10 Intense Shifts In Gameplay That Came Out Of Nowhere

Quantic Dream's Fahrenheit was a hugely ambitious game for its era, effectively serving as a prototype for the far more refined "interactive drama" games the developer would release in the future, such as Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human.

Though the game makes no attempt to disguise its supernatural throughline from its opening scene, nobody quite expected the ridiculous leap the game takes in its final hour.

If the first 90% of the game was a chilly murder-mystery with a heightened, fantastical fringe, in that final hour the game shifts without warning into outright superhero nonsense.

Suddenly protagonist Lucas Kane is battling the antagonist known as the Oracle in a gravity-defying Matrix-esque battle, powered by the game's previously-modest QTE sequences.

In what might be gaming's quintessential "that escalated quickly" moment, Lucas is now running along walls and evading police helicopters like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Between this and the rushed last-minute love story between Lucas and detective Carla Valenti, it's little surprise that Fahrenheit's development was expedited to meet production deadlines, resulting in large swaths of story being cut.

Had the team been able to realise their full vision, the shift to Dragonball Z-style fight scenes might not have seemed quite so damn silly.