What game characters, music, or story had significant emotional impact for you?

[PhantomFox]

Was thinking about this recently. What kind of games made a lasting emotional impact with you that make them great? Be it truly unique and memorable characters, a moving soundtrack to underscore big moments, or just a story that had you glued to your seat? The kind of games that aren't ONLY fun, but go beyond and become iconic (if only personally).

[Razade]

The opening song for Chorno Cross, Time's Scar, still chokes me up a little and gives me the shivers. Especially with live orchestras playing it. Just a phenomenal song. A lot of the music from the .hack// games are also pretty great. Having some big named Japanese composers on the .hack//project in general probably helps with this.

[Brother Oni]

Was thinking about this recently. What kind of games made a lasting emotional impact with you that make them great? Be it truly unique and memorable characters, a moving soundtrack to underscore big moments, or just a story that had you glued to your seat? The kind of games that aren't ONLY fun, but go beyond and become iconic (if only personally).

In my opinion, for a game to have an emotional impact, it needs either a memorable theme song, investment in the characters or plot, or just what you're playing at a certain time in life (e.g one of those long summers that everybody else had).

For me personally:
Dearly Beloved from Kingdoms Hearts
To Zanarkland from FFX
The Hymn of the Fayth from FFX*

*This one is mostly because FFX was released in Japan the day I was flying back and had the demo (Yuna's Sending) playing in nearly all the shops at the airport. It would be another 10 months before the game was released in Europe and I got to play it.

Plot:
Game of Thrones (2012 game). The game's otherwise mediocre, but final scene near the end made me sick to the stomach:

Spoiler: Mors' family

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Mors, one of the main protagonists, took the black to save his family from reprisals and has been living for years guarding the Wall under the impression that they alive and well.

Part way through the story, he travels home with his friend Alester (and the other protagonist), only to find that they're dead and had been killed years ago.

The penultimate scene of the game is Mors discovering that Alester had killed his family on orders, then the game immediately cuts to a flashback scene with you controlling Alester just before you murder Mors' family in their home.

Characters:
Yuna and Tidus from FFX - one of the rare cases where there's a bittersweet ending to a FF game. The epilogue Eternal Calm made me really happy and following Yuna's story got me through FFX-2.

[MCerberus]

Can't really say much because of the spoiler minefield, but very recently the last half of Pokemon Sword/Shield's third act had music that was 100% on point.

A long long time ago, Ocarina on time used a lot of music and sound design to get across its emotion. One scene that sticks out to me is when you first reach the Forest Temple as adult Link. You're there to rescue the only person who ever gave you the time of day, a musician known for bringing joy to everyone, and there's nobody there. You're alone, and it's silent. At least, until that damned owl comes in to rub your face in how you let everyone you cared for down.

[Rodin]

If we're talking all 3 at once, then Ghost Trick is my immediate go-to for an amazing combination of story, characters, and music. It's a mystery story where all the major players are competent, quick on their mental feet, and quite dangerous in their own way. The story is full of twists and turns with big payoff reveals that totally change your perspective on everything you've seen. The music is wonderfully quirky, with character leitmotifs that are instantly recognizable and fit perfectly with who they are portraying.

Most recent game to blow me away with its story is Cross Code. I never knew I could care so much about an almost-mute protagonist, but Cross Code managed to make Lea the deepest character in her game.

Oldest game to spark that reaction would be Final Fantasy Legend II. Heartful Tears was a remarkably soulful song for the Game Boy, and hearing it when Dad sacrifices himself for Lynn gutted me as a child. Come to think of it, the music for that game was just awesome in general.

Honorable mention to The Last of Us. The story is merely average for almost the entire game. The gut punch at the end though? Yikes. That was a "sit down and think about it" moment to be sure.

[Man_Over_Game]

Ugh, Transistor.

