Most emotional moments in games? (possible spoilers)

[Vendetta]

Having to choose between Kaidan and Ashley.

Most plot deaths don't have too much impact, because it's just something the writers have decided to do, and there's nothing you can really do about it.

Making the player choose is a kick square in the nuts.

[Peptuck]

Having to choose between Kaidan and Ashley.

Most plot deaths don't have too much impact, because it's just something the writers have decided to do, and there's nothing you can really do about it.

Making the player choose is a kick square in the nuts.

Alternately, the scene where you're facing down Wrex. If you choose to shoot him...well, the way Shepherd callously disposes of him gave me a bit of a shudder.

[Mr Bean]

Lets me see

Call of Duty
The entire Stalingrad mission start
...The man with the rifle

Call of Duty 4
Wandering around in a Nuclear wasteland, what's worse is I felt totally shitty after saving that pilot only for it not to matter and seeing said pilot being dead in the first shot of the mission.

More as I think of them, but Stalingrad has always been a standout for me.

[Darth Ruinus]

Floyd's suicide bombing in Jet Force Gemini. He's the cute flying robot sidekick, and the last time you see him is when he stares into the camera, terrified, with a pack of TNT strapped onto him. Boom.

What? No.

I never got to that part, and now I dont want to ever. I loved that little robo-guy, he saved me so many times.

Advent Rising did it before Mass Effect did. Near the end of the first level, the Seekers are destroying the space station you are on, and you have to get one of two people onto the escape pods (both of them were injured and couldnt walk, forcing you to have to carry them)

What sucks is, the two people you can save are your brother or your fiancee.

It really sucks when you carry one person onto the escape pod, and you turn around to go for the other, and the fucking escape pod door closes on you and launches away, seconds after seeing whoever you left behind not only get captured, but probably vaporized along with the space station.

[Thanas]

Well, let's see.

WC 4 - Tolwyn reveal (What? I liked the guy)
Max Payne 2 - ending on the hard level, especially considering the previous endings
Baldurs Gate - several scenes in the series. Imoen, Khalid in BG2, Dynaheir etc... especially when using several enhancement mods, BG2 is an emotional rollercoster
KOTOR I - Revan reveal
Fahrenheit was full of emotional moments as well.
Mafia - the ending. Bittersweet and very well done.

[KlavoHunter]

World in Conflict - When Captain Bannon and his company volunteer to stay in Cascade Falls, luring in the Soviets to be wiped out by the nuke he's calling in on his own position. Watching them fight it out to the end in Bannon's Abrams - especially when the gunner says "Captain, I'm scared,". It made me cry. A link, though it lacks the same oomph, without having fought alongside this guy for the rest of the campaign

[Phantasee]

CoD4, both when Jackson dies with the whole team on the chopper, and again when your entire SAS team dies.

[Karza]

System Shock 2: The case of nurse Bloome. The build-up from a couple of logs pretty much tells you she was fucked ("...the DNA in those plans... it was mine."), but actually seeing it happen as one of those ghost scenes was really, really creepy. Even if the -98 graphics make it look a bit cheesy.

Planescape: Torment is full of these. Breaking into your own tomb, meeting the person who made you nigh-immortal, the ending where you essentially get what you deserve, and most of all the scene where you see your own manipulative sociopathic bastard self through the eyes of a woman who had the misfortune of falling in love with you (and who'll help you even from beyond the grave, despite ending up there by your hand). Oh, and meeting said woman's father.

[Masami von Weizegger]

Suikoden Tactics: Kyril learns that he is the offspring of his human father and a mute goat person from another dimension who was pulled into ours when an old wizard called forth a giant tree to make super powered cannons out of its seeds.

Gets me every time.

[TheKwas]

Planescape: Torment is an emotional rollercoster throughout the entire game basically. You start out in a morgue where you were placed because everyone thought you were dead, but you discover that you are actually an immortal being that is constantly brought back from the dead. The problem is that you always lose your memory after dying (even your name, thus you are called the Nameless One), so you're stuck in a re-occuring search for your indentity and for the reason why you became immortal in the first place. The longer you play, the deeper you are immersed in the character's personal struggles and the more you discover about the character's past lives.

