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It's all about the atmosphere. For a few hours, you've been walking around the bleak overworld of the World of Ruin. Familiar continents twisted and towns ruined, with this song as he overworld theme.
But then, you start to bring the band back together, and find some hope worth fighting for. It really hits home when you uncover a second airship, and raise it from its underground tomb. There's this great cutscene of the thing rising out of the ocean, slicing through the water in its wake as it does so, and this song permanently replaces he bleak overworld music.
So many good moments in the probably 25 years I've been playing games.
The first time powering up in MechWarrior 2.
Finding the reverse castle in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
The whole last mission in Freespace 2 when you realize the Shivan's have more than one of those huge capital ships.
Getting ambushed in the original Half-Life and losing all my weapons.
Just the whole opening sequence to Half-Life 2. You really get a feel for the depression going through those apartments before you start getting chased.
The first time going through that suspension bridge sequence in Half-Life 2 where you have to go under the bridge.
Looking up at the Earth from the Moon in Mass Effect, even if the continents were reversed by accident.
The whole ending sequence to the first Halo, on the Warthog. I played that with my college roommate the first time, and we were yelling at each other the whole time. It was great.
So many more, but it's hard to name them all.
In no particular order:
-Getting onto the first outdoor bridge in Ico and seeing the sheer size of the castle for the first time. Then, later, the ending.
-The trial in Chrono Trigger. Simple, but the fact I was so upset about my "guilty" verdict shows just how fast that game made me emotionally invested.
-Beating the Rebel Mothership in FTL for the first time. (Even if it was on Easy...)
-The canals in Half-Life 2. Really made me feel like a badass fugitive. All right, Half-Life 2 and its Episodes have dozens of unforgettable moments.
-The reveal of the Archangel mission in Mass Effect 2 has been mentioned before, but man that was a whole barrel of fun with a downright heartwarming payoff.
-"The fall" in Portal 2 and what you find "down there." Definitely one of the better "breather levels" I've played.
-Beating Red in Soul Silver after training and preparing for so long.
-Entering the Phazon mines in Metroid Prime. The music for that section was perfect: I was nervous as hell the whole time.
-Beating the Queen in Metroid 2. Such a simple game yet so very challenging and satisfying. Now I can only hope for a remake/release.
-Entering Hell for the first time in Cave Story... and promptly dying. I knew I was in a new class of game then.
-Gaining access to Second Class in Starship Titanic. Took me FOREVER to figure it out.
-Seeing people in Riven.
-The sand dragon colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. Probably one of the most epic, enjoyable battles I've ever experienced in a video game.
-Lots of little moments in pre-WotLK WoW, mostly roleplaying and exploration stuff. And the zombie event thing too.
To my ten year old self, everything about this game was epic. Becoming a paladin, learning about the dark crystals and going to the underworld, the return of Rydia, the betrayals of Kain, going to the fucking MOON, man. Wow. This game was my first experience with a real story in a video game, and it was completely amazing.
Shadow of the Colossus
When you lose Agro...and then when he returns at the end. *sniff*
Unlike the streamlined piloting of Battlefield 3, piloting a chopper in Battlefield 2 required a lot of fine adjustments on a continual basis as you flew it. But once you found a decent pilot and gunner, it became a way to rack up a lot of kills quickly. The whole process of being a high-value target, and seeing people try to improvise some way of taking you out on the ground with SRAW rockets and 50 cal mounted machine guns, made the entire round light up with excitement as you weaved your way around the terrain, ambushing pockets of resistance and then swooping off for repairs. The first time I gunned with a friend of mine and we circled a spawn point, knowing that we were crushing the morale of enemy soldiers, was exhilarating.
So of course, when I played on the ground, and managed to lead my shot from 1000 meters away to hit a Cobra on the fly with my tank shell, taking it out in one hit, I nearly burst out of my chair. The two kill notifications and "+2 +2" points rolled across my screen, and I couldn't help but think: Not this time, fellas.
Dawn of War II
Playing as 4 squads with widely varying abilities can be fun in and of itself, but there was a time in the game when something just clicked for me. I was no longer controlling 4 different squads, I was operating a single machine. And in order to maximize enemy destruction I needed a coordinated defense/offense. I remember one particular point defense mission had me worried because I wasn't sure if I could keep an eye on all the generators we were to protect.
As swarms of tyranids skittered around cover, rushing in to disable my ranged units, I sent the Assault marines hurtling down on top of them (To the sky, brothers!), sending the tyranids flying to the ground and disabling their mass rush attack. With heavy thuds signaling a Carnifex lumbering into the battlefield, my Force Commander hefted his Hammer and counter assaulted, charging a two-story high clawed monster with nothing but gumption on his side. Seeing a tactical advantage, My Tactical Squad approached into close range and lit up flamers, sweeping and mopping up what little remained of the smaller units.
Which is when the second wave of Tyranid warriors and genestealers began coming in to support the Carnifex.
Undaunted, my Dreadnaught walker stomped to brace himself, and then spun up his hellfire cannon, scything through the Carnifex and most of the next wave, lending his strength to the Force Commander's. (Or put another way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJU5kUj6Puo&t=61)
All of this happened within the span of perhaps 10 seconds.