Spoiler: Major spoilers of the game's plot

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You're a famous singer that's also in a relationship with a rebel leader. The government/mafia steals various parts of important figures (their minds, beliefs, opinions, etc) to give insight to their god-machine that changes their universe into being whatever they say they want it to be. Well, they steal your voice and use it to create songs to be used to satisfy/brainwash the populace, since you're both against the government/mafia and also a very famous person.

The first boss is your rival who sold out to the mafia. They gave her your voice, and then they tried to use the god-machine to make her more like you. But the god-machine isn't working right (as it's basically the Big Bad), and it turns her into this half-machine zombie thing.

As you fight her, a song she made, with your voice, plays in the background. A song about how "I won't save you", and how "I" will only ever be a disappointment to all of the people that depend on her.

The song was right. By the end of the game, the entire city is consumed by the god-machine, with everyone trapped inside of the Transistor (basically where all of the consumed aspects of people go). It's not all bad, as it is basically a virtual world, and so everyone now continues to exists inside of a new universe to call home.

After replaying the game, there's something powerful about understanding the message of that song, in your character's voice but coming from your nemesis, telling you how you're going to fail despite all of your struggling and desperation.

You think it's a taunt, when it's really a premonition.

[Zevox]

The Persona franchise had a lot of this. I mean, just counting the moments that made me straight-up cry, and not even touching on other forms of emotional impact (of which there are plenty), Persona 3 had at least three that I can remember, Persona 4 had one big one, and even Persona 4 Arena managed it.

Spoiler: P3, 4, and Arena spoilers

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Persona 3: Shinjiro's death, Chidori's death, the potential bonus scene of Chidori surviving but losing her memory of Junpei and the others.

Persona 4: Nanako's death. And it says something that even though it turned out to be temporary (which I didn't think it would the first time I saw it, especially knowing how willing P3 had been to kill characters), I don't think that undermines the power of that scene in the slightest.

Persona 4 Arena: Labrys' story portion, from about the moment her creators said they were going to wipe the memory of the other robots from her onward. And again, says something about the quality here that even though this story's "twists" were quite predictable and it wasn't anything novel, it still hit pretty hard and made me love that character.

Mass Effect 3 is the only non-Persona game to do the same to me, with the scene you get on Tuchanka if you, ah, go full renegade at the end while having Mordin still alive, let's say.

Spoiler: ME3

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Shooting Mordin in the back like that is gut-wrenching enough in itself, but then watching him drag himself to that control panel, still trying to do the right thing and reverse the Genophage, only to fail and die... goddamn, that was brutal.

While Persona 5 didn't have any tear-inducing moments, as far as other forms of emotional impact goes, there's no way I'm forgetting some of those early-game events ever.

Spoiler: P5

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When Shiho attempts to commit suicide by jumping off he school roof like three days into the game it's a big enough "oh ****" moment, but then you find out that the reason she did it, which is a complicated web of manipulation and abuse perpetrated by the gym teacher, Kamoshida, which culminated in him raping Shiho because her friend, Anne (who is also your friend and party member), refused to go home with after school that day (with the obvious implications). A decision Anne made knowing that it might blow back on Shiho because of what Kamoshida is like, after talking about it with you. Just, wow, did all of that horror ever get you invested in taking Kamoshida down hard. Honestly, none of the other villains of the game ever quite had that level of personal connection to your group or motivated that much hate of them, I felt, even though there are some who commit even worse crimes.

As far as music goes, Persona 4's end credits song, "Nevermore," fits the bill for me - I was sad when I got to the end of that game just because it was over and I didn't have anything more to do with those characters, so that song basically wound up having those feelings associated with it in my mind.

[Beowulf DW]

Bastion got me pretty worked up. Especially that ending scene if you choose to make...well a more forgiving choice. Easily of the most moving games I've ever played in the sense that it genuinely stirred emotion in me.

The Mass Effect series also had its moments for me:

Spoiler: Mass Effect 1

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During the Bring Down the Sky DLC, I initially made the choice to sacrifice the hostages to bring down the terrorists. But then I saw the burned corpses of the hostages...

