10 Monumental Video Game Plot Twists Nobody Saw Coming
That damn Lance Vance...
Everyone
loves a good plot twist. A loyal companion that’s stuck with you throughout the entire adventure suddenly
turns on you, stabbing you in the back and hitting you straight in the feelings. You journey across a forbidden and hostile land, fighting demons, ghosts and
goblins, only to be awoken from a dream, waking up in 1960’s London as a bus
driver that's having an existential crisis, and your dreams are actually your
subconscious yearning for a more fulfilling life...
Just me?
Maybe that last one is a bit much, but a well-constructed narrative shift can turn a good story into a great one (or a great story into a terrible one depending on if you liked it or not).
Star Wars had you find out Vader was Luke’s dad, Sixth Sense had you thinking Bruce Willis was alive, and The Happening showed you that vegans had the right idea, and were trying to save us from being attacked by plants. Film has offered plenty of shocks over the years, and while gaming is a considerably younger art form, it too has had its fair share of twists.
WARNING: SPOILERS HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE.
10. Reznov's Mind Tricks - Call Of Duty: Black Ops
Convoluted though it may be, Black Ops had one of the most hoodwinked moments in the series history by having Mason imagine the presence of Reznov throughout the game, his head having been messed with in order to eliminate Reznov’s enemies.
After meeting World at War hero Victor Reznov in a Russian Gulag, Mason escapes from the prison but is separated from his Russian revolutionary. Later in the campaign, Mason goes to meet with a Russian defector who turns out to be none other than old ‘V-Rez’ himself.
He then joins Reznov’s crusade for revenge against the men who betrayed him, before being captured and interrogated by the CIA. There he discovers that Reznov in fact did not survive the breakout, he’d been brainwashed to be a sleeper agent and then been “reprogrammed” by Reznov to do his dirty work. In the process, he’d developed a dissociative disorder, causing him to hallucinate Reznov’s existence.
This was a bold move from a series like Call of Duty, a franchise that while very commercially successful, never had an enthralling or engaging story beyond “go here, shoot everyone”.