10 Powerful Video Game Endings That Gave You Chills

3. SOMA

It's not hyperbolic to say that SOMA has one of the very best twist endings in video game history. The sci-fi thriller spins a haunting tale for the bulk of its runtime, casting you as a man (well, the conscience of a man trapped in a robot's body) who needs to shoot an "ark" into space.

The idea is that the world is on the brink of total destruction, and the only way to save humanity is to transfer the consciousness of the lucky few who have been uploaded to a hard drive onto this computer and launch it into space, where the uploaded brains can live in a utopian virtual reality.

It's a lot to get your head around, but the one constant is that you can't just transfer another consciousness into another body or database. Instead, you're uploading another version of it, a copy of it, while the other one remains in existence, and it's a flip of the coin whether it's "you" who jumps to the new body, or another version of you.

This happens to you halfway through the story, where you jump into a new body and are given the choice to destroy your previous self rather than leave them to dwell and die in confinement forever.

However, at the end, it's revealed you've been lied to, and that the "flip of the coin" hypothesis was fabricated as the player character would never doom themselves and launch the ark if they knew they wouldn't be on board. The game ends as your copy walks out into the light, and your former self who did all the work is doomed to a life of insanity at the bottom of the ocean.