...which almost made me vomit. I'm not joking, I sprinted to the bathroom, and stood by the toilet until it passed. I was that disgusted with the choice I'd made, and the moral implications of it. I loaded up an older save and replayed about 2 hours of gameplay to redo that.

And then of course there was the horror of the Collector Base in ME2, and the various scenes in ME3 like Tuchanka and the culmination of the qeth/quarian conflict all brought a tear to my eye.

Spoiler: Dragon Age 2

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Strangely, one of the games that I found genuinely moving (as in, I put the controller down and just stared off and breathed for a while) was Dragon Age 2. Mostly the ending, combined with the credit songs. At the end of my first play-through, it finally hit me that this wasn't the story of an epic hero. This was the story of person that was in the wrong place and the wrong time just trying to push back against a world that won't let them be. Hawke loses so much of the course of that game, and in my first go round I hadn't been able to max out everyone's loyalty, so I ended up having to fight and kill characters I'd thought were Hawke's honest to Maker friends. It was one gut punch after another.

[Rynjin]

Kingdom Hearts 2, The Other Promise.

Yoko Shimamura in general is a master composer (the KH franchise has some of the most consistently amazing music in gaming, and I'll fight anybody on that), but The Other Promise is such an emotionally laden song in context. It helps that it takes place during the most meaningful (and arguably hardest) boss fight in the entire game. It's just so..MWAH. About the only one I think even rivals it is Birth By Sleep's version of Dearly Beloved, once you've beaten at least one character's route. Both songs are on my "I need to cry and then get motivated" playlist, along with Under Star (the first opening) from Hajime no Ippo.

Moving away from Kingdom Hearts for a moment, because there's so many great emotional moments in games that aren't 3, the bit in God of War (2018)

Spoiler

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where Kratos retrieves the Blades of Chaos is really ****ing good

...that whole game is excellent, and a great redemption for how gratuitous God of War 3 was.

I started the Yakuza series with Yakuza 0, as I think a lot of people did, and there are some great emotional moments in that game. The scene where

Spoiler: Like the entire plot of 0 and Kiwami/1

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Nishikiyama and Kiryu face off, with Nishiki having been ordered to off his best friend was as heartwrenching as the later reaffirmation of their solid bromance...as was the death of Tachibana, and Majima's rage fueled rampage through the Dojima family after Makoto gets shot and apparently killed. And then Kiwami (a remake of the first game; 0 was a prequel) happens, where I then had to watch in disbelief as it's revealed that Nishiki has completely SNAPPED in the last 20 years and is actually the villain of the game, followed by the death of almost every character you got attached to in 0. It's the most I got emotionally gut punched by the series until 5.

In more positive emotions, I've never been more hyped in a game that I can recall than the Ashtray Maze sequence in Control, set to Take Control by the (literal?) Old Gods of Asgard.

[NeoVid]

I had to purposely keep tears out of my eyes during the entire epilogue of Pyre, so I could actually read the summaries of what happened to all the characters. The fates of all the named characters were affected by nearly everything I did over the course of the game, including my mistakes... and top it off with how the music for each of the PC party's characters actually changes depending on whether you were able to free them or not...

I really want to play through the game again, and I'm really reluctant to play through it again.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Ori and the Blind Forest is great for hitting you in the feels. Without wishing to spoil, the start of the game is incredibly tragic, and later on when Ori spares Gumo despite the incredible frustration he's put you through up to that point I found it genuinely heartwarming.

Don't know if I'd call it an emotional impact per say, but the Halo games have been a pretty big part of my life. Combat Evolved in particular is a masterpiece I've replayed quite a few times, but for all of them the music is just fantastic.

