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What is your favourite cutscene/cinematic in any game?
For me, it's the intro cinematic to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I never played the defunct 1.0 version of FFXIV, whose final moments are what this cinematic shows if you aren't aware, but there is something about seeing all the bloodshed and destruction while Answers plays in the background that makes an incredibly strong melancholy mood in the trailer and really sells the feeling of this being an end of an era for Final Fantasy XIV, both in-game and in real life. I have to imagine that it's only more poignant if you were one of the people there for the end of 1.0.
Warcraft 3. For selfish reasons, I worked on those!
huge props! The cutscene when Arthas "succeeds" his father is my favorite cutscene in all video games. It's so chilling.
I still hear those bells. If you stand in the ruined throne room long enough in WoW, you hear echoes of the cutscene. Chills.
Warcraft 3 is one of the first games I ever played. I was 9 and felt incredibly cool that I could play a game with a USK 12 age rating. It's the first piece of media where the story had a real impact on me. I carry those characters with me still some 15 years later. It's a fantastic game. Thank you, for whichever part you carried in making it.
Shame about the remaster though :( Luckily it's one of the few 3D games which has such a distinct artstyle that it's honestly pretty to look at it even in 2023.
When you left Blizzard did the person replacing you tell you they were succeeding you?
Seconded ! Having access to someone like you is like meeting someone who worked on Top Gun or Jurassic Park.
Additional question:
Aww that is nice to know. I've been in the film-games-animation industry for 25+ years now so it's easy to forget the impact some of these projects have had on people. It's nice to read about it when they do. To answer your questions.
Yes. When I started at Blizzard the Cinematics Department was less than 10 people. We were all huge cinema buffs. Making a fully CGI animation film was and is a very big undertaking, especially at Blizzard quality. Doing so without the support of the game just wasn't a possibility (back then and now to a degree). For a stand alone film you needed the support of A-list actors/directors. There's a 100year old system for that and we were just a small group of guys making game cinematics. There was no way the company would fund a movie. There was a bit of talk about trying to shoe-horn a narrative that could stand alone outside the games into the process of the cinematics, then circulate that at festivals as an 'indie film' but there was so much creative fire back then it was never going to get that structured. The games were the first and foremost priority. I have to say I loved the old blizzard leadership when it came to their narratives, they made edgy choices. That drew me to the company and I've very much seen that dip over the years since.
I'm not sure I completely understand the second question, but the basic answer is we just had time, focus, and an iterative process. We were making cinematics with over the counter animation software, 3dsmax (brazil renderer), after effects, combustion, etc. When it came to art creation it was very iterative. My biggest lesson was: Do it once and it's OK. Do it twice and it's BETTER. Do it a third time and it starts to become GREAT. And this is if you're already 'good' at what you're trying to do. Practice is the key. That and the awareness that it can always be done better. Working next to incredibly talented people also helped.
A lot of those other titles you mention were immensely better than what we were doing as they had huge infrastructure and RnD departments dedicated to elevating their platform/tools. We were always blown away and scrambling to try and do something that could stand out. That crow at the beginning of W3 was in direct reference / competition to the bird scene in Pixar's Bug's Life, we aimed for something just as real and intense.
Perhaps you meant "create a movie within the in game engine" or something, but in case you meant a movie shown in the cinema then you might have missed this and would find it interesting:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_(film)
I meant movie in the cinema. I am aware of the Warcraft movie, but that's a 2016 thiny. In 2002 Blizzard cinematic seemed so well done that it seemed natural to me to have a movie at some point.
Halo had some truly amazing cutscenes and a few stick with me.
"Don't make a girl a promise you can't keep"
The entire space portion of Halo 3 had some gems of cutscenes as well. "Giving the covenant back their bomb" stick with me too.
The cutscene at the end of Tsavo Highway(? I think). Where the Forward Unto Dawn comes into atmosphere and blasts everything in a square kilometer, and then you ride around on the tanks. I replayed that hundreds of times.
My friends and I spent hours getting the Scarab Gun on that level.
The cutscene in Halo: CE when you're introduced to the Flood. Walking into a room full of dead bodies, coming across a lone paranoid survivor driven crazy by something, wondering what the hell happened. Then you watch a playback from some random marine's POV and see this hereto unmentioned alien body horror swarm the room and effortlessly overwhelms everyone. Then the cutscene ends and you realize you're in the same room. Game took a hard left turn from space opera war adventure into Lovecraftian cosmic horror without any warning.
