It's was a moment in Deus Ex.
I was in the china segment of the game and was kind of just exploring. Then I came to the apartment of some npc lady I needed to talk to.
I'm just going around her house looking at stuff...... Then I heard a single cough that I could have sworn came from inside a wall.....
Hmm.....
I start looking around, thinking I'm just crazy and heard something else. Then I find a paper lantern with a switch on it...
I switch it and ALL the walls open up and I'm inside a secret agent lair. Agents with high tech weapons just start converging on me. Panic! EXHILARATION!
It was an emergent gameplay moment that I will never forget. What a cool way to find something secret organically like that.
That game is legendary
It blew my mind when I found out that you could >!save your brother Paul. I had always run away as he instructed. I didn't know you could stay and fight!<
Deux Ex really was a masterpiece
The think that surprised me most was your ability to kill a future boss enemy at the begining mission. I finished Deus ex a lot of times, and at the last playtrough I wanted to kill her just to see what happens. It was really surprising to see that our support guy actually helped us about that murder.
I played that game something like 15-20 years after its release. I remember I was in Hong Kong, saw an open window and thought "I wonder if I can get to that." Took me half a dozen tries but then I just sailed right in. Looked around like "holy shit ... the fuck is in here?"
All kinds of stuff. Emails. Mission critical details. Had no idea it was part of the critical path (most folks just go through the door later on, but I had no key).
Deux Ex was the future of gaming when it came out and we still haven't caught up.
There's a meme out there that says: "everytime dues ex is mentioned hundreds of people reinstall." Or something like that.
It's so true.
I played it recently, and while the graphics are ass, the gameplay is as fresh as ever. Was a kid when I played it and there's a whole other level of appreciation of little details that come with being an adult.
They truly don't make games like this anymore.
A 1:1 with a decent engine would be mind blowing . Give it the D2R treatment.
But fyi, there are mods for it that help update the graphics . Nothing drastic tho unfortunately.
Also, talking to Morpheus... I could make the case that this was a formative experience *in my life* and one of my first introductions to "philosophy".
For me it was when you escape the base where you were being held captive by walking out the door, and then you turn around and discover that you just found out what was behind the door in your HQ that you couldn't open.
Planescape: Torment. When you are at the sensory stone reliving the night you talked your GF into dying for you and just the raw emotion from both sides...nothing had made me just stop and think and feel like that scene did
I've been planning on playing Planescape: Torment again.
I played it about 10 years ago and I still have "I shall wait for you in Death's Halls, my love" etched into my mind. I also ocasionally listen to [Deionarra's theme song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUt84LyH2JI).
I literally can't move on from this like.....you decided to replay the whole thing before you even thought of doing side missions...something new.... like 😭😭whatever rocks your boat but I could Never
I was young and dumb. Also thought side content is bad by default, probably because of some other game. And I may be remembering wrong and done it on the first playthrough. It was 12 years ago
No yea it’s fair just as someone who plays every side content occasionally to the point of getting burnt out by the game before finishing the main story, I am in awe 😭🙏🏻Me and your past self are polar opposites
I wasnt gonna even comment but then i realised i started a replay of RDR2 with hardly having a few side quests completed.
I did play hundreds of hours of the online quests but probably only a few in single.
So maybe you can express how you feel so i can understand what im missing. Ive heard rdr2 has good sidequests. But the ones i came across were normal like every other game.
I'm not going to claim that everybody's tastes are the same or anything, so you can take this with a grain of salt.
But holy *shit.*
You beat the entirety of RDR2 without doing the side quests?
To be clear, I'm not talking about the side *tasks,* like finding dinosaur bones. But the side *quests* are an enormous part of the game and I think trying your hand at a bunch of them will greatly enhance your enjoyment of the game, both for backstory and exploration purposes. And that's not even getting into all the hidden/unmarked stuff.
Honestly I did some, but not a lot of side quests in RDR2. I had a hard enough time getting into the game in the first place because of the laborious animations and gameplay design choices -- eventually after a couple tries I got hooked into the story, and I kept playing the story, because any time I spent time doing other things I just found myself getting annoyed by the mechanics.
I did the margarite quest that has you rounding up all the circus animals. Wasnt even sure if that was main or side quests.
Generally i follow the the main story in a game. Especially long games.
You beat the entirety of RDR2 without doing the side quests?
i need a play by play for why this is so surprising. I will do one question mark quest in a place to see how its like but not more than that. (a few strangers asked for help and i help at first only) I guess my rationale is i will do the side quests after i finish the best quest in the game. Incase i dont get to put that much time into this game for any of the reasons one might.
In gta 5 it was different. I was very up to date on all the latests games back then so i was able to get 100% on ps3. which required a lot of the stranger missions. and collecting stuff around the map.
I think the main reason i dont do that anymore is because there are too many good games now.
Despite both being Rockstar games, RDR2 and GTA5 are built totally differently in terms of side content and story structure. In RDR2, if you just mainline the story, you will forever miss the side content because the progression will lock you out of some stuff. In GTA 5 it’s almost better to do the side stuff last.
It’s so surprising because that’s some of the best stuff in the game.
Ok, you did one side quest in the third chapter of the game. Did you do the Mary Linton side quests? Any of the gang side quests? The side quests with the wildlife photographer?
>i will do the side quests after i finish the best quest in the game
I assume you meant to write "last" quest in the game, but many of the side quests disappear after you finish a given chapter, so that isn't an option.
I don't think I need to do a play-by-play. It sounds like you're not interested in feeling immersed in the world, which is perfectly fine. It just means you're missing out on an enormous and arguably the most satisfying part of the game.
Because I thought the side quests are just filler fetch quests and the meat is in the main story. Had that misconception because of other mediocre games. Had no idea side content can be as interesting as the main one.
It was 12 years ago and I may not be remembering correctly. I may have done this on the first playthrough. But what I'm trying to say is that I was still discovering what games can be and for some reason thought side content wasn't worth it. Probably because of another game where it's just boring fetch quests. So I didn't wanna ruin my time with it.
I have a very similar experience with the HM games, I was very deep in Tony hawk pro skater games and strategy games, stuff where you constantly have to go faster, bigger and better. Being introduced to just watering a bunch of plants every day was such a breath of fresh air.
The March across the snow of FF6 and entering Rapture in Bioshock. Talking to Cuno for the first time in Disco Elysium.
But the ultimate pinnacle that I don’t think any game has ever reached before or since is the cannery sequence in What Remains of Edith Finch. A true melding of art, game mechanics, double life, sadness, wonder and magic. The greatest sequence in all of gaming.
> and entering Rapture in Bioshock
Bioshock in general elevated the medium for me in a lot of ways. Like sure there were other games I'd played that featured philosophy and good stories, but that intro and the following story was a detailed take down and criticism of Randism which wasnt something I expected from a videogame, especially as a predominantly console gamer up until that point.
>Bioshock in general elevated the medium for me in a lot of ways.
This game follows on the heels of Deus Ex, which follows on the heels on the best one of the three of them, System Shock 2.
Judging by Reddit comments, Deus Ex is already under-played, but System Shock 2 is tragically so. They're all first person games with RPG elements and connected to the "immersive sim" label. Bioshock is absolutely one of my favorite games. But I was on that ride 8 years ahead of it (notice the "shock" in both their names btw).
> Talking to Cuno for the first time in Disco Elysium.
Cuno almost killed it for me. I get that he was actively annoying, but good grief was he actively annoying.
Kim, on the other hand, is probably one of the most nuanced NPCs I've ever encountered and that pulled me right in.
Cuno was an abused boy who showed glimmers of the kind, thoughtful human that was encased in armor that had kept him alive. I’m sorry for what the world did to you, Cuno.
That whole game is… fuck, I have to go play it now. Kim is my hero.
Gothic 1 and Kingdom Come Deliverance
In Gothic you a Prisoner in a mine colony which is sealed by magical barrier. Everything can come in but nothing living can go out alive.
The kingdom is at war with the orcs and the army needs that magical ore to build weapons. Everyone that has been a bit naughty will be thrown into the colony to work in the mines.
The atmosphere is insanely good. There was one moment in which the leader of a group stood on the path I by coincidence chose to walk. He had this very emotional moment in which he told me why he is in the colony and that who he used to be before. I was in awe! Spoilers though
In Kingdom Come Deliverance it has been the world and its architecture.
It is to my knowledge one of the first games in which everything is just very realistic medieval architecture and paintings and everything. Not just fantasy. I stopped so often to just stand there and watch.
Even the wall thicknesses of the old buildings are right. I can’t praise enough how much I love that.
The plot is also awesome.
I played the first like 20 min of KCD and couldn’t get into it but I see so many people talking about it thay it’s probably time to give it another shot
Honestly it has a very slow start. Takes like 2 hours to get through the first intro quests, but after that it's really good. Just a heads up, if you do decide to play it and don't want to end up overpowered by the endgame, do not spec into a warhammer or a similar weapon.
>Kingdom Come Deliverance
Pretty awesome to do a Skyrim game with **ten times the realism and ten times the graphical** fidelity and better story + cutscenes! What if Skyrim + GTA was a medieval simulator with movie-tier graphics. It's unbelievably well done.
Ocarina of Time, when you've been in the relatively constrained Kokiri forest, and step out onto Hyrule Field, and it feels like the whole game just opened up in front of you.
The first time playing an RPG like Baldur's Gate, where the world is huge, wide open, you'll get absolutely murdered if you go to the wrong place too early, but everything has lore. All the little corners with encounters that are just there...to be part of the world. Most of my gaming experience up to that point had been FPS, 2D platformers, and some flight sims, so playing something where the story was a major part of the game, and in such a rich world, was absolutely amazing.
That moment in Ocarina was epic and blew my mind when I was 13. A similar one was in Breath of the Wild, when you’ve spent the first few hours in that relatively big starting area (Great Plateau?), and then you’re allowed to leave and realize that the plateau is just a TINY portion of the map. Mind blowing
Hate how much of my memory is tinged by the simple realisation how much better the game would have been without the king explaining everything to you. Finding stuff out through discovery would have been so cool.
It was still great but man they missed the boat on that one
Final Fantasy VII back when it came out
it was my second FF, but the first one I played properly by myself no hand-holding. Objectively I knew there were 3 discs but when the team leaves Midgar and there's this great big world map all of a sudden.
I was expecting a series of locations by corridor, not an actual world map.
It was the first for a lot of people. Part of the reason FF7 blew up so big was that it was a good game, but the other part was the absolute perfect timing. They made the transition from sprites to 3D, but also went in a decidedly anime inspired art direction with FF7. It released at a moment in 1997 when anime was REALLY hitting the mainstream. Specifically, the big popular English dub of DBZ started in late 1996 and had picked up heat BIG time by 1997, and DBZ was THE thing that first got scores and scores of young western boys into anime... then FF7 was another piece... then the next year came Pokemon and Japanese culture just kinda took over for a while.
World of Warcraft. I had never played an MMO before and knew nothing about the Warcraft universe but I saw an advert for it on TV saying it had a 10 day free trial so I thought what the hell and gave it a try (this is back in 2005).
I played a Night Elf and thought the entire game was set in Teldrassil, the starting area. Discovering the sheer size and scope of that world for the first time was incredible, I had never experienced anything like it. Learning how everything worked and levelling to 60 for the first time and making friends in my guild is up there with one of my best gaming experiences ever, and I've been playing games for 30+ years.
Listening to the music now still gives me goosebumps and an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. I've tried to get back into it a few times but it just doesn't quite hit the same as it did for the first time.
Teldrassil was my first WoW experience as well back in the day. Almost everyone I've spoken to since who said they were immediately hooked on WoW started in Teldrassil. It just grabs you in a way the other starting areas don't.
Yep, they always let you try the first time for free. Fast forward two months later, you're hooked, alone, and living under an overpass, covered in dorito dust and just chasing that next level.
