Your favorite moments in video games (Or "WOW" moments"

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Siliconemelons

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A favorite of mine, that I tend to bring up in "things done right..."

EverQuest II - in Nektulos Forest as you approach the Nektropos Castle the atmosphere is creepy, perfect and the scripted bats swooping in around you is great. The visuals are good and it all around works... maybe it was just something done so right in a game that was done so wrong... I dunno.
 

Lanx

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I remember just buying the game, knowing nothing about it, it was first none guitar hero, rockband type game for the 360 i got (it was just a party console), popped it in and started playing.

a hour or two in, this MASSIVE fucking rumble from the controller, and i'm like "WTF IS THAT?"

this is the game






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Ryan

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Was so hyped for a sequel after that ending. Too bad they never came close to living up to the potential there.
 
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mkopec

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Definitely EQ for me. I always loved me some RPG action but when I finally got a computer in 99 my sorry ass wife bought this for me for xmas that year. I was fucking hooked from the first minute. For the next 2 years this game took over my life like nothing before or since. Literal digital crack.
 
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Regime

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Many good ones already listed

For me



And

The computer logs of Randall Clark in Fallout New vegas dlc Honest Hearts.

 
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Ukerric

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As many, if I try to remember an awesome moment in a video game... the first thing that comes to mind is the clipping plane revealing the Bridge between North and East Karanas.

(that and the wet slapping sandals sound that suddenly accelerates and you realize a Hill Giant had just aggroed your lvl 9 ass and you still have 75% of West Karanas to run thru)
 
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Borzak

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First time I got blinded and the entire screen went blank by the muddites in the Gorge of King Xorbb in the early days of EQ.

It was cool tho the first game I got into online for just a few minutes. Island of Kesami on compuserve in the mid 80's. On a vic-20 and a modem made out of a converted teletype modem @ 110 baud. But there were other people doing things. Wow.
 

Big Phoenix

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Last time I can remember being distinctly wowed or awed by a game was the opening scene to the 3rd of 4th level of Crysis;

 

Gamma Rays

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Playing original Doom, getting to the final level of ep2 and fighting this guy.

Cyberdemon-Doom-video-game-upscale-Hidfan.jpg


His Roar when being woken up and then his clunk - clunk - clunk as he walked. Oh and if he sees you out in the clear he fires rockets at you!

I was so scared, wasted a lot of my better ammo doing wild shots at him, soon I was running low on ammo, I was able to get some courage and shotgun shoot at him through a gap in the structure(s) when he lived. To finally kill him.
 
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DrSpooge

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The Andrew Ryan climax in Bioshock - the Frank Fontaine focus thereafter marred an otherwise sublime narrative experience. This isn't among my favorite games, but it might be my favorite scene from a game as it's just on another level. Games are my favorite hobby, so believe me when I say that the claim I'm about to make isn't rooted in an elitist dismissal of games as a legitimate form of entertainment. But virtually every game, no matter how well written or how well acted, falls woefully short of the standards set by the storytelling in any
A-tier book. At their worst (and this is very common) they replace gravitas with melodrama and at their best the ambition of the storytelling is still subordinated to the necessity of quality gameplay. For this reason I often flat-out skip all scenes in a game - i spent 450 hours in Nioh and cant name a damn thing that happened. The games that handle story the best are the ones that either tell a story good enough to overcome these limitations (Witcher 3, The Last of Us), serve up plot/detail/immersion without interrupting gameplay (Witcher 3 also excels at this, although it obviously has a lot of cutscenes as well; Bioshock is the oldest game i recall doing it well) or the ones canny enough to deliver on a message that games are uniquely suited to deliver. The Andrew Ryan confrontation is one of the few examples here. Books, movies and the like are prone to pontificating endlessly about free will, but none are capable of pulling off what Bioshock did because none can serve up the illusion of control that a controller provides, and while they can, and do, chisel away at conceptions actual agency underlying decision making, in the same way that Bioshock does before its twist, they can't literally wrest control from the player and force him to take a golf club to someone's head as the culminating point of the narrative.

Finally finding Ciri in the Isle of Mists in Witcher 3 - definitely teared up a little there.

Reaching Anor Londo in Dark Souls

Final Fantasy has more of these moments than any other, and for a multitude of reasons - the Tidus-Yuna laugh has the dubious honor of being the only scene seared permanently into memory by dint of how retarded it is, for example. Most of them are great, though: Kefka being the biggest bastard of all time, repeatedly in FF6 - particularly the poisoning of Doma and the Leo confrontation. All the great FF's have moments like this.

