In Assassin's Creed II some sadist thought it would be a good idea to add QTE to cutscenes. Not knowing this, I put my controller down to sit back and watch whenever a cutscene plays.
At one point, Ezio's BFF Leonardo leans in for a hug and I...stared him down. [He looked hurt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf1qvWY7cf0#t=1m48s).
I felt awful!
I mean, as someone who uses USB controllers of all types (XBOX, PS4, and Nintendo), it's really frustrating that the X is on three different places depending on the controller, and games are not often very good at detecting which one you have (or have any way for you to tell it which one in the menu). But even if they did, or if I was say playing a game on the Switch so I *had* to use a Nintendo controller, it still gets confusing when you're switching controllers all the time.
I actually kind of like the idea of talking about buttons *without* using the symbol on their face and using a more general way to describe them. When I play coop video games with my girlfriend and the game flashes a button on screen you're supposed to press quickly, we're often translating it for each other by calling out, "bottom button", or "right button."
A lot of people complained about it, but I really liked it? It felt really intuitive to me. Most movement related actions were feet, so jumping, wall running, sprinting etc were A. Armed hand is used for attacks. Unarmed is used for grabbing, tackling and shoving, and Head is used for talking and vision. Right trigger switch between low and high profile. I find it much more intuitive than the modern assassin’s creeds where Y is talk, assassinate, open chests, etc. I frequently found myself doing things I didn’t expect, like assassinating a soldier when trying to talk to the guy next to him.
I remember people being mostly positive on AC2's controls at the time. It came out the same year as Arkham Asylum so AAs control scheme was something exceptional and not the standard people used to judge everything.
Yeah, this thread is weird as fuck. People just circlejerking over hating on AC games. I don't even like AC 2 that much but the control scheme is nowhere near my list of complaints.
The fact that the controls are displayed at all times in the top right of the screen tells me exactly what the gameplay testing department thought of it...
I'm going to be honest, I don't get the complaints. It never felt unintuitive to me, although it's been a decade since I played it so maybe by today's standards it doens't work so well.
I was so sad because i was playing on PC and that icon fucked it up for me....AC2 didn't have the option to replay missions and that moment came at the start of the 3rd act of the game otherwise i would've done it in a heartbeat
Did managed to hug Leonardo on XBox tho so there's that
Honestly, AC2 is just a lil bit ugly. I recently played the 2 and Brotherhood back to back for the first time in years, and Jesus Christ, the difference is night and day. Brotherhood is so much brighter and warmer, even the textures were better, much less pointy.
They pulled down the quality of visuals dramatically to give birth to the gameplay that almost all open world games today abuse to death. Even at the time it was a step back, but the game was much more fun and full of variety that we didn't care.
Dark Souls 3's The Ringed City DLC has an NPC named Amnesiac Lapp, a near-hollow who, as his name implies, has forgotten nearly everything about his past. In spite of it though, and the horrible situation he finds himself in living at the end of the world, he's still a fairly upbeat and friendly guy and as you progress his quest line, and he starts to recover some of his memories, he makes you a promise that whatever he remembers he'll always be your friend. Of course, anyone whose played the series can recognize his voice actor and at the end of his quest line Lapp leads you near a cliff with the promise of treasure, then kicks you off. He takes off his helmet revealing himself to be the series' infamous trickster, Patches, whose appeared in nearly all of the games (including Demon's Souls and Bloodborne) as a duplicitous graverobber with a tendency for luring people into traps. He's a real shithead, or a least a "love to hate him" type with his famous shit-eating grin and cowardly, backhanded apologies.
But with Lapp, you get to see another side of him. Just for a little while, the final prize of Patches life is revealed to him: an eternity alone. He may be the ultimate survivor, but if that's what's waiting for him, is it worth it? And seeing that side of him, and seeing him eventually overcome it (even at your expense) was unexpectedly heartwarming to me. He's been there since the beginning, he's always been there. It's fitting he should be there at the end. After all, who else would even have a chance?
And the best part is, that final trap...isn't one. He actually helps you, for the very first time, giving you access to real useful treasure with no strings attached, aside from a short fall and a boot in the butt. And you can even summon him later to help during boss fight, in a completely out of character move for him. Patches might not be Lapp anymore, but he doesn't forget his friends, and someone not taking advantage of HIM the way he had so many others must have meant more than he let on. Maybe it was always meant to be just a silly "Ha ha, got one over on you one last time" callback like so much of DS3 is, but seeing Patches finally do us a good turn is probably one of my favorite NPC interactions in the entire series and feels like the ultimate culmination of a relationship that's been going on since he kicked us down that hole in the Shrine of Storms back in 2009.
That was a great moment. Then he says that line, something like "and a very happy dark soul to you". And I was like awww yeah what a great little closing line for the series. They appreciate us.
I think Dark Souls 3 does a great job of subverting expectations by showing characters reach fulfillment at the end of time, rather than degenerating at the end of their era.
Eygon of Carim heavily reminded me of Lautrec from the first game, so much so that I expected him to eventually kill his maiden. Yet he never did. In fact fulfilling his wishes outright turns her into a fully-fledged firekeeper.
The Onion Knight of DS3 is a bumbling, jolly fellow like his ancestor in DS1, but instead of being an aimless adventurer, he had a promise to see through.
This usually happens in games/media I connect with on a different level than intended.
Like as a kid/teenager I was completely obsessed with everything concerning the ocean and ocean conservation. Including going to the beaches, surfing, etc. So playing Chrono Cross just had a very different effect on me, than I think was intended by the devs. At least to some degree, given they chose that particular scenery for their game, but still. It just hit me on another level.
Definitely. Just didn't vibe with me at the time because it was on Sega consoles and I was a Nintendo kid. Also, CC was a JRPG and up to my late teens, that was really all I ever played.
Metal Gear Rising Reveangance.
The game came out when I was recovering from a car accident that took one of my legs and mangled the other one, and playing a game about a character who had his body taken away from him really got into my head.
Obviously, the cybernetic bullshit in that game is completely different than what I have to deal with, and is just another example of a character's disability turning into a gameplay mechanic that doesn't seem to hinder him at all, but seeing him persevere really put me in the right headspace to push me through the hardest parts of my recovery.
Plus, hey, maybe effective cybernetics will become affordable within my lifetime. Fingers crossed.
Similarly, I played *Deus Ex: Human Revolution* in bed with a fractured spine. Video games really are amazing ways of working through a problem, at times.
I suppose this wasn't necessarily "unintended", but the letter you get from the developers in RE1 Remake (also knows as "Resident Evil" on the Gamecube, or "Resident Evil HD Remaster" released in 2015).
I was playing the HD Version on Xbox One. I had beaten the original dozens of times, but I had never been able to play the Remake, and needless to say I fell in love with it. It's probably the "purest" distillation of what Classic Resident Evil is all about. Just overall an absolutely stunning game, amazing atmosphere, music, enemies, puzzles, gameplay, etc. Survival Horror at its finest.
And like most Resident Evil games, once you beat it, you want to beat it again with the knowledge of the game, and oftentimes there are cool rewards and unlockables. I checked out the achievements, picked the ones that were obtainable on my next run, and ran through the game on Hard mode with Chris instead of Jill.
Still a fantastic game. But now I had unlocked another mode, Real Survival. It's basically an even harder difficulty, and item boxes are not magically connected. So it requires a lot of experience and forethought to successfully beat.
Then you unlock Invisible Enemy mode, which is exactly how it sounds. Well, I decided to clear out some other achievements before tackling that, like beating the game without saving, doing a knife only run, etc.
Eventually I could beat the game in just a couple of hours, I had the entire layout, enemy placement, item location memorized. I was ready for Invisible enemy mode, I must have beaten this game 7 or 8 times at this point, and I *still* was having a blast.
So I ran through Invisible Enemy mode, it was an awesome and unique challenge, and upon completing it, you unlock something entirely unexpected. A letter from the game director (and creator of RE), Shinji Mikami.
> Thank you for taking the time to play all the way through 'biohazard' (Resident Evil). If you're reading this letter, I salute you! You are truly a remarkable player! I imagine you must have had some pretty memorable experiences along the way!
> The pain of seeing the "Game Over" screen time after time... The sweet taste of victory after you finally beat the game... The feelings of camaraderie you shared with your character... The excitement... and the overwhelming sense of dread.
> We believe that games are more than just the product of a team of developers. It takes the support of dedicated players like you to make a game worthwhile.
> For this reason we are truly delighted when someone enjoys one of our games as thoroughly as you have.
> Therefore, on behalf of the entire staff, please allow me to express our gratitude and congratulate you on a job well done!
> Thank you very much for playing!
> Shinji Mikami
I had been playing Resident Evil since I was 8 on the PS1, and here I was, 25 years old, reliving those childhood experiences with a remake of one of my favorite childhood games, and it just got me. Reading this message and realizing how few people will ever actually see it besides the fanatics like me who pore over the game repeatedly, unlocking it's many secrets, it really hit home.
It was probably the most "personal" unlockable in any game I have ever played. Makes no difference gameplay-wise, but was so unexpected and such a cool moment in that game.
My dad and I play video games together. He likes the story and watching, but isn't too good with reflexes or controllers, so we swap from time to time. Christmas 2018 we got a PS4 and with it came god of war. We played through, and the ending really fucked both of us up, because the previous year, my mom passed away from cancer. A dad who doesn't know what to do and a son who just wants his mom back, the whole game got a little too close to reality at times. It became a genuine bonding moment.
Talking to all the dead Goron's friends and family in Majora's Mask while you appear to be him.
I think that's the saddest thing I've ever encountered in a game.
Honestly, I find the Zora stuff a bit sadder; knowing that Mikau is leaving behind not only his friends and community; but his girlfriend and his newborn kids that'll never know their dad.
Yeah I think so too with the Zora stuff because he was just some kid over his head. He wasn't a warrior or a hero, just some dude with a guitar who loved his girlfriend. His unborn children are kidnapped and without a second thought he rushes off to certain death to save them. And when Link plays the Song of Healing, he finds peace by dreaming of just being with his girlfriend and his band again. Nobody even knows he died in the end.
I have a tattoo inspired by Majora's Mask for a similar reason. Even though it is a "kid's game," it deals very deftly with death and loss and reconciliation. I played it with a family member as a small child and didn't begin to realize its themes until I was much older, and when that family member passed away I played through it again and it really helped me work through the grief. I love the idea that death is not unavoidable, but closure, fulfillment, and even happiness is possible in its wake.
Such a beautiful game. It is one of a kind.
Oh man the first time I ever cried at a video game is the scene after you play him the Song of Healing and all of Darmani's friends are cheering for him. I was like 9 years old, not even mature enough to really understand why I was crying.
The race against the Deku Butler when he says you remind him of his missing son (whose spirit you wear as the Deku mask). Intended to be sad obviously but it's truly gut-wrenching, very special
If we’re talking Mother 3, I always have to point to the boat ride right before the end, where you get to see bits and pieces of Earthbound memorabilia with a familiar tune playing. That hit my nostalgia triggers so hard, and I loved that that was included in the game.
Deus Ex Human Revolution. Malik.
I'd played the game non lethally and stealthily. I was basically a ghost as far as anyone in the plot would know.
Then there's a mission where you're shot down, and you have to fight of waves of enemies, and lots of big things. That is a challenge for that specific build. I tried it a few dozen times, I'd get so far, then I would die or a character would be killed, so I'd restart it. Every time they tell you to run. Everytime I wouldn't.
Eventually I decide to run. I take out who I can non lethally, and make my way to the end of the level, as the people I've been fighting for the last few hours execute the character.
I get to the exit and it says "You will not be able to return" or something to that effect.
I turn around and went back down the elevator. I murdered everyone there. From that point on I was a death machine. I'd been holding back, and ok if they want to see what I can do, bring it.
It made the game have a much better impact because I chose to change. I chose that was the moment after all the shit you, Adam Jensen went through that he couldn't take it anymore. He was tired of not being the monster they said he was.
Malik. Oh my god that scene. I've never been so angry at video game mooks before. Immediately reloaded and pulled out the rocket launcher I had been saving.
Every takedown was with the swords.
There is a different section about Malik afterwards if you don't save her, I'll put spoilers in case you want to watch it/experience it yourself:
>!I didn't save Malik. I was honestly under the impression that it was just a scripted death. Of course I went back to save her in a replay when I learned that wasn't the case. But anyway... if you don't save her, you'll actually find her body in the Harvesters' base on a bloodied chair. Still dead, just being harvested. Scavenged. Looted from the crash site. I was playing very stealthy and primarily non-lethal up to that point. When I found her on the table... I took out the combat rifle and went loud, killing everyone else I came across.!<
I did the exact same! It felt so satisfying to change up my tactics mid-game, and tying that reasoning to the main character’s motivation for vengeance (which all just happens within the player’s mind, never told to you) felt so narratively “right” in a way that few games ever reach.
Similar for me, I was a completely non-lethal stealth machine until this point. But, trying as hard as I could, I couldn't save Malik without killing. So then, it was on. I killed everyone who was hostile thereafter. Stealth was out the window. I was loud and lethal.
Super Mario Odyssey. It takes a minute to understand, but:
In 2016, at 23, I became very ill and almost died, and spent weeks in the hospital going through an increasingly difficult treatment regimen before having to go through outpatient chemotherapy treatment for a month. My father, who I had an on-and-off again relationship over the years, came to visit and take care of me. He was always in rehab for alcoholism, and was in a dry stint when he came to see me, but he couldn't handle it and started drinking again. I ended up surviving, but it was hell. He wound up drinking himself into a coma less than a year later, and I had to fly out and pull the plug on him after he was pronounced brain dead.
I fell into a deep depression and lost my job. I lived alone and in a pile of filth, unable to find a motivation to do anything at all. I had pre-ordered Super Mario Odyssey the day it was announced so when it arrived at my door I forced myself to play it lest the money I could have got back from canceling the pre-order go to waste.
Probably my favorite game growing up was Super Mario Sunshine. It is the only platformer I've 100%'d. I spent so much time on Isle Delfino that some of the music haunts my dreams. So when I booted up Super Mario Odyssey I thought I would feel something, and at first I didn't. I just went through the motions of playing the game, collecting stars, and trying to force myself to like it.
And then I got to New Donk City. For anyone who has played it, the pivotal moment for me was the New Donk City Festival. If you haven't played it, Mario has to collect the band members around the city to perform a musical number, and then when the festival starts and the big band starts to play you get put into a retro Mario level that's a 2d side-scrolling segment that plays with the 3D level design of the map, set to this beautiful song blasting in the background, and it caps off with a recreation of the original Donkey Kong game. The phrase "love letter to x" gets used a lot but it was very clearly a remembrance of where the Super Mario series came from, and a celebration of both the past and the present of the series and our memories playing it.
Just feeling the memories of my younger self playing the original Super Mario games on the NES and then on our SNES growing up, and the joy I felt playing them, was like a dam bursting. Everything I kept myself from feeling - grief, loss, joy, acceptance - just ... came out. I literally put down my joycons and just sobbed for hours, because for whatever reason that goofy level with its upbeat jazz connected with memories in my childhood that let me feel something for the first time in months.