The flood revelation was the most terrifying video game moment I had experienced at that point. So much so, that once I realized the room I was in, I saw the first wave of pod infectors coming out and I turned the game off and wouldn’t play it for months. That fleshy murmur was so unsettling. I only continued when I did co op with a friend who was braver than me.
Damn.. This one made me tear up for a second. I remember watching this scene the first time and my mind racing on where this damn game is going to go!
"Shipmaster, they outnumber us three to one"
"Then it is an even fight. All ships: fire at will. Burn their mongrel hides"
The ending of Assassin's Creed Revelations, when Ezio speaks to Desmond...holy shit.
Ezio was smart enough to realize that everything he had lived through his whole life wasn't about him, it was about someone else in the far future and he could give him a message by means he didn't understand.
Ezio realized he was just a small piece of much a larger puzzle and his time was over. He was smart as hell to be able to figure all that out from such little information to go on. All this after becoming very attached to this character after 3 games.
First time I ever cried at a video game. Requiescat in pace Ezio.
The Ezio trilogy was perfection.
I'm kinda sad they had way less of the real world bits in the latter games, they're what made the games unique. Now it's just the Ubisoft Formula of "conquer tower to open map, take over fortress to clear out some enemies" with no context.
Killing Desmond killed my interest in the series.
It's not popular but the animus/genetic memory modern day bit was what made it stand out and be interesting to me. I liked the story just fine but the modern sci-fi tie in hooked me for sure. They saw that as the weakness and they tossed it away thinking they'd lost nothing.
I loved the fact that the modern parts didn't have any of the UI, but Ezio's skills had bled into Desmond so he could do the stuff, just without the Animus UI.
Yup, I haven't touched any ACs after Black Flag, it just seems like they got worse and worse and lost what made the series so good.
The future storyline is what made the series and they dropped it like it was nothing. It was what made the series unique and interesting, the juxtaposition of past and present, and the distant past with the ancient stuff. It was all so cool and they just threw it all away for no reason. So sad.
It is worth playing Unity even today, it's the one that perfected classic AC formula and it has aged exceptionally well. It was extremely ambitious for the time and released in a terrible shape but couple of patches later it's a very enjoyable experience, even on previous gen consoles.
"Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?" The Far Cry series has some good cutscenes overall, but Vaas's monologue in Far Cry 3 is particularly good.
The message just repeats. Regret. Regret. Regret.
Or really just that entire game on the remastered graphics.
"Dear humanity, we regret being alien bastards, we regret coming to Earth, and we most definitely regret that the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!"
Just reading those lines takes me back 20 years and gets me pumped up to fight some alien bastards.
What game is this from?
Halo 2
The original Ninja Gaiden intro for NES is laughably short and low-tech by today's standards but it was utterly captivating the 80s when nothing of its sort existed anywhere else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4C0GdBKPyw (enhanced version with slightly sharpened graphics)
For me it would be the intro to Mega Man 2. The pan up the building to the intro song...fantastic!
Great ending scene, too, with him walking through the changing seasons!
Yes indeed! Man I loved that game! I can still pick it up and play through to this day!
The fact that this was coded using Assembly just blows my freakin' mind.
The end of AC Black Flag. I've told the story before. The Parting Glass is the song my family sings when we put one of our own in the ground.
Last time I'd sung it before finishing the game was for my dad. Goddamn game made me fukken cry on a videogame controller.
I remember meeting the DARPA chief in MGS and having my mind blown by the cutscene
Meeting Psycho Mantis is what did it for me. The cutscene itself is nothing flashy, but to show off his psychic powers, Mantis looks into your mind and tells you how reckless you are based on how often you've saved the game. If there are save files from other Konami games on your memory card, he'll say something about them as well.
He then shows off his psychokinesis powers by getting you to place your controller on a hard surface and moving it around with the vibration function.
There are so many great scenes in the series, but this one, and the ensuing boss fight showed that Kojima was willing to blur the line between the game and reality a bit, which is something he would do consistently through the series.
You had to plug your controller into the player 2 port to beat him or do something as far as I remember. One of my earliest 4th wall break memories.
In MGS2 when you are running around Arsenal Gear the AI commander will message you and reference that you are playing a game too, i.e. talking to the player not Raiden.
