When was the last time you got all teary-eyed, enraged or otherwise emotionally involved in a video game? No, not when Batman slipped out of 2014's grasp and took up his perch next year - we're talking really genuinely-affecting moments; the ones that leave you a total mess of primal rage or tears, evaluating everything you just played and if anything could've gone differently. It's a pretty rare thing to get right, being that there's a huge amount of variables that go into making sure you're in the appropriate place for maximum impact when everything kicks off, and not say, looking at the floor or admiring a particularly sweaty-looking piece of wet pavement (yes, it's something many gamers do, feel no shame). Factor in something like the very way characters animate, in which anything less than perfection can make what could be a romantic scene or a long sought-after kiss look more like a couple of mannikins gaining temporary sentience and mashing their cheeks together, and there's a simple reason most games stick to purely visceral thrills. For those developers that dare to go that extra mile though, expanding on gameplay to factor in a weighty narrative ends up creating on a whole new level of resonance and memorability for the player, alongside occasionally cementing the work as a truly timeless end product. Some spoilers follow.
