Tales Series / Woobie

open/close all folders

Tales of Destiny 2

Reala. She's created with a huge disadvantage compared to her Dark Messiah counterpart, initially cannot find the hero she needs to prevent Elraine from creating a Terminally Dependent Society, and during the course of her journey falls in love with a boy who decides to kill her creator, the only person keeping her alive. She doesn't say anything to try to reduce the pain Kyle would go through as a result of this, only for said counterpart to reveal both the truth of how she was created and that she will die with glee. While she does manage to come back to life in the end, she had no way of knowing survival was possible, and fully expected to be erased from existence.
Nanaly grew up in an orphanage with her brother, who got sick. Elraine offered to save his life, but only if they accepted brainwashing and having their free will removed entirely. Her brother died and she was left alone raising a bunch of orphans. Then, when she joins the party to fight Elraine, she gets put in a Lotus-Eater Machine where her brother's alive, only to be told he's not real. Then she has to reject her brother while he screamed and cried that he was real and didn't want her to leave him. Ouch.

Tales of Symphonia (and its sequel)

Tales of Symphonia

Pretty much the entire party counts, and then some. But to go into specifics...
Colette Brunel. She's a decidedly cute and kind girl raised to be a Sacrificial Lamb. She even gets a title for that one (Ill-fated Girl). Said "raising" meant dehumanizing her to the point where she actually did believe that she wasn't human, and would willingly carry out her duty, knowing full well that it results in her death. Also, everyone in her hometown— save for a few select people (all of which being playable characters in the game (namely, Lloyd, Genis, and Raine)) were taking part in said dehumanization (including her family). She's got everyone who's a potential enemy in the game wanting her head on a platter. (Well not literally. The main bad guys want to make her dead... without killing her.) Now add in the the fact that she's a primary target of the rage of not one, but two whole worlds of people... On top of that, she gets this funky disease that turns her into a crystal.
Presea; especially whenever something reminds her of her lost time, such as meeting neighbors she used to babysit as adults while she's still physically a child. Not to mention she was kept as an Empty Shell for sixteen years and in that time, her sister died, her father died and Presea was unable to comprehend it whatsoever, which made everyone in Ozette reject her for not aging and not burying her father.
Sheena is quite the woobie as well. She was found in the Gaoracchia Forest when she was an infant, (which is known as the forest of death) and while the chief of Mizuho took her in, some still consider her an outsider. Because of her hereditary ability to summon, she's made to try and make a pact with the Summon Spirit of Lightning, Volt, when she's just a kid, which backfires so horribly that Volt goes berserk and kills several people in her village, and puts the chief of the village (who's also her grandfather) in a coma. In the end, she's become the outcast of her village and ends up with serious self-esteem problems, and much like Colette she has the fate of the world riding on her shoulders. After joining the party, she eventually succeeds in making a pact with Volt, but her familiar/one of her oldest friends ends up sacrificing his life to save her. Oh and another one of her friends? His parents were also killed during Volt's initial rampage, and he's secretly held a grudge against Sheena ever since, to the point where he even joins Cruxis to get a chance to get back at her.
Zelos, very much like Colette, from birth onwards. Zelos was only born because it was prophecied that if his mother and father were to have a kid, it'd be the next Chosen. His mother and father pretty much hated each other. When he's a young child, Zelos' mother is killed in front of his eyes by his half-sister Seles' mother. The attack that killed his mother was actually intended for him. All through life, he is seen as nothing more than the Chosen by everyone and so Zelos hides his self-loathing and despair being a cheerful mask. Sure he's the jerk that betrayed your party, but if you go the route that ends with your party killing Zelos, you can bet you'll feel really bad about it afterwards.
