Truly unsettling
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00:00One of the greatest things about video games is the sheer amount of detail a meticulous
00:04developer can cram into their game. Whether expanding the wider lore,
00:08fleshing out the supporting characters, or just flat out including details intended to make
00:13players feel like absolute garbage. These 10 video games are largely fantastic in their own rights,
00:19all dare to include secret truths which, if discovered, would undeniably change how you
00:24felt about each game. Whether guilting the player for their actions throughout,
00:28introducing some low-key horrific world building which changed everything,
00:33or simply offering up some deeply devastating subplots, these games all delivered unsettling
00:38home truths most players would probably rather be blissfully ignorant about.
00:43Though these reveals weren't easily missed by the vast majority of players,
00:46they nevertheless recontextualize each game, their story, their characters,
00:51and their gameplay, in ways likely to make you feel at least a little bad.
00:56Of course, the players themselves aren't always to blame, but at the same time,
01:00these disturbing revelations should give them pause to consider the consequences of their actions.
01:06I'm Just For What Culture, here are 10 horrifying video game truths you never noticed.
01:1110. Malice had to watch you kill all the other colossi.
01:15Shadow of the Colossus
01:17Shadow of the Colossus ends with the devastating reveal that you've killed
01:2016 innocent colossi minding their own business,
01:24in turn accidentally releasing the malevolent supernatural entity, Dormin.
01:28But the game accidentally twists the knife further,
01:31as players battle the game's final colossus, Malice, a giant skyscraper-sized humanoid.
01:37The boss is hidden away in a secret area of the Forbidden Land,
01:40which can't be accessed until the prior 15 colossi have been beaten,
01:44a valley which looks out over the land where you've spent your time throughout the game.
01:48But while atop Malice, observant players might notice that all 15 of the Pillars of Light,
01:54which mark the area where you've killed a colossus, are visible in the sky,
01:58suggesting that poor Malice had to watch as each of his 15 siblings were felled by you.
02:04As if this game wasn't heartbreaking enough already.
02:079. The man you save in Saint Denis gets hanged a few days later.
02:11Red Dead Redemption 2
02:13One of Red Dead Redemption 2's most memorable random encounters
02:16allows players to discover a badly wounded stranger lying in the road near Saint Denis,
02:21and if they take him to Dr. Barnes,
02:23he'll end up having his arm amputated in order to save his life.
02:27As much as that seems like a pretty decent outcome for a guy who seemed to be on death's door when
02:31you stumbled across him, if you travel through Saint Denis a few days later,
02:35you'll find a grim follow-up to the man's story.
02:38As it turns out, he's been strung up at the gallows for murdering a woman who,
02:43get this, ridiculed his disfigurement.
02:46As the man is hanged for his crime, you're left to ponder the virtue, or lack thereof,
02:52of helping a wounded stranger in the harsh, unforgiving landscape of the Old West.
02:56Nobody does side content quite like Rockstar, eh?
02:598. Some of the enemy soldiers were forcibly conscripted.
03:03Call of Duty World at War
03:05Call of Duty World at War may not be among the FPS series' best or most memorable entries,
03:11beyond introducing the wildly popular Zombies mode,
03:14but it does feature one of its most low-key disturbing story beats.
03:18The game's campaign takes place during World War II, and its sixth mission,
03:22Burn Em Out, sees players hurled into the Pacific Theater as Allied soldier Private Miller,
03:27who takes part in an offensive against the Imperial Japanese Army.
03:32During this level, you'll end up getting access to the devastating M2 Flamethrower,
03:36causing any afflicted Japanese soldiers to scream variants of fire and hot in Japanese.
03:42But some players noticed that some of the immolated soldiers are actually
03:45screaming out in an Indonesian tongue, seemingly implying that they're actually Heiho soldiers,
03:51auxiliary members of the Indonesian Army who were captured
03:54and forcibly conscripted to fight for the Japanese.
03:57As much as the Call of Duty games tend to be pretty flippant about the true,
04:01soul-crushing nature of war, this was an insanely depressing revelation
04:05that some of the people you've been toasting weren't even committed to the damn cause.
04:097. The Red Zone's Few Remaining Citizens Are Mostly Suicidal – Prototype 2
04:15Prototype 2's Red Zone is a region of New York City which had become
04:19totally ravaged by the Blacklight Virus, overrun by a colossal horde of the infected,
04:24while actual human beings are extremely few and far between.
04:28But if you explore the Red Zone's rooftops, you'll periodically come across scattered survivors,
04:33most of whom sadly take a suicidal leap from the roof the moment you move near them.
04:38Their situation is evidently hopeless enough that they've opted to punch their own ticket
04:43rather than risk becoming one of the infected,
04:45though fast-thinking players can rescue them if they wish.
04:49Despite cementing the full emotional toll of the Blacklight Virus,
04:52these suicidal NPCs are easily missed even by those who've beaten the entire game.
04:586. The PS4 Was Never Released In The Game's World – The Last of Us Part II
05:03The Last of Us II is one of the bleakest video games ever made,
05:06and while a humanity-annihilating infection is certainly enough depression for one game,
05:11Naughty Dog's expert world-building also hints at some subtler tragedies.
05:16For starters, players can find numerous PlayStation 3 consoles strewn around the world,
05:21typically with copies of Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2, Among Thieves, and Jak and Daxter Collection.
05:26This might seem like nothing more than a couple of cute easter eggs,
05:29until you remember that the Cordyceps fungus began to spread in September 2013,
05:35a whole two months before the PlayStation 4 was actually released.
