Who doesn't like a good love story? Two people meet, they hit it off, and the next thing you know, there's cheeky banter and flirting before falling in love. As straight to the point as it might sound, that's not always the case, and there aren't a lot of 'great love stories' that the world knows because they ended well.

There's something about an unfinished or unrequited love story that truly rings home. Whether it's because we've all, at some point, had to go through something like that, or because tragedy and romance, when tied together, make for very potent emotions, there's just no denying that tragic love stories stay with us for very long times.

As with any form of media, gaming is no stranger to love stories either. Sure, I do feel like love stories in gaming are never front and center, and the genre itself is rather untapped, but there have been some, over the years, that have left huge marks on players, and not in a rosy, happy way.

Dominic and Maria Santiago — Gears of War

They are with their kids now

Gears of War, when I played it as a kid, was always supposed to be cutting locusts in half with a cool chainsaw gun and blowing them full of lead, not about heartbreak and emotions I didn't know how to deal with. For all the bravado and explosions my screen could handle, this fantastic franchise, at its core, is more about survival and loss than it is about gunning down Locust. I wish Dominic Santiago had a better fate, because that man, ever since the Emergence Day, went from one low to another, his life a series of terrible, heartbreaking events. His desperate 14-year search for his wife, Maria, was the only thing on his mind from the very first game, and while Marcus fought for the war, Dom fought for Maria.

It was in Gears of War 2 that he finally found her, but reality was far crueler than anything I expected. Having been captive with the Locust for years, Maria was a husk of her former self — lobotomized, drained, and reduced to an unrecognizable shadow of the woman Dom had loved. His choked breathing and sobs, telling Marcus he doesn't know what to do, still rattles in my ears.

Cradling his wife he had spent over a decade looking for, Dom knew he had to put Maria out of her misery. The gunshot we never saw but heard down to our very core is a core memory I'm never getting over. Dom will always be one gaming character I wish never died, and yet, I'm happy knowing he's with his wife and kids now.

With E-Day announced and coming out in 2026, I hope we get to see more of Dom and Maria, because my heartstrings are ready to be pulled apart once again. And who knows? It might even come to the PS5 soon at or after launch, considering how Gears of War Reloaded has been ruling the charts on the PlayStation Store.

Commander Shepard and Tali'Zorah — Mass Effect

The weight of a choice I didn't know I was making

When I first stepped into Mass Effect 2, I wasn't really sure who I wanted my Shepard's romance option to be. Tali was a squadmate, yes, but she also felt more. Vulnerable under the helmet, brilliant in her engineering skills, and quietly one of the most loyal companions across the series. It felt right to choose her, and then, I even got to carry over that bond into Mass Effect 3. Admittedly, this was the first time in my gaming life that I saw choices from one game carry over into another, and my story felt real, lived-in, and connected.

Then came the war between the Quarians and the Geth, and in the heat of it all, I made a choice that I thought was strategic, or even noble. Looking back, I don't know what I was thinking, or if I was thinking at all, siding with the Geth. My decision carried weight far beyond mere numbers, and it wiped out all of Tali's people. The cutscene that followed soon after? That's one I'm never forgetting, as Tali'Zorah removed her helmet, whispered one last word, and hurled herself from the cliffside because of my actions. No gore, no spectacle. Just heartbreak, and break my heart it did.

I remember sitting there in stunned silence, trying to figure out a way to roll back my save. Instead, I just ended up not touching the game for a few days, being rather muted about what I'd just done in the game.

Ezio Auditore and Cristina Vespucci — Assassin's Creed

I wish they could have had a second chance

When Assassin's Creed II first introduced us to Ezio Auditore, he was nothing but a young man and a reckless womanizer, sneaking up balconies and stealing kisses. There was Cristina, however, who was the first woman he met, right after the brilliant title card dropped. From their very first encounter of sneaking into her room and being driven out by her father the next morning, it was clear that Ezio really cared for Cristina, and who knows, had his life gone the normal route, he would have cleaned up his act and married her. At least, that's the alternate timeline I firmly believe exists somewhere in the multiverse.

