10 Video Game Mysteries Answered In CUT CONTENT
When the answers you seek got left on the cutting room floor.
Modern video games are such colossal and complex entities that take years to make that it's little surprise so much material ends up getting left on the cutting room floor.
While the cloak-and-dagger nature of games development ensures we don't usually hear about most deleted content, sometimes trusty dataminers are able to glean remnants of cut material from the game itself.
The sophisticated nature of games development means that developers will often leave half-finished content embedded in the code, because removing it risks causing a cascade of other unforeseen issues.
Often these deleted scenes will actually clarify burning mysteries which were left up in the air in the main game, finally offering a measure of solace to those who anguished over these dangling threads for potentially many years.
While you might lament that the developers didn't include these scenes in the main game, at least the truth has finally come to light, even if these revelations aren't strictly canon by not being conventionally playable in the game proper.
All the same, it's neat to finally have some answers and also a glimpse into what might've been...
10. What Happened To Captain Price? - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 marked the end of the original Modern Warfare franchise before it was rebooted in 2019.
The original trilogy concluded on an ambiguous note after Captain Price kills villain Makarov and then defiantly lights a cigar as the screen fades to black. Price's fate was never confirmed one way or another, with some speculating that he died from his wounds, while others contended that he lived to fight another day.
However, earlier this year modders yoyo1love and Vlad Loktionov discovered a cut post-credits scene which would've revealed what became of Price.
As he continues to watch Makarov's corpse swing in the wind, a shadowy individual appears in the background, watches the scene for a moment and then walks off.
Price then slumps over, his cigar dropping to the floor, before the game cuts to a picture of Price's fallen Operation Kingfish squad.
While still somewhat ambiguous, the implication seemed far more overt here that Price died, yet perhaps because Activision wanted to keep the door open for him to return, it was ultimately excised.