Games

The end of Horizon: Zero Dawn

The death of Chrono in Chrono trigger and the trupe ending of 8doors.

Zack's final battle. Yes dude, you are a hero.

Fuck Shinra.

The completion of Lohse's character arc in Divinity:Original Sin 2.

Final Fantasy XI, both getting access to Sea and finishing the last chapter of Chains of Promathia, when it was still fairly uncommon to have progressed that far in that expansion.

Binding of Isaac: Repentance, the true ending. It hits harder because it's the first time we got a definitive ending since the original game came out in 2011.

Mass effect 3, the last scene with Anderson. I used the better ending mod, and it made it so much better. Anderson was a true friend.

Lots of moments in Honkai Impact 3.

There’s literally a YT channel that collects tears from streamers playing the game.

https://youtube.com/@Ollyt_

There’s a lot of context needed to understand why anyone would cry playing through HI3 though. I’ll give a high level summary here, but I highly encourage people to play it, even if it’s a gacha game. You can really ignore the gacha and just play the game for the main story. Do be warned that the story isn’t something suitable for kids — it can be quite a bit too heavy for them.

The theme of self-sacrifice is covered quite extensively, with the main character being the centrepiece of the theme. There’s also deep self-loathe, with an eventual self-acceptance, also from the MC. Mix that all in with some sense of duty.

There’s also a tragedy, but from the tragedy, a narrow path to hope was born. The people in the tragedy mostly hoped only for a simple life, or to live their lives atoning for their sins, but circumstances forced them to become warriors against a great, unstoppable force of destruction. As if to make things harder to swallow, their digital clones that survived into the future have to experience yet another tragedy that would eventually destroy all of them, and the player will see this through. Yet, in the second tragedy, these clones further sowed the seeds of hope for the future.

Chinese company or not, HoYo has pumped out a lot of very human stories that I think deserves attention and praise. Genshin Impact has also started to go down a similar path.

Kairi’s heart sequence in Kingdom Hearts

Subsequent playthroughs of Ace Combat 4, knowing the full story of Yellow 13 and 4 with the Spanish guitar accompaniment (even though blah blah war crimes etc). I guess because I know I did it while jamming to rock ballads with qaam spam. Mihaly of AC7 was such a weak arc by comparison.

Assassin's Creed Unity in the post-Templar part, my 3rd experience with Ubisoft avoiding happy endings but my first Assassins creed

One of the more recent ones was the ending of A Plaguetale: Requiem. Amicia and Hugo stay near and dear.

Not sure Cyberpunk has actually made me cry but there's been more than a couple moments where I was right there emotionally.

Lisa the joyful. Broke me and people should just play it and not look up any spoiler.

The ending of Valiant Hearts, and the ending of FFXIV's Myths of the Realm.

Walking dead. In retrospect not that great of a game, but damn clem got me crying

In Medieval 2, when the love interest dies.

A certain scene in SOMA.

Losing the main characters mother in Fire Emblem Engage.

Phantom Brave, when Marona finally makes a real friend. I lose it every time.

Breath of the Wild, during one of the memories.

Also Undertale. Left me with a large mess of feelings at the end.

For me it was The Last Guardian's ending.

Yakuza 0 - When she finds the wrist watch

In Enderal (an absolutely amazing, totally free game that runs on the Skyrim engine - if you own Skyrim you owe it to yourself to play Enderal), at the end of Esme's questline, sitting on top of the lighthouse and discussing the events of her story.

Arven's dog. He's a good boy.

Half of Kaim's dreams in Lost Odyssey, and the cliff flashback.

The ending of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Such a wonderful soundtrack an story.

Final Fantasy IX. Just... everything to do with Vivi and Quina. Those to characters cemented IX as my favorite in the series after initially writing it off as inferior to VII and VIII. While those games have some great narratives, Vivi and Quina both do such a great job of exploring what it is to be human, in their own beautiful and heart rending ways.

The entire experience of Outer Wilds.

So many parts of Persona 3, 4, and 5, but especially 4.

Here's a weird one: Starflight on Genesis. Not so much because of the story or content, but because I played this game so much with a friend of mine in middle school, and had all but forgotten about it. I was playing through some old Genesis games a month or so ago, and started this game up. As soon as the title screen came up, a flood of memories washed over me and took me right back to 1992. Bawled like a kid for about ten minutes as I realized I had an awesome friend that I had basically completely forgotten about.

Playing against Xero on Nightmare! setting.