The Rules of a Good Plot Twist | Semi-Ramblomatic

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[@SirSicCrusader]

A good plot twist is when you try to fire a beloved leader from your company and then half the staff fires you instead!

[@yaoiboi60]

holy shit its sir sic

[@user-yl7yv4gy8k]

Interesting to see sir sic in the wild...

[@Alakaizer]

Second Wind must have whiskey.

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

How is that a twist?

[@jlev1028]

​@@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithmNo one expected the Escapist channel would collapse just from the editor-in-chief being fired.

[@fearlesswee5036]

A tip I've always heard to writing a good plot twist is that "It makes earlier confusing events make sense, rather than make earlier sensical events confusing."

[@lordbuss]

Evangelion forever traumatized me by breaking this rule...

[@lukeskywalker987]

Honestly I actually prefer plot twists that completely turn the world on its head. The trick is that they need to give questions that don't feel like the answer is "because the creator said so."

[@Jsharts]

I think its a case by case basis, sort of thing. Like Alan Wake 1; everything is pretty clear, magical lake makes creativity come alive,, until the twist where its revealed that Alan wake was written in by Thomas Zane, but Alan had already wrote in Thomas Zane so it's now turned into a chicken or egg scenario. For me personally, I think that it's a great twist because it adds to the atmosphere and mystery of "what the fuck is going on" and "you don't need all the answers" that the game outright tells you at the start.

[@gamegroomps]

xenoblade chronicles is excellent at this

[@ethandubois7536]

Trails into Azure hits this beat perfectly. It turns the confusing ending of the previous game into an incredible setup that really ups the ante before the second game's finale. If you like turn based JRPGs I highly recommend it, if you have 80 hours to spare 😅.

[@thakillman7]

The cardinal rule of twists: The twist shouldn't be worse than just playing it straigth

[@matthewmuir8884]

Indeed. One twist that comes to my mind immediately is the ending of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. It was a really good story with a lot of good twists, and then the game didn't know when to stop throwing in new twists and threw one in right after the player beats the final boss, and it's a twist that undermines everything that came before and is worse than if the game just didn't have the twist.

[@leviHeichou]

@@matthewmuir8884 I played that game twice but I just can't remember how it ended which is probably a bad sign for a twist and further proves your point.

[@jcace13]

Oh the twist for the sake of a twist is never good.

[@matthewmuir8884]

@@leviHeichou The last time someone told me they couldn't remember a bad plot twist, it turned out that they actively blocked it from their mind (in that case, it was for the Bond movie _Spectre),_ but I will remind you of the twist: The twist, as you learn in the normal ending and the golden ending, is that the entire Ys universe is the Earth Goddess Maia's dream and the Lacrimosa is necessary in order to keep her asleep, as the universe ends if she wakes up, so Maia rewrites the universe so that the tree never existed and Dana takes the tree's place before Maia then goes back to sleep. Not only does it come completely out of nowhere, completely break the game's themes of overcoming seemingly-inevitable doom and make it that a sentient tree committing serial omnicide is somehow justified and necessary, but Dana becoming the new goddess of evolution is treated as a positive even though it means that she: a victim of a Lacrimosa, will now have to routinely inflict the Lacrimosa upon sentient species. It's terrible.

[@michaeldove6603]

Yup, gonna steal the OSP example and say how much more interesting it could have been if instead of "Lol Quicksilver ded" he stuck around, oh what great character drama you could have had if the twins ended up on opposite sides

[@unironicallylikesranger7122]

I feel like the reason so many of those twist rules are broken is specifically because of the “author wants victory over the audience” mentality

[@TheJadedJames]

Yeah, it is cool to want to outsmart your audience. But you have to earn it with creativity. If you cheat the fun of the game is spoiled.

[@Venatius]

Richard Burlew, the webcomic artist who's been drawing D&D webcomic "The Order of the Stick" forever now (although it's been slowly wrapping up), requires users on the comic's official forum to discuss predictions in dedicated threads where he can't see them, because if someone calls a twist or development correctly, he knows he'll feel compelled to change it. I'm torn between finding the pettiness of that desire to outsmart the audience immature, and finding the self-aware honesty about that pettiness to be admirable.

[@ArcaneAzmadi]

aka. the Vince Russo approach.

[@cybertramon0012]

That mentality is what I feel is also behind a lot of bad ‘subverting expectations’. The author/s don’t care if it creates a massive plot hole, only that they get to say they subverted our expectations. I’m obviously going to use The Last Jedi as an example, because that film seemed built on subverting expectations. Leia is taken out of action for a while, leaving Holdo in charge of the Resistance for most of the film. She refuses to tell Poe what their plan of survival is, so he comes up with his own plan alongside Finn and Rose. They go off and recruit a criminal with a heart of gold to be their codebreaker, while Poe ends up mutinying because he believes Holdo is going to abandon them to save her own skin. His mutiny is stopped by Leia, who tells him the plan was for everyone to hop onto stealth ships while the First Order keeps chasing the flagship. A plan that the criminal leaks to the First Order so he can walk away with money and his life. The subversion is the idea that the main characters know best, that the hotshot pilot’s daring plan works, and that you can trust some guy you found in prison because he did a few nice things. But there’s some issues when you stop to think about it. First off, not telling Poe about the plan. When he does finally learn of the plan, he acknowledges it’s a good plan. The whole reason he was kept in the dark was for the sake of the twist. And Holdo doesn’t give a reason for keeping him in the dark, like there might be a spy on board, or that he just needs to trust her. She instead demeans him for having just been demoted and that he’s nothing more than an arrogant flyboy. And the other plot hole is how does the criminal know the plan? Finn, Rose, and Poe didn’t know about it, but as soon as it’s revealed to the audience he suddenly knows what they’re up to? Plot twists and subverting expectations need to make sense to the plot to be effective. Otherwise you’re just pulling the rug out from under the audience.