Lloyd may not show it much but like Tidus from Final Fantasy X, he is going through hell. It starts off with Kvar transforming his human mother into a monster and his father, Kratos having to Mercy Kill her. Because of this, he goes through with Genis' plan to break into Iselia's human ranch to save Marble. Unfortunately, this doesn't go well as Forsyctus ends up forcing poor Lloyd to kill Marble, causing both him and Genis to be exiled from the village. Since then, Lloyd's been living his life with Colette on the lam, constantly having to fight off enemies because he knows only he can save Colette from her fate. When Lloyd finds out that his former older brother figure Kratos (who's actually his real father and an angel of Cruxis as said before) he's utterly crushed, especially after finding out not only was Kratos a traitor, but he was also his father. And everyone makes fun of his naivety and stupidity at times, even though he's only following his heart. It's also telling that like Colette before becoming Martel's vessel, Lloyd is the most idealistic of the group and sometimes his stupidity ends up helping the party more often than hurting them. Even after his father's Heel–Face Turn, he goes to live with the other angels depending on your choices, or Zelos dies, both are pretty heartwrenching options. The only really good thing to happen to him was being Happily Adopted by Dirk and that he does eventually get a happy ending unlike Tidus.
Raine and Genis were abandoned to another as a small child and a newborn, respectively, because of the racism against half-elves, with Raine having to lie about being a half-elf and raise Genis by herself, not to mention she has a crippling fear of water because whilst escaping researchers with her parents as a child, she fell of a boat and nearly drowned. Then later Genis is banished from his village (It was his own fault, but still), and his friend Marble was transformed into a monster and he and Lloyd had to team up to Mercy Kill her. It's hard to deny them Woobie points. Really, all the main characters are Woobies to some extent.
Lloyd's mother, Anna Irving, was Kvar's precious Angelus Project, an attempt at making a Cruxis Crystal from a human host. He wouldn't stop chasing her after she escaped the ranch with Kratos and their son. He turns her into a monster and begs for Kratos to kill her to protect their child.
Regal is a Stoic Woobie. He killed the woman he loved after she was turned into a monster from having her Exsphere removed. Since then, he turned himself in and never managed to get over it, even in the sequel.
Kratos is a Stoic Woobie. He also killed the woman he loved, who was Lloyd's mother. She also went out of control due to having her Exsphere removed. A baby Lloyd and Noishe fell off a cliff and by the time Kratos got down to the bottom of the cliff, all Kratos found was the corpses of Desians eaten by monsters. Since then, he's been a Death Seeker who has no reason to live until he meets Lloyd at the start of the game.
Yggdrasil is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. He watched his sister Martel die, the only family he had left when all he wanted to do was stop Half Elf discrimination. He then split the world in two to stop it from destroying itself and has spent over four thousand years trying to revive Martel and has gone off the deep end big time. By the end of the game, he goes completely insane and tries to take away Derris Kharlan which would end the worlds. His dying words are so filled with despair that it hurts.
There are also plenty of minor characters that qualify thanks to all the horrific trauma they go through. For example, we have Clara - because her husband is the Governor-General, the Desians perform horrifying experiments on her, mutating her into a monster. Dorr desperately tries to hide this by claiming she died while selling out his beliefs because he mistakenly thinks the Desians have a cure for Clara. When he dies, it turns out Killia was Dead All Along and was simply one of Pronyma's minions sent to keep tabs on the situation. Clara escapes Palmacosta as a monster and traipses around Sylvarant, unable to communicate with anyone or control her violent urges and is chased by monster-hunters. She can eventually be found in Izoold and healed - but then, Palmacosta is destroyed and Clara never leaves the beach where you found her. With her husband dead, daughter dead and hometown destroyed, she likely simply has nowhere else to go.
There's also Kate, who is pretty much constantly treated like garbage, because as a half-elf in Tethe'alla, she's designated to working in a lab and is not permitted to leave, ever. Then when she saves Presea, she's arrested for treason and sentenced to death. When the party rescues he, she hides out in the destroyed Ozette and reveals she's the Pope's daughter, who created the anti-half elf laws in the fist place. In an optional sidequest, she's then tricked into posing as Princess Hilda and drugged in order for the Pope to try and get close enough to kill Zelos. Though it fails, he abandons her once again, leading her to end up hiding out as Zelos' house (of all places) for refuge.
Aisha in Asgard, who is picked to be a sacrifice for the (fake) Summon Spirit of Wind, and it's implied she was selected because she and her brother Linar hang out with a half-elf.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

Emil. His parents are dead because they were assumed to be killed by Lloyd, his uncle and aunt hate him and he's hated by the entire city of Luin because he doesn't worship the grounds of Lloyd.

