10 Video Game Endings That Were Profoundly Insulting

2. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

For the entirety of MGS V, we were holding out for an explanation. An explanation for why there was a man made of fire, why Big Boss was suddenly a mute, why there was a giant space whale eating a helicopter, a half-naked super-powered sniper, the lack of any boss battles, lengthy cutscenes - any and everything, really.

Stories abounded that creator Hideo Kojima and Konami were having a major falling out, and the proof was indeed in the pudding, as the entirety of 'Act 2' (the game's final act, because to hell with three act structures) felt haphazard and unfinished. After a string of random-feeling missions and the game's insistence you replay chunks of them all over again, suddenly one called 'Truth' appears. And it's here, where things went completely off the rails, before burying themselves at the bottom of a ravine...

You find out that your playable character wasn't Big Boss, after all. Instead you were a brainwashed clone, programmed to mimic all his thoughts and actions through advanced psychotherapy. Whilst this isn't inherently terrible - designing the clone's original appearance after yourself does mean that literally you are now part of the mythology - it does mean the game never addresses the key point of its marketing:

What made the real Big Boss become the tyrant we fight in the original Metal Gear games?

With no resolution or connective tissue to the rest of the canon, and with Metal Gear Sahelanthropus floating off over the sea alongside young Liquid Snake and Pyscho Mantis, MGS V just... ends, leaves a 20 year gap in the canonology, and provides no full-stop to its immortally meandering sentence.