Games with stories that sucked you in emotionally

I gotta say,

Mafia 1 and then RDR1 and 2, especially RDR2. Jesus, I couldn't wait to find out what happens in the game. So 3 games that I can remember so far, how about you guys?

EDIT: Uncharted 1 too

When I was a kid Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X and Popolocrois were games that impacted me greatly. I was so invested in the characters and the scale of their worlds.

Recently though I’d say The Last of Us & Heavy Rain really had me on the edge of my seat. Those games really get your adrenaline pumping. A game hasn’t done that to me in a long time.

Psychonaughts and A Hat in Time were great too though. Just great games in general.

I could go on and on about how games impacted me but I’ll leave it at that. :P

Emotinally... Last of us, no doubt. But last month I really connected with "We happy few".

@Hydrolex:

Final Fantasy VIII

Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2

Mass Effect Trilogy

Life is Strange

Walking Dead Seasons 1 and 2

GTA 4

Final Fantasy X

Muv Luv

Persona 4 Golden

Spiderman ps4 (surprisingly lol)

Last of Us

Detroit Become Human

Danganronpa Another Episode

In no actual order. I'm kind of sensitive to that emotional stuff mostly. But it has to be done right, not shoehorned like in Final Fantasy XV.

ME Trilogy always gets me.

Walking Dead season 1 was particularly good in the emotional stakes terms.

RDR2 is on another level, my god that game is phenomenal

Silent Hill Shattered memories love the psychology of that game and the ending twist.

Spec Ops the line amazing reveal

GTA4

Spiderman PS4 when that one person dies you know

Detroit become human

F.E.A.R. extraction point what happens to that character Holiday.

- Persona 3

- Persona 4 Golden

- The Last of Us

- Final Fantasy X

- Final Fantasy XV

- Red Dead Redemption

- Chrono Trigger

- Life is Strange

- The Witcher 3

- Horizon Zero Dawn

Which game has a better story than the movie Sun Dogs?

I would say Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy 7.

I like more simple stories. As a kid, I was really moved by Super Metroid and its' ending. Later, I was moved by the story in Wind Waker. Really liked the story of Super Mario Galaxy.

I find that games that tries hard come off as cringey or cliche/derivative. So It's not often I care about the story in games.. Especially when it's served to me. I like more mysterious games where you slowly uncover more details, like Hollow Knight or Dark Souls.

At the top of my head, the Yakuza series, Shenmue, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Skies of Arcadia, Persona 5, the Ace Attorney series, the Witcher III, some Zelda games, and KOTOR. The most impactful one would have to be the Yakuza series, because it's been quite the journey following Kiryu through 7 games and three spinoffs.

- Walking Dead (seasons 1 & 2 especially)

- Life is Strange

- Half- Life 2 Episode 2

- Witcher 3

- Mass Effect trilogy

- Hellblade

...to name a few.

There’s been a number of them but a few just off the top of my head are:

- Chrono Trigger

- Chrono Cross

- Final Fantasy III

- Final Fantasy VII

- Final Fantasy VIII

- Final Fantasy X

- Mass Effect trilogy

Shenmue for sure. So happy to see the third one being made. I remember watching the the 2015 E3 conferences. I had my turned away at the time but as soon as I heard those first notes it had my full attention :P

This war of mine is difficult to play.

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy Tactics

Heavy Rain

Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc ( the rest of the games, while good didn't get me as much )

Persona 4 Golden

Zero Escape trilogy

Missle Command. One person is responsible for keeping multiple cities safe from increasingly swarming waves of alien attacks. The amount of pressure and drama that person has to deal with is mind boggling. All along the player knows that success of saving the earth is impossible as Game Over is the end...of mankind.

I cry every game.

Metal Gear Solid 4 ending was the most emotional thing I have witnessed in a game.

Silent Hill 2 the story itself was really brutal if you saw past all the symbolism.

Yakuza 0 had some emotional cutscenes.

I'm old, so I'm gonna say Secret of Mana.
The ending chocked me up way back when -no happy ending at all in that one.

Damn that's near 25 years ago...

I will inevitably get clowned for this, but Gears of War. I instantly as of GoW1 identified with Dominic Santiago. Played as him literally every MP match ever (on COG side). When Epic killed him, they killed me a little bit :(

Valiant Hearts - for a game with only one or two audible words, this hit me right in the feels.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Assassin's Creed with Ezio's storyline

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Star Wars KOTOR I and II

The Witcher 3

Elder Scrolls Series

FF10, FF7,

wing Commander 3/4

Kathy Rain

Mass Effect 2

A Night in the Woods

Metroid Fusion

Octopath Traveler (some sections more than others)

Outside of some text heavy RPGs. I find most stories in games really terrible or plain funny. This maybe because I never buy a game for story reasons_

Makai Senki Disgaea and its cast of characters caught me off guard much like HunterXHunter. Its premise on first impressions is light-hearted and comedic. However it goes against that assumption, delivering the first characters I generally liked in a game, and how they develop through the game was enjoyable.

Resident Evil 7 had the typical set-up for the series 'OP bioweapon unchained', which is a common horror movie trope (don't play the series for premise reasons anyway). Yet characters are developed really well 'Not the protagonist, he's laughable'. The line before the final encounter for example hit harder than I thought it would. It was surprising how they handled storytelling in a Resi game.

