10 Touching Video Game Moments You Probably Missed

5. Mother's Journal - Dishonored

Video games are perfectly capable of emotive cinematic storytelling these days, but it's their ability to communicate story through our interactions with the environment that really makes them stand out from other media. Take the excellent Dishonored, for example. It not only has incredible gameplay and a gripping main storyline, but also loads of back rooms and hidden corners brimming with lore about the rotting city of Dunwall. Sneaking through the distillery district, you take out a guard patrolling one of the abandoned houses. All you can hear in the room is the sound of buzzing flies, which isn't atypical in a city that gives 17th century London a run for its money in the low-life expectancy charts (around 38 years, I imagine). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUq9EZaJvJQ You spot a book lying on a family dining table with three empty plates, and pick it up to read a mother's grim journal charting her family's steady demise from plague. It ends with an entry that only says 'I have the fever now. No guards come near any more'. You put the journal down with a sinking feeling in your stomach, then turn to leave but notice some dark outlines of something lying in the corner. You head over and realise that the sound of buzzing flies was coming from here, because this is where the dead bodies of the family members you just read about are lying, unceremoniously wrapped up in bags.