Who says games can’t make you cry? As the Bay Area shifts from a yearlong drought to winter monsoon season, it seems like a perfect time to make things awkwardly personal with a Top 5 about the games that made the hosts choke up and shed a tear or two. Just a little. In a totally manly way. After that, we take a look at the last big game releases of 2014, the Assassin’s Creed Victory leak, and the stories you wish you could change.
Question of the Week
Has there ever been a moment in a game that made you tear up or outright cry, and if so, what was it?
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Theme song by Matthew Joseph Payne. Break song is Jaws by Lemon Demon. Haunting and beautiful New Releases Theme by David B. Cooper.
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I don’t remember crying, but ICO worked on me. The lack of UI, exposition and understandable dialog really helped draw me in.
Portal 2 made me very sad, it’s kind of a story of failure and loss. Cave Johnson is a constant failure and dies from exposure to his experiments, Aperture is always in Black Mesa’s shadow, Caroline is forced to be Glados and suffer alone and go crazy. Wheatley is a loser who is driven crazy by the power that made Glados evil but doesn’t get to be redeemed like she does and is left alone in space. Lastly Chell finally escapes the test facility but it’s been decades and she doesn’t know the outside world.
A lot of people who disliked the Mass Effect 3 ending probably don’t care to remember the kid from the beginning as fondly as I do. But I wasn’t expecting that game to go straight for the jugular like it did. When the kid appears to escape on the transport ship only to have it blasted out of the sky by the Reaper laser beam, all while that incredibly powerful score is playing in the background… damn if I didn’t start to feel a legitimate connection to the story of that game. That moment really sets the tone for the entire story of not just Mass Effect 3 but the series as a whole.
Another moment in the same game. During my first playthrough, when the Geth destroy the Quarian fleet after Legion uploads the Reaper code, seeing Tali commit suicide was really heartbreaking. Losing one of my favorite characters in Legion then getting a punch in the gut from Tali giving up hope further brought home the climactic feeling of the story.
Mass Effect is still one of my favorite franchises in gaming history and I play it every now and then just to relive that same emotion and thrill.
My only post-listening comment is that I do enjoy the vast majority of videos you add to YouTube Chris as I’m usually not around to watch the Twitch streams live. However, I would suggest looking into fixing the technical issues as they do hinder enjoyment a lot. The WWE 2K15 video was pretty much ruined and the recent Game of Thrones video has an audio issue as well during peaks and high pitched sounds.
Something to consider when producing future content, perhaps just ask the chat in Twitch if there are any issues. And of course the more people who participate in the videos the better. Dave is always great and the more of Brett and Grimm you can get the happier I’ll be.
Woah, you beat me to it! I was gonna say the exact same things, kind of relieving to know i wasnt the only one who got a choked at the intro level conclusion and i wasnt expecting to feel that way at all. When Tali jumped i was like OH FUUUUUUCK WHAT HAVE I DONE I AM THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. I just wish the rest of the game had as much impact and levity.
The raccoon was lit on fire and came back to life. He ABSOLUTELY can come back to life. Also, anyone who doesn’t like the raccoon can eat a bag of dicks.
For me, Red Dead Redemption holds pride of place in this regard.(Spoilers) When the moment came for John to finally face Ross and the others, it was this sinking feeling that there would be no more running, no more treacherous errands to run for them, just this last stand. That alone made me very emotional. That this man(John) was doing everything he could to give his son a life free of gangs and crime, so that he could be whatever he wanted to be and not turn out like his father. So when the game flashed forward to John’s son Jack as as an adult, and he looks and acts JUST like John, I wept. I even sent feedback to Rockstar giving them the text equivalent of a standing ovation. My runner-up would have to be Telltale’s Walking Dead. (Spoiler) Lee’s journey to find Clem, his getting bit, then how Clem had to end it. It’s strikingly similar to RDR in the way the role of protagonist was handed down to the very character you’d been protecting the whole game. Bravo!
