What a Twist!

Samus Aran is a bounty hunter who follows space pirates across the galaxy in an effort to track down and destroy parasitic life forms called metroids. She wears a power suit that conceals her face and body, and the instruction book explicitly uses male pronouns to describe her. The majority of gamers assumed that she was a dude, and there was no reason to think otherwise. If you managed to complete the game in under five hours, however, it was revealed that Samus had been a woman the entire time! Admittedly, the revelation didn’t change the context of the game one iota. Samus was a lone wolf who didn’t utter a single word during her adventure, and her gender was completely irrelevant to the game’s plot. Nevertheless, the knowledge that she was a woman challenged our pre-conceived notions and changed the way we look at gaming protagonists. In the fantastical world of video games, there’s no reason why women can’t be just as capable as men! Some critics insist that the ending was somehow sexist because Samus appeared in a bathing suit, but their opinions are born of jealousy and should be disregarded entirely.

Aeris Gainsborough was an upbeat and compassionate woman who could be described as an eternal optimist. Despite growing up in the slums of Midgar, she developed a positive outlook on life. She was head-strong and street-smart, but her fierce independent streak ultimately led to her demise. Aeris took it upon herself to stop a unhinged nihilist named Sephiroth from destroying the planet with a giant meteor. She left her friends and departed to the Forgotten City where she planned on using her Holy spell to counter Sephiroth’s destructive magic. While she was praying at an altar, Sephiroth appeared out of nowhere and stabbed her through the back. Her friends arrived just in time to witness the assault, but it was too late to do anything. I probably would have dropped five or six Phoenix Downs on her just to see what happened, but her friends decided to drop her body in a lake and let the planet reclaim her. This wasn’t the first time a character had died in a video game, but it’s arguably the most impactful and well-known example. She was one of the most compassionate characters in gaming history, and her death came out of nowhere. It was a pivotal moment in Final Fantasy VII, and it completely changed the tone of the game.

The story in Chrono Trigger unfolds in an unconventional manner, and the time travel gimmick gives us a unique perspective on many of its characters. The Demon King Magus is introduced early on as the game’s main villain. Vague stories about him are spread throughout the world in the year 1000, and you hear first-hand accounts of his actions when you travel back to the year 600. When you skip ahead to the year 2300, you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic world that was laid to ruin by a parasitic alien called Lavos. It becomes apparent that Magus had summoned Lavos, so your party decides to travel back to the year 600 and stop the dark mage from carrying out his plan. It’s at this point that you discover that Magus had no intent on destroying the Earth. He was only summoning Lavos because he intended on destroying the vindictive creature. Everything you thought you knew about Magus was wrong, and the next act of the game turns him into a sympathetic character by shedding light on his troubled past. He had all the makings of a great villain before the game flipped the script.

The tenth game in the Spec Ops series is set in the United Arab Emirates against the backdrop of some of the most violent sandstorms in history. A US Army Colonel named John Konrad volunteers to aid in the evacuation of Dubai, and goes against orders in his attempt to lead a caravan of refugees out of the vulnerable city. The Army fears Konrad and his men were lost in the destruction, and a small Delta Force team led by Captain Martin Walker is sent to find Konrad and rescue survivors. After picking up a weak distress signal, Walker is able to communicate with Konrad via a small handheld radio. Walker is forced to make difficult decisions during his mission, and his actions and morals are constantly questioned by Konrad. As the game draws to a close, Walker stumbles upon the decaying remains of Konrad. Incidentally, Walker had been suffering from a dissociative disorder. He had committed unspeakable atrocities in the field, and his mind created a hallucination of Konrad to rationalize his actions. The twist was not especially creative – the framework was lifted right out of Heart of Darkness, after all – but it changed the context of the entire game.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a re-imagining of Konami’s long-running franchise that exists within its own continuity. The game focuses on Gabriel Belmont’s battles against malevolent creatures during the “end of days” in the year 1047. The holy knight is sworn to protect the innocent, but his ultimate goal is to resurrect his wife who had been brutally murdered. To that end, he enters the Land of the Dark Lords in an effort to unite the Heavens with the Earth. Along the way, Gabriel fights the usual cast of vampires and werewolves, but there’s one Castlevania mainstay who is conspicuously absent. Count Dracula is missing in action for the entire game, and a dark sorcerer named Zobek acts as the game’s primary antagonist instead. Zobek is predictably defeated in the final act, but Gabriel is unable to revive his wife. In a shocking post-credit scene, it’s revealed that Zobek is still alive. After forcing his way into a sealed cathedral, Zobek confronts the Prince of Darkness himself and asks for his assistance. The reason why we weren’t introduced to Dracula earlier is because Gabriel was Dracula! After losing everything he loved, he became corrupted by darkness and declared war on the world he once served. The surprises don’t stop there. After a brief scuffle, Zobek sends Dracula crashing through a stained glass window onto a busy street below. The street in question is lined with cars, and it’s apparent the game had discreetly jumped from the 11th century to modern times while the credits were rolling.

