Soul

[Oyster Sauce]

Call of Duty giving every allied soldier a name when you hover your crosshair over them. I think they still do it to this day.

[Nico]

Assassin's Creed Odyssey (possibly there since AC Origins) : when you walk through a wheat field, the character will raise his hand and brush the wheat, palm down.
If you walk along the edge of a wheat field, the character will put his hand to the side and brush the wheat that way.

[logincrash]

Assassin's Creed Odyssey (possibly there since AC Origins) : when you walk through a wheat field, the character will raise his hand and brush the wheat, palm down.
If you walk along the edge of a wheat field, the character will put his hand to the side and brush the wheat that way.

The protagonist of Black Flag (the 4th game) did the same when wading through water. It's probably done the same way.

[Finarfin]

In Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio wears his cape draped over one shoulder. Whenever he runs, it flows behind him, but when he stops, he adjusts it back over his shoulder.
Persona 3 had the MC put his hands in his pockets and when you walk, he walks with them still in his pockets, if you run they are out and when you walk while his hands are out, he has a different walk animation.

[Bertram_Tung]

In Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio wears his cape draped over one shoulder. Whenever he runs, it flows behind him, but when he stops, he adjusts it back over his shoulder.
Persona 3 had the MC put his hands in his pockets and when you walk, he walks with them still in his pockets, if you run they are out and when you walk while his hands are out, he has a different walk animation.

no offense finny old buddy, but this one is a reach. this is just basic stuff

[Bertram_Tung]

My last post is correct - A character doing an animation to correct his cape in a AAA game is not soulful. Goyster and Roastie can disagree all they want.

[Oyster Sauce]

The sniper in TF2 whispers while looking through his scope

[maidenhaver]

Why would I listen to people with no soul tell me what sovl is?

[rusty_shackleford]

esoteric inane mechanics like last hitting and people having different exp, etc.

Alright its not that bad come on now.

esoteric/arcane mechanics are soul

[maidenhaver]

Bikini armor.

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

If you count the instruction manuals, Warcraft 2 has a paragraph-long description for every unit. I appreciate how they bothered to come up with those, even for units that are self-explanatory, and their horde counterparts that are the exact same.

[logincrash]

In Mass Effect 1 every character is named in the subtitles. But when the twist Big Bad is revealed, his subtitles have no name at all.

meta narrative elements.jpg

It's literally the only instance of this in the game. Very kino.

[Oyster Sauce]

Madden '07 on the Wii used live weather data from the Forecast Channel to match in-game weather to your own local weather

[Oyster Sauce]

Madden '07 on the Wii used live weather data from the Forecast Channel to match in-game weather to your own local weather

https://kydsgame.itch.io/rpg-maker-mv-r ... her-plugin

[Oyster Sauce]

I love the developer rooms in the Pokemon games where you can interact with the devs

[weaselus]

I may place this in a separate thread, but this one seems pretty good, too.
Sony in the nineties was an absolute artistic powerhouse.
Behold the soul in this attract sequence:

Tenchu Intro

Tenchu PSX Intro.mp4

[maidenhaver]

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

I'm replaying Dark Souls 2 and forgot how cosy Majula is. Getting to have a little adventure in that abandoned mansion made me feel like a kid again.

[Oyster Sauce]

In Pokemon Gold/Silver you can optionally give your mom a cut of your earnings, which she'll save for you and occasionally use to buy you little gifts.

[Vergil]

I'm replaying Dark Souls 2 and forgot how cosy Majula is. Getting to have a little adventure in that abandoned mansion made me feel like a kid again.

Speaking of Dark Souls II soul if you keep killing the pigs in Majula they will eventually be replaced with massive hard to kill boars. If you then keep killing those boars they'll be replaced with a massive hard to kill boar.
Also the skeletons in the mansion basement multiply for every NG+ up to 8 iirc.

[Oyster Sauce]

If you open the manual for Team Fortress 2 in Steam it brings you here

[methoxetamine]

Madden '07 on the Wii used live weather data from the Forecast Channel to match in-game weather to your own local weather

How was Madden on the Wii, anyway?

