I still think about the antlions from Half Life 2 all the time. It's maybe one of my favorite examples of storytelling in video games.
These creatures go from being absolutely fucking terrifying to being cute and valued sidekicks, all because you suddenly have a way to communicate with them.
And (if you're like me) you go from wishing death on all of them to feeling bad about sending them to their deaths. You start to feel a little bad for all of the ones you killed before that point. You kind of feel bad for siccing them on another antlion guardian.
And then you have to go into a nest and you stomp on SO MANY of the grubs and they're gross and they give you health and you're on a mission but (if you're like me) you still feel kinda bad about smushing them or smacking them but they're Not On Your Side anymore so you're also trying not to get killed by them.
And (again, if you're like me) you feel like you don't want to kill any of them on subsequent play-throughs.