Silent Hill 2 is an unnerving game with restless characters, disturbing monsters, and a surreal setting. The game focuses on James Sunderland, who receives a letter that was written by his wife, Mary. Mary had apparently died several years earlier from a mysterious illness, but her letter requests that James meet her in Silent Hill. James enters the abandoned town in search of answers, but everything he finds is a reflection of his own inner psyche. The town forces James to confront his fears through a number of increasingly-symbolic monsters, and the handful of individuals that he meets are manifestations of his repressed emotions. James eventually finds a video tape that reveals the truth about Mary’s death. As it turns out, James had killed his wife after she became terminally ill. The letter he received was actually a blank piece of paper, and his nightmarish visit to Silent Hill allowed him to repent and come to terms with his overwhelming guilt. James entered the eponymous town in the hopes of seeing his wife again, but the only thing he was reunited with was his own dark and terrible past.

Four thousand years before the rise of the Galactic Empire, a powerful Sith Lord named Darth Malak unleashed an armada against the Republic. Assuming the role of an amnesiac Republic soldier with dormant Jedi powers, the player tries to gain insight into why Malak turned to the Dark Side. After retracing Malak’s steps and traveling to various planets across the galaxy, it’s eventually revealed that you had been a Sith Lord named Darth Revan the entire time! The visions that you had been experiencing throughout the game were actually fragments of Revan’s memory, and it was shocking to see Revan remove his distinct mask during a flashback to reveal the face you had chosen while creating your character at the beginning of the game. Revan and Malak created a Sith Empire with the intent of unifying the galaxy, but Revan was usurped and defeated by his apprentice. Revan was kept alive through the power of the Force, and the Jedi Council wiped his mind in an effort to restrain him. This revelation fits perfectly with the game’s alignment system, and players can choose to cast aside their dark past, or embrace it full-on. Generosity and altruism lead to the Light Side, while selfish or violent actions will lead the player down another path. It makes sense that a former Sith Lord would be conflicted, so the plot twist manages to be completely logical and completely shocking at the same time.

BioShock is an engrossing first-person shooter that deals with complex sociopolitical philosophies. The game is set within the underwater city of Rapture, and the claustrophobic environments feel suppressive and mysterious. Rapture was intended to be an isolated utopia, but its potential was marred by draconian politics, class warfare, and armies of genetically-altered monsters. As the game begins, a man named Jack arrives in Rapture after his plane crash lands in the Atlantic ocean. He’s overwhelmed by his surroundings, but a man named Atlas helps guide him through the city. Atlas is astonishingly polite, but he has all kinds of unusual (and morally questionable) requests for Jack. It’s eventually revealed that Jack is the son of the business magnate who created Rapture, and Atlas was a gangster named Frank Fontaine who planned a coup over the city. Fontaine had kidnapped Jack as a child and manipulated his genes to accelerate his aging. He also programmed post-hypnotic suggestions into his mind that would be triggered by the phrase, “Would you kindly?” Fontaine’s suggestions to Jack throughout the game are proceeded by this phrase, and this forces you to recontextualize the entire adventure. If Jack didn’t have free will during his journey, then you have to wonder how much control the player truly had. It makes you wonder if you were controlling the game, or if the game was controlling you.

Braid is an ambitious platfomer with some light puzzle elements and a unique time-manipulation gimmick. On the surface, the game has a straightforward plot involving a young man named Tim who is searching for a princess that has been kidnapped by a “horrible and evil monster.” The final stage in the game sees the princess working together with Tim to escape from a knight that’s pursuing her. When Tim and the princess finally meet up at her home, however, it becomes apparent that the stage had been playing out in reverse. In actuality, the princess was trying to get away from Tim. When you play through the stage, it seems like the princess and Tim are working together. The princess uses various switches to open doors, raise bridges, and help Tim proceed past various hazards. After you reach her home, the flow of time is corrected and you have to play through the stage in reverse. It becomes clear that the princess was actually running away from Tim. She was locking doors, dropping bridges, and setting up traps in order to slow him down. Tim’s relationship with the princess is intentionally vague for most of the game, but it was still surprising to learn that he had been the “horrible and evil monster” all along. I really appreciate how the plot twist unfolded through the use of the game’s time-manipulation gimmick. It’s the type of thing that could only be done in a video game.

In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, nine individuals are abducted and trapped on a sinking cruise liner. They all have bombs planted inside their bodies, and they become unwilling participants in a twisted experiment called the Nonary Game. They only have nine hours to figure out why they are on the ship, and they’re forced to work together as they solve puzzles. The top screen of the DS is where most of the dialogue is shown, while the bottom screen is used for the puzzle-solving gameplay. This was a common setup for adventure games on the DS, but it’s eventually revealed the bottom screen represented the point-of-view of a young girl named Akane who was being forced to play the Nonary Game in the past. Incidentally, your actions during the puzzle-solving sections represented Akane’s previous actions. Through the use of morphic resonance fields, she was able to relay solutions to the future contestants on the cruise liner. It was imperative to keep them alive because she needed their help to solve the final puzzle in her own timeline. During this final puzzle, the Nintendo DS is physically turned upside down so the top-and-bottom screens switch positions. This allows the future contestant to solve the puzzle and relay the solution back to Akane in the past. It was a beautiful revelation, a creative use of the DS’s dual screens, and one of the most literal renditions of a plot twist I’ve ever seen. Its the kind of thing that wouldn’t work in another medium.