[@pirojfmifhghek566]

This is why Steven Moffat is such an insufferable tv writer. If he were banned from using retcons, outright lies, and last-minute explanations in his screenplays, I think he'd literally explode from blue balls.

[@Firestorm6651]

I can’t believe Yahtzee ruined my cauliflowers.

[@tonysladky8925]

I definitely read this in the tone of the cabbage merchant from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

[@malicekerendu3574]

What a twist

[@SimuLord]

I _wish_ I could be at home playing Stardew Valley and not stuck at work scrambling to get everything done on a deadline (stop looking at me like that, I know I'm posting on the Internet instead of working, I never said I was diligent!)

[@alex.g7317]

@@SimuLordbro, I ain’t even got a job, you don’t need to justify going on the net

[@scinex]

Yahtz: Don't lie to your audience! Also Yahtz: [Lies to his audience about their crops being ok unattended]

[@jamesrule1338]

While "surprising but inevitable" are important parts of plot twists, I'm glad the third part "don't try to out smart you audience" was brought up. George R R Martin (the King of making the incest babies plot twist work) mentioned something about that once, something like "If someone talking about book one has already guessed the plot twist you're setting up for in book 4, you can change it, which breaks the story, or you can just go with it and live with the fact some people figured it out."

[@stryke-jn3kv]

Kinda funny though that he hasn't followed his own advice of just going with it by virtue of not publishing anything after the fifth book. The big plot twist of couse being 'R + L = J' which is a theory many got before hand including the D&D show runners. Thing is this twist is still treated as something to debate by lunatics online as it was only fully confirmed on the show, and they're still in full on denial about all the hints basically confirming it but not outright stating it for sure yet in the books as the books still haven't got to that bit where it is going to be revealed yet.

[@billcox6791]

Don’t remember where I heard it, but I think it was related to R+L=J: If the audience figures out your plot twist, that’s not bad, that means you did a good job foreshadowing There’s some nuance as to wanting them to not figure it out immediately, but, if the plot twist is good, all that should change is that they get a bit of enjoying the recontextualization early mixed with Hitchcock’s knowing the bomb is under the table

[@GlacialScion]

​@@stryke-jn3kvHis issue isn't about dealing with twists. He wrote himself into a corner and has spent years upon years trying to figure out how to get out of it in a way that doesn't break anything else in the narrative. The perils of being a Gardener instead of an Architect.

[@stryke-jn3kv]

@@GlacialScion I suspect that it is the planned twists that are part of the problem, and even more so now he's seen how people reacted to them on the show. There's quite a bit of foreshadowing for King Brann and evil Danny too in the published books. Course there's also him maybe not actually spending any of those years figuring things out as he sure has said a bunch of things that just flat out contradict other things he's said. The timeline of his comments about how much he's done is pretty dang funny by this point. Then the dude's got serious bank, and so he can afford to procrastinate with other distractions like the tv stuff if he wants.

[@Dranlia]

My take on that is if your twist is good twist that isn't completely out of nowhere then some clever people in the audience are gonna figure it out. But that shouldn't actually be a problem. It is a bad twist if it is figured out too easily but if the smart people in the audience had to think about it to figure it out then it will actually be cathartic for them to be proven right. So unless you are a hack who wants to think they are smarter than the audience there is no real reason to be upset that some audience members figured out the twists.

[@Omnywrench]

The whole bit about lying to the audience reminds me of this one episode of Bob's Burgers where Linda puts on a murder mystery dinner theater show in the restaurant, and during the opening she says "can you guess the murderer? Its not meeeeee!" In a very obviously lying tone. At the end of the show she reveals she was the murderer and a couple people in the audience say this: "Hey wait a minute! You specifically said at the beginning you weren't the murderer!" "That's right! Its a TWIST!" "No, its a lie! A lie is not a twist!"

[@DragonNexus]

Don't be scared of your audience figuring out the twist either. If your audience looked at the clues and deduced what they mean...that's GOOD WRITING. A bad twist people see coming is either because you over explained a plot detail too early, or it's such an established trope people actively look for it (X character was dead the whole time, for example)

[@dragonfiremalus]

I've always felt it's the best when the audience figures it out a moment before you tell them. That way they get the clever "aha!" moment, but aren't sitting there half the game going "I know this already, move on"

[@prog8454]

Wouldn't Funny games as a film be considered Bad writing then because it has physical events occurring and pulls the rug from you that it didn't happen

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

In fact, one of my favorite "twist" in gaming is based on the audience figuring it out. During all of Mary Skelter 2, you are pursued by a mysterious monster,. At the very end, you're asking a bunch of leading questions to help you figured out their identity. And the whole point isn't that it's a hard mystery to solve, but that the truth is so awful, so cruel the characters have refused to admit it (and maybe the player too. I was fully invested, so that worked very well on me). You can also fail the test and not figures it out, which is cool too. I have a complicated relationship with this game because it's also a Compile Hearts RPG, but that part was pretty good

[@Ten_Thousand_Locusts]

​@@shytendeakatamanoir9740so what's the truth?

