Co-Op Games that Start as Simple Adventures, But Become Incredibly Dark by the End

Cooperative video games are often designed to be more family-oriented compared to single-player games, with many co-op titles being released as party games or games that can easily be played and understood by people of all ages, from children to adults.

However, there are many co-op games that are generally more complex in gameplay mechanics and more mature, narratively speaking, compared to the average couch co-op experience.

Co-op games such as these may start out as fairly simple adventures, but by the time their stories near their climax, they often feature shocking twists and revelations that completely change the tone of the overall game.

Here are 10 co-op games that begin as relatively routine journeys for gaming protagonists but quickly become incredibly dark by their final act.

10 LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game

Leaving the Galaxy in Darkness

TT Games' LEGO titles are primarily comical adaptations of famous films, and while most of them do tend to skip fairly dark scenes or downplay them with comedic LEGO bricks or actions, a few of their games did adapt dark sequences true to their source material, with one such game being LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game.

The first LEGO game ever developed by TT, LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game was a two-player local co-op, third-person action-adventure game that adapted that Star Wars prequel trilogy in slapstick comedy LEGO form about a month before Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith's theatrical release.

The game starts just like Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan investigating the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo, but by the time players get to Episode III, the game gets pretty dark despite being a LEGO game.

Anakin Skywalker still turns to the dark side and Order 66 is initiated, but the final level on Mustafar actually pits the players against each other, culminating in the Obi-Wan player being forced to defeat the Skywalker player as a boss, resulting in Skywalker losing all of his limbs and becoming the menacing cyborg Darth Vader.

9 A Way Out

Breakable Bonds

Ever since Hazelight Studios was founded in 2014, the Sweden-based developer has become a prominent figure in keeping the couch co-op genre of games alive. While most of their games are rather lighthearted, their first game, A Way Out, is their most dramatic game so far.

Unlike Hazelight's other more fantasy-oriented games, A Way Out is a fairly grounded, realistic game set in the early 1970s and following two inmates, Vincent Moretti and Leo Caruso, who strive to get revenge on a crime boss called Harvey who wronged them both.

Despite being heavily marketed as a game centering around players having to work together to escape prison, only about two hours of the game is actually set in prison, with most of the game following the duo evading cops, meeting up with their wives, and exacting revenge on Harvey.

However, after all of this time bonding together, it's eventually revealed that Vincent was an undercover FBI agent the whole time, causing the two to fight to the death, with one ending having Vincent survive and return to his newly born daughter and another ending having Leo return to his wife and son on the run.

8 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

Following Orders

Some games don't feature co-op modes as their main attraction, with campaigns often only being available in single-player, but sometimes the secondary co-op modes tend to leave a more lasting impression than their main campaign counterparts, which can be seen in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction.

While Conviction's main campaign follows series protagonist Sam Fisher as he investigates the mysterious death of his daughter and a plot to assassinate the U.S. President, Conviction's co-op campaign is actually set before Fisher's journey begins following Third Echelon agent Archer and Voron agent Kestrel.

Here, players embody Archer or Kestrel as they aid each other in preventing Russian criminals and military officials from completing arms deals with help from crime boss Andriy Kobin.

However, right after Archer and Kestrel secure EMP weapons and evacuate on a cargo plane, Archer is ordered to kill Kestrel despite the two becoming close friends, with players being forced to stealthily take out each other, only for Kobin to eliminate the surviving character in order to leave no loose ends.

7 Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Brothers to the End

Compared to every co-op game listed so far, Starbreeze Studios' Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a rather calm, tranquil, and less action-packed game, but one that still packs quite a depressing punch by the time credits role.

Played in a top-down, third-person perspective, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is an adventure game that follows the brothers Naiee and Naia as they set out on a journey to save their sick father by obtaining healing water from the faraway Tree of Life.

What ensues is a heartwarming, fantasy journey as players embody both brothers, helping each other traverse medieval ruins, solve puzzles, evade predatory animals, and help locals and fantasy creatures such as gryphons and trolls.

While the brothers are ultimately able to bring the water back to heal their father, the game ends on a rather melancholy note as Naia, Naiee's older brother, is wounded by a half-woman, half-spider creature and dies toward the end of the journey just after Naiee collects the water from the Tree.

6 Gears of War 2

The Scars of War

Despite featuring some of the most gory action and gung-ho military protagonists in all of gaming, the Gears of War series actually features many dark twists and soul-crushing moments for its characters, showcasing that the scars of war are often those that can't be seen on a person's body.

In no other Gears game is this best shown than in Gears of War 2, which follows Marcus Fenix, Dominic Santiago, and the rest of Delta Squad as they take part in Operation: Hollow Storm in an effort to take out the monstrous Locust forces on their home turf deep in the underground tunnels of Sera.

Along the way, Santiago increasingly begins to find clues that his long-lost wife, Maria, is actually alive, but captured by the Locust in their capital city of Nexus, motivating him to rescue her at all costs.

Eventually, Santiago and Fenix do find Maria, only to discover that, after weeks of starvation, forced labor, torture, and lobotomization by the Locust, she had been left in a mindless, vegetative state, forcing Santiago to tearfully put her down in order to finally bring her peace, leaving Santiago as shell of his former self for the rest of the war.

