Asklemmy

"I need sleep and should stop mining"

I had hoped that playing Spiritfarer would help me deal with the loss of my mom. It's not any particular moment in the game, but I just can't play it without breaking into tears at some point. Not sure I will ever be able to play it for any length of time.

Life is Strange: True Colors completely fucked with my head. Not all the plot relevant and intense parts of the game, but the moments where Alex found a new home and community. Especially the end where

spoiler

Gabe's "ghost" guides you to choose between staying in Haven or leaving.

Watching the scenes of Alex staying really hit me hard because I lived for years in a place I hated, was working in a stressful environment I hated, and was 1000 miles away from my friends. It took a while to get out of that funk, but I haven't gone back to play it despite being in a better place and it being one of my favorite games of all time.

I beat mgs2 when i was like 14 and I just sat at the end of my bed and pondered for like 3 hours before moving again

Kentucky Route Zero came to me at a shaky time in my life. Such that it was full of impactful moments. Maybe made more so by myself living in the often grim, beautiful and haunted place that is east Kentucky -and of course late stage capitalism.

Orchids to Dusk is another that inspires awe. Though it is entirely about looking for a nice place to die.

Shuaaan! Shuaaaan! Shuaaaaaaaaaan!

MGS 2

also MGS 1, but the ending of MGS2 👀

Obligatory FF7...

There's an old PS 1 game called Legend of Dragoon... not too bad of a game but probably gameplay wise doesn't hold up. BUT... its basically you getting a team of heroes from several the surviving races after another race (the only one who could naturally use magic) decided to do a genocide against everybody (and lost badly).

There is a scene later in the game, where you're in the ruins of a floating city that (I think) was the capital of the genociders. It is a barren husk of a place, devoid of all sentient life, there are no survivors of this race. However, some of the their machines were made with magic and are running on autopilot. There is a room where you can just hang out and watch these little flying robot things zip around and have scripted NPC dialogue where rules/laws are submitted and passed.

It was this weird example of the banality of evil that I don't think I've come across in a game before or since.

Fallout 3, The Pitt DLC. Deciding whether to take the baby.

This is a great question, lots of interesting replies.

There's so many points for me that were also turning points for gaming. Watching the pixels move on the TV because they were being told to by the console, from the original Pong, to Atari 2600 Space Invaders, were all events that left an impression. Playing a Williams licenced Defender on an Atari 400, and Donkey Kong.

I grew up with all this, it was part of my childhood.

Then, one day, some friends got a Playstation, the original. I went round and they were playing Die Hard. They had the gun controller that came with it. I watched for a bit and I couldn't keep up, things happening so quickly it looked so intense and sort of real. It was fascinating but also terrifying.

Then it was my turn, I said no it's not for me I can't do that. Go on they said and pushed the gun at me. Alright, but I'll be shit.

Some time passed and I found myself moving through an airport, my friends barking as each baddie appeared and going silent as I popped them and moved on. Slick, efficient, deadly.

I stopped and held the gun loosely, they turned protesting in dismay. I was shaking and sweating, I couldn't go on. Something changed that day, I knew games were different now. There was no going back, from now on I would always be a First Person Shooter.

When I was younger, I had really only experienced console games and maybe a few basic PC games at school. My uncle showed my this FPS game on his computer called Redneck Rampage. Basically you're running around farms trying to kill aliens. I don't really remember playing very many FPS game before that and it opened up a whole new world for me. But the really crazy part was how "adult" the game was. You could drink beer in the game and your character would get drunk. I also remember some graffiti in the game of a naked woman with huge tits. At the time I could not believe something like that would be allowed in a video game! Blew my mind.

Walking into Leyndell in Elden Ring for the first time realizing this might be the greatest game of all time.

Basically the whole premise of Paradise Killer. Who ought to seek justice? Can a government be irredeemable? Is justice even possible?

The first one that comes to mind is the betrayal of King Cailan at Ostagar in Dragon Age: Origins, and the aftermath where you and your party have to escape into the Korcari Wilds.

