Tear Jerker / Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

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• The entire story of the Jedi Exile, especially if you play the canonical Light Side path for them. Best summed up by the Ithorians on Telos:
  Moza: Forgive me, Chodo, but the human - I could feel his/her suffering. I did not feel it until he/she stood before us, but then it filled my senses. Have you ever felt such an intensity before?
  Chodo Habat: Only once. The day I came to Telos, and strode upon its ashen surface.
  Moza: It's a planet's worth of pain. I don't know how he/she endures.
  Chodo Habat: It is because he/she has no choice.
  • Consider that Telos was completely annihilated by the Sith during the original game, all life being extinguished and the surface becoming a barren wasteland. The Exile is suffering just as much pain. If the Exile is a Dark Sider, he/she has been through so much (like having to cut his/her Force connection because he/she felt the deaths of everyone in Malachor V and then being unjustly exiled by the Jedi Order) that it's hard not to see their descent to darkness with a whole new light.
• Part of why Vrook hid on Dantooine was because the scars of war masked him from those that could sense him through the Force while he was investigating the Sith threat. Another reason why he chose it was that he wanted to see his old home, one last time.
  Vrook: [solemnly] Perhaps I wished to see this place one more time. It has changed much, as I knew it had, but I had to see it for myself.
• This exchange after the Handmaiden asks the Exile about how feels to be a Force sensitive. If the Exile answers they can only describe its absence, Kreia will describe it in her own words.
  Handmaiden: Then tell me of its absence.
  Kreia: It is standing atop of the summit of a great mountain, the winds tearing about you, and finding yourself buried alive - trapped, helpless and alone. It is knowing what you want to say and never finding the words. It is a chorus, replaced with silence. Hearing teachings without meaning. It is like having the energy of youth, and feeling the cloak of the years fall upon you, and knowing you are weak, fragile and a thing easily discarded. It is like having a beloved pupil to whom you have shared everything, sacrificed everything, and then having them turn from you... and forget all you were.
• After their duel, Atris crumbles due to the Exile's mercy and admits it was the Exile's example who inspired her to act independently and ignore the Jedi Council. Essentially, all of her misgivings were caused by Atris Dramatically Missing the Point of her admired Jedi knight.
  Atris: Once, I was a historian, the chronicler of the Jedi. And when both wars passed me by, I was determined I would not forsake battle again. In some part of me... I knew I had made choices, compromises, but always for the sake of the Republic, of the galaxy. To do what you had done... at times, did not seem so wrong.
  • Even if it's sweet, the Exile's final reconciliation with Atris only highlights how the present was shaped by all the mistakes they both committed. Atris, who had been a proud Jedi Master and an implacable judge to the Exile throughout the game, comes to acknowledge that her obsession with the Jedi Order only ruined her life (and the lives of many people across the galaxy) and that she should have been exiled along with the Exile the first time. For their part, the Exile realizes how his influence unknowingly threw Atris off the rails in the first place and caused so much misery.
    Atris: And what will you do with me now? Abandon me here on this dead world - or end my life, as I wished to end yours?
    Exile: I will do nothing - except tell you that I am sorry. I did not realize that the Mandalorian Wars would hurt others that had known me... and cared for me.
    Atris: I tied my life, my decisions to the Jedi. Perhaps only in separating myself from the Jedi can I become myself again, learn who I am. Perhaps exile is what I deserve... even though it is many years too late, and you have already returned.
• Malachor, the final world, is incredibly emotionally affecting - it feels like the last echo of the World.
  • Kreia stating that in the Exile's memories, they can no longer picture the beautiful world Malachor was before they dropped the superweapon on it, instead, it's always the desolate landscape that they caused.
• The possible Heroic Sacrifice of Visas Marr would count as a Tear Jerker. If it wasn't the player's choice to do so. You monster.
  • The intended version would have been much, much worse, with the Exile's companions confronting Kreia on their own only to be beaten down and imprisoned in order to force the Exile to choose between freeing them and making the final boss fight harder, or allowing them to die for an easier boss fight. Meanwhile, Atton manages to escape capture only to sacrifice himself in a one-on-one battle with Darth Sion - and if he loses, Sion tortures him and leaves him, broken and dying, for the Exile to find. The audio file for Atton's death exists in the game's files, and it is heart-rending.
    Atton: Hurts... when I laugh...
    • Considering Atton's back story as a former Sith assassin, dying for fighting a Sith Lord could also be interpreted as a Redemption Equals Death moment, especially if he has been turned to the Light Side via the Exile's influence.
    • If you have the Restored Content mod installed, try to reach this moment as a female Exile. Atton will tell the Exile in his dying moments that he's been in love with her since they met on Peragus. It's the only time in the game that he ever admits his feelings for her.
  • Seeing Remote being destroyed. It's so sad to see Bao-Dur losing his best friend. It's even worse since it has been confirmed that Droids have no afterlife.
    • Although it is possible that Remote doesn't die. Nonetheless it's still crushing that Bao-Dur's future is never revealed. Made even worse given that Kreia embellishes on the future of everyone else.
• The music in the Jedi Enclave, accompanied with the rebuilt enclave starting to show a spark of life that it once had, makes for an utterly beautiful scene, and this serves to make the next scene all the more heartbreaking as your quest over the past few planets turns out to be All for Nothing.
