The setting of the game is essentially an apocalypse in which 90% of the world has been killed off. Naturally, it's going to get quite sad at times. Spoilers Off applies to all "moments" pages so beware of unmarked spoilers.
- As mentioned in the description, the world is pretty bleak. 90% of the world has been killed off and the remaining 10% are confined to an island called the Ark, which has been known to fail at times. Just ask anyone within Zone 9. Add in Aberrations and Chimeras breaking into Earth at an alarming rate and things don't look so good for humanity.
- What was included in that 90%? Entire species of animals, to the point that even those that weren't endangered were wiped out by chimeric activity. One of your Neuron colleagues, an animal lover named Mike, gushes about koalas and gorillas, but knows that he'll never have the chance to see them with his own eyes.
- Zone 09 in particular. Imagine: A deadly infection broke out in the district you live in and the police decided to just quarantine the whole place and have no further business with it, leaving it a lawless hellhole where armed gangs like the Hermits have de facto jurisdiction. All of the infrastructure is worn down and the less-than-cheerful residents, including said Hermits, cling on to the hope that one day, they will be able to leave the walls.
- The circumstances of the twins' birth. According to Max's profile and the artbook, a pregnant woman found Max as he was stationed in Zone 09 and died giving birth to them. And if Max wasn't as good a person as he was, the twins could've easily become the Aegis Research Institute's favorite new science experiment.
- In File 03, you can find a man and his cat just chilling and enjoying the view of the skyline. When you come back from the gate with the missing woman in tow, with the area in a state of emergency due to an abrupt influx of gates and chimeras, said man and cat can be found on a catwalk below...only for the man to turn into an aberration that you have to Mercy Kill. The cat looks understandably frightened, and while you can adopt it, that doesn't change the fact that its owner is gone...
- In that same area, you had several children playing soccer with their parents watching on and musing about how fragile such moments of peace are. When you return during the influx, that same place is in complete ruins. And...those children are nowhere in sight.
- Similar to the above, in File 04 you have the option of helping a woman get her cat back. A few files later, that cat is one of the strays you can rescue
- Max's Heroic Sacrifice. He may have been a bit overprotective at times, but he did love his kids and his team. And it shows when he decides to hold off the four berserk Legions, just so that they can escape. What makes this worse is that we don't actually know what happened to him. The only hint we have is that his Legatus and a photo of him and the twins was attached to the Axe Legion but he evidently failed to tame it in the same way as the player character. At least File 11 implies that he might have inadvertently fused with his Axe Legion.
- Akira's first Heroic Sacrifice counts for different reasons.
- They get better, but...just imagine what their sibling is feeling? Just a few days ago, they lost their father and now they are close to losing their sibling as well, both of whom only did so to save their life.
- It's also this incident that cause Yoseph to realize that the twins can die at any time, and so he decided on a backup plan, namely cloning Akira without their consent... which causes all sorts of issues later on in the game.
- In spite of the protagonist's new fugitive circumstances, the optional missions of File 10 grant them a lot of bonafide wins including successful Astral Plane rescues and generally making life better for the people of Zone 09. Then you get a case wherein you're tasked to investigate a mysterious fog by a young woman whose fiancé went missing in it. Upon defeating the chimera responsible, a key item is dropped whose icon is reminiscent of the items you usually give to the Beast Legion so it can sniff out the source, giving you the hope that you can use it to find the aforementioned fiancé. Unfortunately, it's not that kind of key item or ending—the man is long dead. And the way the young woman accepts this truth without any strong outburst of denial—and asking you to get rid of the engagement ring, so that the fog that took him will stop haunting her...it's hard to find the words to describe how heartbreaking her reaction is.
- Douglas. He only appears in one chapter, but that chapter puts the poor guy through far too much. He was an ARI researcher who was smuggling a drug known as Blue Evolve, which gave regular humans the ability to fight off chimeras on their own, into Zone 09. He believed this would be the best way to help people there, considering UNION had effectively abandoned them. Then he gets dragged through a gate to the Astral Plane, nearly dies, then sees firsthand that this drug actually turns people into monsters, and is confronted by Jena, as she makes off with his drugs. With so much guilt crushing him and nothing else left to him, he commits suicide. He doesn't even try to stop Jena; he just hangs his head in despair and enters that small room as she leaves. Perhaps what makes this particularly sad is that if the protagonist hadn't saved him, Douglas would've died anyway, but his actions wouldn't have caused a massive chimeric outbreak all throughout the Ark.
- In the interlude between Files 9 and 10, you can read up on what Akira's been doing as part of the Raven Corps. The Blue Case report has Akira search a Gate to find a missing dog — the kind of mission you would have taken together in better times. While Akira succeeds in clearing the Gate, they don't find the dog. Whether it was due to their inexperience, the new direction Yoseph has been taking Neuron since the Ravens took over, or just bad luck, it's sad to see Akira trying to live up to your example and coming up short (especially since they didn't know if you were still alive at the time), and it explains why they so desperately want you to come back to Neuron when you meet again at the end of the File. Turns out being the star of Neuron was harder than you made it look.
- Akira's Heroic BSoD in File 11. They're fresh off having been betrayed and left for dead by Yoseph Calvert, as well as learning that the rest of the R.A.V.E.N.s were clones of them. However, upon arriving at the Aegis Research Institute and delving further into it, they soon begin to realize the extent of Yoseph's machinations when they see and are forced to fight hundreds of clones of themselves, which triggers an identity crisis and mental breakdown that has been building up for a long time. The music
that plays during all of this only makes the events even more melancholy and depressing. It degrades to the point that you have to fight an emotionally-unstable Akira, while so close to reaching Yoseph. - And then there's Akira's second Heroic Sacrifice. Fused into Noah, Akira does the one thing they can and try to wrestle what control they can from Yoseph. By the end of the fight with its Prime form, Noah's weakened enough to allow it, and they all but cry for their sibling to deal the finishing blow. You can choose not to go with it, but the Arrow Legion isn't going to have any of it; Akira's motions towards it imply that they're using the last of their connection to their old Legion to pull the trigger. Even if you choose to do it, it only makes things harder to swallow, as the Axe Legion comes out on its own. File 11 itself implies that Max fused with his Legion in some way, so it feels as though he's doing something he knows he has to do regardless of his own misgivings. While File 12 reveals that Akira managed to live on via their Legion transferring a copy of their memories to one of the remaining clones, it doesn't change the fact that they had, at one point, been well and truly gone, and they still are, in a way.
- And the music that plays during that final choice? A sombre rendition of Saviour.
- The opening title screen of Astral Chain always features Akira looking out over the horizon through their various states throughout the story (Neuron, Raven, etc.), but after File 11 is done, they're no longer there. This really drives home the fact that the Akira the player fought alongside and the new one in the epilogue are inevitably two different people.
