In Dark Souls: Coming back to Firelink shrine from Blighttown after ringing the second bell, expecting to find sweet respite and safety only to find that the Firekeeper has been murdered and the bonfire is no longer lit, and also there’s now a giant, freaky teeth muppety-lookin snake with an old man voice who wants me to kill the gods?? That was a lot to take in. Even though it later turns out that grandpa snake is a manipulative liar, it still gave me a feeling, however false, that I was beginning to understand what was going on while simultaneously making the world seem much scarier, like all bets were off and anything could happen.
Pokemon Silver: Beating the Elite Four and watching the credits roll and then discovering that was only the first half of the game, that the entire fucking Kanto region from Red and Blue was there with 8 more badges and the champion to fight! That practically made my 8 year old brain explode. It was like getting double the game and made the game world feel so unimaginably huge. If the first game’s entire continent was hidden in there then there could be literally anything else hidden away! Maybe all the schoolyard rumors about finding Mew and secret infinite items and hidden rare pokemon were true! Every Pokemon after Silver was honestly a bit of a letdown in comparison, and the games never felt that vast and mysterious ever again.
Nier:Automata has a lot of these, but one that stands out to me personally is the beginning of route C/D, pretty much the entire sequence up until you encounter A2 is incredible, but particularly the section where the enemies start messing with your screen by applying filters and blurring out enemies was just a “well shit, this is wild” moment that put me in a mindset to really appreciate the dramatic credits and title card that follow as it makes clear “the real game starts now”.
Iconoclasts: there’s so many, the game is filled with “oh shit!” moments, but if I have to pick one thing it has to be the Black fight as you and Royal try to board the rocket. The frantic chase culminating in a standoff, the desperate fight that ensues as Black keeps straining herself to get back up - the screams of the monstrosity she becomes in the second phase as the guitar kicks in; actually that entire sequence, from the cuts back and forth to the control room where things go to shit; the awkward silence on the rocket itself as you’re left unsure if the mission has failed; the devastating and completely real way the game makes you/Robin complicit in Royal’s death and presents it not as an overwrought tragedy but as an awful, unfair, traumatic thing you/she just have to find a way to live with via a just-too-long timer and a puzzle it seems like you ought to be able to solve that has you screaming in frustration and injustice at not being able to work it out and then feeling like shit as you have to abandon him and run for the escape pod alone. God. That game somehow evokes so much pathos for its thoroughly unlikely characters, it’s astounding.
Every time in Pyrethat you send someone back. Some of them don’t even want to go, but you send them back to help foment a revolution they’d never wanted to be a part of.
This is really dumb but Sonic Adventures 2 when I was in elementary school.
I remember being shocked that they straight up execute Robotniks grandfather, Maria gets gunned down by GUN and Shadow seemingly burns up in the Earths atmosphere at the end. Again really dumb because you play it now and your eyes roll into the back of your head whenever anyone opens their mouth but at the time it was something I never expected a game to do.
Also I got extremely upset when my really cool dragon chao died and from that point on whenever any of them would go into the cocoon thing I would leave immediately to stop it because I thought another one was dying.
came to post the same part of nier:automata, especially the sequence where 2B realizes she has the logic virus and you have to get to the commercial facility while the entire game basically disintegrates around you. staggering across that bridge while the entire screen and audio are almost completely lost in static really felt like the culmination of everything the game had set up so far wrt the interface stuff as a vehicle for storytelling, and like holy shit did it pay off.
also ico: the part where you’re separated from yorda and make your way back into the castle only to arrive back in the room where the game started, where you have to slowly fight off all the shadows as you gradually realize what they actually are. the fact that the game draws that fight out for so long that you know it knows that you know (lol) what it’s doing but refuses to give you an out, the fact that the shadows can’t actually hurt you, the music, everything adds up to make it such an eerie and uncomfortable experience.
oh shit, also in nier:automata when the pods first interrupt a loading screen to basically talk about whether they were becoming sentient. holy shit was i not expecting the game to take that turn, and “pod 153… do not die” absolutely broke me.
Man, there are so many of these with Nier Automata. And the first Nier actually, come to think of it. No one has mentioned this Automata one yet though: The whole scene with Pascal and A2 before and at the Abandoned Factory. I mean, holy shit. To have the one real safe/sane haven in Pascal’s Village be desecrated like that (especially if you’ve made the slide) to then try with all your might to protect the children, getting that release as you destroy so many machines as Engels Pascal, then the horror of finding the children, THEN having to make the choice of whether to delete Pascals memories or kill him… Damn. I chose to walk away and let him live with his memories (which broke my heart to do) but the implication from that is that he commits suicide…
I definitely also felt stunned so many times in Undertale. This game just has so many layers, there are so many gobsmacking moments to choose from. The biggest stunner for me though was probably when I wasn’t even playing the game: having completed a “normal” and then a pacifist run, I went to watch the genocide ending on YouTube (no way was I going to do that myself, but I wanted to see the final boss fights in particular) and as you walk through the road on your way to the castle, Flowey is speaking to the player character, talking about all the death and destruction they’ve caused and how it’s all justified, and then says, “At least we’re better than those sickos that stand around and WATCH it happen…” I mean, I wasn’t even playing the damn game and it was still talking to me! That blew my mind. Toby did such a great job of anticipating just about everything the player would do and created a scenario to handle it.
NeiR: Automata - Beginning of Rout C. I remember when Automata came out I (and other fans of the Nier series) kinda smugly watched as people new to the series picked up the game & began to experience the subversion in games that made the previous game stand out. I remember when I started playing thinking “Oh I shouldn’t hurt the robots unless they attack me because I learned my lesson with the first game.” When I finished Rout B I was like “Okay, this has a good experience I guess I’ll experience it all again like in Nier because I know exactly what these kinds of games are like.” only to have the rug pulled out from under me to realize that the first two routs were basically extended prologues that lead to the real climax of the story. The plot twists that I expected in Routs A & B didn’t happen then and when they did happen in the begginning of Rout C they were nothing in the way that I expected. I remember at numerous points after Rout B being shocked at just the things I was seeing (The Trailer for Rout C, The Speech by the Commander, 2B in her armor, The second suicide of 9S & 2B, the commander & operators being affected by the virus, 2B finally showing emotion towards someone, 2B being affected by the virus & her march across the map, A2s rescue, 2Bs death, 9S breaking down, then the giant tower that springs out of nowhere & then finally the Title card showing up like a last “You thought you were so smart and thought you knew what was going on”).
During Yoko Taro & Takahisa Taura’s GDC Talk this year Yoko Taro mentioned how he wanted to subvert the expectations of players who had played the previous game which is what lead him to the idea of making Routs C, D & E be the ways they were & I remember thinking when he was talking “Yeah he totally got me”.
The ending of Journey was a big one for me. Both when your character dies from the cold on the side of the mountain and then again when you walk into the light as Austin Wintory’s music crescendoes around you. I felt spiritually renewed.
And on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I loved the part in Saint’s Row the Third when you parachute to recapture your base and suddenly Power starts blasting. It was the hardest I have ever fist pumped in a game.
This is what I came here to say! I remember sending back Jody being a very emotional decision and moment because of her foundation as a leader on my team and mechanically on the field. The exile mechanic makes the game! The end song left me stunned as well.
