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.
For me, that moment was in Kingdom Hearts 2. I hadn’t played the first game (or the second game) and didn’t really understand the concept of sequels that continued a story. My parents had gotten me the game probably because it had Disney characters in it. But this moment stuck with me nonetheless.
It was the game’s first boss fight, the Twilight Thorn. Everything leading up to it and the fight itself was just utter cinematography to my young eyes. I wasn’t even able to actually beat the fight (and I was the older brother, so I didn’t have anyone to help). But it stuck with me for years. I ended up getting a PS4, the first console I bought with my own money, for the sole reason of playing the Kingdom Hearts collections.