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts Without getting too much into details... The monster pursuing you is actually a former companion transformed into a soulless beast. The one in your team is a clone/false. (Both of those things happened before during the game to other characters) When learning the truth their lover can't handle it and ends up fusing with it to form the true final boss.

[@jonasboel2473]

I would like to add a rule that Red from OverlySarcasticProductions came up with: when your plot twist re-contextualizes the story, the new story has to be *at least* as good as the one without the twist though that might fall under 'no incest babies'

[@Uniscorn123]

I'm still blown away by how Bioshock's twist was pulled off. Technically it tells you what's happening at the opening cutscene and you just didn't notice. Masterfully done.

[@jocosesonata]

Would You Kindly tell me the twist?

[@StupidButCunning]

When I saw the title, my very first thought was of BioShock. It's such a masterpiece throughout.

[@jemandetwas1]

There is also the amazing meta aspect of the twist. You play the game thinking that you go on your linear quest dictated by the guy on the intercom because following orders from the guy on the intercom is just the way linear fps campaings are made. You're character is an empty shell with no free will meant as a self insert. Except he isn't. Those common fps tropes actually make sense in the story and the ludonarative dissonance that you silently accept has suddenly vanished.

[@lbsc1201]

@@jemandetwas1 Of course the game then pisses away that meta aspect by not changing the gameplay one iota after the twist is revealed.

[@Doct0rLekter]

@@StupidButCunningI would say that it peaks at the twist. Everything after that phenomenal moment is much weaker IMO.

[@SageVallant]

In my experience, the perfect twist is the one I realize about 30 seconds before the truth comes out. Because, yeah, it all came together, but not 10 minutes into the movie. You had me up to the very end but I kind of knew where it was going anyway.

[@Thanatos2k]

A lot of Phoenix Wright twists have this property. Many you can see a ways off but a lot of them are things you realize juuuuust before the game tells you.

[@Brainstrain]

Often it’s a music cue that can get you thinking in the right direction, a visual, or an acting choice that happens before the revealing dialogue

[@Lemerney]

The first Mistborn book has a really excellent twist exactly like this. At the end of the book, the evil overlord says "I made you dominant", and anyone paying attention to the story will rememeber that's exactly the line an ancient person used. You figure out he's not the person the reader and protagnoist believes him to be from just one word, and the main character figures it out about a minute later iirc

[@daaaah_whoosh]

I'm reminded of the first big 'twist' in Spec Ops: The Line. Which I figured out right before the reveal, but right after I'd already pulled the trigger. Which for me was just about as perfect a video game twist can be.

[@chrondeath6142]

I agree. Complete surprise twists can be fine, but I like them best when it's JUST enough for me to twig to it right before it's revealed. Brandon Sanderson seems to be good at pacing the information drops and inconsistencies to bring that about. On the other hand, I suppose I also really liked Dredge's twist, which caught me totally off guard and had me realizing I was an idiot for my naive reactions to all the foreshadowing I suddenly recognized.

[@CHUCKLZLORD]

Rule 4: The twist must add to the story, not take away from it. The twist at the end of 12 minutes is "none of that was real, it was all in your head, but also you needed to do the thing in your head to get the ending that starts the whole game over" which... just robs the whole game of any point. By forgetting, we're doomed to repeat the "mistake" that led us here, but it isn't a mistake it's a freaking hypothetical.

[@kadosho02]

MGSVTPP. That still stings Even with the knowledge of Big Boss in MG1&2 on MSX being the later chapter. It's that connection, the darkness that takes hold of BB. Everything changes how you feel about Naked Snake, and his evolution into the baddie he eventually has to become.

[@TheJadedJames]

The Second Sight plot twist is so much better because even though most of the story didn’t actually happen, it COULD have happened which is way more meaningful than “It was all a dream”

[@matthewwhiteside4619]

​@@TheJadedJamessince the protagonist experienced it as premonitions, it kind of DID happen from his point of view. He still remembers all those events

[@Sorain1]

@@matthewwhiteside4619 Yeah. That tends to be the dividing line between good and bad versions of the twist. If it was all unreal, but has substantive effects on how the story progresses/ends than it wasn't a waste of time for the audience. The 'most of this was precog' and then the events being averted works because without the precog, we know where this is going. If you open a story with the protagonist suffering from bullying and then pull the 'all this supernatural stuff wasn't real' then you need to end on the protagonist clearly having taken away the ability to stand up to the bullying that you showed at the start. (And if you really _must_ have a last second twist, have the twist be them demonstrating one of those supernatural elements right before the credits roll.)

[@jcohasset23]

Yeah I would say that is what ultimately pulls down the game. Until then it's an interesting mystery game as the player works to piece out what happened and how to stop the timeloop from reoccurring. Even when one finds out the twist of her being the main character's sister it means the main character might have had something to do with the guy's death but it's all made completely irrelevant with the final twist of none of it ever happening. "It was just a dream" can be pretty unsatisfying but it can at least allow for character growth on reflection whereas "none of what you experienced was real" really emphasis the question of "what was the point" and kills any desire for replayability.