Tales of Rebirth

Tales of Rebirth
- Hilda Rhambling. Born in a world of Fantastic Racism as a Half means she gets the butt end of bullying and prejudice from both Huma and Gajuma. Later, Tohma of the Four Stars arrived and killed her Huma father and took her away from her mother, and she was raised as a Tyke-Bomb, while Tohma supplied her with a fictional backstory of her being abandoned by her parents. When she failed him, Tohma proceeds to break her in the most painful way possible: reveal that she is a Half, and tell her there is no place for her in the world. Later, she joins Veigue's party, and found a Gajuma woman named Naira, who happens to be her blood mother, and she flat out rejects her, making her angry and believe she was discarded. Until Tohma arrived again and tried to kill her, only for Naira to cover her and die for it. And then, after she dies, another person delivered her a letter that pretty much sums up how much she loved her, leaving Hilda in anguish that she could never apologize to her mother or even call her mother, at all... Sometimes, a Cool Big Sis like her does need a pat in the back...

Tales of the Abyss

Once you revisit Baticul after Akzeriuth and travel through the Inista Marsh, you might end up wishing you could give Natalia a hug.
If Luke's character development in the third chapter doesn't repulse you, then you'll feel terrible for Luke when the God-Generals begin mass replication; it creates a whole myriad of social and ethical issues. Replicas are treated like monsters and subject to violence. Replicas have no place to call home because the originals despise them. The crowning moment of woobie for Luke comes when the world leaders ask Luke to die at the Tower of Rem to save everyone from the miasma. It doesn't get better after, because Luke is dying.
Luke in general tends to make you want to hug him after Akzeriuth and his Important Haircut cuts away his Jerkass tendencies, leaving a genuinely sweet guy... who the whole world seems to want to crush down into little tiny pieces. Including his friends.
Arietta. She loses her mom, then her love, and then her life.

Tales of the Tempest

Caius. He goes through a big Trauma Conga Line in the beginning of the game through no real fault of his own, and it just gets worse from there. His reaction to his foster father's death over the course of the game is actually pretty well written - not too whiny, but not too apathetic -, and that just make it seem sadder. Then, when he finds his long lost brother, they're enemies and he has to kill him. Lukius survives and Heel Face Turns, so it's okay, but it's still sad.

Tales of Innocence

Thanatos. Cast down from Devaloka for falling in love with a human girl, his peerless love for her spread to the whole Naraka itself, pushing him to protect it at all costs. To think he'd meet his end at the hands of one of his descendants... <Sniff>.
Chien. He was shunned by the society thanks to the fact that his dogs, Cer and Ber, are actually his biological brothers (being the reincarnations of Cerberus), prompting him to join Arca cult under the hope he could finally be accepted. Then Mathias reveals her nature as Omnicidal Maniac. The kid really needs one of Ange's hugs.

Tales of Vesperia

Karol. He's an unlucky coward whose crush hates his guts and eventually fires him from their guild. He's such a coward, he was fired from every guild in the book. His hero, Don Whitehorse, commits suicide. Everyone except the main characters seem to hate his guts. Even Troy Baker, Yuri's voice actor, says he's annoying. He needs some more love, people!
Estelle becomes this when Alexei uses her power for his own ends, and eventually forces her to fight her friends. To the point where she outright begs Yuri to kill her.
Raven/Schwann turns out to be one, too. He lost both his unrequited love and his own life ten years before, was revived for the sole purpose of doing the Big Bad's dirty work, has an honest-to-God deathwish, has come to enjoy being Raven far more than Schwann, and ends up fighting the friends he's made, where he is left to die with them by Alexei and sacrifices himself to save all of them. Luckily, he gets better.
Pretty much Judith as well, once you learn her history.