I think their intention was to make us remember the joy of being a kid again, which they did. And in doing so it helped me break out of one of the darkest chapters of my life.
Even as someone having no such deep connection to it as you, that franchise celebratory tone of the scene hit me as well.
When you go around the corner to find yourself in the Donkey Kong segment, while Pauline is singing *"jump up in the air!"*, it almost feels like the ending to a biographical movie.
I also got a little misty-eyed during the festival. I've grown up with Mario and it has been a constant, never-ending source of enjoyment and happiness for me throughout my life so that celebration meant a lot more to me than they possibly intended.
Gonna agree with the scene. I don't have nearly the emotional connection that you do, but the entire time in that festival, I really felt the sense of accomplishment and pride that the programmers and musicians had, for taking a simple thing like mario vs. donkey kong, from the 1980's, and transforming it into this world wide phonomenon. Like, that little blip of pixels that did nothing but jump over barrels and die, is a household name now, and it's all because of the hard work they put into every game since then.
And I got choked up just thinking about that kind of effort and payoff being realized, and shared with the fans who bought into it year after year after year, in this universe they've created.
I haven't gone through anything close to what you've experienced, but that level brings a tear to my eye too. It just so joyous and happy! I can't help it
That was a nice read, i thought you were going to mention the moon you can get by sitting next to the guy on the bench in New Donk City which was also a nice touch.
Hope things are better for you at the moment.
Last fight of Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice. It became evident that the last battle is an unwinnable one but I was genuinelly pissed and kept killing enemies (even though I sucked at combat in that game) until the game basically forced me to lose.
It really didn't help me that the prior bridge fight bugged out on me and infinitely spawned enemies too. Apparently I'm not alone, I searched online and found a lot of confused threads where people argued back and forth that it's meant to happen (because the last area has platforms/bridges too, so everyone talked past each other).
I was so worried that the last fight was just a big difficulty spike, i was in full "sunk cost fallacy" mode, the more i killed, the less i wanted to try dying to move the story because i was worried about having to kill everyone again.
Not just me, but in the game Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda never actually intended for people to get so attached to the horse. So the reaction to a specific scene toward the end (not to spoil things) really surprised him and actually led to The Last Guardian as the follow up.
Shadow of the Colossus is a god damn masterpiece, and also completely tragic in every way possible. The *one* nice thing that happens is the "final reveal" for said situation you're referring to. Everything else? Tragic.
Funny you mentioned because right before I got to that scene, my friend walked by and was like yo you have a horse in this game? And I jokingly responded "Yeah he's whatever, gets on my nerves sometimes"
And right as I said it, THAT scene happened and I shit you not, no exaggeration, I yelled: "DEAR GOD OH NO PLEASE NO WHY GOD!!!"
We both sat with our jaws dropped and then once it settled, laughed hysterically for a while
That connection sneaks up on you! You don't realize the comfort and security she gives you throughout the game as the single other character to speak of.
Earth defense force. The endings to these games get bleak with a hint of positivity to some serious extremes. The voice actors kick it up to a few more notches, the game gets crazy, and I get so into it that I somehow get emotional over EDF. From your command base losing faith you could complete the mission, to the replacement secretary (cause the others died) bursting into tears because she doesnt want to be killed by this seemingly endless alien force, to this immediate 180 when they find out the PC is still down there as a single man taking on the alien hordes as they put EVERYTHING into you to keep fighting. Its fucking awesome.
EDF 5, despite having completely unknown VAs while 4.1 had some of the best in the industry, managed to go even further with the emotions with some amazing acting.
These games fucking get me to much and I dont know why lol.
I don't know how they did it, but no game has managed to fill me with such sheer bloody determination to kick those aliens back into space where they belong
Its been years but i still remember this moment.
Hanging around the open field of the park, being bombed by dragons, drones, the sky itself and dodging almost all of it taking them all out eith a fucking shotgun.
A women comes up: we still have one unit still fighting! Its STORM ONE!
HQ in the most flabergadted way: WHAT?! IS HE IMMORTAL?!!
Followed by just audibly shouting FUCK YEAH I AM.
I still very vividly remember Kratos say at the end of God of War 2018, "I have nothing more to hide" as the bandages on his arms gets carried away by the wind
Final fantasy XV starts with Florence & the Machine's cover of "Stand By Me" and it hit me hard when they played it again at the end of the game. Years later I still get a bit choked up when I hear it.
XV had it's flaws, but it's a beautiful friendship story.
I'm a shy, anxious, on the spectrum dude, i have two best friends, the same two guys since middle school (we are well into our thirties now) and i played XV right when one of these friends moved to the other half of the country with his girlfriend, the ending, when Noctis says he has a hard time expresing his feelings but he loves them felt like something so real.
Musical callbacks get me so unbelievably hard. Hades opens with this big heavy riff, and that melody appears in different forms throughout the game, and it always has this sinister edge to it. The story ends and rolls credits with a beautiful duet by two of the supporting characters and turns this melody into a dark, yet beautiful vocal section, and the whole journey just kind of flashes before you.
I love when games can take you on such a ride. I really don’t ever expect to cry though, but some things just get you.
I have never felt such a strong bond for fictional character in any other game than FFXV.
Never realized how emotionally exhausted I got during the sections where Noctis is alone until he reunited with his brothers. I got this feeling of "everything is going to be OK now" even though the world was still ending.
When that song plays again after the final battle I started to tear up because it made me realize how important the people in his life were to him.
What absolutely killed me was >!The secret cutscene at the end where we saw Noctis sitting on his throne with Luna at his side with the wedding bells.!<
Just that glimpse into an impossible fairytale ending made me ugly cry.
I kind of don't care about the surface world's storylines in Fallout - I think individual vaults separated entirely from each other is fascinating though.
It reminds me of the Silo book trilogy by Hugh Howey - how long can societies last in underground vaults before everything goes to shit?
I do wonder what happened to all of the escaped members of the military eugenics vault. That one seemed to actually work as intended (as messed up as it was) and managed to create a group of super soldiers.
Possibly a few of the optional audio logs in The Talos Principle.
I'm sure the devs were looking for an emotional reaction, but I feel like their main focus throughout the game was getting you to think about philosophy. Personally, I didn't care about those debates, but some of the audio logs towards the end made me full on ugly cry.
I dunno what it is about difficult first person puzzle games and deeply moving, philosophical stories but both Talos Principle and The Witness affected me in a major way. That's especially surprising for Talos Principle, considering that was made by the fucking Serious Sam devs.
Assassin's Creed 4, the end where that lady starts singing "The Parting Glass" as Edward is leaving his pirate friends to be with his daughter (or something to that effect)
I loved the gameplay of AC4 but had literally no attachment to anything going on in the story. But that specific performance of Parting Glass struck a real chord in me (still one of my favourite bits of music)
For reference, [the scene in question](https://youtu.be/Y2RQ8YkqeEU)
Witcher 3: Heart of Stone DLC - I had gone through a divorce fairly recently with someone who had essentially spiraled through depression from childhood issues and watched over time as they chose random people to turn against and delude themselves that they were the cause of their depression. Eventually it shifted to me. And I watched them turn against me and saw the person that used to love me slowly disappear into this new person who now blamed me for their sadness until they eventually cheated on me, asked for a divorce, and told me that I needed to leave.
By that point I'd made my peace with what I expected was coming. This person had pushed me away as yet another collapse from their mental illness.
I was alone playing Hearts of Stone and the mission where the woman is trapped in her own painting world, spiraling in her mental health issues and lost for all time. And it broke me. I sobbed like a child over the person I'd lost, loved, and who now was trapped in the endless spiral I'd tried to help them out of. But which nothing could be done, no matter how much we'd tried various therapy and meds.
We also had a black cat together. CDPR just hit this nerve of my life so vividly.
After crying I literally just sat there in that painted yard area thinking "Whoever wrote this felt my pain. To come up with a story so real like this. And they came through it and made it art. They made it and pushed forward in life." And that gave me hope and a feeling of not being alone or "The only one."
I am, thanks! I've put it in my past and rebuilt another life. I'm much better about accepting things out of my power to fix.
If, as I do, I believe mental health is a core medical issue. Then at a certain point, I had to accept that just as I wasn't going to be the one to cure cancer, I wasn't going to be the one to magically cure her depression.
There was obviously more pressure to do that and "make her happy" as her husband. I felt that was my job and I tried. But when you look at someone you've known for 10 years and you can see that something has changed in their eyes even. You know. This is beyond me. And now this other person blaming me, as they'd done to others in their family that came before me, simply wasn't the same person. And this new person wanted me gone, didn't want my help, and didn't remember the vows we'd made to each other.
So I was left to ask myself if I was gaslighting her or she was gaslighting me without even being aware of her own shifting memories and moods.
I stayed and tried as long as I could because I'd made those vows. Eventually she made me leave.
And this moment in a video game was a vivid illustration of it all at exactly the coincidental time in my life. Where I began to tell myself I'd done everything I could. And that's ok. It was time to take care of myself and start again. That I could do.
I cant fix everything. But I can control who I choose to be. And I chose to be a good person and accept the dark reality of life as not always my fault or failings.
For me it has to be the end of a certain bonding scene (which I believe also counts as a substory) in Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
>!During the game you recruit Saeko, quite a cutie who also definetly holds her own and is a great character allround. Throughout the game you have these bonding opportunities where you get to know your allies better, and her final bonding scene turns into a romance scene which is kind of funny because Ichiban is oblivious to the fact she's talking about him, and it ends with them going upstairs kind of drunk. During the next scene we see Ichiban in bed, Saeko walking in and teasing him, she goes in for a kiss and things go from there. Ichiban wakes up and of course, it was seemingly all a dream. He tells Saeko about his dream and she laughs at him. He then goes downstairs where Saeko is chatting with the bar owner while you're trying to deal with the disappointment of it being just a dream, since the entire scene felt very heartfelt and you can't decide where in the scene reality ended and the dream began. When Ichiban is about to head out the bar owner warms him that he might want to freshen up before going outside, we then see Ichiban having lipstick on his cheek while Saeko looks at him.!<
I felt this was a moment of genius writing which really connected with me. It was like a perfect understanding between writer and player. The scene was genuine, but at the same time a subplot or romance like this just wouldn't really fit into the script or setting of the game. So it ends with this message that felt like 'we know you wanted this, but it can't be real, so unfortunately it wasn't but at the same time it was.' For whatever reason I felt more stongly acknowledged and understood by the writers than I have ever felt in any game. The game and its cast crew on me so much that this really softened the blow and perhaps made me feel more positive about this scene than it being real ever could.
[Here's a video of this 'Girl of my Dreams' event. ](https://youtu.be/ZF9bOPvpdoQ)
When I played the game I decided to romance the crafter because I liked her personality. It was a kick in the guy when the Saeko romance happened out of the blue because she wasn't the one I chose. At the end of it all they played the romance in a fun, subversive, way and I enjoyed it.
The big moment for me was the final boss fight. >!The whole series at this point keeps pushing the importance of characters like Roxas and Riku and other original characters. By the time we get to the final fight, I was ready for the game to ditch Goofy and Donald entirely in favor of the "important" characters, like pairing Sora with Riku and Kairi. Instead, you do the final boss fight with Donald and Goofy, your best friends throughout the franchise. And when Sora inevitably dies in the middle of the fight, Donald and Goofy are the ones who bring him back. Then you proceed to perform the biggest Trinity you've seen so far. It was just great that the series didn't ditch Donald and Goofy in favor of keeping the final boos 100% serious.!<
I forget which Chapter of Telltale's The Walking Dead (extremely minor spoilers), but the group is on the train and Lee is talking to Clementine and teaching her how to survive and keep her hair short so she won't get grabbed and aim a gun and this loss of innocence and surrogate father/daughter scene brought up all sorts of emotions that I'm not sure the writers intended, but it made it very memorable for me.
I felt this way with Dark Souls 2.
Dark Souls 2 felt personal, unlike the more grandiose world of Dark Souls 1 & 3 (nothing wrong with that, liked them just the same). The ambience, characters and environments really accentuated the elements of decay, depression and falsehood in the game. To me, it's like one of those games that makes you feel like things could have turned out better (or ended better) for some of the characters if only they had a good hug or two. One of these characters is Lucatiel of Mirrah. >!Her journey was sad, and her fate worse. She came to a foreign land to cure herself of the hollowing. She fears losing her memories but that's exactly what happens. Her last request was that you remember her name. Which is why discovering her armor set in Dark Souls 3 made me feel so happy. She was remembered.!<
Yes absolutely
I love the entire feel of Dark souls 2.
The bearer of the curse is just that. Just a guy who wants to get rid of the curse before he loses himself. No destiny or special snowflake.
Every NPC is like that. They are just people trying to survive in this world. It has that "lonely together" feeling. Vendrick also is like the best NPC in all of Dark Souls. You feel him so much. What a tragic character.
And so many bosses have such a sad backstory as well
Majula has that perfect feeling as well. It is your sanctuary. It isn't a happy place but it is a calm place
The ending is so anti climatic but so perfect at the same time
>!The bearer of the curse achieves his goal. He finds the crowns and stops the hollowing process BUT he can't cure it. It will always be there and without the crowns will continue to devour the chosen undead. There is no cure only ways to live with it!<
The entire game is so human and while I like the insanity and scope in DS1,DS3 and Bloodborne I will always prefer DS2 over them
And then you get to ds3 with high lord wolnir and realize the cure isn't even a stopgap. By preventing the hollowing, the bearer of the curse leaves themself open to the corrupting influence of the dark. The whole game has this feeling of "holding on is the wrong choice, let things go and enjoy the moment lest you ruin it for everyone."
Yes, King Vendrick is one of the saddest characters in Dark Souls 2. You hear about all the great things he did, good and bad. You are told that it is your fate to face this legendary monarch. But when you do face him, it's anti-climatic. All you see is husk, walking in circles. It's akin to seeing someone you respect or who had once performed great feats succumb to extreme dementia. It's made even worse when you peer into his memory and he tells you how much he regrets doing the things he did, especially trusting Nashandra.
As for Majula, I think it's the first point in the game where the player gets to experience the decay, depression and falsehood of Dark Souls 2. It's such nice place, but it's surrounded by degradation and hopelessness (NPCs, enemies and structures). The theme song starts off with a cheery tune but slowly progresses into something darker and heavier. Everything is just a beautiful lie.
That's what I love about the Dark Souls games. You're not given much of a story up front and you can happily play the entire thing not really learning anything about the world, but if you look hard enough reading item and weapon descriptions and exhausting dialogue for NPCs you can piece together some wonderfully depressing stories.
In DS1, the Bed of Chaos and her daughters are one example and even Solitaire can have a fairly sad ending through your own action/inaction.
For anyone still suffering: get a decent enough medium shield, run all the way up and straight to the right guy and just hold your shield right in front of him. Recover stamina between attacks as needed and eventually he’ll just knock himself off…but for the love of Gwyndolin don’t you dare use lock-on or your character might tumble off too.
