"Leave us be. We have done no harm to you."
- At the end of the game, if you decide to kill the Maiden in Black and accept the Old One's offer, you get a cutscene where you step on her head to get past her. This character has been nothing but kind, considerate and helpful in this world of tragedy and despair, and you just struck her down. And then, you walked on her corpse without any hesitation. It can almost make you sick.
- Maiden Astraea and Garl Vinland's story. Astraea went on a pilgrimage to the Valley of Defilement in order to ease the suffering of the sick and abandoned. But upon arriving there, she began to have a Crisis of Faith, questioning how God could possibly let such a place exist, and discovers that she was worshipping the Old One instead of the true God all this time. She then accepted the Demon's Soul and began using her new powers to try and bring comfort to the residents of the valley—effectively using evil in order to do good. Unfortunately, the creatures she looked after began killing all those who stepped foot in the valley in order to feed her more souls, and so she has to be killed herself in order to stop the Old One. What makes this tragic is the fact that both Astraea and Garl truly want to help the creatures living in the valley and ease their pain, and neither want to fight you and ask you to leave quietly. The only reason they fight you at all is in self-defense. Although, it's pretty obvious that Astraea has crossed the Despair Event Horizon by this point, and is unable to recognize you as anything other than a threat, since you, a stranger, essentially walked in on them. They constantly tell you to leave them alone during the entire boss fight, too. Even worse, should you kill either Garl or Astraea first, the other will commit suicide out of grief.
- Even worse? There is no way to spare them. You unfortunately need to defeat Astraea to be able to put the Old One back to sleep, because the Archdemons are feeding it souls just by existing. You have to kill her and there is no way around it. Not even the player is safe from being a Woobie in this situation. It's enough for some players to go, "Demon vanquished? Then why am I still standing?!"
- The Remake somehow makes this worse; the music starts only after you initiate combat, giving the feeling that you are the demon and Garl Vinland is the hero. And once Vinland dies, the music goes from a rather epic, stirring, determined rendition of the original to a quieter, more somber version. The music was for him, not you.
- Oh, and THIS
is playing throughout the fight. - At least you can find comfort in the belief that, despite the tragedy of the fight, both Astraea and Garl Vinland are free from the curse of demons and are at peace with God now.
- Stockpile Thomas abandoned his wife and daughter when the Demons arrived and found himself stuck in the Nexus, not knowing whether they were still alive. He's fond of the Maiden in Black because she reminds him of his daughter, who he still believes to have survived when you first meet him. Sadly, you learn that both Thomas's wife and daughter are dead, either at the hands of Demons or the Fat Officials of the Boletarian Palace (likely out of suspicion of witchcraft). You actually find their bodies and can retrieve the daughter's jade hair ornament, which you can give to Thomas later. He sobs at the revelation that his "baby girl didn't make it after all", but if you give it to him, he'll thank you for giving him closure.Thomas: [on the verge of tears] You're a saint...! Thank you... Thank you so much...
- When you finally meet the real Allant below the Nexus. He's a disgusting frog-like blob, clumsily wielding the Soulbrandt to try and kill you, and while you're busy killing him, he goes on about how horrible life is and how the Old One was actually created by God to end humanity's suffering. He's sounds so utterly pathetic and mad and hopeless. Given everything you've seen up until that point, one could make a case for him actually being right. And who can blame him?
- Ostrava committing suicide after seeing the demon in his father's image. The worst part is? While that demon specifically isn't his father as he believes, his father still indeed became a demon. So even if we could have told him that his father wasn't the demon on the throne, it would have been a bare-faced lie.
