Video game characters often get put through the wringer. Sometimes it’s a first-person shooter whose protagonists have to fight countless enemies, a survival horror game where players are pitted against puzzles and phantoms, or a cozy farming sim where they have to wait six in-game days for a strawberry. Either way, tragic characters are far from rare in video games. Here are three characters from 2026 releases whose stories might inspire a few tears.
1. Zoe Ellis (Silent Hill Townfall)
Like many a Silent Hill game that came before it, very few, if any, characters in the fog-shrouded world of Silent Hill Townfall are having a good time. Townfallis the franchise’s most recent addition, and while it differs from its predecessors with its Scottish island setting and shift to first-person perspective, it follows the established pattern of keeping its characters absolutely miserable. One character who suffers particular torment is Zoe Ellis.
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Zoe works as a nurse in the town of St. Amelia, whose inhabitants are reeling from a terrible accident, the details of which the player learns slowly as they progress. Fellow protagonist Simon doesn’t remember his role in the tragedy until the end of the game, and Richard Shaw, the game’s third playable character, has an entirely different emotional landscape. Zoe, however, is plagued by guilt and grief from the start. Not only do her former friends and neighbors blame her, but she also blames herself, feeling as though she was not good enough to save everyone.
The depth of Zoe’s tragedy isn’t revealed until players delve deep into the story, but her sadness and memories weigh heavily on both Simon and Richard. In fact, one could say it’s the beating heart of the game.
2. Alfred (Forever Ago)
Forever Agois a narrative adventure whose story begins with grief. The game follows widower Alfred, a lonely older man dealing with the loss of his wife, Audrey, with whom he shared a relationship spanning more than fifty years. Using a scrapbook Audrey left him, Alfred embarks on a road trip, following the route she laid out and adding his own pictures to the book.
At first, Alfred takes the trip only because he feels it’s what his wife would have wanted. His grief also engenders feelings of anger and bitterness, common companions of grief. But he finds new companions along the way: characters he meets on his cross-country journey. There’s mechanic Sam, who Alfred meets early on and helps him repair his van, and a stray dog named Luke, who wanders onto the van one night and allows Alfred to open his heart again.
Fortunately for Alfred, his journey is more about healing than Zoe’s story. Forever Agofocuses on learning to live again after loss, but it takes a while for Alfred to get there; he starts as a deeply unhappy character before finding catharsis.
3. Marie (Resident Evil: Requiem)
Players might struggle to sympathize with Marie immediately in the latest Resident Evil vehicle. She is introduced as a stalker enemy, plaguing Grace Ashcroft from one location to another, and she’s as relentless as Mr. X and Nemesis before her. She does have a weakness to light, which can send her screaming back into the dark. But when players learn about her backstory, her shrieks of pain take on a different tune.
Initially just referred to as “the Girl”, players learn more about her as the game goes on. Marie was born simply to be experimented upon, one of many clones who underwent terrible treatment in the ARK labs. She once looked just like Emily, the little girl who Grace protects after freeing her from the basement of the Rhodes Hill Care Center. But unlike Emily, Marie mutated because of the procedures she underwent.
Thinking of Emily and Marie growing up in the facility is bad enough, knowing they exist only to be used as guinea pigs. But Emily has a different story than Marie’s, one that eventually ends with Grace adopting her. Marie becomes a monster, long-limbed and lethal, with any vestige of her former personality swallowed by the feral mind of the creature she becomes. Unlike her predecessors on this list, Marie has no hope of catharsis.
She is destroyed in the denouement of her story, and all that can be said is that she is now free of torment and experimentation.