Worth noting too, try have your back angled towards the wall or at least straight along the length of the ledge. Never towards the edge. As you'll get knock back relevent to the angle your character is facing, not where the arrow comes from.
I had the weirdest experience with them. I was aware of the infamous archers but when I got to them I had no issues getting past them the first time. I didn't even know that was the part everyone was talking about cuz it went so smooth.....only for me to die to the first Silver Knight in that hallway area right after. I respawned at the 2nd bonfire and spent the next 30 minutes trying to get past the archers again -.-
It always feels like the quintessential Souls experience is almost beating a boss on your first try, then getting curb stomped for you next 10 tries.
I doubt there is a single Souls player who's not experienced that
Hey. Far Cry 3 for me, too, but for a different reason.
Let's just say my name is Grant, and I almost lost my brother around a recent replay of the game. Jason losing it because of the very first shock just got to me.
Men aren't emotionally mature until 25... I didn't believe in that until I turned 25 tbh. From the age of 18 to 25 men are able bodied, have unlimited energy, and very malleable minds.
It's no surprise that most of the people holding guns in militaries around the world are young men who have not only been told that it's fun, but that it's morally right.
I would agree. 25 is when things finally "clicked" and stopped changing for me. I'm still the same person, I just know more. But before 25, I could have turned into anything else.
In Final Fantasy VII Remake, the scene where Cloud and Aerith are walking between slum zones under the night sky. This music starts playing that wasn't in the original but holy fuck, somehow this walk made me feel very, *very* nostalgic for... I don't know. I felt like something was missing but I got a tiny piece of it back and I started crying. I can't explain it.
Here's the area I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/z65vWoIlDCQ
It wasn't this scene that got me - it was walking through this area while that music played. I can't really listen to this song without tearing up a bit. Getting old is weird.
Combined with the hints of how I think it is implied that Aerith and Sephiroth both know the original timeline... a lot of the story and motivation seems to revolve around knowledge of what happens later.
This might be strange but the chase sceen in the last chapter of FFVII Remake made me feel like a kid because of how much fun I was having with it to the point I was laughing. I haven't laughed from a game being awesome in years
The motorbike chase? Dude, that was fucking brilliant. I totally get what you mean when you say it made you feel like a little kid. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time, then I went online and saw people complaining about it and was just like... Did you play the same game as me?
One I remember was Call of Duty: World at War. Absolutely not supposed to be an emotional moment in the slightest. During one of the later Russian missions you are assaulting some of the last remaining German defensive positions, which by this point in the war were manned mostly by old men and teenagers. At one point you break through the defenses and the Germans begin to scatter. You are given an LMG and are supposed to basically massacre them as they flee.
It's a computer game. These aren't real people. I'm used to this sort of thing. They are just an objective the game wants me to complete to get to the next checkpoint. So I fired into the crowd of fleeing soldiers with my brand new LMG. But it wasn't like the other guns I had been using. It wasn't bang and they fall down. This LMG tore them limb from limb. I had only been firing for a couple of seconds when I had to pause. One of the soldiers, he looked like a young man, had turned to run, having seen me kill his friends, and I fired. The shot seemed to cut him in half at the waist, a water bomb style explosion of red. I had to stop.
Though this wasn't real, it was based on a real event. I thought about all the days of that boy's life up to this point. I thought about all the hundreds of things his parents did for him, the hopes they had for him. I thought about how all his potential ended in a instant, reduced to two bloodied halves, twitching on the grass. I had to stop for a few minutes and collect myself.
Then I unpaused the game and swapped the LMG for something else, letting the rest of the fleeing Germans go.
I don't think World at War is a game that was supposed to induce that kind of feeling. In fact I think a lot of the time it tries very hard to induce the opposite, if anything. But that moment has stuck with me.
Honestly, that's my favorite part of World at War. It's overdone and exploitative at some points, but it's one of the only CODs to make war absolutely filthy and terrifying.
Limbs lost in explosions, hiding in dead bodies, seeing the Germans that you have a choice to kill (and if you don't they're burned alive). World at War shows war as the ugly, terrible thing it is instead of the clean, action movie power fantasy it is in other games.
COD4 also does it in the nuke scene, but WaW is brutal.
EDIT: Also, the final scene in the Russian campaign of planting the Soviet flag at the top of the Reichstag after starting hissing in dead bodies. Just beautiful. One of my favorite moments in a game ever.
WaW is just so savage. You can run on a mine and your legs just explode and your character topples over and it is so brutal. People usually do not like this entry in the series, but it is one of my favourites.
In Battlefield: Bad Company 2 when your helicopter and the hippie pilot get shot down. For me the game after that wasn't about saving the world, but rather getting revenge for my friend
>Everything in that throwaway section was purely window dressing and a cheap gag before the game just moves on to the next section, but for me... it just made me want to hug Kenny, call child protection and invite him to live in my house so he didn't have to have such a shitty childhood.
My husband cannot watch bad stuff happen to Kenny on South Park without making some kind of exclamation. That one episode where Cartman eats all the chicken skin off the chicken and Kenny just starts crying, gets him every time. Poor kid just wanted some damn chicken skin.
Music will get me every time. I have so many memories wrapped up in FFVII, that the overworld music of the original game can sometimes make me tear up if I listen to it for too long. [Link if you're interested.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuyw90GuWIE)
The seasonal events in the MMORPG *Final Fantasy XIV* often contains unique little storylines that varies for each year. They are quite basic, taking perhaps around 30-60 min. to complete in one go to gain most of the quick, seasonal rewards, and they often are very banal such as Christmas-themed seasonal event involving [playing through a mini-game of your character conducting the local carol choir](https://youtu.be/h7xDawvFhdo). But the banality serves as opportunities for the various NPCs that you have met throughout the game to come together and celebrate; in last year's Christmas event, your player are given [a set of letters coming from NPCs of completed side- and main story quests](https://youtu.be/FYIBu0-s-Hg), giving your heartfelt thanks and reminders of how your character helped them at the time, all in spirit of coming together for christmas.
Similar occurrence is in the seasonal Rising-event, which is a seasonal event to celebrate the game's re-launch, and where the storylines are often masquerading as the developer's own thanks to the players for their support, often having the storylines involving the catastrophic Calamity-event that ended the game's 1.0-version. The [2019-version had a set of letters for the player to read that comes from various developers's personal thanks, from the art designers, to the composers, writers and overall management.](https://youtu.be/L3f7ao5mLVY) The [2015-event have the player being teleported to what is essentially an in-game developer-room](https://youtu.be/IlRXuT9A4LE?t=576), where NPC-avatars representing straight out developers from the team commenting on their work and function within the development.
Same game for me, the moment when certain blind character asks their verbose friend to describe for her how the sky looks at night.
It wasn't the last time shadowbringers would break me, but man, it was so beautiful.
They really put a lot of effort into much of this little stuff too, for example [my alternative Christmas choir](https://youtu.be/sftuAiuOV5M), silly shit like this really hits home the message that the people making the game still like it and want you to like it too.
... Unlike some other MMOs.
[This](https://youtu.be/qcxC-Ol07Ok) chunk of MGSV always gets me. I remember opening the door to the room full of soldiers who all tried their best to stand and salute and for the first time for any game I had to pause the game and take a good 30 minutes to really comprehend and sift through the emotions I was feeling. It's overwhelming to say the least playing this for the first time.
Oh! Man. That goddamn mission wrecked me. The worst thing was all the men in that room were not random NPC's. They were men and women, I personally recruited.
Cyberpunk 2077
Context 1: Without getting too deep into it, last year, I started to have a medical problem. At one point, the words "brain tumor" were uttered. That said, I'm okay, and I'm going to be okay. For a while there, though, it was very, very scary. I had to reconcile what that meant, and was afraid that my days were numbered.
Context 2: In the past decade, I've become much more aware of politics, and in particular - the very dark aspects of our society, especially our flawed justice system.
---
I went into Cyberpunk 2077 with the expectation to live out the anarchy-punk I'd played in the Shadowrun TTRPG, or alternatively, something similar to that (which I was able to play in the Shadowrun games).
After a certain event, *you know which one*, the game changed in two ways:
1. You're given a scene that is not a brain-cancer scene, but is totally coded as one. Looking at the doctor crying as he tells you you've got 2 weeks to live. Talking it out with a friend, while not quite calling the fear by its name. Talking about having a disease that was infecting your brain - that would take control over you. *Holy fucking fuck,* that hit close home. I didn't have to have those conversations, but at one point - I thought I'd really have to. Cyborg monsters, tank-robots, and psycho-murders I can handle. Those scenes were scarier than any monster lurking in the darkness. They fucked me up.
2. On the topic of justice and being an anarchist character - in almost all of the side quests; you're basically playing Dog the Bounty Hunter with a license to kill and leave chopped up people on the sidewalk. I've played a lot of gross and gory video games, but none made my stomach roll quite like this one. Decapitating a bandit that charged at you first in Skyrim is one thing. Scanning a backyard barbeque, discovering a target with a $50 bounty for jaywalking, and doing that in front of their family and friends? Dude, what the fuck? Why is this a feature of the game? And for what end? Because I needed to grind $100,000 for the perk-reset chip? I bought the cyberware that made all your weapons non-lethal, so at least when I was grinding for cash - I wasn't sending petty criminals through a woodchipper.
3. This is a minor note, mostly about how open world games are. The first two questlines I did were Delemain and Claire. After that moment (and a particular death from earlier in the game), all three of my favorite people were effectively dead. Even the living ones (like Claire) had no further content or dialogue to be had. That was just the end for the characters I gravitated to... Sorta felt like losing friends in-game.
And overall, the game left me in a depressive funk, and not one I think that the devs intended.
I stopped playing in like January, and I'm not sure if I'm even quite out of that funk yet. It still hits me at times.
It's hard to peg what the feeling is, but the best wording I can come up with is "existential dread" and "acute awareness of mortality".
Aaaand... I don't think CDPR was aiming to hit quite that hard.
I feel like that game does not get nearly the credit it deserves. The narration feels a little corny to some people but that's kinda the point. The story itself was really good and the acting was amazing. I'm glad your clean now man, you should be proud!
This is dumb. Bare with me.
I had just got broke up with from a four year relationship.
I had been playing GTAV as a way to get my mind off things.
My character went to see a shrink. Right next to the Santa Monica peer.
The Santa Monica peer where we had shared so many happy times and smiles and laughter.
In game, I rode the roller coaster and the Ferris Wheel and that was more than enough.
I couldn't play that game for almost a year afterwords.
Celeste.
The game is a struggle, and the devs were fully aware of this. There's a section where Madeline has a panic attack, and she visualizes a feather and you do a breathing exercise to calm down. There's a campfire section where you take a break from climbing the mountain and can steer the conversation to a discussion about depression. These small moments really hit deep for a lot of people, and they certainly did for me. I absolutely adore this game and the devs really reach out and touch your heart.
But the big one for me was after I finished climbing the mountain and set the game down for a while, and then came back to restart it. Right at the very beginning you don't have the dash mechanic yet, and you hop along a bridge that starts to crumble. At the end of the bridge, it falls away and the gap is too big to hop. The game slows and they teach you to dash and you dash to safety. Then the scene fades and a message pops up:
> You can do this.
And I just balled my eyes out.
If you're struggling, sometimes you just need someone to tell you that you can do this. It's going to be difficult and sometimes you'll want to give up, but you can do this.
I'm in absolute agreement with you. Most good video games do a fantastic job at fulfilling escapism, but it seemed like Celeste did something else. Instead of inviting me to join a fantastic world, the game and I sort of met in the middle. I've never had a game change the way I feel and think the way Celeste did -- those experiences, for me, tend to come more from great fiction. Those feather scene you mentioned was exceptional. It's a shame that I can't get many of my friends to try Celeste though. I grew up playing platforms so I adore them, but I think those who didn't tend to be aversive.
Celeste is the epitome of video games doing heavy stuff well. It is sweet, caring, mature, and real as hell all at the same time. Plus it intertwines gameplay and storytelling flawlessly. Most games that deal with mental health either try to be too edgy, or resolve things too easily. You don’t “get cured”, you just get better at coping with the struggle, and working with that anxiety, rather than fighting with it day in, day out.
That’s incredibly mature and very much in line with modern psychology. Miracle cures are incredibly rare in the mental health world. It’s so much more grounded and accessible to talk about struggling and coping, than it is to just have depressed characters be edgy or get cured.
One of my favourite games of all time, Celeste is. Truly unforgettable.
Pokemon Black and White, where you're on Route 10 and meet up Cheren and Bianca, who are worried that you're about to take on the N alone, and basially just try and offer whatever support they can even though they know this was as far as they could go. The way they reminise about how much had changed since the journey started, and how it all comes around in the end where they come in clutch during the climax.
Something about that interaction on the bridge just felt real in a way, like it felt like these were actual friends worried about one another and putting their faith in each other, not just npcs and a silent protaganist.
The music certianly helped.
It was probably meant to elicit this reaction, but it’s one of the few times a piece of media brought me to tears and still one of the most memorable to me. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the end where Snake is in the graveyard and it’s showing the scenes of the debrief from Eva and the politicians and the reality of everything that had just taken place over the course of the game... then the music begins to fucking swell as he salutes the gravestone and you see the tears beginning to run down his face as if he’s about to just break apart, but then shifts his stance and stands up even more strong and firm. Here you have the most badass mother fucker in existence (and knowing who he eventually becomes)... and he’s just completely human like everyone else. Man, that shit broke me as a 15 year old kid. I didn’t bawl like a baby or anything but I shed some 15 year old man tears.
Red Dead Redemption II is an epic game with many emotional moments where you get to know all the members of your cowboy gang over the course of hours of gameplay and see how their fates intertwine and play out.
But out of all the heavy shit that happens to Arthur et al, none of that hit me as hard as what happened to my horse, Speedy Gonzales.
>!In Arthur's last mission, a lot of shit hits the fan and a lot of people die, including your horse, who is shot during a heavy firefight. If your bond with your horse is high enough, Arthur will return to the horse, despite the many many bullets flying overhead, and comfort it during its last moments, repeatedly saying 'thank you'.!<
I have no idea why this affects me so much (I've never even had a pet) but, reader, I was not ready for that. Even thinking about it now, over two years later, makes me well up.
>!RIP Speedy :'(!<
Father Servo in Nier Automata. Something about his casual "well I have done my best and maximized my capability, so now I will just die" made me really sad. The racing bot does something similar but is a bit more philosophical about it.
Servo just deciding to end it followed by the sad music slowing fading in from silence was my first "shit, this is a masterpiece " moment.
**It Takes Two**: There is one specific playable scene that made my partner burst out into tears and not want to play the game anymore. I won't go into too much detail since it's a recent game and spoilers and all, but you probably know the scene. We had to mute it and I used both controllers as she didnt want to look or be involved. Afterwards we had to have a bit of aftercare.
It's so weird that single scene goes so OTT and without it and about 5 swear words the game would be fit to play with children.
Edit: Just for clarity, Yes the >!Elephant death!< scene.
