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Plot twists are great...and sometimes they're not. What's the most ridiculous, unbelievable, or just plain BAD plot twist you've ever encountered in the story of a game? Were you surprised by it? Have your feelings for the plot and the game changed over time because of this?
The end of Bioshock Infinite. This one ranks right up there in the bad category, and considering how not flattering the gameplay is (especially by that point), it really leaves a bad taste where you should really be overflowing with emotion.
I'm not really going to go into what happens since the end is basically based solely around its twists, but the game's logic essentially collapses into itself in favor of...trying to make the player feel some sort of bittersweet takeaway? I generally like to forgive this game on the basis that it had such a tumultuous development cycle and was at one point a completely different game (that looked a hell of a lot better), but it just seemed far too confused with itself at the end and really failed in its attempt to try to make the player feel as if there was more meaning than was actually there.
Transitioning away from the beast focus of Bloodborne into the eldritch horror focus was so freaking cool and not something a lot of people expected.
You buy Bloodborne expecting to hunt beasts and those infected by a plague that turns people into said beasts, and by the end of the game you're dealing with HP Lovecraftian Horror monstrosities
Also Nier Automata. All of the last third of Route B and beyond. Not spoiling that, though.
Transitioning away from the beast focus of Bloodborne into the eldritch horror focus was so freaking cool and not something a lot of people expected.
You buy Bloodborne expecting to hunt beasts and those infected by a plague that turns people into said beasts, and by the end of the game you're dealing with HP Lovecraftian Horror monstrosities
Also Nier Automata. All of the last third of Route B and beyond. Not spoiling that, though.
Not to discredit your post or anything, Disturbed, but we're talking about BAD plot twists here. Like, for instance, Super Mario Bros. 2 being all a dream, the extreme pushover of a final boss in Fallout 3, Joker's steroid serum in Batman: Arkham Asylum, that kind of thing.
P.S: Now that I'm thinking about it, your positive reaction towards Bloodborne makes me wish all the more that it comes out the Switch sometime soon. :-(
Spoilers of both the Bravely games await you beyond this sentence.
Spoiler:
Ah, Bravely Default. Such an interesting game, with a lot of interesting people, interesting gameplay, interesting story-
WAIT A FREAKING SECOND.
OK, so at the end of Chapter 4, you encounter Alternis Dim in Grandship- this guy is clad in full body armor 100% of the time.
After you fight him, his helmet breaks, revealing himself to be a parallel version of Ringabel, one of the main protagonists, who has amnesia- so he had absolutely no idea he was Alternis before this.
Why this is such a ridiculous plot twist is because literally no one comments on how Ringabel looks even vaguely similar to Alternis, not even Edea, Alternis's childhood friend, or EVEN HIS FOSTER PARENTS. What, did he start wearing armor at the age of six?
As for Bravely Second...
The main antagonist (for most of the game, anyway), Kaiser Oblivion, has a mask covering his face partially. And when I say partially, I mean literally only covering up around the eyes and nose. It doesn't even look flashy, it's literally just a plain black mask.
After you defeat him the first time, his mask breaks, revealing him to be- gasp- the brother of Yew, one of the main heroes of the game. How does one not recognize his brother under a mask that covers up such a small area?
EVERYTHING post Disc 1 of Final Fantasy VIII. See, I do love this game, but when I look back over the plot, this is why I buy into the "Squall is dead" theory. Because it makes no sense otherwise. I can almost believe Squall surviving an icicle through the shoulder because, large as it was, it's not like it pierced his heart or anything. But to have EVERY character in the party all from the same orphange, only to have them all conveniently forget this because summons cause memory loss of all things? Rinoa, who was mad in love with Seifer, fall for Squall instead? God, I could go on, but...it's one thing after another with this game. Never mind Lunatic Pandora, the whole blood moon thing, ALIENS...
The entirety of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is trash, but Klaus' expository banter before the final boss fight...that's on a whole other level of bullshit. It seems like a ridiculously contrived attempt to link XC2 to the vastly superior original title, and it falls horrendously flat for how utterly meaningless and pointless it is to even include it. At the very least XC2 could try and stand alone and be its own garbage story, rather than trying to drag others down with it.
Tales of Xillia 2's "true" ending is mislabelled, too. After all this time being told alternate realities aren't real, and don't matter...why is paradox Elle any different? Just because she's been with the party the whole time? As the "good" ending shows, she'll be born anyway, IN REALITY. So Ludger, a REAL person, is sacrificing himself for an illusion that DOES NOT MATTER, and by doing so making sure she'll never actually be born. And this is the true ending! Even the bad ending is better than this.
The end of Bioshock Infinite. This one ranks right up there in the bad category, and considering how not flattering the gameplay is (especially by that point), it really leaves a bad taste where you should really be overflowing with emotion.
I'm not really going to go into what happens since the end is basically based solely around its twists, but the game's logic essentially collapses into itself in favor of...trying to make the player feel some sort of bittersweet takeaway? I generally like to forgive this game on the basis that it had such a tumultuous development cycle and was at one point a completely different game (that looked a hell of a lot better), but it just seemed far too confused with itself at the end and really failed in its attempt to try to make the player feel as if there was more meaning than was actually there.
Really? You didn't like that? I thought that was a great twist to his entire character and the whole point to the story. It was one of the more unique and interesting plot twists I've seen in something.
And it makes replaying it all the better.
As fascinating as the game is, it really suffers from trying to be a sequel to Chrono Trigger. That is not to say having lots of references to the previous game is a bad thing. Chrono Cross actually did a pretty decent job for the majority of the game.
