10 Video Games That Missed Out The Money Shot
We only saw the aftermath of Trevor's drunken carnage in GTA V.
Video games are such vast, expansive works of art that most of them don't have a single, defining image, but that doesn't mean they don't promise iconic moments that sear themselves into our memories forever more.
A money shot can become an emblem of the game itself - think Sephiroth stabbing Aerith in Final Fantasy VII, Joel carrying Ellie away at the end of The Last of Us, or John Marston exiting the barn at the climax of Red Dead Redemption.
Yet sometimes, for whatever reason, developers decide to deprive players of a statuesque visual and leave them to conjure it up in their own minds instead.
Maybe there were technical issues during development, perhaps a controversy resulted in scenes being re-jigged last minute, or it's simply a case of the developers having a little fun at the player's expense.
Whatever the reason, these video games failed to deliver the expected money shot, as has left many fans frustrated ever since, even while some have been able to see the funny side of it all.
For better or worse, you had to fill in the visual blanks for these gaming moments yourself...
10. Arsenal Gear Crashes Into Manhattan - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty
Metal Gear Solid 2 concludes with Arsenal Gear, a gigantic submersible mobile fortress, running aground and crashing into Manhattan, though Hideo Kojima's original vision for this sequence was considerably more epic and destructive.
Beyond showing more extensive carnage as Arsenal Gear careens through Manhattan, the scene was also supposed to feature the vehicle knocking the Statue of Liberty over and pushing it onto Ellis Island.
Yet less than two months before the game's release the 9/11 attacks took place, and so Kojima and his team had to act fast in order to tone down the game's unavoidably untimely depiction of a destructive terrorist act in New York City.
While Kojima certainly made the right decision for the time, it's a shame that the full sequence has never been restored in a Director's Cut of the game, because from the brief snippets that Konami has revealed to date it sure seems like a lot of effort went into it.