I found the story to be refreshing considering the 'save the world/kingdom' storylines that tend to dominate RPGs.

I'm still in the process of finishing the game, but one scene I found particularly emotional was where you experience Deionarra's memory. In the game there's a faction dedicated to experiancing what all the senses can offer, and they collect memories inside of stones. One you come across is of your former lover (Now she's stuck as a ghost waiting for you to die and join her) in a very emotional conversation with a former version of yourself. She is begging you to allow her to travel with you, but she knows that you are going to betray her and probably end up killing her, but she loves you so much she still wants to come. She knows everything you say is calculated beforehand in order to manipulate her and her feelings, but she is too emotional to care. Your current self is screaming at her not to trust your former self and awakes from the memory in tears and hutched over.

All the while this song is being played.

[Schuyler Colfax]

Final Fantasy 7 - You know the part

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker - The ending (Both Gannon and the King)

[SirNitram]

Nothing will ever beat Homeworld.

'Receiving no transmissions from anywhere in the systems... Not even beacons.'


Though Planescape: Torment comes close.

[tim31]

Yeah, I'll agree with COD's Stalingrad opener as well as COD4's death of Sgt. Jackson as well as the final moments of the game.

First time I played it, each of the soldiers got a headshot, Zakhaev took two rounds, and the rest I fired into the air Point Break style.

Captain Price isn't dead. The man's like a good Kane.

[Starglider]

Planescape: Torment is an emotional rollercoster throughout the entire game basically.

Agree. It's absolutely stuffed with awesome pieces of writing; a lot moreso than the Baldur's Gate series, which are more famous.

It's a sharp contrast with Lost Odyssey, which I'm currently playing through. It's essentially a cheap Microsoft knock-off of the Final Fantasy games and consists of a massive ball of cliches glued together by cheese. The whole wandering amnesic immortal searching for fragments of memory theme is very reminiscent of PS:T, but the execution is awful. I'm playing it for the stunning graphic design and the sheer hilarity; every time I think they can't possible make this more cliched, the designers somehow to take it to the next level. Anyway, they try really really really hard to have a big emotional moment with the death of your daughter in front of your grandchildren etc etc followed by her funeral etc etc, and the voice acting was pretty good, but I just couldn't stop giggling at the sheer predictability of the writing.

I also second System Shock 2 and Twilight Princess. My favorite moment in the later is when Midna unexpectedly shatters the mirror of twilight.

[Phantasee]

Captain Price isn't dead. The man's like a good Kane.

What do you mean?

[Molyneux]

The death of Perfect Dark's Dr. Carroll comes to mind. Yes, he didn't have THAT many lines overall, and he was a bit annoying when following you around (mostly just when he got into my line of fire), but when you give him his personality back after fighting your way into the Cetan superweapon, only to have to leave him behind...

And the suicide-by-flower in Magical Starsign. Up until that point, it was a pretty fun game, nice cheerful feel to it with a having-fun-planet-hopping-fighting-evil storyline...and then an innocent girl caps off her horrible life by jumping into a man-eating flower, to let you get the MacGuffin you need.

I think that may be topped later on by the big reveal about what the robot civilization is going to do when their power supply runs low, though...or the revelation of the effects of prolonged biological exposure to gummies...seriously, that game turned into a kiddie-mindscrew about two-thirds of the way through.

[R.O.A]

The only time I really ever felt bad about a game was the whole, "Wont you kindly?" bit from Bioshock. I expected Ryan to be like a final boss or something. SPOILER
And then im killing my favorite character in the whole game/being used as a puppet in his suicide

[Peptuck]

Also, for hilarity's sake, there's nothing that quite beats the METAL BOXES for blatantly unintentional laughs.

[Losonti Tokash]

Captain Price isn't dead. The man's like a good Kane.

What do you mean?

Well, Captain Price also fought in World War 2.