That whole scene is just incredible.

In Rain World interacting with Moon especially if you don't know what is going on then go back once you can communicate with her.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura still remains my favourite to this day.

The world's setting is centred around how capitalism and industry affects society, how it pushed aside feudalism, how racism remains endemic and easily seen as normal, how history is swept away to hide attitudes, all sorts of complex things. Early on in the story, you get involved with a strike by exploited half-orcs and the wealthy factory owner who would rather they all died. Thinking back, it was a big part of how young me started to realise industrial relations are fucked up in capitalism.

One moment (of the many cool things) that really hit me, is that there's an entire sub-plot across the whole continent that's never explicitly mentioned, but is entirely noticeable if you actually pay attention and listen, not to the quest-givers or the industrial leaders, but to the servants of the powerful men you meet. If you're lucky, near the end, you suddenly realise you just.. swept all these weird characters and remarks under the rug as you had 'important' people to talk to. I had relegated servants and whole in-game races to an 'unimportant' role, when actually their stories are key to a whole second sub-plot of their own that affects everything in the world.

I know a lot of that behaviour is because I'm playing to typical game design, but, I dunno, having a real moment where you think back and realise you've been ignoring what should have been an obvious pattern of so many exploited people, and I just glossed over it 'til that moment, it affected me.

The prison escape in the first Deus Ex, when you learn where you really are. I guess for some people this was easy to figure out beforehand, but when I first played it at age 15 it was a shock to me.

Baldur's Gate 3. Karlach's reaction once you kill Gortash. One of the few times I've ever really respected a videogame's writing and voice acting on a serious level.

It wasn't super meaningful from a narrative perspective, but no one who played Unreal when it was new is likely to forget that first step off the Vortex Riker onto Na Pali. Sure, there had been games like Myst, but this not only elevated how beautiful games can be, but put the player right in the middle of it like nothing else did. Not an easy moment to recreate. To be honest, that game plus UT2003/04 had some of the best graphics in the business, from both the technical and design standpoints.

Witcher 3. Spoilers here, btw.

I will never forget riding my horse up to The Baron's residence after losing his child and his wife and seeing him hanging from the tree. They do such a good job making his character barely tolerable at first, then make him slowly grow on you after you learn he's just like you. Scared, confused, and lost. He lashes out because he's trying to protect his family, but the weight of losing it is the end is too much for him.

Truly, what a masterclass in narrative design, and it's only a sliver of what that game has to offer.

Probably different to most people but I remember the first year of Uni summer holidays I spent playing Fable 3… which ended up being the entire 3mth holiday. I realised in real terms I just moved from one part of the cd to another and hadn’t accomplished anything else with my life in that time, no hobbies, friends or shared experiences.

I packed up my Xbox and refused to play another game for about 10yrs. Now I have a much better balance with games and my life

The game OneShot was one of the few to ever have me emotionally invested to the point of tearing up. An excellent aspect of that game is having you the player be a character in the story in a organic way that makes sense plot wise. you converse with the character you are controlling, essentially a lost child that wakes up in a nearly dead world and wants to go home. You directly communicate, console, and encourage them. and it made me so much more invested. The original ending made you pick a very tough choice that leaves you emotionally deviststed, its dlc solstice finally gave a true definitive ending.

Everhood also gave me some emotions. Death is a very hard thing to contemplate and deal with, for me anyways. It helped make me a little more comfortable the nature of death and why its such an important aspect of existence. The game turns from fun cute psychadelic rythm game to heavy existential mercy killing of immortal beings who have gone fucking nuts and mentally decayed after trapping themselves in a legitimate eternity of immortality, and then their reality. The music is kick ass and the gameplay turns the old rhythm formula on its head.

There are so many now, the one that comes to mind, maybe not the best but it's the one, is Braid. I don't want to spoil the ending, but I basically played the game in one sitting and the way the game ended just made something click into place in my mind and changed the way I think about the human experience.