Tear Jerker / Frostpunk

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Given that this story is set After the End, there is naturally a lot of tragedy to be found.

Hope Falls Greatly

---

In General:

• The story begins with the desperate survivors of an apocalypse huddling around generators in order to cling to survival. Every day is a struggle, and there's no guarantee that things will ever get better.
• Intro of the game show the somber mood of the game itself. The coming of the frost not only ended the optimistic vision of the 19th century, but entire human civilizations collapsed, except for the few who made a journey to the generators. Many people perished along the way, but they kept going in hopes of finding the warm sanctuary of the generator.
• When you first start a playthrough, the sight that greets you is a deactivated generator in a pit full of wreckage. It demonstrates just how feeble you are in the face of a cold climate.
• Whenever a citizen dies, whether because of your incompetence or because of circumstances out of your control.
  • Even children can die.
• Failing to survive the big storm that comes at the end of some of the scenarios; all your people freeze to death, and your attempts to keep them alive prove to have been for naught.
  The last soul perished...
  The end
  Everyone has died
  Snow covers the dead city no longer protected by the heat of the Generator. Month after the month the snowdrifts rise higher and higher until they fill the entire hole and no trace of the city remains on the frozen Earth.
  It's Over
• Some of the citizens have children or spouses with them. How does the game describe those who don't? "Alone in the world." Worse yet is the implication that these people lost everyone they loved in the frost.

A New Home:

• When news of Winterhome arrives and your people begin to panic. Seeing your hope drop from 100% to a mere 10% can be hard to watch.
• If you refuse to let the desperate father leave to find his runaway daughter in the days before the storm, be it due to lack of food to spare or thinking that he is senselessly throwing his life away, midway through the Storm reveals that after he hung himself out of despair believing that he would be reunited with his kin. Sad, but the true tragedy is that in a sick twist of fate, said daughter actually turned around shortly after leaving New London before the storm hit and was hiding near the Generator the whole time. Now you have tell her about what happened to her father...

The Arks:

• A sole survivor of an expedition from New Manchester will come to your outpost, begging for help you don't know if you can provide. You can save his life, he could very well die from lack of medical care. You go find his city and you have the choice of either lending aid (potentially dooming the Arks for the future) or not (condemning New Manchester to certain death). The man will plead with you and you can change your mind or not. If you don't help his city, he will leave with a note left for you.
  Note: I came here looking for aid for my people and you ignored us for the sake of your mission. May God forgive you, for we won't.
  • The scientists agreed that it was a selfish decision to save a larger legacy rather than a dying city, but the narration of "It Will Have To Be Our Legacy" showed the scientist's regret and eventual acceptance of their sacrifice for the sake of their goal.
• The another possible ending is if you do try to save New Manchester, but don't manage to get enough resources together for all relief automatons while still preserving the Arks. The ending narration notes that, although you couldn't save the city, there is at least some solace in knowing you accomplished your mission without losing your humanity. The man from New Manchester won't blame you for failing, likely due to seeing that you did what you could. For all the good that did.
• Another possible tear-jerker is if you try to help New Manchester, but due to poor luck or poor planning manage to save neither that city nor the Arks. The Game Over entry becomes a straight-up Apocalyptic Log in which one of the scientists notes that their failure has ensured all of them will die in vain, with the world never to become green again, ending with the sicentist desperately begging whoever finds the log to forgive them.
• Failing to save the arks while managing to save New Manchester is not great either. It is implied that the scientists perished or deserted due to the Arks' contents being destroyed by the frost, and/or insufficient resources stored long enough to survive the storm. While you may have saved countless lives, the inhabitants would have to either soon investigate the Arks for the discovery of their now-dead "saviors" or realize the fact that the world has lost its chances to restore life once the ice age ends.

Refugees:

• One of the first Frostland locations you can explore is a man who hanged himself from a tree. Exploring that location reveals that he built the Generator, and that Lords who hired him lied to him about his wife being dead and about him having a spot there, upon the Generator's completion.
• Many of the Lords are children, who are distrusted by your people for conditions out of their control. The last group of Lords to arrive at the city, the one lead by Lord Craven, is made up mostly of children. If you choose not to welcome the Lords, then these innocent children will all die.

The Fall of Winterhome:

• Knowing that you can't save all your people. Even in the Golden Ending, where you evacuate as many as you can, it's still guaranteed that some of your people will die cold and afraid.
  • Even worse when playing "A New Home", the results of your Scouts implies that the Captain over there didn't manage to evacuate even half of the highest possible capacity. He only evacuated 150 out of 191 children and the engineers, as based on you find only 41 Winterhome children in various areas.
• Another one is that regardless if you choose to lie about evacuating to another city or not, there was actually a team of scientists scouting out the Frostlands who did find another city. However, they discovered what would be New London too late, only seeing that city's Generator smoke around the time the local Generator is hours from blowing. Even if the scouts made it back with this vital info, the direct path is blocked by impassable terrain. This means that there is no way for the refugees to shelter from the Great Storm, which is around a month away, unless they reach another city.

The Last Autumn:

• If the construction crew is forced to stay on site after the frost hits and the ocean freezes, you will be confronted with the image of a sad old woman with tears frozen to her face, as the realization that they are alone sinks in. Her sadness is enough to make the player feel they have failed their people.
• You can choose to sign the Medical Repatriation law, which will send your amputees back to Britain, effectively firing them and leaving them crippled. With that in mind, as well as the knowledge of what happens after the scenario, you might as well have signed those citizens' death certificates.
  • What's worse is if that you do and you start to ship people off, a crippled man hobbles up and confronts you, pleading not to be sent off, imploring you that he needs his job to feed his family, and asking if the company taking his limb wasn't enough.
• Six simple words if you fail to build the Generator:
  All we sacrificed was for nothing.
  • The screen immediately after only makes it worse: no matter the reason why, your failure has condemned hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to certain death when the Frost hits.
    Site 113
    Failed Construction
    New Liverpool
    Liverpool skipped in evacuation plans.

---