The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
No Man’s Sky - Finally lifting off the planet into space for the first time reignited my love of space and the cosmos. Made me feel awe and wonder
The Stanley Parable - never had a game make me laugh till I had tears in my eyes before. This game really fucks with your perception of what is real and just how common / predictable some gaming tropes have become
No Man’s Sky had a couple for me. The first time I summoned my freighter from a planet was pretty incredible
There’s also that moment in No Man’s Sky when you figure out what the story is implying. I’m being vague here to not spoil it for anyone. But it doesn’t have a single point in time where you piece it together. There’s a growing amount of evidence before the game outright tells you what’s going on.
For me it was playing Life is Strange for the first time. I bought it because it had been listed on Steam as “Overwhelmingly Positive” for ages, and at the time I was really enjoying the story-based games that companies like Telltale were producing. So, knowing nothing about the game, I picked it up and started playing it.
The first act was slow. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the writers were establishing Arcadia Bay, a city in the Pacific Northwest, as a character. All the people in it needed to be recognizable, so it took time for them to teach the player about who they were, what mattered to them, how they fit in to the city, and what their flaws were. I actually stopped playing for a while after the first act. But, luckily, I picked it back up over the holiday season.
I still remember playing it in my living room. I was so thoroughly absorbed into the story that when something tense happened in the second act and I couldn’t stop it the way I normally could, I was literally crushing the controller as if I could make things work by pulling the triggers harder.
I am decidedly not the demographic that Life is Strange was written to appeal to, but they did such a good job writing a compelling story that it didn’t matter. I got sucked in, the characters became important to me, and I could not. put. it. down. I played straight through a night until I finished it.
(If you’ve played it and you’re wondering, I chose the town the first time I played it.)
I’ll never forget that game. I’ll also never forget the communities that spawned around it. I read the accounts of people who had just played it for the first time for about a year because it helped me relive the experience I had when I played it. It was incredible.
Yes, the scene at the end of Act 2 is what hooked me on the series. It’s a shame they didn’t do something similar at the end of Act 1, because so many people stopped playing due to the slow start.
My most profound moment in those games was at the end of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. Even though it’s the smallest story in the games, that final dialogue put me through the floor.
For my Life is Strange 2 was so much more impactful. There’s actually multiple endings. A big part of the story is the relationship between the brothers, since I’m an older brother it just hit close. The ending I got was so bittersweet, it wasn’t all happy but it captured the reasoning behind my decisions in the game so we’ll. I was telling myself “this is so sad… but… it’s exactly what I wanted”
There’s also a scene where you can come out of the closet to your dad. I was really blindsided by this, I came out to my parents before, the scene plays out in a really authentic way. I kept pausing the game to mentally process it, and kept rewatching it on YouTube right after. I just couldn’t believe it was real.
I remember the first mission of hotline Miami. You take the phone call and learn that you are supposed to kill some people. You learn how to use your guns. You kill a bunch of baddies, quite badass. Then at the end of the mission, the screen starts swaying more than usually, and the protagonist vomits in an alley. Of course, he just killed for the first time, overwhelming. Makes him quite human, more than many other protagonists, despite the pixel art style.
Originally did you not just save before choosing? I saved and was able to just see all of the endings. As an original Deus Ex player I really enjoyed the game and setting, but the endings felt so lazy and dumb to me.
As an original Deus Ex player I really enjoyed the game and setting, but the endings felt so lazy and dumb to me.
I had the same reaction and I couldn’t believe it. Of the original, the “easiest” ending made sense, and the other two were obvious strategic encounters with very different paths of engagement.
I couldn’t bring myself to finish DXHRDC because I was certain that even after the additional strategies were added to the bossfights they wouldn’t bother with endings. Maybe I’ll go through it one day to find out.
Oh gawd the boss fights on my no-kill run… it was a nightmare. I watched a hilarious YouTube fella tear the game apart for a few hours, and all of his criticisms were legitimate. I still enjoyed my playthrough, but the boss fights were absolutely doodoo.
Nothing as profound as what you described there…
But…
The Last Of Us was an experience for me…
I hadn’t played a “new” game in about 8-10 years at that point, so the huge increase in development was mind blowing to me.
But really, the intensity of the story is what really did it for me. I legit got teary eyed in the intro, and then the burning restaurant scene made me ball my eyes out…
Phenomenal fucking game
Or, to bring it back to my youth… The Illusion of Gaia was probably the first game I played that made me feel things. That was so long ago, and I was so young when that came out that being specific about it is hard. But I think I really related with the main character, and I remember really feeling things during the lost-at-sea raft scene.
I might need to go find the ROM now…
**Or, to go a bit further back, Dragon Warrior.
That was the first game I ever played that really captivated me. It was the first RPG I ever played, and even tho the storyline is incredibly basic and cliche, it was the first time I experienced a story at all in a video game. It’s definitely the reason that I prefer fantasy RPGs over every other type of game
For some reason, there’s this one little throwaway line in The Last Of Us that just lives in my head. It wasn’t even part of a cut scene, just some random banter as you’re walking around but Joel asks Elly after they first meet where her parents are, and she matter-of-factly says “I dunno, where are anyone’s parents?” and carries on with whatever she’s doing.
