10 Earth-Shattering Video Game Plot Twists You Didn't See Coming
9. You Are Not Who - Or What - You Think - Prey (2017)
On the surface the 2017 reboot of Prey appears to be a straightforward story of ethically dubious research gone badly wrong. Isolated research facility? Check. Containment breach of a hostile alien species? Check. A choice between heroic self-sacrifice or saving the research and inviting inevitable disaster down the line? Check.
Only one thing seems out of place, an opening segment where the protagonist, Morgan Yu, wakes up in what seems to be their apartment, only to later find that it is a well-disguised set and they are a willing lab-rat.
That last bit is important because it proves to be a Chekov’s Gun.
The protagonist is a lab-rat, and there was a containment breach, but the game’s events all happened in that past. In the present day, Earth has been completely overrun, the real Morgan is long dead and the person you’ve been playing as is not a person, but a thing – a captured alien - intended to be used as an ambassador between their race and the humans.
Sharp players might have had a lightbulb go off early, but for most, being an alien all along was novel and jaw-dropping way to end the game.