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.
0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.I had to stare at the window for an hour afterwards.
Outer Wilds, like all of it. Falling into the black hole made me actually scream in terror, then shiver for how small being away from the solar system makes you feel. Also the quantum moon, and that ending holy fuck
Ah, a fellow Outer Wilds enjoyer 🍷 What a terrifying, mesmerising, soul wrenching and beautiful game.
Disco Elysium was full of such moments for me. Here's one:
You spend a lot of time in the game basically talking to yourself and your inner voices, and one of these voices is volition. If you put enough points into it, it'll chime in when you're having an identity crisis or struggling to keep yourself together and it'll try to cheer you up and keep you going. At the end of Day 1 in the game you, an amnesiac cop, stand on a balcony in an impoverished district reflecting on the day's events and trying to make sense of the reality you've woken up into with barely any of your memories intact. If you pass a volition check, it'll say the following line:
"No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive."
This line in combination with the somewhat retro Euro setting, the faint lighting, and the sombre-yet-somewhat-upbeat music was very powerful. The image it painted was quite relatable for me. I just sat there for a minute staring at the scene and soaking it all in. Even though this is a predominantly text-based game with barely any cinematics/animations, I felt a level of immersion I had rarely, if ever, experienced before.
Oh, look at that. Someone actually made a volition compilation. 😀 This video will give you a better idea of what I'm describing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENSAbyGlij0 Minor spoilers alert!
This thread is filled with comments on DE, but it was your comment that convinced me to finally play the game.
Thanks for the story!
This will date me, Missile Commander. When you lose the game doesn't reset, you had to reset it. So if you don't you just see dead cities on a screen, with silence. This was right about the same time I saw War Game. The only wining more is not to play.
Oh man I forgot about that! Yeah it does! It's been an age since I've played it.
Homeworld mission three. Adagio for Strings still gives me chills because of that game. That was when teenage me realized videogames could be art.
Red dead redemption 2 for sure. It's hard to pick because there are a lot of profound experiences in that game. The part where Arthur is riding back after Guarma when d'angelo starts playing definitely stands out. It just made me think about how some people just get trapped in these shitty situations that are just tragic. It's easy to say what you would / wouldn't do in that situation but the gang were Arthur's family and it's not that easy to just walk away from the only community you have and the only life you've ever known.
This one came to my mind too. What's surreal is it comes out of nowhere, and just adds a level of rawness and authenticity to the game you never thought existed. I think it's brilliant.
I killed an ODST for his sniper. Then I realized he probably had a family and reloaded the checkpoint. Never hurt a human npc in Halo ever again.
I already had a sniper. I wanted the ammo and was too young and dumb to realize I could drop mine, trade, then pickup my ammo
The final ending of Nier: Automata.
That game was all about a lonely world and then turned it around at very end. It’s not exactly hard to ask for help, but sometimes someone turns to you to ask if you need it. And even in a lonely time, it’s very nice, touching even, to think about someone reaching out to help.
Of course then, after accepting the help, I made the choice to offer myself to someone’s aid.
X-COM (from the 90's, not the remake):
I totally sucked at playing X-COM and died a lot, until I learned about real world squad tactics.
In X-COM, the members of your team can get scared/lose it, and behave in random ways like throwing away their weapons/fleeing the fight or just going berserk and shooting around.
So, after I improved my game with my newly acquainted knowledge of real world squad tactics, I had a terror mission. Terror missions are missions, where the aliens attack and which are harder than the other missions.
I managed to survive the load out from the helicopter and kill nearly every alien on first contact, thanks to very careful and orchestrated movement of my squad.
There was one alien left, I tried to shoot it several times from a distance, and of course (this being X-COM after all), all of my shoots missed...
... THE ALIEN STRESSED OUT AND BERSERKED...
I didn't even know that it was possible. After weeks of loosing and frustration, this one moment is the most satisfying moment of my entire gaming history (more than 30 years now).
