Open-World Games that Start as Simple Adventures, But Become Incredibly Dark by the End

Most open-world games tend to start out as simple adventures, usually centering around exploring areas, crafting objects, or looking for someone within vast landscapes.

Open-world games, by their very nature, can oftentimes allow players to continue casually venturing about the game in these ways without any sudden change in tone or activity, similar to how players in Minecraft can freely spend weeks just building structures without ever going to the Nether or the End.

However, many more narrative-driven open-world games will shift in tone dramatically by the time credits roll, often impacting characters' roles, actions, relationships, and the world around them to become far more dark than previously expected.

Here are 10 such open-world games that initially begin as simple adventures but become incredibly somber or bleak by the game's final act.

10 Shadow of the Colossus

The Cost of Renewed Life

Arguably the most famous open-world game to dramatically shift in tone by the final act is, without a doubt, Fumito Ueda's haunting masterpiece Shadow of the Colossus.

Shadow of Colossus' story is innately mysterious as the game features very little dialogue and context for the game's world or characters, with the game simply beginning with a young man known as Wander attempting to resurrect a girl.

Wander is tasked by a mysterious disembodied entity called Dormin to seek out and eliminate 16 massive colossi in exchange for reviving the girl, making the game appear initially as a simple monster quest tale to save a fair maiden.

However, as Wander slays each colossus, his body becomes increasingly corrupted, and it's eventually revealed that the colossi were peaceful creatures whom Dormin sought to kill to free themselves and possess Wander, leading to Wander's own demise and the girl being resurrected, but at a terrible cost.

9 Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Embracing the Dark Side

Video games based on Star Wars often tell stories surrounding the films or at the very least tell original stories that are fairly PG in tone compared to other games, but Star Wars Jedi: Survivor managed to shock gamers and Star Wars fans alike with how dark its story got by the end.

Set five years after Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and 10 years after Order 66, Survivor follows Jedi Knight Cal Kestis after years of fighting the Galactic Empire to no avail, attempting to find a safe haven for his friends and allies on the mysterious hidden world of Tanalorr.

This quest initially begins as a fairly hopeful journey recovering pieces of a device to gain access to Tanalorr and fighting raiders, but as soon as Kestis and his friends recover the device, it's revealed that his close friend, Bode Akuna, was not only an agent for the Empire, but another Jedi survivor who fell to the dark side all to protect his daughter.

Akuna's actions lead to the death of hundreds of people, including the death of Jedi Masters Eno Cordova and Cere Junda, and cause Kestis, in his grief, to embrace the dark side in order to stop Akuna from hurting anyone else, including his own daughter.

8 Red Dead Redemption

No Rest for the Wicked

The Red Dead series by Rockstar Games is one of the most popular and cinematic franchises they've ever produced, and while each entry does have its emotional and shocking high points, the first Red Dead Redemption's ending is especially dark.

While technically a follow-up to Red Dead Revolver, Red Dead Redemption features an entirely new cast of characters and locals as players embody former outlaw and member of the Van der Linde gang, John Marston, as he's forced to hunt down each remaining member of his gang in order to free his family from U.S. authorities.

As an open-world, American Western film-inspired game, most of RDR is centered around taking out outlaws, riding horses, and helping locals in small towns, though each encounter with Marston's former gang members is fairly emotional, as both parties feel like they betrayed each other and are being pushed out by civilization.

Eventually, Marston is successful, and his family is free to live a new life on a farm for a little while, only for the authorities to go back on their word and kill Marston, forcing his wife and son to go on the run and his son to eventually become an outlaw of his own out of vengeance for his family's mistreatment.

7 Fallout: New Vegas

War Never Changes

Much like other open-world RPGs, the endings of every Fallout game depend on each player's choices throughout the game's runtime, but Fallout: New Vegas has some of the darkest endings seen in the entire franchise.

New Vegas follows an unnamed Courier who, after being robbed, shot in the head, and left for dead by a mobster called Benny, is revived by robotic Securitron and a doctor called Mitchell with the goal of tracking down Benny for revenge and to recover the Platinum Chip he stole.

Being an open-world RPG, players can simply ignore this objective for a long time and go about completing other quests, such as aiding the New California Republic, Caesar's Legion, the Brotherhood of Steel, or even the Elvis Presley-impersonating gang called the Kings.

However, players will eventually have to complete the main quest where they'll ultimately have to choose between siding with Mr. House in establishing imperial control over the Mojave, helping the violent Legion in invading Vegas and enslaving most of the region, helping the NCR annex the Mojave, or take control of Vegas themselves.

6 Assassin's Creed Rogue

A Misguided Creed

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed games may not seem like titles full of emotional roller coasters on the outside, but most entries do have their fair share of surprising emotional moments, with Assassin's Creed Rogue being one of the darkest entries in the whole franchise.

Set in the mid to late 18th century, Assassin's Creed Rogue begins as most AC games do, with people playing through the memories of an old Assassin, in this case Shay Cormac, a relatively young member of the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins tasked with taking out Templar leaders and recovering powerful ancient Isu artifacts.

However, after Cormac is tasked with traveling to Lisbon, Portugal to retrieve an Isu artifact beneath the city, it suddenly dissolves and initiates the Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, killing over 30,000 people.

