20 Gaming Moments That Insulted Your Intelligence
2. Shelby Is The Origami Killer - Heavy Rain
Quantic Dream's interactive drama Heavy Rain has a lot going for it, though it also flushed plenty of its goodwill down the toilet during the climax, when it was revealed that the elusive Origami Killer is actually one of the four characters we've been playing as throughout the game.
As it turns out, the serial killer is none other than private investigator Scott Shelby, and while it's certainly a bold idea in theory, the problem is that the twist reveals that the audience has been unknowingly controlling an unreliable protagonist.
Earlier in the game, players control Shelby when antique shop owner Manfred is murdered, and the scene makes it abundantly clear that Shelby couldn't be the killer.
But it then turns out that Scott did kill Manfred, because the perspective of events we saw earlier in the game was basically manipulated to ensure that players didn't ever consider Shelby a possible culprit.
That's not clever - it's maddeningly lazy, unfair storytelling that actively works against the audience's ability to figure out the killer's identity.