9 Awesome Video Game Moments That Didn’t Need To Happen

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is an incredibly fun, slick and engaging single player adventure, which demonstrates just how well superhero video games can thrive when they’re not built upon a live service model (I’m looking directly at you Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League!) 

The irony here is that the developers, Eidos-Montréal, are the creators behind 2020’s live service game Marvel's Avengers, which has since gone on to…well…die. But Guardians is the product of learning from one’s live service mistakes and shifting focus to tell an engaging story with a great gang of characters. And oh boy is it an emotional one!

Playing as Peter ‘Star-Lord’ Quill himself, you and the rest of the Guardians – Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Groot and Rocket Raccoon – are heroes for hire who pursue adventures as you wander around the galaxy together. 

The game’s opening, however, is poignant which is further explored as the game progresses. We see a 13-year-old Peter celebrating his birthday with his mother Meredith, before she is killed by Chitauri warriors who arrive and kidnap Peter. 

He is left with trauma after this incident and behind the wise-guy quippy personality of Star-Lord is a Peter who still misses his mother.

Later in the game, the Guardians are captured by Raker, the Grand Unifier and leader of the Universal Church of Truth. Raker takes you to meet the Church’s Matriarch who turns out to be Nikki, a character we meet earlier in the game whom Peter questions if she could indeed be his own daughter. 

Now this is an emotional punch for Peter, as you’ve spent the majority of the game building a fatherly relationship with Nikki by this point. However, things turn even darker following this.

The Matriarch uses the Soul Stone to brainwash followers with a ‘promise’, which creates an illusion of a person’s deepest desires and traps them within it. 

As Peter, you are sent back to that fateful moment on his thirteenth birthday, but this time an adult Peter is able to fight off the Chitauri warriors and save his mother. Although slightly sceptical at first, Peter falls fully into it and embraces his mother, the person he has desperately missed the most.

He sees the other Guardians living in his childhood home with him and his mother – Peter has everything he’s ever wanted. But when Nikki is mentioned as Peter’s illegitimate daughter, the illusion begins to crack and Peter is reminded of his actual reality. 

He is quickly taken back to the moment of hugging his mother outside after saving her, but Peter now understands the illusion he is in and what it’ll take to remove himself from it and save Nikki.

This emotional beat hits incredibly hard. Peter raises his gun to his mother with a shaking hand as she pleads with him not to do it; to stay there with her forever. 

Watching Peter’s inner turmoil as he fights his desires before shooting her is truly heartbreaking and gives us a beautiful moment of character development. In a lesser game, this wouldn’t have happened. We could have heard about the effects of the Soul Stone and a Nikki boss battle could have played out immediately after.

But this moment in particular highlights the strength of focusing on your characters and their emotional journeys. We get to know the characters better and in turn are more emotionally invested in the game. 

Eidos-Montréal really pulled it back with Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy by investing in the characters and inviting players into a fun and engaging world. Focusing on story and the Guardians’ big personalities and inner demons is ultimately more interesting than, say, increasing numbers on equipment and different coloured weapon skins.