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Tear Jerker / Bramble: The Mountain King

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  • After escorting a group of young gnomes, Olle sends them back to a safe house. And then a troll arrives and stomps them to death, All for Nothing. Olle cries in horror for having unknowingly led them to die.
  • There's a section in the game where you have to avoid a hidden enemy. There's a cage with a prompt sign that can be interacted with while Olle's above and not touching the pool of viscera. Push it, and you'll hear screams from within that turn out to be gnomes imprisoned in the cage that you ended up using as bait to distract it. Many players ended up realizing too late that they've just sent innocent gnomes to be killed. What's worse is that Olle can still make it to the end without doing so, but their fates remain unknown as there's no way to free them. There's also no callback to this when the story recalls Olle's regrets even in a playthrough where he pushed them.
  • Even though he is a malicious spirit, some people cannot help but feel bad for the Näcken upon hearing his backstory. He was once a simple violinist who wanted people to appreciate his talent, only to endure days of being unjustly and mercilessly bullied by his fellow villagers (save for a woman whom he fell in love with). One day, he became fed up with the bullies that he retaliated by playing a cursed melody that made everyone dance uncontrollably to their deaths; the woman he fell in love with was one of the casualties. Heartbroken by the loss and ashamed of what he had done, the man drowned in a lake, where he would become the spirit that Olle confronts later in the game.
  • Olle being too late to save the child from being drowned.
  • Multiple women are killed after being accused of witchcraft, and in both cases it ends up being All for Nothing - the shapeshifter was never any of the women in the village.
  • After all that effort for King Nihls to find the flower to heal his son and succeeding after, Ulrik was killed in an assassination attack and since he was the last tether to Nihls' sanity, the latter lost it and used the flower to destroy his kingdom in an attempt to end his own misery.
  • The death of the shapeshifter. Even though she caused so much pain and suffering, her death is utterly brutal and Olle is traumatized by what he's done for a good while after.

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