Poll of the Day > What are some video games that deal with the concepts of suffering?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's an uncomfortable topic, but one that I pretty much never see in games... ... since why would you want a player or a game entity to suffer?

Well, there's horror games for one; and of course emotional response.

By suffering I mean some sort of ongoing pain or struggle for a game character rather than a one-off moment... so Metal Gear torture scenes, while definitely suffering, are entirely isolated to their scripted events and don't impact the gameplay.

On the other side, 'game I can't remember the name of' when you are carrying your wounded dog... that's use of suffering for emotional response done really well.

Persona 5 had some "suffering" tones from the top of my head.

A lot of visual novels deal with pretty negative topics. Musicus is about (first couple hours spoilers) a struggling musician who tries to figure out why his mentor committed suicide, and the MC is in a bad mental state to begin with. Symphonic Rain is essentially entirely about depression and lingering trauma. Yume Miru Kusuri heavily deals with physical+mental bullying and substance abuse.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/2/8/AAFUswAAEoyM.jpg

Metal Gear Solid 4 deals with Snake suffering because he realizes he's either going to die of accelerated aging soon, or worse, he'll become a walking biological weapon that spreads mutated FOXDIE to everyone in the world.

Also, Celeste very openly deals with the main character's struggle with anxiety and depression.

Tomb raider

Overwatch, from dealing with bad teammates to bad matchups to bad devs that renege on their promises (really more an issue with upper management tho)

wwinterj25 posted...

Persona 5 had some "suffering" tones from the top of my head.

Persona 2 came to mind, but a lot of Persona/SMT games deal with it tbh

This War of Mine

FFVI I'd say?

Spec Ops: The Line

I haven't played it but heard great things about Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. The main character has some form of psychosis she's dealing with.

How was the Tomb Raider reboot? I heard it has a lot of.... things breaking

Lokarin posted...

I heard it has a lot of.... things breaking

Such as? Been a while since I played the first one and there were a couple sequences where she goes through a lot of shit and you think, how is she still alive?

kind9 posted...

Such as? Been a while since I played the first one and there were a couple sequences where she goes through a lot of shit and you think, how is she still alive?

I mean stuff like fingers and bones breaking

Does Red Dead Redemption 2 count? It's more a growing concern than constant struggle but Arthur spends the latter half suffering from TB.

AndyReklaw posted...

Does Red Dead Redemption 2 count? It's more a growing concern than constant struggle but Arthur spends the latter half suffering from TB.

haven't played, but maybe

What Remains of Edith Finch

Heavy Rain, depending on what choices you make

I was also going to say persona 5

The last of us 2 for sure

Cuphead

Xenogears, maybe? ...although it primarily shows up in the unfinished second disc where you're trying to help greatly suffering mutants while almost feeling bad about being healthy.