10 of the Best Video Game Plot Twists

The hallmark of a great game is often the plot twist but, let’s face it, they rarely succeed. Let’s look at ten games that did it right. They drew us it and smacked us around, sometimes leaving us confused and sometimes charging us forward to victory.

Some twists are just strange. Did a single person feel fulfilled at the end of Super Mario Bros. when the Princess is, yet again, in another castle? At the end of Metroidwhen the plasma blaster wielding Samus Aran is revealed as female, we shouldn’t have been surprised but in the heyday of boys-only gaming culture it came as a shock.

Sometimes plot twists are just confusing. In Halo: Combat Evolved we found ourselves going back to the box and wondering if we’d bought the wrong game, what the hell is the Flood? Did I spoil Halo for you? Well be warned, there are tons of spoilers to come.

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Title: DmC: Devil May Cry
Publisher: Capcom
Release date: January 15, 2013

After you finally beat the enormous trash monster, Mundus, you’re finally stand side by side with your loving white haired brother. Then we get “the path is clear for us to rule” speech. What’s up with these damn power-tripping angel-demons? Virgil was out to save himself and humans are just pawns.

Let it be known, can’t trust an Angel, a Demon or a creepy well-coifed mix of the two. So the final boss battle is revealed: your own twin brother! Kick in the electro metal cause it’s slashin’ time.

Okay so we may have saw this one coming, but it was still good. The ensuing battle took us nearly ten minutes of straight brawling to get through and, yes, fans of the original, you finally get white hair.

Title: Assassin's Creed III
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release date: October 30, 2012

The basis of the Assassin’s Creed franchise goes back to a near-prehistory secret war between the Assassins and the Templar. The Assassins seek to give the world free will and a little justice, while the Templar seek to control all of it. Hell, they’re even blamed with crucifying Jesus, now that’s a bum rap.

So as Assassin’s Creed 3 gets going we’re ready to bring the pain to these dirty cavorting Templar bastards when…what? We’re Templar? I’ve been doing evil!? In a game full of twists this one genuinely got us.

The Assassin’s Creed series has a love it or hate it storyline, we love the gameplay but sometimes it just gets in the way. This was a great example of giving the story work in a small, but effective way.

Title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Publisher: Activision
Release date: November 5, 2007

Call of Duty and its Modern Warfare series is known for clinch endings and OMGWTF set pieces. The incredible ending to Modern Warfare where we just won’t die, for example.

As we’re running in gunning in the previous release, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, expertly extracting ourselves from a dangerous and overwhelming firefight, we jump into a helicopter to make our hasty escape. Just a few seconds pass between the radio confirmation of a nuclear device and it detonating in an action sequence that blew our minds.

Just as we’re sure the tough-as-nails US soldiers can escape the nuclear holocaust behind them, our chopper is brought down hard and we’re left to shuffle about the wasteland until we expire. This twists pushes up the action and drama in a game that felt too familiar from the start but quickly defined itself, and the series, as a stunning shooter.

Title: Heavy Rain
Publisher: Sony
Release date: February 23, 2010

Heavy Rain is one of the best written, and has one most interestingly twisted plot, in this generation of games. No list would be complete with looking at how the developers took a cliché plot twist and made it oh so good. Some would argue that there are plot holes in the twist, specifically a murder that happens off camera while we’re looking at the murderer, but this may be simply the antagonists, selective memory.

The main character, Scott Shelby, is great with children, sometimes, and a fantastic detective who’s chasing after the elusive Origami Killer. Throughout the game we sympathize with the plight of Shelby, as he chases this horrible killer only to realize that he is that killer. The detective is too good and has gone to chasing only his own demons.

The entire game builds to an ending that leaves the player feeling creepy for rooting for, and sympathizing with, Shelby.

Title: Silent Hill 2
Publisher: Konami
Release date: September 24, 2001

The Silent Hill series ranks high in the creep-factor of video games. Aside from being one of the most flinchingly scary games, it takes the cake for most disturbing ending with Silent Hill 2.

As the game progresses a pattern starts to emerge. Near the end we’re left wondering if we’ll ever find the woman who the protagonist loves so much. In this moment we’re let in a secret that the protagonist already knows, but the player has just realized; He's killed her. Killing the love of his life because she was already dying of a terminal illness, the entire game was his punishment.