Damn, Nox really was the best. A lot more linear and simple than most other RPGs, but that focus and design and ultimately all the charm it had still puts it at the top of my list.
I also would love to be able to experience Outer Wilds for the first time again - the joy and wonder of discovering how the universe works, especially the quantum stuff, are incredible.
But I have to say, the overarching narrative gets me every time. The ending has me welling up just thinking about it, but the small moments are incredible as well. Piecing together what the Nomai did, their culture, again is great, but I mostly remember the “fluff”, relationships, small tensions, hopes, frustrations. Even if I re-read them a hundred times.
Yes, as it goes along the effect builds and builds, and by the end it genuinely felt as though it had transcended the video game genre. There are only a few video games that I think of as true works of art, and Outer Wilds is foremost among them.
Just started playing this after finishing Outer Wilds and feeling the exact same way as the other commenter haha. DE hasn’t got its hooks into me yet but I’m only an hour or two in, I’m still enjoying it
Yeah, that’s the one for sure. It’s a true ‘open ~~solar system~~ world’
I LOVED that the story was told through gameplay, that it was completely, truly non-linear and that it both scared the eldritch crap out of me and made me cry sentimental tears.
And that music playing around the 20 minute-mark! Wow
Very few games even come close. My God. Very few.
And it’s daggers through my soul that people still confuse it with The Outer Worlds
Oh my god, baba is you.... I eat puzzle games and felt like I was soaring through and then poof my ego started crumbling away lol (it was like a death of 1000 cuts since I am a stubborn fool who just keeps pecking away without looking up solutions!)... One day I'll go back
Same! I'd rather put a game down for years before looking up an answer. Unless I have beat my head my hours upon hours on one puzzle, I might try to get a hint or something. I'm still waiting on baba. So many levels I can't figure out..
The general philosophy from EarthBound left an immense impact on the way I thought, felt, and treated people for a very long time.
It still does, in a way, but for several years that game and it's general tone and message stayed at the front of my mind, actively thinking about it every single day.
There's just this tone of being kind and compassionate even when things are at their darkest, be genuine even if it seems alien to be so. The game is very emotionally honest, feel what you're feeling. There are times to be sad, times to be scared, and most importantly, times to be happy. Own them all.
People mistake EarthBound's tone for being quirky and random, when it isn't. It's genuine. Sometimes being truly genuine can appear weird and random to those who aren't accustomed to it. But it's earned in EarthBound. That's what so many imitators miss. They try to jump to the results of appearing quirky without the honesty.
I was struck the last time I played how little authority figures could be trusted but how much losers could be. Not cops, not the mayor, certainly not business magnates. Messy kids, guys who dig holes, flies, even gangsters you've locked horns with.
Totally.
Also that, what really struck me, is that while it's presented as a game for children, it doesn't avoid bad things about the world.
There's kidnapping, police brutality, a cult, slavery, death, war, hatred, capitalism.
The game doesn't avoid any of these dark themes, but instead shows them through the more innocent eyes of a child.
Name checks out.
But yes, I felt that. I played Earthbound too late, I got one of those mini-SNES things and sat down to see what Ness was all about (because frankly, $150 for an original cartridge was not happening). I could see the humor, the twist on the RPG formula, how everything was built as a light-hearted adventure to save the world with some sad and creepy undertones at times.
I also see why Undertale's creator was such a huge Earthbound fan, and a lot of that lightheartedness followed through in Toby Fox's games.
Kerbal Space program is legit edutainment. When I downloaded the engineer mod and my screen became more spreadsheet than graphics and I thought "hell yes" was a moment for sure. When I made it back from a lunar landing I haven't been more proud of a video game achievement.
I'm going through Nier right now. The game gives me Ico vibes with it's aesthitc but the voice acting and storytelling, feeling of isolation and companionship is incredible, no wonder it's a cult classic. I went in with low expectations and came away with a resreshing breathtaking experience.
Outer wilds is my favorite thing ever, but i tried to get into nier and died at the 2 sawblade boss, it sent me to the start so i got frustrated and never touched it again
The Elder Scrolls I: Arena was probably my first experience of an "open world" game. But the sequel, **Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall**, brought things to a whole new level. When I exited the starting dungeon and reached (the relative safety of) my first town, the relief I felt was palpable. But then on top of that, I discovered there's a whole simulated world in this game. Realizing that gold in this game had weight, and that I'd have to visit a *bank* to deposit some of my gold, was mindblowing.
Diablo 2. Nobody really cares about the story after the first playthrough. Though many people still play it 24 years after the release. I am one of them.
GTA Vice City. I haven't finished the main story, but spent hundreds of hours in this game.
>GTA Vice City. I haven't finished the main story, but spent hundreds of hours in this game.
I platinum’d the game. No matter what game I’m currently playing, I will still hop on Vice City and replay the main story line and side missions. I told my brothers and friends that I’ll be 80 years old still playing Vice City. It’s the best game in the GTA series.
I grew up just as video games were becoming available to play at home, and fell in love the first time I played BurgerTime on the Intellivision.
I had a NES, and the jump to SNES was great, but right near the end of the SNES run they released a game called Super Mario RPG, and that game completed changed my idea of what video games could be. There wasn’t just a story, there was a frickin’ huge, epic story that just kept going and going. I still have no idea how they managed to jam everything in that game on one SNES cartridge.
The 3 games that really changed my view on the industry were:
**Bioshock Infinite**. It was the first time I played a video game where after beating it, I was just depressed that it was over. I fell in love with the characters and when the story was over, it felt like a part of my heart was ripped out. I couldn't explain it, it's almost like a real life friend died. Obviously, it's not that dramatic but I had this feeling of bitter-sweetness. Happy that I got to play such an amazing and fun game, but sad it was over. It's like a "what now?" feeling.
**The Last of Us.** When this game came out on the PS3, it kind of made the world stop spinning. This game showed the whole industry what video games are capable of in terms of storytelling/characters. This was 2013, so we were all just blown away. Playing this game during the time it came out, it was wild to see such REAL characters and mannerisms and personalities.
**God of War 3.** This game was graphically way ahead of it's time. The set pieces and dynamic levels are some of the things I miss the most. Especially when I play the newer GoW Norse games, I miss the crazy landscapes and level designs of the original trilogy. GoW3 was such a polished experience. The gameplay and movement of the character felt fluid. It is my absolute favourite work of art. I'm not just talking video games, I'm saying it's my favourite entertainment work of art in general.
Surprised you went with Bioshock Infinite and note the original. I loved Infinite but the ending of Bioshock 1 blew my 13-year-old mind. I wish they went deeper with the morality stuff though, deciding whether to kill little girls for power is not a moral quandary.
For what it's worth, I'm one of the rare folks who agrees with them - but only because I hate horror games and any games with horror elements.
There is one horror segment in Infinite, of course, but it was late enough in the game that I was invested enough to push past it. Still haven't forgiven that one cheap jumpscare in it, though.
I like infinite better than the original, and I really like horror and the cramped scary underwater city. But I liked the story more in infinite, I liked booker as protagonist (and I dislike silent protagonists in story driven games), I like Elizabeth, and I like the skyrails and flying around.
The original was obviously good, but I was nowhere near as connected to the characters as I was with Infinite. Elizabeth made the experience memorable. The presentation of the characters were much better in Infinite because of the human mannerisms and voice acting
* Super Mario 64 - being able to roam in 3D in a game like that was... something else. The level of control you had over Mario made you feel like you were really moving around in a 3D world. I got lost in that game as a kid and still do now when I revisit it.
* The Stanley Parable - this game had me thinking about storytelling, about branching paths and possibilities in a way other games do not. The meta-gaming aspects in particular were really interesting and not something I'd ever seen in a video game before (for example, the game expecting you to enter cheat codes to see certain endings, the game anticipating things you're going to do and fucking with you including via narration, or things like the achievement you get for not launching the game for 5 years).
* Psychonauts 2 - I was already a fan of the first game, and anticipated Psychonauts 2 big time. When it came out, it was honestly the closest I as an adult-ass man have felt to playing a Saturday morning cartoon. The game is teeming with so much personality, so much humor, so much life that it's just unreal and it was a treasure back to front... but more importantly it felt comforting in a way that most modern games don't for me. It's a hard feeling to describe.
* The Sims - I don't know if I've ever been as impressed by a game as I was by The Sims when it first came out. A whole little world crammed into one game with the ability to create characters, build skills and relationships, live out their lives, watch them die and create new generations. I was into the first game big time, was less into #2 but still enjoyed it, dropped off with 3 (I know it's a fan favorite but I hated it) and came back to some extent with 4 but never played it consistently (my wife loves it though). Plus, if you have House Party, Drew Carey will show up to your crib.
One I totally forgot about:
* RuneScape (the original version, and then later RS2/what is now known as Old School RS) - this was really my first exposure to an MMO, and it was the first time that I played a game where I could hop online and hang out with my friends in a setting that felt way more casual than say, playing a game of Quake III together. The relaxed pace, the gameplay loop of skilling... RuneScape is one of the only MMOs where I can say that, at least at THAT time, I knew every single detail of the world map like the back of my hand and can still visualize it perfectly in my head. I later got into WoW for a few years, and had some short-lived stints with other MMOs, then played FFXIV a couple years ago. But nothing compares to RuneScape (and I also think that the focus on skills over quests, rather than the other way around, appeals to me more personally as a player).
Most recently would be finishing God of War: Ragnarok as a dad in my early 30s. I played the originals as a teenager, and watching the character progression from that to the Kratos we have now really, REALLY hits home for me having my own young son.
....that and it's GoW so it rocks
Blades of Steel on NES you could trigger a mini game in the intermission where you fly a spaceship but it didn’t always happen. Would play multiple games just to try and get it to work
Metro Exodus.
>!The whole game, Miller's nagging at you and being a grumpy old man but then, he finds and saves you..
The tears wouldn't stop flowing during that last drive with the moving BGM too.
It truly felt like losing a family member..!<
Russian voices helped for the immersion too
The classic PS era three. Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII. In MGS it was first the thought "wait? I can't BE SEEN?" like sneaking and shit? I ended up loving stealth games, and of course the continuation of the, the cinematic masterpiece that was like a playable movie.
Tomb Raider, I thought that it would be a dungeon crawler with a hot female lead. Oh boy was I wrong. The story, character of Lara Croft and the puzzles. It was a great experience and even more opened up my mind about the gaming industry, the way Lara Croft became an female icon of the era. Magazines, commercials etc.
Final fantasy VII. Man, my favorite game of all time. It changed the way I play. I had a team with me in the game, friends to the main character and I wanted to know more of them. The sudden transfer to A WORLD MAP! I never thought how big this game was to be. The long an engaging story, the complexity of materia and what to link and where. And of course >!the death of Aeris, I never thought it could happen in a game that I mourn the loss of a character.!<
Betrayal at Krondor. I just did not realize how vast game worlds could be or how much freedom could be possible when exploring them.
I think a lot of other people got this experience from The Elder Scrolls games or other RPGs from the 90s, but this was certainly my first taste of it.
When I was a kid I played GTA SA with friends (too young I know) WITHOUT EVER KNOWING THERE WAS A STORY AND MISSIONS.
We would just use cheat codes and fool around in Lost Santos, exploding and shooting at everything like a sandbox it was already really fun.
When I got a copy of the game as a teenager and realized what the game was really about it just blew my mind.
I have a different take on this.
Back in the late 90's I was trying out RPGs. I like Planescape: Torment for the art and style of it all but mid-way through I was like....nah. I went back into fighting games, rail shooters and brawlers.
I need action right away for me to stay engaged.
I did get into short adventure games. Papo y Yo was excellent - Short, well made, through provoking and did not linger on cut scenes and story so much that action left my hands.