  • There's also Kreia, moving to the benches. She has, from Peragus, projected the image of a cold and aloof mentor figure. She hid all of her pain from losing her hand on the Harbinger. Even discounting Gameplay and Story Segregation, she has fought alongside the Exile without protest and with the capabilities of the younger and more able-bodied crew. And then suddenly, she is unequivocally presented as bone-weary and old - you can feel every year she has and then some as she makes to sit down. It doubles when you remember that, after her hand was cut off, Atton tells the Exile that she seemed to not want to display any sign of weakness around the Exile, and then allows them to see this...
  • The Light-sided endgame starts with the Exile meeting with the Jedi Masters they gathered across the planets. They finally get the answers they seek, know the nature of their connection to the Force, and that the Sith are on the move... but the Masters, once again, are content with doing nothing. They then point out that the Exile's ties to the Force is but a threat to them, and reach the decision to cut off the Exile from the Force once again. It's a cutting feeling of betrayal to have the ones you sought over the course of the game turn on you in a blink of an eye.
  • The Dark-sided endgame treats the Exile to an empty council chamber. Kreia comes in, and after some exposition, asks if the Exile's quest for revenge has brought them peace. Naturally, you cannot say yes. She then thoroughly chews out the Exile for their futile quest for revenge as the Sith are now on the move and nobody is around to stop them, while expressing levels of anger and disappointment that she has not expressed before.
• The "Death of the Ebon Hawk" movie. Watching the ship that travelled with you for two games plummet into the depths of Malachor V, after everything you've been through is truly sad.
  • If the player goes for a Light Side playthrough, this is kind of offset by the fact that it reappears without any reason or justification in the ending, rescuing them from the collapsing core of Malachor V.
• If Revan is set to have been light side, then there is a brief conversation with Carth Onasi after the Battle of Telos. If Revan was male, he will tell you that, if you happen to find Revan, "simply tell him Admiral Onasi is following orders." And then there's if Revan was set to female. The game assumes you followed the love story. What you're told this time? "Tell her Carth Onasi is waiting for her."
  • The meeting with Carth if Revan was played as female is rough to watch. He tells the Exile that he's been waiting for her to come back for four years, and that the reason she left him behind was because she couldn't bring 'those she loved' to wherever she was going. Carth's heartache, loneliness and resolve in his final line is palpable.
    • And the worst part? Revan never came back. Star Wars: The Old Republic reveals that s/he gets captured by the Sith Emperor and imprisoned for 300 years. Carth spent the rest of his life waiting for the woman he loved to return to him, not knowing her horrific fate, and died without ever seeing her again.
  • If Revan was male, the game also assumes that you followed Bastila's romance. If set to Dark Side, you can come across a Sith holocron that Bastila made on Korriban, where she decided to leave the Sith movement to find her lover, however long it takes. If set to Light Side she will talk to Carth after the Exile leaves Telos, acknowledging that Revan left her behind for her protection, but still missing him and wondering why he did so.
• On the light side run, you can make Mira a Jedi, and when you do, what makes it kind of sad is the reason she does so. It's because she doesn't want to live in fear anymore. If that doesn't make you feel for her, the voice acting in this bit of dialogue will:
  Mira: (almost sobbing) I don't want to keep running, and looking, and never feel like I'm finding what I'm looking for. I'm tired of being hunted!
• Handmaiden has suffered from years of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her sisters. They call her the "last" of them, openly refer to her as weak, and berate her for her perceived failures, both in sparring sessions and in general conversation. When Atris realizes that she has begun training as a Jedi and tells her sisters she is a traitor almost all of them immediately believe it, and all five are hostile to her when she returns, to the point where they try to kill her.
  • In the Restored Content mod, the Handmaiden she has the option to kill her sisters during the confrontation instead of just incapacitating them. Whether this is in self defense or revenge is up to interpretation.
• Visas meditating on the destruction of Katarr. On a Dark Side playthrough, she draws power from the hatred and suffering she feels. On a Light side playthrough, she makes peace with the destruction of her home and decides to kill Nihilus, not out of hatred, but to protect other worlds from his hunger.
  • And on both you hear whispers of the event. The DS version is the screams of those who died. The LS version is voices comforting her, saying its okay and she's forgiven. Ouch.
• Darth Sion's words after the Exile has convinced him to let go of the Force and of his pain, particularly so if the Exile is a female and Sion admits to loving her, in his own twisted way. When you consider his entire life has been nothing but suffering, hatred and pain, his last words carry a lot of feeling:
  Sion: I am glad to leave this place... at last.
• Kreia's story, in the end - her entire life is devoted to teaching. Of all the titles and roles she carries, this is clearly the one that she considers at the heart of who she is. As a Jedi, she saw her greatest student, Revan, rise and "fall" to the dark side. This, combined with her unconventional attitude towards the Force, led to her being sidelined by the Jedi - she could no longer teach, students would no longer come to her to learn. She herself went to the dark side, and yet, due to the nature of the Sith, her students turned on her. By the end of it all, she sees the fault not in the students or the teachers but the lesson itself - she has come to despise the Force, for treating her as The Chew Toy, and it's hard to really blame her. Pick your flavor of Woobie - Jerkass Woobie, Iron Woobie, Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, she has shades of them all.
• If you select Revan to have been female and to have fallen to the Dark Side, T3-M4 will have a hologram message from Carth right before he boards the Starforge in an attempt to get Revan to repent. You discover through the dialogue options that Carth was killed, and T3 kept the message to remember him, as he was a friend.

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