When have video games given you unexpected emotions?

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
bitsy_bites5
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Like the title says, when has a video game you were playing given you unexpected emotions?

For an example I had happen to me: I was playing Pokémon Y a few years back and had gotten to the point in the game when I could catch the cover legendary, Yveltal. I saved right before the battle because I had had a lot of difficulty catching Xerneas when I played Pokémon X and was expecting to have even more difficulty with Yveltal since it has Oblivion Wing to heal itself. I go into the battle and things are going really well, I get it down to a sliver of health and throw a Dusk Ball. I catch it on my first attempt with the first ball, I think to myself "wow, that was quick" and I get the prompt to add it to my party for the battle with the main story's villain, I choose not to because I planned on completing the game with the team I already had. I finish the battle and am ready to go finish the game and decided to check out my new pokémon, the first thing I noticed is it's nature, Lonely. I am punched right in the feels as my brain starts immediately putting together a backstory for this pokémon I caught because the games story forces you to. I come up with this (spoilers for the story of Pokémon X and Y):

Spoiler:
This pokémon, long feared and considered more monstrous than others for legends connecting it to death, has never known kindness or love. It has lived a solitary life away from humans and pokémon alike when it's power begins to weaken and it goes into hibernation and sleeps for many centuries. At some point in its hibernation it is found by Lysandre, the leader of the villainous Team Flare, and is used to power an ancient machine called the Ultimate Weapon. Yveltal is unable to fight back and suffers immense pain at the hands of Team Flare, when it is suddenly awoken from its long hibernation by a young man, who looks pleased to see it and immediately engages it in battle. This is the first time a human has interacted with it in any meaningful way, and the pokémon the young man commands don't flinch and run from it. After battling with the young man's pokémon Yveltal is tired but content, and when the young man pulls a ball from his bag and throws it toward Yveltal it doesn't fight against it because it knows it won't be lonely anymore.
I immediately added it to my team. As a note, when I play Pokémon games I usually play the first time as one gender (usually female) and do the second playthrough as the other.
Last edited by bitsy_bites5 on May 15, 2020 12:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Kikki
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I don't 100% understand this, I don't think. Are you wondering what games made us feel surprise, specifically? Or what games made us feel any way we weren't expecting to? I'm not sure my answer will be what you're looking for, but I can right off name 3 games for having surprised me with how I felt. Xenoblade Chronicles (the original), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (the whole series, even after all this time!) and Harvest Moon: A New Beginning.

Xenoblade had massive plot and twists that were really fresh. At least, they were fresh to me when I first played it...in XC2 I found nothing surprised me at all because they used the same devices and I was able to recognize them as they appeared...I could tell how each character would end up by seeing what trope they were using...so resulting developments were expected, for me, which means it was not a game I could really love. But the first one amazed me by how they continually upended me. (Except in the case of one character who apparently shocked my friend, but whom I had pegged from the minute he showed up.) Who is the real bad guy? Who is the real good guy?What really happened to X and O? Are we where we think we are?? Etc.

Then there is Ace Attorney, which always surprises me, which is very weird in a game that you'd think should be a huge cliche. Sometimes the cases are genuinely unexpected and twisty, but other times the game outright TELLS you who the criminal is, and yet you still don't end up coming to the end in the way you think you would. Even down to the wire, when the verdict is about to be announced... sometimes the game throws you for another loop. AND I'm always amazed by how well-developed the characters are...they feel so real, in spite of the silliness and the anime quality. Ema Skye x Klavier Gavin turned into my top (non-canon!) fandom pairing EVER because of how much detail they added to interaction and the backstories. It always surprises me how all the nuances end up working together to make something so believable, when the games are actually, to be frank, ridiculous. And how is it STILL surprising me after all this time?! All game series grow stale through reused devices and plot and character tropes. Why does only Ace Attorney never do that?

Then there is HM: ANB, which ate my soul. It was the whole game...being able to rebuild an entire town and organize it to my liking, being able to progress at my own pace with going slow, or rushing through as fast as possible with ways to unlock late crops early by working hard on what you already had available, and via festival wins and competing in festivals above your level to start raking in the big bucks asap. And of course, Sanjay. That was the first time a game character made me write an entire novel, inspired by his back story and his setting within the game. I was continually amazed by how I could never get sick of that game, how I just wanted to keep playing, just to see which line Sanjay would say at mealtime. (I particularly liked the one where you get a bit of food on your finger.) I never got bored with it, which has never happened to me before, and felt almost surreal. I felt shocked that I had some how found my actual perfect other half, lol.

I guess RF4 counts as well, since it was the first game I ever played so intensely that I even dreamed about it for nights on end. That surprised me about myself, lol.

Not sure that any of that is what you mean, though.
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Bluie
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I guess in regards to when video games hit me with emotions that I didn't anticipate, that's what you're looking for? There have been a lot of instances where I get a gut punch or really upset with a game over its plot, but one thing I've found to be a constant and instant trigger for waterworks is whenever a game ends on a view of a letter from a character no longer with the party. You spend your whole journey with them, you get the happy ending, but they're not there to share it with you and it just blindsides me every time.

I can give two examples; one being Final Fantasy IX and the other being Valiant Hearts - there's more, but these are the ones that stick out to me presently. Serious spoilers for both games below:
Spoiler:
With FFIX, Vivi was such a huge part of the plot throughout the entire game. He finds out he's a defected war machine early on, decides to chase after the man whom created him for answers, and then said answers reveal that he's going to die very soon as he may very well already be past his expiration date. Despite all this, he continues on the good fight and just before he passes, he writes a letter (to the currently MIA main character; Zidane, who may or may not be dead at that point) about how much he loved his life and every one he met and thanks them all. This is being read out whilst watching the rest of the cast go about their daily lives while he's absent, implying his death, and it gets me every damn time I play the game.

With Valiant Hearts, one of the protagonists, Emile goes to war in search of his son-in-law who was conscripted to the opposite side due to his heritage. He goes through absolute hell of earth and then eventually ends up in as POW and then back to his troops only to be put in charge of a squad mean to march into certain death (decoys). He ends up killing the commanding officer, saving his squad and possibly many others, but is sentenced to death by firing squad for insubordination. You have to literally WALK Emile to his execution while a letter he wrote to his daughter plays over the gameplay, him lamenting about the war and how he wishes his family happiness. It broke me that his man who survived the hell of WWI only to die because he decided to put others first the entire damn game.
I'm tearing up just thinking about it...(lol). But yeah, every time the game gives me a 'sad letter' sequence, I think I can take it, only to find myself in tears by the end of it. I'm a bit of a stone-faced person when it comes to things made to make people internationally sad, but I guess letters are my limit.
bitsy_bites5
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Post  Posted:

Yeah, I guess I should have phrased the title better, I'll change it to make things clearer.
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