For a weirder one, Devil May Cry V's Urizen is a phenomenal example of gameplay/story integration. Looking at it objectively, his lines are pretty corny, even cliche in places. But after beating my head against his second bossfight, dying time after time to whittle down his shield, and finally succeed at shattering that stupid shield as the game switches to cutscene and the triumphant music swells... and then he swats you out of the sky having received only a scratch, which has still made him furious to the point that for the first time in the game he starts taking things seriously, gets up off of his throne, effortlessly heals the scratch and restores the shield, delivers a monologue, and then the bossfight starts again - only you've still got all the damage from the first round and his health has only gone down by a sliver, and he's got a whole new suite of moves, and that damn shield is back.... Legitimately intimidating.

[Unavenger]

Basically every game in the entire Life is Strange series, a relatively large portion of the time.

[Cygnia]

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice...it blew me away. I was shaking in the end.

[Eldan]

Music, there's really only one thing I can name. Nerevar rising. That tune makes me feel more like I just came home after a long frustrating journey than anything else in my life.

Characters and story, most recently, Disco Elysium, which is one of the best games ever made.

[Cespenar]

Though they are not necessarily the best games I've played, the ones that I'd really consider moving would be probably something along the lines of Life is Strange, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Planescape: Torment, some parts of Bastion, some parts of Night in the Woods. Just off the top of my head.

[Wraith]

I concur with those above who mentioned the Mass Effect series - there's dozens of moments, each with perfect music, that invoke so many emotions at different times.

I think that ME2 just about edges it for the most memorable moments, though. Whereas the Suicide Mission from the very end was excellent, I still remember the hollow, kicked-in-the-stomach feeling that came during the intro - there's a particular piano chord that strikes just as Shepherd grabs at his helmet and begins to descend, and it's perfect.

The original Aerith's Theme from Final Fantasy VII is probably a very common one and a bit of a meme nowadays, but again I remember the first time that I heard it and I choked up a little bit.

As for characters, there aren't many but the one that sticks out is Viconia Devir from the Baldur's Gate. Sufficed to say I had a little bit of a crush on her in my teens, and I played through hundreds of hours of the BG trilogy to get the 'good' ending wherein...

Spoiler

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The protagonist helps her to conquer her demons, helps her reach some form of closure and enlightenment to turn her back on her evil, selfish, scared life from before you met, and then he chooses to refuse apotheosis and remain mortal so that they can stay together.
...Only for her to be killed by Drow assassins years later. She dies in 'your' arms, softly exchanging sweet, devoted words to one another. And then you and your son head down into the Underdark and start burning Drow settlements to the ground, one after another and become a scourge on their entire civilisation.

Immense mood-whiplash from triumph, to shock, to righteous anger in the space of about 3 paragraphs of text.

[DeTess]

The aforementioned mass effect 2 has some absolutely fantastic moments, and it's the game that properly got me into gaming. However, for me the games that had the most impact with both music, story and characters are Persona 3, 4 and 5. There are very few games that make me legitimately tear up, but all three of these managed to do that at various moments. I discovered these games through their music as well (I ended up listening to P5's soundtrack on youtube and decided to buy it because of that). The recent updated rerelease of persona 5 in particular had some absolutely awesome and heartbreaking moments in its final section.

Another game that I haven't seen mentioned here is Ace Combat 5. It has an interesting story, great soundtrack and absolutely fantastic final mission where all that comes together.

[Caledonian]

The Quest for Glory series had a major impact on my life, many years ago.

Riven, the sequel to Myst, was deeply moving. Beautiful scenery, lovely immersive music, these things brought me in. I wandered, trying to understand precisely what was happening. And then I began to understand... and the horror set in.

[Dienekes]

I am the very model of a scientist —- BOOM

Character, story, and music. Right there.

[danzibr]

Kinda surprised so many people are mentioning music, but that's cool. Guess I'm just not as affected by music as much???

Lots of games affected me emotionally. In particular when I was most impressionable, like 10ish, but it still happens in recent years from time to time.

