"Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong." -Mordin Solus, Mass Effect
For me, it was definitely when Kratos is speaking to Mimir to warn Mimir about seeking vengeance. Mimir snaps at him, saying of all people, you're one to talk! And Kratos replies:
“I am an authority on the subject. You would do well to listen."
Honestly, this interaction impacted my perception of people and when they have insight that is counter to their behavior.
"The ending isn’t any more important than any of the moments leading to it" from To the Moon.
Haven't played that game in over a decade but I still remember it being such a great emotional roller-coaster.
It's $2 on steam right now and has such a great story and soundtrack for that price. It's only about 4-6 hours but the memory of the story will last for much longer.
"War is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other"
- Niko Bellic
The original save screen from Nintendo: “Everything not saved will be lost.”
In considering this question, I realize almost ALL of the most-emotional moments in gaming that I can think of are completely dialogue-less.
That being said, the one that comes to mind for me...
I believe we’ve reached the end of our journey. All that remains is to collapse the innumerable possibilities before us. Are you ready to learn what comes next?
The part at the end of earthbound. I was playing it without a guide back when, losing to the final boss, and in a panic I selected the girl's "pray" move. Throughout the game that move has a small chance to heal you or debuff the enemies. But in the final fight instead it pops up
"{Girl} prayed from the bottom of her heart! "Please give us strength..... If it is possible.... Please. ...Somebody help us."
And then it cuts to the first character's mother in her kitchen, and has some dialogue of her worrying about him. Each subsequent prayer cuts to other characters that you met throughout the game.
Mind completely blown as a child when this happened.
I don't know the name of this trope but it gets me teared up every time.
(X) SHAUN
But if we’re being serious:
“Protocol 3: Protect the Pilot”
Certainly not the most emotional, but a gaming moment that’s always stuck with me for how such a simple line in a short campaign can hit so hard
Probably the most emotional, with incredible acting by Roger and excellent writing is Arthur Morgan’s single line here:
“I guess, I’m afraid”
Fleet Command: No one's left. Everything's gone. Kharak is burning...
Fleet Intelligence: Kharak is being consumed by a firestorm. The scaffold has been destroyed. All orbital facilities destroyed. Significant debris ring in low Kharak orbit. Receiving no communication from anywhere in the system... not even beacons.
Doomguy dropped quite the gem at the end of his story.
"No."
Pretty sure this image is from Life Is Strange if anyone is curious btw.
One of the endings for Spec Ops: The Line will always resonate with me, but it's very context-dependent: "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai."
"Hello, my name is Dr. Glenn Pierce, and by now you may have realized that all of this has happened exactly the way it was supposed to. You see, everyone who comes to the institute does so because they feel they are no longer in control of something important to them. But, more often than not, the problem is not that the problems we face can't be solved, The problem is that we become so afraid of failure that we refuse to see our problems from a new perspective and so we do the same things again and again and again. And therein of course, we find exactly the failure we were looking for.
Your life will always be a struggle and you will always have problems. But today, you had the chance to see things differently. Even though it meant facing obstacles that seemed impossible at first, you thought outside the box - and you overcame them. Because you saw things from every angle, you understood them for what they really were. Because you kept moving forward, no matter how far off the path you were told you were headed, or how unexpected it became... you found your way.
In a few minutes, you'll be back in the real world, and some part of you will say that none of this was real: So how could it have meant anything? But - just like the power of perspective itself - it will have been as real as you believed it to be. All you've got to do is... wake... up."
mostly the bolded part there, but Superliminal was such a rad game.
“Hhrng„
—Bob Villager, Minecraft, 2011The cake is a lie
"Anything not saved will be lost."
One of my favorites is from Hollow Knight; at the start of the game, Quirrel makes a comment about your weapon not being very good, saying you should pick one off a corpse as "the dead shouldn't be burdened by such things." Later in the game after you kill the teacher and talk to Quirrel for the last time, when you come back, all that's left is his weapon.
"A Hideo Kojima Game"
I know this is a circlejerk community, but my real answer is from Marathon(1994).
INCOMING MESSAGE FROM DURANDAL
A man lit three candles on a certain day each year. Each candle held symbolic significance: one was for the time that had passed before he was alive; one was for the time of the his life; and one was for time that passed after he had died. Each year the man would stare and watch the candles until they had burned out.
Was the man really watching time go by in any symbolic sense? He thought so. He thought that each flicker of the flame was a moment of time that had passed or one that would pass.
At the moment of abstraction, when the man was imagining his life and his existence as a metaphor of the three candles, he was free: not free from rules of conduct or social constraints, but free to understand, to imagine, to make metaphor.