And the Assault marines signalled the ready for jump again.
As if on cue, blue armor and weapons began dropping from fallen enemies for me to pick up. Dawn of War 2 and the Emperor approved, it would seem.
I was playing the DS version. The scene where the twins turn themselves to stone to save you and then trying to turn them back. I was really upset by that.
Chrono Trigger:
They actually killed the main character. That really surprised me.
Xenoblade:
The killing (and then the return) of Fiora. Until she came back, I thought Shulk would end up with Melia.
The ONE moment that always stuck with me was stepping outside Irenicus' dungeon in Baldurs Gate 2 - after the cut scene I knew that I was in for a gaming experience of a lifetime. Honestly that game is full of those moments and is to this day the best game I have ever played.
There are a multitude of moments in Freespace 2 that I remember very fondly
the Sathanas is Jumping out DIVE DIVE DIVE! Hit your burner's pilot, being one of them. The end missions as the hope you have for the future is GONE. a mind-blowingly huge alien fleet is around a son and there is NOTHING you can do to stop it.
I have a ton of these moments, at the moment I can't write them all down.
+1
Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Resident Evil 4
There's a section of the Krauser fight where he's on a high wall, and pops out from behind cover to shoot arrows at you. You need to wait for him to emerge to get a good shot...but one time I was able to see that he had a little bit of his body exposed while he was hunkered down, and managed to hit it with the sniper rifle. Don't know it if did much damage, but it sure felt good.
Didn't matter if you were a world first guild, or a casual random raid group. Taking down the Lich King in World of Warcraft is a highlight for everyone who raids it seems. As well, the race to the end of Halls of Reflection was extremely tense. You've got the End-game boss slowly walking towards you, and you're trying run away, but he keeps placing walls of ice and tossing monsters at you. Got rather terrifying near the end, since if he got close to you, you were dead.
You know, this made me realize that I'd classify my whole first year or two of WoW as an unforgettable moment. I'd never played an MMO before and had previously found myself scoffing at games like EverQuest (despite never even seeing it in action). Exploring the world of Azeroth for the first time was an incredible experience. Discovering new areas was great, and trying to sneak through the opposing side's zones while on a PVP server actually got my heart racing the first time I did it. I joined three major guilds over the years, the first of which was not worth mentioning, the second actually full of cooler people who were around my age or older (27+ at the time), and the third with people from this forum around the time of the release of Wratch of the Lich King. That was the first time I went on a raid instance, and I had a lot of fun clearing Naxxramas with everyone.
Sadly, I've lost interest in the game. Mists of Pandaria was the first expansion where I didn't hit the level cap before losing interest. Oh well. The awesome memories remain.
Man, you totally stole my thread idea ;-)
It's cool though, no one posted in it for some reason.
Just gonna copy & paste then:
Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals on the SNES. The game's about 20 years old now, but I'll still use spoiler tags, to be on the safe side:
Partway through the game, you meet a character called Dekar. He's a buffoon, a wannabe womanizer, but still extremely likeable and incredibly strong in combat. Some time after he joins your party, however, he sacrifices himself, enabling the rest of the party to escape from a crumbling temple. The party (and the player) is devastated, but the game goes on nonetheless. At the very end of the game, the party is about to depart for the final dungeon when the port town they're currently in is suddenly overrun by monsters, preventing them from leaving in their airship. The situation is desperate when suddenly you hear "Ha, those are all just babies!" from off-screen and, accompanied by a heroic fanfare, Dekar comes riding in on a fucking whale and saves the day.
I was completely blown away and if I had to choose, that was probably my favorite moment in a video game ever.
My next Magic Moment is from a pretty recent game, namely The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Some people dislike the motion controls, but I had no issues with them, and most of all, they made the following possible: Pulling the Master Sword out from its resting place is something that happens in every other Zelda. It's always a special moment (I especially love when it happens in Wind Waker), but this time, the key difference is that, thanks to the game's motion controls, it is actually you, the player, who pulls the sword out from the stone - and to me, that was absolutely amazing. Link raising the sword above his head at the same time as, or rather because the player is doing the same with the Wii Remote, was glorious.
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, end of Chapter 2 (so not really spoilers as such, just a ridiculous crowning moment of awesome):
The whole chapter is basically building up to and hinting towards it. You finally get to the Neutron gun and take on the Decepticon army pummeling the Arc. Then when it runs out of energy, you try to head back, but the door shuts ahead of you. Then this happens (start from 33:40, or 35:40 if you want to get straight to the relevant part):
Metroid - Samus is a girl?!!
Doom - finding out you could make the cyberdemon fight the spider mastermind
X-Com - wait i can blow up buildings?
GTA 3 VC - killing vance
Silent Hill - pyramid head
Metal Gear Solid - Psycho Mantis
Bioshock - descending to rapture
Dead Space - Realizing whats up with Isaac
Fallout 3 - Exiting the Vault/Nuking Megaton
Finding out Goldeneye 007 had a worthwhile multiplayer after beating the single player twice. It was like opening a treasure chest full of gold coins and then finding another full treasure chest buried directly under it.