Final Fantasy V. Galuf's sacrifice. So baddonkey. Hits ya in the feels.

Final Fantasy VII. Yeah, you know the scene. One of the first real RPGs I played, cried a lot from that scene. And you fight a boss immediately after! EDIT: Duhhh how could I forget about the whole Nanaki-Seto thing? Not as profound as Aeris, err Aerith, dying, but that was good too. Self-sacrifice.

Final Fantasy VIII. Eyes on Me by Faye Wong. When you realize it's about a certain romance, which didn't pan out... super sad.

Final Fantasy X. It's already been mentioned, but man what a depressing ending. Ya just want happiness for these characters, and they can't get it. And what's more, what happened 10 years ago, poor Auron.

Final Fantasy XV. This game got a lotta crap, but it was like 95% of the way to greatness. After the time jump near the end, when the boys get back together, that's touching. But what really takes the cake... the very end. Noctis's sacrifice. Sad face.

Phantasy Star IV. Alys's death. Sad music to go with it.

Hollow Knight. More recent one, the vessel sacrificing himself (depends on the ending).

Undertale. True pacifist ending. Asrieeeeeeeeeeeeeel :'(

Breath of Fire IV. Been so long I forgot the name, but that creepy dude that experiments on Nina's older sister. I can still see the scene, horrific.

Resident Evil 6. Forgot the dude's name (Piers?), but Chris's buddy, use the enemy's weapon. More self-sacrifice.

Zelda: BotW. Egad, what happened 100 years ago, all the people dying.

To the Moon. The whole premise of the game, poor old dude unable to find happiness. Works out alright though.

Self-sacrifice, that usually gets me.

[JNAProductions]

The Company Of Myself (Warning: TV Tropes Link!)

It's a flash game, a puzzle platformer where you make duplicates of yourself and stand on your own spiffy top hat to reach levers to make/unmake blocks and open doors.

Spoiler

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As it turns out, you're a mental patient who murdered his love. The game is you telling your story to a doctor.

You don't get better.

[Sloanzilla]

Not exactly what you are looking for, but I think about Ultima 4's virtue system a lot even now. It was sort of a Character Counts for a geek back in the day.

[The Hellbug]

Bastion (but Supergiant has my number when it comes to emotional beats in general--damn those phenomenal soundtracks!)

Spoiler: Ending

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So you have the choice between the weapon you'll be using to break out of the Ura's home and the carrying out the nearly-dead body of Zulf, who's freshly betrayed you but accidentally led you to his people's home (they aren't happy about it--thus the nearly-dead).
The whole sequence is phenomenally moving, but the one detail that I think hit me the most was that in the first few seconds after you pick up Zulf, the narrator cuts in like he has for the rest of the game, but for the first time he's wrong. That and the music and the scene afterwards--it's quite moving.

[Umbral]

I have a few stories that had impact for me.

Movie: The 9th Gate - I love this movie, and it also had me look up the Author of the Original Book "Club Dumas" by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, which also lead me down a rabbit hole of similar themed books by other authors.

Netflix: The Last Kingdom - A very good representation of betrayal upon betrayal and plans within plans. The fact that there is no magic is appealing as a base for understanding some plot developments I had not thought of in my own games. Cool stuff.

Twin Peaks - Surrealism done right. Very creepy and superb dialog. Love this show. There are tons of reviews for this, so enough of me.

A few bits of music:
Helloween "Ride the Sky"
Gojira a French Metal Band
Unleash The Archers "Tonight we ride"
and a ton more, mostly Swedish,Norwegian, etc goth, metal...

[T.G. Oskar]

Music-wise, I love a lot of RPG songs, but there are two that are significantly emotional for me. Both, however, turn even more emotional when they're rearranged in one way or another.

The first is City of Flickering Destruction by Yoko Shimomura, from the Legend of Mana game. The original was part of a rather melancholic dungeon, and it played all the way through. This one, however, was from her release of Drammatica, an album covering several pieces of the game with a more instrumental arrangement, and the way this song just amps it up makes it so much more heart-wrenching.