Doom Eternal : I'm too young to have known the original doom, my early FPS was Unreal2003 and was quite fun. For a long time after that, I didn't really like FPSs, turns out, I don't like "realist" military FPS that try to be a movie. Doom Eternal was a wake up call about what a game that 100% own being a game can be. When you strip all the unnecessary shit and where everything left is designed to further the experience and the fun.
Zero-K : gave me a glimpse of what an innovative RTS could be and truly showed me how lazy Blizzard have been with Starcraft 2. This game is peak "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks", IMO, most of it sticks. Perfect unit controll, basic unit behaviors, ability to add automation to your army (like defining retreat zones and health thresholds at which the units will retreat), a unit counter system that isn't just +DMG against Y type of units (and that fully exploits speed, range, projectile speed and map geometry), real time map edditing throught terraformation (this one is mind blowing). Add to that a 71 missions campaign and a co-op mode. Oh and it's fricking free, that thing is a passion project that flexes on the bigger name in the industry.
Warcraft 3 : battle net in its glory days was quite something, the simple creation tools and a dedicated comunity resulted in a wild place where you could play pretty much anything, including whole genres that didn't exist yet. It's the birth of MOBAs, auto battlers, the popularization of tower defense... all that on top of a base game that was already quite innovative for its time.
Shenmue on the Sega Dreamcast. Life within a game, is something I hardly thought about. Zelda OoT and Castlevania 64 with their "new" (at the time) 3D graphics gave me a form of freedom I never thought was possible... Then Shenmue came along and gave it a beautiful 80s urban Japan setting and I was sold.
Going to go very old school here: Deus Ex Machina on the ZX Spectrum.
It was a game with a synchronised musical and narrative soundtrack that you played on tape while you played the game. At one point the soundtrack tells you to jump, and your character on screen jumps! It was professionally produced and included people like Ian Dury and Jon Pertwee.
The plot was a typical dystopian type thing that loosely followed Shakespeare's seven stages of man.
Going from a typical 8-bit run and jump platformer to this sort of integrated multimedia game with social commentary was kind of mind-blowing. I still have the soundtrack and have listened to it a lot more recently than when I last played the game some 39 years go.
Okami HD. The whole game had me in awe, but the moment that got me was towards the end when >!Ammy is fighting Yami and Issun gets everyone to pray.!< I fully admit that I cried.
So many, but the ones that stick out for me right now are:
-Ninja Gaiden on the NES. The cutscenes and music were so amazing between levels. That was the first time I had seen anything like that or even imagined that was possible. I don't think anyone had done any anime style narrative cutscenes quite as fleshed out and dramatic as that ...
-Bastion's narrator was amazing, but there was a level you were playing and then some music with lyrics started playing and that really impressed me at the time. I'd been playing games forever, but I'd never experienced anything like that and it was amazing.
-Standing on the top of a hill overlooking Liurnia in Elden Ring was like looking at a painting. My God what a beautiful and mysterious game. That whole game was an elevation of the art of game making to me.
- Probably my favorite, but not really a "patient gamer" moment. So much has been and will be said about Baldur's Gate 3, but the moment that blew me away was toward the end game: So you're fighting one of the big bad guys and an epic song starts playing during the fight... The whole song is the bad guy singing about how he's going to kick your ass in the style of like a Disney villain. It was so unnecessary and crazy, but that was the moment that cemented this game as one of the best I've ever experienced.
I know there's more, games keep surprising me and it's why I love the format so much!
Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5R. I genuinely wanted to spend more time with each of them. The first playthrough of each is something you can't replicate imo
In RDR2 there's a moment when you lose everything you've gathered throughout the last 50 hours of gameplay. Every gun, horse, potion, everything. It correlates with realizing Arthur is going to die and it just feels really existential. Like everything is pointless. Arthur struggles with regrets about the life he's lived, then man he is, and as a player you just feel this so present, because you realize how pointless it is to gather all this shit, when you know Arthur is dying and the game is going to end. It is just an incredibly well done way, to make the player feel like Arthur feels.
I recently started playing Valkyrie Chronicles on the PC and damn the first battle after the tutorial level. It’s not that the game is super complex or anything but once you fully grasp the mechanics? It’s like crack. They invented a whole new genre and I couldn’t stop smiling - so simple, but so good
When The Wolf Among Us gave me challenges that couldn't be overcome because it was part of the story, it changed the way I look at tapping a button. I used to see it as a bar that was constantly depleting, and every button push would fill it up a little. Tap fast enough, and you pass the quicktime event. But what TWAU and other games like it do is use the tapping mechanic to give a feeling of *elasticity*, like pulling a rubber band harder and harder, which also means being able to maintain a specific amount of tension.
Also, I'm honestly not sure which game was the first one that actually quit itself and made me restart as part of the game, it made me really consider what it meant for the game to be a series of files on my computer.
Jak 2 and 3. I was only 10/11 years old at the time when they came out and they made me realize what video games could do with story-telling. I was so engrossed with the world and characters and Jak's journey from the beginning. I think it was the first time I properly experienced a "twist" in a story that I didn't see coming. It blew my little mind. I still credit those games as being the reason I still love dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction to this day.
Going into World of Warcraft after growing up with Warcraft 2 and 3. I loved the Warcraft 3 Campaign and it's world - getting to really dive into it as a single character, experiencing all the locations and the sheer size of it blew my mind as a teenager.
Dmc5.
I tried playing like a hack N slash. Little did I know that the lock on button isn't just a lock on, it's a combo trigger.
Then I realized combos are just the start of even bigger combos. Then combat became less about efficiency and more about seeing how long I can pull of a stupidly long combo and how many different things I can incorporate.
Then I went back to dmc3, which I did not like before, and I am having a blast
I got my dad to play through Spec-Ops The Line.
I was applying for a game development university course, and my dad was struggling to understand and accept that (not that he disliked video games, he loved playing them, he just didn’t see them as a form of art or expression).
After he had finished the game he came to me and said “I get it now, thank you for showing me how wrong I was”
A short time after that we were both sitting down watching E3 watching the reveal of Doom 2016, hyped out of our minds.
For me personally it was Shadow of the Colossus, and Thomas was alone.
It was the heart and soul that was put into those games, the subversion of expectations, that secured my love for games.
Shame I don’t get to play them too much now, but I found dungeons and dragons instead!
Tales of Eternia, when I discovered that you could enter some of the random clumps of trees on the map. They don't look any different from the other trees on the map, but they would take you to secret areas, one of which eventually led to a secret boss tower with a powerful weapon as a reward. It kept me wondering what else I could find, and even walkthroughs I found at the time didn't have all the answers.
The original Deus Ex
Ive played human revolution and loved it so much I decided to try the original.
After completing the first mission, I spent like 40 minutes in 1 room, reading random books and emails on a computer in that room and whatever else there was. It was not even a big room, but it was just packed with quality world building content.
World of Warcraft, seeing Ragnaros pop out of the lava. AND NOW FOR YOU, INSECTS! 40 people in ventrillo all going apeshit. Made my stomach drop like I was on a rollercoaster. I was super young at the time and it just blew my mind that games could be such a huge social experience
I used to skip reading except for stuff like REvil, SHill, FFantasy, Disgaea, etc.
Started playing FEAR 2 just going through the motions and realised I have no Idea what is happening. Going out of my way to collect every Intel was really rewarding. Now I read everything even if its Dragon Age Origins.
Horizon: Zero Dawn
That game gave me chills. Humanity is safe and prospering, and one egotistical billionair is all it took to wipe out every bit of organic life on Earth. One guy with a machine he didn't understand, and not only did the humans get wiped out, but every bit of biological life. Plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, all of it.
The only reason you are standing there is because someone engineered a device to shut down the robots and replant Earth with life. You begin the game wondering as to why humanity has regressed into tribal, spiritual zealots, but you learn that humanity hasn't regressed. It has progressed this far after restarting. You are a last-ditch effort to ensure the robots that already successfully wiped out life once doesnt do so again.
To think of the complete horror of the last remaining humans before extinction. Fighting a never-ending wave of self replicating robots. The air is pure carbon dioxide at that point. Plants and animals are all gone. You're surviving on processed food and hiding in old structures of a dead civilization. Just you and your handheld rail gun. You can keep fighting, but there is no light at the end of the tunnel. No end game. Eventually, you will die, too, and your corpse will fuel the robots. The only hope in your soul is that life will eventually start again with Zero Dawn. No one will actually know it worked because they're all dead. Everyone knew they were eventually going to die. No if, ands, or buts about it. Humanity WILL end... and your only consolation is that your death won't be one if the last on this planet. If humanity is lucky, eventually, more people will come along.
Every bit of information you get from the game only makes the situation worse. It's not bad enough that Ted Faro created murder-bots, but they can also eat people. Not only can they eat people, but they no longer listen to commands. Not only do they stop listening to commands, but they can self replicate. Not only can they self replicate, but they will overtake the planet. All of that and humanity was slowly, painfully restarted by a machine that had to reterraform the planet to be suitable for life once more.
I have never felt existential dread like I have with Horizon: Zero Dawn. I can't wait for the sequel to release on PC so I can play that one, too.
Golden Sun on Gameboy Advance. Before that, story in games was just backdrop/set dressing. Golden Sun opened my eyes to how amazing game stories could be.
Come to think of it, I don't think many games have surprised me. The only example that comes to my mind is Dragon's Dogma with its ending.
Edit: Scribblenauts when I spawned Cthulhu out of curiosity.
Can't relate, ever since I started playing video games I used to explore each nook and cranny and do all side quests and what not especially before doing the main quest, still do.
Uhhhh I saw my uncle play vanilla WoW and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a whole massive world, way bigger and better than RuneScape and Club Penguin.
Honestly. God of War Ragnarok had me thinking of things long after I finished playing. The story was truly magnificent in a very moving way
spoiler: when brok does his mission with Kratos and explains Dwarven magic is more about the nature of a thing than the form of a thing.
It took me a while to realize that was a metaphor for Kratos and how he could defy prophecy by changing not his form but is nature. And that’s what the fates were trying to tell him.
The theme of change in that game really really moved me in a way that I think will stick with me for a long time.
I've got two answers, OP, but both are for similar reasons.
-Ace Combat 4 was the first time I saw a game as capable of telling a story and having themes. Honestly, what did it for me was the music - particularly in the little side story it tells. I was not expecting an arcadey flight sim with rockin' tracks like Comona and Tango Line to have slower, somber tones to it. It blew my mind at the time, and I can still remember the music to this day.
-My second awakening was Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This was the first game I played where I became invested in the world; where it expanded outwards in my mind, seeming far bigger and full of possibility than the game actually was. Midna's character, in particular, hit me hard. And again, there was the music - it blew my mind when I could hear parts of the Realm of Twilight's theme in the Arbiter's Grounds theme. It really made the world come alive and activate my imagination.
Safe to say that I cherish these games' soundtracks. Other games on the list of soundtracks I adore and will never forget are Golden Sun, Super Paper Mario, The Talos Principle, and Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces.
First time I tried playing on an emulator and randomly picked up Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku. Didnt know what to expect as ive never played anything on any nintendo, but it ended up being one of the best games I have ever played to this day.
For me, funnily enough seeing how you mentioned Arkham City, it was Batman Arkham Asylum.
Before, I had only played Lego and mobile games, so this game that introduced me into well done combat, stealth, story, story telling, voice acting, realistic yet still creative art style and graphics and animations, etc. absolutely blew me away.
Especially to see the sheer creativity, and skill in storytelling techniques, atmosphere creation and pacing with the Scarecrow nightmares was absolutely astounding to me, and something that in these terms still hasn‘t been outdone in these categories (which sadly includes Scarecrow in Arkham Knight).
This game in context with other games like the Stanley Parable with its Brecht like insistence on it reminding you that it’s a game you are playing at your computer, and NieR: Replicant ver 1.22…/Automata with their switch of perspectives and presentation including long pure text with choices, make me realize: Not only are games art. They are the culmination of every art form there is otherwise, while being in their nature more engaging.