This kind of literary twist is fantastic and gut wrenching when you realize that the entire game was punishment for the player. Punishment he may or may not deserve. These moral ambiguities make the plot twist even more disturbing. Is it self-imposed punishment? Or will of the ancient sacred ground on which the town in built?

Title: The Walking Dead
Publisher: Telltale Games
Release date: April-November 2012

The Walking Dead Game is by far one of the most gut wrenching, emotionally taut games ever created in the medium.

It holds the record for most tears dropped at a game's end, but one genius sub plot runs through all the episodes and ends with a terrible realization.

In The Walking Dead players can choose their own actions, trying to tread a good or evil path is quickly foiled with lots of grey choices whose consequences cannot be seen.

When resources are available we take them, we must survive, only to find that through our survival we’ve destroyed others and driven them mad. This results in obliquely killing an entire family and driving the father, a good person, to do horrible things.

Taking resources from a vehicle earlier in the series leads to a crazy end game. With a father whose family has starved, cold and alone, whose supplies you took, now hauls around a bowling bag with his wife’s head it in searching for another child.

Mark that one down as a reason not to have kids.

Title: Red Dead Redemption
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Release date: May 10, 2010

In Red Dead Redemption the protagonist, John Marston, spends the entire game trying to make up for his past wrongdoings. By defusing a war and trying to bring justice to the last outpost of the Wild West.

When we’ve finally completed all our missions and gain the love and lives of Marston’s family when a posse shows up at his house. As John busts through the doors he starts firing but no matter how many times you replay, John always dies. In a horrible slow death, of fifty lead-bullet gut shot, bleed-out.

But that’s not all! Just when you’re contemplating throwing a brick through Rockstar Game’s office window we take on the role of Marston’s son for one last glorious shootout and the resolution of the meaning of the game’s title.

Title: Braid
Publisher: Microsoft (but Jonathon Blow did all the work)
Release date: August 6, 2008 

Tim must search for his lost love, his girlfriend stolen by the brutish knight. Yet as the game goes on turning from a quirky little time-bending platformer in a dark tale of loneliness and unrequited love the ending to which was anyone’s guess.

As the game ends we’re left wondering if she is running away or helping you, all you can do is use your primary weapon, the manipulation of time, to roll back the clock to the truth of how it all began. She was trying to get rid of you the entire time. You are the usurper.

The ending is incredibly heartbreaking for such a little, low-res platformer and shows that graphics don’t always equal an immersive game, sometimes the best and most interesting games can still be told with text.

Title: BioShock
Publisher: 2K Games
Release date: August 21, 2007

From the beginning, BioShock appears to be a game about free will and choice. By chance you’re dropped into a dying utopia and the only way out is picking sides in the last days of civil war where everyone’s gone insane. The illusion of choice is brought up again in how you deal with the Little Sisters during the game.

But all that is shattered when we finally meet Andrew Ryan only to discover that the protagonists is the final product of Rapture’s insanity. A killing beast designed and manipulated by Fontaine to do his bidding while you’ve been brainwashed into thinking you’re fighting the righteous fight.

The execution of the twist is magnificent. It left us slack-jawed and instant fans of anything Ken Levine touches. The brutal murder of Andrew Ryan challenges you to break the chains of your slavery, as he forces you to kill him knowing it would perhaps free you. Would you kindly.

Title: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Publisher: LucasArts (RIP)
Release date: July 15, 2003

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a game about choices. Players choose their actions carefully to follow the way of the Light or Dark sides after waking up with amnesia and able to start over on their life path.

Throughout the epic 50-hour plus game players join other Jedi in a grand quest to discover the secret of your past and defeat the evil remnants of the Sith Lords who still stalk the galaxy.

During your quests and battles with the Sith we’re told of a Sith Master so evil and dark he makes the emperor look like a ankle-biting Chihuahua, Darth Revan. After fifty hours of gameplay we’re sure that our well-meaning, clean cut Jedi character is ready to face off against the Dark Side’s greatest warrior when, what? You are Darth Revan?

Oh no, you mean we’re evil? But we tried so hard to be good. This ending can be alternately wonderful and horrifying as you realize that no matter how we play the game we end up evil. Fate, it happens.