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What was the last game you played that really surprised you?
“Surprise” can be anything from an unexpected plot twist to a novel mechanic to simply liking a game you weren’t expecting to like.
What surprised you about the game, and why?
Please mark any spoilers. Code below:
<details>
<summary>[Game Title] Spoilers</summary>
[Spoiler text goes here]
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Results:
[Game Title] Spoilers
[Spoiler text goes here]
I don't know about "last" but I perused my games list and saw at least a few games with moments that really surprised me:
Baba is You
The Witness
Undertale
Outer Wilds
I haven't played very much of the witness yet (though I have seen the aspect of it you mention), but I will say that it does something I really appreciate that many other games seem unwilling to do:
In the witness the challenge is not, in many cases, to solve some particular instance of a puzzle (like a sudoku puzzle), but rather to figure out the parameters of the puzzle at hand. Such parameters are, of course, repeated and explored (to great effect); but I think the idea of a puzzle game where the puzzle is figuring out how the puzzles work is rather novel.
The Witness
Details
That stands as one of my favorite gaming moments of all time. I still get goosebumps just thinking about it. The “HOLY SHIT”-ness of the realization was so incredibly powerful.
I discovered it late at night, right before I was about to end my session and go to bed. It made me WAY too jazzed to sleep, and I instead spent the next two hours running frantically around the island, seeing all of its familiar sights with brand new eyes.
It was truly an incredible gaming moment. I’m so glad I didn’t have it spoiled for me.
This reaction you describe is why I almost got into actual game design/development professionally. I fucking live for seeing people's amazing reactions to such moments of wonder.
… Then I just decided to watch Let's Plays instead, and keep my game design to hobby status :P
It’s funny you mention The Witness. Of course, I had the same reaction to those puzzles, but there were other things in there that also did it for me:
The Witness Spoilers
The way I wondered through the world, I ended up down by the water by the pottery-making studio pretty quickly. There’s a point where you can walk over a small natural bridge. There’s a tree on or near the bridge and some of its roots stick out. If you look down in the water, the reflection of the roots look like koi swimming in the water. I wasn’t even sure it was intentional when I first saw it. But you start seeing more and more of that as you explore. There’s another point where you’re on the boat and you look back at the land and the rocks form a man laying on his side. It really is a game about perspective. I was also floored by the clip of James Burke from the original *Connections* series.Games plots never really surprise me that much, and when they do it's not earth shattering or noteworthy. The stories are generally not very good. Yakuza Like a Dragon has a great twist in the beginning but I honestly can never remember the syntax for spoilers and it's a pain to type in mobile, so I won't say what it was.
The only time I was really surprised and shaken to my core was when I first saw Super Mario 3 I guess. So beautiful.
I added a copy/pasteable block to the main thread if you (or anyone else) wants to use it. Don’t feel obligated to, but I thought I’d offer because, like you said, it really is a pain to type on mobile.
Sorry about that, can't believe I missed this. But I'll leave the comment as is. It's nothing mindblowing anyway. Thanks.
You didn’t miss it! I added it in after reading your comment. :)
For me the biggest surprise was Skyrim. I didn't think I'd like it as much as I do, a decade after it came out (I first really played it in April 2021).
I was watching a streamer, Burke Black, talk about how Skyrim seems to have endured a decade while still being immensely popular to play, and for streamers to even draw views with. He pushed the point that the reason it was still so popular was because it was so good, even arguing with his viewers that the modding community is only as strong as it is today because Skyrim can still attract players. Being a somewhat passive Elder Scrolls fan, who "didn't have time" to start these intensive RPGs, I figured "Fuck it, I'll give it a shot." Got out of Helgen, went for the story, and it felt good. I'd always liked TES combat, at least from Morrowind and Oblivion, but this was a step above: It was tight, you could dual wield, dual cast, use a spell and a sword, I could basically have any configuration I wanted. My previous experience with an RPG was The Witcher which is boring in the combat department, basically a short rhythm quick-time event every couple of seconds. Before I knew it, I'd sunk 120 hours into my first Skyrim save in six weeks (while still keeping up with school, and life).
I always found open world games intimidating, even Breath of the Wild has the issue where I could do anything in the game, and just quit to do nothing. Skyrim is even worse about it, but I came up with a rule: Do major quest lines, and anything I encounter that looks interesting. I got into my character's development, even creating some sort of moral code to follow for specific characters where certain quest lines align, for example (also a potential strat for achievement hunting). I'm running several different characters with very different builds to explore different play styles. I never would've done this in a game a year ago: Once I beat a game, I'm done with it. I've cleared Skyrim's main story twice in three months, did Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, and College of Winterhold on various saves, and am working on Solsteim with my mage character. I also have the issue where I really like what TES does across its three single-player 3D games, and I'm not sure any other franchise will scratch the same itch the same way: It's the way the first person perspective feels that I don't think anybody has ever come close to.
I've put all of this in spoilers, because The Outer Wilds is honestly best experienced knowing as little about it as possible. I consider almost everything a spoiler. :D
The Outer Wilds Spoilers
The Outer Wilds surprised me quite a few times. A lot of the time it was a realization about a puzzle - like the time my partner and I landed on the quantum moon and managed to use the tower to travel between planetary orbits before we'd officially learned that quantum rule. Or the utter shock of standing on a teleportation pad before we'd read any of the Nomai writings about them, and finding ourselves on an entirely different planet.