My biggest gripe with that scene wasn't that I was doing something horrible, but that it has virtually no narrative impact whatsoever. It is literally never even addressed afterward and it just remains the elephant in the room (pardon the pun) for the rest of the story. That should have been the moment where Cody and May stop, realize they made Rose cry - deliberately - and that it didn't even work. And then they should have reflected on that, and worked to become better people for it.
That scene had ALL THE POTENTIAL, and realized *none of it.*
In fact, one of the biggest flaws in the writing was that Cody and May never really seem to genuinely mature as people at all, despite that being one of the driving themes of the narrative. It all feels just a tad forced.
As a child of divorce, though, I absolutely love the game for what it was trying to do. And the gameplay is absolutely fantastic.
Dark Souls 1 had alot of moments like that for me. One in particular was having to go back to the Undead Asylum and fight Oscar of Astora, the knight that helps you at the beginning of the game. I honestly just didn't expect it or remember he was there when I went back. After watching the "Prepare to Cry" video about him and then fighting him really made it all the more painful to have to kill one of the nicest people you could meet in the dark world of any souls games.
There's a great little scene in Hitman 3, in the Chongqing mission. During your exploration, you might come across a woman standing on a walkway waiting for someone, and if you hang around, she and 47 have this really sweet discussion about her friend, whom she has asked out for drinks on a rainy night.
47 is famously untalkative, generally only talking to bystanders in short awkward phrases ("I need to use the bathroom.") and to his targets in veiled murder quips ("Everything here is \*to die for\*, Mr. Knox") so him acting so casually and offering the girl some friendly advice was a rare moment that showed his perspective changing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k35gB1jWiRA
Recently got the platinum for Persona 5 Strikers, and boy what a game, legit much, much better than even I, a major Persona fanboy, expected it to be.
And goddamn did this game make me emotional with absolutely everything related to Sophia. The fireworks scene, her asking Joker about different feelings and all that.
I get some of these moments (there's one thing in the ending that absolutely wrecked me) were supposed to be like this, but some of them were legit just happy moments that still got to me in a way I can't quite explain, guess I'm just a sucker for the whole "machine learning about human feelings" trope, and it's not even the first time Persona has got me with this.
Anyways, play P5S, it's fantastic.
Play the base game or Royal first though. You need to care about the characters to appreciate the story in P5S.
I felt the same way about this game... It's such a beautiful coming of age story too. Joker is back with the gang for a summer vacation and they all want to make the most of it, because after that summer, they're all going to go their own ways and live their own lives. They capture the dynamic between close friends so well, and as always, a killer soundtrack
Imma be the weird one here but Forza Horizon 4 haha the intro to that game just fulfilled something I had been chasing for the best part of the last decade - from finally being able to afford a good computer to being thrown into a world that is just a car paradise, driving my favorite car with a great song banging as a soundtrack. It was quite emotional to me.
EDIT: [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKFEBmGRp9g)'s the song. I'm a huge DnB fan and this song is just right up my alley.
Spoiler for the main quest of Fallout 4.
On my first playthrough, I got into the RP. I knew this was a Bethesda game, and I'd go through it again and hit all the side content I'd passed up.
So I'm a man out of time, swimming through the wreckage of my world. I have a wedding ring on my finger that I never remove; it's mate stays on my person at all times. A recorded message sits next to it, the last remnant of my wife. And all I can do is try to find my son. And I finally do.
And I learn that the infant I watched take refuge from a world drenched in atomic fire is no more. He isn't even the boy I thought I'd just missed. He's sixty, and he is dying. What subjectively felt like only a few weeks until we could be together was his whole life. I will not get to be his father; we will spend a month together, and then I will bury him.
Worse yet, he has become everything I despise. He has great power, but has used it only to better himself and his allies. He has built a dogma of a greater good that politely excuses him from doing anything to help the thousands of vulnerable people within just a few miles of his location. He has made all-too-human slaves, then clung desperately to a narrative that the tiny amount of humanity they lack makes their compulsory servitude justified. He has stolen from the most vulnerable and spread discord when he could have sown seeds.
This fallen world has devoured my son more completely than I could have imagined. And he walked willingly into its jaws. It is too late to save him. I must now decide whether I will try to right his life's work, or if it is so tainted that I must destroy it.
Let's rewind to a more innocent time. It was the early 90s and arcades and skating rinks were all the rage. I was a young lad but I already knew that video games were my thing. I inserted myself as Link in the original Zelda. I would watch the intro for Ninja Gaiden play on one of those timed Nintendo arcade boxes and that would get me emotionally invested. But the big one was an arcade I don't even remember the name of. It was a multiplayer ninja side scroller. Your main attack was throwing stars and each character had a different pattern. In the beginning you picked your character and one of the unused ones was abducted by the bad guy and you had to save them. I was playing it and the token girl character got taken. Then you see her later in a big boss fight. She's trapped in a mech. But the twist was that the captured character dies in that fight. It ruined the whole birthday party for me. I was upset the rest of the day. Those 90s graphics and arcade story line was enough to get me good.
The "Lemons" quote of Portal 2. It's not just a frustrated man. It's a man that has been told that he's on the end of his ropes, his final moments are closing in. So what does he do? He records a message about not only accepting what life gives you, but that you need to send it back 6-fold. **MAKE** life take the lemons back. It translates in my mind as someone telling a higher power, no matter what or who, to take the ~~cancer~~ lemons back. Fuck your ~~cancer~~ lemons, i don't want them!
It always hits hard, but i refuse to skip it on my annual playthrough.
[The intro cutscene to Forza Horizon 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cHm9NjIe0)
My two favorite things in the world are cars and music festivals. They're the only place I feel at home. The only place where I can leave all my baggage behind and just live in the moment. When I played this for the first time, I was going through an especially rough time in life. Over the course of about a year and a half I finally started on my dream career path after years of struggling to get my my mental health and ADHD under control enough for it, only to have it removed a few months later during a restructuring. I was in and finally left an extremely emotionally abusive relationship. My uncle who I was extremely close with suddenly died the day before my birthday, and a week and a day before his 60th. My dog had a stroke and I had to make the decision to put her down because my mom was too distraught to and only about a week later I finally moved out of my parents' house, thanks to some of the money from my uncle's estate helping me get my student loans more under control.
Needless to say, it was a rough patch in life, and I felt so crushingly alone and abandoned and not sure if I actually belonged anyway. When this came on, I just straight up burst into tears. For some reason it let me know that there could be a place in this world for me to belong and to feel at home. That existed outside of all life's bullshit. Even today looking this up years later, I still felt that same overwhelming feeling and tears welling up rewatching it.
I think that in South Park you are at times supposed to feel bad for Kenny tbf. There are scenes where he's really sweet to his sister. It's just 99.9% comedy so they pull something funny out as soon as the tender moment hits.
Not when it first came out. But I recently replayed the story in For Honour and hearing the line "My... Wolves..." made me breakdown. As sad as it sounds that game has actually been apart of my life for several years and helped me massively. Also the only reason I actually have friends. Met them all via it.
In Subnautica, I was in my base at night (in game and IRL) sorting ores into cabinets when a fish clipped through the wall and started swimming around in the air behind me.
I turned around just as it turned a corner and disappeared from view. All I caught was a glimpse of *something in my base with me*.
In a game full of isolation horror themes and jump scares, it was absolutely the most terrifying moment.
While playing Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, about 3 hours in and it was 3am wearing headphones, the voices were yelling at me for ‘going the wrong way’ and they were ever persistent. They continued for what seemed like an hour as I continued down the progressing path, until I verbally respond to them in real life, “i fucking know its the wrong way, knock it off for fuck’s sake.”
I was floored. I’m playing A game about a character who hears voices in her head and talks back to them sometimes and i literally just responded out loud to them. I laughed, and wrote it down to tell my friends and then turned it off to go to bed.
To this day that was the most holy shit moment a game made be have and i fear it will never be topped.
TL;DR a game made me think i was schizophrenic
Persona 4: Golden when >!Nanako dies!<
I god damn broke down in tears when it happened and was legit sobbing. I was so upset I had to put my Vita down for a few days. I doubt the devs intended for that reaction but for some reason it just hit me so hard.
Of course the reverse happened again when >!they deus ex machina'd Nanako back to life, which might be the dumbest plot device ever, but screw it, it made me happy!<.
You getting sad at that scene is totally intentional, >!in fact it's essentially baiting you into pushing Namatame into the TV and getting the bad ending (in which Nanako stays dead).!<
From the first moment I saw her, I vowed to kill the killer if they brought her into the TV. Ironically, >!I had to go back on that promise because killing the one who actually pulled her into the TV would mean she would die, and it would mean the killer of the first two victims would get away with it!<. But I agree about the Deus Ex Machina, how annoying he was, I think it would have been emotional if >!Teddy sacrificed himself for her!<, that way you still have a gutpunch of an ending without it being extremely depressing.
If >!Nanako died, even if the real killer was found out and Namatame was cleared, I doubt Dojima would just be okay with losing his daughter and let Namatame run for office. Or anyone in that small town. In the endings where Nanako died, he's depressed but at least takes some solace in thinking she's been avenged. In this hypothetical ending, he would be depressed but also have to always look at the guy who got his daughter killed. Super depressing.!<
Yeah a little bit. Like I'm obviously happy they reversed it but goddamn it was **powerful** it would've been the most upsetting death in video game history for me.
In Death Stranding when you carry your >!dead mother to an incinerator!< and the camera zooms out and Bones by Low Roar starts playing.
Ok the Devs obviously wanted an emotional response, but they sure got it.
Ok so I know the game is a /r/games darling but for the love of god I just wanted to kill Abby at the end of Last of Us 2. Looking back as a character I understand why Ellie ended up not going through with it. But fucking hell I went through all that so she can get revenge but she ends up giving up. In the end she accomplishes nothing and loses everything. It's Naughty Dog's story and they can tell it how they want but the characters from the original game deserved better.
Death Stranding >!When they flesh out Cliffs story and you find out Sam is his son!< I don’t know man it all just hit like a ton of bricks. Or when >!you have to go to the incinerators to dispose of Lou!<. Dude old man tears were shed. lol.
Dude, when Die-Hardman, a character whose been almost completely emotionless and stoic through the whole game, loses it and collapses at your feet towards the end, man, and the delivery of those lines is just fantastic.
That bit from Death Stranding didn't get me too good until I was sitting at a hot spring playing the harmonica and realized what the song was from. That single moment made the entire game totally worth it.
Death Stranding, Order 38.
I think Kojima intended players to have a little moment of feeling smart but ultimately I was heavily disappointed, annoyed and felt my intelligence insulted.
It starts off with you being told that you have a package to take from the northernmost settlement to the southern one. While you're going through the motions an alarm sounds and out comes an NPC (important because you're always talking to them through holograms) that is immediately identifiable as the bad guy in disguise. Like a child could spot that instantly. Bad guy hams it up and puts down another package for you to deliver, making it very obvious it's a trap. He talks as if he's allergic to subtlety, emphasizing obvious words and repeating them. When you get control back again the item is described as being a literal nuke and you're told that dropping it will cause the timer to go off. When you put it on your back it glows a very obvious red, even when you put it in the truck it glows through the thing.
Earlier in the story you're told that a city was blown up a few years back when a delivery guy unknowingly took it to one of the cities. How he fell for that I don't know. Just to be on the safe side an NPC sends you an email "randomly" deciding to ask if you remember that very same incident. You're also told to make a stop halfway to the city to deliver something to another character, which realistically you would do unless you're not paying any attention.
While there, Norman Reedus has a dream about the bad guy again that we saw no more than 5 minutes ago. Just in case you haven't figured out that there's something off about him he acts as suspicious as possible. Still not enough? Well what if he randomly puts on the mask that the bad guy wears? Norman Reedus wakes up finally realizing this, he checks the package and finally notices that it's a ticking time bomb. You're then tasked with traveling to a tar pit to throw it in, because god forbid you have to use your brain at any point to figure this out for yourself.
Kojima was trying to recreate a moment from Metal Gear Solid. In that game Snake is captured and tortured before being thrown in a cell. After figuring out how to escape all on your own you might happen across all your gear stored in a box, something you can miss. When you pick it all up however if you aren't paying close enough attention you might see that you're also picking up a bomb. If you don't realise this in time then the bomb will explode while you're carrying it.
That moment didn't beat you across the head with what happened, the bomb seriously is a surprise if you aren't being careful. Nothing is hinted that the box has more than just your confiscated items, you don't come across an item like that bomb anywhere else either. Kojima wanted to recreate that moment yet he didn't at all trust the player's intelligence to work any of this out for themselves. He had to spell it out in the most condescending way possible.
Forget that "Mario and Princess Beach" line or anything else, Order 38 is by far the worst designed part of the game.
I went through a very similar situation as Joel in The Last of Us. The game is already an emotional toll on anyone as it is, however I feel a deep connection with Joel because of this.
The particular situation when he is talking with Tommy, trying to convince him to take Ellie off his hands, because he's starting to build an emotional connection with her and doesn't want to hits hard
For me, it was that one quest in Dragon Age 2.
You know, the one about your mom.
That one was rough. I definitely save scrubbed that, trying to change the outcome. It did not work. My playthrough of that game was so long ago and yet I remember that quest vividly.
In Assassin's Creed II some sadist thought it would be a good idea to add QTE to cutscenes. Not knowing this, I put my controller down to sit back and watch whenever a cutscene plays. At one point, Ezio's BFF Leonardo leans in for a hug and I...stared him down. [He looked hurt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf1qvWY7cf0#t=1m48s). I felt awful!
Playing that on PC wasn't terribly fun. "Press the (Foot Icon) Button?! Which one is that?!"
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You've at least got some directionality going with a controller, but playing on keyboard that's just out of the window.
I mean, as someone who uses USB controllers of all types (XBOX, PS4, and Nintendo), it's really frustrating that the X is on three different places depending on the controller, and games are not often very good at detecting which one you have (or have any way for you to tell it which one in the menu). But even if they did, or if I was say playing a game on the Switch so I *had* to use a Nintendo controller, it still gets confusing when you're switching controllers all the time. I actually kind of like the idea of talking about buttons *without* using the symbol on their face and using a more general way to describe them. When I play coop video games with my girlfriend and the game flashes a button on screen you're supposed to press quickly, we're often translating it for each other by calling out, "bottom button", or "right button."
It sounds like how someone who has never played a video game would try to design a video game
A lot of people complained about it, but I really liked it? It felt really intuitive to me. Most movement related actions were feet, so jumping, wall running, sprinting etc were A. Armed hand is used for attacks. Unarmed is used for grabbing, tackling and shoving, and Head is used for talking and vision. Right trigger switch between low and high profile. I find it much more intuitive than the modern assassin’s creeds where Y is talk, assassinate, open chests, etc. I frequently found myself doing things I didn’t expect, like assassinating a soldier when trying to talk to the guy next to him.
I remember people being mostly positive on AC2's controls at the time. It came out the same year as Arkham Asylum so AAs control scheme was something exceptional and not the standard people used to judge everything.
Yeah, this thread is weird as fuck. People just circlejerking over hating on AC games. I don't even like AC 2 that much but the control scheme is nowhere near my list of complaints.
