Over thelast few generations, games have gotten more and more ambitious with the stories that they tell. This has led to increasingly engaging narratives, and it is easier than ever to get swept up, not just by the gameplay, but the story as well.
With stories in games being more important than ever, this also means that one of the most common narrative devices has become a lot more popular in the medium as well, being plot twists. However, some of the most iconic plot twists in gaming history are so goodbecausethey hide in plain sight, but which are the best?
8Dredge
Was I Not Supposed To Do That?
When you start Dredge, you won’t have too much direction. You’ll just be tasked with fishing, making money, and surviving for as long as possible. However, your journey is given a little more overarching structure when you meet a mysterious man on an isolated island who tasks you with retrieving occult relics from around the map and bringing them to him.
So, following your instincts, you’ll likely go to each of the different regions, collect their relics, and bring them back to him - it just feels like the natural progression, even if the man is particularly suspicious. However, if you follow his instructions, you’ll end up being complicit inthe bad ending of the game. The relics are used in an otherworldly summoning ritual to bring the man’s wife back to life, but in doing so, seemingly brings on the apocalypse as well.
7Atomfall
Never Trust Fast Friends
While a misconception surrounding Atomfall is that it’s just a Fallout clone thattakes place in the UK, in truth, Atomfall is more of a mystery game where you need to learn about the events leading up to the nuclear disaster that led to the quarantine protocol being enacted, and the citizens of the Quarantine Zone being trapped.
During your journey, you’ll uncover notes and logs detailing the zone’s history, and a mysterious name you’ll hear again and again is Agravaine, a codename for a spy who was sent to the zone to collect data on the research being done at the plant. In your journey for freedom, you may end up aligning yourself with Joyce, a seemingly friendly woman who asks you to collect a sample from the plant in exchange for freedom. However, upon following this path, it’s revealed that Joyce is the mysterious Agravaine, something obvious if you manage to find enough clues, and she’ll end up betraying you as soon as she has her hands on the sample.
6Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
The Grand Twist
The Ace Attorney series thrives on its plot twists. With each of the multiple cases included in each game, you’ll go through many convoluted twists and turns in an effort to uncover the truth behind the legal cases you’ll end up entangled in, and it’s part of why the series is so appealing.
However, the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a prequel series taking place about a century before the main series, has a twist built up over the course of the ten long cases the two games include. While it isn’t massively obvious, the eccentric Lord Chief Justice, Mael Stronghart, ends up being the mastermind behind the final case of the second game. Even despite the (albeit convoluted) layers upon layers of manipulation and conniving that need to be uncovered to prove he is guilty, his motivations can be discerned before reaching the conclusion if you’ve been paying close enough attention earlier in the case.
5Shadow Of The Colossus
Now I Feel Worse…
When a game gives you an overarching goal, your instinct usually isn’t to question it, especially when it’s as enticing as defeating the hulking bosses in Shadows of the Colossus. However, while it might be satisfying to see some of the beasts finally fall to your blade, for some of them, watching them die can invoke a twinge of guilt.
As it turns out, this guilt is not misplaced, and the mysterious deity, Dormin, who you’ve been killing these Collosi for in return for reviving Mono, has been manipulating our hero and ends up possessing his body. Even though Dormin ends up being sealed away once again, at least Dormin kept its promise, and Mono is revealed to have been brought back to life in the game’s last moments.
4Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Perhaps Not The Best French Representation
Betrayal is a common theme throughout the duology of Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, but usually it’s pretty easy to see coming thanks to just how suspicious some of the characters are. However, the betrayal that likely stings the most is Brabant.
You’ll find him having been held captive alongside Henry’s lord, Hans Capon, around the mid-point of the game, and he quickly aligns himself with Henry’s cause, but it’s all perhaps a little too convenient. Brabant will work alongside Henry and his group as a strategist, notably helping them raid the Kuttenberg mint, but at the last moment, he betrays them all and even stabs Adder, killing him. Even though Brabant was an entertaining ally for the time he spent with the group, his timing of when he joined, and his conniving nature mean that it feels all the more obvious in retrospect.
3Dishonored
Just A Pawn?
Corvo’s betrayal by Havelock and his allies at the beginning of the game’s final act is one of those twists that is hard to see coming when you have the tunnel vision of a first playthrough, but once you’re returning for an inevitable replay, you can’t fathom how you didn’t see it being foreshadowed.
Throughout the first two-thirds of Dishonored, Corvo does more than enough to display his capabilities, so it makes sense that Havelock wouldn’t want such a powerful figure getting in the way of his planned manipulation of Emily. While the twist is quite a gut punch right at the point the game would usually wrap up, it makes the subsequent revenge all the more satisfying.
2A Way Out
Keep Your Enemies Closer
With their two subsequent games, It Takes Two and Split Fiction, Hazelight Studios have placed an almost obsessive focus on co-operation and mutual trust. That’s why it’s so surprising to go back to A Way Out and realize that the narrative is nowhere near as predictable as the games that followed it.
As a game that you can only play with two players, it’s all the more shocking when Vincent turns on Leo in the game’s final mission after spending the entire game working together to escape prison. It stings even more that the person you’ve been working with the whole time is suddenly your rival. While it’s likely a shock the first time you play, if you replay, you’ll recognize all the hints that Vincent’s betrayal is coming.
1Bioshock
Iconic For A Reason
The first Bioshock not only has the best telegraphed plot twist, but arguably the best plot twist overall throughout the entirety of gaming. The discovery that the request “would you kindly” that was spoken to our protagonist before most orders from the seemingly friendly Atlas, is in fact a hypnotically conditioned order, and then the following compilation of all the times it’s been said where you likely didn’t even notice it, is as shocking as it is satisfying.
It’s then followed by the reveal that Atlas is actually Fontaine, a character you’ve learned about if you’ve been paying enough attention, making the reveal even juicier. It’s the kind of twist that is hard to forget, and makes the following replays of Bioshock even more enjoyable as you listen out for how often the inconspicuous phrase shows up.