[@Kaunte]

The writers of Westworld were so mad the internet predicted their twists in season one, they made season 2 utterly incomprehensible in response. Talk about real dickweeds.

[@Badficwriter]

Writing robots as self-willed human type people is bad writing to begin with. A non-human lifeform is never going to think like a human.

[@TheJadedJames]

Westworld S1 breaks my rule about plot twist pacing. You should edit your storylines so that people don’t have too much time to breakdown the plot. If that Man in Black Flashbacks had been contained to a single episode or two, people might not have guessed it, but stretched across the entire season, EVERYONE had the time and clues to put it together. Future seasons demonstrated they had no idea this is what their mistake was

[@Kaunte]

@@TheJadedJames I still think it's better to have twists that make narrative sense, even if they can be predicted, than to have a bunch of random bullshit happen just to stay unpredictable. I stopped watching the show after season 2 so I have no idea how they did in the seasons after that.

[@TheJadedJames]

@@Kaunte S3 was okay and actually felt like it was reasonable on the plot twist factor. S3 actually has one really cool plot draw dropping plot twist that it doesn’t cheat to hide. S4 was a bizarrely forgettable waste of an interesting idea. And its determination to turn what could have been straightforward plot developments into twists is a huge part of what robbed those developments of any power. Dolores basically doesn’t do anything the entire season because the show her status being concealed behind a plot twist that doesn’t get revealed until the very end. Like, I understand why Dolores was being isolated from the main storyline but that could have been accomplished without the insufferable disconnect the show pulled the entire season And now WW has been canceled and stripped from streaming. So nobody will know whatever dumb twist was going to be at the end of it

[@RumpusImperator]

That's part of the problem with long-running Puzzle Box shows where the audience can get together and discuss between episodes. If you have a million viewers, at least a few of them are going to figure it out and then post it all over the internet.

[@MetalGearCuban]

Man gotta say... the animations in second sight have aged gracefully.

[@lunaitc]

Stylized animations age like wine, realistic animations age like milk on a radiator in Arizona.

[@stevethepocket]

Sixth-generation graphics in general have aged really well. It's like the 3D equivalent of SNES/Genesis/VGA graphics: detailed enough to accurately convey whatever you're trying to convey, but not detailed enough to risk an uncanny valley effect. Yet another reason it bugs me that indie games going for a retro look have apparently decided instead to combine PSX blocky pixels with fancy PS3 shaders.

[@ShimSham.]

Still waiting for Yahtzee to review his board game namesake

[@Topo842]

The internet needs this

[@nickelbutt]

The plot twist in that game is something else.

[@MegumiZero]

Hint: There is no board!😱

[@paulrus-keaton439]

Yahtzee Tries: Tabletop Simulator

[@Besmertnic]

An analysis of a dice game? Where's the fun in that?

[@existentialselkath1264]

Knights of the Old Republic still has one of the best plot twists in gaming imo. 2 stories for the price of 1 was a perfect way to put it.

[@Silversteeldragon]

Indeed, and i think the best reason i´ve heard for why it works is from the Spoilerwarningshow cast (spoilers ahead): 1)It never cheats. It's blatently obvious at various points that things are unusual(Why was your character added to the registry at the last minute? Why were you able to master jedi abilities in weeks that takes most jedi years? Why do you have a force connection to Bastila from pretty much the start? Why do you dream of the star maps that Darth Revan found?), It does mention these things, and often right after they happened. But it still blindsides you because: 2) It hides the twists within the troupes of the genre and Star wars itself. The force has a will of it's own and a mind for destiny. Of course your hero would be right there where it´s needed. Of course it would enable you to go where you need to go. Of course it would enable you to become powerful enough to meet the threat head on. So you end up accepting a lot of it as the general explanation for why this is happening and accept some of the lies fed your way. So when you find out there is actually an actual direct reason for why it's all like this, It blindsides a lot of people because it upturns everything you thought you knew of the situation while painstakingly showing every clue it provided for how it happened.

[@LostOneOmega]

​@@Silversteeldragon To add to this: I think a lot of players, myself included, NEVER suspected that the Jedi could do something like that to anyone. We know about Mind Tricks and breaking wills but never just flat out lying. Then there's the other side of it being a desperate situation. So the game counts on the players being naive then deciding how they want to go from there. You can literally do all lightside quests and then side with Bastilla because you were lied to.

[@michaelweileder8328]

I was literally, 100%, without exaggeration, watering cauliflower in Stardew Valley when Yahtz said I was. Now THAT'S a good plot twist.

[@smaug2981]

I was washing a subway in PowerWash Sim

[@michaelweileder8328]

@@smaug2981 I have also done that while watching Yahtzee, lol

[@KeithFraser82]

Yahtzee sees all. Yahtzee knows all. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake...ADRIAN!

[@TwistedMe13]

More like the narrator knowing his intended audience.

[@chefbreccia2642]

Wait, is your name Adrian, by any chance?

[@shoestringVA]

Best recontextualized twist is definitely Ghost Trick Phantom Detective. The pieces are all there, and once you put them together with the final twist, seeing the story a second time makes everything much more fun.

[@robertbernard7844]

Yay, another fellow soul who played Ghost Trick!

[@padriazozzriaorizifian8672]

Ghost Trick mentioned!!

[@JPChereb]

This and 999 for me.

