Cool plot twists you'd like to see

[Not Matt]

in at any game, where you think your the good guy...

YOU ACTUALLY TURN OUT TO BE THE VILLAIN, AND DIDN'T KNOW IT THE WHOLE TIME.

that would be great, i'd pay to see it

then i suggest you try spec ops the line

Except in Spec Ops it's not a twist, it's hammered over your head the entire game.

I'd just wish that the twists in games were good to begin with. But still so far we have to deal with crap twists like in Bioshock or Infamous, stuff that you see coming miles away because they can't be subtle about it.

Someone here mentioned Deus Ex having twists hidden into the narrative that are completely optional to find, those were the best part about an otherwise hit and miss game.

Well it's sort of a half twist. It changes the tone of the game dramatically once you figure it out (you enter as the hero who's supposed to save everyone and end up being the bad guy, but in this game who isn't a bad guy?) but it happens so gradually so the shock value is reduced to smaller mini shocks along the game. But it still keeps the promise of what he asked for. The protagonist is a cruel heartless basterd

And deus ex (atleast human revolution) kind of built it's story on these twists in order to use the "ending tron 5000" (watch the ZP review)at the end is based on these twists. You figure out why this guy is helping you, why this guy did, what he really wanted all along, who that guy is, why you should care... Etcetera. I suggest playing it twice. The first time, just play through it without thinking. Second time read everything, go everywhere and explore. The grim realizations will come like a cat who wanna be fed.
It might seem stupid when I say it like that but if you do. The story changes for you and around the end of it your gonna get a nasty surprise you did see the first time but you didn't understand before now that changes from relationship to some characters to what is really the right thing to do, to how you see Adam. As you said, there is a hidden twist in the narrative. You just need to find it.
It is hard to explain just try it out for yourself.

And I think the reason infamous and bioshock failed is because they are moral choice. So they either have to end up with mother Theresa or Hitler. And having to keep both those plates spinning and have a shock twisty story at the same time is hard

 

[Exius Xavarus]

The weapon you start off with turns out to be the most powerful weapon in the game/the key to slaying the big bad.

 

[Bobic]

I would love to play a game where aliens attack and you have to defend yourself until the the military come to kill the aliens but then you have to defend yourself from the military because they have been instructed to kill all witnesses to keep the invasion secret.

So you want to play Half Life again?

Anway OT, in a World War 2 game, it turns that you are HITLER!

While I'm not sure how to make it work for WW2, that'd be a brilliant twist for that WW1 game people keep asking for. You go through the course of the war, fighting for the Austrians, valiantly, heroically, in a never shifting first person perspective then BAM shot in the groin at the end of the last mission, you get dragged to a medical tent screaming, people start to operate, you survive, time passes, you recover in a military hospital, you get out of bed one day, stretch, move over to the mirror and see a dejected empty looking man, shave the beard you've accumulated, leaving only a toothbrush moustache. MIND=BLOWN.

True to history too. Probably.

As for my on twist, how about a game where the protagonist decides that the mission's getting too hard, that it's just not worth it any more, after fighting all the way to his Mt.Doom to rescue his daughter he sees the biggest most horrific looking demon you could ever imagine. 'This is getting to be too much of a struggle, there's no way I can defeat that monstrosity, I can't take it anymore, I think I'll just go home, reconcile with my wife, make a new daughter.' And the game ends with him hopping on his trusted donkey and riding home.

If nothing else it'd be hilarious to see people's reactions to it.

 

[Nouw]

I'd love to see a Starship Troopers-esque game that has all of the commentary and satire the original film has.

You're an anemsiac ghost trying to solve your own murder.

Then at the end, the revelation hits you...

Spoiler

You were your own murderer!

Bam! Art worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.

Your avatar fits perfectly.

 

[Squilookle]

I'd love to see an Xcom where after you finished the aliens your human allies decided to attack you.

And then when you make a counter-attack against every country and neutralize all of them it turns the Council was just manipulating you to take over the world for themselves.

And with the Corrupt Council now in control, you have no option but to flee Earth and join up with -of all people- the vanquished Aliens. You build them up and then control them in a second invasion of Earth.

And this time... The Council knows your weaknesses...

 

[Generic4me]

A game with some stupid plot about bullshit. You go on an adventure from weak-ass ant-hurter to unstoppable master god of making not-dead things dead. Then, you kill the FINAL BOSS, and OH SHIT HE WAS THE GOOD GUY AND YOU JUST FUCKED THE WORLD. Now go back in time and kill yourself to save the world.

BUT due to some stupid plot device of the dimensional travel continuum being all stupid and not helpful, you can only go back 20 minutes, so you have to fight yourself at full strength, just before you screw the world over. And it was an RPG so you have to figure out how to defeat your ultimate ultra-OP class of 30x critical damage on all your weapons and such.

Also if you want a sad ending, yourself from 20 minutes ago is incredibly ignorant (Like you were 20 minutes ago before this plot twist), and refuses to give up, so you have to kill your past self, which also kills your present self. And every time you stabbed 20 minutes ago you, you get hurt too. Then you both die together and it's really sad because sad music plays.

