The best plot twists in video game history

Many of us grew up expecting games to have little in the way of a great plot, let alone having great plot twists.

The greatest plot twist is that even though games have relatively recently flourished into an artform that can feature splendid storylines and character arcs, great game plots and plot twists aren’t that new of a thing. Let’s look at the best plot twists in the history of gaming.

Bloodborne is all about aliens

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from nearly 20 seasons of Ancient Aliens, it’s that it’s never really aliens in real life. In Bloodborne, however, we spend most of the game thinking we’re playing Victorian London’s version of Leon S. Kennedy as we cull a plague of bloodthirsty humans, but that’s not the case at all.

What brought the world of Bloodborne to the brink of ruin is everyone’s addiction to “old blood.” That’s not a fancy way of talking about aged blood, but what they call the blood of “old ones,” cosmic entities whose odd bodily fluids humankind is completely crazy about.

In true Lovecraftian fashion, we don’t know the cosmic entities’ motives. We know that “The Hunt” we conduct in Bloodborne happens not to help the people but to suit the needs of the Moon Presence, the great old one pulling all the strings in the Hunter’s Dream.

Solid Snake is the bad guys’ greatest asset in Metal Gear Solid

Few games teach players a bigger lesson in humility than the original Metal Gear Solid. Hideo Kojima, always the master of deception, spends the entirety of the game letting players know that Solid Snake is the best spy in the world. He’s right regarding Snake’s sneaking abilities, but, as Snake himself states at the start of the game, he’s a pawn.

The thing is, we see Snake as a pawn of the US government when, in fact, he’s unwittingly working for the bad guys. Snake ends up saving the day, but not before giving the terrorists occupying Shadow Moses nuclear strike launch capabilities after his evil brother plays him like a fiddle.

Kain is actually on our side in Soul Reaver 2

We spend the entirety of the original Soul Reaver trying to get revenge on Kain for dooming the main character to an eternity of torment, only for him to escape right before we strike the final blow right at the end of the game.

Not too long after Soul Reaver 2 begins, we learn that we’d always been part of a greater plan of Kain’s, one where the death of the protagonist was never meant as a final punishment but as a necessary means to save the world.

Is it a retcon? Well, definitely. The original Soul Reaver was meant to end with Raziel killing Kain and ending the entire story, but the game had to be cut short due to budgetary constraints. That’s a good thing because this originally unplanned twist allowed this once-by-the-numbers revenge tale to elevate the whole series into something so much grander.

Darth Revan’s identity in Knights Of The Old Republic

RPGs love the amnesiac main character trope because players can fill in the huge gap with whatever story they want for themselves, and the writers don’t have to bother coming up with a specific backstory for that character. The original KOTOR lulls players into thinking that’s the kind of story they’re in, but they’re later hit with the revelation that their character’s memory had been erased by the Jedi. Why? Because you’re actually the story’s ominous Sith, Darth Revan, and you’re being used by the Jedi to secure a weapon you hid in your old life.

BioWare had big shoes to fill when writing a Star Wars video game with a big plot twist, and it deserves the Rebel Alliance’s medal for writing what’s arguably an even gutsier twist into Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic.

SHODAN returns in System Shock 2

Before GLADoS, there was SHODAN. The evil AI is the main antagonist of the original System Shock, but in the sequel, only the bad memories remain. At a later point in the game, we make a significant deal with a character, only to learn that said character is actually dead and that we’d been played by none other than SHODAN. It’s a good moment in the narrative sense, but what sells it as one of the best moments in the history of gaming is how it all plays out in real-time.

If you think that’s scary, remember that the developers’ original idea for the ending of System Shock was to have players think their computer had been taken over by Shodan.

Learning that “the cake is a lie” in Portal

Learning that an AI is actually evil hasn’t been a surprising twist for the past, say, 40 years. I mean, I’m pretty sure 99% of AIs — real or fictional — are evil. The thing about the reveal in Portal isn’t that GLaDOS seemed benevolent the entire time. It’s that she spends the entire game acting very dubiously and then is revealed evil in a moment that’s equal times cruel and hilarious. There’ll never be another evil AI like GLaDOS.

Learning that Wheatley is bad in Portal 2

Portal 2 takes players through a narrative that mirrors many of the beats from the first game, only this time we have an ally named Wheatley. Wheatley is a bit aloof, but he’s very helpful in trying to disconnect the evil GLaDOS from the system.

The problem here isn’t even that Wheatley is mischievous or straight-up evil. The problem is that he’s a dumbass. How dumb, you ask? He was made by the smartest minds in the world to be the dumbest AI in the world. He’s very good at being dumb, so it really should come as no surprise that as soon as the now-deposed GLaDOS makes fun of him for being completely incapable of keeping things together, he proves her right.

Learning we’d been helping the G Man in Half-Life Alyx

The good people at Valve know that the people demand more Gordon Freeman, and so they have the players of Half-Life Alyx embarking on a quest to rescue the main hero of the series from the clutches of the evil Combine.

It’s only in the very last scene, where we finally break Gordon’s apparent prison, that we see the silhouette of a man with a briefcase. What the hell is that? Gordon would never carry such a business-prone item. Well, that’s because we’d been tricked into releasing not Gordon but the G Man, the most mysterious — and possibly most villainous — character in the series.

The truth about James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2

If you’d played the original Silent Hill before venturing into Silent Hill 2, you’d likely expect that you’d be visiting a creepy town previously populated by monsters. The good news is that the residents of Silent Hill remain as evil as they’d ever been, but they may not be the worst entities hanging around anymore.

The truth about James Sunderland, the supposed hero of the story, is that he’s responsible for doing the worst possible thing to the person he loved most. The game doesn’t reveal him as a villain all along but rather as a broken man who might never recover from his guilt.

The meaning of “Would you kindly” in Bioshock

Most characters in FPS games tend to either do as they’re told or follow the scent of more enemies to kill. No player has ever complained about either option. In the original Bioshock, we get introduced via comms to Atlas, a polite man who never fails to utter the words “would you kindly” before asking us to do something. You’d think he’s just being nice, or that’s how people in the ’60s era that Bioshock is trying to emulate spoke all the time, but it is not.

That’s because Atlas isn’t even Atlas, but a master conman who’d “programmed” the main character to do what he was told, so long as he’d hear the words “would you kindly” beforehand.

This is not just a great narrative twist but also a fun dig at the speechless and thoughtless main characters usually populating the genre.

The mysterious stranger in Tales From the Borderlands

At the beginning of Tales From Borderlands, we find the main characters imprisoned by a masked stranger who accuses them of treason. We then spend most of the game seeing flashbacks that take us up to the moment of their capture. You’d think that witnessing everything that took place beforehand would help us guessing the identity of the stranger, but every new scene seems to only make it more difficult.

My recommendation is that you play this underrated gem and see — or guess — for yourself the identity of the stranger, as it’s probably the most deviously clever reveal I’ve ever seen in all media.

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