Apparently, there's an even cooler part of the Mantis fight on some older TV's. Apparently, when the screen goes black and shows HIDEO at the top, the resolution would switch quickly, which caused some TVs to turn off. I can't imagine having to turn back on the TV in the middle of a boss fight.
Take it with a grain of salt. I read that on a random YouTube comment. Still sounds a like a novel idea, but could just be an urban legend.
MGS could have its own post alone. Much has been said about Kojima’s blurring of cinema/games to tell a story, so I won’t belabor it, but the whole series is so rewarding simply because the attention to detail in the narrative is so well executed. MGS has plenty of flaws and clichés but they never take away from how enjoyable each game is overall.
The boat scene and the intro with the cow sounds in Metal Gear Solid 4 were amazing.
Opening cinematics to Kingdom Hearts II. Song is a total bop as well.
If there's one thing KH does right, it's the music.
In that same series, the secret endings for the first 2 games sparked so much speculation and so many theories in the years between games. The first glimpse of the organization in the first one then the keyblade war in the second.
To this day, still probably the opening intro from Descent: Freespace. The raw fear in the pilot's voice (seriously, terrific voice acting, really sells it) really sets up how bad the situation is that you're about to fly into.
"Sir, we're sending a recovery craft--"
"NO! SEND FIGHTERS! I know they're following me, SEND EVERYTHING YOU HAVE NOW!"
I never played it, but I will agree. That voice actor did a fanastic job.
It's absolutely worth playing. It and it's sequel are still my favorite space combat "lite" sims.
No trading, no empire building, no role-playing. Just space combat.
That cinematic was absolutely amazing. Also the game itself looks really great so thanks for introducing it, going to get it at some point.
You're in for a great time!
The dedicated fan community has made upgrades to make the original Freespace campaigns run well (and look good) on modern PCs. Of course, there are also many excellent mods.
Here's a link:
https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91849.0
The Baldur's Gate 3 intro cinematic really blew my mind when I saw it. I've always been a "patient gamer", I don't often buy the latest games. So whenever I play a game the graphics are usually already a bit outdated and not very impressive. But I started following the development of BG3, and when I saw this intro it looked so cool, I felt it should be movie. I don't know how BG3's CGI compares to other modern games, but to me this looks absolutely amazing!
the moment in Horizon: Zero Dawn when you learn what, exactly, Zero Dawn is.
honestly, it's a culmination of little snippets of info in the quest Deep Secrets of the Earth, so linking just one cutscene devoid of context doesn't really hit as hard as it does when you're actually playing the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjpdU1R-LP4
but holy fucking shit. I've played a lot of videogames and this scene, to me, is probably one of if not the most impactful/profound moments in any videogame I've ever played. just an incredible "holy fucking SHIT" when you realize what all went down.
spoiler
I know it's just a Grey Goo scenario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo so it's not like, a super original novel concept, but it was SO impactful to me when I was playing through HZD. such a good game.
I was going to reply with the very same cutscene. The build up to that moment and the reveal itself makes for an incredible story and ZD is cemented as my favorite sci-fi because of it!
Spoilers
You spend the entire game wondering how humans survived. You're drip fed info about Zero Dawn. You're still pretty sure that maybe people cryo'd themselves in bunkers or something or that they found a way to stop the Faro plague, and then NOPE! Every single last person died, the Earth was consumed, and it became a barren rock, all with the hopes that an untested AI would somehow revitalize the entire planet. The sacrifice Elizabet and her team made sticks with me. They spent years in a bunker developing a secret project that they didn't even know would work and where they'd never see the results and instead of enjoying the last few years they had, they did the project anyways and it freaking worked.Kingdom Hearts - Opening
Pokemon Firered/Leafgreen - Opening
Super Smash Bros. Brawl - The Great Invasion
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box - Layton vs Anton
Metroid Dread - Samus Speaks Chozo
Death Stranding - Happy Birthday
It's not really a cutscene, as you still have character control, but in the original Bioshock after you kill Ryan and Atlas reveals himself and his grand deception, was the first thing that jumped to mind. I was literally raging at this fictional character, with all the emotions of betrayal and anger. The most invested emotionally a cutscene has ever made me, felt truly in the moment
The final cutscene at the end of Bioshock Infinite is a real trip too. The big reveal at the end is very well done.
