For me it is opening credits sequence in Nier Automata, Shadowlord’s castle in Nier Replicant and AI reveal in MGS2. All these three games are masterclass in storytelling.
KotOR. Just the whole thing basically but especially the story turning points.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
If you played the “evil” plotline, there is a point where Mission (the Twi’lek girl) is telling you how horrible you are and one of your options is to get her best friend Zaalbar (a wookie) to kill her. By this point he owes you a life debt and is honor bound to do what you say. For as terrible as “evil” plotlines tend to be in games, that was an amazingly well done moment.
The factory level in Titanfall 2, where you’re trying to escape
Fuck so good, peak single player FPS. Still blows my mind that they used the Source engine.
They used the Source engine???
Wow that blows my mind too.
And yeah perhaps the most riveting SP FPS I’ve played. Just as you got used to one new gameplay mechanic, they’d throw a new one at you. Story was simple yet badass, tieing it all together
Hmm maybe it’s time for a replay
Gotta say, the opening of Nier Automata is something I tell people how much I hated! It’s a great story, but it’s bad game design.
It’s a mix of cutscenes and gameplay that takes about 40 mins to get through, there’s no saving possible at any time, and if you die then you go right back to the beginning.
And I did die, twice. So yeah, that was a slog, and by the third time round I’m not enjoying the storytelling anymore.
If you are actually good and didn’t die, I can see why you had a different and more enjoyable experience :)
I really enjoyed begining of Automata, action, music and artstyle, but the neat thing is … That opening credits are placed 20+ hours later in the game. And by that time i was really invested in the story and characters.
I also agree that there should be some savepoint in the begining of a game, I died once or twice and it was annoying to replay everything from the start.
This was my experience too, except after dying at the boss I got a Steam refund. Just too frustrating.
The moment early in Fez when you receive your titular hat, hit me at just the right time and place in my life. I was ready for exactly that kind of cheeky, childish, wonderment
When I have a perfectly flat four row stack and the 4x1 tile appears.
In Monster Hunter World’s iceborne expansion there’s a monster called Brachydios. It’s a giant blue monster that attacks by spreading explosive slime all over the arena and punching it to blow it up. In the postgame you can eventually fight a variant known as Raging Brachydios which is about twice as big and three times as agressive. For the most part it’s almost the same as the normal Brachy fight, just significantly more intense. That is, until near the end of the fight.
It should be noted that Monster Hunter games are hard. The base game is difficult. The expansions are even harder. The expansion post games? Brutal. Raging Brachydios is one of the most difficult fights I’ve ever had in a video game, only topped by the monsters that follow it in the same game. (soloing Fatalis is probably my greatest video game achievement of all time.)
So you’ve been stuck with this beast for about 20 minutes now, slowly wearing it down. You’re probably on your last life and you’ve burned through enough healing items to last you the entire base game. Finally this thing runs away, and you can tell you’re nearing the end. You sharpen your weapon one last time and follow the monster into that volcanic cavern.
Suddenly, it lets out a bellowing roar and starts rapidly punching the ground! Slime is flying everywhere and the entire room seems to heat up. You notice a message on the side of your screen: “Oh no! The entrance has been blocked off! Looks like you can’t use certain items!”. the Brachydios has sealed off your exits and disabled your traps and fast travel items. There is no running away. There is no capturing this thing. Neither of you are leaving this room until one of you is dead. You can tell Brachydios is getting desperate. It’s flailing wildly, throwing slime everywhere with none of the precision and technique it had before. It has recognized you as a serious threat and it does not want to die.
Eventually however, you triumph! The beast belts out one final roar and falls over dead. Exhausted, you take a moment to recover from that grueling fight and from its corpse you tear your well earned prize! Two ebonshell and a warhead. Looks like you’re gonna have to murder another couple dozen of these things for that immortal reactor. Happy hunting!
Discussing God and freedom with Morpheus AI in original Deus Ex. It’s just excellently done. The damn thing makes good points, and there’s this soft piano (?) music setting the tone
Blew my mind when I was a kid. That game is filled with moments.
Gotta be the final fight in Metal Gear Solid 4. So ridiculously dramatic
Getting 25000 points in Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.
Don’t do this to me
The ending to the Spiderman PS1 game was pretty funny for something that comes from a game that was so short and modeled after fear.
Running from Monster-Ock while the facility is exploding around you. That game was such a banger. And it’s short length is made up for by it’s replayability. Collecting all the comics and suits. Amazing.
For me it was when i was playing deep rock galactic. I always played with randoms and i was still not very sure how everything worked and i would quite often get lost. In one game extraction was already going, and we had like 2 minutes left. I panicked and just ran around like an idiot, at some point i accepted my fate and kinda just looked around. Suddenly a driller blasted through a wall, like the koolaid man. He gave me a rock and stone and i followed him back to the drill with like 20 seconds to spare. I never had a moment in video games before and after where i saw someone doing something and i legitimately though: wow, an actual super hero.
There was just something that clicked right there. Deep rock is very dark and claustrophobic, and if you have a bad sense of orientation and (i think i didn’t know how the map worked) and i don’t think any game ever gave me that good kind of anxiety before.
For me, one of the most memorable was, beating Ornstein and Smough in Dark Souls for the first time solo. It was a great feeling of accomplishment, and I could see that I really mastered that game’s combat.
The ending of SOMA. I sometimes watch it on youtube just to enjoy it again. Note: the ending won’t mean anything to you if you don’t already know the story.
Ahhh I wanted to love it, it’s one of my favourite scifi concepts explored really well, but I wish the big plot points at the end were told in the opposite order. Feel like it would have hit way harder, for me anyway
I kinda bounced off. I was super into the identity stuff that started too be hinted at, fully bought in to the fantasy, but after a point didn’t want to go through another room where all I did was avoid monsters.
Maybe I need to turn down the difficulty and just get through it.
Yeah, definitely more about the tone and narrative for me, so I’d go with that plan and see it through!
Freespace Intro.
This would have made a great movie.
bioshock infinite, know that the girl is the daughter of the protagonist