[methoxetamine]

Ys II: If you go up and interact with the tree right in front of Lilia's house, you will get a textbox showing lines Lilia scribbled into the tree when she was a little kid measuring her height as she grew.

Sakura Wars: You can hold the cursor over a character's portrait to trigger internal monologues and responses from the characters. One timed dialogue that pops up during a battle forces you to recall the color a ribbon a girl was wearing earlier in the morning; failure to do so makes her demoralized and lowers her stats during the battle.

Final Fantasy VIII: If you acquire the summon Odin, he has a chance of appearing at the start of every battle and bisecting the enemy. If you have Odin by the time of the Seifer fight, he will appear and then Seifer will parry Odin's attack and bisect him.

Shenmue: The tactile feel of being able to open closets and drawers in Ryo's home and pick up items and inspect them, or look behind the items. You literally push the button on the vending machine for the coke you want.

Final Fantasy IX: During certain segments of disc 1, you can see other airships flying around the world, makes it feel more alive. Wish that extended to the rest of the game. Also, friendly monsters: there is a small chance that you might get a random battle... but then the battle music doesn't play. Instead, comedic music plays, and a cute little monster asks you to give it some ore. You give it some ore... and then it says thanks, and the "battle" ends, and you get a crap ton of EXP. Spruces up the experience.

Sakura Wars 3: The player can angle the anlog stick to determine the intensity of their dialogue option. In instance, the player can angle their response to be loud enough to be overheard outside the room, or only heard by the character they are speaking to. Characters might get mad if you start yelling in their face, or if you are speaking too low; depends on the situation and character you are talking to.

Animal Crossing: Tom Nook's shop is closed at night, but you can bang his house with a shovel three times and it will set off the alarm and wake him up, and then you can buy/sell from his shop but he will charge 20% more. If you shut off the console without saving, then the next time you boot up the game you get a funny skit with Mr. Resetti yelling at you.

Final Fantasy X: If you use the steal command on Machina, it is an insta kill (ripping out powercords, motherboards, circuits, etc).

Zwei the Arges Adventure: You play as a pair of protagonists who you can swap between at will. In the towns, there are many objects that can be interacted with, such as tables, beds, strings of laundry, barrels, plates of food on a table, statues, etc. When you interact with an object, your current character will give their view on the object, and both characters have different thoughts about every object in the game. For example, when interacting with laundry, Pokkle remembers that he needs to fold the laundry, while Pipiro comments on how she likes the clothes. In another instance, when interacting with sacred idols in a shrine, Piprio simply states what it is, expressing her reverence, while Pokkle cracks a joke about each idol. When mousing over items in your inventory, the game doesn't give you a single, objective description of the item. Instead, your current character gives you their view on the item.

Suikoden 3: This game rotates POVs between three different protagonists. The noble knight Chris won't loot skeletons, while Geddoe and Hugo will.

Fire Emblem The Sacred Stone: Trainee characters have combat animations depicting them as amateurs. When they promote to a upgraded class, their animation set changes to show them as more proficient in combat. Final Fantasy X also started off with Tidus swinging his sword wildly but then getting a different animation later.

Sakura Wars V: Every once in a while, you (as the main character, Shinjiro) will be asked to take a picture for another character. You have to get the camera zoomed in and adjust the focus just right, but while this is happening the characters are waiting for you, and if you take too long they will start becoming impatient, so you have to be quick. It's a timed minigame that doesn't feel like an arbitrary minigame, and feels quite natural.

Valkyria Chronicles: There are named enemy aces who will appear from one mission to the next. However, if you manage to kill a named ace, they will stay dead and will not show up again.

The Last Remnant: dynamic final boss difficulty. In many JRPGs, the final boss is never the hardest boss in the game, because he has to be beatable by everyone who wants to see the story. So the optional superbosses are usually the hardest. If you're a hardcore player, then it can be anticlimatic to work so hard to kill the optional superbossess... and then when completing the game, the final boss is a pushover. In TLR, the final boss becomes more powerful the more of the game you have completed. If you rush through the game and only do the story, then you can pretty easily beat him. But if you do every quest (and there are A LOT of quests and you can easily miss some, so if you completed them all you're probably a hardcore completionist), and you beat the optional superbosses, then the final boss will be far and away the hardest boss fight in the game.