Throughout the game you are a loyal soldier in the service of the Republic who gets caught up for more than he signed on for. You play through the game, save Jedi, learn you can use the Force, become a Jedi and then, HOLY SHIT IT WAS YOU. You were Revan! I did not even consider that and it blew my mind at the time, considering I played on the PC and it was probably a good year or longer after the Xbox game came out I should be glad I didn't get spoiled.
Bioshock:
A man chooses, a slave obeys. With that you kill Andrew Ryan, but only after learning all this time you were being controlled. "Would you kindly". One of those great little moments if you never played Systemshock.
Bioshock Infinite:
You try to save this girl for your own purposes, to pay that mysterious debt only to find out there is no debt. You sold her in the first place to pay it off twenty years past and you've been yanked into a parallel world that she now inhabits while your parallel self became the very man you've been fighting at. You decide to smoother him in his crib, it's the only way to end it, for you that means drowning by parallel daughters. Oh and did I mention you ended up in Rapture near the end, damn.
Red Dead Redemption:
All you wanted to do was to get away from the past and the crimes you did. You get blackmailed into taking down those you were once friends or partners with all to live good clean life redeemed. Unfortunately others don't view it as such, your the last nail left to be hit and when they come they come in force. You fight back but there is only one true way to save your wife and son. You walk out of the barn, shoot several police/army and then shot repeatedly, bleeding you stand and then you fall.
Suikoden II
You come to hate the main villain of the story, he slaughters thousands. Makes women get down on all fours and pretend to be a pig to save themselves and still cuts them down for a laugh. He will destroy everything. Eventually your whole army goes up to take him down, you fight him back to back in several fights with various members you have out of your army, at last you take him down with arrows in a well placed trap. Finally down, defeated did you think he was going to beg? No, he all but laughs at you saying it took hundreds to end him but he killed thousands. End of story...oh no wait! Your former best friend ends up leading the enemy forces after, he knows just because Luca Blight is dead it means nothing, his country is still hungry for war, his followers will only keep it going, so he sets things up to sabotage things from the inside. He goes the distance allowing you to defeat him and all those that followed him but not without one potential last grand cost.............and if that isn't all enough years later you learn why Luca Blight did what he did. Turns out the carriage carrying him and his mother was capture but people from the main characters home country, they repeatedly raped his mother right in front of him which his father hid away in one of his castles. It adds even more tragic context to the whole thing rarely felt in video games.
The Witcher:
Want to play a game where morality isn't a choice that is either good or evil and you pick depending on how you want your character to be. This is it. As Geralt you point how only the witchers blade is for true monsters, you kill many such creatures with the blade. In the end you fight a man who is persecuting anything non human including killing them, it leads to you going after him where he uses some magic to show you what he claims to be a future in which humanity is devolved due to a new ice age. Everything he's done is suppose to help humanity to live through this, you still fight him, down and defeated you raise your blade ready to finish it. He looks up and in a soft voice mentions "that blade is for monsters". The same thing you told Alvin a body you had took charge of who was extremely magically gifted and could tap into forces he couldn't control that caused him to vanish. You find his amulet on the body of the grandmaster you had just killed.
When you first meet the Water Dragon. Master Li betraying you. That really stuck.
Mass Effect
All 3 games had their moments. Getting Saren to blow his own brains out. Benezia's death. Mordin's loyalty mission, hell Mordin. And I know it gets a lot of shit but the ending to Mass Effect 3. Walking towards the ending that you know will kill your character (who you have spent years with and on) and having "An End, Once and For All" play.
Tenchu: Stealth Assassins
Rikimaru dying at the end to save Ayame and Kiku. They retconned it, but it was still powerful
Final Fantasy VI
The opera house. Hell so much of that game period. In my mind the best Final Fantasy to this day. Better than 7, 8, what have you.
Throwing in my experience of the big twist in KOTOR as well. I hadn't ever considered something of that nature in videogames before, so when it happened it completely blew my mind.
Similarly, in Mass Effect 2 on the mission to recruit Archangel. My reaction, summarized:
"This is a pretty cool mission, this Archangel guy must be pretty great to handle all this being thrown at him for so long. Let's just head up these stairs and meet our new crew memb...
HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT'S GARRUS"
And then Shepard had essentially the same reaction as I did, which made me grin even harder.
Lavender Gooms on
+3
HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
I want to echo the Bioshock, Half-life 2, and Portal moments, but here are a few I don't think have been mentioned much:
Unraveling the Milkman Conspiracy in Psychonauts. I'll also never forget the limitless string of expletives prompted by the Meat Circus level at the end.
The whole last hour or so of Shadow of the Colossus. Absolutely heartbreaking.
The twist and reveal in 999: perhaps the best example I know of of a developer designing a twist around the uniqueness of the console hardware.
The final case in Phoenix Wright 3, which tied up every loose thread in the trilogy, including threads we never even knew were loose.
It's all about the atmosphere. For a few hours, you've been walking around the bleak overworld of the World of Ruin. Familiar continents twisted and towns ruined, with this song as he overworld theme.
