10 Best "Everything You Know Is A Lie" Moments In Video Games
4. Spec Ops: The Line (2012) - War Trauma
Set in a near future Dubai which has been buried in sand by severe sandstorms, the hard-hitting third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line centres around Captain Martin Walker and his mission to find Colonel John Konrad.
Taking notes from Joeseph Conrad's iconic novel The Heart Of Darkness (which was also the basis for Apocalypse Now), this game is a journey into madness in which Konrad is the equivalent of the novel's diabolical Kurtz, who's committed several atrocities since taking control of the buried city.
As Walker makes his way to find Konrad, he witnesses the horrors the colonel left in their wake and is likewise forced to commit morally questionable acts of violence himself. Not long into the campaign, Spec Ops becomes less of a conventional shooter and more of a provocative character study.
When Walker finally arrives at where Konrad is holed-up, everything changes.
It turns out that Konrad has been dead the entire time. The Konrad that Walker has been communicating with up to this point has been a hallucination he created to take responsibility for his own horrific actions.
No matter which ending players choose, Spec Ops: The Line is a profound examination of trauma.