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Best/Worst Twists in Video Games


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As I mentioned in the Catch-All thread, I'm playing Star Ocean: Till the End of Time and had managed to not hear about the plot twist until I blundered into about 30 hours in

Spoiler

For those that don't know, the characters escape to the "real" world and discover that everything in the Star Ocean universe is really part of a massive computer simulation that's kinda taken on a life of it's own.  Basically, you're an NPC in a MMO.

I think I'll be ok with the plot twist, but it seems to have been mostly reviled by players and probably crippled the franchise in multiple ways.

Anyway, that set me thinking about plot twists.  What are some of the best/worst in gaming?  In part, I want to know this because I probably have less experience in gaming than many of you and i want some suggestions for good game with surprising plot turns.

A couple of my favorites:

* Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 

Spoiler

You're Darth Revan.  Who knew?  I certainly didn't.  The game sets the revelation up wonderfully, and then leaves it up to you what to do with the information.  Continue being a good guy?  Turn evil again?

*Braided.  Cute little platformer that kinda reminds you of a Mario game until....

Spoiler

You discover that, instead of rescuing the princess, you're the evil monster who has been chasing her since the game started.  Oops.  Sorry 'bout that.

* Final Fantasy X

Spoiler

Personally, I dug the multiple plot twists and the way the game gradually darkens the plot while raising the personal stakes.  All leading to the discovery that Tidus is basically a dream and defeating Sin will cause him to fade away.  But he went out in a heroic fashion and came back in a sequel.  I loved it, though it may not have been the best idea for the same reason the Star Ocean twist isn't: it went over badly with a lot of fans.

* And, finally, Baiten Katos

Spoiler

This one annoys me.  I thought I had the plot twist figured out going in to the Lava Caves.  I guessed Melodia was evil, and I knew there was a traitor and thought I knew who and maybe even why.  And, then, yeah, I'm the villain.  Well, technically, not me.  The main character was a spirit attached to a character.  The character turned evil, grabbed power for himself, and booted me - the spirit - out of his body.  Turned out spirit me had amnesia and was being manipulated from the start.  Oh, and the chick I thought was the traitor turned out to be the heroine of the story and basically rescued my spirit self by bonding with me.

Honestly, I loved Baiten Katos for the twist.  Game on the whole is really underrated.

 

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I felt cheated by the plot twist in FFII.

Spoiler

The bad guy I have been chasing all over the fucking planet and all the way to the moon.. IS MY BROTHER??

And aww mind control so I'm just supposed to forgive him for all of his evil deeds just like that?  Bullshit.

That counts it as bad in my book even though I absolutely love the game itself.

The gameplay of the Assassin's Creed games got repetitive really quickly so I abandoned the franchise pretty early, but I always thought that it was pretty clever that:

Spoiler

The reveal happens in the first five or ten minutes of the game instead of at the end. 

You the gamer been duped by the trailers.   The game isn't set during the Third Crusade.

The game happens in present day and the main character isn't the iconic badass member of the Hashashin, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad

It's his descendant, Desmond Miles... a fucking bartender

 

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I'm still surprised that someone thought "Gamer plays a medieval assassin caught up in a war between secret societies, runs around doing assassin/knight templar/ninjary stuff" wasn't enough of a hook to sell the game.  Or that playing as a bartender stuffed into a VR game was the ticket to commercial success.  

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There is nothing worse than in Black Flag, you sail out on the gorgeous ocean and... You're at Google HQ. Fuck you video game.

One I love is in Ogre Battle 64, depending on the choices you make

If you make most choices early, Dio becomes your right hand man and second in finance through the game. If you mane one set of decisions, he "dies" at the end of the first part of the story. Except then, near the end, you end up having to fight him. Otherwise you get betrayed by a minor character, but when 30 hours of gameplay later, he suddenly is the boss of a campaign... Gut punch man.

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The best plot twist I'm aware of is in Monaco. I'm just going to spoil it because I've screamed about Monaco on here for years and it has inspired exactly no one to play it so whatever.

So the game is like Gauntlet But Stealing Shit Instead Of Fighting, and as you progress through the games you add new members to your party. The story is told by one of the members of the original four in an interrogation. After second-to-last mission, they reveal that all four of the people that you recruited all got together and decided to burn the first four party members. Then, the last mission of this co-operative game is a four player death match in a grave yard, where all four of the turncoats turn on each other and try to make a break for it.

hard to pick a worst twist when so many are tied for last

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I've played some great plot-heavy games in the last few years. Every Metal Gear, most Resident Evils, NieR:Automata, Xenoblade, Ghost Trick, Night in the Woods, and those are just the boxes I can see from where I sit.