But then, you start to bring the band back together, and find some hope worth fighting for. It really hits home when you uncover a second airship, and raise it from its underground tomb. There's this great cutscene of the thing rising out of the ocean, slicing through the water in its wake as it does so, and this song permanently replaces he bleak overworld music.
After about 6 of hours of trudging through the World of Ruin feeling like everything you've worked for is lost, like every challenge is insurmountable, suddenly you have hope. It really is the climax to the game, everything else is denouement: rescuing your friends, gearing up, and kicking Kefka's ass is just the payoff.
The other cutscene that I will never forget, at least in part due to the music, is Rachel's:
By the point you've rescued some other party members and geared up a bit, because the Phoenix Cave would pass in any other game for the final level. It makes you switch between two parties to solve puzzles, fight some nasty monsters, and one of the eight dragon bosses. It's long and hard, and throughout you find yourself with little other than empty treasure chests and a dwindling supply of Potions.
And you're only here on a rumor and a hunch, because the only party member you can't seem to find is Locke. He was one of the main characters in the World of Balance and his absence makes the game feel empty. But he's a treasure hunter, after all, and there is one treasure so valuable to Locke that he won't rest, won't rejoin the others until he has found it. It's odd, because he's the man of action, the first to line up for taking down Kefka. The first one to protect Terra, the one who puts his life on the line to save Celes in her darkest hour, the one who vouches for her without hesitation after she appears to betray the party.
What could be so important to a man with so much loyalty to his friends, that keeps him from joining with them again?
It's something difficult to conceive of a game in which there are five or six whole story arcs that would surpass the entirety of character development in many other RPGs for both length and thematic weight. This is merely one of them in FFVI.
We're very thankful that you saved all our lives... but we're scared shitless of you. So... get out. *Que cutscene of lonely walk into the wasteland.*
Fallout 2, not a spoiler.
New Reno, I was walking down the street and all around the people were talking shit about me. I was a good guy and it's a bad city so it makes sense. I then go up to the casino with the two guards in front and they threaten to blow my brains out if I step one foot, or fucked around, in there, either one of those. I promptly leave town. I come back later in the game fully decked you in Power Armor and the townsfolk are pretty much kissing my ass. I didn't become evil, if anything I was even a bigger Goody Two-shoes. I head over to the casino and the two guards that threatened to kill me earlier, were tripping over themselves in explaining why I couldn't enter. I'll always bring up this moment as my reason why Fallout 1 & 2 are superior to all of Bethesda's RPGs. I mean, the people not only reacted to who I was but what I looked like, that's cool as fuck. In Oblivion, I could be dressed up as someone who went to Hell, killed it, and made it into a suit and people would still smile and say "YOU'RE THE HERO OF KAVATCH!". Lady! I'm wearing the eternal plane of damnation as a suit!
System Shock 2, not the one everyone says, though that one is great too.
That those "zombies" or whatever are actually well aware of what's going on but have no control of their actions. I didn't really pay attention to them telling me to run or apologizing that they're attacking me till I heard that report. I was all "Man, that is fucked up." Also, I swear I heard one of them thank me for killing them.
A few things that come to mind off the top of my head:
Little King's Story: the ending. Well, most of the game, really, as I got super-into it (maybe my single favorite game on the Wii), but especially the ending. Little King's Story's whole deal is the dissonance it likes to create between the cutesy kid-friendly exterior and the fairly disturbing stuff that's actually going on under the surface, so the end is really jarring in terms of how...naked it is.
When you hear yourself say the phrase "maybe if the pile of skeletons gets tall enough my wife won't be digested alive", you know that things are about as bad as they're going to get. I went to great lengths to ensure that none of my loyal citizens ever perma-died up until that point, too, for extra sads. Even without the picture-in-picture of the stomach, seeing your friends get swallowed alive and then having their empty helmets spat back at you as projectiles is morbid as hell.
Resident Evil 4: Fighting the Left Hand. Or the Right Hand. Whichever hand it was. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN FIVE MINUTES?!" I did not know blind panic was an emotion that could be sustained for that long. Or that you could hate an elevator that much (or love an elevator that much). Silver medal goes to the first Regenerator. I shot out its legs and tried to run out of the tiny room while it was helpless on the ground. HAHAHA NOPE
System Shock 2: Exploring one particular big, open warehouse room in the second half of the game. It was empty. But I was so sure it wouldn't be. I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end of the game at that point (I did, though). Can you tell that I don't play survival horror games very often?
Killer7. Just pretty much every second of Killer7. There's really nothing else like it. I keep buying Suda 51 games and they keep not being Killer7 and I keep being disappointed.
Final Fantasy VI: Outside of the obvious stuff like the opera house and the opening segment of the World of Ruin, there's one specific moment that I always remember. It's a tiny snippet of an exchange between Terra and Celes at the end of the first act, while the camera is panning across your newly-reunited party as you march on Kefka for the first time:
"Is it possible for you to love anybody?"
"Are you mocking me?"
Looking back on it later on, when you have more context, it's amazing how much those two little lines say about both of those characters.