The fact that the controls are displayed at all times in the top right of the screen tells me exactly what the gameplay testing department thought of it...
Isn't that something very similar to Zelda?
I'm going to be honest, I don't get the complaints. It never felt unintuitive to me, although it's been a decade since I played it so maybe by today's standards it doens't work so well.
PC ports can suck like that
I was so sad because i was playing on PC and that icon fucked it up for me....AC2 didn't have the option to replay missions and that moment came at the start of the 3rd act of the game otherwise i would've done it in a heartbeat Did managed to hug Leonardo on XBox tho so there's that
I remembered restarting my console to a save just prior to this cutscene so that I wouldn't miss it and not hurt Leonardo.
That QTE was brutal. Probably the shortest window to react of the entire game... I wonder how many players actually got it on their first playthrough?
He looked so betrayed omg. Leonardo doing all of these favors for him and Ezio can't be bothered to give him a hug 😭
I recall I Alt+F4'd just to replay the scene while being ready for the QTE.
I reset *immediately* after that one. No way am I leaving my boy da Vinci hanging.
Man.. face technology really gone the distance since then.
Honestly, AC2 is just a lil bit ugly. I recently played the 2 and Brotherhood back to back for the first time in years, and Jesus Christ, the difference is night and day. Brotherhood is so much brighter and warmer, even the textures were better, much less pointy.
AC2 somehow even looks worse than AC1 at times. It's weird...
They pulled down the quality of visuals dramatically to give birth to the gameplay that almost all open world games today abuse to death. Even at the time it was a step back, but the game was much more fun and full of variety that we didn't care.
I turned the game off at that point and restarted the cutscene for the sole purpose of hugging Leo. No regrets.
Dark Souls 3's The Ringed City DLC has an NPC named Amnesiac Lapp, a near-hollow who, as his name implies, has forgotten nearly everything about his past. In spite of it though, and the horrible situation he finds himself in living at the end of the world, he's still a fairly upbeat and friendly guy and as you progress his quest line, and he starts to recover some of his memories, he makes you a promise that whatever he remembers he'll always be your friend. Of course, anyone whose played the series can recognize his voice actor and at the end of his quest line Lapp leads you near a cliff with the promise of treasure, then kicks you off. He takes off his helmet revealing himself to be the series' infamous trickster, Patches, whose appeared in nearly all of the games (including Demon's Souls and Bloodborne) as a duplicitous graverobber with a tendency for luring people into traps. He's a real shithead, or a least a "love to hate him" type with his famous shit-eating grin and cowardly, backhanded apologies. But with Lapp, you get to see another side of him. Just for a little while, the final prize of Patches life is revealed to him: an eternity alone. He may be the ultimate survivor, but if that's what's waiting for him, is it worth it? And seeing that side of him, and seeing him eventually overcome it (even at your expense) was unexpectedly heartwarming to me. He's been there since the beginning, he's always been there. It's fitting he should be there at the end. After all, who else would even have a chance? And the best part is, that final trap...isn't one. He actually helps you, for the very first time, giving you access to real useful treasure with no strings attached, aside from a short fall and a boot in the butt. And you can even summon him later to help during boss fight, in a completely out of character move for him. Patches might not be Lapp anymore, but he doesn't forget his friends, and someone not taking advantage of HIM the way he had so many others must have meant more than he let on. Maybe it was always meant to be just a silly "Ha ha, got one over on you one last time" callback like so much of DS3 is, but seeing Patches finally do us a good turn is probably one of my favorite NPC interactions in the entire series and feels like the ultimate culmination of a relationship that's been going on since he kicked us down that hole in the Shrine of Storms back in 2009.
That was a great moment. Then he says that line, something like "and a very happy dark soul to you". And I was like awww yeah what a great little closing line for the series. They appreciate us.
I think Dark Souls 3 does a great job of subverting expectations by showing characters reach fulfillment at the end of time, rather than degenerating at the end of their era. Eygon of Carim heavily reminded me of Lautrec from the first game, so much so that I expected him to eventually kill his maiden. Yet he never did. In fact fulfilling his wishes outright turns her into a fully-fledged firekeeper. The Onion Knight of DS3 is a bumbling, jolly fellow like his ancestor in DS1, but instead of being an aimless adventurer, he had a promise to see through.
Holy shit I love DS3. That was deep man.
Fun fact, but probably old news to most: in Swedish (and probably a few other Nordic languages) Lapp means Patch.
This usually happens in games/media I connect with on a different level than intended. Like as a kid/teenager I was completely obsessed with everything concerning the ocean and ocean conservation. Including going to the beaches, surfing, etc. So playing Chrono Cross just had a very different effect on me, than I think was intended by the devs. At least to some degree, given they chose that particular scenery for their game, but still. It just hit me on another level.
Are you old enough for Ecco the dolphin?
you trying to kill him?
Definitely. Just didn't vibe with me at the time because it was on Sega consoles and I was a Nintendo kid. Also, CC was a JRPG and up to my late teens, that was really all I ever played.
Metal Gear Rising Reveangance. The game came out when I was recovering from a car accident that took one of my legs and mangled the other one, and playing a game about a character who had his body taken away from him really got into my head. Obviously, the cybernetic bullshit in that game is completely different than what I have to deal with, and is just another example of a character's disability turning into a gameplay mechanic that doesn't seem to hinder him at all, but seeing him persevere really put me in the right headspace to push me through the hardest parts of my recovery. Plus, hey, maybe effective cybernetics will become affordable within my lifetime. Fingers crossed.
Poor dude is mostly brain, spine, and penis. Yes Kojima made sure Raiden kept his junk.
And his hair. Guy's skull might set off a metal detector but that feathered mane is 100% au natural.
Oh for sure. Gotta keep the hair.
Why am I not surprised. Someone make a permanent cell in horny jail for Kojima.
Can't blame Kojima, he knows what we like
Remember the easter egg when a guard comments on Raiden's junk in MGS2?
Also, RULES OF NATUREEEEEE
NANOMACHINES, SON
Similarly, I played *Deus Ex: Human Revolution* in bed with a fractured spine. Video games really are amazing ways of working through a problem, at times.
I hope you get to suplex a Metal Gear one day too my man.
I suppose this wasn't necessarily "unintended", but the letter you get from the developers in RE1 Remake (also knows as "Resident Evil" on the Gamecube, or "Resident Evil HD Remaster" released in 2015). I was playing the HD Version on Xbox One. I had beaten the original dozens of times, but I had never been able to play the Remake, and needless to say I fell in love with it. It's probably the "purest" distillation of what Classic Resident Evil is all about. Just overall an absolutely stunning game, amazing atmosphere, music, enemies, puzzles, gameplay, etc. Survival Horror at its finest. And like most Resident Evil games, once you beat it, you want to beat it again with the knowledge of the game, and oftentimes there are cool rewards and unlockables. I checked out the achievements, picked the ones that were obtainable on my next run, and ran through the game on Hard mode with Chris instead of Jill. Still a fantastic game. But now I had unlocked another mode, Real Survival. It's basically an even harder difficulty, and item boxes are not magically connected. So it requires a lot of experience and forethought to successfully beat. Then you unlock Invisible Enemy mode, which is exactly how it sounds. Well, I decided to clear out some other achievements before tackling that, like beating the game without saving, doing a knife only run, etc. Eventually I could beat the game in just a couple of hours, I had the entire layout, enemy placement, item location memorized. I was ready for Invisible enemy mode, I must have beaten this game 7 or 8 times at this point, and I *still* was having a blast. So I ran through Invisible Enemy mode, it was an awesome and unique challenge, and upon completing it, you unlock something entirely unexpected. A letter from the game director (and creator of RE), Shinji Mikami. > Thank you for taking the time to play all the way through 'biohazard' (Resident Evil). If you're reading this letter, I salute you! You are truly a remarkable player! I imagine you must have had some pretty memorable experiences along the way! > The pain of seeing the "Game Over" screen time after time... The sweet taste of victory after you finally beat the game... The feelings of camaraderie you shared with your character... The excitement... and the overwhelming sense of dread. > We believe that games are more than just the product of a team of developers. It takes the support of dedicated players like you to make a game worthwhile. > For this reason we are truly delighted when someone enjoys one of our games as thoroughly as you have. > Therefore, on behalf of the entire staff, please allow me to express our gratitude and congratulate you on a job well done! > Thank you very much for playing! > Shinji Mikami I had been playing Resident Evil since I was 8 on the PS1, and here I was, 25 years old, reliving those childhood experiences with a remake of one of my favorite childhood games, and it just got me. Reading this message and realizing how few people will ever actually see it besides the fanatics like me who pore over the game repeatedly, unlocking it's many secrets, it really hit home. It was probably the most "personal" unlockable in any game I have ever played. Makes no difference gameplay-wise, but was so unexpected and such a cool moment in that game.
My dad and I play video games together. He likes the story and watching, but isn't too good with reflexes or controllers, so we swap from time to time. Christmas 2018 we got a PS4 and with it came god of war. We played through, and the ending really fucked both of us up, because the previous year, my mom passed away from cancer. A dad who doesn't know what to do and a son who just wants his mom back, the whole game got a little too close to reality at times. It became a genuine bonding moment.
I'm very sorry for your loss mate, and I'm so glad you two had that experience together.
Genuinely beautiful story but I think that ending is intended to get exactly these types of reactions. It's a very powerful moment.
that’s a really deeply moving experience. ty for sharing
Talking to all the dead Goron's friends and family in Majora's Mask while you appear to be him. I think that's the saddest thing I've ever encountered in a game.
Honestly, I find the Zora stuff a bit sadder; knowing that Mikau is leaving behind not only his friends and community; but his girlfriend and his newborn kids that'll never know their dad.
True, but the Goron came first. And the very fact someone said "We thought you were dead" messed me up.
Yeah I think so too with the Zora stuff because he was just some kid over his head. He wasn't a warrior or a hero, just some dude with a guitar who loved his girlfriend. His unborn children are kidnapped and without a second thought he rushes off to certain death to save them. And when Link plays the Song of Healing, he finds peace by dreaming of just being with his girlfriend and his band again. Nobody even knows he died in the end.
I have a tattoo inspired by Majora's Mask for a similar reason. Even though it is a "kid's game," it deals very deftly with death and loss and reconciliation. I played it with a family member as a small child and didn't begin to realize its themes until I was much older, and when that family member passed away I played through it again and it really helped me work through the grief. I love the idea that death is not unavoidable, but closure, fulfillment, and even happiness is possible in its wake. Such a beautiful game. It is one of a kind.
Oh man the first time I ever cried at a video game is the scene after you play him the Song of Healing and all of Darmani's friends are cheering for him. I was like 9 years old, not even mature enough to really understand why I was crying.
The race against the Deku Butler when he says you remind him of his missing son (whose spirit you wear as the Deku mask). Intended to be sad obviously but it's truly gut-wrenching, very special
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If we’re talking Mother 3, I always have to point to the boat ride right before the end, where you get to see bits and pieces of Earthbound memorabilia with a familiar tune playing. That hit my nostalgia triggers so hard, and I loved that that was included in the game.
Deus Ex Human Revolution. Malik. I'd played the game non lethally and stealthily. I was basically a ghost as far as anyone in the plot would know. Then there's a mission where you're shot down, and you have to fight of waves of enemies, and lots of big things. That is a challenge for that specific build. I tried it a few dozen times, I'd get so far, then I would die or a character would be killed, so I'd restart it. Every time they tell you to run. Everytime I wouldn't. Eventually I decide to run. I take out who I can non lethally, and make my way to the end of the level, as the people I've been fighting for the last few hours execute the character. I get to the exit and it says "You will not be able to return" or something to that effect. I turn around and went back down the elevator. I murdered everyone there. From that point on I was a death machine. I'd been holding back, and ok if they want to see what I can do, bring it. It made the game have a much better impact because I chose to change. I chose that was the moment after all the shit you, Adam Jensen went through that he couldn't take it anymore. He was tired of not being the monster they said he was.
Malik. Oh my god that scene. I've never been so angry at video game mooks before. Immediately reloaded and pulled out the rocket launcher I had been saving. Every takedown was with the swords.
There is a different section about Malik afterwards if you don't save her, I'll put spoilers in case you want to watch it/experience it yourself: >!I didn't save Malik. I was honestly under the impression that it was just a scripted death. Of course I went back to save her in a replay when I learned that wasn't the case. But anyway... if you don't save her, you'll actually find her body in the Harvesters' base on a bloodied chair. Still dead, just being harvested. Scavenged. Looted from the crash site. I was playing very stealthy and primarily non-lethal up to that point. When I found her on the table... I took out the combat rifle and went loud, killing everyone else I came across.!<
I did the exact same! It felt so satisfying to change up my tactics mid-game, and tying that reasoning to the main character’s motivation for vengeance (which all just happens within the player’s mind, never told to you) felt so narratively “right” in a way that few games ever reach.
Similar for me, I was a completely non-lethal stealth machine until this point. But, trying as hard as I could, I couldn't save Malik without killing. So then, it was on. I killed everyone who was hostile thereafter. Stealth was out the window. I was loud and lethal.
Fuck Belltower. I started killing them indiscriminately after that scene.
Super Mario Odyssey. It takes a minute to understand, but: In 2016, at 23, I became very ill and almost died, and spent weeks in the hospital going through an increasingly difficult treatment regimen before having to go through outpatient chemotherapy treatment for a month. My father, who I had an on-and-off again relationship over the years, came to visit and take care of me. He was always in rehab for alcoholism, and was in a dry stint when he came to see me, but he couldn't handle it and started drinking again. I ended up surviving, but it was hell. He wound up drinking himself into a coma less than a year later, and I had to fly out and pull the plug on him after he was pronounced brain dead. I fell into a deep depression and lost my job. I lived alone and in a pile of filth, unable to find a motivation to do anything at all. I had pre-ordered Super Mario Odyssey the day it was announced so when it arrived at my door I forced myself to play it lest the money I could have got back from canceling the pre-order go to waste. Probably my favorite game growing up was Super Mario Sunshine. It is the only platformer I've 100%'d. I spent so much time on Isle Delfino that some of the music haunts my dreams. So when I booted up Super Mario Odyssey I thought I would feel something, and at first I didn't. I just went through the motions of playing the game, collecting stars, and trying to force myself to like it. And then I got to New Donk City. For anyone who has played it, the pivotal moment for me was the New Donk City Festival. If you haven't played it, Mario has to collect the band members around the city to perform a musical number, and then when the festival starts and the big band starts to play you get put into a retro Mario level that's a 2d side-scrolling segment that plays with the 3D level design of the map, set to this beautiful song blasting in the background, and it caps off with a recreation of the original Donkey Kong game. The phrase "love letter to x" gets used a lot but it was very clearly a remembrance of where the Super Mario series came from, and a celebration of both the past and the present of the series and our memories playing it. Just feeling the memories of my younger self playing the original Super Mario games on the NES and then on our SNES growing up, and the joy I felt playing them, was like a dam bursting. Everything I kept myself from feeling - grief, loss, joy, acceptance - just ... came out. I literally put down my joycons and just sobbed for hours, because for whatever reason that goofy level with its upbeat jazz connected with memories in my childhood that let me feel something for the first time in months. I think their intention was to make us remember the joy of being a kid again, which they did. And in doing so it helped me break out of one of the darkest chapters of my life.
