My favorite games are Omori, Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds. I cried for hours at the end of those games, and I think the common point in them is high-quality emotional writing and stellar OST (music really affect me) and my attachment to the characters.
I also found that my taste in movies was similar (Hana-bi by Takeshi Kitano is my favorite movie)
I’ve been trying to find something similar, so has anybody any recommendation?
I’d like to add that I basically hated Nier Automata (way too pretentious imo) and Before your Eyes (I wasn’t a fan of the game concept, and found the story pretty weak), and really loved the horror aspects of Omori.
I also heard about To the moon, but games talking about disease are hard for me to enjoy
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If you’re okay with “walking sims”, Dear Esther is the only game that ever brought a tear to my eye. I played it shortly after someone close to me died and the ending really hit me.
It’s basically 100% “emotional writing” so it might be up your alley.
Baldurs Gate 3.
If it’s emotional you want, you can’t beat To the Moon and its sequel, Finding Paradise. They’re walking sims, but they’ve got great stories that’ll make you ugly cry
Came here to say the exact same thing: To the Moon is definitely a game for ugly crying. I even replayed it a couple of years ago, and even when I already KNEW what was going to happen, I still found myself crying for hours and being overemotional for a week. Great games with beautiful storytelling. I can feel myself tearing up just by thinking about it. Maybe it’s time for another replay haha
Dont forget there is a 3rd in the series now called Imposter Factory which was good too!
To the moon had the best story and made me very emotional, the other two don’t his quite so hard but still left an impact. I’d highly recommend the series if you like that kind of story.
Didn’t know about the third one. Thanks, I’ll check it out!
I know it has a bit of an intense fan base, but Undertale would definitely fit here.
I’d recommend “in stars and time”. It is a turn-based RPG with loveable characters. I think it is best played blind so I’m hesitant to tell you more, but if you like games like undertale then I think you would like it.
THAT WAS IT!!! it was WONDERFUL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! if anyone reads this and recognizes themselves in the games i enjoyed, I would tell them to play this first if they haven’t!
Haha. Glad you enjoyed it. Really great game that I think deserves more attention.
It was already at the top of my wishlist before posting this, waiting for the steam sales to get it!
Life is Strange made me cry. It has a good soundtrack too.
I played through the original and True colors, it was great!
Play Before The Storm if you haven’t, it’s a prequel to the first game.
I haven’t, will try it!
I would wholeheartedly recommend the A Plague Tale duology (Innocence and Requiem). They both had a lasting impact on me (especially Requiem) and the OSTs are the overall presentation is really great IMO.
The Witcher 3 has some really emotional scenes, and an immersive soundtrack.
I’m trying to get into it, played 15 hours already but I struggle to get attached to the world or characters.
Cyberpunk 2077 and edgerunners had way more of an impact on me, with The Witcher’s strong pointsThe game takes a while to warm up the plot. It picks up with the Baron quests, and the big emotional parts come out full steam towards the last third of the story.
If you manage to finish it, replay it with different choices. Some of the character reactions can be really endearing, others can be terribly heartbreaking.
Both expansions also have excellent stories, one with a Faustian plot, the other with dark stories in a fairy tale veneer.
I would suggest you try to make it as far as the botchling quest. If you still don’t care for it after that then I’ll concede that it’s not your style of game.
I haven’t played it myself, but I’ve seen playthroughs of The Last of Us. Even though there’s a sequel, I’ve heard the first one is better. Anyway, if engaging story is what you’re after, I’d check that out.
I’ve also never played this one, but I’ve heard SpecOps: The Line is also a gutpunch.
It’s a bit of a commitment, but I always found the Halo series to be kinda emotional to me, but then I also grew up with it and got invested in the characters. Your mileage may vary with Halo.
Final recommendation would be Ori and the Blind Forest if you’re into platformers.
The Last of Us 1 has been the only game to ever make me emotional. It’s still the gold standard for what a video game is capable of in terms of narrative. The sequel was jarring, but not heart wrenching in the same way the first was.
Already played through Spec ops the line and loved it, but not as muxh as those other games.