The very next day, however, Ezio's entire life would change, and the reckless teenager was forced to grow into a blade of vengeance, leaving Cristina behind in a life he could no longer return to. She did help Ezio give his dead father and brothers their last rites, and in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, we saw little snippets and flashbacks of Ezio's journey with Cristina — glimpses of a romance that never blossomed, but never wilted, either. Cristina wanted stability and safety, which she had every right to, and yet Ezio could only ever have given her war, blood, and secrecy.

The night before her marriage to another man, Ezio and Cristina had met. It was clear the two yearned for each other, and yet Ezio's life was always headed in directions Cristina never could follow. Eight years passed before the two would meet again, and this time, there was nothing but pain and anger in Cristina's words, her love almost threatening to turn into hatred for Ezio and the life he didn't choose with her.

Seeing her dying in his arms, gravely injured while bemoaning the life they never had, was something my 12-year-old self was simply not ready for. To this day, one can only wonder what their lives would have looked like had Ezio's life not taken the turn it had, or if Cristina had left Florence with him when he'd asked.

Max Payne and Mona Sax — Max Payne

She could never pull the trigger

It's befitting that one of the greatest trilogies of all time also has one of the greatest love stories in gaming. A femme fatale out to avenge her sister's death meets a man on a vigilante rampage, avenging his family's deaths — that's what led to Max Payne and Mona Sax crossing paths, before Mona refused to kill Max and got a bullet in the head for it. That was all we got between the two characters in Max Payne, but with Max Payne 2? We got a full-blown love story at the center of it all, and I am never going to get over it.

With Mona back from the dead and working alongside Max in the sequel (along with being a playable character this time around), their paths became intertwined, with Max bailing Mona out multiple times while never knowing what it was he wanted out of this relationship. He wanted his wife and child back, but he also wanted Mona, because that was the path of no return he was firmly on.

Mona, for her part, reciprocated her feelings for Max, but in a world where the two always ended up pointing guns at each other, the only way she knew how to express it was to never pull the trigger. No promises of a future, no plans for "when this is all over". Just a refusal to pull the trigger at Max, not once, not twice, but three times over.

It was poetic how, in the first game, when Mona refused to shoot Max, she ate a bullet, only to survive, work with him, betray him, refuse to shoot him one more time, and truly dying at the hands of Max's "best friend". This tragic, bullet-laden and explosion-filled love story was also elevated by one of the most mournful scores by Kärtsy Hatakka and Kimmo Kajasto.

With the upcoming remake of both the Max Payne games, I am going to have to mentally and emotionally prepare myself aplenty before diving back in.

Chloe Price and Max Caulfield — Life is Strange

The heavy loss of something they never got to realize fully

There aren't a lot of love stories in any media that have hit me as hard as Max and Chloe's in Life is Strange. The thing is, they were never outright romantic partners, not in the traditional sense. However, the undercurrent was always there. Chloe's feelings for Max after losing Rachel Amber were clear, while Max, on the other hand, was swept up in too much. She was dealing with moving back to her hometown, a new school, a looming career-defining photography project, and, oh yeah, supernatural time-bending powers that made her the literal keeper of fate. She never got the chance to stop and ask herself what Chloe truly meant to her.

And before she knew it, Max Caulfield had to save the entire town of Arcadia Bay, or her best friend. A binary decision and yet an impossible choice at the same time, this decision carried the weight of sacrificing your closest friend (and maybe more) or letting an entire town full of people you've come to care for, perish. From the moment Chloe and Max met again, in the girl's bathroom where Max saw Chloe get shot, their fate was set in stone, and Max, for all her time-bending powers, had only been delaying the inevitable. Life is Strange, and the incomplete, unrealized love between Chloe and Max, all with its tragic end, left me reeling for years, and to this day, it's a story I revisit fondly.

The lingering loss and heartbreak are why I love this medium so deeply

Love is rarely straightforward, and definitely not in gaming. As a storytelling element, I've seen it take a backseat to the central plot a hundred times over, and even when it gets its time of day, it's messy, bittersweet, and sometimes, it's downright cruel.

These relationships, as tragic as they were, have remained with me, and left some lasting wounds and lessons. Yet, at the same time, it's what I love about this medium so deeply — the ability to make us feel loss and heartbreak through pixels on a screen.