Twists in games that completely changed your perception of it (spoilers of course)

[Busaiku]

Edit - Twists, obviously.

For me, nothing compares to the final segment of 999.

Spoiler: Of course

Where it's revealed that the entire game, the bottom screen was not Junpei.

It turned my moderate reception of the game to one of pure adoration.

That was the game that demonstrated how this medium cannot be replicated anywhere else.

 

[The Archon]

Dragon's Dogma ending turned a great game into one of last gen's bests for me.

 

[Einchy]

Metal Gear Solid V

Spoiler

V not actually being Big Boss soured me on the whole game a bit. I still love the game and years later looking back on the game that's not something that I think about but right after beating it, that shit really annoyed me. It just made the whole thing feel like it didn't actually matter and it's doubly sad because it's the last MGS game. Going out on a character that's not Big Boss or Solid Snake sucks.

 

[El Goom]

 

[Cess007]

The ending/twist for Bioshock and Specs Ops: The Line elevated those games for me.

 

[werezompire]

I was rather enjoying Indigo Prophecy before the plot went completely off the rails.

 

[Linde]

you can probably expect 90% of replies to be the same as your answer OP

999 is the king of twists in media

 

[Darkwing-Buck]

Nier Automata Ending E

 

[Quad Lasers]

Prince of Persia 08

Playing through it normally: This game blows.

Ending: This game's alright.

 

[Deleted member 4869]

Final Fantasy XV

Spoiler

The fact that the "righteous" Kingdom of Lucis was born out of betrayal, fratricide, lies, blood and cruelty, and that the villain was one of their main victims.

 

[Axisofweevils]

Immediately thought of 999 but OP beat me to it. I'm still searching for a VN to give me that reaction again.

 

[KraytarJ]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Spoiler

The ending tying directly into the ending of XC1 really energized me at a time that I was more into finishing the game than seeing the ending but that tie has me even more excited for what a Xenoblade Chronicles 3 could be.

 

[Hours Left]

Definitely 999.

I'm so glad I played the game knowing next to nothing about it.

 

[Deleted member 35077]

The realization that a certain important character in .hack//GU was actually a grown up Sora from Hack//Sign. It was just a too drastic change that I couldn't believe it when I was thirteen. He turned from this:

Spoiler

To being Haseo

 

[Deleted member 29237]

Second Sight was decent if a little all over the place narratively. Then the ending...

 

[Big Yoshi]

Nier 1's twist re contextualizes the entire game to be about Desert Storm and fighting the wrong enemy.

Spoiler: SPOILERS FOR NIER 1

Also Devola and Poppola being robots/Setting you up with the verses was a fantastic twist, and the resulting reveal of the gestalt project (all shades, the enemies you have been fighting all game are the souls of people separated from their bodies, while you play as a shell that has gained sentience. By killing the final boss you are dooming the human race to extermination. And then to get the true ending you have to delete your save file. That's not even metnioning the halfway plot wist where you skip 5 years into the future after losing almost everything.

 

[Eggiem]

The last story twist in A Way Out was so good. That and everything that followed gameplaywise was fun on the coop-couch.

 

[RochHoch]

Danganronpa V3 applies to this thread in so many different ways.

I for one adore the game for how its twists completely change the way you perceive everything that came beforehand, and yet quite a few people hate the game with a passion due to some of its twists.

 

[Sinder]

Spec ops: the line the thread

 

[ClickyCal']

Bioshock infinite, and not really in a good way.

 

[SirNinja]

Braid did this twice.

First twist: When time starts moving forward instead of backward in the last stage, "rewinding" your final run to the princess, it reveals Tim wasn't ever actually trying to save the princess at all, nor was she trying to help his progress by pushing all those levers. She's trying to run from him, pulling the levers to try to impede his progress, until she can finally make her escape.

Second twist (after finding all the secret stars): The "princess" actually represents an atomic bomb. The first one, to be exact. Tim worked on the Manhattan Project, and his journey "to" her is representative of Tim's desire to turn back time and undo the death/destruction he caused after having successfully helped finish it. Going back and reading all the books before each stage paints the game in a very different light.

 

[Torchiq]

I'm so glad I got to 999 on a whim. The ending gonna stay with me forever.
Heard the sequels are not as good tho, holding back on getting the collection on steam.