05:38And we can safely assume the world was probably too busy fighting for survival
05:43for PlayStation exclusives like Uncharted 4,
05:46Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and Marvel's Spider-Man to ever get made.
05:50Of course, video games are a total luxury at the best of times,
05:53let alone when a plague strikes the world,
05:55but it's nevertheless a quietly haunting detail that lets you know
05:59just how quickly Cordyceps brought everyone to their knees.
06:02Number 5. The train bomber can be seen two minutes before the bomb goes off.
06:07Deus Ex Mankind Divided
06:09Early on in Deus Ex Mankind Divided, protagonist Adam Jensen heads to Prague
06:14to meet up with Alex Vega, and the pair end up getting caught in a train station bombing.
06:19It's later revealed that the bomb was planted by augmented terrorist Ivan Burke,
06:24yet unbeknownst to players at this time, Ivan actually walks past Adam and Alex
06:28a mere two minutes before the bomb goes off in the level's opening cutscene.
06:32Beyond totally drawing attention to himself with his rather loud choice of clothing,
06:37Ivan also covers his face when walking past Adam,
06:40seemingly indicating he's got something to hide.
06:43If that's not enough, just as Ivan exits the screen,
06:46Adam says to Alex,
06:47"...I can only go after enemies I can see."
06:50Well, he was right there, Adam.
06:52Number 4. The police are even more racist than you think.
06:55Mafia III
06:56It's no secret at all that one of Mafia III's primary themes is racism.
07:01Casting plays in the role of black protagonist Lincoln Clay,
07:05who resides in the New Orleans-esque New Bordeaux,
07:08in the midst of the civil rights upheaval of the late 60s.
07:11Though anyone who's played the game will note how quick the police are to pull their guns on you
07:16if they suspect you're doing something untoward,
07:18systemic racism within the police is also depicted in an altogether subtler fashion.
07:23For starters, police response times are actually coded to be different
07:27depending on the area of the game your crime takes place in.
07:30In an affluent, predominantly white area, the cops will swarm your location in record time.
07:36While in poorer, generally black neighborhoods,
07:38the first will take a more casual approach to tracking you down.
07:42Worse still, the cops will respond more aggressively
07:45when crimes are committed against white people,
07:47whereas with black victims, they'll be a lot less enthusiastic to see justice done.
07:52The game as a whole depicts an enormous amount of racism,
07:55both casual and not, committed against Lincoln.
07:58But some of the most egregious are also some of the most subtle.
08:02Number three, enemy corpses rot during time travel.
08:06Titanfall 2
08:07Titanfall 2 boasts perhaps the most criminally underappreciated
08:11single-player FPS campaign of the entire generation.
08:14A short but ingeniously executed sci-fi action blast,
08:18the campaign's marquee level is unquestionably effect and cause,
08:22in which the player uses the time gauntlet to leap back and forth through time,
08:27making for some of the most creative combat and traversal the genre has ever seen, frankly.
08:32But the attention to detail Respawn applied to the time-hopping mechanic
08:36is such that killing an enemy soldier in the past and leaping back to the present
08:40will then show their body in a stage of decomposition
08:43due to the time passing between the two periods.
08:46Gross.
08:47It's a brilliant enough gimmick that it's a genuine shame Respawn only used it for a single mission,
08:53because it's easily nuanced enough to carry an entire video game on its own.
08:57Number two, the waitress from the start of the game can be found in the morgue later.
09:02Batman Arkham Knight
09:04Batman Arkham Knight opens with an unforgettably brutal sequence set in a diner,
09:08where the player briefly controls police officer Owens, in a first-person view no less,
09:13who's served by a kindly waitress, Sharon,
09:15and informed by a fellow patron about a man smoking in the corner of the diner.
09:20As Owens goes to investigate, Scarecrow releases his fear toxin within the diner,
09:25leading to the infected patrons and staff members rabidly beating one another to death.
09:30The scene is so utterly chaotic that we're never quite sure who lived and who died,
09:34but those who play the game's Season of Infamy DLC and pay a visit to the Elliott Memorial Hospital
09:40will be able to take a look in the morgue and get some answers.
09:43Sadly, the corpses of both Sharon and the diner patron who spoke to Owens
09:47can be found in the morgue drawers, confirming they didn't survive Scarecrow's savage attack.
09:53They both seem like nice, upstanding people,
09:55but in the case of the highly affable, attentive waitress Sharon,
09:59it was an especially painful revelation.
10:02Props to the game for making you care about a minor character's fate in such a short space of time.
10:07Number 1. Olibulb only attacks in self-defense. Cuphead
10:12Cuphead revels in the fact that it's one of the most visually stunning video games of the prior
10:16generation, its adorable vintage art style juxtaposed against the fact that it is a
10:22brutally difficult boss-rush platformer. And while the game's high degree of challenge forces players
10:27into a hyper-aggressive mindset, there's actually a secret way to spare one of the game's more timid
10:33boss characters. During the opening battle against the Root Pack, the second of the three
10:38enemies is Olibulb, a sentient, cherub-cheeked onion who most players will immediately take to
10:44putting a major hurting on. Except the game's 1.2 update altered the fight so that Oli actually has
10:50no beef with Cuphead at all and will only attack in self-defense. And so if you simply refuse to
10:57attack him, he'll smile at you and disappear back into the ground within 10 seconds.
11:01With Horace Radish, who was a concept character that didn't make it into the original launch
11:06version of the game, being tagged in as a replacement. Basically, you probably
11:11murdered that adorable onion for no reason at all. How bad do you feel?