The what-could-have-been hangs heavy over Pairbond, the theme song to the underwater horror shooter BioShock 2. The lone violin soulfully plays a melody full of bitterness and longing, accompanied by more strings, which watch the events like a crowd of silent observers, but do not join in. The melody remains alone before fading away into the darkness.

The Anno-series is rather known for its positive nature, which is always wonderfully captured by the music. Wide, green meadows, blue skies and cheerful villagers who laughingly comment on our work. Hush breaks out of this habit and shows the dark side of the blinding sunlight. Like a lullaby, it reminds us that not everything is always rainbow and sparkles - and that's okay. Piano and violin slowly accompany us to sleep, while remindung us: Every rain is followed by sunshine eventually.

Who didn't play Fable III, has just been spoiled. But since I recommend not playing Fable III anyway, I don't feel bad ... at least not because of that. I probably don't need to explain why Death of Walter is in the game. It's not really a tragic death, even if the character and his demise in the course of the story were the closest I came to feeling something anything. The reason for this was this requiem. With its combination of strings and bells, it sounds a bit like Harry Potter, but that's not a bad thing.

A game in which we as protagonists embody one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, death incarnate, can hardly go without a theme revolving around death and loss. However, The Crowfather doesn't see death as a sad end, but as the start of something new and orchestrates the farewell as a magnificent, beautiful thing. Perhaps I'm interpreting a lot into this track because I like it so much. But as soon as the sound of the orchestra explodes, it hits me every time.

I did play To the Moon a a while back now and I don't really recall much of the story. Although the pixel adventure's design makes it more cute than grown-up, at its core the game is a story about longing, grief and loss. These emotions are brought to life beautifully in Born a Stranger . And yes, I just love piano pieces, no matter how simple they are.

The main theme of Child of Light, which is played thoughtfully and reservedly in this duet of violin and piano, is what we hear for the first time when we part from our friends and companions in the game. Final Breath is a reminder that every pain was preceded by something more beautiful, that everything good comes to an end at some point and that every farewell and every passing can also be the beginning of something new.

A track from a Battlefield is something very few people would have expected. But A Theme for Kjell is one of those emotional masterpieces that seriously mixes sadness and regret and lets it waft over us in the form of a synth composition. Our thoughts inevitably wander, we think back to what was and what could have been. We feel the loss, the end ... but also the hope of a new beginning.

A great ending to a great game - there's no other way to describe That’s the Way It Is of Red Dead Redemption 2 . A cowboy ballad to the inevitability of life that says it's okay when paths part and things end. It fits perfectly to the game, which had to show the credits at some point and bid us a fitting farewell. It was nice, as long as it lasted. That's the way it is.

Six years ago, this song was released, which was basically just there so that developer Riot could show how far they had come in the animation and art department. It tells the background story of one of the characters, the mummy boy Amumu, who can't make friends and is so sad about it that he's always crying. It sounds like kindergarten, but in The Curse of the Sad Mummy it is sung with incredible feeling, while the piano and especially the cello are pushed to the extreme. A heart-warming song without a happy ending with a clear message that life (and what comes after) is not always fair.

The last four spots are actually shared by two games with two tracks each, because I didn't want to or couldn't decide. 4th place goes to Broken Wings, which I already wrote about in my review of the Valiant Hearts soundtrack. In terms of style, it goes in the direction of A Theme for Kjell (Battlefield 4) und Best of Times (World of Goo), but without the same amount of grandeur. This restraint gives this track something intimate, something personal. It's as if he's taking you in his arms and saying: "It's good, let it out."

Nurture is exactly that: nourishment of the soul and nurturing of emotions. Where Broken Wing tells us to let our feelings run free, Nurture takes us by the hand and tells us that there will be better times again. At some point, somehow. Stay positive, see the good and don't give up. It's such a simple melody that even I can play it on the piano, but at the same time it gives so much strength, so much positivity. About admitting your feelings and accepting your own humanity.

Now come the two heavy-hitters, which probably make tears well up behind my nostalgia glasses every time. No wonder, after all the Mass Effect-series is also number 1 in my list of Top-10-Sci-Fi-Scores. An End, Once and for All is exactly that. The end of a trilogy, of several hundred hours of playing time in a distant galaxy. Once again, we have a simple melody on the piano that sways back and forth thoughtfully. It's over, remember all that has happened.

Don't Cry Because It's Over; Smile Because It Happened

Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian writer

And here it is, my number 1, the saddest track I've ever heard in a video game - even though I originally didn't! Because this song only plays when you make a decision in Mass Effect 3 , that no one with even a slightest trace of a conscience would choose. Nothing less than the extinction of an entire species precedes this track and the pain of the last survivors hits us here. It's dramatic, it's emotional and it's so full of pain that I find this song hard to bear, but at the same time it's so wonderful, so real, that it almost seems too short. If you haven't been in a bad mood today, go ahead. I'm not sorry.

Top 15 Saddest tracks

	Title	Artist(s)	Album
	Pairbond	Garry Schyman	BioShock 2
	Hush	Tilman Sillescu; Alexander Röder; Markus Schmidt	Anno 1800
	Death of Walter	Russell Shaw	Fable III
	The Crowfather	Jesper Kyd	Darksiders II
	Born a Stranger	Kan R. Gao	To the Moon
	Final Breath	Cœur de Pirate	Child of Light
	A Theme for Kjell	Johan Skugge; Jukka Rintamäki	Battlefield 4
	That's the Way It Is	Daniel Lanois	Red Dead Redemption 2
	Invincible	M.O.D.	World of Warcraft
	Best of Times	Kyle Gabler	World of Goo
	The Curse of the Sad Mummy	Michael Patti	League of Legends
	Broken Wing	Clinton Patrick Rusich	Valiant Hearts: The Great War
	Nurture	Stephen Mark Satterthwaite; Alex Johnson; Christopher James Allen	Valiant Hearts: The Great War
	An End, Once and for All	Clint Mansell; Sam Hulick	Mass Effect 3
	I'm Sorry	Sascha Dikiciyan; Cris Velasco	Mass Effect 3