The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
Too many to count but the most recent one that sticks out in my mind is my first encounter with The Depths in Tears of the Kingdom. I had kinda glossed over the initial introduction you get as you travel to Lookout Landing and figured the big hole you see is just a regular cave (I didn’t really pay attention to whatever the NPC there had to say). Anyway, fast forward about 10 hours and I find some lowly well and hop down it, expecting to land in a small little pit. Instead a 30 second plummet and horn swell later I find myself in complete darkness, getting murderated by moblins and struggling unsuccessfully to stumble my way toward whatever the hell that big light bulb thing was in the distance. Was a fantastic surprise. 11/7 would plummet again.
Another poignant memory is the final mission in A Plague Tale: Requiem—freakin’ heartbreaking.
That first descent blew my mind as I was only aware that we had sky islands as an added later to Hyrule so to go to the depths for the first time just blew my mind.
And yes A Plague Take Requiem ending is pretty tragic but such an excellent game and vast improvement over the first.