(This isn’t necessarily my favorite cinematic but it does stand out as one of the most mind-blowing to me at the time)
The beach assault in Final Fantasy VIII. It’s kind of a beautiful scene but that moment when a Square Enix cinematic of assault ships rushing full speed onto the beach and opening their doors revealing your party characters and it taking a moment to realize that you’re now in control of your characters without there being a transition from cinematic to game was the coolest thing ever in 1999.
Edit: Found a clip https://youtu.be/wNOSYIL1x24
Everything on Diablo 2. (Remastered!)
Diablo 2 yes. Remastered no way. I worked on D2 cinematics and they did a bad job on the remaster. Marius no longer looks like Marius. They made the wanderer have potato sack robes which was a design choice (back then) due to limitations of cloth sim tech not being able to handle complex clothing design, there's something blizzard was great for (character design) why not spice that up with some real robe design? I've a bunch of other minor detailed changes that I didn't like, overall, imo, they put the the Art Direction into the wrong areas.
Not something I've ever thought about. I guess one that's really stuck with me is the ending of Pokémon Mystey Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Team. Spoiler ahead, of course.
The plot of the game is that you're a human transformed into a Pokémon through mysterious circumstances, having adventures and rescuing Pokémon in the Pokémon land. And at the end, your partner from when you were a human, Gardevoir, starts taking you back to the human world, and the credits play.
Slight problem with that. I was, like, eight. This was my first proper game, and the first one I finished, so I had no idea how finishing games worked. In that moment, I genuinely thought that I would not be able to play my favourite game anymore, and just started ugly crying! Thankfully, your character decides to stay in the Pokémon world at the last moment after the credits, and the post-game starts, and I was extremely glad.
In this sense, it's a really effective ending! Though, I do think I low-key have trauma from the experience, since I still feel a bit scared of finishing my games even today. It's not the only way PMD has affected my relationship with gaming either...
Perhaps not the greatest, but this scene from Witcher 2 has stuck with me over the years. I remember being fully immersed in the battle and then getting chills when that moment happened.
I actually have a few of them.
Opening from deadly tides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV9pG_IDCNk
This is a rail shooter. I had it as a very young kid on pc. I played it a ton. I think my dad got it because he bought a joystick and wanted us to have a game that made use of it. This opening cinematic really stuck with me.
FF9 escaping the forest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8SUg4YcNCY
Omg, the army of monsters, the heartfelt loss of a friend turning into stone, and only a few hours into an amazing game. Really struck a chord with me as a kid
Custom robo intro cinematic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-4EwKAGvqQ
Bombastic robot fun. I would just let my gamecube play this it was so cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlVSJ0AvZe0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBHL_-biMrQ
Lastly, the cinematics for wow vanilla and tbc will always hold a special place in my heart. I'd have just listed the vanilla one, but I liked a list of five to a list of four.
It is amazing how FF9 managed to make Blank really likeable (at least for me) in such a short amount of time. Even after decades this cinematic hits really hard. For me the combination of gameplay before this cinematic is probably what made it really great for me played (and replayed) it as a kid and almost 15 years later.
Holy cow, someone else who still remembers this game. I beat it so many times, I adored how cinematic it was for a 90s game. I still have the CD jewel case on my shelf.
I was hoping someone else would remember it! I've never actually met anyone else who remembers it.
Yeah, I don't know how big it was, or rather how small it was lol. I was a really young kid when we had it. Born '91, I can't remember what year we got it but I assume around 96 or 97. I played the crap out of it and beat it many times as well.
I never noticed, in that original wow cinematic there's no gnomes or trolls.
The opening sequence to Brood War was my first (real) introduction to PC gaming. It has stuck with me ever since, and Starcraft 2 will forever be a disappointment to me due to it's tonal and art style shift.
This was the reason I applied to Blizzard in 1998. I saw this at e3 that year and was blown away.
I really liked the Harvester Intro. Somehow it really captures the low-budget horror movie feel and the music is just so haunting.
Oh, and then of course ... Bad Mojo! It's ever so nasty and over the top. The voice-over is just perfect!
Red Dead Redemption, when you cross into Mexico for the first time and the José González song starts playing.
IIRC you're trying to find your missing friend, sprinting across a bridge on your horse, and as a player you haven't been to Mexico yet in the game. This was probably one of the only times I thought "whoa" to myself while playing a video game!
The end of RDR2 is also pretty heart wrenching
Man the end messes me up, but the part before is worse for me.
