A good story does not need a twist or a surprise to be considered good. Sometimes, surprises or twists can make stories better, though, or at least they can help make a game more memorable. To name some 90s game twists would spoil things, but let’s just say Final Fantasy 7 and Super Metroid are good examples.
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In the 2010s, there was seemingly a race for developers to add twists that would help define their experience over others. While these are all memorable, that doesn’t mean they are all good. Some twists are a bit more haunting than what most players desired from their endings. That said, let’s summarize the biggest surprises and discuss their effectiveness.
There will be full spoilers ahead.
Heavy Rain
A Solid Attempt At A Twist
Heavy Rain is an interactive thriller as players try to catch a killer and kidnapper named the Origami Killer. Players switch between four characters, Ethan, Madison, and Norman, and Scott is secretly the killer.
Upon getting to the finale, when Ethan makes it to Scott, who is holding his son captive, it is one of the wildest revelations on the PS3. Upon thinking about it, the plot doesn’t make much sense, which is why it is ranked a bit lower, but upon initial review, it couldn’t have been a cooler twist.
Final Fantasy 15
The Most Depressing Entry Yet
Final Fantasy 15 also has a bit of a muddled story that’s a bit happy-go-lucky for about half of the game, or maybe even two-thirds of it. The last chunk is full of misery and death, with one big revelation finding the protagonist, Noctis, having to time-travel into the future, wherein he has aged, and the whole world has been flooded with monsters.
He unites with his three amigos, and together they take on the final boss, which kills them, but in turn they save the day. It’s one of the darkest endings in the entirety of Final Fantasy.
Spec Ops: The Line
Head Games
It’s clear something is not right in Spec Ops: The Line, as the squad leader, Captain Walker, seems to keep having episodes. Players could chalk it up to exhaustion in the high heat of battle, but eventually it comes to pass that the man they are trying to chase after has been dead this whole time.
He was merely a figment of Walker’s imagination who tried to cope with the atrocities he had committed before the game started. It’s one of those game stories that is better the second time around when players get to experience it from a different angle.
NieR: Automata
All A Lie
NieR: Automata is split into three major campaigns that start with 2b, go to 9s, and then to A2. The game’s concept is about how Earth was taken over by robots in a war from the past, so humans had to flee into space.
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In humanity’s last sanctuary, a space station, they developed battle androids like 2b and 9s to try and take back the Earth one mission at a time. By completing these campaigns, players will get more insight into the conflict and eventually find out that humanity was completely killed off ages ago. The people on the space station are not humans at all and are instead driven by a mandate that humanity must persist no matter what.
The Last Of Us
What Would A Father Do?
The Last of Us is a journey across America from Boston to Seattle. Joel and Ellie have to get to the last remnants of The Fireflies, who might be able to use Ellie as a cure for the plague that is turning humans into parasitic zombies.
It’s a long road, and once they get there, Joel finds out they have to kill Ellie just to even try to make a cure, which isn’t even a guarantee. Unsatisfied with this news, Joel kills everyone, rescues Ellie, and then lies about it later, saying that they couldn’t use Ellie for a cure after all. While it is a dark deed, Joel did what he thought was right as a father figure.
Bravely Default: Flying Fairy
Fairy Troubles
Bravely Default: Flying Fairy was a return to the classic Final Fantasy formula, even though it wasn’t an official Final Fantasy game. Four chosen warriors went on a journey, battling monsters and enemies with various Jobs, while reigniting the power of elemental crystals along the way.
When it seems like the journey is at its end and the last crystal is lit, the group finds themselves back at the beginning in a time loop. Not only that, but after one full loop, eventually they learn that their fairy companion, Airy, who has been nothing but helpful and sweet, was actually the mastermind behind it all. No one could have seen that coming.
BioShock Infinite
Salvation Through Drowning
BioShock Infinite takes place in Columbia, a flying utopia in the sky, wherein a detective, Booker, was tasked with rescuing a girl, Elizabeth, from the city’s ruler, Comstock. It comes to light that this story is also a time loop, which is all connected to Booker and Comstock as they are one and the same.
At some point in history, Booker, having lost his daughter, gets baptized as Comstock, changing his personality and leading to a cult and the construction of Columbia. To break the cycle, Elizabeth and her other multidimensional versions all drown Booker with his blessing, and to call it a dark ending would be an understatement.
Face/Off
This saga begins with Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, wherein the end sees Big Boss go down in a helicopter explosion. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain opens with Big Boss in a hospital, having lost his arm, before he is eventually rescued and brought to a newly formed Mother Base courtesy of Master Miller and Revolver Ocelot.
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The trick is that to fool his enemies, Big Boss actually had memories implanted into one of his soldiers to become him through plastic surgery, while the real Big Boss was out there, lying low and gathering other intelligence. In other words, the so-called “Venom Snake” of this game was not the real Big Boss.
Red Dead Redemption
A Change In Heroes
Red Dead Redemption is about an old gangster, John Marston, who went straight a long time ago to raise a family. When his old gang roams into town, he decides to seek revenge alongside the government, who pressures him into the role.
Eventually, John is betrayed and is gunned down in his own home, which feels like a bittersweet end for the cowboy, but that’s not the final twist. The game then flashes forward some years later with Jack, John’s son, now the playable character, going after the lawmen who gunned his father down, and once Jack gets it, it’s one of the most satisfying kills in all of gaming.
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow
Reinventing The Franchise
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has the greatest twist in the 2010s era of gaming simply because there is a lot of baggage attached to the reveal. Castlevania, as a series, began in 1986 in Japan, and most games feature one of the Belmont family going after Dracula or his minions throughout the centuries.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is essentially a reboot wherein Gabriel Belmont is tasked with taking down an evil group known as the Lords of Shadow, and at the end, he becomes Dracula thanks to a curse. This means that the Belmonts cause their own cursed enemy through time, which was an interesting take for the lore.
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