Dead Island/Tear Jerker


 * The trailer. Holy crap. It opens with a shot of a dead little girl falling out a window, and the rest of the trailer depicts her parents' doomed fight to save her. And then the trailer ends with clips of the family's vacation video from before the zombies killed them. This troper doesn't even have kids, and even so... damn.
 * The music. Does not help. AT ALL. Click on this.
 * Actually, it's even worse, she's not dead, she's zombified. She was caught trying to get into the hotel room, brought inside after a heroic effort from her father, and reanimated while her parents were desperately holding off the zombies, at which point she bit her father's major arteries out and fell out the window
 * The trailer is also shows, once again, that putting peaceful music to a scene of utter horror/violence makes it incredibly sad
 * It becomes even sadder when you start playing the game. You have to break into a room to make it out of the hallway. It's THE family's room. The mother and father from the trailer are there! What makes it REALLY sad? IT'S THEIR BODIES, STILL HOLDING HANDS.
 * Not even Tobuscus who does his "Literal Trailers" could make this funny. In fact, just the opposite. Dear god, the trailer was bad enough, but having it bluntly described to you as you watched it? Dear god.
 * "Wave... goodbye..."
 * The E3 trailer includes a moment where a weeping woman aims a gun at a zombie and says "I love you Dad" then fades to black when we hear a shot ring out.
 * The game provides the context for this..
 * The launch trailer isn't much better. Those, some of the moments of True Companions evoke tears as well.
 * This game was one of the only ones to make one feel sorry for the Zombies...or rather, what they used to be. Sometimes, when you hit one of the Zombies, it lets out a shout of pain. A completely human shout of pain. At first, one thinks nothing of it. Then it hits you...the human screams are supposed to remind you that these Zombies were once human like you. People who just came to the island to have a good time, or to get away from it all. And this shit happens to them.
 * Indeed, as you progress through the game you start seeing zombies wearing things like football helmets and straitjackets... signs that they were trying to protect themselves or others trying to protect them to no avail.
 * The Suiciders actually ask for help in a very quiet, very somber voice. Then they explode.
 * Many missions you do in and of themselves are pretty somber. One quest giver in the second act asks you to find his family . Another involves a worried father asking you to distribute flyers with pictures of his family, not even realizing no one (living, at least) will see it in the zombie-infested streets. Yet another has you find some morphine for someone
 * There's also the guy near the beginning of the game who is sitting in a swimming pool filled with blood, and littered with the corpses of his family, who he had to kill. There's also other encounters like this. Also,
 * This troper encountered one other NPC like that, who had killed his brother. What makes these NPCs especially sad is that you cannot interact with them at all. They just sit there going crazy, and you can't even escort them to safety.
 * What is even worse is that oftentimes, when you go back to the spot where you found them crying over a family member they just killed, a door is bashed in and there are bloody streak marks that show the person being carried away.
 * Anne Snyder.