Steins;Gate: When you open the menu, you are in universe whipping out your phone. If you do so during a conversation with a character, they will complain about it.

Pokemon Black and White: N speaks (his text advances) super fast in contrast to the other characters.

Ao no Kiseki: There is a scene where a character tells you to observe a train passing by. The camera pans over the interiors of the three passenger cars populated by NPCs, and then the character asks you to recount how many passengers were on the train. Makes you pay more attention to what's going on.

Trails of Cold Steel: Rean's notebook recording which quests he has accepted and the progress he had made on them have funny remarks written down by Rean that provide comedy.

Pokemon XY: If you ride a taxi without enough money to pay the fare, the driver will battle you.

Trails of Cold Steel II: The main menu screen depicts a scene depending on where your last loaded save was at in the story. If your last loaded save was at Rean and Toval setting out from Ymir, then when you load into the main menu scene, it will show them on the snowy mountain path. You can meet one of the antagonists as a seemingly random NPC eating in an inn before that NPC is formally introduced as a villain to fight.

StarCraft II Legacy of the Void: The game is structured around characters talking to each other on the bridge -> mission -> repeat. When you begin the final mission, the big bad immediately invades the bridge the moment you click. Neat surprise.

The Banner Saga 2: Late in the story, Juno enchants your map and you can open it to see the expanding apocalypse sphere consuming every place you had been to.

Overwatch: every character has distinct footsteps which you can identify them by before they come into view or speak.

Pokemon Sun and Moon: You can sniff people's beds and get a textbox describing it.

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers: NPC Trust party member quirks. Thancred can't cast magic, so he has to use a gunblade that uses magical powder charges. Occasionally, during battle, he will run out of ammo. If Ryne is in your party, she will toss him ammo charges. In one dungeon, there is a chasm that must be crossed. Thancred will leap across the chasm. Urianger will cast a teleportation spell to port to the other side. Ryne will slowly walk across the planks it trying to maintain her balance. Alisae will sprint across the planks to the other side. In the Elpis dungeon, when the second boss turns invisible, Alpinaud will look for footprints in the snow while Alisae uses magic to blast everywhere, and Urianger teleports from the AoE at the last second.

Kuro no Kiseki: you can find the big bad as a seemingly random/minor NPC in a bar before he is he formally introduced as a villain in the plot.

A lot of pure kino in this list. I love Falcom's main menus that show where you are in the story, there were some great screens in the last couple games. The stuff about Zwei has me really wanting to play it now, I have been wanting to play them for a while but the 30fps cap has been putting me off

[Oyster Sauce]

Fire Emblem The Sacred Stone: Trainee characters have combat animations depicting them as amateurs. When they promote to a upgraded class, their animation set changes to show them as more proficient in combat. Final Fantasy X also started off with Tidus swinging his sword wildly but then getting a different animation later.

[Kolgrim]

The devs who made Rogue Squadron for the N64 programmed in the Naboo Starfighter as a secret ship the player could use if they entered two codes. Cool thing about that is the game came out several months before the Phantom Menace hit theaters so no one knew the actual codes until the film released and the devs leaked the codes.

The devs for Homefront: The Revolution adding a full remaster of Timesplitters 2 in the game as an easter egg.

In one of the levels for Splinter Cell you can shoot a fish tank and it will leak water and stop at the level of the bullet hole. You can also use the water that's leaked onto the floor to electrocute the guards.

MGS2's melting ice cubes.

[Oyster Sauce]

Unique cover art for each console it released on

[KnightoftheWind]

Unique cover art for each console it released on

Too bad The Simpsons was always very, very jewish.

[Oyster Sauce]

Unique cover art for each console it released on

Too bad The Simpsons was always very, very jewish.

Who

[Stack of Turtles]

Unique cover art for each console it released on

Too bad The Simpsons was always very, very jewish.

Who

Most people don't know this, but they were originally the "Simpsteins" before changing their name at Ellis Island.

[Acrux]

Unique cover art for each console it released on

Too bad The Simpsons was always very, very jewish.

Wrong section. This post belongs in the Simp hating MEGATHREAD.