All stupidity aside, the idea of having to go "back in time" to kill yourself previously, when you didn't know you were actually destroying the world, sounds really cool.

 

[Lugbzurg]

In a story, there is a clear hero and a clear villain. At least, for a while. By the end, the one that seemed a hero is now most certainly the villain. And the one you thought was the villain is actually a hero. Nothing about the characters actually changes.

It's all about perspective.

Also, the butler didn't actually do it this time.

Oh, and how about this? A videogame in which the character you're playing as is not the protagonist of the story? Kind of like how Sherlock Holmes stories are told from Watson's point of view.

Then there's always having this one item in your inventory that you find so stupid and annoying. It's even more useless than a rubber chicken that's falling apart. Then it turns out it's exactly the key to defeating the final boss.

 

[Starik20X6]

I had an idea for an open-world game where you play a man who is locked up in an asylum by his family because he claims he's terrorised by monsters. After breaking out of your cell, you begin fighting your way to freedom, killing all the monsters you encounter. Along the way you start finding the mutilated corpses of doctors attacked by the monsters...

... Until the ending where *gasp* turns out you were insane after all, and the monsters were your deluded visions projected onto the guards and doctors. The whole time you've been murdering the only people trying to help you. Then you can either decide if the character kills himself out of grief or succumbs to his visions, escaping the asylum and making his way to the nearby city to kill more 'monsters'.

 

[newfoundsky]

Or how about in Star Wars VII: Vader is still alive!!!!! Oh wait Disney is on that. Crap. Crappy idea too. Seriously, they burned his corpse.

Technically, half the main characters are fucking ghosts by the end of episode 6. It's like Lucas knew. . .

 

[newfoundsky]

Wario and Waluigi are actually the advance scouts for an invading Mirror Universe. It is led by Princess Thorn who is fat and repulsive but also incredibly devious (about as smart as Peach is stupid) but also has a good character in the form of turtle king Apook, but he's a shrimpy nerdy intellectual who is not respected by his followers even though he can breathe ice.

I prefer seeing plot twists that were hinted at previously brought into greater focus. For instance, in the Metroid Fusion instruction manual it states that 'Metroid' is the Chozo word for 'Warrior', hinting that they may have created them solely to counter the X parasites. Surely if their vision is this far-reaching, some of them might have survived having their home planet razed to the ground, right? Perhaps one of their species who wasn't on board with their whole 'protect and defend the galaxy' thing?

And the mushrooms make you shrink D:

 

[Warachia]

OP: I'd like to see a game, or a movie, or whatever, where the heroes fail at their main goal and then have to deal with the aftermath of that failure. It would be really hard to pull that off successfully, without it feeling like everything that came before was just a waste of time or something, but I'm sure it can be done. In fact, I'm sure it has been done somewhere.

You'd really enjoy

Spoiler

Spec Ops: The Line

Yahtzee even loved/hated that failure so much he wrote an extra article talking about that failure and how the protagonists spend the rest of the game dealing with that failure.

 

[Tanis]

I'd like to see a game where you fail, no matter what, in your first play through.

Then, via a 'new game plus', you're given the same basic story but this time you can chose another path...maybe even 'right path'.

Sort of like a 'chose your ending book'.

Or maybe even a game like "Shadow of Destiny", but with better graphics/game play.

Damn Shadow of Destiny was a GREAT game.

 

[Warachia]

In a story, there is a clear hero and a clear villain. At least, for a while. By the end, the one that seemed a hero is now most certainly the villain. And the one you thought was the villain is actually a hero. Nothing about the characters actually changes.

It's all about perspective.

I think I found the games for you.

God Of War 3 gave me that exact feeling, Kratos did something he was explicitly forbidden to do in GOW 2, and he's so upset when Zues tries to punish him that:

Spoiler

he destroys the entire world, and ends up killing everyone near him, the entire time Zeus is trying to stop the world from tearing itself apart, and at a point, he tries to stop Kratos from killing a child who was following Kratos around, so out of spite Kratos deliberately kills the child, then he has the audacity to blame Zeus for the kid dying.

Oh, and how about this? A videogame in which the character you're playing as is not the protagonist of the story? Kind of like how Sherlock Holmes stories are told from Watson's point of view.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume did this, there is a war and political stuff happening around you, but the entire time you play as a soldier, then later a right hand man in one of the armies at war, but not every army you side with ends up winning in the end, Side with A, C gets the crown, side with C, A gets the crown, side with B, B gets the crown, that sort of thing, and there's nothing you can really do about this, you fight on the field, then the army heads talk outside the field, incidentally, you can't choose who to side with, your character does that automatically based on how they feel about the people around them, and you alter this by how you fight on the field.

Then there's always having this one item in your inventory that you find so stupid and annoying. It's even more useless than a rubber chicken that's falling apart. Then it turns out it's exactly the key to defeating the final boss.

There was a ninja game on the SNES that I can't find any more, you are given the dragon sword in your inventory, and the final boss is a dragon, you can NEVER use it, until you get to the final boss.

 

[Sir Pootis]

That the entirety of the C.O.D game's story was a lie told by the US government to prevent soldiers and civilians from going rogue.