The first time a video game made me cry, I tried to hide it. It was 1997, I was 19, sitting alone in my dorm room playing Final Fantasy VII when that scene happened. You know the one. Aerith kneeling in prayer, Sephiroth descending from above, that long sword piercing through her body, the gentle way her ribbon unravels as she falls forward. I remember sitting there, controller in hand, waiting for the Phoenix Down that never came. Games weren’t supposed to do this—kill off a main character permanently, especially one I’d spent dozens of hours leveling up and getting to know. As the music swelled and Cloud lowered her body into the water, I felt something catch in my throat. By the time the materia bounced down those ancient steps and sank into the depths, I was desperately wiping my eyes before my roommate could come back and catch me crying over a bunch of blocky polygons.
Looking back, I’m not embarrassed anymore. That moment represented something profound—the realization that this medium I’d loved since childhood had evolved to the point where it could affect me emotionally in ways I’d previously only experienced through books or films. But there was something different, something stronger about experiencing that loss in a game. Aerith wasn’t just a character I was watching—I had controlled her actions, selected her equipment, chosen her spells, learned her limits and strengths. Her death felt personal in a way that a film character’s rarely could.
That’s the unique power games have in storytelling—they make you an active participant rather than a passive observer. When done right, this creates an emotional connection that other media simply can’t replicate. You’re not just witnessing events unfold; you’re making decisions that shape them. Your triumphs feel earned; your failures feel like genuine losses. The best game developers understand this and use it to devastating emotional effect.
Take The Last of Us, specifically that giraffe scene near the end. On paper, it sounds almost silly—two characters stop to look at some giraffes in a post-apocalyptic setting. If you described it to someone who hadn’t played the game, they’d probably wonder why people consider it so moving. But in context, after hours of brutality, loss, and moral compromise, that moment of pure, unexpected beauty hits like an emotional sledgehammer. I remember just standing there, letting Joel and Ellie watch the giraffes for much longer than the game required, because I needed that moment of peace as much as they did. The fact that I could choose how long to linger made it more powerful than if it had been a fixed-length cutscene.
My girlfriend (now ex, but that’s another story) walked in during this sequence and asked what was happening. “Just… looking at giraffes,” I said, aware of how ridiculous it sounded. She watched for a moment, then said, “You look like you’re about to cry.” I was. And the fact that someone who’d never touched a controller in her life couldn’t understand why just reinforced how unique gaming’s emotional language has become.
The Walking Dead’s first season finale broke me in a different way. Throughout the game, I’d made choices trying to protect Clementine—this child character who depended on my decisions. When the final moments came and I realized what had to happen, what I had to make Lee tell her to do, I actually had to put the controller down for a few minutes. I couldn’t bring myself to make the selection. I know many players who described the same experience—that moment of resistance, of not wanting to proceed because the emotional weight was too heavy. That’s something unique to gaming: the responsibility of choice. When the sad moment in a movie comes, you can cover your eyes but the scene plays on. In a game, sometimes you have to be the one to push the story forward, to actively participate in the heartbreak.
Not all gaming tears come from tragedy, though. Journey made me cry with its sheer beauty and the unexpected connection with anonymous players. There’s a moment near the end when you’re struggling up the mountain, freezing and slowing down, possibly with a companion player you’ve never spoken to but somehow formed a bond with. I remember my character collapsing in the snow, and the other player—someone somewhere in the world whose name I would never know—staying with me, chirping encouragement. When I finally reached the summit, with that extraordinary musical crescendo and visual payoff, I found tears streaming down my face. It was joy, relief, accomplishment, and a strange gratitude to this stranger who’d shared the journey without a single word exchanged. No other medium could create that specific emotional response.
Mass Effect has a special place in my emotional gaming history. I spent three games with Garrus Vakarian as my Commander Shepard’s best friend, fighting side by side through countless missions. In the final game, there’s a quiet moment on the Citadel where you can meet him for some target practice, just two friends taking a break from saving the galaxy. The conversation that unfolds, ending with “There’s no Shepard without Vakarian,” hit me with unexpected force. I’d built this friendship over hundreds of hours of gameplay across years of real-time. That relationship felt more developed than some I’d had with actual people. When my brother Dave asked what I was playing one evening and I tried to explain why I was getting choked up over this scene, he looked bewildered. “It’s just a game character,” he said. But that’s the thing—after all that time and shared experience, Garrus didn’t feel like “just” anything.
