Contemplative moments

The Panzer Dragoon series is full of moments like that, but the most memorable one is the first time the dragon flies in Panzer Dragoon Zwei. Just look at it:


Shadow of the Colossus have some great ones too - namely, almost every time a new colossus appear.

The first Crysis has a very impressive one when you enter in the alien vessel (actually, the first Crysis in general is a very underrated game).

To give a more off-beat example, I think the Skies of Arcadia track in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has probably the only example of that in a racing game: in the third lap, a huge war between flying vessels begins in the background, the racing track gets destroyed and the cars start flying... For a brief moment, the racing itself is almost put aside.

Mirror's Edge also has some of these after Faith's most impressive jumps (the game goes into slow motion and you just realize the scale of the city).

For another first-person example, the moment you take a walk outside the space station in Alien: Isolation,

The Metal Gear series has two in special: the "ladder boss fight" from MGS3 (climb the ladder, listen to the awesome Snake Eater theme), and the car ride in MGS5 (right before Sahelanthropus).

Shmups, of course, have plenty of those. I'll mention 2: from Layer Section/RayForce, when the ship enters Earth's atmosphere. From Radiant Silvergun, the introduction to the last boss fight (actually, I think the entire boss fight counts as one).

Super Bunnyhop once made a video about the importance of "Quiet Time" in games, which is related to what we are discussing:




EDIT: Forgot to mention one that I like: when you get to the moon in Majora's Mask.

Title screen of Dragon's Dogma, the bar in Dragon's Crown, and of course, this.

Good call on Conan! That movie have a really good pacing, and you're right in saying that we see that more in movies than in games. Even in the NES days, I remember most of my game boxes announcing the game as being "non-stop action!", and that is still seem as the ideal thing by most developers - just throwing as much things as possible at the player, without giving him any quiet time to appreciate the audio-visual art put into the game.

Do you want an example of an action series that, even in the NES days, understood the need to stop sometimes? Mega Man. There are three things very common in the series: the classic empty corridor with slow opening doors before the boss, the "S" shaped room (usually a room with no enemies with the shape of a S or Z) and some stage that lets you run with the sky for a background (usually starry or with a sunset/sunrise) with no enemies for a while. While most of those moments aren't really "contemplative", they at least give you some time to appreciate the pixel art and awesome music while you prepare to go against the next challenge.