10 Best Video Game Reveals You Had To Find Yourself

When it comes to storytelling, video games really are an unrivalled medium.

They can tell a compelling story just as well as any movie or series, but they have the significant edge of allowing you to explore their worlds outside of that story. By empowering the player to reveal things about the world themselves, we are drawn into the narrative as subjective participants, as opposed to an objective audience.

Of course, exploring those worlds thoroughly can also feel like a huge waste of time. Collecting all the feathers in Assassin's Creed II, for example, may expand a little bit on the story - but it's super not worth it. Then there are the surprisingly frequent times where you just get nothing - maybe an easter egg or an ugly weapon skin.

But then for all those there are also the ones that carry weight. Sometimes a little too much weight, leaving you scratching your head by the end of the game if you never found them, but hefty nonetheless.

Whether they deepen the story or your understanding of its characters, unveil something unexpected or are simply telling a compelling story all their own - these are the ten best such reveals you had to find on your own.

Double-Fine's Psychonauts is a game all about finding hidden things: the things we try to forget. By traveling into the subconscious minds of numerous characters, the largely comedic game is, strangely, entirely about trauma.

Taking place in a summer camp for psychics, the game's early levels are crafted by the councilors for the purpose of training their students. As expert psychics, they can make sure you only see what they want you to see. No trauma here - just fun!

Take Milla, a levitation teacher who uses her relentlessly cheery, party-girl attitude to craft a dance party where the kids can learn to levitate while having a good time.

Unless you happen to come across a very small hidden room, where you'll find one of the game's memory vaults - hidden places where people lock their memories away. In Milla's case, this vault shows her past life as the caretaker of an orphanage. She cares for the children as if they were her own, until one day she returns from the market to find the building in flames, her children perishing within.

Then another room opens, full of fire and the whispers of her children begging to know why she abandoned them.

Yay... secrets. Fun... fun... secrets...