Suppose despite me not enjoying much of The Witcher III it had great voicework and interesting characters. Won't double down why as many here cover the game. The main plot however was highly generic and seemed heavily inspired by Star Wars, almost to a laughable degree.

One last is Metal Gear Solid. Though I do overlook a few things of criticism; thinking of limitations of the hardware. So if played viewing it modern ways of implementing stories in games? is probably still stupid and poorly paced. Meryl died in my first run so I generally felt bad, especially after Rois confession lol.

https://kolompc.com/category/pc-games/

Every Yakuza game that I played (0, 4, 6, Kiwami 2)

I enjoyed all the stories in Tales, but the best one was Berseria.

Ni no Kuni 2- While it has very basic story, I love those stories of "the Master and Student". Same reason that I like Hikaru no Go and Arslan.

God of War 2018. Loved every moment of it, and despite that I hated Kratos in GOW3. It is because of that, since GOW2018 makes Kratos trying to becaume a better person after the monster he was in the past.

@RSM-HQ: I'm a little confused by you saying that The Witcher 3 was inspired by Star Wars. Can you please elaborate?

Final Fantasy VII & VIII, Metal Gear Solid, good old times!

Devil May Cry 3.

Star Wars Jedi Knight 2.(My introduction to expanded universe)

Silent Hill 1 & 2.

Etc.

I remember that whatever game I'm playing I really try to enjoy the story as much as I can.(Which sometimes some games fail to do that while others will succeed in that)

Even if the game's story turns out to bemediocre it still sucks me emotionally.(Like GTA 3 for example)

@valgaav_219:

*Sigh* Really? If I must. (It's me stating Warcraft is basically The Lord of the Rings all over again)_

Ok. Going to begin stating 'More from a basic premise'. I'm sure you and many fans can tell me how wrong I am regardless, because other elements from both series, the diverse list of characters I'm ignoring, and the deep lore of both, but here is my sum-up as someone who has invested sometime in both The Witcher II and III-

Signs basically works exactly like 'The Force' powers from Star Wars. They are achieved differently but still work similar and heavily used and feared as plot-armor_

Cirilla fills the role of Luke Skywalker/ The Chosen One/ Orphan with anger issues and stupid potential. Taken under Obi-Wan/ Geralt, your beaten down but more interesting and wise mentor, who's rarely around to give good advice to the Padawan.

While The Wild Hunt/ mostly Eredin looks closer to the Skull Knight in Berserk, I get Darth Vader vibes from everything he does or knew about him. They also want the Luke Skywalker of The Witcher universe much like the Emperor and Darth wanted Luke. Less than what the individual is and more for what they have within them.

The biggest difference I found is The Witcher II and III bring up racial issues and wars as a big factor for storytelling, while SW and Lucas/ Disney ignore the subject matter and focus on factions instead (from at least the movies).

Worth noting I'm also not much into Star Wars either probably seen the original trilogy as a young kid and Rouge One was the last I saw far more recent. However, I know enough to view these connections above.

Feel free to disagree. Connections in media are very common, but fandoms commonly get insulted at the very thought.

-Chrono Cross

-Witcher 1-3

-Mass Effect 1-3

-KOTOR 1 & 2

-Fallout NV

There's more but that's just off the top of my head.

Grim Fandango. I was happy for Manny when it was over, but was sad that my time with him had come to an end.

I'd have to say Nier Automata and The Walking Dead Season One.

Intro for Playthrough 3 is pretty intense

I know the games are a bit pretentious but the Metal Gear series has had a lot of great emotional moments

Red Dead Redemption 2. Big time.

The Metal Gear Solid games also had stories that really drew me in, I just really loved them no matter how crazy they got.

Red Dead Redemption really drew me in as well. I imagine that RDR2 will do the same when I start playing it.

The Last of Us, TellTale's The Walking Dead Season 1, and Life is Strange are the 3 that immediately come to mind.

A few others would include Persona 4 Golden, Mass Effect 2-3, and Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.

After reading the question, that was the first game I thought of. No doubt about it. Character development was incredible. Story was flat out amazing.

God of war 4 is the game which caught me emotionally in some scenes and I was really stuck with emotions.

Oh man - some recent gems have been The Last of Us and The Last Guardian. TLG may have made me care more about an animal character than I ever thought I would

Uncharted 4 was poignant as the last adventure... but I'm recently torn up a little by "Thief Of Wishes" that I played on mobile recently.... and I dont know why ahha

Mass effect trilogy- got sad when i lost crew members, some still bother me to this day

Red Dead. still working on 2 but gripped.

I have heard Ori from a lot of people, looking forward to it coming to gamepass next month with HellBlade

Frogger- That poor frog, where is he going and why?

The Mass Effect trilogy, Life is Strange and Mafia 1.

Definitely Persona 3. The game story is emo teen edgy by today standard but damn I adore the story. Everyone was searching for something that worth living as they desperately climbs the 250+ floor tower to prevent judgement day. Amazing story personally. Too bad Atlus really dont do depressed jrpg story nowadays.

Life is strange

Red dead 1

Not sure if emotionally is the word but the evolution of Nathan drake as character was very well done.

I was about to say Mafia 1. Then someone here posted it. Man i remember that game on PC years ago. Just a really great game

This war of mine was one of the greatest games I ve ever played. I still play it (3rd year now)

Pong such an emotional game. Just me playing with myself.