My candidate will come from Bloodborne
Specifically, my entrant will be the first Hunter himself. Gehrman
Now upon first laying eyes on this nigh decrepit, wheelchair bound bastard of an old man, you have a feeling that you're in for a HELL of a fight. Besides the emotional aspect to the fight (the master fighting his student in an attempt to save the student from the fate of all hunters) you see that you aren't the only one who has challenged Gehrman. Oh no. The battlefield has several crosses around. All of which one can only assume are other hunters that Gehrman has saved. Or rather, “saved".
Now let's pause for a moment.
Throughout the game, if you bothered to collect and read the various items you come by, you begin to understand the story behind all this mess as you piece it all together. Which is true for nearly all “Souls" games. A few of these clues hint that all hunters suffer the same fate and that there is no escaping it. All hunters eventually die and are nothing more than the next guy who “suffers” from the dreaming world (the world you're in). So with that said, there's a quote that goes exceeding well with Gehrman. That quote being
“Beware the old man in a profession where many die young.”
It makes way more sense with what's to come.
Now once when you meet Gehrman at this point, you have a simple choice: Accept your fate or defy it.
But this choice has 3 possible paths.
-Acceptance.
Accept your fate and allow Gehrman to “save” you from the Hunter's path. In which case he decapitates you but you awake seeing the sunrise with the Doll presumably over your body. With her final words to you being “Farewell, good hunter. May you find your worth in the Waking World.”
Wait what? “Waking world”? Remember that throughout the game, you keep getting hints that things are amiss or hearing from various NPCs how the game events take place in the “Dreaming World". Hmmm curious
-Defy your fate and Gehrman.
Upon choosing this route, you're met with something new as the words “Tonight, Gerhrman joins the hunt” flashes across the screen. That fleeting bit of a warning was enough to sends shivers down my spine. You've chosen to defy fate and now you face Gerhman in a battle of Hunter vs Hunter, master vs student. After an amazing battle, Gehrman falls to you, the Hunter, and you're met with the words “The night, and the dream, were long...".
Wait “Dream”? What? At this point, you've likely pieced things together and you would assume that at long last, it's all over. But what if it isn’t? What did you miss? After the cutscene, you get a good look at the man in the wheelchair as it's being pushed around by the Doll. Only the man this time…it’s…wait...you? Followed by "so, the hunt begins again." Hmmm curiouser and curiouser.
-Finally, the true defiance path.
The real horror begins here. If you've done the horrible act of finding and consuming 3 of the 4 umbilical cords AND denying both Gehrman and your fate, you're met with the same “Tonight, Gehrman joins the hunt” and the same boss battle. But this time, after defeating Gehrman you're met with a new creature. A new boss. The TRUE final boss of the game.
The Moon Presence.
After a grueling fight, you awake to the Doll picking up a slug like creature. As she examines it, she states in surprise with a familiar “Oh, good hunter,".
Yup. It's you. You are now an Old One (an Eldritch Horror) reborn.
You spend the vast majority of the game fighting against these Lovecraftian type horrors and are met with enemies that would make Lovecraft proud in their design and the unbelievable way that these creatures must function. From “werewolves" to “birds” and massive “spider” bosses, they are all touched and warped by the Old Ones. Gehrman was hoping to spare you from this fate. To spare ALL Hunters from this fate. To help ensure that even through all of the mess and all of the horror, that you and past hunters would still be as human as possible in form, mind and presumably soul as he ends your life and your suffering.
It’s a truly grim and thankless task.
Gehrman is the Watcher of Dreams. It’s his task to work as a kind of gatekeeper, preventing any other Hunter from getting to this point and losing their human soul to the Old Ones. And worse still…becoming one. Defeating Gehrman is simply the worst thing you can do. But perhaps the most horrid aspect to this truth is that you, dear good Hunter are now in the same role as the Moon Presence but in the “Waking World”. You are now the only Eldritch Horror in existence and you've ended every possible threat to you in your journey.
But on the other hand, yay for the achievement. But was it really worth it? Because now you're gonna be doing it all over again. But from the Boss's point of view.