Unchained Melody: The Power of Game Music
I was around halfway through Final Fantasy X-2. I’d reached the cut scene where you’re supposed to “find out” Lenne and Shuyin’s final fates—which I hated, because I had been awake and attentive enough that I was pretty sure I had already figured out their fates—so I braced myself for some redundant info-dump and was completely blind-sided by what is still one of the best scenes I have ever seen in a video game.
Take one attractive young couple. Combine the flavor of a tragic, untimely death in which they express their undying love. Then add a bit of desperate bravado on his part, some heroic self-sacrifice on hers, make sure they reach out to each other after their bloodless, slow-motion mortal injuries, flavored with trademark Square-Enix visual bedazzlement, and assemble around one unabashedly romantic pop song…and you have the one and to-date only cut scene ever to move me to tears.
