8 Powerful Video Game Endings You Had To Die To See

1. You're Doomed Either Way - Red Dead Redemption 2

Depending on how you like to play your Rockstar games - i.e. experimenting with just how much crime and all-out murder you can get away with - Red Dead 2's lengthy tale of lawlessness being reigned in across the Old West might have fallen completely flat.

However, lead writer Dan Houser is trying to make a point about camaraderie, the importance of family and living without conflict - underneath all the train robberies, exploding horses and drunken saloon brawls, anyway.

See, Red Dead 2 takes the bold choice of including a 50/50 split morality meter that gives you two different endings, both of which result in Arthur Morgan dying. One is far more brutal than the other though, forcing you to reflect on the life you gave Arthur across those crucial closing months, and what it was all for, if you ended up being executed by the villainous Micah Bell.

You only get this bad ending if your morality was in the lower 50% of that meter for the entire game - even remaining so in the final third when scores of redemptive acts come Arthur's way.

Play like a full-on nihilist, enacting carnage in all directions and you'll be put in the dirt by the biggest a-hole in the game, negating the possibility of an otherwise peaceful, introspective finale as Morgan watches the sunrise by himself.