"Everybody cry when Aeris die"--The dramatic video game moments that work

Ted Dead Redemption:



Dutch shooting the female hostage in the head in Red Dead Redemption sure jolted me. We'd been told he was a bastard and most likely crazy, but that moment really drove it home, and made me really want to kill him. And so later, when he simply tosses himself off the cliff to his death, I felt cheated. I wanted to be the one to send that fucker to hell.

Guys, maybe put the name of the game before the spoiler so people can judge whether to read it or not?

I JUST started Red Dead Redemption. I'm sure a lot of others have too.

Thought this had it covered, but OK.

Knights of the Old Republic:


If you're like me, you chose the light, but you were the worst bastard the galaxy had ever seen. You were basically the Jack Bauer of the Jedi. Anyway, Bastila gets twisted and turns to the Dark Side, and when you face her and your pursuasion skills are high enough you can basically say "Yeah, I forgive you, but I can never love you and it'd be better for everyone if you just jammed your light-saber into yourself." and SHE DOES. Her anguish, though, is very effective.

You can only get that option if you're light side and have...flexible morals. It's great, I finished this game as this big muscular guy with a buzz cut and pulsing veins and yellow eyes and I'm the good guy. It's like "Shit, this guy is our savior? We are fucked."

Being a bastard while on the side of good is great

The only video game story point that actually affected me was the end of Planescape: Torment. For those who don't know, the game tells the story of a man who committed an act, never named, so grave that it not only doomed him to hell for all of eternity but actually caused harm to the entire universe. Trying to escape his punishment he cheats himself into a sort of immortality, a death/rebirth cycle, trying to find a way to absolve himself, all the while destroying countless more lives. At the end your character realizes that his actions are irredeemable after all and decides to voluntarily descend to hell.

Still unsurpassed in my eyes.

The post nuke sequence in Modern Warfare. Not a boo-hoo moment, but a rare time a video game effectively upped the stakes for the player.

To take it back a bit further, I was pretty gobsmacked in Final Fantasy III by the realization that not only did your group just fail to prevent the end of the world, but the game was only halfway through. I think it was an especially brilliant little twist that the character you start out the second half with is not the one you started the game as.

To be more recent, the endgame of Mass Effect 2 was very effective as psuedo-cinema, and topped things off with a hell of a stinger.

Im going to multiple post here, but lets start with a couple of classics:

Fallout (ending):

The Overseer: "You saved us, but you'll kill us. I'm sorry. You're a hero . . . and you have to leave"

Son of a bitch; Thats all i could muster after that ending; its one downer of an ending, and im pretty sure anyone whose played the game will agree is one hell of a back stab.

Celes loses all hope/Embraces hope alone (FF III):

Pretty much the point where what Schwartz said gets really hammered into the player; Celes, alone on an island with the elderly and sick Dr Cid, tries her best to nurse back to health in the ruined world; if you succeed, she embraces hope and starts a journey to reunite with her friends and defeat Kefka, which is a pretty emotional moment.
However, if you fail and Dr Cid dies...Celes ponders living alone in the ruined world and commits suicide by jumping of a cliff (something pretty damn mature for a snes game); she survives and manages to find hope again, but the suicide scene was very impressive back in the day.

The most effective emotional moments in Knights of the Old Republic 2 occur when you re-visit old locations from the previous game. Visiting Dantooine and Korriban, regions that were once prosperous and thriving in the last game, and seeing them in their dilapidated, deteriorating state adds to the whole somber tone of the game.

Killing the Tiger Colossus by scaring him with fire (in Shadow of Colossus) really makes you feel like a bastard, and causes you to question your entire quest.

The game over screen for Rez is uniquely amazing. The AI disintegrating into nothingness can be really affecting after all the techno-flavored laser blastery.

MGS has a few moments that work. Meryl getting shot in 1 and crawling through the microwave corridor at the end of 4. For all the flaws in the series, Snake is a pretty likable character.

The horse in Colossus and it's a cop out that it comes back.

The Baby Metroid at the end of Super Metroid.

Story wise, FF IV is my favorite FF game. The twins sacrifice is a standout and Cecil has a nice character arc.

And lots and lots of stuff works in Heavy Rain.

Games can build worlds and atmosphere quite easily. Spooky environments or desolated landscapes help make things a bit dramatic in the first place. Add to that some solid character beats and sure it can work.

Well, about Silent Hill 2- the only game that ever had a profound emotional effect on me... it was pretty bad. I started playing it just when I was descending into a mild crisis- I wouldn't call it a depression (that would be exaggerated), just a psychic burnout from the combination of personal stagnation-crap job-no future prospects-too much weed.
So going through this story and its locations, you can understand that didn't do any good. In fact, I suffered a few hyperventilation attacks after a couple of hours of playing at night. Finally, during (spoiler) during the final descent into the underground catacomb I couldn't take it anymore, and had to put it away. That whole episode is far past me now, and SH2 rests on my shelf unfinished. I'd really like to finish it up, but at the same time I get nervous at the thought of venturing into that world again. Same reason why SH3 is on the same shelf unopened in it's plastic wrapping.

Apart from that, my emotional reaction to videogames are either:
-tinge of nostalgia, whenever I start up a commodore 64 emulator.
-very general mood enhancement when playing upbeat cartoony fare like Ratchet & Clank or Luigi's Mansion. I literally have a collection of games to pop in when I'm feeling a bit down.