 

[grand]

Metal Gear Solid V

Spoiler

V not actually being Big Boss soured me on the whole game a bit. I still love the game and years later looking back on the game that's not something that I think about but right after beating it, that shit really annoyed me. It just made the whole thing feel like it didn't actually matter and it's doubly sad because it's the last MGS game. Going out on a character that's not Big Boss or Solid Snake sucks.

Click to shrink...

I was rather enjoying Indigo Prophecy before the plot went completely off the rails.

Click to shrink...

I feel like these are the two most infamous examples of bad plot twists in gaming and both are 100% accurate & earned

 

[Don Fluffles]

Undertale, obviously.
Neutral Route:

Spoiler

XP = Execution Points
LOVE = Level of Violence

No Mercy Route:

Spoiler

Your apparent name was actually the name of the kid you revived after killing everyone.

Mercy Route:

Spoiler

Alphys' failed experiments on Determination, Flowey is Asriel, Your name was the name of Asriel's human friend and your name is actually Frisk.

 

[Lunaray]

Bioshock infinite, and not really in a good way.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I really disliked the ending of Bioshock Infinite.

I did like the original twist in Bioshock though.

 

[master_Willem]

Bloodborne's mid-game twist. Nothing beats it for me, even braid.

 

[Rikucrafter]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance

Spoiler

Having Riku be revealed to have been inside Sora's dreams, not just traversing the same worlds. It's hinted a number of times and really took Riku much further for me as a character when I realised what he had put himself through.

 

[Evil Lucario]

Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 both had pretty good twists that really elevated my love for the games. X didn't quite have as much twists as I'd like, but at least the gameplay in that game is the best in the series.

Undertale is also really good with twists.

 

[kittens]

I don't think this has ever happened to me...

I only played through 999 three times before quitting lol

 

[Blade Wolf]

Yeah I'm gonna say BioShock Infinite too, not in good way.

 

[electroaffe]

It's not a real twist but the ending of The Last of Us made a good zombie apocalypse story a great drama.

The MISSING's big twist really has blown my mind. It's probably the most progressive game this generation content-wise.

 

[ShadowAUS]

I don't really remember many games where the twist made it "better" (999 is probably my favourite positive example) but the first few that stick out for souring me on a game are MGSV, Bioshock Infinite and Heavy Rain. I'm sure if I think about it for a day or so I'll come up with more but those were the biggest "Eh... Nah, fuck that noise." moments that stuck out to me. Though I'm also someone that generally dislikes sudden twists and rarely thinks it helps a story fwiw.

 

[menacer]

Probably the reveal in Metal Gear Solid

Spoiler

Master Miller is Liquid

is still the best for me.

 

[CJCW?]

Still really appreciate Infamous 1's twist ending. It does a good job justifying some of the seemingly dumb actions of its main villain by the end, once you know what his goal is.

 

[abady-25]

infamous , Bioshock and MGS

 

[Ryouji Gunblade]

My opinion of vanilla Xenoblade Chronicles 2 improved a lot when I got to the twist.

The twist made the blade DLC even sweeter, so good on them for having that.

 

[ara]

Dragon's Dogma ending turned a great game into one of last gen's bests for me.

Click to shrink...

What was this about again? I love DD but I can never remember anything about the story

 

[hans_castorp]

I find it sad how Ever17 (same writer as 999/VLR) is never mentioned in these threads :/ Many twists in 999/VLR are literally copy-pasted from E17.
Coco's route is crazy. The main twist is even better than 999/VLR ones.

 

[Kewlmyc]

For the better:

Nier Automata
Spec Ops the Line
999 and VLR (Ever 17 too I guess if that counts)

For the worse:
Zero Time Dilemma

 

[ZeldaGalaxy94]

Jak 3's twist is still my best one, still laugh with it

Otherwise I like all the twists from the Layton games, with 2 being my favorite "WTF" reason

 

[Acu]

The little ending twist of To The Moon, which gets little continuity on the minisodes and Finding Paradise.

Honestly, the main plot stories of these games are perfectly crafted, but the lingering mistery that gets hinted in every one of them is what gets me to play new entries every time.