5 Portal 2

Horrifying Fates

Valve's Portal 2 is well-known for featuring some of the best FPS gameplay in all of gaming, despite not featuring conventional firearms, as well as an enthralling single-player campaign in the remnants of Aperture Science, but its co-op mode is arguably its greatest legacy.

Set after the events of Portal 2's main campaign, the base co-op mode has players embody new bipedal robots designated Atlas and P-Body as they're initially tasked with completing test chambers designed to assess the abilities of two beings with portal guns in completing difficult, dangerous situations together.

After thoroughly displaying their prowess with portal guns, the robots are eventually tasked with recovering old data discs and gaining access to thousands of new human test subjects frozen in stasis deep in Aperture depths before being promptly destroyed so that the AI GLaDOS can begin resuming testing and killing humans.

Then, in the co-op Peer Review DLC, Atlas and P-Body are rebuilt after GLaDOS killed all the human test subjects and tasked with stopping a bird from causing issues in the facility, ultimately resulting in the bird being scared off and GLaDOS taking its chicks to be raised as new "killing machines."

4 Far Cry 5

Prophetic Visions

Starting with Far Cry 3, the Far Cry series has featured many co-op modes and options for players striving to play through often chaotic situations together, with the darkest co-op campaign in the series being Far Cry 5.

An open-world FPS game, Far Cry 5 is set in the fictional Hope County of Montana wherein an unnamed deputy and local authorities are sent out to apprehend Joseph Seed, a militant cult leader who has taken control of the county based on the belief that Seed was chosen by God to save humanity from an incoming threat.

Co-op isn't available in Far Cry 5's campaign from the get-go, as both players will need to activate the radio tower on Dutch's Island in order to access the co-op option, with the second player simply embodying a clone of the deputy in co-op.

Players can complete the campaign together, but it can still end on an extremely shocking note if players decide to arrest Seed, resulting in multiple nuclear bombs detonating and revealing that Seed's visions were actually true, leading to the post-apocalyptic world seen in Far Cry New Dawn.

3 Call of Duty: Black Ops

An Explosive Zombie Ending

Only a few Call of Duty campaigns feature co-op options and, sadly, Call of Duty: Black Ops isn't one of them, but it instead features one of the greatest FPS co-op experiences in all of gaming with Black Ops Zombies.

A follow-up to Call of Duty: World at War's four-player Nazi Zombies mode, Black Ops Zombies once again follows Doctor Edward Richtofen, Tank Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, and Takeo Masaki as they're teleported throughout time and space in an effort to stop the zombie threat, starting at the Kino der Toten theater.

From here, the group is teleported to areas throughout the world, aided by other groups of survivors at the Pentagon and at a George A. Romero Siberia filming site, before ultimately being brought to Area 51, where they're finally teleported to a secret facility on the moon, the source of the zombie outbreak.

After completing multiple complex tasks, Richtofen eventually gains control of the zombies to take over the world, with the remaining survivors inadvertently being forced to launch nuclear missiles at Earth to thwart Richtofen's plans but turning the planet into a fiery nuclear wasteland filled with zombies.

2 Halo: Combat Evolved

Dust and Echoes

One of the most well-known games to completely change tone halfway through its runtime is also one of the best co-op FPS games, with that game being Halo: Combat Evolved.

Set in the year 2552 as the UNSC Pillar of Autumn strives to evade genocidal alien Covenant forces, Combat Evolved follows the Spartan super-soldier Master Chief as he, the AI Cortana, and other surviving UNSC forces struggle to defeat the Covenant while investigating a mysterious ringworld called Halo.

In terms of CE's co-op functionality, the game allows two players in local co-op to play through the campaign together, though the game's story canonically only has Chief exploring the ring as a lone Spartan while his wounded squadmate Linda-058 floats in a crypo pod in Halo's orbit.

About halfway through CE, the game completely shifts from a generic sci-fi action game to cosmic horror as it's revealed that Halo is actually a weapon of mass destruction designed to destroy all life in a massive portion of the galaxy in order to starve the zombie-like Flood parasite from consuming all life, which it already has done in the far past.

1 Dead Space 3

The Fall of Humanity

Without a doubt, the best co-op game that starts out as a simple adventure before becoming incredibly dark by the final act is Visceral Game's third-person survival horror game Dead Space 3.

Set three years after the events of Dead Space 2, Dead Space 3 once again has players step in the traumatized engineer boots of Isaac Clarke as he's joined by EarthGov soldier John Carver to look for fellow DS2 survivor Ellie Langford after she went missing looking for the supposed homeworld of the Necromorph-making Markers.

DS3 initially starts as a simple rescue mission, but once Clarke and Carver find Langford, they're convinced to journey to the nearby planet of Tau Volantis in hopes of finding a way to turn off the Marker's signal after supposedly discovering that an ancient alien race was once able to stop a Necromorph outbreak.

In reality, however, these ancient aliens only managed to delay an outbreak by freezing a nearby Brethren Moon, a moon-sized mass of Necromorphs that created the Markers to help achieve their goal of consuming all life in the universe. While Clarke and Carver are able to kill Volantis' Brethern Moon, they're unable to stop three of the Moons from consuming Earth.