Top 50 Video Games Moments: Number 4

One last Modern Ware moment. It's a doozy.

Sure, you expected there to be a nuke - a game set in an ostensibly 'real' modern warfare theatre can't really get much more dire or pressure-packed than trying to prevent a nuke from going off (it's pretty much a dead horse trope at this point). You saved the helicopter pilot, you got everyone out, you saved the day. There was no way that the bomb was anything but an empty threat...

Then your character comes to, drags his broken body out of the downed helicopter, looks up, and sees this...

Possibly the most blood-chilling image in any video game I've played.

The whole scene plays out in the video below. It's just well done storytelling that shocks the player and subverts expectations, while not being as exploitative and "swervy for the sake of being swervy" as its successor tended to be.