I’m at probably playthrough #4 of The Witcher 3, and the moment when Ciri wakes up still brings me to daddy tears.

I tried a Satisfacfory playthrough while on drugs, and somewhere in the upgrade tiers I fixed my brain. I can just decide what I want to focus on now. I was never able to do that before.

Undertale: You’ve progressed through most of the game. You didn’t strike out at the monsters. You’ve done everything you could to avoid hurting those around you and yet strive for escape. Over and over You’ve been put up against a wall with your enemies striving to end you. You could fight back, you could react to this world of monsters and become like them, a monster.

But you didn’t. You stand before a mirror in a house very similar to the one you were in at the start of the game. Looking into the mirror, you are affirmed.

“Despite everything. It’s still you.”

Despite everything I’ve gone through. Despite the hunger and gnawing to give in. To respond to the hatred and harm that has been inflicted on me with fury and bloodlust equal to the twisted delight others have taken in my suffering. I didn’t give in. I didn’t lose my joy in making others smile. I didn’t give up my interests and the rare and disparate moments of joy.

Despite everything. It’s still me. I’m still here. I’m not a monster.

Outer Wilds, like all of it. Falling into the black hole made me actually scream in terror, then shiver for how small being away from the solar system makes you feel. Also the quantum moon, and that ending holy fuck

… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.

I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.

I hate to say it, but I think it’s more likely the developers just didn’t want sociopathic players to be able to profit from the human loot themselves.

My realization came from DDLC. I learned about what other people can feel after you’ve left

OneShot. The main story does something interesting early on to draw you in, then with the post game content I have just never felt so connected to a game. it’s hard to describe without spoilers. I started the game in the evening then there I was at like 2am “I can’t sleep until this world is free”. you just really feel like you personally have a part in the story.

Brothers: A tale of two sons. Not a unique experience, as it almost seems like the whole point of the game is this one moment. So, spoilers… Its control scheme is each analogue stick independently controls your two characters, two brothers. And it’s a fun puzzle game where you have to resolve moving two characters at once in this way, moving, balancing, timing. It’s all fun and games until a tragedy, the older brother dies. He was one of your control sticks, now for the rest of the game half your controller is dead also. And you walk back out of the cave past all the puzzles you did with your brother, which are made for two people. You’re useless, and the feeling of loss is staggering.

Night in the Woods. Start to finish. It has so many moments where you just pause and go “…shit.” It’s the most perfect game ever made.

Also FF7. White teenage boy complex with Aeris for sure, but also blowing up oil facilities, killing CEOs, and Red XIII’s story. It’s wild to me the themes that this game gets across in Discs 1-2.

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.

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.

Showing my age here, but I’d pick Ocarina of Time as the first game I feel like I had a profound reaction to. At the end of the game, when you defeat Ganon and save the princess, how does she reward you? by sending you back in time to be a kid again. I mean, I understand that it was supposed to be a gift, but it just felt like it was erasing the heroics that you had done for her and the entire kingdom of Hyrule.

Second, I would pick God of War (2018). As a father, that game knew exactly what to do to reel me in and make me care about the characters.

Subnautica…when I was so immersed that I went too deep…didn’t have enough time to return to the surface to breathe…and then looked up in anguish and saw that dreaded refraction “circle” hundreds of meters above you… THE DEEP HAS YOU, THERE IS NO ESCAPE

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.

Pathologic 2

At the end of the game the

Left me shook. Amazing game.