Summary
Sometimes, change in the gaming industry comes slowly and over generations, but sometimes, a game does something so audacious or surprising that it marks a tectonic shift, and nothing is the same afterward.
Whether it’s bringing video games into a more mature age, or including scenes so shocking that they were debated in some countries' governments, there are plenty of shocking moments to discuss that changed gaming forever.
Spoiler Warning: This list will delve into major story spoilers for each game mentioned in the entries below.
For modern gamers it might be hard to imagine, but for a long while, shooter games set in the present day were not popular at all. Historical shooters or fantasy boomer shooters likeDoomwere much more in fashion. WhileCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfarewasn’t the first game to bring the FPS to the modern day, it is by far the most important, because it changed how shooters were perceived forever.
One big reason is the infamous nuke scene. In the campaign, players are accustomed to following their characters throughout an entire campaign, but in a shocking moment about mid-way through the game, a nuke explodes in the Middle-East, and the player character dies in the aftermath. It was a shocking depiction of the brutality of nuclear warfare and really hammered home that the time of invincible protagonists was over. Gaming had grown up and deliveredone of the best campaigns in the series.
AfterCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, modern military shooters flooded the market, and more than a few gamers were concerned about the messaging these games encouraged and promoted. It seemed more often than not, the good guys always won, and the actual Middle-Eastern settings were torn asunder and never considered again.
Spec Ops: The Linechanged all of that. By taking on the guise of a modern military shooter,Spec Opsbrought players through the true horrors of war, most pointedly in the white phosphorus scene when players murder a lot of civilians due to their recklessness,becoming the villain of the game. It’s a brutal and infamous moment that made the silly escapism of modern military shooters impossible to return to after you consider what the games actually meant for the people without guns.
These days, video games frequently have as good, or even better, writing than movies, but for a long time in gaming’s infancy, there was relatively little space for subtlety, particularly in the AAA console markets (RPGs are probably the big exception to this). So,Shadow of the Colossusis probably a game about killing big monsters, right?
Instead, players slowly learn that instead of being the presumed good guy of the beautiful colossus-filled world ofShadow of the Colossus, the player is very much the bad guy, killing perfectly peaceful beasts who have done nothing wrong to the player. It’s one of gaming’s most famous twists, and was a long-needed reflection on just what exactly games ask players to do in the name of following a given objective.
Narrative twists are pretty hard to pull off in video games because of how the story can change and pacing can be disrupted, so it is no mean feat to say thatBioshockprobably has the best plot twist in video games, period.
By using the player’s blind obedience to a voice on a radio to do as it says, playing on a player’s assumption that they just have to follow an objective, it’s revealed that the phrase “Would You Kindly?” uttered by Atlas (one of the franchise’s best villains), your controller, was actually a brainwashing technique to make the player character do as he is told. It’s a remarkable twist that uses the mechanics of games against the player to deliver the twist, and it upped the bar for modern games to integrate their narratives even further with game mechanics.
Any list of shocking moments in video game history would be incomplete without a mention of Hideo Kojima somewhere. While there’s a wild range of possibilities for an entry, nothing beats Kojima’s legendary fourth-wall break in the form of Psycho Mantis in the firstMetal Gear Solidon the PS1, stillone of the best entries in the franchise.
In the boss fight, the psychic Psycho Mantis is able to disable Snake, read the player’s memory card, and make snide comments about the other games on the system. Psycho Mantis fully broke the fourth wall like few other games had done before, making him exceptionally creepy to fight because it felt like he was talking to the player. The only way to beat him was to swap the controller port, which was a remarkable move that would make Bertolt Brecht blush.
For as long as horror has been around, it usually represents something deeply personal about ourselves that most would prefer to keep hidden away. But if horror can be used to make interior anxieties or insecurities literal, it can be used to get deep inside a character’s head like never before.
Team Silent obviously took this idea and ran with it inSilent Hill 2, a purgatorial hellscape specifically designed to prey on James Sunderland’s worst fears, anxieties, and guilts. Famously, every enemy and location in the game reflects on James’s fractured psyche and his decision to kill his wife in some warped way, making it one of the most complex psychological games ever made — and raising the bar for the kind of storytelling that horror games are capable of.
In video games, players are almost always the good guy, or at least an anti-hero. If they’re going to kill someone, it’ll be a bad guy, and players will usually be comforted that they’re doing the right thing so they can just kick back and enjoy. However,Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2did something incredibly bold for one of the biggest AAA games to release in that time, and they decided to push back on that idea in such a shocking way that the game was debated in British Parliament.
In the “No Russian” mission, players embody the role of an undercover agent in a Russian sleeper cell who goes along with a mass shooting at an airport, gunning down civilians indiscriminately, then being shot themselves at the end. Though the player technically doesn’t have to kill any civilians to proceed, the game wants you to, and it remainsone of the most shocking momentsinCall of Dutyhistory. Games had grown up, and even the biggest games in the world were challenging assumptions of good guys in an increasingly complex age.
It is truly hard to describe the generational trauma of Aerith’s death for those who were around to witness it for the first time. Aerith — the lovable, carefree, and caring companion who was uniquely capable of opening up Cloud Strife’s brusque exterior — is stabbed by the vicious villain, Sephiroth. There were no resurrections. She was dead forever.
That may not seem like a big deal now, but in 1997, that was absolutely massive. It had never been done quite like this before, and it instantly skyrocketedFinal Fantasy 7into the legendary leagues of game narratives that dared to go where other hero narratives usually wouldn’t. Ask any gamer who was around to play it for the first time what they think, and they’ll be sure to regale you with the genuine horror of seeing Aerith being cut down and not being able to do anything about it.