*snip Lost Odyssey stuff*

Yeah, okay, whatever. That scene and the vignettes actually got me a bit choked up. Despite the fact that they're just text, they're written very well and the music and sounds add quite a bit that I think would have been lost if a cutscene was made of it. The one about an island where they sing for the dead was particularly powerful for me. Especially when the only survivors are trapped in a cave by the invaders, yet they continue to sing for all the people killed. You can hear it while you're reading, and as they start to starve to death in the cave it slowly decreases in volume until everyone is dead.

And it's a little silly to call it a ripoff of Final Fantasy when it's made by a lot of the same people.

[Stark]

Having to choose between Kaidan and Ashley.

Most plot deaths don't have too much impact, because it's just something the writers have decided to do, and there's nothing you can really do about it.

Making the player choose is a kick square in the nuts.

Lol. That actually WORKED for some people? For me, being clumsily forced to choose between two NPCs I barely spoke to (particularly the hapless Kaidan) was completely meaningless. It didn't help that it was such a manufactured position. It WAS 'something the writers have decided to do', the only 'choice' was 'who is lower level'.

I'd have to agree with Torment, though: it might be full of reams of text, but they're well done.

[Losonti Tokash]

Having to choose between Kaidan and Ashley.

Most plot deaths don't have too much impact, because it's just something the writers have decided to do, and there's nothing you can really do about it.

Making the player choose is a kick square in the nuts.

Lol. That actually WORKED for some people? For me, being clumsily forced to choose between two NPCs I barely spoke to (particularly the hapless Kaidan) was completely meaningless. It didn't help that it was such a manufactured position. It WAS 'something the writers have decided to do', the only 'choice' was 'who is lower level'.

Well, Stark, there are two problems with your criticism.

1) As we all know, you are an inhuman monster with no feelings.

2) You even said you never talked to them, so it's rather difficult to get an emotional attachment to people that you basically only see standing around your ship every once in a while. Me, I used the two of them exclusively for the entire game up till then. I didn't even feel comfortable sending one off to go help the alien commandos because I wasn't used to not having both of them in my group.

[Stark]

But there's no REASON to talk to them! Why would I? I'm doing missions and saving the world, no time for chitchat! Except there's no time limit, so there's no tension...

But nah, he mentioned it was made more effective due to it's choice, but it's not really a choice: all you're going to do is ask yourself 'who do I need for the final boss' and save them. Even the first time I played the game where I heard about as much of Ashleys whining as I could stand, I still chose Kaidan because he's more useful. The fact that the writers basically wrote 'WE WILL NOW FORCE YOU TO DRAMATICALLY LOSE ONE OF YOUR TEAM' in big letters on the screen had me rolling me eyes enough to miss any of it anyway. It might be more or less effective for different people, but it IS a forced, contrived, writer-fiat decision. I can see why it'd work if you used both, though, since everyone is a different 'class'.

Torment sold the characters and relationships five million times better than Ass Affleck, and it was basically text-only. Hell, Saren's personal struggle was more meaningful to me than 'lol edgy choice feel the drama', and it ended with you saying 'could you shoot yourself in the head plz' and HIM DOING IT. This shit isn't Shakespeare.

[Darth Ruinus]

Hell, Saren's personal struggle was more meaningful to me than 'lol edgy choice feel the drama', and it ended with you saying 'could you shoot yourself in the head plz' and HIM DOING IT. This shit isn't Shakespeare.

That was a huge WTF moment for me.

I did NOT travel around the galaxy chasing that dude just so at the end I can convince him to cheat me out of kicking his ass.

[Jaepheth]

there's a few moments in KOTOR worthy of mention.

Especially if you go dark side and make Zalbaar kill Mission... my god, I could feel the evil.

[Darth Ruinus]

there's a few moments in KOTOR worthy of mention.

Especially if you go dark side and make Zalbaar kill Mission... my god, I could feel the evil.

And you can just feel the betrayal in Carth's voice. That was a pretty powerful scene right there. First Jolee, then Carth, then Mission, them maybe Zalbaar. Especially after they all trusted you with their lives.

But its worth it to see your fleet at the end.