[@lego_met]

Yesssss! Was hoping to see Ghost Trick somewhere in the comments 😁

[@LordSusaga]

I saw one lets play of Ghost Trick where a newbie was wondering why Sissel was so fond of tight spaces and the guy who already played it just had a lightbulb moment in the background. The foreshadowing is SO good in that game, but you still never see it coming.

[@chrisavenell3172]

The twist with Kara and Alice from Detroit become human could have been it's whole section on this for bad twists

[@kristoffer8609]

"Oh, you thought the story was an emotional tale of a machine learning to protect and mother a human child? SIKE, they were both robots the whole time!" Still seething about that..

[@brendanh1745]

I haven't seen many people talking about it, but personally I hated that twist for a whole different reason. There's that bit early on where Kara is cleaning the house and she picks up the magazine selling the Alice dolls. It barely shows anything but is finally revealed at the very end... IF you succeed the quick time event as she picks it up. If you fail it, by not realizing there were quick time events in that section or looking away for a moment, she holds up the blurred magazine to the screen for a while and it's very very obvious that it's Alice. So one bad quick time event that was in a super weird spot ruined the twist barely a few minutes in and I spent the entire game confused why everyone was treating her as human since she so obviously wasn't and Kara clearly knew.

[@glassphoenix9095]

@@brendanh1745 if i remember that scene right, when kara picks up that magazine she looks away for a bit and her LED turns yellow. i always figured she just deleted the memory of seeing that magazine from her mind and continued treating alice like a human until she couldnt anymore. which is VERY fucking funny in an aggravating way

[@brendanh1745]

@@glassphoenix9095 I feel like that makes it even worse. Like why even show us that and have the quick time event if the character erases it and we as the audience aren't even supposed to know it yet and it's so easy to fail and reveal the secret early?

[@glassphoenix9095]

@@brendanh1745 exactly!!! the whole twist blows chunks and that magazine bit only exists to make people who like good stories angry GDSKGNDSK

[@jeremycards]

Yahtz, after following you for years i know the entire plot of Silent Hill 2, including weird dog alternate endings, and i have never touched the damned thing.

[@theomegajuice8660]

I think the best plot twists are not the ones that I didn't see coming at all but the ones that you see coming just a tiny bit before it gets fully revealed to you... and then when replaying you are amazed you didn't work it out earlier. Some of that is just making a good story that holds your attention without your mind wandering off and picking apart the plot structure to look for how the next few pieces fit

[@Rehteal]

The Beginner's Guide and Spec Ops: The Line do this perfectly. There are so many tiny little hints that make you go "that doesn't seem quite right". Though the hints start to get a little more blatant on the part of spec ops

[@sidneyflinton6500]

I think rule 4 can apply to more than just plot twists.

[@sabbywins]

Rick and Morty - take notes

[@yavorvlaskov5404]

Definitely my primary rule when grocery shopping for the week.

[@SebastianMikulec]

It's what I tell myself every time there's a family get together where the booze will be flowing.

[@TheThunderbirdRising]

Game of Thrones begs to differ

[@Kaefer1973]

@@TheThunderbirdRising Isn't "No incest babies!" one of the main points of Game of Thrones?

[@jonah_da_mann]

"There's a difference between 'unreliable narrator' and 'the plot flat-out lies to the audience.'" THIS.

[@cranapple3367]

A rule I'd suggest for "was this set up or is this an ass pull" is "could someone who knew the twist call your attention to the appropriate moments right before it's revealed such that you figure it out yourself". Knights of the Old Republic's big twist literally does exactly that, and if you're like me, you audibly went "oh my GOD" when you figured it out mid-cutscene.

[@armelior4610]

I love how in Knights of the old republic, the twist recontextualises differently depending on if you've roleplayed a sith or a jedi : is someone destined to fall to the dark side or can they be redeemed ?

[@stryke-jn3kv]

Kotor is one of my favourite twists. Easily in a top 3 with Jade Empire and the first Bioshock. There's also the added question how much does a redemption matter if it's one that is forced.

[@mattd923]

What makes the KOTOR twist great is that it uses typical narrative tropes of games against you. Most players won't even question why they're receiving plot relevant force visions, why their character is such an expert Jedi so quickly, why they have a force-bond with the main girl, and why the Jedi are so willing to send them on such a dangerous and important mission so quickly. Those are the kinds of narrative contrivances that, in a worse written game, would just be there with the only explanation being "you're the protagonist in a SW game, these are the things that happen to SW protagonists." So the game can repeatedly drop massive hints about the twist that you don't even recognize as hints, because you're not looking for a story altering twist.

[@beechteeth]

the KOTOR twist is iconic, but I also enjoy KOTOR II's twist about a certain character as well. everything - EVERYTHING - this character does means so much more after you know.

[@beechteeth]

that's an excellent point about the typical protagonist narrative. Bioshock plays with a similar troupe about linearity in games being so expected you don't realize you're just being played@@mattd923

[@Badficwriter]

@@mattd923 I hated the twist because it uses the fact that you are forced to play that way because of the video game programming as an accusation. Its the "Only bad people would play this, so you are a bad person" swipe at the consumer. It was a bullshit twist and made me not want to replay it.

