9. You’re The Bad Guy – Crackdown
Much like Call of Duty, Crackdown manages to sneak a fiendish plot twist upon the viewer because of our expectations of the game from the outset; it’s pitched as a relatively simple shooter with modest ambitions and no intellectual pretensions whatsoever. You simply run around a city blowing s**t up, and it’s a fun game, right until the very end where the story takes a cruel, shocking and surprisingly impressive twist, as our actions throughout the game are presented from a different perspective, informing us of the horrifying truth.
Throughout the game, it is presumed that you’re just working for a regular, boring police force, but at the end it is revealed that you’ve been part of a force that has in effect been implementing a police state not unlike the sort that George Orwell warned us of in 1984. It’s one of those brilliant twists that exploits player familiarity with the tropes of the genre and our expectations of what this type of game should provide; very clever indeed.
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7 Comments
Its true that you tend to contact Miller more when playing MGS1 again, just to see what he says. And it become evident, e.g when you fight Liquid in the Hind D on top of comm tower, Miller can’t be reached via codec, same right after the Helicopter is downed
In black ops 2 wen u shoot mason
Also in one of the endings u find out he isnt dead
I thought the nuke scene in CoD4 was good but I think there’s a far better twist in the CoD series. This scene is in MW2 where General Shephard betrays you and Roach + Gaz are executed and burned alive. I was genuinely emosh about it! Gaz was a legend for gods sake. Then you have the epic mission in the plane graveyard. Classy gaming IMO. Good article though pal!
Wholeheartedly agree with the #1. While it didn’t affect me when I first saw it (perhaps I was too young), the conversation has become simply timeless. Perhaps it’s more relevant now with things like SOPA that have entered our world. Truly thought-provoking and deep.
Final Fantasy 7? This is the first list I’ve ever seen not to include that in plot twists. Not the best game ever, and truly over-hyped, but definitely better and more deserving of a slot than 3 different Metal Gear entries. Next time, you should probably limit it to one entry per game/series.
Assassin’s Creed, Brotherhood specifically, would be a good choice.
Overall, pretty underwhelming list. Metroid and KoTOR are the only two that I completely agree with.
While I would have loved to see the Zack twist from Final Fantasy VII (which I thought was more mind-blowing than the Aerith one) or the final twist in The Granstream Saga (which anticipated the KOTOR twist), I’d say it’s a pretty great list overall. I can’t think of any other game that deserves the #1 spot like MGS2 does. And I agree with most of the other entries in the list too.
More recently, the plot twist in Assassins Creed 3 when it was revealed that Haytham is a Templar was pretty suprising to say the least