8 Haunting Video Game Stories Most Players Missed

One of the many great benefits of video games over other storytelling mediums like, say, movies is the ability for games to leave a whole ton of additional content within the world itself waiting to be discovered.

You can pick it or up or freely ignore it, and while many video games pack their world with dull, flavourless filler, sometimes the stories happening on the periphery are just as compelling - if not more so - than the front-and-center ones.

And that's absolutely true with these eight gaming stories, each of which spun a tale sure to haunt you for days, no matter that a large swath of players likely missed it entirely.

These stories typically unfolded by way of memos, messages, and audio-logs, ensuring that those who tirelessly combed through every room in search of Stuff were rewarded with something absolutely unforgettable.

Though it also has to be said that some of these tales are so bleak, so fundamentally sad, that you might well wish you could've remained blissfully ignorant about them forever more. With that in mind, you've been warned...

Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't get nearly enough credit for how brilliantly its audio datapoints help build out the world, and the very best of the bunch can be found within The Grave-Hoard ruin.

Two of these logs will contain messages from a certain Sgt. Guliyev to his wife, and while his first message expresses faith in Project Zero Dawn, the second proves more despairing as he begins to lose hope.

However, elsewhere in the ruin you can find some alternative versions of these messages which have been "edited and approved" before being sent to Sgt. Guliyev's wife.

These edited versions severely alter the tone by removing Guliyev's doubts, seemingly in order to paint a more positive message back home.

It's effectively propaganda, and if that's not bad enough you can also find a reply from Guliyev's wife where she expresses skepticism over the validity of his messages, though this message ends up being rejected for transmission.

As a small window into how the lives of everyday folk were being manipulated by the military, it's totally terrifying - and terrifyingly believable.