Wind Waker: The last Ganondorf battle. I can't get over how much raw emotion there is in that fight. The quest is completely over; there's no noble cause left to defend. It's just Ganondorf's pure spite against Link's will to save his own life as the world literally crashes down around them. I also remember that one time when Zelda shot me in the back of the head and killed me, which kind of put a damper on the mood in that particular run.
Skyward Sword: The very last bit right before the final boss. Flashback: near the beginning of the game, I noticed that the potion shop had started selling green potions. "Huh, infinite stamina. That sounds pretty cool. I'll take one!" And then I kept not using it. For literally the entire game that one green potion sat in my backpack, taking up space that could have been used on a health potion or fairy or something. But when I got to the end and looked down at that gauntlet before me, I said, "Yes. Now is the time. This is what it was all for." And I was an endless hurricane of blood and blade.
Fallout 3: The last couple of hours. Everybody hated that ending, but I kind of made it my own.
I was on my way to the final push when I got the call from my vault. Naturally I immediately dropped everything to go help my best friend. When I found out that the overseer was murdering people to stay in power, I was ecstatic. I had come this close to murdering him in the intro, but he just barely managed to talk me down by convincing me that the rest of the vault would fall apart without him. I always regretted that. Now he had no excuse.
When I finally got in there and it turned out that his enforcers had just gone rogue and he had nothing to do with it, I was furious. I almost killed him anyway, just out of spite. But I couldn't do it. Not because it was wrong, but because he was my best friend's father and I couldn't do that to her.
Said best friend then promptly kicks me out of the vault forever. I must have emptied at least two Railway Cannon clips into the wall in frustration on my way out.
So that was my mindset when I came up to the very end, when somebody has to sacrifice themselves in the radiation chamber. And when I suggested that maybe the Brotherhood paladin who probably swore some kind of literal oath to lay down her life for the protection of of humanity should be the one to do it, she was such a bitch about it. Apparently the teenage girl who only wanted to save her dad and never asked to be involved in any of this is the obvious choice for some reason!
And then I realized, hey! Fawkes is here! He's immune to radiation! I knew I kept him around for something! We're saved!
"This is your destiny. I cannot rob you of that."
"...You're fired, Fawkes."
"I am disappointed, but not surprised."
"I hope you die, Fawkes."
All right, so you all want me to die here? Then fine! Fuck it! Who the hell cares?! Everyone I've ever known or loved has either died or betrayed me. What the fuck do I have to live for anyway?!
So I go in, the door closes, I walk up to the console...and realize that I don't know the code. Nobody ever told me! Oh god oh god, open the door you guys, I don't know the fucking override code! I'm frantically digging through all my recorded logs trying to find something, when all of a sudden I realize what it is. The only thing it could possibly be. And then I flip everyone off through the glass one more time for good measure.
Sure, they told everyone that I died as a selfless, noble hero. One more good deed on top of a hundred others I performed as I traveled the wastes. They never told anyone the truth: that their "hero" died with a heart full of bitterness and hatred for all living things.
Couldn't ever bring myself to play the ending-extending DLC after that.
It's all about the atmosphere. For a few hours, you've been walking around the bleak overworld of the World of Ruin. Familiar continents twisted and towns ruined, with this song as he overworld theme.
But then, you start to bring the band back together, and find some hope worth fighting for. It really hits home when you uncover a second airship, and raise it from its underground tomb. There's this great cutscene of the thing rising out of the ocean, slicing through the water in its wake as it does so, and this song permanently replaces he bleak overworld music.
After about 6 of hours of trudging through the World of Ruin feeling like everything you've worked for is lost, like every challenge is insurmountable, suddenly you have hope. It really is the climax to the game, everything else is denouement: rescuing your friends, gearing up, and kicking Kefka's ass is just the payoff.
The other cutscene that I will never forget, at least in part due to the music, is Rachel's:
By the point you've rescued some other party members and geared up a bit, because the Phoenix Cave would pass in any other game for the final level. It makes you switch between two parties to solve puzzles, fight some nasty monsters, and one of the eight dragon bosses. It's long and hard, and throughout you find yourself with little other than empty treasure chests and a dwindling supply of Potions.
And you're only here on a rumor and a hunch, because the only party member you can't seem to find is Locke. He was one of the main characters in the World of Balance and his absence makes the game feel empty. But he's a treasure hunter, after all, and there is one treasure so valuable to Locke that he won't rest, won't rejoin the others until he has found it. It's odd, because he's the man of action, the first to line up for taking down Kefka. The first one to protect Terra, the one who puts his life on the line to save Celes in her darkest hour, the one who vouches for her without hesitation after she appears to betray the party.
What could be so important to a man with so much loyalty to his friends, that keeps him from joining with them again?
It's something difficult to conceive of a game in which there are five or six whole story arcs that would surpass the entirety of character development in many other RPGs for both length and thematic weight. This is merely one of them in FFVI.
I agree with all of this.
And now I really want to replay FF6 for the 50th time. I haven't done so in years.
BrocksMulletInto the sunrise, on a jet-ski. Natch.Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which I have not finished, because reasons. Early in the game, I caught glimpses of a shuffling figure, and already scared, managed to go wherever it wasn't.