Favorite twist? Easy. Virtue's Last Reward, second game in the Zero Escape series, sequel to 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors. One dumb moment involving the identity of one character. It caught me the perfect kind of off-guard.

Worst twist? THE SEQUEL. Most of it, at least. It had some moments.

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3 minutes ago, JLSigman said:

FF VI (or III by the old American numbering)

  Reveal hidden contents

Kefka wins! The world is half destroyed? WHAT THE FUCK???

 

This totally fucked me up.  It felt like I was starting the game all over again.

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Honestly, the only game that left me slack jawed at the end was Bioshock Infinite. I've contemplated going back and replaying it but I'm scared it won't hold up nor will it lack the gut punch of that final 15 minutes. Same reason I didn't play the DLC

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I quite liked the twist at the end of Braid (heh, holy shit does the title give the ending away?!) as it especially made sense in the context of all the time manipulations.

Not a 'twist' per se but Spec Ops: The Line holds a special place in my heart for throwing the narrative conventions of gaming on their head by trying to rationalise all the horrible shit you 'have to do'. That game was so fantastically well done all the way through

 

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Not sure if this really counts, but in Red Dead Redemption:

Spoiler

I was surprised that the devs had the balls to kill John Marston.  I was glad that the game didn't leave me without catharsis and allowed me to avenge John's murder as Jack Marston.  A chip off the old block.

That was a great plot twist.

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Here are some of the plot twists that I hated.

Spoiler
  • Heavy Rain - Scott Shelby is the Origami Killer?  He must've had the Speed Force to fucking kill Manfred while Lauren was distracted by that fucking ballerina figurine.  This is bullshit as it only serves to keep you from figuring out the OK's identity before the game wants you to.
  • Indigo Prophecy - The Internet is a global AI that makes other AI?  What the fuck?  Oh and why is the Purple Clan colored Yellow?
  • Bionic Commando Reboot - The AI that controls my bionic arm.... IS MY WIFE~?  EWWW~!
  • Mirror's Edge - Celeste is the Masked Runner.  It sucked because you could see the swerve coming from a mile away.

 

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The people that hate the "plot twist" in God of War 3 are fucking retards.  

"Hope" being the final entity released from Pandora's Box and the only thing that can save the world is literally how the actual Greek myth ends... 

 

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16 minutes ago, J.T. said:

Here are some of the plot twists that I hated.

  Hide contents
  • Heavy Rain - Scott Shelby is the Origami Killer?  He must've had the Speed Force to fucking kill Manfred while Lauren was distracted by that fucking ballerina figurine.  This is bullshit as it only serves to keep you from figuring out the OK's identity before the game wants you to.

 

With you there, particularly as he was the only character I actually liked playing as

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Plot twists you say?!|

I liked Xenogears quite a bit. Some of that was probably due to how much I liked Evangellion back then. I liked the game play on foot and when you're in your mech. The story I think would have been better for many people if the game weren't so long. If that were maybe a 20 hour game instead of how insanely long it took to play it, then people probably wouldn't have forgotten as much while playing it and some of this might have made sense.

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Since I got it last night, I feel like end of Far Cry 5 goes here if you choose to shoot that fucker in the face.  The hints were there, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting that.  I dunno if it's in the best or worst category, though.  The twist to the other ending was very, very predictable.

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Not for me either. That shit was par for the course as far as anime goes. What really threw me off was that there was nudity (kinda) in the game. It took me a long ass time to play through Xenogears too. I bought it when it came out and then stopped for a really long time. Maybe a year. When I came back to it I had started buying up VHS tapes of Evangellion. When I got closer to the end of the game I was able to understand what was going on. It was funny re-watching the conversation with Existence because it immediately made me think of the conversation Neo has with the Architect. I doubt Xenogears inspired that scene, but it's eerily reminiscent of it.

Good game and good combat system. I played FF7 first, which I also loved at the time, but Xenogears was so much better as far as gameplay was concerned. Same combat system, but then when you add in playing as your gear, customizing it, etc., man that shit was really cool.

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