5. L.A Noire - Kelso
L.A Noire was a breath of fresh air. In a world infested with Call Of Duty and FIFA, here was a game that asked you to think first and shoot (almost) never. When it was announced, the hype was all about the revolutionary facial animations which meant you could accurately interrogate suspects. It was fantastic. You felt like a true gumshoe, navigating the seedy underbelly of 1950's Los Angeles, formulating hunches and collecting clues. Naturally, in order for a game like this to succeed, you need a complex plot that is going to draw the player in and never let go until the final mission. The hardest thing to accept is Rockstar nearly manage it. As Cole Phelps, you start as a well meaning rookie and, in true noir fashion, the ambiguity of your character and his decisions starts to appear. I was invested, I cared about what happened to Cole. He was a good(ish) guy in a bad world. I didn't care about Kelso. Not once. In fact, he seemed like a bit of an ass. And yet here I was, forced to complete the game as a side character who never really seemed that important in the grand scheme of things. It seemed so out of place, I spent the rest of the game shaking my head asking "Why?". Why spend so much time developing your main character to simply kill him off so unceremoniously and replace him with some schmuck who most people had either forgotten about or didn't care about in the first place. Why, Rockstar, why?