Best and Worst Death Scenes?

Out of all the games you've played where a character died as part of the story, which characters do you think had the best and worst executed (no pun intended) death scenes?

For this topic, please use the spoiler bbcode if it is a recent or obscure game that someone may not have played.

For the best death scene, I have say Mareg from Grandia II. That one really got to me. The way he went down fighting and sacrificed himself for his friends was amazing.

For worst, I have to say Aeris in Final Fantasy VII. No spoiler bbcode needed on this one, btw. It's been spoiled so much it ought to be rotten by now. That's one of the reasons I didn't like it, really. The way everyone spoiled it, I was expecting an impressive scene that would really make me feel something for the characters... but it didn't. When I finally got to that point in the game, I was just like "Oh. Well, I need to use another healer now."

MAREG!NO!DON'TDIE!

That scene... I used him all the time as well.. .. but his death was avenged!

I agree with you on Aeris being the worst..

Aeris = WAKE UP AND MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, YOU $#@*%!!!
That scene is unbelievably contrived. There was absolutely no reason for her to die, or to be meditating or whatever nonsense Square thought up for her to not paying ANY attention there.

Anyway, that is a good one, Thoul. I can't think of any others at the moment.

The Komrade wrote:

Aeris = WAKE UP AND MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, YOU $#@*%!!!
That scene is unbelievably contrived. There was absolutely no reason for her to die, or to be meditating or whatever nonsense Square thought up for her to not paying ANY attention there.

It's so true... Hahaha!

Anyhow, I do believe that Aeris was supposed to die so she could enter lifestream and yadda yadda yadda...I don't remember the storyline much, but I guess she saves the planet in the end from meteor.

That point aside, it does seem pretty, well, stupid for the most part. Though if you ask me, they threw it in there to make it seem all dramatic and sad, though all I can say is good riddance! That girl was annoying and self-centered more than anything.

So is Aeris's death scene the worst? To me, yes, but I was glad that she was gone anyways.

Now, the best death scene? I've only played a handful of games where someone dies. (always the heroine) My pick is Alys from PSIV, you could just feel what Chaz and the others were going through. Very sad indeed.

Bumping up a very old thread:

I don't know about the best death scene because I've played only a few games with deaths. I'd probably say Nei not because the scene is superb, but because my reaction was: "I don't want to play this game anymore".

For the worst, I can say for sure it was Alys death. I could see it coming after playing 3 minutes of the game and it was the most useless death I've ever seen in a game. It was there just to copy the previous installment of the series and to try to create an "emotional impact", as the game developers were too concerned that the lack of character development was not much appreciated in the previous installments. The characters reactions are pretty stupid and exaggerated. Anyway, the character itself is annoying, useless and the game would be far better without this character whose sole purpose was to artificially create an empathy by making stupid jokes and then die. I know it is not the best place to give this opinion, but this is what I think. Don't flame me too much

Aeris death can not be great as the fanboys say, but it is far better than Alys, at least the character had a purpose on the story and the other characters' reactions vary from stupid to quite decent. And that comes from a PS fan, who likes PSIV more than FFVII.

Resurrecting an old topic:

One death that was particularly sad for me was Gueld, from Legend of the Heroes II: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch. You spend the whole game expecting to learn something interesting about her, however, not only you learn that she died, but also, in the end, she is annihilated by sacrificing her soul in order to stop the power that is threating the world.

Her story is simply too sad, without excessive drama. It is a punch in the face.

Oh, no, I spoiled that the character is a woman! What a shame, Tili!

I'll start off with the most unintentionally hilarious death instead, that being Ernst from Ys: The Ark of Napishtim. It's probably the only instance I can remember where a boss attempts to assume a more powerful form and just winds up disintegrating himself (and you didn't say it had to be protagonists. ).

Best is a pretty hard choice, but these days I'd be a bit of a minority report and actually go with Eldeel From Ys: Mask of the Sun. The genuinely tragic antagonist is a really, really hard thing to pull off, and the game managed to nail it pretty hard- one of the things that the game does put a good chunk of effort into showing is that Eldeel really was, and perhaps, still is a good man, but that the temptation of reviving the ancient power and prestige of his fallen race, and the chance to elevate himself from prisoner to god-king was just too much to resist. The two most important aspects of theatrical tragedy is that the fall is able to seem both simultaneously avoidable and inevitable, and include the element when the tragic figure recognizes he has done wrong, and this is one of the few instances where it actually comes off.

Worst death, however? Well, there's a whole lot to choose from there, unfortunately. I would have to go with a fair chunk of Knights in the Knightmare, because at some point it just gets repetitive. yes, we get that your setting is a horrible cesspool of misery and death. Dear lord, the Dept. Heaven setting is one of the few places I know of where things were drastically improved by the apocalypse.

Not really a death scene, but Totori crying over her mother's grave is a very moving scene.

tilinelson2 wrote:

For the worst, I can say for sure it was Alys death. I could see it coming after playing 3 minutes of the game and it was the most useless death I've ever seen in a game. It was there just to copy the previous installment of the series and to try to create an "emotional impact", as the game developers were too concerned that the lack of character development was not much appreciated in the previous installments. The characters reactions are pretty stupid and exaggerated. Anyway, the character itself is annoying, useless and the game would be far better without this character whose sole purpose was to artificially create an empathy by making stupid jokes and then die. I know it is not the best place to give this opinion, but this is what I think. Don't flame me too much

I need to say I agree 150% with this. To me, Alys was berating, useless and annoying. I saw her death scene coming a mile away and yeah, pretty much what Tili said.


As for the Aerith death scene, I learned it the hard way, unspoiled. I was very, very upset as I really like that character. Physically, she looks a whole lot like my wife (girlfriend back then). I arrived to her death scene the very same day my wife had a really bad car accident (she was unharmed, but I still freaked out). The emotional mix made me abandon the game for many months. To me, what made that scene even less digestible was the antagonist. FF games gave us splendid villains like Golbez and Kefka but Sephiroth was just... blah. He had no true goal, he was just powerful... because. Anyways.


Best "death" scene in a game? Seth Balmore in Lost odyssey. Heck, I didn't even care for the character but... that scene? Made me cry like a teenage girl at her first Justin Bieber concert.

That last one was well done, I agree. I liked that character for their role in battle, but not all that much from a personality perspective. Then that scene happened and it had some impact in it. It was much better handled than the death scene early in the game.

As for Alys, I'm firmly in the middle ground on that one. It was not a worst scene, IMO, but not a best either. I didn't see it coming so early on, but they dragged out the situation so long after that key battle that it became kind of obvious as to what was coming. I did think she was a bit berating the first time I played, but I liked using her in combat up to that point. The reactions of the others were generally good, but the lead male's went a bit overboard. Of course, I hadn't played the first two games in the series at this point, so I had no idea about the connection they were trying to invoke with the previous game. I probably would have been less impressed with the sequence overall if I had.