Eventually, I came face to...face for the first time, and... you know how people say what we imagine is much scarier than what is actually there?
No. No. The reality is much worse.
I did not become acclimated to that, not even a little bit. That noise. They broke me. It actually got worse over time. It's dark, and they're everywhere.
Posts
It's all about the atmosphere. For a few hours, you've been walking around the bleak overworld of the World of Ruin. Familiar continents twisted and towns ruined, with this song as he overworld theme.
But then, you start to bring the band back together, and find some hope worth fighting for. It really hits home when you uncover a second airship, and raise it from its underground tomb. There's this great cutscene of the thing rising out of the ocean, slicing through the water in its wake as it does so, and this song permanently replaces he bleak overworld music.
It's an awesome turning point that really marks the moment when things start to look up, after a second act in which everything is rock bottom.
Fixed.
The first time powering up in MechWarrior 2.
Finding the reverse castle in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
The whole last mission in Freespace 2 when you realize the Shivan's have more than one of those huge capital ships.
Getting ambushed in the original Half-Life and losing all my weapons.
Just the whole opening sequence to Half-Life 2. You really get a feel for the depression going through those apartments before you start getting chased.
The first time going through that suspension bridge sequence in Half-Life 2 where you have to go under the bridge.
Looking up at the Earth from the Moon in Mass Effect, even if the continents were reversed by accident.
The whole ending sequence to the first Halo, on the Warthog. I played that with my college roommate the first time, and we were yelling at each other the whole time. It was great.
So many more, but it's hard to name them all.
-Getting onto the first outdoor bridge in Ico and seeing the sheer size of the castle for the first time. Then, later, the ending.
-The trial in Chrono Trigger. Simple, but the fact I was so upset about my "guilty" verdict shows just how fast that game made me emotionally invested.
-Beating the Rebel Mothership in FTL for the first time. (Even if it was on Easy...)
-The canals in Half-Life 2. Really made me feel like a badass fugitive. All right, Half-Life 2 and its Episodes have dozens of unforgettable moments.
-The reveal of the Archangel mission in Mass Effect 2 has been mentioned before, but man that was a whole barrel of fun with a downright heartwarming payoff.
-"The fall" in Portal 2 and what you find "down there." Definitely one of the better "breather levels" I've played.
-Beating Red in Soul Silver after training and preparing for so long.
-Entering the Phazon mines in Metroid Prime. The music for that section was perfect: I was nervous as hell the whole time.
-Beating the Queen in Metroid 2. Such a simple game yet so very challenging and satisfying. Now I can only hope for a remake/release.
-Entering Hell for the first time in Cave Story... and promptly dying. I knew I was in a new class of game then.
-Gaining access to Second Class in Starship Titanic. Took me FOREVER to figure it out.
-Seeing people in Riven.
-The sand dragon colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. Probably one of the most epic, enjoyable battles I've ever experienced in a video game.
-Lots of little moments in pre-WotLK WoW, mostly roleplaying and exploration stuff. And the zombie event thing too.
Shadow of the Colossus
Spoilered for ease of reading more than anything
Battlefield 2:
So of course, when I played on the ground, and managed to lead my shot from 1000 meters away to hit a Cobra on the fly with my tank shell, taking it out in one hit, I nearly burst out of my chair. The two kill notifications and "+2 +2" points rolled across my screen, and I couldn't help but think: Not this time, fellas.
Dawn of War II
As swarms of tyranids skittered around cover, rushing in to disable my ranged units, I sent the Assault marines hurtling down on top of them (To the sky, brothers!), sending the tyranids flying to the ground and disabling their mass rush attack. With heavy thuds signaling a Carnifex lumbering into the battlefield, my Force Commander hefted his Hammer and counter assaulted, charging a two-story high clawed monster with nothing but gumption on his side. Seeing a tactical advantage, My Tactical Squad approached into close range and lit up flamers, sweeping and mopping up what little remained of the smaller units.
Which is when the second wave of Tyranid warriors and genestealers began coming in to support the Carnifex.
Undaunted, my Dreadnaught walker stomped to brace himself, and then spun up his hellfire cannon, scything through the Carnifex and most of the next wave, lending his strength to the Force Commander's. (Or put another way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJU5kUj6Puo&t=61)
All of this happened within the span of perhaps 10 seconds.
And the Assault marines signalled the ready for jump again.
As if on cue, blue armor and weapons began dropping from fallen enemies for me to pick up. Dawn of War 2 and the Emperor approved, it would seem.
Ka-Chung!
Ka-Chung!
Chrono Trigger:
Xenoblade:
Lifting a missile-launcher in Fallout 2.
Playing SSBB with sis. Miss that. Might always miss that.
Also XCOM: The unknowable cornfields, which seemed to be surrounded by endless darkness.
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
I have a ton of these moments, at the moment I can't write them all down.
