For me, it was Princess Rosalina’s backstory in Super Mario Galaxy.
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Brothers: A tale of two sons.
The game has a pretty unique mechanic. It makes you control two characters at the same time. It’s not a coop game, with optional solo. It’s strictly a single player game, where you use one controller to move two characters, the titular two sons, one on each control stick. Throughout the game you use movement and interactions with the environment to solve simple puzzles to remove obstacles in your way and travel to your destination. Usually, by having you do different things with each character simultaneously. After a while, it becomes second nature to control both brothers in a synchronous and flowing manner when you get used to the challenge of moving and paying attention to two different things at the same time.
spoiler
Near the end of game though, one of the brothers dies. Now, you are left with two control sets, but only one character. Puzzles similar to ones that you already solved, now you have to figure out how to solve them, on your own. This on its own is gutwrenching as you developed a familiarity and affection to both characters and their dynamic, as they grow from mutually annoyed siblings, to a well coordinated team of brothers who care and protect each other.
But through the game, you’re also taught that the younger brother can’t swim, he doesn’t know how to. So whenever you had to cross a body of water, the elder brother had to carry the younger brother on his back. He is deadly afraid of being in the water since their mother apparently drowned herself and he saw her die.
At the climax of the game, alone in the middle of the ocean, you have to swim to shore. The emotional kicker is as you discover that using the dead brother’s stick on your controller, which you haven’t touched in at least half an hour since the other brother died because it doesn’t do anything anymore, calls however upon the memory of the older brother when you swim. You have to use both controller’s sticks to swim effectively and survive, and you can hear him cheering and supporting the younger brother to find his strength and swim on his own, back home, to carry on and save their father’s life.
It’s such an empowering and emotional moment.
The ending of that game still makes me tear up after all this years as it makes me think of my own family. Even writing this comment I’m getting emotional. And it does it all without a single line of dialogue, text or voice acting. All by animation and vocalizations along with game mechanics. It’s one of the most effective uses of gameplay I have ever seen in a video game and forever has made me think of this as one of my favorite games of all time.
Other video games, and things people call emotional are usually about story elements, plot lines, events on a character’s arc. Things that have books upon books of analysis and history. Not that they’re any less valuable or deserving of praise, but using gameplay this effectively to convey emotion is, however, kind of unique and rather harder to pull off effectively.
You have me sold on the game.
Yah that sounds like an incredible experience
You put that into words perfectly. I think it’s the only game that proscribes an emotion so successfully through a gameplay mechanic. It’s the most real, raw and visceral sense of loss I’ve ever felt in a game, film or book. Truly unique.
I played this many years ago on Total Biscuits recommendation, he had similar things to say about it, it truly is a beautiful game
“Would have liked to run tests on the sea shells.” ~Mordin Solus (Mass Effect 3)
“Had to be me. Someone else might haven gotten it wrong.”
Brutal every time. 😭
I don’t think I ever cried playing a video game, but I can think of three moments that almost got me. Spoilers, obviously.
- Metal Gear Solid 3. Hearing how much The Boss had to sacrifice for a country that will forever hate her and remember her as a traitor.
- Fighting the Hollow Knight and at some point it starts stabbing itself. The music changes from this epic battle theme to a tragic lonely little violin. It can barely even stand, yet is still forced to keep attacking. At this point it changes from a battle to assisted suicide.
- Doki Doki Literature Club. Living with depression myself, I knew exactly how Sayori felt. I’m not even talking about THAT scene, but the day before.
Being 7yo and trying to play MegaMan 3. Different kind of cry, but you asked.
The end of bl2’s Tiny Tina’s assault on dragons keep where she admits she knows Roland is dead, and gives his statue a big hug. A rare moment in those games
This is a prime example why bl3 sucks. Moments like these made bl2 a true gem.
Probably an obvious one, but Life is Strange was a pretty emotionally fraught game to play through. Everyone’s probably aware, but it is filled with choices that determine lots of different small outcomes as well as the main ending. So after I finished it, I spent the evening watching streamers react to the ending and sniffling along with them.
Personal story about that, a good friend passed away unexpectedly right before the pandemic, and his wife asked for my help finding some things on his computer. He was a great guy, big burly dude not known for being overly-sentimental but a wonderful imagination/DM. As I was going through stuff she was reminiscing about him. So we opened his Steam library and he had 2 games installed. Fortnite and every chapter of LiS. She had no idea what that game was, but imagining him secretly huddled over his laptop, guiding Max & Chloe along just broke me.
Another game that drew me in instantly was Hellblade: Sennua’s Sacrifice. Seeing the character’s backstory in the first couple of scenes and knowing that this was a story game dealing with mental health and loss was major, and I was immediately motivated to help her get through the healing process.
LIS holds a special place in my heart, it was the very first character focused game I played/actually paid attention to while playing. Really beautiful game.
“Keep that hair short”
Ezio meeting Altair for the first and last time at the end of AC: Revelations
Also the “I’m Afraid” scene with Sister Calderon in RDR2
The end of disc 1 for the original Final Fantasy VII. (I’m being intentionally vague here for anyone that hasn’t played it and will be playing the newer FF7 games)
Puuuh, a fair few over the years.
- Same one as you, Rosalina’s backstory made me tear up a little bit. It was really really well done, and so unexpected in a Mario game of all places.
- When first reading through Katawa Shoujo, Shizune’s path (botched as it is) still hit me really hard with Misha being an aside that can’t fit in, then later Rin’s neutral ending also got me really bad.
- Teenage me at the end of disc 1 of FF7, of course.
- The ending of Signalis just recently.
And probably a lot more. FFXIV has a lot of sad and emotional moments, although none of them hit me quite as hard as some other games did.
Ff7 when aerith died.
“Does this unit have a soul?”
2 for me: Arthur’s death in RD2 and Aunt May’s death in Spider-Man PS4
it’s ‘i’m afraid’ for me
It was his horse for me, the way he gently and sadly said thank you, fml
Two games, that I can remember.
One was a particular Journey playthrough, where I happened to match with another really good player. We spent basically the entire game airborne, which if you know Journey mechanics, takes some doing. They drew me a heart at the end, that did it.
Second was my first successful Suzerain run. A morgna wes core.
To the moon
This. Haven’t got around to play the other games in the series yet even though I loved the first one.
