Walking out of The Embrace in Horizon Zero Dawn and seeing this enormous beautiful landscape in front of you.
The first thing that comes to mind was my first play through of Yakuza 0. Majima spends so much time winning stuffed animals for a little girl that lost her dad. Part way through the quest line she starts calling him dad and it made him so happy. It warms the heart and I could not stop smiling.
Recently, Hi-Fi Rush made me smile (and laugh) more than once :)
About 8 or so hours into Tears of The Kingdom I discovered the depths completely on accident by riding one of the dragons into it. First time in a long time I felt a complete sense of awe while playing a video game.
What I find interesting is that you spent 8 hours doing random things, because quite early in the game the main town has a quest that brings you down there and has you tap a light root to see what they do.
Completely missed that quest lol. Most of my time early on was just spent exploring and unlocking the map. Eventually made my way to kakariko village, saw a dragon flying into one of the holes and hopped on thinking I’d go out of bounds and die or something.
Finally beating the asylum demon on my very first playthrough of dark souls.
Then i immediately realized i only just beat the tutorial.
Playing Dark Souls 1 for the first time has so many amazing moments like that - finally defeating the Bell Gargoyles, or surmounting Sens Fortress and pushing the Iron Golem off… But I don’t think anything will ever compare to the exhilaration I felt in beating Ornstein and Smough for the first time.