Haven't found any modern game, where this would be even possible!
Mandatory link to OpenXcom
Echoes of the Eye expansion to Outer Wilds. I managed to avoid all the spoilers, watched some playthroughs but thankfully didn't study them too closely. Importantly, the streamers never looked "up" during the parts of the gameplay that I've seen, so to me it appeared just like another normal environment (well, normal at least by Outer Wilds standards). I already loved the original game, and decided I must play this for myself.
So when I entered through that doorway for the first time I was genuinely stunned. "You fuckers, you really did it this time. You actually went ahead and did it!" I mean...
spoiler
Space habitats have always been a staple of science fiction novels, and they have appeared a couple times in video games already, like in Mass Effect and Halo, but there they were only used as background - the actual playable area was limited. Never before this had anyone successfully implemented a life-size Bishop Ring with the full "You see that mountain? You can walk there!" boastfulness. And sometimes that mountain is on the ceiling. And when the water breaks, oh boy...
Pathologic 2
At the end of the game the
spoiler
inquisition looks at you and tells you that everything has been for naught, not because you couldn't save everyone, but because you were wasting time, in your real life, trying to save people in a video game as your real life slips away from you.
Left me shook. Amazing game.
spoilers for Dark Souls 2
Meeting King Vendrick at the end of the catacombs.
Since you first reached the hub town (Majula), you've been told that Vendrick has the means to cure the undead curse and all you need to do is find him. And so the entire game up 'till this point has been about reaching his castle and then when you discover he isn't there, tracking him down to the very bottom of the catacombs.
At the end of a long corridor full of enemies, past a recurring boss fight against one of Drangliec's many dragon riders, you pass through the fog wall and face Vendrick's bodyguard, Velstadt. It's an okay fight, not particularly flashy or difficult but at least it's not Prowling Magus.
Velstadt falls, and the only way forward is a short, narrow corridor that opened up behind him. The corridor leads down into an unlit room and in the dark you can faintly make out some large shape moving about the farthest side of the room to you.
As you get closer you hear Majula's familiar theme begin to play as the creature in the room takes shape before your eyes.
It's Vendrick, succumbed to the undead curse.
So hollowed by now that he doesn't even acknowledge your presence, instead slowly walking the same circle in a loop. His withered arms barely able to raise the sword he once used to slay the king of the giants.
"What am I supposed to do now?"
As I sat there trying to figure out what my next steps were supposed to be, I couldn't help but contemplate Vendrick's fate.
Time and time again this game presents you with the inescapable nature of death. Of how no matter how good a life you lived it will come to an end. No matter what legacy you try to secure it will crumble and be forgotten. The iron king in all his tyranny is naught but ichorous earth now, even Vendrick is dead (though his body hasn't caught up on that yet).
"If life is short, and my deeds are inevitably forgotten," I thought to myself, "Why the fuck am I living as a man when doing so makes me miserable?"
Long story short, the next day I finally worked up the courage to talk to my GP about a gender service referral.
Glad to see another person of culture who likes Dark Souls 2. Meeting Vendrick is an amazing moment.
It has its flaws, but imho Dark Souls 2 has some of the best moments in the series.
I'll never forget riding the lift to Dragon's Aerie for the first time.
For me, it was the surprise song in Dragon Age Inquisition, when they performed "The Dawn Will Come."
You'd just had a huge battle, the hero was a low point, and they break out into this... thing. It's stunning and so well done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsxE0dwLICU
It's practically a cliche now and there's a lot of reactive pushback to it, but the finale of the True Pacifist Run of Undertale lit a fire in me like nothing else could.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n9zJKhTeaU
When I was 13 a friend of mine and I spent the whole summer after swimming at the trailer park pool playing Super Mario 3 until we beat it. We did a deep study of the game together and beat it together. First platform I ever beat and first gay sex I ever had to help me out in the orientation department. 1988 was a nice year for me. I haven't lived in a trailer park ever since, but the community swimming pool was nice.