Mikel gets into a genuine and heartfelt explanation of why a game made him tear up, and when he’s in the cusp of his argument, Chris let’s a huge, audible fart out. And then the whole thing devolves into a discussion of Chris’ eating habits and whether he farted on purpose or not.
I can’t think of any other moment that encompasses the soul of the laser time crew and their shows, as perfectly as this did.
This, this, and this.
Seriously – very quickly brought me from tears of solidarity to tears of joy and laughter in about 5 seconds.
For real, that first fart was a masterpiece of comedy and I will have no butt-shaming here thank you.
The Laser Time Network: Actually It’s About Flatus in Games Podcasting.
wait… has that embedded player been there for a while? I never noticed that before, but WHOA!
I hope all of the LT shows will have that, it makes sharing the latest episodes on tumblr easier. I think I notice the oddest things.
c:
Hoorah for this week’s longly awaited VGA!
The good ending of Bioshock 2 brought me to the verge of tears because of how beautiful it was. It made me feel as if I had created something strongly positive through Eleanor despite her being raised is such negative circumstances under her mother, Sophia Lamb. Since the game is basically you creating a distinct father-daughter relationship between the Big Daddy you play as and Eleanor, it brought such warmth to me and made me so proud of her that it made playing the entire game totally worth it and to this day is one of my all time favorite games because of how emotionally grabbing it was to me and also how beautiful the music was in that ending.
I have to be the ten millionth person to admit I bawled like a baby at the end of walking dead season one, and teared up a bit at the kenny-wellington ending of season two
great episode, thanks for the timestamps
The ending of The Walking Dead: Season One made me actually tear up and start crying silently and I have never done that before. It spoke to me as an uncle and nephew, and it was rather depressing as a human being who wanted Clementine to have an actual childhood which I failed at her having.
I will actually just make that the whole series because all of Season Two was basically a long conga-line of Clementine’s life being hell for her and because I, Lee, wasn’t around to save her from that life, and she didn’t have the charisma and leadership skills Lee had, she was always in severe danger. I will also say that thankfully the ending for Season Two made me slightly feel better but it was still a bitter pill to swallow since Clementine lost so goddamn much by the end of it that she will irrevocably be broken.
I’m a huge MGS fanboy and feel no shame telling you all this. I remember being an emotional wreck at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4 and holy shit the final act to that game was epic as fuck, the tunnel crawl was maybe the tensest set piece ive ever played and everything gets so much fucking better from there – the Ocelot Fight(s), Snake facing his mortality, Snake meeting Big Boss… By the end of the game i was covered in snot, tears streaming, clapping my hands and wooping like a manbaby walrus.
Also, RDR was harrowing as well but at the time i was playing it years back someone (maybe one of you guys) wrote a GamesRadar article about dead main characters and John Marston was in the FUCKING IMAGE HEADER! I’D JUST GOT TO MEXICO!
spoiler time stamps are awesome, thank you!
Bring back the raccoon
no….
Yes!
Honestly it would make no difference to me, I’ve fast-forwarded past all but like the first three times it showed up.
Then i dont care what you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaG5SAw1n0c
I actually bought Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix on Black Friday (without knowing that 2.5 was out this week) and I think it actually holds up pretty well.
Although a lot of my enjoyment comes from how much the original was a part of my childhood and it could just be my nostalgia bleeding through.
Persona 4 Arena made me tear up with Labrys’s story. After playing through some of the other characters’ story modes, you already know a bit of Labrys’s history so you know where things are going once you finally play as her. That doesn’t make it any less tragic when the obvious and inevitable eventually happens. That was sad, but the part that hit me the most is when she finally finds acceptance and friends with the Persona cast (especially with her sister, Aigis). I suppose that the tearing up was assisted by the fact that I played it at 2 in the morning, but Persona has had several moments that made me tear up (the endings to both 3 and 4 being prime examples)
QOTW: Company of Heroes
During a run-of-the-mill 2v2 skirmish of this WWII Real Time Strategy game, the sudden realities of war stuck me. The enemy had just crashed a huge army against our defenses. We barely held on, and once they had retreated, there was a brief period when there was no fighting and we collected ourselves.
