Nobody ever shed a tear over a video-game character's death.

[Flamezdudes]

Final Fantasy X same here. Some make me teary eyed however, like Red Dead Redemption's ending, Dragon Age just before the

Spoiler

Battle and everyone comes to talk to you.

, Mass Effect 2 and FFXIII ending.

 

[MrShowerHead]

Few ones, yes. Well, I didn't cry, but it was close

Spoiler: Gears of War 2

Maria's death. Was playing it Co-Op with a friend of mine. It was pretty hard to not cry there, my friend would have laughed so much.

Spoiler: Shadow of Colossus

Everytime I ride a horse over a bridge in any game, I feel empty inside. And the music that plays during the boss fight.....

Spoiler: Mass Effect 2

When Grunt died during the suicide mission. I know it can be played without anyone dying. But why Grunt? Good thing Tali survived, don't know what would have happened without her

Actually, I have cried once in a videogame (It was a walkthrough of it)

Spoiler: Heavy Rain

All the bad endings(Ethan is put to prison and his son is murdered, Ethan shooting himself on his son's grave,Ethan being killed by the cops and Shaun(Ethan's son) crying on his body. Heavy Rain can be very sad.

 

[TheGreenManalishi]

Raiden's well written (but sadly pointless) greatest moment in MGS4...

Pales in emotional comparison to MGS3's ending.

*salute*

 

[masseyguy911]

Well honestly I haven't cried from playing a game before... but damn if there weren't moments in Lost Odyssey that made me damn close.

 

[danintexas]

Sometimes when I am playing a GTA - or a Saints Row 2 - The latter I recall shooting a cop in the game and he was crawling away begging for his life how he had kids and shit. I capped him in the head and saved and turned it off. I actually felt bad for offing a virtual cop.

Not sure how to do spoilers so I will warn - possible GTA IV spoilers

There was one mission that to this day gets me fired up just thinking about it. Forgive me if I don't remember it 100% - been a couple years - Your cousin gets kidnapped and you go storming the place where he is being held. I was standing up screaming at the screen when Nico was poppin guys in the warehouse screaming, "no one fucks with my family!" - I was literally screaming with him - GET SOME MOTHER FUCKER! I felt like my character was invincible - nades going off beside me didn't kill me - I would get in their faces for melee hits and shit. Man - Such a kick ass mission. To bad I got sick of my "friends" wanting to hang out every 10 seconds - Killed the game for me. But man that mission.

 

[Judgement101]

There is a rumour that in fable 2 a certain specail character dies and it makes you cry?

Spoiler

The dog?

 

[The Amazing Tea Alligator]

The first time I did the last mission in ME2, Tali and Legion died. Mannly tears were shed.

 

[jamesworkshop]

No and I have been playing games for about 17 years

Movies have made me cry
TV has made me cry

Games never have

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

jarowdowsky:

Spoiler

I've got to play devil's advocate a bit here - personally, I don't think games are even close to creating the same emotional impact that a really great movie can. Some games have come close, and I'll mention some of my favourites in a minute, but that's a tiny, tiny minority compared to the vast number of films that can create a huge emotional impact.

I've yet to see a game that really challenges the impact and emotions stirred at the end of 'Once upon a Time in the West' or at finding the graveyard in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. A game that made me almost cry the same way that the suicide scene in MASH did, or the haunting telephone call in Taxi Driver. I can't recall any game really feeling as exciting as when that sword comes out at the end of Kill Bill. I don't think there's been a game that creates the same unending, hopeless sense of tension that Army of Shadows or Key Largo creates. Nothing in GTA really makes me feel the same sense of amazement watching the main characters enter the bar on a date in Goodfellas... I could go on, and I really could go on for 1,000, even 10,000 movies, but you get the idea.

But my main point is this - who fucking cares? The problem with compared a movie to a game is that the two aren't doing the same thing. There are similarities but they aren't the same. But criticising games for not being the same as movies it's just an excuse for gamers to tie themselves into knots defending the hobby they enjoy.

A movie has a huge amount of interest in creating an emotional reaction - because that's all it can really do. Whether it's excitment in an action scene, blubbering during a romance or tension in a Hitchcock thriller - there's nothing else to do. A movie can't suddenly let you try to save the life of someone during an operation - it's got to construct a world and a perspective that is designed to twist emotions.

Now a game can still do this, but it's much harder. Perspectives change, angles, montages, pacing and rhythm are harder to maintain. The timing is harder - people drop in and out games rather than watching them in one go. To be fair - games do have less emotional impact - but when they do, it's been fucking earnt.

