10 Video Game Plot Twists That Totally BROKE You

Plot twists can make or break a video game - if developers get it right it can enhance the many dozens of hours you might've spent playing through a story, but if they get it wrong it can derail the entire experience.

And then there are those twists that simply leave players absolutely shook, where something is revealed that comes wildly out of left field and just brutalises the player emotionally. 

Perhaps it even forces them to reconsider the entire narrative through a different lens with all this new information.

And that's absolutely true of these 10 video games, each of which dropped literally game-changing twists which left most players feeling emotionally spent and positively broken.

These twists ranged from the sudden, surprise deaths of beloved characters, to shocking heel turns, and reveals which aggressively re-framed the whole damn story.

Above all else, these twists resonated deeply with the fanbase, who in many cases are still enthusiastically discussing and debating them literally decade later. 

And for the more recent twists on this list, don't expect folks to stop talking about them anytime soon...

Naked Snake's mission in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater involves, among other things, tracking down and eliminating his former mentor, The Boss, who left Snake for dead and defected to the USSR.

At game's end players defeat The Boss in an epic boss fight, after which they're forced to pull the final trigger themselves to bring her life to an end.

But Snake Eater's epilogue drops an absolute game-changer of a twist, that The Boss never actually defected - she was still working undercover with the U.S. to infiltrate the ranks of Colonel Volgin, recover the mysterious Philosopher's Legacy, and return it to American soil.

More to the point, because Volgin carried out a nuclear strike on Russian soil which implicated the U.S., The Boss was never able to exit her cover, knowingly going to the grave as a faux-traitor to absolve America of any responsibility in the attack.

And so, at game's end just a handful of people other than Snake know the truth of The Boss' heroism - a jaw-dropping revelation which clearly shakes Snake to his core and alters the course of his future.

For all the silliness of the Metal Gear franchise, this is by far its most effective and impactful storytelling coup - a thrilling and heart-rending payoff to the showdown between mentor and student.