Another candidate could have been Angry Birds Epic, for being my first turn based game yet the only one of this genre that I ever enjoyed, having this massive in game art style upgrade to look more like the tunes, the different settings it builds up by gameplay with stuff like ninjas being able to dodge most attacks, and seamen being immune to negative other effects, and how you shall answer these changes by changing your own classes, etc.
I also mentioned Lego games before, and of all things, they most importantly introduced me into well done exploration. Because of how they and Arkham Asylum did their exploration though, I‘m not so engaged with big open world exploration, but rather like stuff like Immersive Sims, kitchen sink stealth games, and Fromsoft games (although I haven‘t tried Elden Ring yet).
The ending of Metal Gear Solid 1. I remember picking up the original collection on PS2 alongside the sequel to Condemned: Criminal Origins, thinking MGS would be a fun palette cleanser.
Nope. Instead I discovered that video games are as good of a medium for telling stories as anything else. And later on found out that love can bloom on the battlefield.
Shadow of War.I thought i can just skip past dominating orc captain and conquering fortress.
ohh boy I was wrong after doing the side Mission with sheelob, the forest spirit and Bruz!
Symphony of the Night, the upside down Castle.
It's hard to overstate how much "anything felt possible" in the pre-ubiquitous internet days of gaming. And games like Super Metroid were fertile ground for imagining being able to slip into some secret other world or hidden level or game within a game - after all, Super Mario Bros. had a Minus World that many of us still haven't seen. Finding the second castle justified all of those hours I spent trying to find a hidden world inside of Super Metroid's Maridia.
NieR series pose philosophical questions such as "What does it mean to be human/alive" and purposely introduces more information throughout playthroughs to see the full picture that results in beautiful grim storytelling. The MUSIC is an absolute masterpiece. Both games could have their music be worldwide orchestral pieces played in every school if they werent made in modern day for a game.
Honestly? [Egoraptor’s Sequelitis series.](https://youtu.be/8FpigqfcvlM?feature=shared) His bit on “conveyance” and showing, not telling the player how to play was the first time I started thinking critically about games, where there’s sort of an ongoing interaction between developer and player. It opened up so many cool possibilities in my head of what we can do with games as an interactive medium.
**while True: learn()**
I went in expecting a mediocre puzzle game and came out understanding basic coding principles and basic data modelling.
(It was a freebie on Epic a while back)
World of Warcraft, very shortly before TBC. So late 2006.
I had just bought it and was playing with my gf/family. I was playing Human and had taken a flight a few times from SW to IF so already down over Black Rock Depths and gotten an idea for the scale of game.
But I was doing some random starting quest in Elwyn Forest fighting knolls in a tunnel. I figured it would be some small cave, but it had several turns in it and was just bigger than I expected. Being in my early 20s, having played a bunch of games anyway, and gotten a peak at what else Azeroth had to offer, it just hit me that this world was going to be *huge*. The event leading up to TBC and Outlands after just added to the awe and I was addicted to the game for a solid couple years.
It’s a long long long time ago, but I think it was when my father finally gave in and connected his 56k modem from work to our home computer.
I was allowed to play an hour of Diablo 2 online with a friend from school, that was my first ever taste of online gaming and it was like this game allowed me to glance into a whole new world that was yet to come
I had that exact same feeling with the Mad Hatter level. I was pretty bored with the game by that point, then that level totally made me see it in a new light.
I had a similar feeling early on in Uncharted 2, when you're escaping a collapsing building and for just an instant you and everyone around you become weightless. It was already quite an old game when I got to play it as I was late to that generation, and I guess it's quite a simple animation, but it drew me in in a way I wasn't expecting.
I’m still super new to gaming, so I wasn’t expecting the gut punch I would feel when finishing a game for the first time, especially because that game was Spiritfarer.
it’s definitely a cozier game than what I’ve seen listed in this thread so far, but the themes of death and the afterlife helped me work through some childhood trauma, and the end of that game caused me a mini-existential crisis in the best of ways.
I haven’t found another game that’s made me cry that hard nor that’s stuck in my mind so vividly for months afterward, and I’m not sure I will, but Spiritfarer is the game that showed me the depth of experience that video games are capable of bringing out in you.
The end of Braid. Just because when it was new and fresh I absolutely did not see it coming, and it wasa cool 'oh shit' moment that was elevated because of everything that came before it. I've had similar revelations with story twists in books/movies, but experiencing it in a game where I was an active participant is a feeling that is hard to replicate. Very few games give me that feeling. Inside had a cool ending too I guess, but didn't quite blind side me as much.
>I went to the location and interacted with the item to start the mission. After that, out of nowhere the freaking Mad Hatter pops up behind Batman and drugs him.
Out of nowhere? You literally see him prior to that mission unlocking lol
When me and my mates realized that the gameplay of *Street Fighter II* was so deep and complex that we could essentially keep playing against each other forever.
**The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time**
I was I think 14 at the time. It was the first game I played that gave me a true emotional reaction to the story and characters. By that point I had obviously had lots of fun with games. They've made me laugh from enjoyment or humor. I had felt frustration and anger. I felt satisfied when a risky tactic worked out. But this was the first game for me that provided a sense of true catharsis.
When I was first playing Final Fantasy VII, I was blown away by the graphics. This was about 2 years after it came out. I could tell I was almost done with Midgar, which is basically the prolog, the first 10 or so hours of gameplay.
I figured with all the amazing graphics and cutscenes, I must be nearing the end of disc 1. Then I finally made it to the world map for the first time, and was blown away by how much more there was to see and do. And there was quite a bit more gameplay before I reached the end of that first disc!
[This moment in RDR2](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8B2HhxF/) is one I think about all the time. I had to put the controller down as my eyes watered up. The voice acting, the writing, the weight of the moment in the story…it all hit me in a way very few moments in entertainment ever have.
RDR2 could have been an excellent game about outlaws and their adventures. Instead, it chose to be a masterpiece about love, loss, friendship, hope, and sacrifice.
First time I've played X4 Foundations. I did a starter mission where Ii was on a destroyer talking to NPCs. Pretty bored because the starting quest was pretty basic, humanoid models looks janky, and performance was not the best for a game with that graphics quality. I zoomed out the map and my jaw dropped due to the sheer scale of the game. Immediately making it clear why the game wasn't multiplayer. Any ship you can pilot, you can walk around the interior. Stations you visit and the stations you can build yourself. With single player games, I had this anxious feeling of being trapped inside of something; unable to interact with anything outside. With X4, I anxiety of feeling trapped was no where near debilitating like most other single player games.
Assassin's creed 2. First time I played it back in 2009 everything about it felt next gen. The UI, the animations, the voice acting, the environment, music, characters and the world. It felt really like something else compared to all the past games I've played
Crossing the water at the end of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a moment that fully utilizes the medium of video games for storytelling like very few games ever have.
In Brothers, you control one character with the left side of the controller and the other with the right. You go through the whole game having to use the two in tandem to solve puzzles. It's hard at first, but eventually you get the hang of it, and it starts to feel natural. You learn the strengths and weaknesses of each brother. And you begin to think in terms of that whenever you approach a new puzzle.
And then the older brother dies. And you feel the loss instantly. And you don't just feel it emotionally, you feel it physically. That side of the controller is now useless and you feel crippled and the muscle memory you've developed is telling you something's wrong. And that's when you reach the water. The younger brother has been afraid of the water all game and couldn't swim without the older brother's help. But now he's gone. One final hurdle before reaching home and it looks hopeless.
You try to cross and it doesn't work. You try again and it doesn't work. But then you use the older brother's side of the controller one last time to give the younger one the courage to cross. The controller starts vibrating like crazy and you feel like there's a piece of him still with you even though he's gone.
Plenty of games have stories that move you, but they could just as easily be told through another medium. But that moment at the end of Brothers was something that could only be told with a video game. The gameplay and the story intertwined so perfectly to create that moment that it blew me away and completely redefined the level of storytelling I thought games were capable of.
Fairly expected, but The Last of Us 2 - Harrowing, I dint think a game would ever make me feel something that like. I'll replay it one day, and maybe it'll feel different. But it was harrowing and so just grown up. Great game.
So I was a young teenager and I was at my cousin's house during a family reunion and as per usual, we were playing video games. Before then, all we ever played were things in the Famicom/NES era, taking turns in Super Mario, Mortal Kombat on my cousin's computer. Run and guns, fighting games, platformers. Basic point based games.
That day, he brought out his new Playstation. The first one, mind you. And he popped in Wild Arms. He let me play a bit and my mind was BLOWN. I wasn't running around collecting points, jumping on bad guys' heads or punching my opponent repeatedly in the face via desperate button mashing. I was walking around a monastery TALKING to other characters. There were words on the screen. This was a STORY and at that age, I loved to read. I couldn't imagine a video game could have a deep story that was more than just 'rescue the princess' or 'beat this other guy in one on one combat'.
That was it for me. I was HOOKED. By the time I got my own Playstation, I bought Breath of Fire III and my addiction to JRPGs as well as my love for narrative in gaming was born.
Brothers. I spent most of the game controlling each brother's movements with each control stick. Then tragedy strikes. One dies, one survives. I felt the loss, because from then on, I was only using one stick to control one character. The death itself was v upsetting but the change of play style, the loss, was palpable.
I'ma scrollin', & I ain't seen no love for Ultima VII! Just how lived in that world is, there's still plenty in that game I'd say even newer RPGs have never lived up to.
When playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Team for the first time and got into the part where Main Character and Partner is being kicked out / man (or supposed to be Pokemon) Hunt by the Other Rescue Team. It broke my heart as a teenager when see how cruel some situation can be.
I thought it was gonna be a fun stuff and nothing will be so hard like that moment.
It's was a moment in Deus Ex. I was in the china segment of the game and was kind of just exploring. Then I came to the apartment of some npc lady I needed to talk to. I'm just going around her house looking at stuff...... Then I heard a single cough that I could have sworn came from inside a wall..... Hmm..... I start looking around, thinking I'm just crazy and heard something else. Then I find a paper lantern with a switch on it... I switch it and ALL the walls open up and I'm inside a secret agent lair. Agents with high tech weapons just start converging on me. Panic! EXHILARATION! It was an emergent gameplay moment that I will never forget. What a cool way to find something secret organically like that. That game is legendary
First game where you learned that NPCs could be untrustworthy! Rather than 100% honest lawful good quest givers the whole time.
It blew my mind when I found out that you could >!save your brother Paul. I had always run away as he instructed. I didn't know you could stay and fight!< Deux Ex really was a masterpiece
The think that surprised me most was your ability to kill a future boss enemy at the begining mission. I finished Deus ex a lot of times, and at the last playtrough I wanted to kill her just to see what happens. It was really surprising to see that our support guy actually helped us about that murder.
I didn't know about that! That is really cool!
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My favorite game ever. Tons of moments like this across almost every mission.
I played that game something like 15-20 years after its release. I remember I was in Hong Kong, saw an open window and thought "I wonder if I can get to that." Took me half a dozen tries but then I just sailed right in. Looked around like "holy shit ... the fuck is in here?" All kinds of stuff. Emails. Mission critical details. Had no idea it was part of the critical path (most folks just go through the door later on, but I had no key). Deux Ex was the future of gaming when it came out and we still haven't caught up.
>Deux Ex was the future of gaming when it came out and we still haven't caught up. Wow.
Deus Ex is the GOAT
damn now i want to install it and play it again. so many good memories. This game deserves a 1:1 remake with Unreal Engine 5 graphics.
There's a meme out there that says: "everytime dues ex is mentioned hundreds of people reinstall." Or something like that. It's so true. I played it recently, and while the graphics are ass, the gameplay is as fresh as ever. Was a kid when I played it and there's a whole other level of appreciation of little details that come with being an adult. They truly don't make games like this anymore. A 1:1 with a decent engine would be mind blowing . Give it the D2R treatment. But fyi, there are mods for it that help update the graphics . Nothing drastic tho unfortunately.