The second is Stones, from the Ultima series, by David "Iolo" Watson. The original is pretty melancholic, but I can listen to it very well. However, I struggle to hold tearing up at hearing the vocal version, as it's essentially a song of longing and loss. I feel it's downright criminal that few people acknowledge the power of this song.

As for characters? Well, most people that have seen my posts (or that know me) on the Final Fantasy Record Keeper thread know I have a serious platonic crush for Terra Branford (and if you don't, you're aware), but there's only one character that elicits an emotional reaction from me, and that leads me to have a rather shocking emotional reaction to another.

Spoiler: Beware: Trigger Warning

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So, if you've played Vagrant Story (great game, BTW), you'll notice that in parts of the game, some of the characters can essentially piggy-back into the senses of others. Ashley Riot, the main character, sometimes has glimpses of the acts of a rival group, the Crimson Blades, who are supposed to be nominally the "good" guys, hunting those who seek the power of the Dark, all the while being asses about it. Ashley piggy-backs into the senses of this girl, Lady Samantha, who happens to be related to one of the villains of the story - Romeo Guildenstern, leader of the Crimson Blades. Now, that by itself might not be shocking, but there's a few things that set this off.

First, she's presented to be purer than pure. Surrounded by jerks, she's basically the only decent one amongst them...which makes it even more wringing when Romeo finds out and starts pretty much slapping her around and telling her she's weak. Still, it shows up they're mostly jerks, at least compared to the monsters you're facing and the guy you're hunting and the past you're trying to work with...

...uuuuntil the very end, when Guildenstern simply stabs her in the heart and tells her that he only used her, all the while revealing himself to be the villain all along.

That? That's the moment I decided Guildenstern had to be skinned alive and submit to the most horrible of tortures for all eternity. Basically, the moment I saw that, I went berserk, and knowing that was the last battle, it was immensely satisfying to beat the everloving crap outta this guy.

So...what's that trigger thing? Well, it's a clear example of being Stuffed into the Fridge, as the whole purpose was to elicit a reaction of anger and revenge by intentionally killing someone who happens to be a woman and a love interest for someone (in this case, the villain), so it's a scene done in shaky ground. Apologies if you're against this kind of scene in fiction.

[Velaryon]

Musically, I have to go with Frog's theme in Chrono Trigger. It's a really stirring regal march that's tinged with just a hint of sadness, which perfectly captures his nobility, regret, and redemption. The theme is a large part of the reason he's my favorite character in the game, despite being arguably one of the weaker heroes.


In terms of story events, I can think of no better video game story than Red Dead Redemption. This is probably the most powerful scene...

Spoiler

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[BeerMug Paladin]

Everything about the Slylandro. Virtually everything/everyone else in that game.

Activating the viewscreen in the factory ruins and viewing the events of 1999 AD.

Celes waking up from a coma only to fail saving the life of the only other known survivor after the end of the world.

All my examples are fairly old, but I think are generally well known.

[Morgaln]

I'm a sucker for self-sacrifice and martyrdom if they're done well (see spoiler below), so I absolutely second danzibr's mentions of Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil 6.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. It's an action-adventure, a take on the classic chinese tale Journey to the West set in postapocalyptic America. The game is not very long and it does have a number of flaws, but I really connected to the characters and the ending did haunt me for several days.

There's also Legend of Dragoon, a JRPG for the PS1. Not only does it have a very unexpected character death at some point, there are several FMVs in that game that were awesome to behold considering the technology of the time.