But the biggest problem is that without pointing out everything else games do - the challenge, the pure activity of playing the game, the sense of fun and freedom - then it's just games trying to justify themselves by the standards of a different medium. It's a deadend arguement designed to let movie snobs win.

However, saying all that, I really did feel overwhelmed by Silent Hill 2 - especially as it became clear how the plot was playing out and the revelation about the events in the game in BioShock was amazing! - Easily up there with the Usual Suspects for me.

So, I think games can have an emotional impact - but it shouldn't be expected or a problem when it isn't there, just part of an overall experience much broader and much more fulfilling in the long run than most films.

Although I would argue that games do need to grow up a bit (if they want to create a real emotional impact) - the holocaust scenes in Band of Brothers are so moving and when they had to take the food from starving, dying, survivours and lock them back into the camp... A game could do the same and could have the same, or even more impact, but that's not going to happen in the next CoD is it? Instead you'll just be blowing away 1,000s of Nazis and Japs again.

So, I reckon it's fine that games do different things than movies - I just think they could also maybe grow up a bit and try a bit harder to have more of an emotional impact, but it's by no means necessary, at least in my eyes.

Scobie:

Spoiler

Part of what you say is absolutely true. A video game is not a movie. Nor is it a book, a play or a TV show. It's a game and it should be judged as such. Holding it to the same standards as a film makes little sense, because that's not what it is. It makes no more sense than dismissing film as a medium because I can't design the main character or influence the outcome. It makes less sense, in fact, because while games can offer gripping plots, interesting characterisation etc - in short, they can do anything that films can do - films and many other forms of fiction cannot offer many things possible in video games. I disagree when you say that games have less emotional impact than films. They have disadvantages, but they also have advantages in terms of delivering emotional punch. They require a great amount of time and effort and involve you acting in and influencing in a work of fiction, putting yourself in the place of the characters or even making your own. While you may not have felt a great emotional impact from a video game, other people, myself included, have. Games that touch on important themes might not be that common, but that doesn't mean there aren't games that touch people deeply. And don't forget that most of the movies that come of Hollywood are identical commercial trash, just like in the videogame industry (Sturgeon's Law, people). I believe that games have the potential to be artistically superior to films, although I will admit that the industry is immature at the moment. They will grow up, just as film did.

On the subject of the critic, it's a shame when people who know nothing about a subject feel the need to mouth off about it. I'm guessing this man considers video games too inferior to be worth his time playing. If I started going on about the inferiority of films without having ever seen one, I'd be told to fuck off and rightly so. Oh well.

As for my choice of emotional video game moment, I'm going to throw in Skies of Arcadia (again). The whole Dark Rift sequence - Esperanta, the battle with Gregorio, passing through the Dark Rift itself - was, for lack of a better phrase, FUCKING AWESOME.

Critics need to learn the simple fact that everyone is different. No one is exactly the same as the next person.

Just because one person can cry over a book doesn't mean the next person to read the book will cry. He or she may actually laugh at the book.

For instance:
.1.The Hobbit was a great novel for me, while for friends that I have known the book is an horribly long winded adventure tale of a short cowardly dweeb.
.2.A critic on Channel Awesome... "the spoony one" claims that the the movie expendables was a horrible movie while another critic on the same channel, the cinema snob claims that the movie is a great action flick.
.3.Some people feel the Scot Piligrim's movie is great comedic action fest... while others feel that it is too rushed and poorly done.

No one can claim that you can please everybody all the time. Everybody feels things differently and just take the words of critics with a metric ton of salt.

 

[Redingold]

I've never cried at any form of media, but games like MGS3 have made me come closest. Especially Big Boss' final words at the end of MGS4, and Zero's death, too.

 

[Talon_Skywarp]

11 Years old- FF7...

God I was such a girl.

 

[danintexas]

The first time I did the last mission in ME2, Tali and Legion died. Mannly tears were shed.

Damn it man. I was going to start ME 2 this weekend. No lie. Tali is like my fav from #1. DAMN YOU!

:-(

 

[The Amazing Tea Alligator]

The first time I did the last mission in ME2, Tali and Legion died. Mannly tears were shed.

Damn it man. I was going to start ME 2 this weekend. No lie. Tali is like my fav from #1. DAMN YOU!

:-(

It's not a spoiler. Everyone's last mission is different.