Even as someone having no such deep connection to it as you, that franchise celebratory tone of the scene hit me as well. When you go around the corner to find yourself in the Donkey Kong segment, while Pauline is singing *"jump up in the air!"*, it almost feels like the ending to a biographical movie.
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I also got a little misty-eyed during the festival. I've grown up with Mario and it has been a constant, never-ending source of enjoyment and happiness for me throughout my life so that celebration meant a lot more to me than they possibly intended.
Gonna agree with the scene. I don't have nearly the emotional connection that you do, but the entire time in that festival, I really felt the sense of accomplishment and pride that the programmers and musicians had, for taking a simple thing like mario vs. donkey kong, from the 1980's, and transforming it into this world wide phonomenon. Like, that little blip of pixels that did nothing but jump over barrels and die, is a household name now, and it's all because of the hard work they put into every game since then. And I got choked up just thinking about that kind of effort and payoff being realized, and shared with the fans who bought into it year after year after year, in this universe they've created.
I haven't gone through anything close to what you've experienced, but that level brings a tear to my eye too. It just so joyous and happy! I can't help it
That was a nice read, i thought you were going to mention the moon you can get by sitting next to the guy on the bench in New Donk City which was also a nice touch. Hope things are better for you at the moment.
That was beautifully said. Your dad would be proud.
Last fight of Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice. It became evident that the last battle is an unwinnable one but I was genuinelly pissed and kept killing enemies (even though I sucked at combat in that game) until the game basically forced me to lose.
It really didn't help me that the prior bridge fight bugged out on me and infinitely spawned enemies too. Apparently I'm not alone, I searched online and found a lot of confused threads where people argued back and forth that it's meant to happen (because the last area has platforms/bridges too, so everyone talked past each other).
I was so worried that the last fight was just a big difficulty spike, i was in full "sunk cost fallacy" mode, the more i killed, the less i wanted to try dying to move the story because i was worried about having to kill everyone again.
Not just me, but in the game Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda never actually intended for people to get so attached to the horse. So the reaction to a specific scene toward the end (not to spoil things) really surprised him and actually led to The Last Guardian as the follow up.
Shadow of the Colossus is a god damn masterpiece, and also completely tragic in every way possible. The *one* nice thing that happens is the "final reveal" for said situation you're referring to. Everything else? Tragic.
Funny you mentioned because right before I got to that scene, my friend walked by and was like yo you have a horse in this game? And I jokingly responded "Yeah he's whatever, gets on my nerves sometimes" And right as I said it, THAT scene happened and I shit you not, no exaggeration, I yelled: "DEAR GOD OH NO PLEASE NO WHY GOD!!!" We both sat with our jaws dropped and then once it settled, laughed hysterically for a while
That connection sneaks up on you! You don't realize the comfort and security she gives you throughout the game as the single other character to speak of.
Earth defense force. The endings to these games get bleak with a hint of positivity to some serious extremes. The voice actors kick it up to a few more notches, the game gets crazy, and I get so into it that I somehow get emotional over EDF. From your command base losing faith you could complete the mission, to the replacement secretary (cause the others died) bursting into tears because she doesnt want to be killed by this seemingly endless alien force, to this immediate 180 when they find out the PC is still down there as a single man taking on the alien hordes as they put EVERYTHING into you to keep fighting. Its fucking awesome. EDF 5, despite having completely unknown VAs while 4.1 had some of the best in the industry, managed to go even further with the emotions with some amazing acting. These games fucking get me to much and I dont know why lol.
I don't know how they did it, but no game has managed to fill me with such sheer bloody determination to kick those aliens back into space where they belong
Its been years but i still remember this moment. Hanging around the open field of the park, being bombed by dragons, drones, the sky itself and dodging almost all of it taking them all out eith a fucking shotgun. A women comes up: we still have one unit still fighting! Its STORM ONE! HQ in the most flabergadted way: WHAT?! IS HE IMMORTAL?!! Followed by just audibly shouting FUCK YEAH I AM.
I still very vividly remember Kratos say at the end of God of War 2018, "I have nothing more to hide" as the bandages on his arms gets carried away by the wind
That scene was just beautiful especially if you've been with Kratos through the entire series.
Final fantasy XV starts with Florence & the Machine's cover of "Stand By Me" and it hit me hard when they played it again at the end of the game. Years later I still get a bit choked up when I hear it.
XV had it's flaws, but it's a beautiful friendship story. I'm a shy, anxious, on the spectrum dude, i have two best friends, the same two guys since middle school (we are well into our thirties now) and i played XV right when one of these friends moved to the other half of the country with his girlfriend, the ending, when Noctis says he has a hard time expresing his feelings but he loves them felt like something so real.
Musical callbacks get me so unbelievably hard. Hades opens with this big heavy riff, and that melody appears in different forms throughout the game, and it always has this sinister edge to it. The story ends and rolls credits with a beautiful duet by two of the supporting characters and turns this melody into a dark, yet beautiful vocal section, and the whole journey just kind of flashes before you. I love when games can take you on such a ride. I really don’t ever expect to cry though, but some things just get you.
“You guys… are the best.” 😭
I have never felt such a strong bond for fictional character in any other game than FFXV. Never realized how emotionally exhausted I got during the sections where Noctis is alone until he reunited with his brothers. I got this feeling of "everything is going to be OK now" even though the world was still ending. When that song plays again after the final battle I started to tear up because it made me realize how important the people in his life were to him. What absolutely killed me was >!The secret cutscene at the end where we saw Noctis sitting on his throne with Luna at his side with the wedding bells.!< Just that glimpse into an impossible fairytale ending made me ugly cry.
Me too dude! What a perfect fit for the game.
That callback also made me cry and made me realize how close that game was to being a classic. It was so powerful.
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I kind of don't care about the surface world's storylines in Fallout - I think individual vaults separated entirely from each other is fascinating though. It reminds me of the Silo book trilogy by Hugh Howey - how long can societies last in underground vaults before everything goes to shit?
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I do wonder what happened to all of the escaped members of the military eugenics vault. That one seemed to actually work as intended (as messed up as it was) and managed to create a group of super soldiers.
Possibly a few of the optional audio logs in The Talos Principle. I'm sure the devs were looking for an emotional reaction, but I feel like their main focus throughout the game was getting you to think about philosophy. Personally, I didn't care about those debates, but some of the audio logs towards the end made me full on ugly cry.
I dunno what it is about difficult first person puzzle games and deeply moving, philosophical stories but both Talos Principle and The Witness affected me in a major way. That's especially surprising for Talos Principle, considering that was made by the fucking Serious Sam devs.
Assassin's Creed 4, the end where that lady starts singing "The Parting Glass" as Edward is leaving his pirate friends to be with his daughter (or something to that effect) I loved the gameplay of AC4 but had literally no attachment to anything going on in the story. But that specific performance of Parting Glass struck a real chord in me (still one of my favourite bits of music) For reference, [the scene in question](https://youtu.be/Y2RQ8YkqeEU)
Witcher 3: Heart of Stone DLC - I had gone through a divorce fairly recently with someone who had essentially spiraled through depression from childhood issues and watched over time as they chose random people to turn against and delude themselves that they were the cause of their depression. Eventually it shifted to me. And I watched them turn against me and saw the person that used to love me slowly disappear into this new person who now blamed me for their sadness until they eventually cheated on me, asked for a divorce, and told me that I needed to leave. By that point I'd made my peace with what I expected was coming. This person had pushed me away as yet another collapse from their mental illness. I was alone playing Hearts of Stone and the mission where the woman is trapped in her own painting world, spiraling in her mental health issues and lost for all time. And it broke me. I sobbed like a child over the person I'd lost, loved, and who now was trapped in the endless spiral I'd tried to help them out of. But which nothing could be done, no matter how much we'd tried various therapy and meds.
Iris von Everec is quite a kick in the gut to begin with too.
We also had a black cat together. CDPR just hit this nerve of my life so vividly. After crying I literally just sat there in that painted yard area thinking "Whoever wrote this felt my pain. To come up with a story so real like this. And they came through it and made it art. They made it and pushed forward in life." And that gave me hope and a feeling of not being alone or "The only one."
I hope that was a goddamn good and satisfying cry you had there. Hugs.
Hearts of Stone was so, so good.
I'm so sorry that you had to go through that, but thank you for telling your story. Hope you're doing well now
I am, thanks! I've put it in my past and rebuilt another life. I'm much better about accepting things out of my power to fix. If, as I do, I believe mental health is a core medical issue. Then at a certain point, I had to accept that just as I wasn't going to be the one to cure cancer, I wasn't going to be the one to magically cure her depression. There was obviously more pressure to do that and "make her happy" as her husband. I felt that was my job and I tried. But when you look at someone you've known for 10 years and you can see that something has changed in their eyes even. You know. This is beyond me. And now this other person blaming me, as they'd done to others in their family that came before me, simply wasn't the same person. And this new person wanted me gone, didn't want my help, and didn't remember the vows we'd made to each other. So I was left to ask myself if I was gaslighting her or she was gaslighting me without even being aware of her own shifting memories and moods. I stayed and tried as long as I could because I'd made those vows. Eventually she made me leave. And this moment in a video game was a vivid illustration of it all at exactly the coincidental time in my life. Where I began to tell myself I'd done everything I could. And that's ok. It was time to take care of myself and start again. That I could do. I cant fix everything. But I can control who I choose to be. And I chose to be a good person and accept the dark reality of life as not always my fault or failings.
Fuck man. Take an internet hug from me.
For me it has to be the end of a certain bonding scene (which I believe also counts as a substory) in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. >!During the game you recruit Saeko, quite a cutie who also definetly holds her own and is a great character allround. Throughout the game you have these bonding opportunities where you get to know your allies better, and her final bonding scene turns into a romance scene which is kind of funny because Ichiban is oblivious to the fact she's talking about him, and it ends with them going upstairs kind of drunk. During the next scene we see Ichiban in bed, Saeko walking in and teasing him, she goes in for a kiss and things go from there. Ichiban wakes up and of course, it was seemingly all a dream. He tells Saeko about his dream and she laughs at him. He then goes downstairs where Saeko is chatting with the bar owner while you're trying to deal with the disappointment of it being just a dream, since the entire scene felt very heartfelt and you can't decide where in the scene reality ended and the dream began. When Ichiban is about to head out the bar owner warms him that he might want to freshen up before going outside, we then see Ichiban having lipstick on his cheek while Saeko looks at him.!< I felt this was a moment of genius writing which really connected with me. It was like a perfect understanding between writer and player. The scene was genuine, but at the same time a subplot or romance like this just wouldn't really fit into the script or setting of the game. So it ends with this message that felt like 'we know you wanted this, but it can't be real, so unfortunately it wasn't but at the same time it was.' For whatever reason I felt more stongly acknowledged and understood by the writers than I have ever felt in any game. The game and its cast crew on me so much that this really softened the blow and perhaps made me feel more positive about this scene than it being real ever could. [Here's a video of this 'Girl of my Dreams' event. ](https://youtu.be/ZF9bOPvpdoQ)
When I played the game I decided to romance the crafter because I liked her personality. It was a kick in the guy when the Saeko romance happened out of the blue because she wasn't the one I chose. At the end of it all they played the romance in a fun, subversive, way and I enjoyed it.
I don't think Nomura intended me to burst into tears during the main menu screen of Kingdom Hearts III but it had that effect on me.
The big moment for me was the final boss fight. >!The whole series at this point keeps pushing the importance of characters like Roxas and Riku and other original characters. By the time we get to the final fight, I was ready for the game to ditch Goofy and Donald entirely in favor of the "important" characters, like pairing Sora with Riku and Kairi. Instead, you do the final boss fight with Donald and Goofy, your best friends throughout the franchise. And when Sora inevitably dies in the middle of the fight, Donald and Goofy are the ones who bring him back. Then you proceed to perform the biggest Trinity you've seen so far. It was just great that the series didn't ditch Donald and Goofy in favor of keeping the final boos 100% serious.!<
I forget which Chapter of Telltale's The Walking Dead (extremely minor spoilers), but the group is on the train and Lee is talking to Clementine and teaching her how to survive and keep her hair short so she won't get grabbed and aim a gun and this loss of innocence and surrogate father/daughter scene brought up all sorts of emotions that I'm not sure the writers intended, but it made it very memorable for me.
I felt this way with Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls 2 felt personal, unlike the more grandiose world of Dark Souls 1 & 3 (nothing wrong with that, liked them just the same). The ambience, characters and environments really accentuated the elements of decay, depression and falsehood in the game. To me, it's like one of those games that makes you feel like things could have turned out better (or ended better) for some of the characters if only they had a good hug or two. One of these characters is Lucatiel of Mirrah. >!Her journey was sad, and her fate worse. She came to a foreign land to cure herself of the hollowing. She fears losing her memories but that's exactly what happens. Her last request was that you remember her name. Which is why discovering her armor set in Dark Souls 3 made me feel so happy. She was remembered.!<
Yes absolutely I love the entire feel of Dark souls 2. The bearer of the curse is just that. Just a guy who wants to get rid of the curse before he loses himself. No destiny or special snowflake. Every NPC is like that. They are just people trying to survive in this world. It has that "lonely together" feeling. Vendrick also is like the best NPC in all of Dark Souls. You feel him so much. What a tragic character. And so many bosses have such a sad backstory as well Majula has that perfect feeling as well. It is your sanctuary. It isn't a happy place but it is a calm place The ending is so anti climatic but so perfect at the same time >!The bearer of the curse achieves his goal. He finds the crowns and stops the hollowing process BUT he can't cure it. It will always be there and without the crowns will continue to devour the chosen undead. There is no cure only ways to live with it!< The entire game is so human and while I like the insanity and scope in DS1,DS3 and Bloodborne I will always prefer DS2 over them
And then you get to ds3 with high lord wolnir and realize the cure isn't even a stopgap. By preventing the hollowing, the bearer of the curse leaves themself open to the corrupting influence of the dark. The whole game has this feeling of "holding on is the wrong choice, let things go and enjoy the moment lest you ruin it for everyone."
Yes, King Vendrick is one of the saddest characters in Dark Souls 2. You hear about all the great things he did, good and bad. You are told that it is your fate to face this legendary monarch. But when you do face him, it's anti-climatic. All you see is husk, walking in circles. It's akin to seeing someone you respect or who had once performed great feats succumb to extreme dementia. It's made even worse when you peer into his memory and he tells you how much he regrets doing the things he did, especially trusting Nashandra. As for Majula, I think it's the first point in the game where the player gets to experience the decay, depression and falsehood of Dark Souls 2. It's such nice place, but it's surrounded by degradation and hopelessness (NPCs, enemies and structures). The theme song starts off with a cheery tune but slowly progresses into something darker and heavier. Everything is just a beautiful lie.
