My favourite memory of the 7th gen came from Xenoblade. (Endgame spoilers)
Walking through the portal after killing Dickson, and ending up standing -after a whole game grounded on a terrestrial world, albiet a remarkable one- in outer space, in the rings of of a strangley familiar planet. I thought, "no, it can't be", then the Landmark notification popped up: "Landmark: Saturn".
My mind was blown; this whole time we had been in our solar system, on the planet that used to be our earth. Suddenly I had a 4th-wall bendng connection to this strange, alien world I'd been exploring, and as I would later discover, this world was actually built upon the destructon of the earth I was occupying as I sat there on my couch playing the game.
The journey through the solar system that followed, passed Jupiter, Mars, and the moon, was as haunting beautiful in both visuals and music as anything I've ever encountered in a video game. The vast globe of Jupiter loomed over me, so big it couldn't even fit on screen, and as I watched, the great red spot appeared around its rim, circled its equater, and disappeared, while the clouds around it swirled and a comet sailed by, blazing in the sun. PIeces of ice and rock periodically collided in the rings of Saturn, shattering apart.
My jaw was on the floor the whole time.
