the story reveals in Horizon: Zero Dawn. it's hard to say much of anything without spoilers, but that game had me absolutely riveted.

also HL: Alyx had some stunning moments. I haven't been much of a VR fan but that game is fantastic.

I need to figure out how spoilers work in Lemmy haha. hard to talk about.

KotOR. Just the whole thing basically but especially the story turning points.

The factory level in Titanfall 2, where you're trying to escape

Gotta say, the opening of Nier Automata is something I tell people how much I hated! It's a great story, but it's bad game design.

It's a mix of cutscenes and gameplay that takes about 40 mins to get through, there's no saving possible at any time, and if you die then you go right back to the beginning.

And I did die, twice. So yeah, that was a slog, and by the third time round I'm not enjoying the storytelling anymore.

If you are actually good and didn't die, I can see why you had a different and more enjoyable experience :)

Any dialogue instance whatsoever between Aveline and Isabella in Dragon Age II. Here's one of my (many) favorites:

Aveline: You're right.

Isabela: About?

Aveline: About knowing who you are.

Aveline: I'm the captain of the guard. I'm loyal, strong, and I don't look too bad naked.

Isabela: Exactly. And if I called you a mannish, awkward, ball-crushing do-gooder, you'd say...?

Aveline: Shut up, whore.

Isabela: That's my girl.

When I have a perfectly flat four row stack and the 4x1 tile appears.

The moment early in Fez when you receive your titular hat, hit me at just the right time and place in my life. I was ready for exactly that kind of cheeky, childish, wonderment

Chrono Trigger. The Magus Fight. The music.

FF6. Magitech Factory. Also music.

Metal Gear Solid. Psycho Mantis. Late at night. Tired.

Eternal Sonata. Last Fight. Intro line.

Hades. Final boss. Extreme measures 4.

NES Tetris. Crashing.

Would you kindly?

And the realisation that I not only have no choice if I want to progress the plot, but that at no point to now could I have progressed the plot had I not 'kindly' done as requested.

It was such a clever device to put in the story. Innocuous or obvious requests at first until it reached a point where you are forced to kill a guy. Or stop playing. It's the most original and mind-blowing concept I've seen put into a game. I still think of it whenever someone asks me to 'kindly' do something.

(In case anyone doesn't know, though I probably just spoiled one of its biggest moments if you don't)

Burning fields in FarCry 3 jamming to skrillax.

The Mass Effect trilogy is full of favorite moments for me, but perhaps the most memorable one is when you romance Tali and get(h) to the final push on Earth, in ME3.It's beautiful.

In Monster Hunter World's iceborne expansion there's a monster called Brachydios. It's a giant blue monster that attacks by spreading explosive slime all over the arena and punching it to blow it up. In the postgame you can eventually fight a variant known as Raging Brachydios which is about twice as big and three times as agressive. For the most part it's almost the same as the normal Brachy fight, just significantly more intense. That is, until near the end of the fight.

It should be noted that Monster Hunter games are hard. The base game is difficult. The expansions are even harder. The expansion post games? Brutal. Raging Brachydios is one of the most difficult fights I've ever had in a video game, only topped by the monsters that follow it in the same game. (soloing Fatalis is probably my greatest video game achievement of all time.)

So you've been stuck with this beast for about 20 minutes now, slowly wearing it down. You're probably on your last life and you've burned through enough healing items to last you the entire base game. Finally this thing runs away, and you can tell you're nearing the end. You sharpen your weapon one last time and follow the monster into that volcanic cavern.

Suddenly, it lets out a bellowing roar and starts rapidly punching the ground! Slime is flying everywhere and the entire room seems to heat up. You notice a message on the side of your screen: "Oh no! The entrance has been blocked off! Looks like you can't use certain items!". the Brachydios has sealed off your exits and disabled your traps and fast travel items. There is no running away. There is no capturing this thing. Neither of you are leaving this room until one of you is dead. You can tell Brachydios is getting desperate. It's flailing wildly, throwing slime everywhere with none of the precision and technique it had before. It has recognized you as a serious threat and it does not want to die.

Eventually however, you triumph! The beast belts out one final roar and falls over dead. Exhausted, you take a moment to recover from that grueling fight and from its corpse you tear your well earned prize! Two ebonshell and a warhead. Looks like you're gonna have to murder another couple dozen of these things for that immortal reactor. Happy hunting!

Gotta be the final fight in Metal Gear Solid 4. So ridiculously dramatic

Getting 25000 points in Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.

Freespace Intro.

This would have made a great movie.

The ending of SOMA. I sometimes watch it on youtube just to enjoy it again. Note: the ending won't mean anything to you if you don't already know the story.

Discussing God and freedom with Morpheus AI in original Deus Ex. It's just excellently done. The damn thing makes good points, and there's this soft piano (?) music setting the tone

For me, one of the most memorable was, beating Ornstein and Smough in Dark Souls for the first time solo. It was a great feeling of accomplishment, and I could see that I really mastered that game's combat.

The moment in System Shock 2 where you meet Shodan for the first time. The audio is done so well and the first time I played it, that reveal got me really good.

For me it was when i was playing deep rock galactic. I always played with randoms and i was still not very sure how everything worked and i would quite often get lost. In one game extraction was already going, and we had like 2 minutes left. I panicked and just ran around like an idiot, at some point i accepted my fate and kinda just looked around. Suddenly a driller blasted through a wall, like the koolaid man. He gave me a rock and stone and i followed him back to the drill with like 20 seconds to spare. I never had a moment in video games before and after where i saw someone doing something and i legitimately though: wow, an actual super hero.

There was just something that clicked right there. Deep rock is very dark and claustrophobic, and if you have a bad sense of orientation and (i think i didn't know how the map worked) and i don't think any game ever gave me that good kind of anxiety before.

The ending to the Spiderman PS1 game was pretty funny for something that comes from a game that was so short and modeled after fear.

Conclusion and credits of Final Fantasy IX. Especially after playing all the previous entries. What a rollercoaster..

The whole ending of Transistor, OMG. And that’s coming from someone who plays games for fun mechanics, not for the story or for feeling things.

Retrieving the master sword is always a good one

Assaulting Fort Strong for the first time I'm Fallout 4

Finally getting the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2

Pulling down the Star Destroyer in The Force Unleashed

bioshock infinite, know that the girl is the daughter of the protagonist