8 Heroic Video Game Characters Who Didn't Actually Affect The Plot

6. Kaitlin Greenbriar (Gone Home)

As an exercise in storytelling through environmental design, Gone Home is set up like a horror: You return to your family abode after being away as a student, only to find a note on the door from your sister, apologising for something she did and stating that she'll "see [you] again soon."

You then spend the following hours of game-time trying to piece together just what the hell happened while you were away, enduring jump-scares and moving shadows on the walls, with the whole experience playing on the shared genre assumptions that come with first-person, corridor-crawling terror.

However, across the game you'll discover that actually, nothing was wrong at all. A troubled message left on the answering machine pertained to a past event involving your sister's new girlfriend, and the pair running off together is what the door note referred to.

All ancillary items you could pick up inferring that your mother was cheating on your father also turn out to be the two of them spending some quality time together, and Gone Home ends with you having done nothing but pick up the pieces of an already-concluded narrative.

Remember what your parents said about assuming anything?