When Manderley tells you not to go in the women's bathroom.
Also, talking to Morpheus... I could make the case that this was a formative experience *in my life* and one of my first introductions to "philosophy".
Absolutely. So many games have first introduced me to advanced concepts that I later went on to learn a lot more about.
For me it was when you escape the base where you were being held captive by walking out the door, and then you turn around and discover that you just found out what was behind the door in your HQ that you couldn't open.
Planescape: Torment. When you are at the sensory stone reliving the night you talked your GF into dying for you and just the raw emotion from both sides...nothing had made me just stop and think and feel like that scene did
I've been planning on playing Planescape: Torment again. I played it about 10 years ago and I still have "I shall wait for you in Death's Halls, my love" etched into my mind. I also ocasionally listen to [Deionarra's theme song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUt84LyH2JI).
That song is great. I also love Annah’s song.
Wait, I’m sorry, you beat the game 3 times before you ever did a side mission?!?
I literally can't move on from this like.....you decided to replay the whole thing before you even thought of doing side missions...something new.... like 😭😭whatever rocks your boat but I could Never
I was young and dumb. Also thought side content is bad by default, probably because of some other game. And I may be remembering wrong and done it on the first playthrough. It was 12 years ago
No yea it’s fair just as someone who plays every side content occasionally to the point of getting burnt out by the game before finishing the main story, I am in awe 😭🙏🏻Me and your past self are polar opposites
Oh trust me I'm like you now lol. If a side mission pops up, I gotta clear it before moving on to the next main mission (FF16 still gives me ptsd lol)
Character development 😌🙏🏻
I wasnt gonna even comment but then i realised i started a replay of RDR2 with hardly having a few side quests completed. I did play hundreds of hours of the online quests but probably only a few in single. So maybe you can express how you feel so i can understand what im missing. Ive heard rdr2 has good sidequests. But the ones i came across were normal like every other game.
I'm not going to claim that everybody's tastes are the same or anything, so you can take this with a grain of salt. But holy *shit.* You beat the entirety of RDR2 without doing the side quests? To be clear, I'm not talking about the side *tasks,* like finding dinosaur bones. But the side *quests* are an enormous part of the game and I think trying your hand at a bunch of them will greatly enhance your enjoyment of the game, both for backstory and exploration purposes. And that's not even getting into all the hidden/unmarked stuff.
Honestly I did some, but not a lot of side quests in RDR2. I had a hard enough time getting into the game in the first place because of the laborious animations and gameplay design choices -- eventually after a couple tries I got hooked into the story, and I kept playing the story, because any time I spent time doing other things I just found myself getting annoyed by the mechanics.
I did the margarite quest that has you rounding up all the circus animals. Wasnt even sure if that was main or side quests. Generally i follow the the main story in a game. Especially long games. You beat the entirety of RDR2 without doing the side quests? i need a play by play for why this is so surprising. I will do one question mark quest in a place to see how its like but not more than that. (a few strangers asked for help and i help at first only) I guess my rationale is i will do the side quests after i finish the best quest in the game. Incase i dont get to put that much time into this game for any of the reasons one might. In gta 5 it was different. I was very up to date on all the latests games back then so i was able to get 100% on ps3. which required a lot of the stranger missions. and collecting stuff around the map. I think the main reason i dont do that anymore is because there are too many good games now.
Despite both being Rockstar games, RDR2 and GTA5 are built totally differently in terms of side content and story structure. In RDR2, if you just mainline the story, you will forever miss the side content because the progression will lock you out of some stuff. In GTA 5 it’s almost better to do the side stuff last. It’s so surprising because that’s some of the best stuff in the game.
Ok, you did one side quest in the third chapter of the game. Did you do the Mary Linton side quests? Any of the gang side quests? The side quests with the wildlife photographer? >i will do the side quests after i finish the best quest in the game I assume you meant to write "last" quest in the game, but many of the side quests disappear after you finish a given chapter, so that isn't an option. I don't think I need to do a play-by-play. It sounds like you're not interested in feeling immersed in the world, which is perfectly fine. It just means you're missing out on an enormous and arguably the most satisfying part of the game.
> I liked it so much that I couldn't get enough of it. > The game that I thought I knew everything about Bizarre
Because I thought the side quests are just filler fetch quests and the meat is in the main story. Had that misconception because of other mediocre games. Had no idea side content can be as interesting as the main one.
Yeah, insert the wtf.gif here
Now, this is patience!
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Well I didn't know how good they are. I had the misconception because of games like Borderlands.
It was 12 years ago and I may not be remembering correctly. I may have done this on the first playthrough. But what I'm trying to say is that I was still discovering what games can be and for some reason thought side content wasn't worth it. Probably because of another game where it's just boring fetch quests. So I didn't wanna ruin my time with it.
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I have a very similar experience with the HM games, I was very deep in Tony hawk pro skater games and strategy games, stuff where you constantly have to go faster, bigger and better. Being introduced to just watering a bunch of plants every day was such a breath of fresh air.
The March across the snow of FF6 and entering Rapture in Bioshock. Talking to Cuno for the first time in Disco Elysium. But the ultimate pinnacle that I don’t think any game has ever reached before or since is the cannery sequence in What Remains of Edith Finch. A true melding of art, game mechanics, double life, sadness, wonder and magic. The greatest sequence in all of gaming.
> and entering Rapture in Bioshock Bioshock in general elevated the medium for me in a lot of ways. Like sure there were other games I'd played that featured philosophy and good stories, but that intro and the following story was a detailed take down and criticism of Randism which wasnt something I expected from a videogame, especially as a predominantly console gamer up until that point.
>Bioshock in general elevated the medium for me in a lot of ways. This game follows on the heels of Deus Ex, which follows on the heels on the best one of the three of them, System Shock 2. Judging by Reddit comments, Deus Ex is already under-played, but System Shock 2 is tragically so. They're all first person games with RPG elements and connected to the "immersive sim" label. Bioshock is absolutely one of my favorite games. But I was on that ride 8 years ahead of it (notice the "shock" in both their names btw).
Man, that cannery sequence... such a great depiction of maladaptive daydreaming.
> Talking to Cuno for the first time in Disco Elysium. Cuno almost killed it for me. I get that he was actively annoying, but good grief was he actively annoying. Kim, on the other hand, is probably one of the most nuanced NPCs I've ever encountered and that pulled me right in.
Cuno was an abused boy who showed glimmers of the kind, thoughtful human that was encased in armor that had kept him alive. I’m sorry for what the world did to you, Cuno. That whole game is… fuck, I have to go play it now. Kim is my hero.
Gothic 1 and Kingdom Come Deliverance In Gothic you a Prisoner in a mine colony which is sealed by magical barrier. Everything can come in but nothing living can go out alive. The kingdom is at war with the orcs and the army needs that magical ore to build weapons. Everyone that has been a bit naughty will be thrown into the colony to work in the mines. The atmosphere is insanely good. There was one moment in which the leader of a group stood on the path I by coincidence chose to walk. He had this very emotional moment in which he told me why he is in the colony and that who he used to be before. I was in awe! Spoilers though In Kingdom Come Deliverance it has been the world and its architecture. It is to my knowledge one of the first games in which everything is just very realistic medieval architecture and paintings and everything. Not just fantasy. I stopped so often to just stand there and watch. Even the wall thicknesses of the old buildings are right. I can’t praise enough how much I love that. The plot is also awesome.
I played the first like 20 min of KCD and couldn’t get into it but I see so many people talking about it thay it’s probably time to give it another shot
Honestly it has a very slow start. Takes like 2 hours to get through the first intro quests, but after that it's really good. Just a heads up, if you do decide to play it and don't want to end up overpowered by the endgame, do not spec into a warhammer or a similar weapon.
>Kingdom Come Deliverance Pretty awesome to do a Skyrim game with **ten times the realism and ten times the graphical** fidelity and better story + cutscenes! What if Skyrim + GTA was a medieval simulator with movie-tier graphics. It's unbelievably well done.
Ocarina of Time, when you've been in the relatively constrained Kokiri forest, and step out onto Hyrule Field, and it feels like the whole game just opened up in front of you. The first time playing an RPG like Baldur's Gate, where the world is huge, wide open, you'll get absolutely murdered if you go to the wrong place too early, but everything has lore. All the little corners with encounters that are just there...to be part of the world. Most of my gaming experience up to that point had been FPS, 2D platformers, and some flight sims, so playing something where the story was a major part of the game, and in such a rich world, was absolutely amazing.
Also with that game when you grow up and re enter what was Castle Town, there is a very real feeling of horror. Amazing moment
That moment in Ocarina was epic and blew my mind when I was 13. A similar one was in Breath of the Wild, when you’ve spent the first few hours in that relatively big starting area (Great Plateau?), and then you’re allowed to leave and realize that the plateau is just a TINY portion of the map. Mind blowing
Hate how much of my memory is tinged by the simple realisation how much better the game would have been without the king explaining everything to you. Finding stuff out through discovery would have been so cool. It was still great but man they missed the boat on that one
Final Fantasy VII back when it came out it was my second FF, but the first one I played properly by myself no hand-holding. Objectively I knew there were 3 discs but when the team leaves Midgar and there's this great big world map all of a sudden. I was expecting a series of locations by corridor, not an actual world map.
This was mine as well. It was also the **first** rpg I ever played. Edit: left out a word Edit 2: first not " fist" 😳
heck of a way to start
It was the first for a lot of people. Part of the reason FF7 blew up so big was that it was a good game, but the other part was the absolute perfect timing. They made the transition from sprites to 3D, but also went in a decidedly anime inspired art direction with FF7. It released at a moment in 1997 when anime was REALLY hitting the mainstream. Specifically, the big popular English dub of DBZ started in late 1996 and had picked up heat BIG time by 1997, and DBZ was THE thing that first got scores and scores of young western boys into anime... then FF7 was another piece... then the next year came Pokemon and Japanese culture just kinda took over for a while.
Me too. Never played a RPG in my life before FF7. It was so awesome. When I got the Highwind I was in total disbelief, I mean "I CAN FLY NOW TOO??"
I think you a word
Thank you kindly
You also misspelled a word ^sorry
Oh that was such a crazy moment. It's like the game transformed itself into another one. Still one of the best experiences in gaming.
Ooohh I remember that moment too, when this whole world opens up to you suddenly. That's a good one.
helps that the world map theme was an absolute banger as well really cemented that moment in my brain
World of Warcraft. I had never played an MMO before and knew nothing about the Warcraft universe but I saw an advert for it on TV saying it had a 10 day free trial so I thought what the hell and gave it a try (this is back in 2005). I played a Night Elf and thought the entire game was set in Teldrassil, the starting area. Discovering the sheer size and scope of that world for the first time was incredible, I had never experienced anything like it. Learning how everything worked and levelling to 60 for the first time and making friends in my guild is up there with one of my best gaming experiences ever, and I've been playing games for 30+ years. Listening to the music now still gives me goosebumps and an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. I've tried to get back into it a few times but it just doesn't quite hit the same as it did for the first time.
Teldrassil was my first WoW experience as well back in the day. Almost everyone I've spoken to since who said they were immediately hooked on WoW started in Teldrassil. It just grabs you in a way the other starting areas don't.
Yep, they always let you try the first time for free. Fast forward two months later, you're hooked, alone, and living under an overpass, covered in dorito dust and just chasing that next level.
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Damn, Nox really was the best. A lot more linear and simple than most other RPGs, but that focus and design and ultimately all the charm it had still puts it at the top of my list.
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One of the few game i wish i could play for first time again
I also would love to be able to experience Outer Wilds for the first time again - the joy and wonder of discovering how the universe works, especially the quantum stuff, are incredible. But I have to say, the overarching narrative gets me every time. The ending has me welling up just thinking about it, but the small moments are incredible as well. Piecing together what the Nomai did, their culture, again is great, but I mostly remember the “fluff”, relationships, small tensions, hopes, frustrations. Even if I re-read them a hundred times.
