Oh My God! or: Major Surprise Moments in Video Games

[Dasquian Belargic]

http://www.edge-online.com/features/oh-my-god?page=0%2C0

SPOILERS AHOY!

My particular favorites:

Knights of the Old Republic
For the majority of Knights of the Old Republic, the entire galaxy speaks in hushed tones of the unadulterated evil of the missing Darth Revan. When it comes out that the protagonist is actually the missing Sith lord, the context of the entire game changes in a single, jaw-dropping instant.

BioShock:
This revelation not only represented a chilling twist in the story of your character, but the point in the game where you kill Andrew Ryan exhibited artistic purpose by briefly taking control away from the player—you’re not a man, but a slave to the wishes of outside entities.

[Peter McCoy]

I think System Shock 2 should have been in there - the whole Shodan revelation thing gave me chills.

[Kale]

The transition to the Portal endgame has to rank up there, even though it's not much of a surprise that GlaDOS is up to no good... :)

Still a great "oh, crap" moment when the moving platform turns that corner.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Discovering that the cake is, indeed, a lie, was quite shocking :mneh

[Peter McCoy]

Oooh - definitely one for me!

Half Life 2: Episode 2 - At the end, I felt like crying when Eli gets killed by the Combine Advisor.. I really hope Gordon lays some smackdown in Episode 3 for that!

[Crusader]

I think they forgot quite a few much better OMG moments.

My personal list:

Crusader: No Remorse
Finding out who the true traiter is and that you are not a natural born human...They don't make games like this anymore.

XIII
One of those games that deserved a sequel but was not good enough for a commercial succes...The perfect cliff-hanger ending that revealed number obes true identity.

N.O.L.F. No One Lives Forever
Certainly one of the best games ever. Too bad that Monolith was never able to recreate this success.
NOLF had a lot of nice twists but the ending topped nearly all of them.

MGS3
This game really had a true OMG moment. 4 AM!!! After at least 10 or 12 hours of straight gaming madness I had completly lost myself in this game. Eva and Naked Snake had just defeated the Shagohod and escaped Ocelots troops it was then when I realized how much attached I had become to those two characters:
They are having an accident with their motorbike and EVA gets seriously wounded. This is the point where I got my OMG moment: Since it felt like the first aid menu took forever to open and I constantly asked myself if I had enough supplies collected to save her.
Eventually Snake saved her life and I felt so exhausted that I decided to finish the game the next morning.

Deus Ex
This game is actually a game with many OMG moments once you beat it for the second time because then you realized how different your experience can be if you make just a few choices differently: Like fighting off the MIB with your brother instead of leaving him behind so that he sacrifices himself for you.

[Dasquian Belargic]

XIII
One of those games that deserved a sequel but was not good enough for a commercial succes...The perfect cliff-hanger ending that revealed number obes true identity.

I had forgotten that game.. what a cool visual style it had.

[Crusader]

The whole vampire talk in the random thoughts thread reminded me of another OMG moment in a great game that did not get the attention it deserved.

Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption
One of my all time favorites btw. This game did not only feature facial animation that was nearly a decade ahead of the competition but a great story arc as well. The game had so many twists and revalations that it felt like a rollercoaster for the player and Christoph's poor damned heart.
First you battle your way through Vienna just to find out that Anezka never showed up there and then you return to Prague to find the pure and good Anezka defiled by foes that are worse than the cursed blood mages...and then you get hit by a huge rock so that you have to wait 1000 years to get your "bloody" revenge.

[Peter McCoy]

Redemption is a great game, but I felt that the latter half 'Modern Nights' section in London and New York City were somewhat rushed. They just weren't as vibrant and 'real' as Vienna and Prague.

Now Bloodlines, the sort-of sequel to Redemption, is just spectacular. The dialogue, the characters, the actual quests and locations are just great. I love everything about Santa Monica. And I really don't know what it is but I get this very stong, strange sensation when I play that game. The ambient sounds and the general feel of the game give me this longing for summertime and I have no idea why. Its the same feeling I get when I listen to Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals album. It's a really weird but relaxingly cool sensation.

I guess I'm just a weird kinda guy.

In fact just remembering now - I got the same feeling during the second part of Portal - the part where you go 'behind the scenes' as it were.

I'm gonna have a think after work - I'm sure I've had the same sensation/feeling when playing other games.

Back on topic though - another great OMG moment for me was in Grim Fandango. There's a few actually:

At the end of Year One you see Manny mopping the cafe floor as the camera pans and ascends up out of the cafe and up to the cloudy sky and we fade to black. Then the 'One Year Later' appears and the camera pans and soars back down on a starry night sky to reveal the cafe transformed into a casino with Manny standing on the balcony looking very suave in his new suit smoking a cigarette. Me and my mate we're both playing it at that moment and just thought "Nice....." :)

Then the next 'Year Later' has him originally as some lowly chef on a boat, only to become the Captain in the next act. I honestly thought "OMG, Manny's the Man!"

And then in the final act (at least I think it was the final act) when you find Salvador Limones has been shot. I was so angry when I watched that part. Viva la revoluciun!

Oh and one of my personal favourites:

Sonic thwe Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive/Genesis) - fighting Metal Sonic on the Death Egg, then beating him to confront Dr. Robotnik only to find that he's got himself a giant robot of himself to fight you with. And then after the battle Sonic just leaps out of the exploding station. Thank God Tails was on the ball with that plane of his. Intense stuff!