[@StrakBlue]

Hugely underrated game, but Jade Empire had a great twist where characters throughout the game would comment on how your fighting style seems to lure people into seeing a weakness that isn't really there, until you end up trying to save your former master. Upon "saving" him, he turns out to be the main villain and comments that you diligently learned everything from him, "even your weaknesses," and proceeds to exploit the weakness that everyone else thought was an illusion.

[@teuast]

I got Jade Empire free on Origin years back and then the frame rate was so jittery I couldn't play it for more than five minutes without getting a splitting headache. Good to finally find out something about it.

[@redarrw1633]

"hopefully I can ruin it for you before bloober team does." Idk why but that line just killed me, thanks for reminding us about how this industry never learns anything in a hilarious way Yahtz!

[@masonasaro2118]

tee hee hee

[@ryancbarrett96]

I fast forwarded that because I want on PS back then and never played it. The remake will probably be the first time. Let's hope they do ok. For the record, aside from the ending, I loved The Medium.

[@MaskDeSmith990]

@@ryancbarrett96 SH2 is abandonware on PC. You can get it for free and there's an enhanced edition mod that's super easy to install that fixes all of the issues the pc port had. Do yourself a favor and play that instead of the garbage bloober team's going to shit out.

[@kf-95]

One of my favourite twists in a game is at the end of Jak 3 for PS2 SPOILERS So best friend Daxter was turned into a Weasel/Otter (Ottsel) hybrid in the first game, Jak & Daxter: The Precursors Legacy, when touching Dark Eco. The entire series has been building up the "Precursors" as these omnipotent beings only in the final act for it to be revealed that they were, in fact, Ottsels. Also, without Daxter, everyone would've died. So he was The Precursors Legacy. They way its delivered is one of my favourite and the funniest scenes ive ever seen in a game.

[@tbotalpha8133]

The best part is, it doesn't come out of nowhere. When Jak looks through the Precursor telescope, and is drawn into the Dark Makers' ship, there's a cutscene when the mission ends. We hear high-pitched voices cheering "our hero!", but not whatever Jak saw. But Jak seems thrown off by what he saw, saying "it almost looked like... but, no, it couldn't be..." And the whole time he's glancing at Daxter. Later in the game, Seem, one of the monks who study and revere the Precursors, is talking about how they've been contacted by the Precursors in a vision. And Seem says "I have seen the face of my creators, and I am at peace." *While caressing Daxter's face.* Those are the BEST kind of hints, for an absolutely bonkers twist. The answer was always right there in front of you, but you would NEVER have guessed it ahead of time.

[@Jacob_G9]

@@tbotalpha8133 Works Just as Well In Gameplay, if slightly less so, with the context of what dark Eco does to anyone ELSE. When Jak touches a pool of the stuff in game he Vanishes, seemingly consumed by it, When Errol crashes into the barrels of the stuff, he's completely gone as well, and when he show's up in Jak 3, nothing except a small part of his face remains. the Games CONSTANTLY hammers in that Dark Eco kills or is extremely dangerous, heck, Gol, Maya, the Dark Makers, they're all corrupted by it, even though they're sages and precursors, so it makes anyone focusing on the story think "Why did Daxter Turn into an Ottsel?" Well, turns out that he got lucky, and ascended to a precursor, he literally rolled the one in a million chance and survived, attuned to the power of Eco, albiet not exactly in the best or safest way.

[@Mikon595]

Oh god, I forgot about 12 Minutes Oh god, now I remember 12 Minutes! Ghost Trick has my favorite twists

[@d-x-v-i]

Semi-Ramblomatic is a really good format for Yahtzee and I hope it carries on!

[@Korinengamecorp]

I don't know why I wouldn't, Yahtzee's been doing for months, it was could extra punctuation before

[@blackdragoncyrus]

The thing that makes SH2 so good isn't even the twist itself, it's all the foreshadowing and the symbolism of the very environment you've been playing through.

[@JakeJakers]

"No incest babies" is just a good rule in general.

[@Midnight-Starfish]

Alabama, take notes.

[@jlev1028]

The history of Europe would've been much more stable without them.

[@Jedi_Vigilante]

Imagine how different the original Star Wars Trilogy would have been if the revelation that Luke and Leia were siblings came after they'd decided to hook up a few times...

[@rustyjames6131]

OK, but what about Chinatown?

[@akl2k7]

​@Jedi_Vigilante Funny thing is: they weren't even originally intended to siblings in the first place. Luke's sister was supposed to be someone else and part of the plot of the original sequel trilogy, but Lucas got tired of writing it after The Empire Strikes Back and made Leia his sister instead.

[@Tickerbee]

A much simpler story than the examples in this video and the comments, but the twist at the end of the original Shovel Knight story campaign, where Shield Knight isn't a simple captured princess who needs rescuing at all. King of Cards sort of has a meta-twist at the end, Plague of Shadows and Spectre of Torment made two of the villain characters more sympathetic by giving them relatable motivations, and then King of Cards ends and instead of learning something sympathetic we learn that he was actually a bigger bastard than we previously thought.

[@BJGvideos]

But we knew all along that Shield Knight is an adventurer.

[@Tickerbee]

@@BJGvideos But we didn't know that she and the Enchantress were one and the same is what I was getting at.

[@StainlessPot]

The worst kind of plot twist is that which holds back the entire rest of the story. In Evil Within 1 the characters just REFUSE to talk to each other and properly discuss what's happening, because that would give away the (already obvious) plot twist. And on the rare occasion they do talk - they can't finish a sentence before being distracted by a convenient monster. Made the whole story completely shit.

