Wolfire Games Forums

Just post anything that BLEW YOUR MIND in a game. Can be a plot twist, a cameo, anything.
SPOILER ALERT
You were Revan.
SPOILER GONE

Metal Gear Solid, the boss fight with Psycho Mantis was goddamn unnerving the first time through. "SO, YOU LIKE TO PLAY CASTLEVANIA?!"

The entirety of Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45

weirdly, a cut scene.

In HalfLife2,

SPOILER (in the very unlikely event someone hasn't played it-- you should, it's a classic):

... when you get inside the Citadel near the end, and you get the "aerial tour" of the building in one of those very creepy clamp things on rails. Yiiiikes. The being restrained and helpless in a very dangerous place, the music, the lighting, the building itself and the insane drop below you, all the story that's led up to it... Holy Crap. Still pretty impressive on the 4th and 5th time seeing it.

SPOILER OVER.

kehaar wrote:weirdly, a cut scene.

In HalfLife2,

SPOILER (in the very unlikely event someone hasn't played it-- you should, it's a classic):

... when you get inside the Citadel near the end, and you get the "aerial tour" of the building in one of those very creepy clamp things on rails. Yiiiikes. The being restrained and helpless in a very dangerous place, the music, the lighting, the building itself and the insane drop below you, all the story that's led up to it... Holy Crap. Still pretty impressive on the 4th and 5th time seeing it.

SPOILER OVER.

I LOVED that scene. I hadn't played any Valve games before HL2 in 2009 (having switched to OS X in '04 and more or less missed out on mainstream games until I got my Hackintosh), but my already-good opinion of them went stratospheric during that ride. That they were confident enough in the quality of that experience to remove almost all player control, which would normally be a super-risky thing to do, spoke volumes about the lengths to which they're willing to go to provide not just a good game, but a good story. Not a single line of dialogue, minimal music, not even what you could consider any human faces the entire time...and it was enthralling, and quite honestly chilling.

You could at least look around during that sequence (if I remember correctly) so tyou have that at least. Also, if they gave you control, what would you do? Wriggle around? Even if you did escape there was the huge ass fall waiting for you.

Ozymandias wrote:You could at least look around during that sequence (if I remember correctly) so tyou have that at least. Also, if they gave you control, what would you do? Wriggle around? Even if you did escape there was the huge ass fall waiting for you.

That's why I said they removed almost all player control. And they could've designed the sequence differently to have you traverse the distance to Breen's office on foot while shooting some more bad guys, but instead they chose to make the whole place a lot bigger and more imposing, and show you, in no uncertain terms, just how insignificant you were against the colossal Combine machine. I think making the player helpless and immobile drove that point home even a little bit harder, and served the story much better.

I was playing Episode 1 with the Dev commentary on the other day, apprently, they hate taking away control of the movement from the character, so in the beginning of Episode 1 when you SPOILER are dragged out of the rubble by Dog, and glance up at the destroyed citadel /SPOILER they decided to create that entire sequnce just so you had to look at that without them taking away much control from the player at all.

/Nerdyness

zoidberg rules wrote:...apprently, they hate taking away control of the movement from the character...

That's precisely why I was impressed that they decided it was still worth doing in the Citadel sequence. But yeah, that view in Ep.1 was beautiful. Complete with the kind of storybook-like Evil Spinning Clouds you'd expect to see orbiting the tallest tower of a dark wizard's castle.

Damn. I just might have to play through the HL2 series yet again. So many good memories.

The first half hour or so of HL2 is also one of the best I've ever seen--

SPOILER
where you arrive on the train into city 17 and the central train station is so astounding, with the lecture from the big video screens and the guards and all. [END SPOILER]

man, I'm getting re-stoked about Episode 3, which should be out any time now.

"Would you kindly..."

Took about half an hour for the full ramifications to penetrate my skull, but once they did... whoa!

Zhukov wrote:"Would you kindly..."

Took about half an hour for the full ramifications to penetrate my skull, but once they did... whoa!

How could I forget about this? When the game showed you what was going on near the end, my jaw literally dropped.

Same! I'm ambarrassed that I forgot this one, I remember playing it and thinking "God, there isn't much storyline in this is there?!" Then it got to that part and I was like "Holy Shitake mushrooms on a pogo sick! There was a storyline all along!" The sheer awesomeness that should place it right on the wall of "Best games ever made" in my opinion.

Might as well join in the Half-Life 2 jerk-off session and mention another little detail that I really liked.

"Welcome to City 17. It's safer here."

Y'know that big ol' screen at the start of HL2? The one with Dr Breen on it giving speeches? I loved how his speech ended with those words. That one little line manages to say a great deal about the nature of the setting.

If I ever meet the person who came up with that, I'm buying them a drink.

Whenever I play episode 1 I sit for at least 5 minutes listening to the guy in the train station....

"...They're always departing but they never arrive... and the ones that do arrive... they never leave... you never see them go they're always full... no one ever gets on but they're always..."