After Cormac's Assassin Mentor Achilles Davenport refuses to stop chasing Isu artifacts, Cormac is left for dead by the Brotherhood and eventually joins the Templar Order, dedicated to putting an end to the Assassins, killing dozens of his former friends and allies and helping begin the French Revolution seen in Assassin's Creed Unity.

5 The Forest

Horrifying Revelations

At the very start of Endnight Games' The Forest, the game is already fairly unsettling as the player character, Eric LeBlanc, and his son Timmy barely survive a deadly plane crash onto a mysterious peninsula only for a disturbing-looking cannibal to kidnap Timmy before LeBlanc passes out.

From here, The Forest has only one primary objective, that being to find Timmy. But players could simply ignore that objective for a while and simply go about gathering food and resources and building structures to survive while avoiding curious and hostile cannibals.

Eventually, though, as players begin exploring the peninsula's many caves and discover clues leading to Timmy's location, they'll quickly encounter a wide variety of grotesque mutants created by Sahara Therapeutics that will begin to emerge from the caves and begin attacking players on the surface.

These clues will eventually lead to LeBlanc discovering that one doctor survived and planned to use Timmy and the mysterious Resurrection Obelisk to sacrifice him to bring back his deceased daughter, only to find Timmy already dead and forced to decide either to sacrifice another person to revive Timmy or to let his son go.

4 Prototype

Becoming a Villain

Most video games, let alone open-world titles, tend to have people play as rather heroic characters, but Radical Entertainment's Prototype bucks that common tradition by actually having players embody a villain, though that's not explicitly revealed till Prototype's end.

Prototype takes place in New York City and follows an amnesiac man named Alex Mercer who wakes up in a morgue and discovers that he not only has shapeshifting abilities, but that the city is plagued with a mutating virus called Blacklight and merciless Blackwatch soldiers.

Most of Prototype follows Mercer as he attempts to discover more about his past, the cause of the viral outbreak, and hunt down Blackwatch personnel, but after he consumes many Blackwatch members and Gentek test subjects, he discovers a terrible truth.

Mercer was actually the scientist who created the Blacklight virus, and while he is able to prevent Blackwatch from destroying the city, he's resolved to infect all of humanity with a new, powerful version of the virus as seen in Prototype 2, having lost faith in all of humanity.

3 Far Cry 5

The Mystery of Faith

Ubisoft's Far Cry series is famous for its brutal open-worlds and over-the-top antagonists, and while each entry does feature its fair share of shocking twists, Far Cry 5's ending is arguably the darkest in the franchise.

Set in the fictional Hope County of Montana, Far Cry 5 follows an unnamed deputy as they and other local police forces are tasked with apprehending Joseph Seed, a cult leader who has taken over the county with militant followers and hallucinogens, all based on the belief that Seed was chosen by God to save humanity from an incoming threat.

Most of Far Cry 5 plays similar to other Far Cry games, with the deputy aiding local resistance forces in taking down Seed's top lieutenants and rescuing allies, but the story takes an extremely dark turn at the end if players choose to arrest Seed.

After apprehending Seed, multiple nuclear bombs detonate, revealing that Seed's visions were actually true, leading to the post-apocalyptic world seen in Far Cry New Dawn and the deputy becoming a silent, subservient judge to Seed.

2 Horizon Zero Dawn

The Legacy of Ancient Sins

People who may have never played a Horizon game before may think it's just a game centered around tribal people fighting giant animalistic robots, but in reality, Horizon Zero Dawn has an incredibly dark but still hopeful story.

Initially, Horizon Zero Dawn is centered around Nora tribe outcast Aloy, attempting to find a place in the tribe by showcasing her strength and courage in the Proving event, but the game quickly takes a dark turn when the cult Carja faction known as the Eclipse attacks the proving and unleashes ancient war machines to attack the Nora.

Aloy is sent out as a Nora Seeker to discover a way to end the machines' corruption and put an end to the Eclispe, but along the way she also strives to find out who her parents were and why the Eclipse are attacking her in the first place.

This leads her to eventually discover in ancient ruins that Aloy has no parents at all, but is rather a clone of Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, the creator of Project Zero Dawn, an initiative to save life on Earth after most of it was destroyed 1,000 years ago by the robotic Faro Plague, with Aloy only being born in response to the AI HADES going rogue and attempting end all life once more.

1 Dredge

The Danger of Desire

If players were to look at any of Dredge's initial marketing, they may have thought it was just a mere fishing game with some dark visual designs, but if they were to play through the game, they would have discovered that Dredge has an incredibly dark conclusion.

In Dredge, people play an unnamed fisherman in the coastal town of Greater Marrow, going about in his relatively small boat catching fish and reeling in other items to sell in the town.

However, as people play through the game, they'll soon encounter a mysterious man known as the Collector, strange phenomena and monstrous sea creatures while learning about a newlywed woman called J.J. who was killed by the sea-dwelling Leviathan.

After recovering ancient artifacts near the town for the Collector, it'll be revealed that J.J. was actually the fisherman's wife and is given a choice to either resurrect J.J. but at the cost of awakening a Lovecraftian entity beneath the seas bent on destroying the world or to disobey the Collector and instead sacrifice themselves to be consumed by the Leviathan, freeing the town.