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The Longest Journey
- White Mother's death.
- When April sleeps in the Banda village and at night her Evil Twin who is really just a projection of her worst fears appears and belittles her to the point of despair, a projection of Charlie appears and tells April she is not alone on her journey and is loved.
- The entire atmosphere of the second half of the game, when April is risking life and limb in a quest where her reward would be to shut herself off from the entire world for centuries, with no one she'd ever met knowing what had happened to her to be phenomenally depressing.
- The last scene, in which the old Guardian shrugs at April and essentially says, "Oops! Our mistake, you can go home now. Thanks anyway." After all the time spent telling April she's important to the fate of the world(s), it's a Player Punch to see her dismissed like that.
- As part of her final tests before entering the Tower of the Guardian April has to face her biggest fear which she herself might not even be aware of. As it turns out, she is turned into a child and her biggest fear is no other than her creepy, possibly drunken father, obviously ready to abuse April some more. The whole scene is not only surprising as April's difficult relation with her father until that point seemed to be just part of her background with little impact on the actual story,note but it's also very touching as April manages to convince her father that she knows he cares deeply about her even though he has trouble expressing it. Confronted with this, the spectre of her father first hesitates, before he breaks down, barely holding back tears as he confesses that she is right and sincerely apologizes for everything he has put her through. As the scene dissolves before her eyes, April replies with "It's okay. I forgive you."
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
- The ending would be a massive tearjerker if it wasn't such a gigantic Downer Ending that the resulting depression makes it nearly impossible to physically cry.
- To detail:
- Kian, the Apostle, who has begun to question his deeply held faith in the Azadi religion, which has been imposed on the Marcuria, has been taken into custody by his own people for that questioning, with Commander Vamon determined to execute him.
- Zoe discovers the below story of Faith, and is intentionally left in a coma by Helena Chang (implied in this game and revealed in the following game to be her mother), unable to act or do anything in the physical world that can help anyone.
- April, after being dismissed from what she thought was her destiny in the first game and spending this game so lost, uncertain, and disconnected, many in the Resistance believe she's become a Death Seeker, gets her wish, stabbed in the gut and dumped in the lake to be forgotten - a massively offhanded and senseless death, given the Azadi proceed to take the village captive.
- April had been sold out by Na'ane, who had been shown to be a close associate of April's, whose betrayal was the only way to allow needed food and medicine to reach their destination, but leaving her with a crushing guilt and the knowledge that she brought death to April.
- In the Azadi raid that led to Na'ane's betrayal, Benrime, the innkeeper, and something of a mentoring and maternal figure for April, is taken captive by the Azadi, and, as we learn in the next game, is assumed to be being held by the Azadi and slated for execution.
- And, to finish it out, the White Dragon, an ally and sort-of maybe sister to April, is attacked by an unseen figure who she recognized, an act that the next game confirms was her murder.
- Basically NO ONE ends the game in a good place, and Darkest Hour doesn't BEGIN to cover it.
- The entire story of Faith. She was a result of an experiment to create someone who can manipulate dreams, so she had to spend her childhood in a lab. The experiment went wrong and she died, but her ghost remained inside the Wire, causing interference in electronic communications (called the Static). Zoë's task at the end of the game is to convince her to leave the Wire, which essentially means she really has to die this time.
- The fact that Emma has been searching for April for ten years and refuses to give up on her best friend or believe she is dead while we know they will never meet again is gut-wrenching.
- The fate of the Border House in the time since The Longest Journey. It was a boarding house for students and artists. Now it’s effectively a crack house. Just about everything in Stark seems to have just gone to shit over the last decade.
Dreamfall Chapters
- April Ryan's funeral and seeing the Rebels mourn her, and knowing her friends in Stark may never know what happened.
- Damien's and Olivia's Bus Crash between games, giving us no closure to their stories.
- During Book 2 Kian meets Bip, a young Dolmari. His parents have been sent to Ge'en, with Bip awaiting their return. It's up to Kian to either lie about them coming back or explain a ten-year-old the concept of segregation and that his parents will not return. The worst option is first telling Bip the truth about the prison and then trying to soften the blow by lying when he asks if his parents will return. He will call Kian out on his lie. It gets worse when the actual purpose of Ge'en is revealed in the later books.
- Bip is also influenced by the anti-magical sentiments of the Azadi
Bip (to Kian): Is [your Goddess] brown like you, or are they white like some of the other Azadi? I’m pretty sure she’s not blue. No gods have skin like mine, they’re all way better. - Crow's told that April is dead. Gets worse when Zoe talks to him afterwords and he tells her about when he and April traveled in Dreamfall, It didn't feel the same. That too much time had passed, and how she'd changed. Him just accepting that really hammers in just how true that is.
- In Rebels, we discover that the cute little Banda are all dead except for one old woman who mourns her people greatly.The Mole: Is dark and late, and I will sleep. Sleep and dream of happier day in burrow to the north, when laughter of children fill every tunnel. Dream of friend and of family, while I mourn them all.
- The mole's fate gets worse when you see her again as she decides to return to the place where they were all killed so that she can be with them in death. Although it gets better in Book 4 when there is at least one more left.
- The last moments with Abnaxus - the other Venar have moved on, but he's remained in the present, an act that is toxic to the Venar, which means that he is dying. All in the name of being there to guide Zoe as she returns the Soul Stone to Lux and activates her full Dreamer abilities. As he is left alone, with only the Oular for company, he admits that his family and all other Venar are lost to him, and that his "loop" is ending, with the implication being that he will be dead shortly thereafter.
- To make it hit home all the more, his tenses, which he typically mixes up as he experiences time all at once, settle firmly into present.
- A farewell to Shitbot/Kidbot. Players who got Kidbot probably would feel sad because of how cute Kidbot is. Players who got Shitbot will still feel sad - that something that barely functioned decided to do something selfless. "Remember me". Players will indeed remember them.
- The ending to Book 4. Saga's father, knocking the wall and crying in desperation.
- Kian repeatedly refers to Crow as just "Bird" after joining up with him. "Bird" was the way that the old sailor who'd originally claimed ownership of him back in The Longest Journey - the same old sailor who stuffed him in a box and lost him to the peddler in a game of cups (a shell game). Which just means that Crow's being reminded of a period of his life he clearly was not happy at all - this being AFTER all of his other companions have been forced to leave him behind.
- The sudden and brutal death of Crow, the plucky comic relief character.
- Saga finding Crow's dead body.
- April and Crow walking together on one last Long Journey Home. Seeing them walk off into the afterlife is still heartwrenching especially to long standing fans.April: "Hey funny bird."
Crow: "I’ve missed you, April"
April: "I’ve missed you too. Come on, Crow. we have a long journey ahead of us. You ready?"
Crow: "Yeah, yeah I am." - Saga's parents being lost and never reuniting with her. Even in Saga's later years she still laments their vanishing, hoping that they at least found each other and spent the rest of their days together, "Someplace green and beautiful." Saga's reaction to her parents disappearing changes with her age from sadness when she is younger, to almost cold indifference during her adult years to tearfully admitting how much she misses them when she is an old woman.
- The entire Epilogue. Looking around the house, Lady Alvane reminisces over the various adventures she's had and while she clearly remembers them fondly and has few regrets seeing her whole life on display, now that its in its twilight years, can be a rather melancholic experience for players.
- The end credits watching the Longest Journey play out in paintings after seeing the story come full circle. It's rather bittersweet.