And then you get to the end. There's a point right at the end when you come to realize that you've pretty much done all there is to it. Pretty much any conflict build up has been resolved and the game might as well end and everything would be fine. But of course that's not the end. After all it's a sequel to Chrono Trigger, which means that you have to fight Lavos because of course it's not dead, yet.
So in the "Really well done and just generally amazing plot twist" category, we have Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time, Darkness, and Sky. Oh my Arceus this was so perfectly done. They don't hint it at all (bar the "Ghost types are usually evil in Pokemon games" thing), which can be good or bad. In this case, the first real clue you get is... well... when it happens. You just caught a bad guy, Grovyle. Then your friend Dusknoir says that he and Grovyle are actually from the future and that he's going to take Grovyle back with him. But as he is about to return, he literally grabs you and your partner and says "YOU'RE COMING WITH ME!" and the next thing you know Dusknoir is about to have you executed. This game is rated E. then the execution fails cause Grovyle is a smart cookie.
What's great about this is the surprise, buildup, and the character's reactions. Unlike in some games where the characters just kind of accept the plot twist at face value, in PMD2 your partner really struggles to get over the fact that Dusknoir isn't the great hero he thought he was. It takes him a solid 4 dungeons to come to terms with this fact. OH, and these dungeons are freaking scary. which really adds to the intensity.
In the "good concept but terrible execution" category, we have Bravely Default (and to a much lesser extent Second). The concept of this was really good. Your heroes meet a mystery fairy, who tells you how to save the world, but turns out you were just destroying a different world, which you then get transported to. Repeat. The execution was just bad. The repetition in the last 4 chapters was awful.
And in the "worst plot twist ever", we have Gates to Infinity. Dear Arceus this game was terrible and the twists worse. It's another "turns out the character you thought was evil is actually nice fwohohoho" but it was REALLY forced. Oh, and the Keldeo subplot was dumb.
Best part about how bad the latter half of Bravely Default's story was is that Ringabel regains his memories part way through and doesn't even bother to tell the rest of group the highly important information he's remembered, or even just offer a "hey, maybe we should do something different this time". Like what the hell man.
Really? You didn't like that? I thought that was a great twist to his entire character and the whole point to the story. It was one of the more unique and interesting plot twists I've seen in something.
And it makes replaying it all the better.
The idea itself is filled with holes. For me, my immersion was pretty much broken the moment Booker woke up from his drunken stupor and heard his child crying, ran into her room, yelling her name. Apart from it being odd that Booker would even do this considering there's no reason she shouldn't have been there, the whole idea of the ending was to stop everything from happening by removing the choice altogether. This essentially means that the Booker we see...after the credits, I believe it was, was still this terrible dad with highly questionable morals that would give away his daughter to save himself a few coins and hacksaw a guy's face open without giving an inch. Because the events of Infinite never happened. Assuming the events can't happen again and Comstock never comes into being, one might even assume that this is even the worse ending because now Booker really has little to know chance at redemption, something that he achieved both in becoming Comstock in one timeline and going out of his way to save his daughter in another.
So there's that.
Apart from that, there's the fact that the ending...doesn't really work. From the outset the game sets up this idea that choice is an illusion, and that what you've done has been done many times before and ultimately it will lead to the same outcome (it would have to- after all, if one of the Bookers before you actually succeeded then you wouldn't have been able to play the game at all because it would have already happened. This is both a commentary on the idea of choice and free will itself as well as a look at Booker's character and how he falls into the same patterns (which is why he parallels Comstock to the degree that he does).
Hence the "Circle being unbroken". The reason I mention this is because all it means is that the events of the game are doomed to repeat, even though the game frames it as if it takes place in some sort of aftermath (with an even stranger non-reveal of his child which was just...no idea why they didn't show it, dunno who they thought they'd keep guessing).
It always seems as if this game is at war with itself, which is a real problem when you're trying to make a game that is meant to keep the player thinking about it after the end.
Oh, and the whole Comstock thing in itself I kinda facepalmed at. It was a nice idea but they really, really make it obvious what's going on there a good while before the reveal actually happens and at the time I didn't really know why it bothered me at the time.
And I suppose the reason was that for a game that decided it actually wanted to take on these real world ideas of racism and the like and then go for a twist that was so...plain, with Comstock...Infinite didn't take any risks. It didn't have anything to say, and it wasn't really trying to do anything even though the tools were all there for what could have been one of the greatest narratives we've seen in gaming. And I really want to blame the game getting cut short and being reworked multiple times for this because, again, the narrative and the ideas within it all do seem to be at war with each other, and some parts of the story seem so hamfisted that it seems like they really were a part of some other game considering how quickly they escalate or how easily they're moved on from.
And in terms of replay value, I actually think it's probably one of the weaker games I've played in that regard, partially because all of its issues become glaring once you start it up a second time, more once you realize that the idea of the illusion of choice, as they portray it, makes all of the choices particularly unfun because they don't have any interesting or thought-provoking outcomes. This ironically even extends to the gameplay, where likely 99% of the playerbase will take at least the same powers each time, most of the same weapons, and will upgrade most of the same things. This irony's made a bit humorous when you realize that the game actually even penalizes you for upgrading multiple weapons since all that this really grants you is reduced damage overall and fewer perks on the weapons you have equipped, made worse by the limited nature of the resources in the game.
Just makes me sad is all. Starting it up I was really looking forward to it but I can easily say that the first hour, maybe 30 minutes are the best part and after that it's all downhill. Which is a damn shame.
Sorry for the rant, had a lot to say about it at the time but never really had the chance or outlet to actually do it.
