10 Video Games That Trick You Into Playing The Villain

Bioshock boasts one of the most staggeringly unexpected and downright creative plot twists from any game released this century, with player character Jack attempting to navigate his way safely through the former underwater utopia Rapture.

Later in the game, however, it's revealed that Jack has actually been the pawn of his apparent guide Atlas, having been psychologically conditioned since his arrival to obey any of his requests that were followed by the trigger phrase, "Would you kindly?"

Basically, Jack has been doing Atlas' bidding for the entire game, and given that Atlas is then revealed to be the game's primary antagonist Frank Fontaine, it sure isn't a good look.

As much as Jack is in many ways a hapless victim himself, it's tough to reconcile that he ends up beating his own father, Andrew Ryan, to death with a golf club, even if it was a result of Ryan wilfully using the trigger phrase to prove the truth to his son.

As both a stunning shifting of the narrative goal posts and a devilishly clever commentary on player agency in video games - or rather, the lack thereof - it was absolutely perfect.

Jack obviously wasn't a megalomaniacal mastermind on the level of Frank Fontaine, but as with Mason in Call of Duty: Black Ops, it's virtually impossible to accept that such an horrific act could make you anything but a bad guy.