Which story arcs/missions do you find most emotionally engaging?

For me it was the Ghost Widow Patron arc. I was really behind her and wanted her to succeed and then was forced to betray her. I actually found myself apologizing to her out loud. It really, really bothered me to have to betray her.

Other than that some of the Praetorian arcs especially the one where you capture a drug shipment and then the Resistance wanted to use it to control another group. I said "Hell, no" and called the government.

No mention of Johnny Sonata's "Devil May Care"? The one where you destroy a person's soul? Loved that one.

Blueside:
The Vahzilok Plague
The Library of Souls
To save a Thousand Worlds (Requiem's journal was creepy)
the whole Faultline contact series
Through the Looking Glass

Redside:
Die by the Freak!
The Cult of the Shaper
all of Vernon Von Grun's missions
The Hammer of the World
Old Friends, New Enemies, and New Opportunities

Coop:
The Horror of War

Goldside
Letting Go
The Woman Named DeVore (Mother just makes me go eww)
View From the Other Side

About what I can think of off-hand.

Hands down The Terra Conspiracy. "What do you mean I CAN'T save her?!?"

And both the resistance warden, and loyalist responsibility arcs were really well written. I actually had to think about the warden choice.

I actually kind of feel sorry for Mother Mayhem. In a "poor bint needs to be locked up" kind of way.

The four arcs in Dark Astoria. Such an awesome story! All the fighting (and not fighting!) against hordes of BP - and the Fossil Shades (love those zombie smilodons and dire wolves, but those darned zombie trilobites - yikes, easily the creepiest things in the game) - and then at the end, when we're re-enacting the Last Stand in the warehouse, and just when it seems like we're about to win the day... that one little thing... oh, it's heartbreaking.

And then when it turns out it's that same one little thing that enables us to try again in the Awakening TF...

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...and gives us exactly what we need to make it all work out. When the fog lifts and the sun shines down on Moth Cemetery... and the people in the streets look up... that's one cutscene I'll never skip!

Unmatched brilliance! No other mission/quest/whatever in any other game even comes close!

It's a little funny, but almost all of mine are red-side, and almost all of them come from the process of leveling Kestrel... I guess it makes sense on some level, since Kes is one of my very few devoted role-play characters, as well as being one of the ones I have the strongest emotional attachment to. I guess when I'm playing her, I'm more involved with how she would see things and react to them than I am with most of the others... The stories seem to have more impact when she's the one I'm running them with.

Anyway, "O Wretched Man" is definitely a favorite. When I was leveling her, I think Kes ended up hitting every single mission red-side that included Paolo as either a rescue or a companion. She's never faced him as an enemy, and after that arc in particular she pretty solidly considers Wretch a friend. She's flat-out fond of the big lug, and knowing his past and why he is the way he is just moved him soundly into "you may be a villain, but you're still just a big, mushy sweetheart" territory as far as she's concerned.

Vernon von Grun and his arc just amused the hell out of her (And me. Vernon always makes me grin...) She considers him a much better Mad Scientist than Aeon.

The one that made the biggest impression, I think, was her Patron arc, though. When Kes got into the 40s and I started looking at Patron pools for her, I knew I wanted to go with Scir's. She'd always seemed to have a bit of an affinity for the Mu guys, so it only made sense to go that route. I'd never run his arc with anyone prior to that, and really had no clue where it was going to go. Imad ended up being another one of those characters that Kestrel got very attached to... Which was problematic, given the conclussion that whole story-line is railroaded into.

As a character, *I* know she'd never have given Daos the time of day. She wouldn't have given up what Scir was planning for anything in the world... But the plot doesn't give you a choice.

Don't get me wrong. She still wouldn't have let him finish that ritual... It was a Very Bad Idea, and she knew it... But her reasons for throwing a wrench in the gears wouldn't have had anything to do with Arbiter Sticking-his-nose-in-everyone-else's-business. It would have been done under the rule of "Friends don't let friends commit kharmic suicide", not because some over-bearing Arachnos chrome-dome told her to.

With the arc ending the way it did, though, and with Scir's reactions being what they were, I didn't have much trouble figuring out how Kestrel would feel about it... I can't think of another arc in the game that could have made one of my characters more unhappy than that one made her. That's why I remember it. Not necessarily as a favorite, but as one of those bits of story that made an impression based on the strength of the character's reaction to it.

Kes did go on to do the rest of Scir's arcs, and these days I do play her as still having a strong association with him. I like to think that they eventually sat down, talked things out like rational adults and sorted out what happened and why... But Kestrel still wants Daos' head on a freaking plate for ever making Im doubt her.