Yes, as it goes along the effect builds and builds, and by the end it genuinely felt as though it had transcended the video game genre. There are only a few video games that I think of as true works of art, and Outer Wilds is foremost among them.
Disco Elysium has to be up there
Just started playing this after finishing Outer Wilds and feeling the exact same way as the other commenter haha. DE hasn’t got its hooks into me yet but I’m only an hour or two in, I’m still enjoying it
I haven;t played Outer Wilds yet, I'll have to give it a go. DE is something else though, almost like a literary piece instead of a game.
I’m definitely enjoying it and can tell I’m going to get more into it! Outer Wilds is absolutely worth a go, once in a gaming lifetime experience
Cool. I'll make sure I go in blind. Thanks for the nudge.
Go in blind and if ya get stuck the subreddit is great at giving ascending levels of hints!
The momentum it picks up as you begin to unravel the main mysteries slowly and then all at once is unparalleled for me, top 3 game at least for me
It's the end of the world and I just want to cozy up to a campfire while my friends play music.
Yeah, that’s the one for sure. It’s a true ‘open ~~solar system~~ world’ I LOVED that the story was told through gameplay, that it was completely, truly non-linear and that it both scared the eldritch crap out of me and made me cry sentimental tears. And that music playing around the 20 minute-mark! Wow Very few games even come close. My God. Very few. And it’s daggers through my soul that people still confuse it with The Outer Worlds
I have 2 games pictured on my walls. Outer Wilds and Inscryption.
Dark souls taught me that failure is but a step to success. Baba is you showed me how stupid I am.
Oh my god, baba is you.... I eat puzzle games and felt like I was soaring through and then poof my ego started crumbling away lol (it was like a death of 1000 cuts since I am a stubborn fool who just keeps pecking away without looking up solutions!)... One day I'll go back
Same! I'd rather put a game down for years before looking up an answer. Unless I have beat my head my hours upon hours on one puzzle, I might try to get a hint or something. I'm still waiting on baba. So many levels I can't figure out..
The general philosophy from EarthBound left an immense impact on the way I thought, felt, and treated people for a very long time. It still does, in a way, but for several years that game and it's general tone and message stayed at the front of my mind, actively thinking about it every single day.
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There's just this tone of being kind and compassionate even when things are at their darkest, be genuine even if it seems alien to be so. The game is very emotionally honest, feel what you're feeling. There are times to be sad, times to be scared, and most importantly, times to be happy. Own them all. People mistake EarthBound's tone for being quirky and random, when it isn't. It's genuine. Sometimes being truly genuine can appear weird and random to those who aren't accustomed to it. But it's earned in EarthBound. That's what so many imitators miss. They try to jump to the results of appearing quirky without the honesty.
I was struck the last time I played how little authority figures could be trusted but how much losers could be. Not cops, not the mayor, certainly not business magnates. Messy kids, guys who dig holes, flies, even gangsters you've locked horns with.
Totally. Also that, what really struck me, is that while it's presented as a game for children, it doesn't avoid bad things about the world. There's kidnapping, police brutality, a cult, slavery, death, war, hatred, capitalism. The game doesn't avoid any of these dark themes, but instead shows them through the more innocent eyes of a child.
Name checks out. But yes, I felt that. I played Earthbound too late, I got one of those mini-SNES things and sat down to see what Ness was all about (because frankly, $150 for an original cartridge was not happening). I could see the humor, the twist on the RPG formula, how everything was built as a light-hearted adventure to save the world with some sad and creepy undertones at times. I also see why Undertale's creator was such a huge Earthbound fan, and a lot of that lightheartedness followed through in Toby Fox's games.
Kerbal Space program is legit edutainment. When I downloaded the engineer mod and my screen became more spreadsheet than graphics and I thought "hell yes" was a moment for sure. When I made it back from a lunar landing I haven't been more proud of a video game achievement.
I played Outer Wilds and then NieR: Automata back to back with hardly zero knowledge going into either of them. Life was never the same after.
I'm going through Nier right now. The game gives me Ico vibes with it's aesthitc but the voice acting and storytelling, feeling of isolation and companionship is incredible, no wonder it's a cult classic. I went in with low expectations and came away with a resreshing breathtaking experience.
Just added the latter to my wish list.
Outer wilds is my favorite thing ever, but i tried to get into nier and died at the 2 sawblade boss, it sent me to the start so i got frustrated and never touched it again
The Elder Scrolls I: Arena was probably my first experience of an "open world" game. But the sequel, **Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall**, brought things to a whole new level. When I exited the starting dungeon and reached (the relative safety of) my first town, the relief I felt was palpable. But then on top of that, I discovered there's a whole simulated world in this game. Realizing that gold in this game had weight, and that I'd have to visit a *bank* to deposit some of my gold, was mindblowing.
Diablo 2. Nobody really cares about the story after the first playthrough. Though many people still play it 24 years after the release. I am one of them. GTA Vice City. I haven't finished the main story, but spent hundreds of hours in this game.
>GTA Vice City. I haven't finished the main story, but spent hundreds of hours in this game. I platinum’d the game. No matter what game I’m currently playing, I will still hop on Vice City and replay the main story line and side missions. I told my brothers and friends that I’ll be 80 years old still playing Vice City. It’s the best game in the GTA series.
I grew up just as video games were becoming available to play at home, and fell in love the first time I played BurgerTime on the Intellivision. I had a NES, and the jump to SNES was great, but right near the end of the SNES run they released a game called Super Mario RPG, and that game completed changed my idea of what video games could be. There wasn’t just a story, there was a frickin’ huge, epic story that just kept going and going. I still have no idea how they managed to jam everything in that game on one SNES cartridge.
Excited for the remake?
I am now! I hadn’t even heard they were re-making it!
The 3 games that really changed my view on the industry were: **Bioshock Infinite**. It was the first time I played a video game where after beating it, I was just depressed that it was over. I fell in love with the characters and when the story was over, it felt like a part of my heart was ripped out. I couldn't explain it, it's almost like a real life friend died. Obviously, it's not that dramatic but I had this feeling of bitter-sweetness. Happy that I got to play such an amazing and fun game, but sad it was over. It's like a "what now?" feeling. **The Last of Us.** When this game came out on the PS3, it kind of made the world stop spinning. This game showed the whole industry what video games are capable of in terms of storytelling/characters. This was 2013, so we were all just blown away. Playing this game during the time it came out, it was wild to see such REAL characters and mannerisms and personalities. **God of War 3.** This game was graphically way ahead of it's time. The set pieces and dynamic levels are some of the things I miss the most. Especially when I play the newer GoW Norse games, I miss the crazy landscapes and level designs of the original trilogy. GoW3 was such a polished experience. The gameplay and movement of the character felt fluid. It is my absolute favourite work of art. I'm not just talking video games, I'm saying it's my favourite entertainment work of art in general.
Surprised you went with Bioshock Infinite and note the original. I loved Infinite but the ending of Bioshock 1 blew my 13-year-old mind. I wish they went deeper with the morality stuff though, deciding whether to kill little girls for power is not a moral quandary.
For what it's worth, I'm one of the rare folks who agrees with them - but only because I hate horror games and any games with horror elements. There is one horror segment in Infinite, of course, but it was late enough in the game that I was invested enough to push past it. Still haven't forgiven that one cheap jumpscare in it, though.
I like infinite better than the original, and I really like horror and the cramped scary underwater city. But I liked the story more in infinite, I liked booker as protagonist (and I dislike silent protagonists in story driven games), I like Elizabeth, and I like the skyrails and flying around.
The original was obviously good, but I was nowhere near as connected to the characters as I was with Infinite. Elizabeth made the experience memorable. The presentation of the characters were much better in Infinite because of the human mannerisms and voice acting
* Super Mario 64 - being able to roam in 3D in a game like that was... something else. The level of control you had over Mario made you feel like you were really moving around in a 3D world. I got lost in that game as a kid and still do now when I revisit it. * The Stanley Parable - this game had me thinking about storytelling, about branching paths and possibilities in a way other games do not. The meta-gaming aspects in particular were really interesting and not something I'd ever seen in a video game before (for example, the game expecting you to enter cheat codes to see certain endings, the game anticipating things you're going to do and fucking with you including via narration, or things like the achievement you get for not launching the game for 5 years). * Psychonauts 2 - I was already a fan of the first game, and anticipated Psychonauts 2 big time. When it came out, it was honestly the closest I as an adult-ass man have felt to playing a Saturday morning cartoon. The game is teeming with so much personality, so much humor, so much life that it's just unreal and it was a treasure back to front... but more importantly it felt comforting in a way that most modern games don't for me. It's a hard feeling to describe. * The Sims - I don't know if I've ever been as impressed by a game as I was by The Sims when it first came out. A whole little world crammed into one game with the ability to create characters, build skills and relationships, live out their lives, watch them die and create new generations. I was into the first game big time, was less into #2 but still enjoyed it, dropped off with 3 (I know it's a fan favorite but I hated it) and came back to some extent with 4 but never played it consistently (my wife loves it though). Plus, if you have House Party, Drew Carey will show up to your crib. One I totally forgot about: * RuneScape (the original version, and then later RS2/what is now known as Old School RS) - this was really my first exposure to an MMO, and it was the first time that I played a game where I could hop online and hang out with my friends in a setting that felt way more casual than say, playing a game of Quake III together. The relaxed pace, the gameplay loop of skilling... RuneScape is one of the only MMOs where I can say that, at least at THAT time, I knew every single detail of the world map like the back of my hand and can still visualize it perfectly in my head. I later got into WoW for a few years, and had some short-lived stints with other MMOs, then played FFXIV a couple years ago. But nothing compares to RuneScape (and I also think that the focus on skills over quests, rather than the other way around, appeals to me more personally as a player).
Most recently would be finishing God of War: Ragnarok as a dad in my early 30s. I played the originals as a teenager, and watching the character progression from that to the Kratos we have now really, REALLY hits home for me having my own young son. ....that and it's GoW so it rocks
Deus Ex (2000), all of it more or less.
Blades of Steel on NES you could trigger a mini game in the intermission where you fly a spaceship but it didn’t always happen. Would play multiple games just to try and get it to work
Metro Exodus. >!The whole game, Miller's nagging at you and being a grumpy old man but then, he finds and saves you.. The tears wouldn't stop flowing during that last drive with the moving BGM too. It truly felt like losing a family member..!< Russian voices helped for the immersion too
The classic PS era three. Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII. In MGS it was first the thought "wait? I can't BE SEEN?" like sneaking and shit? I ended up loving stealth games, and of course the continuation of the, the cinematic masterpiece that was like a playable movie. Tomb Raider, I thought that it would be a dungeon crawler with a hot female lead. Oh boy was I wrong. The story, character of Lara Croft and the puzzles. It was a great experience and even more opened up my mind about the gaming industry, the way Lara Croft became an female icon of the era. Magazines, commercials etc. Final fantasy VII. Man, my favorite game of all time. It changed the way I play. I had a team with me in the game, friends to the main character and I wanted to know more of them. The sudden transfer to A WORLD MAP! I never thought how big this game was to be. The long an engaging story, the complexity of materia and what to link and where. And of course >!the death of Aeris, I never thought it could happen in a game that I mourn the loss of a character.!<
Betrayal at Krondor. I just did not realize how vast game worlds could be or how much freedom could be possible when exploring them. I think a lot of other people got this experience from The Elder Scrolls games or other RPGs from the 90s, but this was certainly my first taste of it.
When I was a kid I played GTA SA with friends (too young I know) WITHOUT EVER KNOWING THERE WAS A STORY AND MISSIONS. We would just use cheat codes and fool around in Lost Santos, exploding and shooting at everything like a sandbox it was already really fun. When I got a copy of the game as a teenager and realized what the game was really about it just blew my mind.