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue also qualifies. I loved the characters of the predecessor (Lunar: Silver Star Story); Lunar 2 plays centuries later, so while there are references to the characters of the previous game in form of statues and history accounts, they are obviously not in the game. Of course the game focuses on the new characters so it's not a big deal. Until you meet the one character who, by nature of what he is, actually is long-lived enough to be in both games and he starts to reminisce about the characters from the first game and how they are all gone now. The feelings did hit me like a truck at that point. Of course there's also the sequence where the paladin who works for the evil empire switches sides and dresses up as a superhero (i. e. donning a mask and a cape) to rescue the other characters from prison. Every single person immediately recognizes him and greets him by name, resulting in exceedingly awkward attempts to claim he's not actually that person. It's hilarous and is still making me laugh occasionally 15 years later.



I've also got a negative example: Goodbye, Deponia, the third installment in a Point&Click series.

Spoiler: Deponia

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In the Deponia series, you play Rufus, a failed inventor on the planet Deponia, that is completely covered in trash. His life goal is to reach Eylsium, a kind of mythical promised land (and in actuality, an orbital space station where the wealthy retreated to after covering the planet in trash). Please note that it is primarily a comedy series running on comic/slapstick logic.
Now Rufus is a pretty selfish character, who will happily screw people over if it helps him. Over the first two games, he does a few pretty awful things (oh god, those baby dolphins...) But he also has several opportunities to complete his goal but doesn't, because every time, it would mean to either deceive his love interest or otherwise screw over a person he actually cares for. He is also working actively toward saving Deponia from destruction So he does have a certain level of integrity, even if the bar is somewhat low.

Cue the third game: the game forces you to do some really nasty things; on the level of literally selling a woman of color as an exotic dancer and trying to leave a group of children with an obvious pedophile. In addition, it introduces a minor side character who introduces himself as Rufus' greatest fan. The character not only is portrayed as incredibly stupid and oblivious, he also gets screwed over hard by Rufus every time he shows up. He is an obvious take that against those fans of the game who like Rufus and want him to succeed, and it shows nothing but contempt by the author for people who dare interpret his work differently from what he intended.
And then we get to the ending of the game. A major plot point in the whole series is that two main antagonists look identical to him. One of them impersonating one of the others happens a lot over the whole series. In the end, all three of them are stuck in the propeller of an airship about to slowly crash. If one of them lets go or tries to get out, the propeller will move again and fling the others to their deaths. Rufus' love interested then shows up and tries to find out which of them is the real Rufus. Obviously, each of them wants to be rescued and claims to be him. Your only way out of this situation is to claim you're one of the other two and support that person's claim that he is the real Rufus; i. e. you do a noble sacrifice so your love interest will go and save herself. Only the way you do that is by letting go and falling to your death. Never mind that by the previously established rules for the situation this means the other two should die as well (note: they don't). Never mind that you spent several weeks with your love interest and almost certainly have ways to identify yourself by mentioning something the others can't know. Never mind that there are several thousand other people on the ship and there is ample time to get help and save all three of them.

The author himself stated that he hates good endings and that he doesn't write good endings out of principle. I have no problem with bad endings. I prefer my endings bittersweet (which this one isn't because none of the actual plot points - saving Deponia, saving Elysium, Rufus reaching Elysium - gets resolved), but 'm fine with a story ending badly. However, what I expect is for an ending to make sense. I cannot agree with the author that a good ending in itself is terrible. What is terrible is a contrived ending, and Goodbye Deponia is incredibly contrived in the end.
I was pissed at that game and especially the way it handled the ending. It's been years since I played it and I'm still getting pissed when thinking about it. I found an online discussion where the author himself commented on other people bringing up the same objections and it basically boiled down to saying that this is his artistic vision and if you don't like it you don't understand art and thus are not qualified to comment on, much less criticize it. To which I can only say, if you need plot holes and contrivances to make your artistic vision work, then your art is sh*t.

[Eldan]

Deponia:

Spoiler

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Which was not improved by adding a fourth game where he's alive again, so the sacrifice is extra meaningless.

[Cespenar]

I mean, the writing of Deponia is crappy altogether (at least by point&click standards), so those parts are pretty much are guaranteed to not be that well written as well.