Psycho Mantis mentioning my Symphony of the Night save file
 
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Lambourne

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Original Dungeon Master on the the Amiga, around 1990 as a teenager. If you've never played it, it's a dungeon crawler and (like original EQ) it didn't hold your hand. No map, no music, only the (positional) audio of monsters moving around in the dark. It's basically a recipe for tension when you hear some monster move closer and closer to you but you can't get eyes on it just yet. Then you'd move down a level and there would be new sounds from the new monsters you hadn't seen yet. Played it for weeks and weeks.

Original EQ, pulling an all-nighter camping jboots when they still dropped off Drelzna in Najena. Finally got the last set we needed around 7 in the morning and we were just ecstatic. Had the whole range of classic EQ experiences that night, people falling asleep, some KSing asshole showing up, people worring about where they sat due to the "anti-camp radius" etc.
 
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sleevedraw

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The first time you descend to flooded Hyrule in Wind Waker and the old Hylian theme starts playing. Also at the end of the game where you perform a prefrontal lobotomy on Ganondorf with the Master Sword.

Arsenal Gear and its aftermath in MGS2, especially the now-prescient diatribe about people retreating into their hugboxes.

Couple of recent ones from FFXIV:
Finding Amaurot for the first time.

"'tis good to see you awake, G'raha Tia." Crystal Exarch is best boi and makes awesome sammiches.


Every scene Emet-Selch is in. Probably FF's best villain since Kefka.

 
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Caliane

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some of this stuff I find really loses its punch on me, since I've played too many games, watched too much sci-fi, etc. Or, its 2019, and walkthroughs, guides, lets plays, forums, spoil the shit out of everything.
So like, I just assume EVERY game is "it was post apocalyptic Earth ALL LONG!" unless specifically told otherwise, at which point, probably still is.

Like playing pathfinder:kingmaker atm. Obvious betrayals are obvious for the most part. (to the point the game keeps acting like your PC is in the dark, when its BLATANTLY OBVIOUS.) But, even the twists and turns, that aren't as obvious... get casual spoiled on the reddit/steam/etc, when you are trying to just find out spell mechanics. "HOW DO I KEEP X FROM BEING INSTANTLY KILLED BY Y in such and such cutscene"

The andrew ryan one is really so great, because it defies even being spoiled. Its a 2for1. So even if you are genre savvy enough, or get spoiled on the first part,
Would you Kindly?
the second aspect kicks in, and the meta narrative holds you in place and is 100% as meaningful spoiled or not.

Something like The Swapper is sortof similar. you probably could be spoiled on the story of the game. But, be spoiled wont really effect, the impact of the final choice.
Also, sortof like Soma I guess. Although, the point here is again the impact of the final choice, not the "twist", which I found blatantly obvious. I figured that out in the first 30s of the game iirc.

Wow Beta had a huge impact on me. Just next level game design, world design etc compared to Lineage 2, Ultima, EQ, etc of the day.
I remember running up the day it shut down, at like level 14? or so, up Loch modan, through wetlands, up into Arathi, and like checking out Stormgarde.

Seeing Kings Quest 6, in PC stores back in the day. They'd have the SVGA monitors, etc. so. holy shit. +"talking", and the like. ha While going back home to 16 color ega, maybe even was still 4 color CGA at the time.
 

a_skeleton_02

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Almost the entirety of Final Fantasy's XIV newest expansion. They spent years building up a narrative and heroics of you the main character and then turn everything on its head.

They make you genuinely feel for MMO side characters and the villain is both sympathetic and menancing probably the best villain in decades.

In terms of story pacing and areas it's one of the best Final Fantasy stories full stop and it's a fucking MMO.

The music alone is only topped by FF7 but I'm biased on that regard it's probably the best musical score ever in a game tbh.
 
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TBT-TheBigToe

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Getting my Soul Essence of Aten Ha Ra in EverQuest, it was like... well, it meant a lot to me and the neck item was going to stay banked forever.
 

Kaige

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The final boss of Dragon Warrior 4, where he originally looks like an earlier boss, but then chop off enough pieces and suddenly he starts transforming. They never did anything like that in the previous games, and it fucks up your rhythm because you thought you were winning the whole time.
 
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Regime

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winning FPS tournaments for sure is another.

tribes 1 was my first game i played competitively and my clan won the dallas lan 99.

I played base renagades and ultra ren.


 
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Valderen

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KOTOR, at the end playing as a dark side character and you order the wookie to kill his friend the little twilek girl, he refused and then you force persuade him. When I saw the option to order him to kill I could not believe they would allow it, and then the force persuade option appeared and my jaw drop to the floor realizing that yes they are going to do it.

By far my favorite moment in a video game.
 
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