I never played TLOU, might try it out
And yeah Halo wasn’t for me at all
Ori has been also recommended a lot to me but isn’t it hard to get attached to characters with the presentation the game is going for?Yeah, Ori is emotional but there isn’t much to attach you to the characters if that’s what you’re looking for.
Might I recommend Witcher 3? I didn’t play the other ones, but I found myself getting attached to the characters by the end all the same.
Edit: just saw you didn’t care for Witcher 3 much.
Since you’re ok with horror, I highly recommend both Detention and Devotion by Red Candle Games. Both of them start out as horror, then gut punch you as you realize what’s going on. Devotion is an amazing example of domestic horror (the horror that can happen inside the home), and Detention is the horror that people do when they don’t realize the consequences of their actions. Devotion has stuck with me, and to this day the last line makes me want to cry.
Thank you for reminding me of this. I loved Detention, they did a great job of transitioning to an intriguing story once the horror elements got less scary (as they naturally do as you get used to a horror game.)
If you haven’t played Devotion, I really can’t recommend it enough. It’s a completely different style from Detention, but they did that same really good job of transitioning to the story.
Woha never heard of that, I’ll look into
Edit: Managed to find detention, it looks very very cool and might exactly fit what I’m looking for, but why is there only the soundtrack for devotion on steam?
You can only get Devotion on Red Candle’s website, thanks to Chinese censorship bullshit. It got pulled off Steam, then when GOG said they would sell it, they freaked out because they were worried about CP2077 sales and claimed “gamers” complaining made them change their mind (but wouldn’t respond to anyone asking for specifics).
Why would it be affected by Chinese censorship? Is it critical of the ccp? Or just because it’s a taiwanese game?
There was a random art asset that compared Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh that didn’t get taken out in time.
Their partner in China got their business license pulled, and they took the game off Steam when it started getting review bombed. It was a big mess over the stupidest thing.
Damn, that’s unfortunate
Luckily, they were eventually able to get it up in their own site for sale, but the damage is done. They lost so much in sales and momentum. The game truly is amazing, and this game had just started to really get buzz around it when all this happened. Barely anyone even knows it now, even though it’s one of the best psychological horror and family tragedy games out there.
I look at everything happening with the Silent Hill 2 remake and wish Red Candle hadn’t gotten kneecapped by bullshit so they could be the ones doing it.
I’m not super familiar with the examples you gave but I’m gonna say anything from Supergiant Games: Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, Hades. Fantastic music always, I would say the storytelling is done best in Transistor and Hades.
Gotta check Transistor it looks cool af
Final Fantasy X still holds my personal ugly-cry record. To this day, I can’t hear some of the music from it without tearing up. It’s one of those games that has emotional react videos on YouTube.
Shadow of the Colossus manages to be emotional with very little explicit story. A lot of it has to do with its use of dynamic music in an orchestral soundtrack.
Persona 3 just had a remake, and that’s part of a series that can really gets its hooks into you. A big part of it is the parasocial gameplay, but even if you’re not the type to get into that, the story is still very moving. Persona series composer Shoji Meguro recently said the ending theme in this game was his magnum opus.
Huge RPGs kinda scare me… But Ive heard a lot about Persona 3 that might get me to play it
Persona 3 is one of the “shorter” ones in the contemporary Persona series at a mere 60 hours. Persona 5 Royal is a beast, though. Hard to get through that one in under 100 hours without rushing.
Mass effect and dragon age series from bioware are excellent, they’re a little involved but the story telling is incredible in both. While it has aged and may be depending on a love for star wars, their knights of the old republic series was also excellent.
They’re really damn good at making a story that’s worth being part of, often one of my first recommendations aside from the last of us, outer wilds, and a couple of others I’ve seen here already.
Took me over a year to recover from Outer Wilds. Can’t explain it…
I thought Ori and the blind Forest was rife with emotion
Ori and the Blind Forest made me shed a few tears. It was a beautiful game that was full of emotion while telling an amazing story.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps made me bawl like a baby for days.
Immortal Defense.