Tales of Graces

Asbel gets completley broken at the end of the child arc, and just when things start getting better, his brother banishes him from his own home and his best friend turns evil.
Hubert throughout pretty much the entirity of the child arc, especially when Asbel implies he'd rather have Richard as a brother than him. He gets better in the present after he takes a level in badass though.
Cheria was constantly ill as a child, and the guy she liked left home and didn't even keep in contact for seven years.
Malik doesn't really seem the type at first, until you get to Fendel and learn his backstory. He used to be a member of a resistance group in Fendel, and was in love with another member, who happened to be the Chancellor's daughter. She was tragically killed in an operation gone wrong, and Malik constantly regrets not being more honest about his feelings. And things only get worse, he ends up having to fight fellow resistance member and friend Kurt, who bears no ill-will towards him at all, simply because the government was about to do something monumentally stupid. Kurt dies in a Heroic Sacrifice shortly after. In short, he's a Heartbroken Badass in every sense of the word. Even his trollish Shipper on Deck tendancies towards Asbel and Cheria take on a tragic light once a few skits in Liniages and Legacies imply why he's like that: he probably sees a lot of his own former romance in them, and he's desparate not to let it end as badly as his did.
Pascal is probably the only one who doesn't really qualify, being upbeat all the time. Though she did have some distance issues with her sister at first, but that gets thankfully resolved early on.
Richard qualifies as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds completley lost his faith in humanity after so many assassination attempts, most by his own family. This leads him to willingly let Lambda posess him, because he's all too willing to help Lambda with his goal of wiping out humanity. He's that broken. Thankfully, unlike many RPG villains like him, he isn't doomed to Redemption Equals Death, he's actually saved from his posession and makes an effort to atone for his actions.
On that note, Lambda, the Big Bad himself is another Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, and possibly the most sympathetic Omnicidal Eldritch Abomination ever. He was an energy being who was given a chance to experience the world and live life like a human in a humanoid body who was starting to show emotions, and one of the people who studied him eventually became like a father to him, treating him like any human boy. Unfortunately Emeraude has to come and ruin all that by subjecting him to horrible torture and claiming he shouldn't be treated like a human. His father-figure ended up killed right in front of him, and he was left on the lower world completeley alone. He posesses his human hosts simply because that's the only way he can stay alive. And then Emeraude sends Protos Heis to hunt him down and kill him. Eventually he basically snapped and decided to Kill All Humans just so he wouldn't be hurt again. It's probably for this reason that Asbel gives him the opportunity to make a Heel–Face Turn rather than destroying him. And awesomely, this actually works.
But of course Sophie is easily one of the biggest in the game. Her amnesia and seemingly dying and coming back to life ealry on without knowing why is one thing, but then she gets conflicted since protecting one of her friends (Asbel) involves fighting another friend (Richard). And it only gets worse once she realises her true nature, and her mission to destroy Lambda at any cost, even by self-destructing. Not only is the party extremely distraught at the idea of her destroying herself, but the one she's programmed to kill is currently posessing one of her closest friends. And as if that's not enough, Liniages and Legacies explores the Who Wants to Live Forever? trope for all its worth, with Sophie coming to terms with the prospect of having to watch all her friends die as she remains ageless.
Lady Kerri (Hubert and Asbel's mom). Her kids love her but are either afraid (Hubert) or slightly resentful (Asbel) of her husband who isn't helping matters any due to him generally being emotionally constipated mixed with a short temper triggered by Asbel almost daily, so in short she's the Only Sane Man. Then one day, said husband comes up with a bright idea to ship off Hubert for adoption to another country. Before she even can find the words to explain it to his older brother, said oldest runs off somewhere. She then gets news that both of her sons were almost killed but can only see one of them since the other has already been sent away. This causes the eldest child to run away from home and disappear for seven years. Aston then dies causing her sons to come back home, only now they are at each others throats. Afterwards, the youngest son hates her and the oldest is exiled from the village. It's really surprising she didn't go into an Angst Coma.

Tales of Xillia (and its sequel)

Tales of Xillia

Rowen, who takes the blame for Nachtigal, his best friend, becoming how he is in the present after leaving his side two years before and then watching him get impaled before possibly doing a Heel–Face Turn, watches his Lord Cline die prior to that, and blames himself for not being able to save his fiancee and Nachtigal's sister, Princess Carrie, who was caught in the tsunami at the Fezebel Marsh battle and believed to be dead. But when it turns out Carrie is alive and living in Elympios, she has lost all memory of him and is already happily married.
Then there's Leia, who is an Unlucky Childhood Friend, feels like she's dragging the party down at times, attempts to keep it together and take care of Jude while he's in his Heroic BSoD state after Milla's death, and then gets shot by Alvin while trying to protect the former. Not to mention the guilt she feels about Agria's fate.
Elize, who was taken to an experiment lab at the age of TWO after the death of her parents by Jiao, lived in a village where a majority of the villagers felt negatively about her, and finds out that her best friend Teepo is just a machine that says her innermost thoughts.
Driselle. Even she's a minor NPC, she had to deal with her brother's death, not to mention shoulder a lot of responsibility in his place. She manages to hold up fairly well though.
Alvin may be a jerk with a bad case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder but he was trapped in Rieze Maxia by the tsunami when he was six, raised as a child soldier who only knows how to betray others, and keeps working for Exodus to get medicine for his ill mother. And in the end, all of his actions were for naught as his mother dies anyway, after being poisoned by the woman who was supposed to take care of her. It doesn't really excuse his actions but man, his life sucks.
Ivar just cannot get a break. He's fiercefully loyal to Milla and all he gets in return from her is cold indifference and he sees his position as Milla's handmaid stolen by Jude. And then he's the one who turned on the Lance of Kresnik and caused Milla's death... His rude and agressive attitude towards anyone who's not Milla, however, makes him more a Jerkass Woobie.