In Company of Heroes, soldiers often do not outright die immediately. They are usually mortally wounded with a small window to save them with medics. In the meantime, they writhe in a pool of their own blood and scream at the top of their lungs begging for someone to come and get them.
As I said before, all fighting along the front had temporarily ceased, so all I could hear was a field littered with young German, American, and British men crying in pain.
In most games, medic units usually heal and regenerate teammates directly (because magic/science), but in Company of Heroes, medics are delegated the much more realistic task of clearing casualties from the battlefield. “Clearing casualties” literally means running out into the battlefield, triage who has the most likelihood of living, and return the wounded to friendly lines in a fireman’s carry.
The scene was horrific to me. Somehow, the scene of just two medics SLOWLY trying to clear the field actually made me feel WORSE rather than better, because while the medics were saving lives, I knew they couldn’t save everyone in time.
I told my teammate I was going to build another medic station to clear bodies faster, but he nonchalantly advised me not to and instead save up for a tank.
When the game ended (in victory may I add), I actually choked up and cried because the scene I just recreated in this videogame actually happened on a daily basis during WWII – and every war ever at that.
One quote: “Had to be me, someone else would have gotten it wrong”
My younger brother and I found and saved all the hidden Yoshis in Yoshi’s Story for N64… except for the dark blue Yoshi.
And we wept.
Wow, I’ve become such a sap with age, just listening to you talk about this stuff made me choke up.
I don’t dislike Gone Home considering I don’t know anything about it and have never played it, but the intense masturbatory circlejerk that happens whenever it gets mentioned does get annoying
Also To The Moon made me pretty teary
The ending of Batman Arkham City had me in tears. Specifically the song in the credits after all that had happened and knowing the finality of it all since there was a body and batman was carrying it so it was definitely real. Spoilers ahead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfsIvwzMeY
QOTW: While there are several games I recall tearing up at (including the goddamn amazing Gone Home, thank you very much), none have caused the bawling to commence more so than the ending to Valiant Hearts. Even with the game’s issues, the art, music, voice work and real world history come together at the end to make me absolutely lose it.
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. It’s gotten to the point where even watching the original trailer makes me recall the ending and turns me into a human faucet.
There’s another game as well I’ve cried at the end, mostly due to its suddenness and changing of mechanics which cemented the events that had occurred, but I don’t even want to mention its name for fear of spoilers. Instead, here’s a Rick and Morty clip to allude to its title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziXpIPAhD4
Also, while I didn’t cry, the ending to Ridiculous Fishing is quite touching, and I’m looking forward to That Dragon, Cancer to turn me into a six-foot-one sobbing machine.
At the end of mass effect 3 when Anderson and Shepard are sitting in the citadel turned weapon and gives you grats. Something to the effect of “you did good son” I felt so emotional to have my favorite series end and happy at the feeling of how far Shepard had come.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=UyyFVPfNI9W1sQT_n4K4Ag&url=http://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DCDWpd9nCKws&ved=0CB8QtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNETWnzIyPF348od4a2IUnQlCv4KUQ&sig2=85HVbnh-IA1eMhZXTBH__w
one doors red..
the others blue
missed hearing you 3 exclusively on a podcast
The moments before the ending of Brothers: a tale of two sons, it made me not only tear up but cry.. a lot
QotW:
Mass Effect 3: When Mordin died. He was my comic relief showtune singing, buddy. He had realized what he had done with the genophage was wrong and was working to fix it all, but then he had to sacrifice himself. It seriously bummed me out for the rest of the night. Then once again, when I realized there would be no ending in which Shepard defeated the Reapers and ending up happily married to Liara who she had been faithful to since the first game. All of the long goodbyes were too much to bear.