The advancement of technology has certainly enhanced games’ ability to deliver emotional impact. Performance capture can now record subtle facial expressions that would have been impossible in the PS1 era. I remember being startled by the genuine grief on Joel’s face during the opening sequence of The Last of Us—the way his eyes conveyed shock, disbelief, and devastation as his world fell apart. Compare that to the blocky character models struggling to convey emotion in FF7, and you can see how far we’ve come. Yet interestingly, those technical limitations didn’t prevent earlier games from hitting emotional beats. They just had to be more creative with the tools they had.
Music deserves special mention here. A game’s soundtrack can bypass our rational defenses and speak directly to our emotions in ways visuals sometimes can’t. To this day, I can’t hear “To Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X without being transported back to that beach scene where Tidus learns the truth about the pilgrimage. Game composers understand this power—how a returning musical motif at the right moment can devastate the player. Hearing a somber piano version of a previously upbeat theme is basically emotional shorthand for “prepare to feel things now.” The fact that I have specific video game soundtracks (Nier: Automata, I’m looking at you) that I avoid listening to while driving because I know they might make me too emotional to be safely operating a vehicle probably says something about either the music’s power or my questionable emotional stability. Maybe both.
Player choice creates another dimension of emotional storytelling unique to games. When a character dies in a book or movie, it’s sad but predetermined. When a character dies because of YOUR choices, that hits differently. I still haven’t forgiven myself for certain decisions in Telltale games or Mass Effect that led to characters I cared about meeting bad ends. There’s an ownership of those outcomes that creates a different kind of emotional response—one tinged with personal responsibility.
The length of games also contributes to their emotional impact. You typically spend far more time with game characters than with characters in a two-hour movie or even a season of television. I’ve spent upwards of 100 hours with some RPG parties, seeing them develop, learning their backstories, watching their relationships evolve. That time investment creates an attachment that’s hard to replicate elsewhere. When I finished Persona 4 Golden after about 90 hours, saying goodbye to those characters genuinely felt like moving away from good friends. I found myself lingering on the ending credits, not wanting to accept it was over.
Sometimes a game’s emotional impact comes from unexpected places. I certainly never thought a game called Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons would wreck me emotionally, but its brilliant mechanical storytelling—using the control scheme itself to convey loss—hit me harder than almost any other gaming moment. Similarly, I didn’t expect a seemingly cute farming simulation like Stardew Valley to contain such poignant examinations of small-town life, depression, alcoholism, and finding purpose. I’ve had more meaningful moments sitting on a digital pier with a pixel-art character opening up about their struggles than I’ve had watching many Oscar-winning dramas.
What’s fascinating is how games can sustain emotional states over long periods. A film might make you sad for a scene or two before moving on. A game can create a pervading atmosphere of melancholy or hope that lasts for hours or even the entire experience. The constant rain and gothic architecture of Bloodborne create a persistent dread that seeps into your bones after extended play. The warm, nostalgic summer setting of Firewatch envelops you in its bittersweet atmosphere for its entire runtime. These sustained emotional environments affect us in ways that are hard to articulate but profoundly impactful.
I’ve noticed that the games that affect me most emotionally often subvert expectations. God of War (2018) transformed from what I expected to be another violent action game into one of the most moving father-son stories I’ve ever experienced in any medium. Life is Strange appeared to be a teen drama with a time-travel gimmick but evolved into a devastating examination of grief, regret, and impossible choices. These genre-bending experiences catch us off guard, slipping past our defenses when we’re not expecting to be emotionally challenged.
There’s something beautifully vulnerable about admitting which games have made you cry. It’s a window into what matters to you, what touches you. For me, it’s often moments of sacrifice, forgiveness, or unexpected connection. The ending of Red Dead Redemption 2, with its themes of redemption and acceptance. The Witcher 3’s reunion between Geralt and Ciri after I feared she was lost forever. Smaller moments too—in Animal Crossing, when my villagers threw me a surprise birthday party during the early pandemic when I couldn’t celebrate with real-world friends. I sat alone in my apartment, genuinely moved by these little digital animals who “remembered” my birthday when the world outside felt chaotic and isolated.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve become less self-conscious about these emotional responses. That teenage boy who tried to hide his tears during Aerith’s death scene has evolved into a middle-aged man who’s comfortable admitting that yes, sometimes games make me cry, and that’s actually one of the things I value most about them. They prove that this medium I’ve loved for decades isn’t just about reflexes or problem-solving or competition—it’s about human experiences, rendered interactive.
The next time someone dismissively asks, “How can you spend so much time playing games?” I might just tell them about standing on that mountain peak in Journey, or watching that sunrise with Arthur Morgan, or making that impossible choice to save one companion at the expense of another. I might tell them about how these moments have stayed with me, shaped me, moved me. But I might also just smile and say, “You’d have to play them to understand.” Because some emotional experiences truly are unique to this medium we love—tears included.