[@g80gzt]

That's just an idiot plot. The plot (including its twist) could only happen because everyone is an idiot that can't say what's happening.

[@santiagomenchaca4248]

@@g80gzt spoilers: the game takes place the simulated reality of what at first glance is the main villan

[@TheSaltyGendo]

I guess simply recontextualizing the events of a story isn't enough. Arguably, a good twist should give us something better that the original story would not give us. Like a greater appreciation for a characters's personality, struggles or journey (for example, Madoka Magica has two plot twists that enhance one of the characters greatly. If you know, you know) or a showing that the world of the story is more interesting than it first seemed (Attack on Titan and Digital Devil Saga). If a plot twist makes the story lesser because of it, it is a bad twist Basically, a good twist should add to what already exists, not just recontextualize it.

[@Brian-tn4cd]

I was not expecting Digital devil saga avatar tuner to be found in a random comment...

[@dannywatson4253]

And then there's the twist about Serph in DDS2... That one hurt!

[@HGForrest]

Bad twist: makes me wonder what all the prior fuzz was all about (like the good old it-was-all-just-in-your-head) Good twist: makes me realize what all the prior fuzz was all about (like whispered world, where it was all just in your head, but the plot actually builds upon that)

[@unknowntoall.8280]

My personal favorite twist happens in Styx: Master of Shadows, if only because I actually did manage to figure it out mere minutes before it was revealed. (Spoilers for those who care). The stories narrative device is presented as an imprisoned Styx being interrogated by a human governor and his son, telling them about his adventure thus far, with gameplay occurring in flashbacks. Mid-way through though, during a mission to rescue a prisoner from a very specific cell in the prison, the truth is revealed: there were no flashbacks. The Styx you were playing as is a Rakash (a clone, effectively), and was unknowingly completing the steps of the real Styx’s plan while real Styx was being interrogated. This is good twist to me, because there is enough foreshadowing for you to guess it, and it completely changes the plot from there on in. Here are the important clues… The Styx we play as can himself create clones of himself (a pretty central game mechanic, if I might add) which opens the gates for Styx himself being a clone. This clue is camouflaged by his clones being fairly crude and non sentient, but it still reveals the possibility. At the end of each interrogation sequence, the transition occurs with imprisoned Styx saying “and so I think to myself…” before cutting to an in engine cutscene of our Styx in his hideout “thinking to himself” (actually receiving orders telepathically) about what he has to do next. Interestingly, these “thoughts” always start with clone Styx apparently calling himself Rakash (he isn’t, The real Styx is, but our Styx isn’t cognizant of this yet) but we don’t know that it means clone yet; both Styx’s do, but the audience doesn’t yet. Honestly, if I hadn’t overhead a couple of guards in the prison talking about how the governor and his son were currently interrogated someone, I probably wouldn’t have figured it out. As it was, it only hit me moments before the reveal.

[@V4Now]

Yahtzee "no incest babies" Mangaka "dammit!"

[@babygorilla4233]

And Dan Harmon.

[@Ansemguy]

@@babygorilla4233 Well hold on, the writer of the community incest episode comes forward at the end of the ep to make sure we knew it wasn't Harmon specifically, remember?

[@babygorilla4233]

@@Ansemguy sir I'm referring to the incest space baby made out of Mortys mutated sperm that he's keeping secret and one of summers eggs. Also beth dates a clone of herself and Jerry sleeps with his stepdad. If it was just community I'd agree.

[@chrisdaughen5257]

@@louisduarte8763 I think it was the second to last episode of the final season. So I guess the writers weren't under as much pressure and could get away with writing episodes like that. Even the study group acted weirder than usual in that episode.

[@Irisverse]

Hey, that would imply that manga authors would actually commit to making their characters actually have sex.

[@georgeferetatis1040]

I would argue there's one more rule: the story is better WITH the plottwist. Nearly every "It was all a dream" twists fail this rule and basically make the story worthless, these stories would be better without the twist.

[@Cross31415]

You've kind of made a tautology there, because a good plot twist is one that enhances the story. So that's not so much a rule as the definition.

[@theloneomega574]

I'm a creative writing student and I've heard (not just twists) explained as: "It has to be surprising, but in retrospect, is the only thing that could have happened." Following the Silent Hill example, "of course he murdered her, just look at how unstable this guy is! Think any wife would be safe around someone like that?"

[@BLZ231]

Murdered isn’t quite the word I would use. Mary was dying from a terminal illness, and James killing her was an act of desperation after watching her suffer for three years and not being able to take it anymore. Yes, under normal circumstances a husband killing his wife would be an unequivocally bad thing, but the circumstances were far from normal.

[@sirzmo]

i literally just installed Second Sight, one of the only times i had to skip a Yawtzee video

[@kadosho02]

It is still worth a playthrough. The narrative grows, and moves with you, as you play

[@Dissonance556]

Yahtzee says that the plot twist of Sanabi felt impossible to predict, but I had the opposite experience. It felt overly foreshadowed and the plot felt like it dragged along while refusing to outright state it. When it finally did drop it, my thoughts were just "yea no I figured that out 3 hours ago". In chapter 2 when you get the upgrade, Mari talks about how implanting false memories leads to depression, later she gives you a harmonica and says "you know how to play", to which the general responds "I'm not your father" and Mari says "I know you're not". There's also this whole bit with the chapter boss being a replica of a human. All in chapter 2. It doesn't erase Yahtzee's point about lying to the audience, but the twist certainly doesn't come out of nowhere.