You're the brightest star I know, Rusty!

I swear, Aron Walker's arc was pretty good, Penelope Yin made it better (which I didn't think could happen) and than Dark Watcher just pushed it through the roof. Good stuff.

Time after time was probably the most epic moment of my solo career on my widow. Soloing Recluse was pretty fun and awesome.

Other than that, a lot of the RWZ arcs and missions are pretty good, but I don't bother with the names too much, nor have I done them enough times, sadly.

The Katie Douglas arc (Seer 1381) changed the way I think about Seers. (They're still really creepy, but I have compassion for them that they may well be conscripted into Seer-dom against their will)

I was going to post, but you've beaten me to all of the good ones.

Oh, all right.

Buzzsaw and Von Grun make me laugh, and Television makes me geek out - and then there's the infamous Westin Phipps, who mostly makes me shudder and/or plot his comeuppance - but for "emotional engagement", I have to give the nod to arcs like Wretch, and the Vanguard, and Katie Douglas, and Noble Savage / Aaron Walker / et al. It seems to me that the writing has just gotten better and better as this game goes on.

I'm going to give special mention to an oft-overlooked diamond in the rough, the Slot Machine arc. Unlocking this contact, hidden inside the Giza, requires beating up a lot of a particular sort of Family, which are easy to miss and annoying to grind. My hulking brute got angrier and angrier at its empty promises, until it finally dropped the pretense and simply begged for help. He got the long-awaited payoff... and a sad little apology and a final promise "not to bother you anymore". Result? My big monster mumbling an awkward apology of his own to the now unresponsive machine (that "no one ever comes by to fix"), saying that it wasn't that much trouble, really...

A final note: Warrant was pretty much the only person in Powers Division my ambitious punk loyalist/rogue ever really respected, and after seeing what happened to him, he made sure the person responsible got just as bad or worse. He added a set of gold-on-gold spaulders to his 'hero' costume to honor the man, and they're still part of it today.

There are a lot of arcs I like, but here are some I like for emotional reasons. I believe all the following have been mentioned already:

"O Wretched Man." I particuarly like Wretch's speech (in a clue) at the end. There's a pretty nice video of this story floating around out there someplace, by the way.

"The Red and the Black" combined with "The Horror of War." Sefu's ultimate fate always affects me. Even my villains end up liking him. Aside from being emotionally engaging, "The Red and the Black" is also notable for having a great title and for being one of the few hero vs. hero stories I've ever seen that makes sense (if you're playing it with a hero).

The conclusion of the Praetorian Responsibility branch, if you choose the Loyalist ending (the Resistance ending falls kinda flat for me).

Overall winner: "The Terra Conspiracy." While the gameplay is, to put it politely, not the most exciting, I really like the story here. This arc is one of the major reasons I consider Hamidon the most evil of all our NPC villains, a guy so obsessed with his own agenda that he literally erased his girlfriend's identity so that she could be a mere extension of him. I did a Kid Eros story about this called "Echo and Narcissus" a while back, but the computer that held all the screenshots died, and I never got them all moved over when I replaced it, so it has gone unpublished all these years. For that reason, I consider Hamidon's Praetorian retconning into a mere appurtenance to Tyrant (which also managed to garble the timeline of "Terra Conspiracy") one of the great errors of the Going Rogue era.

@#$@%@#$@#$!!!!!!!!

I am reminded once again how much I despise the short login timeout on this forum. GRRRRRR!!!!!! I guess that's a reminder that you NEVER take a significant amount of time composing a post without copying the contents and saving them in the clipboard before clicking submit and having it all vaporize because the forum decides you aren't logged in anymore.

Frag me, that is so annoying!

Two of the ones that touched me the most are ones that have been mentioned quite a few times in this thread.

Aaron Walker’s story through Praetoria is the most recent one. This one had me shedding tears by the end of it all.

The Red and the Black is the other one. Sefu Tendaji’s story was very well done.

The one that made me feel the worst was when I found out the fate of Pyriss. I don’t think I have ever felt as dirty in this game as at that moment. Westin made me hate him for what he was making me do but Pyriss made me feel dirty because I did it to her.

I'd refrained from posting here until I had a chance to compile a full list, but I've got to add that Aaron Walker's last stand was one of my best storytelling moments-- not just the story, but in the way it was told:

... hear the ambush coming in... SEEING a rather large ambush converging on you, then seeing the clockwork power up and give their (reprogrammed) battlecry...

It was unexpected, well-timed, and extremely well-executed. It would've had an even bigger impact the first time if my squishie hadn't faceplanted from the ambush before the bots could really lend a hand