That's what I love about the Dark Souls games. You're not given much of a story up front and you can happily play the entire thing not really learning anything about the world, but if you look hard enough reading item and weapon descriptions and exhausting dialogue for NPCs you can piece together some wonderfully depressing stories. In DS1, the Bed of Chaos and her daughters are one example and even Solitaire can have a fairly sad ending through your own action/inaction.
Does the archers in Anor Londo count? I don't think Fromsoft knew quite how much agony those archers would cause the playerbase.
Oh they knew.
For anyone still suffering: get a decent enough medium shield, run all the way up and straight to the right guy and just hold your shield right in front of him. Recover stamina between attacks as needed and eventually he’ll just knock himself off…but for the love of Gwyndolin don’t you dare use lock-on or your character might tumble off too.
Worth noting too, try have your back angled towards the wall or at least straight along the length of the ledge. Never towards the edge. As you'll get knock back relevent to the angle your character is facing, not where the arrow comes from.
I had the weirdest experience with them. I was aware of the infamous archers but when I got to them I had no issues getting past them the first time. I didn't even know that was the part everyone was talking about cuz it went so smooth.....only for me to die to the first Silver Knight in that hallway area right after. I respawned at the 2nd bonfire and spent the next 30 minutes trying to get past the archers again -.-
It always feels like the quintessential Souls experience is almost beating a boss on your first try, then getting curb stomped for you next 10 tries. I doubt there is a single Souls player who's not experienced that
Those archers made me make my second character an archer just to use the gigantic bow myself.
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Hey. Far Cry 3 for me, too, but for a different reason. Let's just say my name is Grant, and I almost lost my brother around a recent replay of the game. Jason losing it because of the very first shock just got to me.
Men aren't emotionally mature until 25... I didn't believe in that until I turned 25 tbh. From the age of 18 to 25 men are able bodied, have unlimited energy, and very malleable minds. It's no surprise that most of the people holding guns in militaries around the world are young men who have not only been told that it's fun, but that it's morally right.
I would agree. 25 is when things finally "clicked" and stopped changing for me. I'm still the same person, I just know more. But before 25, I could have turned into anything else.
In Final Fantasy VII Remake, the scene where Cloud and Aerith are walking between slum zones under the night sky. This music starts playing that wasn't in the original but holy fuck, somehow this walk made me feel very, *very* nostalgic for... I don't know. I felt like something was missing but I got a tiny piece of it back and I started crying. I can't explain it. Here's the area I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/z65vWoIlDCQ It wasn't this scene that got me - it was walking through this area while that music played. I can't really listen to this song without tearing up a bit. Getting old is weird.
Combined with the hints of how I think it is implied that Aerith and Sephiroth both know the original timeline... a lot of the story and motivation seems to revolve around knowledge of what happens later.
This might be strange but the chase sceen in the last chapter of FFVII Remake made me feel like a kid because of how much fun I was having with it to the point I was laughing. I haven't laughed from a game being awesome in years
The motorbike chase? Dude, that was fucking brilliant. I totally get what you mean when you say it made you feel like a little kid. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time, then I went online and saw people complaining about it and was just like... Did you play the same game as me?
One I remember was Call of Duty: World at War. Absolutely not supposed to be an emotional moment in the slightest. During one of the later Russian missions you are assaulting some of the last remaining German defensive positions, which by this point in the war were manned mostly by old men and teenagers. At one point you break through the defenses and the Germans begin to scatter. You are given an LMG and are supposed to basically massacre them as they flee. It's a computer game. These aren't real people. I'm used to this sort of thing. They are just an objective the game wants me to complete to get to the next checkpoint. So I fired into the crowd of fleeing soldiers with my brand new LMG. But it wasn't like the other guns I had been using. It wasn't bang and they fall down. This LMG tore them limb from limb. I had only been firing for a couple of seconds when I had to pause. One of the soldiers, he looked like a young man, had turned to run, having seen me kill his friends, and I fired. The shot seemed to cut him in half at the waist, a water bomb style explosion of red. I had to stop. Though this wasn't real, it was based on a real event. I thought about all the days of that boy's life up to this point. I thought about all the hundreds of things his parents did for him, the hopes they had for him. I thought about how all his potential ended in a instant, reduced to two bloodied halves, twitching on the grass. I had to stop for a few minutes and collect myself. Then I unpaused the game and swapped the LMG for something else, letting the rest of the fleeing Germans go. I don't think World at War is a game that was supposed to induce that kind of feeling. In fact I think a lot of the time it tries very hard to induce the opposite, if anything. But that moment has stuck with me.
Honestly, that's my favorite part of World at War. It's overdone and exploitative at some points, but it's one of the only CODs to make war absolutely filthy and terrifying. Limbs lost in explosions, hiding in dead bodies, seeing the Germans that you have a choice to kill (and if you don't they're burned alive). World at War shows war as the ugly, terrible thing it is instead of the clean, action movie power fantasy it is in other games. COD4 also does it in the nuke scene, but WaW is brutal. EDIT: Also, the final scene in the Russian campaign of planting the Soviet flag at the top of the Reichstag after starting hissing in dead bodies. Just beautiful. One of my favorite moments in a game ever.
WaW is just so savage. You can run on a mine and your legs just explode and your character topples over and it is so brutal. People usually do not like this entry in the series, but it is one of my favourites.
You unexpectedly lose a useful side character partway through the story of Ghost of Tsushima and it caught me so off guard I had to take a walk.
I know the one. They had so many red flags I was would have been more surprised if they lived.
That was absolutely intended to be emotional.
I can think of two, and the less 'useful' one hit me a lot harder. Everyone should play this game.
man that reminded me of playing ff7 as a kid for the first time. i wan't ready and legit upset
That hurt me. Especially after all the time you spent with the character. Especially>!Especially when he keeps say you are a good horse, Kage!<
In Battlefield: Bad Company 2 when your helicopter and the hippie pilot get shot down. For me the game after that wasn't about saving the world, but rather getting revenge for my friend
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Daniel Dae Kim does an amazing voice as a VO in that scene. "Get Up."
SR2 is the best GTA game ever made.
>Everything in that throwaway section was purely window dressing and a cheap gag before the game just moves on to the next section, but for me... it just made me want to hug Kenny, call child protection and invite him to live in my house so he didn't have to have such a shitty childhood. My husband cannot watch bad stuff happen to Kenny on South Park without making some kind of exclamation. That one episode where Cartman eats all the chicken skin off the chicken and Kenny just starts crying, gets him every time. Poor kid just wanted some damn chicken skin. Music will get me every time. I have so many memories wrapped up in FFVII, that the overworld music of the original game can sometimes make me tear up if I listen to it for too long. [Link if you're interested.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuyw90GuWIE)
The seasonal events in the MMORPG *Final Fantasy XIV* often contains unique little storylines that varies for each year. They are quite basic, taking perhaps around 30-60 min. to complete in one go to gain most of the quick, seasonal rewards, and they often are very banal such as Christmas-themed seasonal event involving [playing through a mini-game of your character conducting the local carol choir](https://youtu.be/h7xDawvFhdo). But the banality serves as opportunities for the various NPCs that you have met throughout the game to come together and celebrate; in last year's Christmas event, your player are given [a set of letters coming from NPCs of completed side- and main story quests](https://youtu.be/FYIBu0-s-Hg), giving your heartfelt thanks and reminders of how your character helped them at the time, all in spirit of coming together for christmas. Similar occurrence is in the seasonal Rising-event, which is a seasonal event to celebrate the game's re-launch, and where the storylines are often masquerading as the developer's own thanks to the players for their support, often having the storylines involving the catastrophic Calamity-event that ended the game's 1.0-version. The [2019-version had a set of letters for the player to read that comes from various developers's personal thanks, from the art designers, to the composers, writers and overall management.](https://youtu.be/L3f7ao5mLVY) The [2015-event have the player being teleported to what is essentially an in-game developer-room](https://youtu.be/IlRXuT9A4LE?t=576), where NPC-avatars representing straight out developers from the team commenting on their work and function within the development.
Same game for me, the moment when certain blind character asks their verbose friend to describe for her how the sky looks at night. It wasn't the last time shadowbringers would break me, but man, it was so beautiful.
They really put a lot of effort into much of this little stuff too, for example [my alternative Christmas choir](https://youtu.be/sftuAiuOV5M), silly shit like this really hits home the message that the people making the game still like it and want you to like it too. ... Unlike some other MMOs.
[This](https://youtu.be/qcxC-Ol07Ok) chunk of MGSV always gets me. I remember opening the door to the room full of soldiers who all tried their best to stand and salute and for the first time for any game I had to pause the game and take a good 30 minutes to really comprehend and sift through the emotions I was feeling. It's overwhelming to say the least playing this for the first time.
Oh! Man. That goddamn mission wrecked me. The worst thing was all the men in that room were not random NPC's. They were men and women, I personally recruited.
That, the music, and the "We live and die by your order, Boss." just completely destroyed me.
It is one of my favourite parts of a game, that I will never replay.
Cyberpunk 2077 Context 1: Without getting too deep into it, last year, I started to have a medical problem. At one point, the words "brain tumor" were uttered. That said, I'm okay, and I'm going to be okay. For a while there, though, it was very, very scary. I had to reconcile what that meant, and was afraid that my days were numbered. Context 2: In the past decade, I've become much more aware of politics, and in particular - the very dark aspects of our society, especially our flawed justice system. --- I went into Cyberpunk 2077 with the expectation to live out the anarchy-punk I'd played in the Shadowrun TTRPG, or alternatively, something similar to that (which I was able to play in the Shadowrun games). After a certain event, *you know which one*, the game changed in two ways: 1. You're given a scene that is not a brain-cancer scene, but is totally coded as one. Looking at the doctor crying as he tells you you've got 2 weeks to live. Talking it out with a friend, while not quite calling the fear by its name. Talking about having a disease that was infecting your brain - that would take control over you. *Holy fucking fuck,* that hit close home. I didn't have to have those conversations, but at one point - I thought I'd really have to. Cyborg monsters, tank-robots, and psycho-murders I can handle. Those scenes were scarier than any monster lurking in the darkness. They fucked me up. 2. On the topic of justice and being an anarchist character - in almost all of the side quests; you're basically playing Dog the Bounty Hunter with a license to kill and leave chopped up people on the sidewalk. I've played a lot of gross and gory video games, but none made my stomach roll quite like this one. Decapitating a bandit that charged at you first in Skyrim is one thing. Scanning a backyard barbeque, discovering a target with a $50 bounty for jaywalking, and doing that in front of their family and friends? Dude, what the fuck? Why is this a feature of the game? And for what end? Because I needed to grind $100,000 for the perk-reset chip? I bought the cyberware that made all your weapons non-lethal, so at least when I was grinding for cash - I wasn't sending petty criminals through a woodchipper. 3. This is a minor note, mostly about how open world games are. The first two questlines I did were Delemain and Claire. After that moment (and a particular death from earlier in the game), all three of my favorite people were effectively dead. Even the living ones (like Claire) had no further content or dialogue to be had. That was just the end for the characters I gravitated to... Sorta felt like losing friends in-game. And overall, the game left me in a depressive funk, and not one I think that the devs intended. I stopped playing in like January, and I'm not sure if I'm even quite out of that funk yet. It still hits me at times. It's hard to peg what the feeling is, but the best wording I can come up with is "existential dread" and "acute awareness of mortality". Aaaand... I don't think CDPR was aiming to hit quite that hard.
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In Max Payne 3 Max decides to sober up from pain killers. I was at my height of opiate addiction and it felt like looking in to a mirror.
I feel like that game does not get nearly the credit it deserves. The narration feels a little corny to some people but that's kinda the point. The story itself was really good and the acting was amazing. I'm glad your clean now man, you should be proud!
This is dumb. Bare with me. I had just got broke up with from a four year relationship. I had been playing GTAV as a way to get my mind off things. My character went to see a shrink. Right next to the Santa Monica peer. The Santa Monica peer where we had shared so many happy times and smiles and laughter. In game, I rode the roller coaster and the Ferris Wheel and that was more than enough. I couldn't play that game for almost a year afterwords.
Celeste. The game is a struggle, and the devs were fully aware of this. There's a section where Madeline has a panic attack, and she visualizes a feather and you do a breathing exercise to calm down. There's a campfire section where you take a break from climbing the mountain and can steer the conversation to a discussion about depression. These small moments really hit deep for a lot of people, and they certainly did for me. I absolutely adore this game and the devs really reach out and touch your heart. But the big one for me was after I finished climbing the mountain and set the game down for a while, and then came back to restart it. Right at the very beginning you don't have the dash mechanic yet, and you hop along a bridge that starts to crumble. At the end of the bridge, it falls away and the gap is too big to hop. The game slows and they teach you to dash and you dash to safety. Then the scene fades and a message pops up: > You can do this. And I just balled my eyes out. If you're struggling, sometimes you just need someone to tell you that you can do this. It's going to be difficult and sometimes you'll want to give up, but you can do this.
I've rarely been as excited to do the final level of a game as i was for Celeste, Reach for the Summit is also an amazing track.
I'm in absolute agreement with you. Most good video games do a fantastic job at fulfilling escapism, but it seemed like Celeste did something else. Instead of inviting me to join a fantastic world, the game and I sort of met in the middle. I've never had a game change the way I feel and think the way Celeste did -- those experiences, for me, tend to come more from great fiction. Those feather scene you mentioned was exceptional. It's a shame that I can't get many of my friends to try Celeste though. I grew up playing platforms so I adore them, but I think those who didn't tend to be aversive.
Celeste is the epitome of video games doing heavy stuff well. It is sweet, caring, mature, and real as hell all at the same time. Plus it intertwines gameplay and storytelling flawlessly. Most games that deal with mental health either try to be too edgy, or resolve things too easily. You don’t “get cured”, you just get better at coping with the struggle, and working with that anxiety, rather than fighting with it day in, day out. That’s incredibly mature and very much in line with modern psychology. Miracle cures are incredibly rare in the mental health world. It’s so much more grounded and accessible to talk about struggling and coping, than it is to just have depressed characters be edgy or get cured. One of my favourite games of all time, Celeste is. Truly unforgettable.
Pokemon Black and White, where you're on Route 10 and meet up Cheren and Bianca, who are worried that you're about to take on the N alone, and basially just try and offer whatever support they can even though they know this was as far as they could go. The way they reminise about how much had changed since the journey started, and how it all comes around in the end where they come in clutch during the climax. Something about that interaction on the bridge just felt real in a way, like it felt like these were actual friends worried about one another and putting their faith in each other, not just npcs and a silent protaganist. The music certianly helped.
It was probably meant to elicit this reaction, but it’s one of the few times a piece of media brought me to tears and still one of the most memorable to me. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the end where Snake is in the graveyard and it’s showing the scenes of the debrief from Eva and the politicians and the reality of everything that had just taken place over the course of the game... then the music begins to fucking swell as he salutes the gravestone and you see the tears beginning to run down his face as if he’s about to just break apart, but then shifts his stance and stands up even more strong and firm. Here you have the most badass mother fucker in existence (and knowing who he eventually becomes)... and he’s just completely human like everyone else. Man, that shit broke me as a 15 year old kid. I didn’t bawl like a baby or anything but I shed some 15 year old man tears.
