The Elder Scrolls/Tear Jerker

• When Martin died in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, this troper was not only heartbroken, but a bit frusturated that all his work protecting him from the Daedra was in vain. Everyone seems to have cried over Lucien's death, but this troper thought that the little creep deserved it. As for the Expansion Pack, there's when Sheogorath reverted to Jyggalag, forcing you to Shoot the Dog. However, this means you technically kill a GOD, so it could also double as the player character's Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • The worst thing about the ending to This Troper was how, afterwords, everyone calls you the Hero of Cyrodiil. Why is that so bad? Because you didn't do a damned thing. In the end, all you did was help Martin sacrifice himself.
  • This troper found the Dark Brotherhood (assassin) missions a little heartbreaking. Why? Well, when you arrive at the Sanctuary after your initiation killing, you are quickly introduced to a rather (disturbingly?) cheerful band of murderers, whom the mission-givers encourage you to talk to for advice on your "contracts". So after a while, you've gotten to know all of them, their quirks, even the mean old shopkeep, and the black humor surrounding the missions themselves is hilarious, ("If [soon-to-be-dead guy] doesn't quit that awful drug, it'll be the death of him!") and then you get to the halfway point. The guy who recruited you thinks there's a traitor amongst them, and in order to get the traitor, he orders you to kill everyone in the sanctuary. All of them. Even darling Antoinette-Marie. And you have to, if you want to complete the mission line. And you'd have to be completely soulless not to feel bad about it. I mean, the shopkeeper chooses now of all times to start being nice to you! Just to add insult to injury, it seems like the rumor mill chooses that moment to pick up all the rumors about all the new dead guys you had a hand in making. Jerks.
    • This troper could not finish the rest of the assassination missions after that. He essentially made a Heel Face Turn at that point. What did it was having to duel Antoinette-Marie, whom he had become rather attached to. He had tried to take her out last, and quickly, with a Stealth Kill, so she wouldn't know who it was. But, she survived, and he was forced to fight her all through the hideout, on what felt hauntingly like the receiving end of an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight.
  • And some other Dark Brotherhood targets are fairly likeable too. Whodunit always gets this troper, 'specially Matilde. But for this (different) editor, it was Honour Thy Mother that went too far. Thanks to my Misaimed Fandom I was completely unable to kill Mathieu, so I fled.
  • Do NOT get this troper started about the Dark Brotherhood quest "Next of Kin." That note... with the shopping list... easily the worst thing this troper has ever done in a video game.
  • This troper's moment was during the Arena battle for Grand Champion. Up till then, your predecessor, the Gray Prince, has been a jovial fellow, if a little worried about his past. When you find out the truth... that he's really the son of a vampire...he goes straight into a Heroic BSOD, not even bothering to lift a finger to defend himself in the Grand Champion fight. The tear-jerking part? Everyone in Cyrodiil treats you like a hero for killing him...except his best friend, a Dark Elf in the Arena, who bitterly says, "Congratulations, Grand Champion. I hope it was worth it." >.<
    • It wasn't worth it for this troper. Who proceed to load up an old save game where he hadn't killed the Grand Champion.
    • This troper chose not to follow the sidequest, so that when he faced the Gray Prince, it was a fair fight and not assisted suicide.
  • Even some minor details can provoke this. There's a cave in the Shivering Isles populated by elytra and gnarls. Toward the back, you will find a dead woman. She is holding a diary, which details her coming to the cave with her lover and him wishing to make the cave their home due to his finding other people stifling. She came to find the cave something of a prison since she could not leave without breaking his heart (and it having been populated by the aforementioned monsters). She planned to escape, but confronted him about it first, and he allowed her to leave. However, she broke her leg on the way out, and was unable to either leave or return, and he did not respond to her cries for help. Thus ends her story. Deeper in the cave, you come across the man himself - he is still alive but attacks you on sight. If you kill him, and read his journal, he details the same events from his perspective, including how heartbroken he was that she wanted to leave. His diary finished with him hearing her voice, but putting it down to the echoes of memory, not realising she is genuinely in mortal peril. There is as far as I know no quest relating to these two; you will only encounter the story at all if you find and choose to explore this cave.
• This troper finds the entierty of the Shivering Isles to be depressing, if not Heartbreaking. To start, we have a realm that invites it's users in with a laughing Sean Connery like voice. Immiedantly after, it will either drive the "guest" insane, and spit him back out to be killed, or keep him/her there forever, thus cutting him off from his life. Next, for those that survive, there's the Gatekeepers death, which, in and of itself, isn't so bad, but compounded by the fact that you can use it's mothers tears to injure it further. The crying ALONE deserves a special mention, because that hints that the mother knows her child is going to die, and that she has seen it before, and she knows she's bound to making these things, just to see them die. Further in, we have an entire city divided into insanity, and the Dementia side is truely heart-wrenching, seeing these people within bound to a lifetime of sorrow and paranoia and such, and the only way out, suicide, is punished by the suicide cliffs! Oh! Did this troper not mention these? Cliffs that bind the souls of those who couldn't take it any further, and killed themselves, only to be sentanced to stay there for all of eternity, just waiting. To wrap this happy little party up, Sheogorath himself is depressing, as he is bound to continuously watch as his world is built up, and then see himself tear it down peice by peice, only to start again.
• The fate of the Dwemer race. Yes, they were not the nicest guys in history and they did some dick things (like what they did with the Snow Elves for just one example among...quite a few). But even as creepy as the Dwemer ruins can be, there is a kind of wonder surrounding them. After all, these guys made steam engines, complex astronomical devices and robots. F--ing robots, man! They had a scientific genius that the rest of the Elder Scrolls world could only guess at. But then they tried to make their own God, and...well, it all just went downhill from there. As unlikely as it may have been, and as ultimately destructive as it could have been...As an optimist regarding technology, I can only wonder just how much better life might be for the denizens of Tamriel if the Dwarves could have used their technology to truly better themselves AND the world around them. Now all that is left of the greatest minds in Tamriel are rotting cities, rusting machines and one final member of their race, searching for his kin and ending his life diseased and mad. Maybe I am just as mad as he is, but I can't help but wonder What Could Have Been, even as some Mechanical Monster tries beating me to death. I love you guys Bethesda, but you are evil.
  • Adding to this: In Skyrim, we learn that the Dwemer had managed to build a device that could read an Elder Scroll without the associated blindness. In other words, using science and technology, married to magic, they could see the future! And then their civilization vanished.