10 Video Game Endings That Left You Totally Speechless

1. "Would You Kindly...? - BioShock

Could there really have been another choice?

It really says something about the inherent brilliance of BioShock endings that both BioShock and BioShock Infinite made this list - and in the top two spots, because who could argue that any other game endings have had quite as much of an impact as those?

Whilst BioShock Infinite's ending is great, however, the original game's ending just takes the cake. On account of it being the first game, it has the edge, but it probably left more people speechless than that of Infinite because it was easier to understand straight away.

After crash landing in the ocean and stumbling upon the secret underwater "utopia" that is Rapture, players spent the sum of BioShock - as Jack - on a mission to find the reclusive leader of the city, one Andrew Ryan. Guided by a man named Atlas who communicates with Jack via radio, the player eventually finds Ryan, who reveals something crazy.

It turns out - in a stunning sequence of events - that Jack is actually Ryan's illegitimate child, and that Jack has been hypnotically controlled by Atlas for the length of the game using the phrase 'Would you kindly...?" (something that goes completely amiss on a first play through). Jack even crashed the plane that landed him in Rapture having read the phrase from a piece of paper - and this revelation really, really screws with the player.

At this point, Ryan delivers the phrase himself and his son is forced to kill him. Jack then sets out to defeat Atlas, also known as Fontaine, and eventually defeats him. And then, depending on how you played the game, a number of endings present themselves, the most likely of which sees Jack having "stolen the terrible secrets of the world."

From the moment that the "Would you kindly...?" revelation drops to the very final scene, BioShock cements itself as a beautifully dense game worthy of all the time you spent playing it. There's a feeling that many developers have since tried to imitate the success of the twist and subsequent ending with their own arbitrary plot turns, but really - in terms of impact - nothing has come close to rendering gamers totally speechless than BioShock.