On the other hand, Jack died in Mass Effect 2 for my playthrough and I did not miss her even once. Someone needed to buy her a damn shirt and I was so sick of her attitude.
I cried multiple times throughout Persona 4, most notably on my first playthrough when the game convinces you that Nanako dies, which made me cry, and then I cried again when Nanako survives. That game does an excellent job of making you feel for all of the characters and has, in my opinion, the best video game story ever. It’s hard to justify buying Gone Home for $20 when you can buy P4G for $30 and get a much better story, gameplay besides spinning around a toy duck, and nearly 100 hours of content on your first playthrough.
Preach it! (although I still really like Gone Home)
I’d love to play Ghost Trick on iOS but it doesn’t work on iOS 8. Capcom really needs to fix that.
QotW-
Recently, tearjerker… Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons
He guides you, manipulates your moves.
He dies, you channel his spirit to push on.
Those sad Halo ads make me cry harder than the end of the Walking Dead. Take the ODST ad. It starts at a funeral… ok you can just watch it I am tearing up thinking about it. They glassed Harvest and Reach and there is nothing to be done for it but die fighting. Jesus I can’t even type about it.
I laughed myself to tears at this episode. multiple. times. Holy shit.
I have feelings similar to Mikel on Portal but I don’t think it actually brought me to tears. I was pretty wowed by it, maybe brought close to tears mostly by joy. I would say that Journey and Shadow of the Colossus hit me with tears in a similar way. The overwhelming beauty of the atmosphere and accompanying soundtrack just kind of …overwhelmed me.
Original T-Dar cast on this episode. Great stuff guys!
To be honest the closest i ever got to a manly tear rolling down my cheek from a game was the endings to the New Vegas DLC where you found out the fate of the many characters you met along your journey.
However for a gaming moment that left me “changed” on an emotional level has a bit of a story. It begins with a scratched copy of kingdom hearts 1 which left the game freezing during the end credit. It would always freeze on that image of huey, dewey, and lewie and has spawned an internal hatred toward Disney ducks…but i digress. I was about 10 at the time and I tried everything to get it to unfreeze. Cleaning with Windex, unscrewing the ps2 and cleaning the inside, beating the game at different levels, weapon sets, and nothing ever worked and what laid beyond the credits was a mystery. I probably ended up getting to level 100 over 5 times and who knows how many times i beat Ansem or the Hades cup. To me kingdom hearts was my legend of zelda, that game that i took the most out of. Fast forward 10 years and I was a freshman in college. The only other kingdom hearts game I played was 2, which I also really enjoyed and one afternoon read up on the confusing wiki. One day i was sitting in my dorm and I remembered how I never saw what was after the credits. I was about to youtube search the ending when i remembered the disk cleaner i recently purchased. I put the disk in the cleaner and beat the game beggining to end, which was so engraved in my mind at this point it was no issue. Finally the moment of truth game and credits panned out. After the credits and a small cutscene it shows your stats at the title music plays over it. I didn’t cry or even feel sad, I felt that i had completed the last part of my childhood, the last thing i had to leave behind. I remember leaving it on for the rest of the evening as a completed the work. However, to this day it still remains the most difficult game to recommend to anyone because of how stupid the story is.
So I know I am in the minority on this one but I wasn’t moved much by Red Dead Redemption, I think it happened because everyone was so hyping the game that there was no way it could live up to the hype that surronded it. To me it felt like a *SPOILERS AHEAD* a game where a man gets jerked around by the government then killed. It was a fun game but in the end it just felt like a let down after the hype.
With all the Gone Home talk lately, thought this might interest you folks:
http://www.dorkly.com/video/58404/gun-home
I wonder if anyone will see this, but I just finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and no game has made me cry harder. There is one minute in that game that was more powerful for me than anything else I’ve ever experienced in videogames.
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