When Arthur is in the bench with the nun and says “I’m afraid” it just breaks me. His face says so so many words
Saints Row 2. That's moment when Johnny Gat, with all his pain and bitterness, says "Get up."
The cemetery live burial of the Ronin boss is haunting.
Xenosaga Episode II, where momo’s data extraction goes wrong.
When I played it I had it attached to a huge cinema projector with a surround sound setup, and that event is synced with a song called Communications Breakdown. Its one of the most exciting things I’ve seen out of any visual medium still. The sequence had me in tears just from how sensually overwhelming it was.
For me it's definitely Tales From The Borderlands' chapter four intro!
I've watched it a million times and it never gets any less amazing! I'll never forget playing that game and how incredible this moment was when I first experienced it. The song is a perfect choice for the scene and I still get goosebumps every time I watch it!
I've played most of Telltale's games at this point and Tales From The Borderlands will always be my number one; it has such a special place in my heart!
Always choose step 3!
The Dawn Will Come scene from Dragon Age: Inquisition. (Cutscene starts at 3:56; before that is a lore dump to add context, if you like.)
I find that most fantasy games tend to represent religious institutions as fairly black and white: they're either the pure charitable holy people who you can turn to for light and healing etc, or they're the corrupt overlords oppressing the populace. Dragon Age is one of the few franchises that I feel has a much more authentic, in the middle representation: it doesn't shy away from showing the failures of organized religion, while also showcasing the good it can do at both a personal and an institutional level. This cutscene is one of the most moving examples of that I can think of. Yes it's cheesy, but it's incredibly well done cheese imo, and I'm not ashamed to admit I've cried several times over when watching and re-watching it.
It ages me, but the first time you meet SHODAN in System Shock 2... Still gives me goosebumps. 🙂
SHODAN is not in my wedding invite lists because I consider her to be one of my husband's exes lol
Very impactful existence and scene yes
I love any of the cutscenes from the RDR2 mission where you go drinking with Lenny.
So many memorable moments from my first time and haven’t laughed that hard from a game in a long time.
Any scenes from Final Fantasy VIII blew my mind as a kid I remember thinking that game graphics could never get any better than that. How wrong I was.
Another one for me is the opening theme video to Ridge Racer Type 4. A great song to go with a great opening cut scene really draws you into the game.
Red Dead Redemption 2, the runup to the mansion made me start thinking this is literal art and the best video game I've ever played in terms of the emotions it evoked from me
I still need to commission a shirt that says "I skip cutscenes". This has been a thing for me since the 90s... but over the past decade or so, I have aged a lot and now... I may or may not be into cutscenes.
I really do abhor when the cutscene detracts from the gameplay. There has been a lot of that, and I see a range of options I've had to watch: Aloy in Horizon Dawn Zero, Capt Shepard in ME (1-3), and honestly @martinxyz reminded me of one I was actually okay with (Far Cry 3).
Some of the Borderlands' options were somewhat close, but...
I still need to get me that tshirt.
Not exactly a cutscene, more of a medley of the cutscenes throughout the game, but the intro to Tales of the Abyss has always given me the chills, the music pumps me up every single time I hear it.
I gotta say, the Taken King intro cutscene from Destiny is one of my favourite all games. From the little dialogue intro, to the big battle scene. It's just great. https://youtu.be/rAZOVt4K8Tw
Mine is the intro from Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. I can still hear "Kain was deified..." and I haven't played it in more than a decade. Funny that I was unaware of blood omen when I first played it.
The final battle in Diablo 4
The intro cinematic from Battleborn remains my favorite video game cinematic of all time, all these years later
https://youtu.be/4N5XQI8EDDw
Yeah, it was so good, I miss that game. Best thing gearbox has ever made
The intro to Xenogears. The story is ridiculously complicated (and i love it) and the intro is compelling enough that i would read a whole series just to figure out what the heck is going on.
Mafia 3. All of the cutscenes in it are great, but if I had to pick one it'd be the last one. That sit down with Sal Marcano was just perfection.
This one might not be my #1 favorite but it has always stuck with me. Furthermore, I'm going to butcher my recounting since it's all coming from memory.
Grandia II.
Throughout the whole game, they set you up with this epic battle between the "good god" and the "evil god", and every time they replay the scene, the "good god" is shown to swallow/defeat the "evil god" so you kind of assume that good has prevailed.