You know, this made me realize that I'd classify my whole first year or two of WoW as an unforgettable moment. I'd never played an MMO before and had previously found myself scoffing at games like EverQuest (despite never even seeing it in action). Exploring the world of Azeroth for the first time was an incredible experience. Discovering new areas was great, and trying to sneak through the opposing side's zones while on a PVP server actually got my heart racing the first time I did it. I joined three major guilds over the years, the first of which was not worth mentioning, the second actually full of cooler people who were around my age or older (27+ at the time), and the third with people from this forum around the time of the release of Wratch of the Lich King. That was the first time I went on a raid instance, and I had a lot of fun clearing Naxxramas with everyone.
Sadly, I've lost interest in the game. Mists of Pandaria was the first expansion where I didn't hit the level cap before losing interest. Oh well. The awesome memories remain.
My Backloggery
It's cool though, no one posted in it for some reason.
Just gonna copy & paste then:
Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals on the SNES. The game's about 20 years old now, but I'll still use spoiler tags, to be on the safe side:
My next Magic Moment is from a pretty recent game, namely The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Some people dislike the motion controls, but I had no issues with them, and most of all, they made the following possible: Pulling the Master Sword out from its resting place is something that happens in every other Zelda. It's always a special moment (I especially love when it happens in Wind Waker), but this time, the key difference is that, thanks to the game's motion controls, it is actually you, the player, who pulls the sword out from the stone - and to me, that was absolutely amazing. Link raising the sword above his head at the same time as, or rather because the player is doing the same with the Wii Remote, was glorious.
3DS: 1521-4165-5907
PS3: KayleSolo
Live: Kayle Solo
WiiU: KayleSolo
And basically the entirety of the final chapter.
Doom - finding out you could make the cyberdemon fight the spider mastermind
X-Com - wait i can blow up buildings?
GTA 3 VC - killing vance
Silent Hill - pyramid head
Metal Gear Solid - Psycho Mantis
Bioshock - descending to rapture
Dead Space - Realizing whats up with Isaac
Fallout 3 - Exiting the Vault/Nuking Megaton
Bioshock:
Bioshock Infinite:
Red Dead Redemption:
Suikoden II
The Witcher:
The Witcher 2:
When you first meet the Water Dragon. Master Li betraying you. That really stuck.
Mass Effect
Tenchu: Stealth Assassins
Final Fantasy VI
hell, the revelations in the Secret Reports in general, but especially that last one.
The sensory stone in Planescape: Torment.
Amnesia. The water.
Note to self: Do not click spoiler tags on games you haven't played but want to. Barely managed to avoid reading that. :P
Similarly, in Mass Effect 2 on the mission to recruit Archangel. My reaction, summarized:
HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT'S GARRUS"
And then Shepard had essentially the same reaction as I did, which made me grin even harder.
Unraveling the Milkman Conspiracy in Psychonauts. I'll also never forget the limitless string of expletives prompted by the Meat Circus level at the end.
The whole last hour or so of Shadow of the Colossus. Absolutely heartbreaking.
The twist and reveal in 999: perhaps the best example I know of of a developer designing a twist around the uniqueness of the console hardware.
The final case in Phoenix Wright 3, which tied up every loose thread in the trilogy, including threads we never even knew were loose.
You're right about the music that bookends that cutscene. Here's the whole thing:
After about 6 of hours of trudging through the World of Ruin feeling like everything you've worked for is lost, like every challenge is insurmountable, suddenly you have hope. It really is the climax to the game, everything else is denouement: rescuing your friends, gearing up, and kicking Kefka's ass is just the payoff.
The other cutscene that I will never forget, at least in part due to the music, is Rachel's:
And you're only here on a rumor and a hunch, because the only party member you can't seem to find is Locke. He was one of the main characters in the World of Balance and his absence makes the game feel empty. But he's a treasure hunter, after all, and there is one treasure so valuable to Locke that he won't rest, won't rejoin the others until he has found it. It's odd, because he's the man of action, the first to line up for taking down Kefka. The first one to protect Terra, the one who puts his life on the line to save Celes in her darkest hour, the one who vouches for her without hesitation after she appears to betray the party.
What could be so important to a man with so much loyalty to his friends, that keeps him from joining with them again?
It's something difficult to conceive of a game in which there are five or six whole story arcs that would surpass the entirety of character development in many other RPGs for both length and thematic weight. This is merely one of them in FFVI.
Fallout 2, not a spoiler.
New Reno, I was walking down the street and all around the people were talking shit about me. I was a good guy and it's a bad city so it makes sense. I then go up to the casino with the two guards in front and they threaten to blow my brains out if I step one foot, or fucked around, in there, either one of those. I promptly leave town. I come back later in the game fully decked you in Power Armor and the townsfolk are pretty much kissing my ass. I didn't become evil, if anything I was even a bigger Goody Two-shoes. I head over to the casino and the two guards that threatened to kill me earlier, were tripping over themselves in explaining why I couldn't enter. I'll always bring up this moment as my reason why Fallout 1 & 2 are superior to all of Bethesda's RPGs. I mean, the people not only reacted to who I was but what I looked like, that's cool as fuck. In Oblivion, I could be dressed up as someone who went to Hell, killed it, and made it into a suit and people would still smile and say "YOU'RE THE HERO OF KAVATCH!". Lady! I'm wearing the eternal plane of damnation as a suit!
