Tear Jerker / Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Being a more light-hearted entry of the series, Syndicate doesn't pull on the heartstrings quite as roughly as other entries, but it certainly has its moments.

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• It's actually somewhat saddening when Evie assassinates Sir David Brewster. The moment has a healthy dose of Alas, Poor Villain, and in fact his calmness in death can be quite upsetting too.
  Evie: Do not be afraid.
  Brewster: I'm not. God will protect me.
• Watching the rift between Jacob and Evie grow throughout the game is quite depressing, each of their disagreements becoming more and more confrontational as time goes on.
  • Especially when it reaches its peak at the end of Sequence 8, after Roth is killed.
    Evie: I've seen your handiwork across the city. Perhaps you should trust my judgment.
    Jacob: I've been killing Starrick's henchmen. What have you been doing? Let's ask Henry, shall we?
    Evie: I have been repairing your mistakes! "Too much haste is too little speed."
    Jacob: Don't you quote Father at me!
    Evie: That's Plato! And I am sorry that this doesn't involve anything that you can destroy. Father was right; he never approved of your methods!
    Jacob: Father is dead!
  • Eventually ending with this once they find out where the Shroud of Eden is:
    Jacob: Once more, for old time's sake?
    Evie: And then we're finished.
    Jacob: Agreed.
• Starrick himself earns some sympathy throughout the game, namely when Attaway and Thorne are murdered. When mourning the former, he plays a somber song on the piano, trying not to cry. Somewhat mitigated, though, when he shoots one of his underlings through the head for interrupting him.
  • In the latter case, he's having an assistant write a letter to Thorne, revealing his intentions to cut her out of the search for the Piece of Eden. And even then he's also ensuring she will have plenty of money and otherwise be set up for more or less a retirement. Then he gets the news that she was murdered, taken aback and even punching his desk in anger.
• During a mission where Evie and Henry are working to retrieve a set of blueprints, Henry is captured and Evie foregoes retrieving the blueprints in order to save him. When it's clear their original goal is out of their reach now, Henry is riddled with guilt over ruining the mission.
• Seeing Karl Marx so idealistic and optimistic, dedicated to reform and criticizing hasty violence is this for some people, it's hard to forget watching this earnest gentlemen knowing how his ideas would eventually take shape in the 20th Century.
  • Shaun's notes in his bio don't help either.
  Perhaps his greatest contribution to society was to inspire millions of young men around the world to grow disastrous neck beards, wear skinny jeans, and bloviate endlessly about the "capitalist machine" whilst drinking thimbles of artisanal coffee in neighborhoods that cats wouldn't be caught dead pissing in.
• When Shaun finds out the Disraelis dog is also named Desmond he feels the universe is mocking him. Rebecca then says that Shaun has lcoked himself up in his room, a bottle of whiskey has gone missing, and she can hear him crying. Later Shaun reveals that he really misses Desmond and how he has taken more dangerous field-work because of it.
• Galina Voronina's backstory, previously detailed in Initiates, crosses over with Nightmare Fuel. Her mother was an Assassin scientist working on early versions of the Animus. She forced Galina, Galina's twin sister Avdotya, and all the other Assassins working there to use the Animus for extended periods of time, not knowing about the Bleeding Effect. Galina escaped and brought back Gavin's team, who were forced to put down all the crazed Assassins. Galina personally euthanized her mother and sister, as well as the vast majority of the cell single-handedly.
  One time in Norway, I saw Galina talking to herself. When I asked her about it, she told me that she was talking to her dead sister, who follows her everywhere she goes! #NOPE -RC.
• The final Modern Day cutscene, before The Stinger. Violet de Costa aims her gun at Shaun and Rebecca tackles him, taking the bullet herself. Shaun sits for the rest of the scene with the injured Rebecca bleeding out in his arms. Considering the amount of times Rebecca's saving of Shaun's life is brought up, it makes the scene particularly poignant.
  Shaun: Stay with me, Becs! Please!
• The database entry on Juno ends on a very sad note, making it clear that Shaun carries a lot of guilt for the part he and the team played in unintentionally freeing Juno at the end of AC3.
  Shaun: She killed a friend of mine, and she's our responsibility.
• In the DLC we have Jacob seeing the kid that he rescued and trained into the Brotherhood personally become a Serial Killer. Even as Jack hunts him down, all Jacob can do is plead with him to stop and desperately wanting to help him.
  • Alongside that, Jack took over the Rooks. Your heroic gang of green-clad Londoners is now no better than the Blighters they were organized to fight. Jacob had to see the gang he and Evie created as a force of good become perverted and twisted into something evil, and know that he was the one who gave Jack the tools to do it.
• Underground, the song that plays at the end of the main game, a slow dirge that viciously damns the high society and oppressive system that forced untold thousands to slave away in factories and work or starve to death in the streets of London.