But the idea of emotionally investing into a game character seems a bit loony to me. Not saying it can't happen, just that I've never experienced it & find it a bit weird that people have it with FF et al.

Bioshock. This moment, and the reveal that precedes it:

"A man chooses! A slave obeys!"
THUNK.
"A MAN CHOOSES! A SLAVE...OBEYS!"
THUNK.
"....A...MAN CHOOSES! ....A SLAVE....OBEYS..."
THUNK SQUISH.
"..."

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

The ending to Episode two is a giant punch to the gut. You just finish saving the day (yet again) in an epic battle, and then a major character gets killed. It's not unexpected as it gets foreshadowed for a while, but it is still powerful, especially because of the reaction to it by another major character that is with you. The game fades to black and starts the credits to the sound of sobbing.

I am being intentionally vague here, but anyone who has played it will know exactly what and who I am talking about. This ending is one of the reasons why it really, really sucks that Valve has seemingly put Half-Life on the shelf for the last several years.

Why did you remind me, stupid wizard?

I just watched a YouTube of the beginning of Shadow of the Colossus. You could apparently grab hold of vines. I did not succeed in this. If I had, perhaps I'd found that first colossus.

All in all, I'm glad I skipped it in favor of God Of War II.

Shit yeah that game's for pussies

Scott knows the score!

Guess what happened in the first fifteen minutes of God of War 2? I killed a colossus yaaay

The opening of the barn doors in RED DEAD REDEMPTION.

'Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger': The moment where I found out that Hobbes IS a traitor kinda got me.
The ending of 'Red Dead Redemption' got me.
Call me a sap, but Leliana's song during 'Dragon Age: Origins' kinda got me.
'Gauntlet': I was crushed when the elf shot the food. 'Remember, don't shoot the food'.

God yes. The only thing that made sense at that point.

More Red Dead spoilers...
Just after John has been killed and it cuts to an older Jack standing over the run down, dilapidated grave of John and the fresh grave of Abigail, really didn't expect that time jump and it really did me in.

Also the song that plays as you make your way back to the ranch.

The saddest thing about that moment for me was that (SPOILERS) I thought I had to trigger the dead-eye at that moment. I didn't realize that I would be in dead-eye the moment the doors opened. So in my game, John walked out of the barn, eyed a bunch of army troopers, and was unceremoniously gunned down without firing a shot. (END SPOILERS) Kind of a drag.

I did the exact same thing

Some good ones in here already.

Final Fantasy 6:

Celes alone on the island certainly hit home, and with her solution being to throw herself into the sea after her "father" dies... pretty good drama for a video game.

MGS3:

Actually pulling the trigger on The Boss in the field of flowers.

Gears of War 2:

This one isn't that high up, but I remember it had a little impact even if it was a big predictable... but Dom's wife emerging and ending up looking like a holocaust victim was a pretty good moment.

Really can't think of all that many.

Fable 2: Re-uniting with your dog after a year of being away. Then, well, you know what happens later. Never wanted to kill a bad guy so much.

I agree with this. The new music that went along with the ruined towns and the ruined world also sold it really well. Also, the death of General Leo was pretty tough.

I thought Chrono Trigger had a lot of great dramatic moments too... the Death and revival quest of Chrono... the scene where you go back in time and witness the accident that causes Lucca's mom to lose her legs (and the chance to prevent it from happening by remembering what her name was from a piece of dialogue earlier in the game)... oh and when all the robots were beating the shit out of Robo in the factory in an attempt to scrap him.

I was alarmed whenever one of the shadows grabbed Yorda during Ico and started dragging her away.

Similar BioWare moment, but convincing Saren to turn his own gun on himself at the end of the first Mass Effect. You still had to fight his final, Reaper-possessed form afterwards, but I never even would've guessed that'd be an option you'd actually get to use.

The princess is in another castle??? Sonuvabitch!

Because I'll always mention it:

The revelation of Viola in "Zone of the enders"; holy crap, i had never gone from hating a character to have pity for it so fast.

Alys dying in Phantasy Star IV; guess what, Square, Sega beat you it.

Now that you mention it, Ryoken, I'm going to go with another of the series: Phantasy Star Online

Though slight, the game did have a story and much of it was told through messages left behind by Rico, your boss' daughter and a great researcher and adventurer in her own right. As you progressed deeper and deeper into the mystery and entered some ancient alien ruins, Rico's messages got more fraught and personal as she realised she was unlikely to see her father again, she felt guilty for letting him down, for not keeping in touch and so on, and she was also aware that something truly terrible was lying in wait ahead.

Onward to the final area, it's briefly peaceful before turning into a mini version of Hell, wailing corpses beneath your feet and the like. The final boss appears, a terrible monstrosity locked away for millennia and now ready to eat the universe or whatever. We spent most of the fight thinking Rico would maybe show up at the last minute and pull our asses out of the fire but no, no sign of her, so we got on with the job of being awesome and killed it ourselves. It lurched one way, then the other, screamed one last time then finally died.

A single red ring fell from its corpse and hit the ground. And that was when you realise that hideous thing you just killed *was* Rico. Cue credits filled with random shots of fighting bosses, hanging out in the shops and lobbies with your buddies...and your boss, slumped sobbing on his desk with his head in his hands and getting a hug from his assistant.

A lot of my personal favorites have already been named but I really like Luna's song on the ship in Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. I was a big sap at 14.

I nearly peed myself laughing. Good times. Good times.

When my Pikachu evolved.