System Shock 2, not the one everyone says, though that one is great too.
God Hand - All of it. Never Forget.
I can beat that.
Oh my god it is.
I used to do a playthrough of Diablo every six months or so (it doesn't take long) and this takes me back so hard
Little King's Story: the ending. Well, most of the game, really, as I got super-into it (maybe my single favorite game on the Wii), but especially the ending. Little King's Story's whole deal is the dissonance it likes to create between the cutesy kid-friendly exterior and the fairly disturbing stuff that's actually going on under the surface, so the end is really jarring in terms of how...naked it is.
Resident Evil 4: Fighting the Left Hand. Or the Right Hand. Whichever hand it was. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN FIVE MINUTES?!" I did not know blind panic was an emotion that could be sustained for that long. Or that you could hate an elevator that much (or love an elevator that much). Silver medal goes to the first Regenerator. I shot out its legs and tried to run out of the tiny room while it was helpless on the ground. HAHAHA NOPE
System Shock 2: Exploring one particular big, open warehouse room in the second half of the game. It was empty. But I was so sure it wouldn't be. I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end of the game at that point (I did, though). Can you tell that I don't play survival horror games very often?
Killer7. Just pretty much every second of Killer7. There's really nothing else like it. I keep buying Suda 51 games and they keep not being Killer7 and I keep being disappointed.
Final Fantasy VI: Outside of the obvious stuff like the opera house and the opening segment of the World of Ruin, there's one specific moment that I always remember. It's a tiny snippet of an exchange between Terra and Celes at the end of the first act, while the camera is panning across your newly-reunited party as you march on Kefka for the first time:
"Is it possible for you to love anybody?"
"Are you mocking me?"
Looking back on it later on, when you have more context, it's amazing how much those two little lines say about both of those characters.
Wind Waker: The last Ganondorf battle. I can't get over how much raw emotion there is in that fight. The quest is completely over; there's no noble cause left to defend. It's just Ganondorf's pure spite against Link's will to save his own life as the world literally crashes down around them. I also remember that one time when Zelda shot me in the back of the head and killed me, which kind of put a damper on the mood in that particular run.
Skyward Sword: The very last bit right before the final boss. Flashback: near the beginning of the game, I noticed that the potion shop had started selling green potions. "Huh, infinite stamina. That sounds pretty cool. I'll take one!" And then I kept not using it. For literally the entire game that one green potion sat in my backpack, taking up space that could have been used on a health potion or fairy or something. But when I got to the end and looked down at that gauntlet before me, I said, "Yes. Now is the time. This is what it was all for." And I was an endless hurricane of blood and blade.
Fallout 3: The last couple of hours. Everybody hated that ending, but I kind of made it my own.
When I finally got in there and it turned out that his enforcers had just gone rogue and he had nothing to do with it, I was furious. I almost killed him anyway, just out of spite. But I couldn't do it. Not because it was wrong, but because he was my best friend's father and I couldn't do that to her.
Said best friend then promptly kicks me out of the vault forever. I must have emptied at least two Railway Cannon clips into the wall in frustration on my way out.
So that was my mindset when I came up to the very end, when somebody has to sacrifice themselves in the radiation chamber. And when I suggested that maybe the Brotherhood paladin who probably swore some kind of literal oath to lay down her life for the protection of of humanity should be the one to do it, she was such a bitch about it. Apparently the teenage girl who only wanted to save her dad and never asked to be involved in any of this is the obvious choice for some reason!
And then I realized, hey! Fawkes is here! He's immune to radiation! I knew I kept him around for something! We're saved!
"This is your destiny. I cannot rob you of that."
"...You're fired, Fawkes."
"I am disappointed, but not surprised."
"I hope you die, Fawkes."
All right, so you all want me to die here? Then fine! Fuck it! Who the hell cares?! Everyone I've ever known or loved has either died or betrayed me. What the fuck do I have to live for anyway?!
So I go in, the door closes, I walk up to the console...and realize that I don't know the code. Nobody ever told me! Oh god oh god, open the door you guys, I don't know the fucking override code! I'm frantically digging through all my recorded logs trying to find something, when all of a sudden I realize what it is. The only thing it could possibly be. And then I flip everyone off through the glass one more time for good measure.
Sure, they told everyone that I died as a selfless, noble hero. One more good deed on top of a hundred others I performed as I traveled the wastes. They never told anyone the truth: that their "hero" died with a heart full of bitterness and hatred for all living things.
I agree with all of this.
And now I really want to replay FF6 for the 50th time. I haven't done so in years.
PSN: BrightWing13 FFX|V:ARR Bright Asuna
Eventually, I came face to...face for the first time, and... you know how people say what we imagine is much scarier than what is actually there?
No. No. The reality is much worse.
I did not become acclimated to that, not even a little bit. That noise. They broke me. It actually got worse over time. It's dark, and they're everywhere.
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
the song Stones from Ultima Online dooes this for me.
Ultima Online was my first MMO, and though I didn't play for all that long (only 9 moonths or so) you never forget your first MMO.