 

[Deleted member 984]

Spec Ops. It went from it's an average TPS with a basic story to an average TPS with a basic story containing a poor plot twist but nice to see them tackle that issue in a game, just a shame it wasn't good.

 

[The Archon]

What was this about again? I love DD but I can never remember anything about the story

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: The ending

After you kill Grigori the world falls into ruin, you are met with betrayal by the king. To then go to to the mausoleum underground to collect 20 wakestones to then find out what caused the upheavel. When you go inside you find out the steward of the world caused everything to find to find his own replacement. You are offered various choices to back down if you donhe considers you werent the one to replace him, if you battle him and lose to him(he's way too easy doubt it ever happens) you become the next dragon to find another arisen. At the final battle he reveals to be the character from the prologue or the character from your previous playtrough

The bolded part absolutely blew my mind at the time. It's my favorite feature from the game

Second Sight was decent if a little all over the place narratively. Then the ending...

Click to shrink...

Oh shit. I forgotbabout this one. But this was some good shit.

 

[EarthPainting]

Someone already mentioned NieR, so I'll go for my runner-ups:

Spoiler: Ghost Trick (DS)

You play as a ghost, who deduces at the start of the game that the corpse on the first screen if your corpse. You'll go through the entire game under this assumption. Near the end however, they game reveals that there was another corpse in that same scene...one of a cat. Turns out, you weren't the human all along, and you were the kitty. Playing the game again, it really blew my mind to see how strongly and frequently they foreshadowed this twist.

Spoiler: Rather early in Chrono Trigger (SNES/PS1/DS/PC/Mobile)

Another really big one for me is early on in Chrono Trigger. The game lets you roam around festival grounds playing mini-games and generally learning the controls and mechanics of the game. It was a really elegantly dressed up tutorial that eased you into its game world, that flexed its level of interactivity and dynamics. What the game didn't tell you though, was that the game was also testing you the entire time. A few hours in the game, you'll be put on trial, and the game will throw your behaviour in the fairgrounds back at you. You better hope you didn't steal a guy's lunch, helped the crying girl find her cat, and displayed compassion, consideration and patience when the NPCs asked it from you.

The outcome of the trial doesn't really change the direction of the game, but it still had a significant impact on how I play games. I'll avoid looting people's homes now, and if the game forces me to, it'll affect how I perceive my character. I don't want to be called out like that any more.

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

Nier 1 is the perfect example of this.

Route B is literally all about this.

 

[KushalaDaora]

Dragon Age Inquisition.

Replaying the game with the twist knowledge, suddenly you notice there are so many foreshadowing regarding said character.

For example

Spoiler

Cole banter with Solas suddenly make sense as Cole knows Solas true nature from the beginning

 

[trippyturtle]

I just played through Suikoden 2, which has several twists n' turns that I'll never forget. If every other Suikoden game is like this one, this'll quickly be my favorite series of all time.

Spoiler: MAJOR SPOILERS

I honestly did not see Jowy betraying you coming at all. And who'd thought killing Luca Blight wasn't the end of the game?

And the True Ending requiring you to remember the cliff scene from the beginning of the game. Just an amazing experience overall.

 

[E.Balboa]

The little ending twist of To The Moon, which gets little continuity on the minisodes and Finding Paradise.

Honestly, the main plot stories of these games are perfectly crafted, but the lingering mistery that gets hinted in every one of them is what gets me to play new entries every time.

Click to shrink...

Could you expand on that please?

I only played To The Moon years ago in one sitting and it was one of the most emotional stories I've seen in my life. Loved it really.

I didn't know there were sequels or that there's another story in there.

Thanks

 

[Dan Thunder]

Metroid - Samus is a woman?!

KotR -

Spoiler

Darth Revan!

Silent Hill 2 -

Spoiler

When you find out that the main character killed his wife.

RDR -

Spoiler

I was used to previous titles where after the bad guy dies you get to play in the world as you see fit. I was stunned that John actually ended up being killed. Even more disappointing was continuing on as Jack!

Cod:MW -

Spoiler

Genuinely didn't believe it when your character died in the nuclear explosion. I was like "I'm sure he'll be picked up and we'll cut to a hospital or something"!

 

[Deleted member 17402]

Click to shrink...

Oh look nameless gifs. This shit is annoying. Say what you're posting. Not everyone knows what the hell every game looks like.