The Plot

1. You - Dark Souls

The ultimate story of time being a flat circle, Dark Souls is a cyclical story where no matter what, everything that happens will happen again, and nothing outside of its "cycle of events" can change.

Now, there's a lot of fantastical elements and semi-metaphorical imagery going on, but said cycle revolves around one light-bringing Flame, that helped the Age of Man flourish. All the games revolve around this idea of light being life, and how sustaining it brings prosperity, yet the first game presents you with a key choice at its close. Though ultimately, both options result in the same outcome: Everything happening all over again.

Option 1: Walk into the fire, give yourself to the blaze and rekindle it, allowing light to flood the world and another Age of Fire to carry on. However, the light will always fade, and another body will need to have made its way across the lands to make the same decision.

Option 2: Walk away from the Flame, letting it extinguish and ushering in the Age of Dark: A time without light or energy, where demons and monsters rule. However, Dark Souls II revealed that any wayward ember can reignite the flame again, ushering in another Age of Fire - and another potential quest.

You're damned if you do, damned if you don't - essentially, you're damned all round. There's no happy outcome, and your own flirtation with the wider world once you've figured out its ramifications, is to momentarily (in the grand scheme of things) make a decision that will only be reversed in another cycle.

Lovely.