Tales of Xillia 2

Elle is basically a magnet for things. Her home is attacked by people and her father fights them off, all while sending her away on her own, in order to keep her safe and leaving her with the goal to head to the Land of Canaan. And when she gets taken in under Ludger's wing, nothing lets up for her. She strikes up a friendship with the alternate Milla, only for said Milla to be sacrificed, to bring the prime dimension's Milla back and when Elle finally manages to make it home? It's in a fractured dimension, meaning she was never part of the prime dimension to begin with. Her father is a fractured, older version of Ludger, who has gone insane with his limited time and killed Bisley, Julius and majority of the protagonists, with only Milla, Muzét and Gaius still alive. And the last one is horribly, and likely permanently, crippled. And her father manipulated Elle into getting Ludger into this fractured dimension, so he could kill him. Elle then sees Ludger and her father fight, ending with Ludger having to kill her father. And then it turns out that Elle is beginning to turn into a Divergence Crystal, the exact thing her father was trying to prevent. And even the endings vary, with Elle potentially being sacrificed. No matter what the player may think of her, it's difficult to not feel somewhat sorry for her, with all those revelations.
Ludger himself. His mother died when he was 5 years old, but he doesn't remember her she was actually killed by his older brother Julius in self-defense, though Ludger has repressed this entirely, was raised by his aloof brother and he failed the test to become a Spirius agent. Things go downhill from there. If the revelations for Elle aren't enough, look at it from Ludger's perspective. Bisley, who is actually his father, wanted to take his daughter Elle away from him, to sacrifice her for the sake of Origin's Trial. Infuriated, 'Victor' fought everyone who opposed him suddenly, killing Bisley, his brother Julius, majority of the protagonists and is now suffering the after-effects of using his Chromatus ability too much, turning into a Divergence Crystal. He merely wants to go to Canaan and be reborn with Elle, so that they can live happily. Same as with Elle, Ludger can also die at the end of the game, in a Heroic Sacrifice. Poor guy.
Alternate Milla, too. In her dimension, she achieved victory over Exodus and her duty as Maxwell at an early age and lost her status as Lord of Spirits. Her sister, Muzét, protected her at one point and was blinded as a result, which has caused her to abuse Milla for the next fourteen years. And despite Milla wanting to become friends with the people of the village, they are still too ingrained about Milla being Maxwell and keep a respectful distance, which leaves Milla isolated from everyone. And when Ludger destroys the Divergence Crystal in her dimension, it ceases to exist and she's transported by accident into the prime dimension. Her entire home world is gone, she had to kill her sister, whom she still loved, despite the abuse, and is now in a very different dimension and sees herself as a 'fake' Milla. The fact that her being in the prime dimension is what is causing the real Milla Maxwell to be incapable of returning, Milla starts to become depressed over her status as a fake Milla and realizes she has to die, for the real one to return. And then Milla is used as a sacrifice to bring Milla Maxwell into the prime dimension - and for an extra kick in the nuts, she is either dropped by a guy, with implications that she might have had a crush on him, to save Elle or performs a Heroic Sacrifice, so that Ludger can go save Elle.

Tales of Berseria

Kamoana was a young girl living with her mother aspiring to follow her mother's footsteps. However, when the Abbey forces it's influence on her homeland, her mother is powerless to do anything. Her wish to help made her receptive to Innominant's power which the Abbey used to their advantage to trick Kamoana into becoming a Therion and lose all sanity. This pushed her mother into becoming a daemon, and her mother was forced to let Kamoana eat her to regain her sense of self. When Kamoana regained her sanity, she unknowingly committed matricide. One can't help but feel bad for the poor girl for suffering so much even if she did forget some of it.

Woobie / Tales Series