Then, they show you the full cutscene in which the "evil god" actually prevails in the fight, meaning you've been playing this game under a completely false assumption that the "good god" still exists.
I remember being pretty shocked as a kid.
Glad to see more love for Grandia II!! One of my favorite cutscenes that I remember is when the backstory of Ryudo and Melfice is revealed. I actually kept my save file from just before this cutscene and would occasionally load it just to watch it and play the subsequent fights with Melfice. To me, he was a better villain than the Pope, as he had some history with Ryudo that was constantly alluded to throughout the plot.
The intro cinematic for the original Battlefield 1942. I still get chills watching it when the music kicks in.
Trails in the Sky SC, Chapter 7 finale.
"My comrades-in-arms, thanks to your labors, the third stage is complete! And now our plan moves to its final stage.."
100+ hours of play between two games (especially with side-quests) and the plot has been slowly building up to this. The first game, especially, is a fairly slow burn with lots of world-building, back-story, and slice-of-life moments. But when things finally get epic, they get epic.
Yakuza 0, the scene where Majima is introduced.
The whole game could easily be a movie.
It's a meme by now but the definition of insanity from Far Cry 3 had me on the edge of my seat the first time I played through it.
On a more lighthearted note, Asura's Wrath: the final bit between Asura vs Augus has always been such a highlight for me in video game cutscenes. 10 years ago I thought this was the coolest thing ever, but after playing it again on an emulator I still think it's the coolest thing ever. It's honestly a bit sad it never got ported to modern consoles, or gotten an animated series that it so obviously asked for.
Deadlock: Planetary Conquest (1996) intro https://youtu.be/mBLM6kDxBHM?t=19
So much drama and tension packed into a short video, especially after you've read the lore-filled handbook. Good stuff.
OMORI spoilers about the main plot of the game
(For the record, while you do play through all of this, it's extremely linear and scripted, so by me it counts.)
The end of OMORI where the Truth is revealed to you is definitely up there for me. The whole game you're wondering what is the main problem of the main character that he's constantly going back to his childhood and his dreams, why are all his friends so troubled, what is so much more grave about the death of the protagonist's sister that made him not leave his home in 4 years and made him and his closest friend go through so many horrors together including the seeming main antagonist (as far as it can be called an antagonist instead of as more of a mindlessly threatening spirit called SOMETHING) just haunting him constantly.
The game gradually reveals to you how she died in intricate detail and horror and it's basically the worst answer you could come up with. It is gradually revealed to you that the main character killed his own sister in an impulsive accident, and everything in this game happened because of him, and the whole game is the story of the main character coping with how much damage he has caused to everyone he used to care about on an accident. When you learn of what happened, you also learn that said SOMETHING is a representation of her death as the main character has to remember what he's done, which he's forcibly forgotten and makes him feel like an unimaginably terrible person while doing so. After this completely unexpected revelation, the player has to persist even whike knowing he's playing as a murderer, and realizes that the main character is as disgusted with his actions as the player may be, and feels he deserves this. Afterwards, he wakes up from this nightmare and he fights his best friend (which is revealed to have staged the MC's sister's death as a suicide to make sure he isn't punished by law in panic) while both are hallucinating about their long nightmare together. Then after they both black out, Sunny has to travel through his childhood memories and accept what has happened and tell the truth to the childhood friend group he scarred, after fighting a personification of himself and his permanent guilt, who talks about how much his former friends will never forgive him if he reveals the truth. Despite all this, you must persist and make the other half of yourself allow you to continue. Then you wake up, now in the hospital and tell them the truth to his friends (remember, they think she killed himself and Sunny, the main character is just struggling to cope). How their friends react to this isn't actually depicted in the game, but at least Sunny has told the truth and he can leave knowing his childhood friends know what happened.
My other nominee for favorite cinematic (an actual cutscene in this time) is basically the opening of Sonic Unleashed, where Sonic basically defeats the entirety of Eggman's fortress with the Chaos Emerals but he falls into a trap and Eggman uses it to destroy the planet and unleashes an ancient being in the world while also turning into a Werehog, all completely action packed and in utterly modern resolution for about 10 minutes, settting the stage for the game.
Red Alert intro cinematic is the one I still play sometimes:
https://youtu.be/Qtb4uow940c
Frank Klepacki - Hell March if you want to hear it on Spotify.
the lake scene of titus and yuna or the sending scene in FFX, or the intro with to zanarkand playing. Immediately made me want to play the game.