There were also the emotional gut punches. Entering The Interloper and discovering the senseless, random end of the Nomai. Finding an escape pod that never made it out of Dark Bramble. Reading the words of someone who escaped but mourned their sibling.
And then there was the ending. The slow realization that no, this isn't a game where you save the universe. The universe is dying, and just as the Nomai couldn't stop the ghost matter explosion, you can't stop the sun from exploding. Once your loop is broken, that's it. All you can do is come to terms with it, and help create a new universe that will exist after you're gone.
I don't know how intentional it is, but The Outer Wilds (to me) is an amazing exploration of loss, grief, acceptance, and renewal, something I never expected when I first started playing a game because it had a cool time loop mechanic.
Moss : https://store.steampowered.com/app/846470/Moss/
Moss is a simple platformer game about a mouse. The story is nothing extraordinary, but it is a good story, and well told and well paced.
The surprising thing is how well it sucked me in. The game is explicitly VR, so you are present in a way you can't be looking at a monitor.
Two major things that have stuck with me. The first occurred in the first few minutes. The character walks out from behind some bushes, looks around, and then looks directly at you. It's hard to describe just how much more immersive and real a character feels when they are able to make direct eye contact with you because the game knows exactly where your head is. It triggers a primal part of the brain that is always waiting, monitoring for that specific body language and eyeline that tells you "that person is looking at me".
The second was after an hour or so. After guiding the little mouse character through a moderately difficult puzzle, she gave a cheer. She then turned, looked at me, and held up one paw in the air. Without hesitation or conscious thought, I reached down and gave that mouse a high-five. Then sat amazed for a minute or two, after realizing that I was so immersed that my brain believed that this fictional character was real enough that I was obligated to respond to it's social cues the way that I should a real person.
I am here to gush about Outer Wilds, too!! It was honestly so good, there were so many moment of genuine awe and just so much to explore and figure out. I played through with my SO (him at the wheel; I was tragically horrible at space travel) and I helped get through puzzles. There was just such a magical feeling playing through that game, that made me feel the excitement I felt as a child.
Outer Wilds Spoilers
I could go on and on about this game! My SO and I played around in it for a few hours before either of us lived long enough to see the star explode. We genuinely had no clue that's what happened!!
We found out when my SO was messing with the bramble seed on the home planet, shooting the probe into the opening. We were so intrigued by this place. Where was this? It's so creepy! And as he's sitting there in the crater we hear this great rumble and shake and we're both like uuuuuuuh what was that? I asked my SO "What did you do?" jokingly but then on the horizon was that firey mass and it swallowed us whole. And we woke up by the campfire and that's when we understood the stakes of this game.
Finding out what happened to the nomani and reading through their tragic plight was so incredible and sad. You felt for these people in search of knowledge and ending up stranded, away from everyone. The lore was so rich and compelling.
I remember when we first came across the ship stuck in the bramble. We were looking around and found the coordinate input puzzle. We figured it was some sort of symbol but we couldn't quite figure it out. We were laying in bed for sleep one night when it hit me; we had seen the coordinates before and that's what the machine was for! We were both so ecstatic at figuring out, that giddy feeling was incredible.
@Eladnarra 's description of how the ending felt is perfect. It truly was something you had to come to terms with but it was so beautifully done as well. It was tragic and hopeful.
This game is engaging and enriching. It kept a hold on us for some time and we still talk about it a year after we beat it. I still remember the excitement and wonder learning about everything this game had and exploring every nook and cranny we could find and just enjoying the absolute crap out of it. This is by and large my favorite game I've ever played.
Omori surprised me as a very Earthbound-inspired RPG that I dare-say is superior to Undertale in almost every way.
This game combines an innocent child-like dream world very reminiscent of the Mother series with psychological horror twists. I would encourage you to play the game in its entirety before reading the spoilers below.
Omori Spoilers
Omori consists of two main twists. First twist is that the main protagonist, Sunny, became a shut-in and created a dream world and an alter-ego (Omori) in his mind as a coping mechanism to deal with the grief of his sister's death. The dream world represents Omori and his friends as they were four years ago, playing as children while the real world is far more grim.
Mari's suicide broke apart the circle of friends in reality. Aubrey became a violent delinquent, Hero moved to university, Basil remains devastated and ridden with guilt over her death and Kel is the only one that has still tried to reach out to Sunny.
This whole story arc can be skipped by simply not answering the door when Kel knocks, but it will only get you the bad endings where Sunny either moves away or commits suicide. This "hikkikomori route" also makes some pretty big changes to what locations can be accessed and what bosses you'll face in the dream world.
Second twist is that Mari didn't commit suicide. Sunny had a heated argument with his sister over their violin recital, pushed her down the stairs in a fit of anger and killed her. Basil then helped Sunny fabricate her suicide to cover up the fact that his friend had unintentionally killed her. The Real World route if followed correctly culminates in Sunny triumphing over his alter-ego, accepting his sister's death and coming clean about how she died.
I'm really going to have to buy this game some time soon. I'm just bummed that my budget has been killed because of dental bills.
I have complete sympathy for your situation, both no money for games and painful dental bills. If you'll DM me your steam ID, I'll buy you a copy.
Thank you for your generous offer, but seeing as my situation is entirely my own fault (both for letting my teeth get this bad in the first place and for poor impulse control, seeing as I just preordered a playdate), I think that I should just tough it out until I can more easily afford it. It’s not a terribly expensive game so I am sure it won’t take too long; things should be good by next paycheck.
Ok, no worries.