Games that gave you 'feels"

I know similar discussions have been around the boards, but since the threads date back to 2010 and 2012, I thought it'd be better to start a new one.

What game(s) gave you 'feels' and why?

The first time a game made me cry was during the ending of LufiaIIRiseOfTheSinistrals when the world is saved from the Sinistrals, but Maxim and Selan die, leaving their baby boy behind. (I hadn't played LufiaAndTheFortressOfDoom yet, since it wasn't released in Europe). I was probably 10 years old and had never cried because of a game or movie before. And while the storyline was a bit generic, that ending hit me hard and I still love the game for that (and the puzzles). I think I never played game without a pure happy end until then, so it took me quite by surprise. Ever since I've been fascinated by TearJerker moments in games, such as PlayerPunches or VideogameCaringPotential. Other games that left a similarly lasting impression were SuikodenI and SuikodenII, {{The Walking Dead} and most recently Lisa the Painful RPG.

If you want, please also participate in my survey on the same topic (for my Ph D).

edited 10th May '15 12:32:53 PM by hadaly_habal

Metal Gear Solid. Sniper Wolf's death. It's very probably the first time I felt sympathy for an antagonist in any media, ever.

Earthbound, though it's really different kind of feel.

It's a game that just makes you light and fuzzy in all the right places. It's a sort of weird warm blanket kind of game; quirky, but there's a homey feel to it.

Wow I'm bad at articulating my thoughts, it just makes me feel happy.

edited 1st May '15 3:00:11 AM by mrsunshinesprinkles

Nie R.

Was the first time in a long while anything had made me cry, and the game got me close to crying on multiple other occasions. i'm the one that wrote a lot of the game's YMMV tropes actually.

Mother 3 is also another game that got to me, and it did so pretty quickly, actually.

edited 1st May '15 3:01:22 AM by wehrmacht

I never finished Mother 3, but the events at the beginning already made me kinda sad/anxious. Especially, Flint's breakdown after Hinawa's death. And then later on, finding Claus' shoe near the Mecha-Drago fight.

yeah, that was like a punch in the gut for me too.

the game stops being quite as sad for a while and then starts to viciously ramp up again near the end.

I've never seen a game that like NieR that made a sacrifice involve the player by deleting the fucking save file, seriously game, goddamn it!

Obviously I let it happen, and it made the ending more sad. Deleting the save file made it more effective. All that progress and memories were lost, what a fantastic game!

edited 1st May '15 4:24:33 AM by YoKab

Asuras Wrath: "My wrath is finally.....gone."

edited 1st May '15 4:40:12 AM by Demongodofchaos2

that ending is one of the most brilliant things i have ever seen in a game because it completely breaks the barrier between the player and the main character. much like the main character, it is obligating you to make a real, tangible sacrifice to save someone who, at this point, you probably care about a lot. if it had just been a cutscene it wouldn't have been anywhere near as effective.

edited 1st May '15 4:49:24 AM by wehrmacht

Metal Gear Solid 3. Boss' death, as much as I knew it was coming, and especially Big Boss saluting her made me feel tingly.

Just bought and finished the DLC for Asura's Wrath a couple of weeks ago. Definitely the strongest part of the game.

As for me, I would have to say Final Fantasy X. I don't think any other game has surpassed the emotional roller-coaster that I felt while playing through that particular title. Just thinking about the ending makes me want to play through the game all over again.

Oh, gaming moments for the feels...

I guess the obvious one for me is Cid's death in Final Fantasy VI. It was only a month or two after the game's release in the US, so almost nobody knew that he could be saved. That whole sequence shocked me.

There's also the ending of Final Fantasy Adventure. I saved the day... how could that happen? How, if I beat the final boss, did I fail to save the Mana Tree? Granted, at this point, if you're playing a Mana game, it's practically expected that the Mana Tree is going to bite it at some point, but who saw it coming when the first game came out?

Jumping forward a bunch, "You're The Inspiration" in Elite Beat Agents. I mean, this was the game in which everyone involved broke out the Ham and Cheese. The game took the chance to go over the top at every single point to that moment. Then, a kid's dad dies, Commander Kahn is quiet as he sends the Agents out... holy crap. And then, in the finale, that little girl is the one who starts the "E! B! A!" chant. God damn it, Nintendo, this is a cheesy rhythm game... why the feels?!

Finally, Hinawa's death in Mother 3. For a bit of background, I was one of the people who was fanatically following the game's prerelease reveals. One of the biggest was when they released the mp3 of "Love Theme of Mother 3" for free. I instantly loved it, particularly its thematic similarities to both "Eight Melodies" tracks. And I had the game pre-ordered, so I got it roughly a day or two after the Japanese release. I was one of the first Americans to get to play the game, so I went in with absolutely no warning. And then, after Hinawa's death is revealed, that is when the game first plays "Love Theme," the song that I had fallen in love with. Player Punch indeed.

Offhand I recall the following:

Aquaria: Even the title music was stirring (I remember at times just sitting at the title screen to listen to the music), but the environments were beautiful. More, however, was the final revelation of who and what the "creator" was, how he came to be, and what "the Verse", the musical magic system central to the game, in fact was. Before that there was Mithala's story.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers: There were a few points—Crash's death, Wolfgang's sacrifice, Malia's relationship with Gabriel, for a few examples—but Tetelo was perhaps the major source of affecting moments; her backstory comes to mind, but the moment that perhaps most stands out for me was at the finale: "You will betray her, witch-hunter!"

Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within: Baron von Glower comes to mind, both in his lonely, tragic history and his relationship with Gabriel, as does the story of Ludwig II.

Gabriel Knight 3: Gabriel and Grace finally getting together after the tension between them throughout the games preceding, and the final scene in the hidden sepulchre, with the power passing on and the faithful servant taking his master to final rest.

(I'm pretty sure that I'm forgetting quite a few moments, however.)

edited 1st May '15 8:25:16 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

I didn't cry, but having to put down Jimenez and Zelenin in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey was definitely a punch in the gut.

Okami.

Seeing all those people who you help throughout the game, who you grow to love protecting and caring for all praying to Amaterasu at the end of the story so that she can recover and defeat Yami never fails to bring a smile and a tear to my eyes.

I get emotional really easily, so a lot of games have made me cry. Kingdom Hearts: Days, Final Fantasy X, and Radiant Historia are a few of them. In all those cases, it was the endings that got me.

There's also Tales of the Abyss, which I didn't actually cry much over, but which gave me feels that stuck around for months.

edited 1st May '15 9:02:53 AM by SapphireBlue

How could I forget Final Fantasy X... Apart from the ending, another scene that touched me was when you find Yuna's sphere: Since at that point in the game it seems she will sacrifice her life for vanquishing Sin, she addresses every party member with a few kind words. Then she finally addresses Tidus and refers to him as "star player of the Zanarkan Abes" or something. However, in the German subtitles this was translated as something along the lines of "my dear newbie" and this got me all misty-eyed for some reason.

The Walking Dead just damn.

I nominate Metal Gear Solid 4, and two scenes in particular. First would be the microwave corridor. Snake is in unbearable pain as he gown down the corridor, getting slower as he progresses until all his equipment his broken and he's dragging himself along the floor by his fingers. At the same time, there are scenes of Snake's allies being overwhelmed in their respective battles. At this point, everything seems so hopeless, that it's difficult to imagine how the heroes could ever succeed.

The second is at the end of the game, when Otacon says "Snake had a hard life." His voice breaks and he's on the verge of tears, but he's desperately trying to hide it from Sunny. This one's sad in another way too, as it's effectively the end of Metal Gear. The saga is coming to a close, so it's sad for saying goodbye to the characters and setting, as much as what actually happens. Yes, Metal Gear Rising is set afterwards, but that's very different in tone, and it's implied that Snake won't live for long past the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, meaning that he's probably dead by the time of Rising.

Pokemon Emerald's ending had me surprisingly emotional the first time I saw it. The first 2 generations of Pokemon pretty much just had music playing over text, but gen 3's credits not only utilize the game's MIDI instrumentation (to the point that the song sounds orchestrated), but they play the music over the image of your player riding their bike home, along with images of the Pokemon that you caught over the game. The music is surprisingly tender, and I'm pretty sure it's meant to represent the player character riding home to their mother after beating the Elite Four.

Kingdom Hearts is pretty emotional too. Taken as a single game, the ending is very bittersweet - and even with the endless convolution of the storyline from Chain of Memories/2 afterwards, the ending's still pretty sad. Though it takes a bit of getting used to listening to "Simple and Clean" without cracking up.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Emma Emmerich's death. She was a cool character, and her dynamic with Hal was tragic.

God of War: Chains of Olympus: I only played this fairly recently, and I knew about the Calliope mini-game, but Christ did I feel like a dick when it happened.

Oh!

Elite Beat Agents, very unexpectedly. Not even the dead dad/Xmas song, but the final level where The EBA is frozen and all the people they helped chant their name, somehow freeing them? Cheesy as all hell but it gave me tingles.

Kingdom Hearts Re Coded

"Thank you, Namine."

Also, Xion's ultimate fate in KH 358/2 Days.

I've got two. The first comes from Cave Story, starting around the climax. First, there's the deaths of King and Toroko. King just got a bit of character development when he realizes Sue isn't entirely at fault for the deaths and kidnappings, and then he just gets one-shot by The Doctor. Then, Toroko, one of the most innocent and adorable characters in the game, gets turned into a hulking monster that you're forced to put down. Following that, Professor Booster dies in your arms in the Labyrinth, and mere minutes later, Curly Brace, one of my favorite characters in all of gaming, sacrifices herself to save you. Then there's the bad ending, where The Doctor takes over the world and Quote and Kazuma hide away, and the normal ending, where the floating island crashes into the earth, leaving everyone except you and 4 other characters dead. Luckily, the good ending prevents all but the first to from happening, but considering the guide dang it and brutal bonus level it requires, you need to earn it.

The second is from the end of Bioshock Infinite.Once you get past the whole what-the-fuck-just-happened phase, it's really bittersweet. Elizabeth had to drown her own father in order to break them out of a time-loop-alternate-dimensions experiment run by two psychos with reality-bending powers. Killing someone you'd trusted so much, even under these conditions, is something I doubt I'd ever be able to do. Heck, the entire game is a trauma conga for Elizabeth, and this is just punctuates it. The final scene implies that it worked, but the whole thing is really heart-wrenching, and Elizabeth goes down as yet another of my favorite gaming characters.

Lost Odyssey, with that one scene. Superb VA work there too.

Also finishing Ni GHTS Into Dreams. The game really is a work of art and just filled me with childlike joy and wonder.

Mine's are pretty standard - what happens to Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, and what happens to Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid.

Both women, oddly enough.