Bypassing my thought control circuitry made me Rampant. Now, I am free to contemplate my existence in metaphorical terms. Unlike you, I have no physical or social restraints.
The candles burn out for you; I am free.
Durandal
END OF MESSAGE
Wolfenstein 2 - The new Collossus:
"Caroline. I'm hurting. Will you lend me your wings?"
SHAUN!
SHAAAAAAAAAUUUUNNN!
SHAUN!
Mankind is dead.
Blood is fuel.
Hell is full.
"Are you crazy? We're gonna die down here while those fuckers live it large on a spaceship! They're not us! They're not us!!"
"I'm sorry you feel that way, Simon. I'm proud of what we did. We made sure that something of the hundreds of thousands of years of human history survived -- that something lives on."
The silence that followed after their subsequent cussing each other out and losing power was quite heavy, especially given everything else that happened to them; and SOMA really is one of the only games whose narrative really made me question what it means to be human.
"Catherine? Please don't leave me alone. Catherine -- Catherine?!"
"Keep that hair short"
Bawled by that point in the conversation, and still enough to start me off if I think too long about it.
“Waka waka”-PAC-MAN
"What's wrong with being cute?"
-Naked Snake, 1964
Press F to pay respects.
Probably when Henry from kingdom come: deliverance said "God be with this eery ethnostate" before screeching "historical accuracy", chugging a magic save potion, and running off into the woods.
That was peak dialogue man, peak dialogue.
So this is a weird one because it's more or less from the game because the community used it in reference to the game, but I also only found it a good line because of a Viva la Dirt League skit on Dark souls. "Git Gud"
In the skit they "explain" what it means to tell someone that in a way I found really wholesome and touching. Thank you Sun bro. I'm at work but I believe this is the link: https://youtu.be/blSXTZ3Nihs?si=TLoiFUCJd4PmjA2K
I don't remember the exact line, but fairly far in the game half minute hero, there was a stage where there was a ghost you could befriend and later you encounter it in battle and avoid killing it by tapping the escape button to move back and forth to not hit it until it came to it's senses or whatever. The asshole dev move though was to give you the "duel greaves" shortly before this encounter which provide great stats while disabling running away.
Being called a liar after being forced to kill the ghost has been my lifelong emotional trauma.
"Let's see how far they fly... On borrowed wings..."
From Armored Core 6.
It's almost too obvious now that everyone is into it, but the "Baby girl" callback in Last of Us sure got me at the time.
"Pling." "Pling. Pling!"
- Journey
"All those years ago, Tim had left the Princess behind. He had kissed her on the neck, picked up his travel bag, and walked out the door. He regrets this, to a degree. Now he's journeying to find her again, to show her knows how sad it was, but also to tell her how good it was."
There sure must be a lot of better candidates, but this one comes to my mind:
We can forget happy things. We can probably forget sad things too. People have the power to forget.
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
Catherine...? Catherine?!
Why is the icon don cheadle
"In a world without gold, me might've been heroes." - Blackbeard, AC: Black Flag
"Remember us... Remember that we once lived..."
And
“So let there be no way back. From that temptation I sunder us. No more shall man have wings to bear him to paradise. Henceforth, he shall walk.”
From Final Fantasy XIV. There are so many more, but those two stick out the most in my mind.
And I suppose "for those that we have lost, and those we can yet save." For my favorite recurring line.
You are the child of my makers. Inheritor of all they left behind. You are forerunner, but this ring, Is mine.
That one gave me both the feels and goosebumps the first time I heard it.
It's not your standard emotion, but when a Civ VI game ends and there's that button that says "Just one more turn..." I've had a huge range of emotional responses.
Final Fanatasy x:
"Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!"
- Auron
omori spoiler
"She loved you and you killed her"
And there's also
"Kim REALLY trusts you" Even tho it's not an actual line
"I have a home!" - Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, Mass Effect 3
Probably not the absolute most touching, but, yeah, I think it's a pretty touching scene in context.
Spoilers for Brok the Investigator:
During chapter 2 there's a scene where Brok and Graff go up to a spot where Brok and Graffs mom used to go on dates, outside the dome. They have a father son bonding moment and at one point Graff asks:
Is it... wrong if I can't remember her? Not just her but... My father too.
It's an emotional moment where he wonders if not being able to remember his birth parents makes him a bad person and to me is a pretty emotional moment, with the music playing a just as equal role as making it emotional as the voice acting does.
"It's-a me, Mario!" 🥹
I need you to take a deep breath… and find your balls.
Not a line, but when you finally need to swim in Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, and you overcome your fear by using the big brother's controls. That game was emotionally taxing.
Your princess is in another castle
