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.
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!
bioshock infinite, know that the girl is the daughter of the protagonist
Have you played them all? I remember playing Bioshock 1 (at release) and the ending blowing my tiny, child mind.
when i finally beat free bird on guitar hero 2. then the next morning i forgot i did that and thought someone messed with my game 😂
All of the big set pieces in the Uncharted series. The train in Uncharted 2 stands out.
I’m partial to the helicopter scene in U2, the vehicle chase scene in U4, and the train sequence in Lost Legacy.
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.
The whole ending of Transistor, OMG. And that’s coming from someone who plays games for fun mechanics, not for the story or for feeling things.
Gotta be the final fight in Metal Gear Solid 4. So ridiculously dramatic
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.
So many “AHA!” moments in TUNIC. Figuring out secrets. Figuring out mechanics for the first time and realizing you had access to things well before you realized you did. Finding the Holy Cross and the Golden Path. Many of this moments gave me goosebumps.
The chasing scene in Syphon Filter 1 or 2 where it ends with one guy hanging on to a helicopter and you gotta shoot him down. I loved the whole scene + music.
Old Pokémon games: catching a legendary with a normal pokeball. Defeating the legendary four (or whatever they were called) for the first time
Witcher 3, the sad story of the Baron (bloody Baron?)
Crash bandicoot, being able to reach the really high gem
Oddworld, having saved enough slaves to win the game
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.
Assaulting Fort Strong for the first time I’m Fallout 4
Finally getting the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2
Pulling down the Star Destroyer in The Force Unleashed
Battlefield 4 when you get extracted by a skyhook.
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Would you kindly?
And the realisation that I not only have no choice if I want to progress the plot, but that at no point to now could I have progressed the plot had I not ‘kindly’ done as requested.
It was such a clever device to put in the story. Innocuous or obvious requests at first until it reached a point where you are forced to kill a guy. Or stop playing. It’s the most original and mind-blowing concept I’ve seen put into a game. I still think of it whenever someone asks me to ‘kindly’ do something.
(In case anyone doesn’t know, though I probably just spoiled one of its biggest moments if you don’t)
“A man chooses. A slave obeys.”
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 :)
Hard agree. I played through the opening twice in my first sitting. Died both times. Put it down for a year and a half.
Finally decided to try again and picked it back up. Passed the opening sequence and got into the game proper. And, I can say that I had a pretty good time—excepting a key, bullshit timed mission that I barely passed.
They really did not need to gatekeep the game behind the poor design of the opening.
This was my experience too, except after dying at the boss I got a Steam refund. Just too frustrating.
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.
