Games with characters you miss most after completion.
It's a bitter sweet feeling afterward, but I love it when a game has characters where, after the game is over, I miss seeing a part of their lives. Be it due to the characters themselves or the interaction they have with one another, exiting their world feels more like a loss than when normally putting a story away.
Are there any games where you experienced similar? While it can be a bitter sweet feeling, I know that it is a sign that I really enjoyed what I was playing and love to find these experiences.
Cyberpunk had some really strong characters/acting/writing. I'm finding it hard to get excited by other games lately because they just don't measure up the same.
Undertale is the game I want to experience for the first time again. Can't believe that game is already 8 years old. The music is brilliant. The characters are all compelling. The storytelling is stellar. The graphics.....they get the job done lol
Napstablook was great. Especially once you find out who his neighbor was and a bit more about why he's so depressed. I lied on the floor with him for a solid 20 minutes on my first playthrough. Probably one of the best minor characters ever.
ETA (four hours later lol): The Bioshock trilogy as well. Booker and Elizabeth are imo the best duo ever. Plus the twist in Infinite is a special kind of mind fuck.
Undertale for sure. (I'm a long time gamer, and I consider this in my top 5 games now)
It has such a slow start, and meh graphics going into it. It took me 3 separate years trying to get into it, but once I got past the first 2 hours, man did the humour, characters and music blow me away.
If you're worried you won't get into it:
The graphics start out rough to make the better graphics later on really stand out
The slow start is actually them setting things up a whole bunch of things that pay off later, stick with it. (Also since the game is only 7 hours and there are multiple endings, you will replay it to get the other endings and notice just how much content is hidden at the start that you didn't understand the first time playing it).
I'm so glad I came back and stuck with it.
I was just trying to clear something out of my library and ended up with the most powerful gaming attachment I've had in over a decade.
I played Undertale last week for the first time, and WOW, so many emotions! I was definitely not expecting that, even after finishing the game for the first time.
Dr Mordin Solus can be saved, all it costs is the ruthless suppression of Krogan : source trying a renegade run and feeling so bad that I shot him - for Solarian aide - started from mass effect 1 to do a renegade run that I could feel less guilty from my horrible decision
LiS, LiS: Before the Storm and LiS 2 just hit me differently. I'm not really the target group but somehow it got to me on an emotional level like no other game.
I remember the first time I completed RimWorld. Kept all three OG colonists alive. Two of them got married. The husband was an old farmer, had dementia, bad back, and was eventually bedridden for a long time. His wife was a doctor and she'd visit the hospital everyday to check up on him. The third colonist, Oneesan, became a Countess and was so full of herself that she never worked. She spent her entire day meditating in her throne room.
Also shoutout to Tracker, a recruited waster, who did some of the craziest shit like single handedly stopping a siege with a sniper rifle, and breaking up a fight between us, mechanoids, and pirates with a rocket launcher.
Can definitely relate to a few of these, namely Phoenix Wright and Danganronpa. While they're cartoony (particularly the latter) the interactions between characters makes it very easy to attach to them
Not a week goes by that I don't think about Y's 8 at some point. It was my first entry into the series, it took my restarting 4 times before I got a "feel" for it and got sucked into the story. I am so glad I did. One of my all time favourite series now. Currently playing through Origins waiting for the English and hopefully PC release of Nordics
I just restarted my save in Mirror's Edge Catalyst, and man did I miss Noah! It's good to have him back, at least until I finally run out of side quests and have to play the mission where he is callously ripped from my life again!
I definitely prefer Mirror’s Edge 1, and Catalyst was my first so it’s not because of nostalgia. I just think 1 was done much better. But Catalyst is still a really fun game, and definitely worth it on sale. Just don’t expect it to be as good
The whole Investigation Team from Persona 4. The way the game is framed does an excellent job of making you feel like you've met all your best friends over the course of one school year and then you have to say goodbye to all of them. The multitude of spinoff sequels takes away a lot of the impact of the final scene and credits sequence, but I've never been more attached to a cast of characters in a game.
Pyre by Supergiant gets you like this with all the characters you help out of exile. It’s really a great visual novel held back from wider appeal due to their unique sport gameplay mechanic. But if you enjoy anything supergiant, you should enjoy it.
Undertale, definitely. FFX I was really attached to Auron. The Ace Attorney series? I get attached to characters so I feel like those are the tip of the iceberg.
Runas the Shamed from World of Warcraft: Legion. In summary, he's a victim of magical addiction that tries to con you into helping him, then you realize he's not in his right mind, he's addiction fueled. He is really trying to be a good person, but he's screwed by circumstance. By the end, you really feel sorry for him because he isn't majority responsible for his situation. It does not end well.
Some of the gameplay hasn't aged well but the look and feel of the game is still one of the greatest for me. The HD remaster from a few years ago is the best way to play.
For me, it was Astrid. Watching that fiercely proud, brutally honest and deeply caring warrior lady slowly lose the will to live after Giovanni was gone ... that hit hard for some reason. And her reassuring Stella that is "isn't so bad to be alone" and the like didn't make it better.
Witcher3 upon finishing Blood&Wine - there was such a void in my life after the closing scenes. Like I’d just watched my best friends move away across the world, knowing that I would probably never see them again.
I found the premise of exploring the psyche of Senua and after the end, even though she isn't fixed, she can at least put a part of herself to rest and really rings home what she as a person and people like her can be living with.
Spec Ops: The Line
Getting through the game and then evaulating all your decisions and seeing the changes over time of a broken man getting more broken leaves an impression of "Are we the bad guys", especially after seeing the tone change from dialogue, loading screens and even how the characters move and animation over the course of the game.
Lee from the Walking Dead game by Telltale, your character in Knights of the Old Republic, Abe from Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey, Octodad, and Ricky the sock puppet from My Friendly Neighborhood.