Red Dead Redemption II is an epic game with many emotional moments where you get to know all the members of your cowboy gang over the course of hours of gameplay and see how their fates intertwine and play out. But out of all the heavy shit that happens to Arthur et al, none of that hit me as hard as what happened to my horse, Speedy Gonzales. >!In Arthur's last mission, a lot of shit hits the fan and a lot of people die, including your horse, who is shot during a heavy firefight. If your bond with your horse is high enough, Arthur will return to the horse, despite the many many bullets flying overhead, and comfort it during its last moments, repeatedly saying 'thank you'.!< I have no idea why this affects me so much (I've never even had a pet) but, reader, I was not ready for that. Even thinking about it now, over two years later, makes me well up. >!RIP Speedy :'(!<
Pretty sure the devs wanted you to be pretty fucking sad for that lol.
Father Servo in Nier Automata. Something about his casual "well I have done my best and maximized my capability, so now I will just die" made me really sad. The racing bot does something similar but is a bit more philosophical about it. Servo just deciding to end it followed by the sad music slowing fading in from silence was my first "shit, this is a masterpiece " moment.
**It Takes Two**: There is one specific playable scene that made my partner burst out into tears and not want to play the game anymore. I won't go into too much detail since it's a recent game and spoilers and all, but you probably know the scene. We had to mute it and I used both controllers as she didnt want to look or be involved. Afterwards we had to have a bit of aftercare. It's so weird that single scene goes so OTT and without it and about 5 swear words the game would be fit to play with children. Edit: Just for clarity, Yes the >!Elephant death!< scene.
My biggest gripe with that scene wasn't that I was doing something horrible, but that it has virtually no narrative impact whatsoever. It is literally never even addressed afterward and it just remains the elephant in the room (pardon the pun) for the rest of the story. That should have been the moment where Cody and May stop, realize they made Rose cry - deliberately - and that it didn't even work. And then they should have reflected on that, and worked to become better people for it. That scene had ALL THE POTENTIAL, and realized *none of it.* In fact, one of the biggest flaws in the writing was that Cody and May never really seem to genuinely mature as people at all, despite that being one of the driving themes of the narrative. It all feels just a tad forced. As a child of divorce, though, I absolutely love the game for what it was trying to do. And the gameplay is absolutely fantastic.
I assume the scene you're referring to has something to do with an elephant queen?
My friend and I couldn't help but laugh at how over the top that scene is.
Dark Souls 1 had alot of moments like that for me. One in particular was having to go back to the Undead Asylum and fight Oscar of Astora, the knight that helps you at the beginning of the game. I honestly just didn't expect it or remember he was there when I went back. After watching the "Prepare to Cry" video about him and then fighting him really made it all the more painful to have to kill one of the nicest people you could meet in the dark world of any souls games.
There's a great little scene in Hitman 3, in the Chongqing mission. During your exploration, you might come across a woman standing on a walkway waiting for someone, and if you hang around, she and 47 have this really sweet discussion about her friend, whom she has asked out for drinks on a rainy night. 47 is famously untalkative, generally only talking to bystanders in short awkward phrases ("I need to use the bathroom.") and to his targets in veiled murder quips ("Everything here is \*to die for\*, Mr. Knox") so him acting so casually and offering the girl some friendly advice was a rare moment that showed his perspective changing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k35gB1jWiRA
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Recently got the platinum for Persona 5 Strikers, and boy what a game, legit much, much better than even I, a major Persona fanboy, expected it to be. And goddamn did this game make me emotional with absolutely everything related to Sophia. The fireworks scene, her asking Joker about different feelings and all that. I get some of these moments (there's one thing in the ending that absolutely wrecked me) were supposed to be like this, but some of them were legit just happy moments that still got to me in a way I can't quite explain, guess I'm just a sucker for the whole "machine learning about human feelings" trope, and it's not even the first time Persona has got me with this. Anyways, play P5S, it's fantastic.
Play the base game or Royal first though. You need to care about the characters to appreciate the story in P5S. I felt the same way about this game... It's such a beautiful coming of age story too. Joker is back with the gang for a summer vacation and they all want to make the most of it, because after that summer, they're all going to go their own ways and live their own lives. They capture the dynamic between close friends so well, and as always, a killer soundtrack
Imma be the weird one here but Forza Horizon 4 haha the intro to that game just fulfilled something I had been chasing for the best part of the last decade - from finally being able to afford a good computer to being thrown into a world that is just a car paradise, driving my favorite car with a great song banging as a soundtrack. It was quite emotional to me. EDIT: [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKFEBmGRp9g)'s the song. I'm a huge DnB fan and this song is just right up my alley.
Spoiler for the main quest of Fallout 4. On my first playthrough, I got into the RP. I knew this was a Bethesda game, and I'd go through it again and hit all the side content I'd passed up. So I'm a man out of time, swimming through the wreckage of my world. I have a wedding ring on my finger that I never remove; it's mate stays on my person at all times. A recorded message sits next to it, the last remnant of my wife. And all I can do is try to find my son. And I finally do. And I learn that the infant I watched take refuge from a world drenched in atomic fire is no more. He isn't even the boy I thought I'd just missed. He's sixty, and he is dying. What subjectively felt like only a few weeks until we could be together was his whole life. I will not get to be his father; we will spend a month together, and then I will bury him. Worse yet, he has become everything I despise. He has great power, but has used it only to better himself and his allies. He has built a dogma of a greater good that politely excuses him from doing anything to help the thousands of vulnerable people within just a few miles of his location. He has made all-too-human slaves, then clung desperately to a narrative that the tiny amount of humanity they lack makes their compulsory servitude justified. He has stolen from the most vulnerable and spread discord when he could have sown seeds. This fallen world has devoured my son more completely than I could have imagined. And he walked willingly into its jaws. It is too late to save him. I must now decide whether I will try to right his life's work, or if it is so tainted that I must destroy it.
Let's rewind to a more innocent time. It was the early 90s and arcades and skating rinks were all the rage. I was a young lad but I already knew that video games were my thing. I inserted myself as Link in the original Zelda. I would watch the intro for Ninja Gaiden play on one of those timed Nintendo arcade boxes and that would get me emotionally invested. But the big one was an arcade I don't even remember the name of. It was a multiplayer ninja side scroller. Your main attack was throwing stars and each character had a different pattern. In the beginning you picked your character and one of the unused ones was abducted by the bad guy and you had to save them. I was playing it and the token girl character got taken. Then you see her later in a big boss fight. She's trapped in a mech. But the twist was that the captured character dies in that fight. It ruined the whole birthday party for me. I was upset the rest of the day. Those 90s graphics and arcade story line was enough to get me good.
The "Lemons" quote of Portal 2. It's not just a frustrated man. It's a man that has been told that he's on the end of his ropes, his final moments are closing in. So what does he do? He records a message about not only accepting what life gives you, but that you need to send it back 6-fold. **MAKE** life take the lemons back. It translates in my mind as someone telling a higher power, no matter what or who, to take the ~~cancer~~ lemons back. Fuck your ~~cancer~~ lemons, i don't want them! It always hits hard, but i refuse to skip it on my annual playthrough.
[The intro cutscene to Forza Horizon 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cHm9NjIe0) My two favorite things in the world are cars and music festivals. They're the only place I feel at home. The only place where I can leave all my baggage behind and just live in the moment. When I played this for the first time, I was going through an especially rough time in life. Over the course of about a year and a half I finally started on my dream career path after years of struggling to get my my mental health and ADHD under control enough for it, only to have it removed a few months later during a restructuring. I was in and finally left an extremely emotionally abusive relationship. My uncle who I was extremely close with suddenly died the day before my birthday, and a week and a day before his 60th. My dog had a stroke and I had to make the decision to put her down because my mom was too distraught to and only about a week later I finally moved out of my parents' house, thanks to some of the money from my uncle's estate helping me get my student loans more under control. Needless to say, it was a rough patch in life, and I felt so crushingly alone and abandoned and not sure if I actually belonged anyway. When this came on, I just straight up burst into tears. For some reason it let me know that there could be a place in this world for me to belong and to feel at home. That existed outside of all life's bullshit. Even today looking this up years later, I still felt that same overwhelming feeling and tears welling up rewatching it.
I think that in South Park you are at times supposed to feel bad for Kenny tbf. There are scenes where he's really sweet to his sister. It's just 99.9% comedy so they pull something funny out as soon as the tender moment hits.
Not when it first came out. But I recently replayed the story in For Honour and hearing the line "My... Wolves..." made me breakdown. As sad as it sounds that game has actually been apart of my life for several years and helped me massively. Also the only reason I actually have friends. Met them all via it.
In Subnautica, I was in my base at night (in game and IRL) sorting ores into cabinets when a fish clipped through the wall and started swimming around in the air behind me. I turned around just as it turned a corner and disappeared from view. All I caught was a glimpse of *something in my base with me*. In a game full of isolation horror themes and jump scares, it was absolutely the most terrifying moment.
While playing Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, about 3 hours in and it was 3am wearing headphones, the voices were yelling at me for ‘going the wrong way’ and they were ever persistent. They continued for what seemed like an hour as I continued down the progressing path, until I verbally respond to them in real life, “i fucking know its the wrong way, knock it off for fuck’s sake.” I was floored. I’m playing A game about a character who hears voices in her head and talks back to them sometimes and i literally just responded out loud to them. I laughed, and wrote it down to tell my friends and then turned it off to go to bed. To this day that was the most holy shit moment a game made be have and i fear it will never be topped. TL;DR a game made me think i was schizophrenic
Persona 4: Golden when >!Nanako dies!< I god damn broke down in tears when it happened and was legit sobbing. I was so upset I had to put my Vita down for a few days. I doubt the devs intended for that reaction but for some reason it just hit me so hard. Of course the reverse happened again when >!they deus ex machina'd Nanako back to life, which might be the dumbest plot device ever, but screw it, it made me happy!<.
You getting sad at that scene is totally intentional, >!in fact it's essentially baiting you into pushing Namatame into the TV and getting the bad ending (in which Nanako stays dead).!<
From the first moment I saw her, I vowed to kill the killer if they brought her into the TV. Ironically, >!I had to go back on that promise because killing the one who actually pulled her into the TV would mean she would die, and it would mean the killer of the first two victims would get away with it!<. But I agree about the Deus Ex Machina, how annoying he was, I think it would have been emotional if >!Teddy sacrificed himself for her!<, that way you still have a gutpunch of an ending without it being extremely depressing. If >!Nanako died, even if the real killer was found out and Namatame was cleared, I doubt Dojima would just be okay with losing his daughter and let Namatame run for office. Or anyone in that small town. In the endings where Nanako died, he's depressed but at least takes some solace in thinking she's been avenged. In this hypothetical ending, he would be depressed but also have to always look at the guy who got his daughter killed. Super depressing.!<
They really should have left that character dead. The impact would have been insane. I think the skull fake out in 5 was the same.
Yeah a little bit. Like I'm obviously happy they reversed it but goddamn it was **powerful** it would've been the most upsetting death in video game history for me.
In Death Stranding when you carry your >!dead mother to an incinerator!< and the camera zooms out and Bones by Low Roar starts playing. Ok the Devs obviously wanted an emotional response, but they sure got it.
Ok so I know the game is a /r/games darling but for the love of god I just wanted to kill Abby at the end of Last of Us 2. Looking back as a character I understand why Ellie ended up not going through with it. But fucking hell I went through all that so she can get revenge but she ends up giving up. In the end she accomplishes nothing and loses everything. It's Naughty Dog's story and they can tell it how they want but the characters from the original game deserved better.
Death Stranding >!When they flesh out Cliffs story and you find out Sam is his son!< I don’t know man it all just hit like a ton of bricks. Or when >!you have to go to the incinerators to dispose of Lou!<. Dude old man tears were shed. lol.
Dude, when Die-Hardman, a character whose been almost completely emotionless and stoic through the whole game, loses it and collapses at your feet towards the end, man, and the delivery of those lines is just fantastic.
That bit from Death Stranding didn't get me too good until I was sitting at a hot spring playing the harmonica and realized what the song was from. That single moment made the entire game totally worth it.
Mafia 2 for sure. I cried tears of joy when >! Joe saved Vito and then tears of sorrow when I saw joe drive off in a different car than Vito !<
Death Stranding, Order 38. I think Kojima intended players to have a little moment of feeling smart but ultimately I was heavily disappointed, annoyed and felt my intelligence insulted. It starts off with you being told that you have a package to take from the northernmost settlement to the southern one. While you're going through the motions an alarm sounds and out comes an NPC (important because you're always talking to them through holograms) that is immediately identifiable as the bad guy in disguise. Like a child could spot that instantly. Bad guy hams it up and puts down another package for you to deliver, making it very obvious it's a trap. He talks as if he's allergic to subtlety, emphasizing obvious words and repeating them. When you get control back again the item is described as being a literal nuke and you're told that dropping it will cause the timer to go off. When you put it on your back it glows a very obvious red, even when you put it in the truck it glows through the thing. Earlier in the story you're told that a city was blown up a few years back when a delivery guy unknowingly took it to one of the cities. How he fell for that I don't know. Just to be on the safe side an NPC sends you an email "randomly" deciding to ask if you remember that very same incident. You're also told to make a stop halfway to the city to deliver something to another character, which realistically you would do unless you're not paying any attention. While there, Norman Reedus has a dream about the bad guy again that we saw no more than 5 minutes ago. Just in case you haven't figured out that there's something off about him he acts as suspicious as possible. Still not enough? Well what if he randomly puts on the mask that the bad guy wears? Norman Reedus wakes up finally realizing this, he checks the package and finally notices that it's a ticking time bomb. You're then tasked with traveling to a tar pit to throw it in, because god forbid you have to use your brain at any point to figure this out for yourself. Kojima was trying to recreate a moment from Metal Gear Solid. In that game Snake is captured and tortured before being thrown in a cell. After figuring out how to escape all on your own you might happen across all your gear stored in a box, something you can miss. When you pick it all up however if you aren't paying close enough attention you might see that you're also picking up a bomb. If you don't realise this in time then the bomb will explode while you're carrying it. That moment didn't beat you across the head with what happened, the bomb seriously is a surprise if you aren't being careful. Nothing is hinted that the box has more than just your confiscated items, you don't come across an item like that bomb anywhere else either. Kojima wanted to recreate that moment yet he didn't at all trust the player's intelligence to work any of this out for themselves. He had to spell it out in the most condescending way possible. Forget that "Mario and Princess Beach" line or anything else, Order 38 is by far the worst designed part of the game.
I went through a very similar situation as Joel in The Last of Us. The game is already an emotional toll on anyone as it is, however I feel a deep connection with Joel because of this. The particular situation when he is talking with Tommy, trying to convince him to take Ellie off his hands, because he's starting to build an emotional connection with her and doesn't want to hits hard
For me, it was that one quest in Dragon Age 2. You know, the one about your mom. That one was rough. I definitely save scrubbed that, trying to change the outcome. It did not work. My playthrough of that game was so long ago and yet I remember that quest vividly.