Also FFIX the scene with garnet jumping from one tower to the other or any of the scenes where an airship would appear.
The opening cinematic in Onimusha 3. So badass. I loved that series and that cutscene got me so pumped.
The cutscene that plays in Horizon: Zero Dawn when Aloy falls into a old one ruin. She encounters a hologram birthday message that keeps repeating. Theres something about the way she says "hi" to the hologram that gets me every time.
It incredibly hard to pick a "favorite" here as I have so many that come to mind. Here's a few...
The opening to Megaman X4 - Looking back at this, it's really not that impressive. There are probably AMVs that do a better job. But back then seeing a full blown anime cutscene in a game, with an absolute BANGER of a opening song accompanying it, was just so mindblowingly hype. Especially as a fan of both Megaman/X series and anime in general. I would load Megaman X4 into my console for the sole purpose of watching the opening over and over and over when I was young.
The Grandia opening - Similar to the Megaman X4 opening, it's probably nothing incredible now. But back then, it was an absolute masterpiece. The music alone was, and still is, an amazing orchestral piece that invokes a sense of wonder and exploration. This combined with the (at the time) incredible 3d visuals, and the hype of seeing the main characters looking over the top of that mysterious huge wall as the sweeping orchestra reached the climax of the song, really captured my imagination as a child and immediately hooked me onto the game from the start.
The opening to Omega Boost - The ULTIMATE hype cutscene when starting a game. This one still holds up today IMO. I can't even explain how awesome it is, you just have to see it. I especially love the moment when the music gets silent as the Omega Boosts gets hit by that huge attack, only to turn and wreck that huge starship's day. As a giant mecha loving nerd I am literally screaming and jumping in my seat as I watch it again even today.
Best MMX4 cinematic is the one where Zero shouts "What are we fighting for!!!!!!! Auuuuuggghhh!" After Iris dies lol
There are so many that aren't worth linking, simply because they're too long, like the end of Metal Gear Solid 3, out because they'd be reposts, like Final Fantasy 7, so I'm gonna go with the opening to [Soul Edge] (https://youtu.be/RtF80UCgarY), or Soul Blade depending on where you're from.
As an old gamer, and having played it in the arcades, I was totally unprepared for the level of hype they'd created for the PlayStation 1 release. It's a banger song with amazing cameos from all the characters and done in a way that early PS games just hadn't achieved. It was one of those "graphics look like real life!" things that seem silly to look back on but at the time were genuinely cutting edge and amazing to witness.
My friends would come round and we'd watch it endlessly, pure class.
Reading the thread, I was struggling to think of any cutscene that has really stayed with me like that, but this brought a huge smile to my face.
To shine!
Having played the Original Blood Omen around when it came out, the scene in Soul Reaver 2 where it turns out that Raziel was the reason Malek didn't arrive in time to prevent the slaughter of the circle, and hearing the screams from the first cutscene of the first game in the distance.... Nothing has ever given me shivers like that.
From the look of it, finding out the truth about Sovereign in Mass Effect counts.
It really upped the stakes and scale!
I was really impressed with cutscenes in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet in that it had many of these that were acted out with generic characters that you could design with the character chooser but I thought were still pretty effect.
Mine is also from FFXIV. End of an Era is great, but it's third place to the scene in Endwalker where Answers is recited in second place, and the lead in to the final boss in Shadowbringers in first place.
That scene with Venat has gotten me several visits to The Unending Journey I must say!
The farmhouse scene in The Last of Us. The acting is so real and raw and always gets me choked up. The TV show didn’t even try to improve on it, they just reproduced it in faithful detail.
I've been thinking about this for a while, and even though I could pick so many FFXIV cutscenes I love, my favorite really would be from Ace Combat 5. The mission: Journey Home.
During the tense mission defending against an enemy attack force in order to protect civilians, one of your wingmen is shot down. Your allies are distraught because he died so suddenly to put his life on the line, but your squad, with some allied assistance, pushes the enemies back and forces a retreat. Then the cutscene happens, where the allied squadron does an impeccably timed and emotionally charged flyby in the missing man formation. Thinking about it always gives me chills, as do so many other small but impactful scenes from that game. One of my favorites of all time, for sure.
I can’t narrow it down to a particular scene, but the last two God of War games have been amazing. Especially with me having a son that is growing up. Just a masterpiece of story telling.