God of War (series)/Tear Jerker

• Kratos killing his wife and children in the last of God of War's flashbacks.
  • Even worse: In God of War: Chains of Olympus, upon reuniting with his daughter Calliope he is forced to abandon her to save the world. The scene where he must push his daughter away is made even more tragic as it is interactive, forcing the player to mash on the circle button to ditch poor Calliope as she tries to hold on to her beloved monster of a father.
    • For all the monstrous brutality of Kratos and all the heartless killing he has to do to get to this point, hearing Calliope crying and calling out to him in despair tears right into this troper every time, and forces him to hold back the tears while playing the game in a public place.
  • The last two hours or so of God of War III. Oh, where to begin?
    • The entire Daedalus subplot is just.... depressing. He's been chained up inside the Labrynth, hanging from the ceiling because Zeus is a dick, and is willing himself alive on the hope that his son Icarus will come and save him. His dream comes true when he sees someone with Icarus' wings flying around and solving the puzzle... and then he learns it's Kratos, who brutally killed his son in the previous game.
    • Pandora's Heroic Sacrifice. It's the one time in the series Kratos actively tries to prevent someone's horrible death. Not only does he fail, but the promised weapon, the one thing that can destroy Zeus, is not inside Pandora's Box.
    • Seeing Kratos' wife and child die in III. The scene implies that they KNEW that it was Kratos who killed them. Calliope's screams made this troper tear up.
    • The ending. Kratos finally kills Zeus, but has destroyed the world in the process. Athena pulls a Face Heel Turn and demands Kratos surrenders the power of Hope. The spartan moves to finish her off, raises the Blade of Olympus... and then flips it around and runs himself through. Hope rushes across the world while Kratos bleeds to death. The last shot is a blood trail leading over the edge of a cliff, while the sun shines through for the first time since Helios' death.
• The ending of Ghost of Sparta, where Kratos buries his brother Deimos, after fighting beside him for the first and only time as a true Spartan.
• Hephaestus's death. Believing that Kratos would kill Pandora, Hephaestus attempted to crush Kratos but failed and gets impaled. With his dying words, he plead Kratos to spare Pandoras's life and ask her for forgiveness. Kratos expressed pity for him through the rest of the game, since he was the only god he trusted and the reason why he attacked would be same as Kratos if his family was alive.
  • On that note, Pandora's death. Especially cruel since it's one of the few times Kratos is trying to stop something horrible from happening.
    • And ESPECIALLY cruel since the box was empty and Pandora died for nothing.
• On somewhat the same level as Hephaestus' death; Athena. At that point she was practically the only god feeling something akin to sympathy for Kratos and then he runs her through with the sword meant for Zeus'. Hers was probably the only death he regreted. Made worse by the fact that Zeus, her father, LEAVES her there. If you think about it, it makes it even worse for Kratos, because he just saw a father abandoning his daughter.
• Your first time through the underworld you hear a beautiful yet haunting tune called the melody of pandora. (look it up on youtube.) This song plays as you hear and see dead people falling through the underworld, and while killing enemies. It's a tearjerker because the song is suppose to be happy, yet people are dying while it plays.
• For all his Chewing the Scenery, Kratos' moments of emotion work. The sheer determination in his voice when he cries "I will save my family! fill the player with a sense of desperation; it's particularly heart-wrenching when you know he's doomed to fail. What gets me is his broken sob of "No...not again."
• I also tear up when Kratos hugs his wife and daughter, just sort of enveloping them in his arms, like he's trying to form a barrier of love and protection around them all.

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