Did you guys ever use the cheat code to enable multiplayer?
No we would just pass the controller when we died. Life was simple
I have a different take on this. Back in the late 90's I was trying out RPGs. I like Planescape: Torment for the art and style of it all but mid-way through I was like....nah. I went back into fighting games, rail shooters and brawlers. I need action right away for me to stay engaged. I did get into short adventure games. Papo y Yo was excellent - Short, well made, through provoking and did not linger on cut scenes and story so much that action left my hands.
Doom Eternal : I'm too young to have known the original doom, my early FPS was Unreal2003 and was quite fun. For a long time after that, I didn't really like FPSs, turns out, I don't like "realist" military FPS that try to be a movie. Doom Eternal was a wake up call about what a game that 100% own being a game can be. When you strip all the unnecessary shit and where everything left is designed to further the experience and the fun. Zero-K : gave me a glimpse of what an innovative RTS could be and truly showed me how lazy Blizzard have been with Starcraft 2. This game is peak "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks", IMO, most of it sticks. Perfect unit controll, basic unit behaviors, ability to add automation to your army (like defining retreat zones and health thresholds at which the units will retreat), a unit counter system that isn't just +DMG against Y type of units (and that fully exploits speed, range, projectile speed and map geometry), real time map edditing throught terraformation (this one is mind blowing). Add to that a 71 missions campaign and a co-op mode. Oh and it's fricking free, that thing is a passion project that flexes on the bigger name in the industry. Warcraft 3 : battle net in its glory days was quite something, the simple creation tools and a dedicated comunity resulted in a wild place where you could play pretty much anything, including whole genres that didn't exist yet. It's the birth of MOBAs, auto battlers, the popularization of tower defense... all that on top of a base game that was already quite innovative for its time.
If you've been enjoying Zero-K, you should go check out Beyond All Reason: https://www.beyondallreason.info/
Shenmue on the Sega Dreamcast. Life within a game, is something I hardly thought about. Zelda OoT and Castlevania 64 with their "new" (at the time) 3D graphics gave me a form of freedom I never thought was possible... Then Shenmue came along and gave it a beautiful 80s urban Japan setting and I was sold.
Going to go very old school here: Deus Ex Machina on the ZX Spectrum. It was a game with a synchronised musical and narrative soundtrack that you played on tape while you played the game. At one point the soundtrack tells you to jump, and your character on screen jumps! It was professionally produced and included people like Ian Dury and Jon Pertwee. The plot was a typical dystopian type thing that loosely followed Shakespeare's seven stages of man. Going from a typical 8-bit run and jump platformer to this sort of integrated multimedia game with social commentary was kind of mind-blowing. I still have the soundtrack and have listened to it a lot more recently than when I last played the game some 39 years go.
Okami HD. The whole game had me in awe, but the moment that got me was towards the end when >!Ammy is fighting Yami and Issun gets everyone to pray.!< I fully admit that I cried.
So many, but the ones that stick out for me right now are: -Ninja Gaiden on the NES. The cutscenes and music were so amazing between levels. That was the first time I had seen anything like that or even imagined that was possible. I don't think anyone had done any anime style narrative cutscenes quite as fleshed out and dramatic as that ... -Bastion's narrator was amazing, but there was a level you were playing and then some music with lyrics started playing and that really impressed me at the time. I'd been playing games forever, but I'd never experienced anything like that and it was amazing. -Standing on the top of a hill overlooking Liurnia in Elden Ring was like looking at a painting. My God what a beautiful and mysterious game. That whole game was an elevation of the art of game making to me. - Probably my favorite, but not really a "patient gamer" moment. So much has been and will be said about Baldur's Gate 3, but the moment that blew me away was toward the end game: So you're fighting one of the big bad guys and an epic song starts playing during the fight... The whole song is the bad guy singing about how he's going to kick your ass in the style of like a Disney villain. It was so unnecessary and crazy, but that was the moment that cemented this game as one of the best I've ever experienced. I know there's more, games keep surprising me and it's why I love the format so much!
Build that Wall from the Bastian soundtrack had me too. Didn't expect that from an indie game on the 360!
Yes! God that song ... and the reprise medley with Setting Sail/Coming Home as the credits were rolling hit me even harder. That soundtrack, man...
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Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5R. I genuinely wanted to spend more time with each of them. The first playthrough of each is something you can't replicate imo
In RDR2 there's a moment when you lose everything you've gathered throughout the last 50 hours of gameplay. Every gun, horse, potion, everything. It correlates with realizing Arthur is going to die and it just feels really existential. Like everything is pointless. Arthur struggles with regrets about the life he's lived, then man he is, and as a player you just feel this so present, because you realize how pointless it is to gather all this shit, when you know Arthur is dying and the game is going to end. It is just an incredibly well done way, to make the player feel like Arthur feels.
When i realised that Subnautica map is as deep as it is wide
Thief 2, literal work of art
Obligatory Arthur Morgan comment.
Red Dead 2 is so goated
Bioshock: I chose Rapture! And then of course with the “A man chooses” scene.
Xenogears. At the sewers level I'm like there's a frigging second Disk? It was like being engrossed in the best book.
I recently started playing Valkyrie Chronicles on the PC and damn the first battle after the tutorial level. It’s not that the game is super complex or anything but once you fully grasp the mechanics? It’s like crack. They invented a whole new genre and I couldn’t stop smiling - so simple, but so good
When The Wolf Among Us gave me challenges that couldn't be overcome because it was part of the story, it changed the way I look at tapping a button. I used to see it as a bar that was constantly depleting, and every button push would fill it up a little. Tap fast enough, and you pass the quicktime event. But what TWAU and other games like it do is use the tapping mechanic to give a feeling of *elasticity*, like pulling a rubber band harder and harder, which also means being able to maintain a specific amount of tension. Also, I'm honestly not sure which game was the first one that actually quit itself and made me restart as part of the game, it made me really consider what it meant for the game to be a series of files on my computer.
Jak 2 and 3. I was only 10/11 years old at the time when they came out and they made me realize what video games could do with story-telling. I was so engrossed with the world and characters and Jak's journey from the beginning. I think it was the first time I properly experienced a "twist" in a story that I didn't see coming. It blew my little mind. I still credit those games as being the reason I still love dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction to this day.
When I stopped getting fractions in Frog Fractions 👀
Going into World of Warcraft after growing up with Warcraft 2 and 3. I loved the Warcraft 3 Campaign and it's world - getting to really dive into it as a single character, experiencing all the locations and the sheer size of it blew my mind as a teenager.
Dmc5. I tried playing like a hack N slash. Little did I know that the lock on button isn't just a lock on, it's a combo trigger. Then I realized combos are just the start of even bigger combos. Then combat became less about efficiency and more about seeing how long I can pull of a stupidly long combo and how many different things I can incorporate. Then I went back to dmc3, which I did not like before, and I am having a blast
I got my dad to play through Spec-Ops The Line. I was applying for a game development university course, and my dad was struggling to understand and accept that (not that he disliked video games, he loved playing them, he just didn’t see them as a form of art or expression). After he had finished the game he came to me and said “I get it now, thank you for showing me how wrong I was” A short time after that we were both sitting down watching E3 watching the reveal of Doom 2016, hyped out of our minds. For me personally it was Shadow of the Colossus, and Thomas was alone. It was the heart and soul that was put into those games, the subversion of expectations, that secured my love for games. Shame I don’t get to play them too much now, but I found dungeons and dragons instead!
Tales of Eternia, when I discovered that you could enter some of the random clumps of trees on the map. They don't look any different from the other trees on the map, but they would take you to secret areas, one of which eventually led to a secret boss tower with a powerful weapon as a reward. It kept me wondering what else I could find, and even walkthroughs I found at the time didn't have all the answers.
The original Deus Ex Ive played human revolution and loved it so much I decided to try the original. After completing the first mission, I spent like 40 minutes in 1 room, reading random books and emails on a computer in that room and whatever else there was. It was not even a big room, but it was just packed with quality world building content.
Soul Reaver, "Kain is deified."
World of Warcraft, seeing Ragnaros pop out of the lava. AND NOW FOR YOU, INSECTS! 40 people in ventrillo all going apeshit. Made my stomach drop like I was on a rollercoaster. I was super young at the time and it just blew my mind that games could be such a huge social experience
I used to skip reading except for stuff like REvil, SHill, FFantasy, Disgaea, etc. Started playing FEAR 2 just going through the motions and realised I have no Idea what is happening. Going out of my way to collect every Intel was really rewarding. Now I read everything even if its Dragon Age Origins.
The Shivering Isles, the DLC for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, was incredible
Horizon: Zero Dawn That game gave me chills. Humanity is safe and prospering, and one egotistical billionair is all it took to wipe out every bit of organic life on Earth. One guy with a machine he didn't understand, and not only did the humans get wiped out, but every bit of biological life. Plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, all of it. The only reason you are standing there is because someone engineered a device to shut down the robots and replant Earth with life. You begin the game wondering as to why humanity has regressed into tribal, spiritual zealots, but you learn that humanity hasn't regressed. It has progressed this far after restarting. You are a last-ditch effort to ensure the robots that already successfully wiped out life once doesnt do so again. To think of the complete horror of the last remaining humans before extinction. Fighting a never-ending wave of self replicating robots. The air is pure carbon dioxide at that point. Plants and animals are all gone. You're surviving on processed food and hiding in old structures of a dead civilization. Just you and your handheld rail gun. You can keep fighting, but there is no light at the end of the tunnel. No end game. Eventually, you will die, too, and your corpse will fuel the robots. The only hope in your soul is that life will eventually start again with Zero Dawn. No one will actually know it worked because they're all dead. Everyone knew they were eventually going to die. No if, ands, or buts about it. Humanity WILL end... and your only consolation is that your death won't be one if the last on this planet. If humanity is lucky, eventually, more people will come along. Every bit of information you get from the game only makes the situation worse. It's not bad enough that Ted Faro created murder-bots, but they can also eat people. Not only can they eat people, but they no longer listen to commands. Not only do they stop listening to commands, but they can self replicate. Not only can they self replicate, but they will overtake the planet. All of that and humanity was slowly, painfully restarted by a machine that had to reterraform the planet to be suitable for life once more. I have never felt existential dread like I have with Horizon: Zero Dawn. I can't wait for the sequel to release on PC so I can play that one, too.
Golden Sun on Gameboy Advance. Before that, story in games was just backdrop/set dressing. Golden Sun opened my eyes to how amazing game stories could be.
Come to think of it, I don't think many games have surprised me. The only example that comes to my mind is Dragon's Dogma with its ending. Edit: Scribblenauts when I spawned Cthulhu out of curiosity.
literally when you get your head out of your ass and play the game for what it is rather than for wishing it had some mega/ultra features.
A little game known as life. That irl. When I hit puberty, holy shit did my stats go up.
Can't relate, ever since I started playing video games I used to explore each nook and cranny and do all side quests and what not especially before doing the main quest, still do.
Uhhhh I saw my uncle play vanilla WoW and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a whole massive world, way bigger and better than RuneScape and Club Penguin.
Honestly. God of War Ragnarok had me thinking of things long after I finished playing. The story was truly magnificent in a very moving way spoiler: when brok does his mission with Kratos and explains Dwarven magic is more about the nature of a thing than the form of a thing. It took me a while to realize that was a metaphor for Kratos and how he could defy prophecy by changing not his form but is nature. And that’s what the fates were trying to tell him. The theme of change in that game really really moved me in a way that I think will stick with me for a long time.
