"Would you kindly...?" - BioShock. Games with the most shocking endings

• 10 Most Powerful Game Endings
• "Would you kindly...?" - BioShock
• "And if the truth is undeniable, you create your own." - Spec Ops: The Line
• "Keep your hair short" – The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series - Season One
• "The price you pay may be heavy indeed" - Shadow of the Colossus
• You don't send a man to do a woman's job... - Metroid
• My name is Snake, Snake... uh, wait a second... - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• "She radiated fury" - Braid
• "I held John's hand while he was drowning" - Heavy Rain
• Join me, on... whichever side of the Force! - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

"Would you kindly...?" - BioShock

The fact that the ending of BioShock is shocking is probably not so much of a surprise - after all, even the game's is a big spoiler. Seriously, though, it is not the finale itself, i.e. the last boss fight boss and cut-scene (again, one of three available) turns out to be so shocking, but the events taking place a little earlier, when we find out the reasons for our visit to the underwater metropolis Rapture.

Somewhere near the end of the game we find out that it wasn't a game of "defeat the enemies, reach the end of the location and save the world". Our protagonist, Jack, turns out to be a puppet without his own will, blindly following the orders of his ally who in truth was the enemy. We played as a genetically modified creature, constantly subjected to total manipulation. In fact, everything we did here, all the objectives in the missions were the result of the cynical play of the main antagonist, to whom we were blindly obedient.

Not only as the main protagonist of the story, but also as a player - in the real world - we took the kind words of our mentor Atlas, "Would you kindly...?" at face value, considering them a cool narrative device and way to increase immersion in giving mission objectives. Meanwhile, everything was rigged from the start. The repeated phrase served as a subconscious "order", forcing us to carry out all the commands without a second thought - and that we did. We consistently pushed for the confrontation, only not against our true enemy, but - as it turned out - our own father and Atlas' main rival in the struggle for power in this strange underwater metropolis.

And for dessert there was also the question of saving "little sisters". Depending on how we have acted throughout the whole game, the game "rewarded" us accordingly with one of the three versions of the final cut-scene. As you can guess, only one of the endings was a happy end.

1. More about BioShock