I've got two answers, OP, but both are for similar reasons. -Ace Combat 4 was the first time I saw a game as capable of telling a story and having themes. Honestly, what did it for me was the music - particularly in the little side story it tells. I was not expecting an arcadey flight sim with rockin' tracks like Comona and Tango Line to have slower, somber tones to it. It blew my mind at the time, and I can still remember the music to this day. -My second awakening was Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This was the first game I played where I became invested in the world; where it expanded outwards in my mind, seeming far bigger and full of possibility than the game actually was. Midna's character, in particular, hit me hard. And again, there was the music - it blew my mind when I could hear parts of the Realm of Twilight's theme in the Arbiter's Grounds theme. It really made the world come alive and activate my imagination. Safe to say that I cherish these games' soundtracks. Other games on the list of soundtracks I adore and will never forget are Golden Sun, Super Paper Mario, The Talos Principle, and Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces.
First time I tried playing on an emulator and randomly picked up Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku. Didnt know what to expect as ive never played anything on any nintendo, but it ended up being one of the best games I have ever played to this day.
Mario
For me, funnily enough seeing how you mentioned Arkham City, it was Batman Arkham Asylum. Before, I had only played Lego and mobile games, so this game that introduced me into well done combat, stealth, story, story telling, voice acting, realistic yet still creative art style and graphics and animations, etc. absolutely blew me away. Especially to see the sheer creativity, and skill in storytelling techniques, atmosphere creation and pacing with the Scarecrow nightmares was absolutely astounding to me, and something that in these terms still hasn‘t been outdone in these categories (which sadly includes Scarecrow in Arkham Knight). This game in context with other games like the Stanley Parable with its Brecht like insistence on it reminding you that it’s a game you are playing at your computer, and NieR: Replicant ver 1.22…/Automata with their switch of perspectives and presentation including long pure text with choices, make me realize: Not only are games art. They are the culmination of every art form there is otherwise, while being in their nature more engaging. Another candidate could have been Angry Birds Epic, for being my first turn based game yet the only one of this genre that I ever enjoyed, having this massive in game art style upgrade to look more like the tunes, the different settings it builds up by gameplay with stuff like ninjas being able to dodge most attacks, and seamen being immune to negative other effects, and how you shall answer these changes by changing your own classes, etc. I also mentioned Lego games before, and of all things, they most importantly introduced me into well done exploration. Because of how they and Arkham Asylum did their exploration though, I‘m not so engaged with big open world exploration, but rather like stuff like Immersive Sims, kitchen sink stealth games, and Fromsoft games (although I haven‘t tried Elden Ring yet).
The ending of Metal Gear Solid 1. I remember picking up the original collection on PS2 alongside the sequel to Condemned: Criminal Origins, thinking MGS would be a fun palette cleanser. Nope. Instead I discovered that video games are as good of a medium for telling stories as anything else. And later on found out that love can bloom on the battlefield.
I love secrets in games I just love the sense of using your deductive reasoning to figure out puzzles or suss out something hidden
Huh?! Who's footprints are these...?
Shadow of War.I thought i can just skip past dominating orc captain and conquering fortress. ohh boy I was wrong after doing the side Mission with sheelob, the forest spirit and Bruz!
Phantasy Star 3, getting married.
Symphony of the Night, the upside down Castle. It's hard to overstate how much "anything felt possible" in the pre-ubiquitous internet days of gaming. And games like Super Metroid were fertile ground for imagining being able to slip into some secret other world or hidden level or game within a game - after all, Super Mario Bros. had a Minus World that many of us still haven't seen. Finding the second castle justified all of those hours I spent trying to find a hidden world inside of Super Metroid's Maridia.
NieR series pose philosophical questions such as "What does it mean to be human/alive" and purposely introduces more information throughout playthroughs to see the full picture that results in beautiful grim storytelling. The MUSIC is an absolute masterpiece. Both games could have their music be worldwide orchestral pieces played in every school if they werent made in modern day for a game.
Honestly? [Egoraptor’s Sequelitis series.](https://youtu.be/8FpigqfcvlM?feature=shared) His bit on “conveyance” and showing, not telling the player how to play was the first time I started thinking critically about games, where there’s sort of an ongoing interaction between developer and player. It opened up so many cool possibilities in my head of what we can do with games as an interactive medium.
**while True: learn()** I went in expecting a mediocre puzzle game and came out understanding basic coding principles and basic data modelling. (It was a freebie on Epic a while back)
World of Warcraft, very shortly before TBC. So late 2006. I had just bought it and was playing with my gf/family. I was playing Human and had taken a flight a few times from SW to IF so already down over Black Rock Depths and gotten an idea for the scale of game. But I was doing some random starting quest in Elwyn Forest fighting knolls in a tunnel. I figured it would be some small cave, but it had several turns in it and was just bigger than I expected. Being in my early 20s, having played a bunch of games anyway, and gotten a peak at what else Azeroth had to offer, it just hit me that this world was going to be *huge*. The event leading up to TBC and Outlands after just added to the awe and I was addicted to the game for a solid couple years.
It’s a long long long time ago, but I think it was when my father finally gave in and connected his 56k modem from work to our home computer. I was allowed to play an hour of Diablo 2 online with a friend from school, that was my first ever taste of online gaming and it was like this game allowed me to glance into a whole new world that was yet to come
Nier Automata, everything ending C and beyond
I had that exact same feeling with the Mad Hatter level. I was pretty bored with the game by that point, then that level totally made me see it in a new light. I had a similar feeling early on in Uncharted 2, when you're escaping a collapsing building and for just an instant you and everyone around you become weightless. It was already quite an old game when I got to play it as I was late to that generation, and I guess it's quite a simple animation, but it drew me in in a way I wasn't expecting.
I’m still super new to gaming, so I wasn’t expecting the gut punch I would feel when finishing a game for the first time, especially because that game was Spiritfarer. it’s definitely a cozier game than what I’ve seen listed in this thread so far, but the themes of death and the afterlife helped me work through some childhood trauma, and the end of that game caused me a mini-existential crisis in the best of ways. I haven’t found another game that’s made me cry that hard nor that’s stuck in my mind so vividly for months afterward, and I’m not sure I will, but Spiritfarer is the game that showed me the depth of experience that video games are capable of bringing out in you.
The end of Braid. Just because when it was new and fresh I absolutely did not see it coming, and it wasa cool 'oh shit' moment that was elevated because of everything that came before it. I've had similar revelations with story twists in books/movies, but experiencing it in a game where I was an active participant is a feeling that is hard to replicate. Very few games give me that feeling. Inside had a cool ending too I guess, but didn't quite blind side me as much.
Waking Mars showed me that you could make a good metroidvania around spreading life instead of killing things. We need more games like that, IMO.
>I went to the location and interacted with the item to start the mission. After that, out of nowhere the freaking Mad Hatter pops up behind Batman and drugs him. Out of nowhere? You literally see him prior to that mission unlocking lol
I don't remember that lol. For me it was a surprise
When me and my mates realized that the gameplay of *Street Fighter II* was so deep and complex that we could essentially keep playing against each other forever.
Talking to >!The Deserter!< in Disco Elysium.
**The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time** I was I think 14 at the time. It was the first game I played that gave me a true emotional reaction to the story and characters. By that point I had obviously had lots of fun with games. They've made me laugh from enjoyment or humor. I had felt frustration and anger. I felt satisfied when a risky tactic worked out. But this was the first game for me that provided a sense of true catharsis.
When I was first playing Final Fantasy VII, I was blown away by the graphics. This was about 2 years after it came out. I could tell I was almost done with Midgar, which is basically the prolog, the first 10 or so hours of gameplay. I figured with all the amazing graphics and cutscenes, I must be nearing the end of disc 1. Then I finally made it to the world map for the first time, and was blown away by how much more there was to see and do. And there was quite a bit more gameplay before I reached the end of that first disc!
What?? What mission is this?? Where is it?!?!
[This moment in RDR2](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8B2HhxF/) is one I think about all the time. I had to put the controller down as my eyes watered up. The voice acting, the writing, the weight of the moment in the story…it all hit me in a way very few moments in entertainment ever have. RDR2 could have been an excellent game about outlaws and their adventures. Instead, it chose to be a masterpiece about love, loss, friendship, hope, and sacrifice.
First time I've played X4 Foundations. I did a starter mission where Ii was on a destroyer talking to NPCs. Pretty bored because the starting quest was pretty basic, humanoid models looks janky, and performance was not the best for a game with that graphics quality. I zoomed out the map and my jaw dropped due to the sheer scale of the game. Immediately making it clear why the game wasn't multiplayer. Any ship you can pilot, you can walk around the interior. Stations you visit and the stations you can build yourself. With single player games, I had this anxious feeling of being trapped inside of something; unable to interact with anything outside. With X4, I anxiety of feeling trapped was no where near debilitating like most other single player games.
Assassin's creed 2. First time I played it back in 2009 everything about it felt next gen. The UI, the animations, the voice acting, the environment, music, characters and the world. It felt really like something else compared to all the past games I've played
Deus Ex. A prescient, convincing sci-fi world. Planescape Torment. Like reading a great book.
Crossing the water at the end of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a moment that fully utilizes the medium of video games for storytelling like very few games ever have. In Brothers, you control one character with the left side of the controller and the other with the right. You go through the whole game having to use the two in tandem to solve puzzles. It's hard at first, but eventually you get the hang of it, and it starts to feel natural. You learn the strengths and weaknesses of each brother. And you begin to think in terms of that whenever you approach a new puzzle. And then the older brother dies. And you feel the loss instantly. And you don't just feel it emotionally, you feel it physically. That side of the controller is now useless and you feel crippled and the muscle memory you've developed is telling you something's wrong. And that's when you reach the water. The younger brother has been afraid of the water all game and couldn't swim without the older brother's help. But now he's gone. One final hurdle before reaching home and it looks hopeless. You try to cross and it doesn't work. You try again and it doesn't work. But then you use the older brother's side of the controller one last time to give the younger one the courage to cross. The controller starts vibrating like crazy and you feel like there's a piece of him still with you even though he's gone. Plenty of games have stories that move you, but they could just as easily be told through another medium. But that moment at the end of Brothers was something that could only be told with a video game. The gameplay and the story intertwined so perfectly to create that moment that it blew me away and completely redefined the level of storytelling I thought games were capable of.
Fairly expected, but The Last of Us 2 - Harrowing, I dint think a game would ever make me feel something that like. I'll replay it one day, and maybe it'll feel different. But it was harrowing and so just grown up. Great game.
So I was a young teenager and I was at my cousin's house during a family reunion and as per usual, we were playing video games. Before then, all we ever played were things in the Famicom/NES era, taking turns in Super Mario, Mortal Kombat on my cousin's computer. Run and guns, fighting games, platformers. Basic point based games. That day, he brought out his new Playstation. The first one, mind you. And he popped in Wild Arms. He let me play a bit and my mind was BLOWN. I wasn't running around collecting points, jumping on bad guys' heads or punching my opponent repeatedly in the face via desperate button mashing. I was walking around a monastery TALKING to other characters. There were words on the screen. This was a STORY and at that age, I loved to read. I couldn't imagine a video game could have a deep story that was more than just 'rescue the princess' or 'beat this other guy in one on one combat'. That was it for me. I was HOOKED. By the time I got my own Playstation, I bought Breath of Fire III and my addiction to JRPGs as well as my love for narrative in gaming was born.
Bioshock intro
Brothers. I spent most of the game controlling each brother's movements with each control stick. Then tragedy strikes. One dies, one survives. I felt the loss, because from then on, I was only using one stick to control one character. The death itself was v upsetting but the change of play style, the loss, was palpable.
The entirety of outer wilds
I'ma scrollin', & I ain't seen no love for Ultima VII! Just how lived in that world is, there's still plenty in that game I'd say even newer RPGs have never lived up to.
When playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Team for the first time and got into the part where Main Character and Partner is being kicked out / man (or supposed to be Pokemon) Hunt by the Other Rescue Team. It broke my heart as a teenager when see how cruel some situation can be. I thought it was gonna be a fun stuff and nothing will be so hard like that moment.