[@manavsridharan3811]

I was ok with Sanabi's plot twist lying to the audience, because the same lie has been implanted in the general's mind. Helps you sympathize with his goal of revenge until you realise that it's a robot programmed to do so. I agree with it being long drawn out though, it was pretty clear some cloning fuckery was going on.

[@kadosho02]

​@@hariman7727same, it still bugs me even today

[@Latronibus]

​​​@@hariman7727I am a bit puzzled by how you can conclude by 2 hours into FFX that Tidus isn't a time traveler. I can see coming up with something like the truth as a theory but I don't really see how you rule out time travel that early on. Assuming that's the twist you meant. If you meant the twist about the whole summoner journey, then I get it, but I also think that was deliberately not obfuscated. People just avoid talking about it because it's painful. They tell Tidus as much when he finds out.

[@manavsridharan3811]

@@Lucifronz But how do you convey the story by being an impartial narrator in this scenario? The whole game plays out mostly from the General's POV, except for the last chapter where we see Mari's story. Maybe the story could have been done without a twist, but I feel it would take away from the narrative.

[@dennyAyard_]

​@@hariman7727I don't remember anyone in FF X being dumb besides death-obsessed Seymour. Everyone else made some sense, (although, the Al Bhed didn't seem to have an end-game for their summoner kidnapping scheme).

[@PerkinsVR]

i exploded when you mentioned Second Sight. that game needs more recognition.

[@Katy133]

(Re: The Beyond Good & Evil segment) I'm reassured to hear that I wasn't the only player to not like that twist. I'd like to add that I think the twist actively hurts the story: One of the main reasons we like Jade as a protagonist is that she's an everyday person who just got caught up in the politics of the story. In her intro, she's trying to earn enough money to take care of her lighthouse and kids. Then she makes the choice to investigate the plot, even though it's dangerous and she has nothing to do with it. She has no supernatural powers, so her accomplishments are impressive. It's her lack of connection to the aliens that makes her compelling because that makes her impact on the story her choice. Adding the twist felt too much like a "chosen one" trope, which didn't fit in this type of "everyman gets caught up in political intrigue" plot. If she was always connected to the aliens, then were any of her choices really hers, or was she acting on her alien nature? The plot doesn't address that, it doesn't have enough time to by the end of the climax, so the twist ended up adding nothing significant, and hurting pre-established character. I still love that game though, Jade, Pey'j, and Double H were such memorable characters.

[@kehraus]

One of my favourite twists is with the original Myst. The game does little to force the player through a narrative, instead using each location that you explore to exhibit the lifestyles of two characters who had previously inhabited them. The brothers Sirrus and Achenar are the closest things to a narrative lead, spurring the player on to retrieve the missing pages of their books currently trapping them, to spring them from their wrongful confinement with increasing urgency. The twist has to be pieced together organically by the player: ultimately, neither brother deserves saving and their imprisonment is for good reason. Each world they formerly inhabited showcases their greed, cruelty and wickedness, so their father's equal punishment for the two was justified. By freeing either brother, the player receives a Bad End with the brother trapping you in their prison book. The organic sense of discovery and the jaw-dropping revelation still strikes me as an amazingly bold decision for the game to place such faith in the player in putting it all together.

[@weresquirrel]

Firstly, I'd like to mention that I'd forgotten how good Free Radical were at making expressive faces back then. I remember Timesplitters 2 and 3 being really good on that front too. Second, I think my favourite plot twist was in a movie; Lucky Number Slevin.

[@TheCoolHandsLucas]

I had so many laughs during the campaign of TS3. The time looped key, the "Ghost Goggles, Ghost Gun", so many good memories

[@weresquirrel]

@@TheCoolHandsLucas I think one of my favourite interactions in all gaming media was the "It's me!" "... Grandpa?" cutscenes. Comedy gold.

[@JoaoAgile]

This movie is indeed amazing!

[@Carlos-ln8fd]

I know it's infamous but i like the twist in bioshock infinite. It's thought provoking and fun.

[@bluecoin3771]

The biggest problem is when your only way of knowing about these fantastic games are through video essays that give away the plot twist. I didn’t want to play Silent Hill or Spec Ops until the video essay that spoiled their plot twists.

[@Semudara]

Yeeeaaaahhh, true. That is less so a weakness of Silent Hill, but absolutely the main weakness of a game like Spec Ops: The Line, which presents itself as a mostly unremarkable bog-standard shooter game unless you already know that it's intending to thwack you with some meta-commentary.

[@M00SHTY]

@@Semudara yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh. I really wish I had gone into spec ops blind. Would haved been a really cool experience.

[@randomjunk1977]

I LOVE the twist of Second Sight. It's probably my favorite time travel based twist. I never hear anyone talk about it though so it's pretty sweet to see Yahtzee name it his favorite.

[@lonewanderer3219]

One of the twists I really enjoyed was the reveal of Odin in God of War Ragnarok. It makes so much more sense on a 2nd playthrough, and the game follows the rules of a good twist well

[@normalrachael]

i was spoiled on this twist early on, but i didn’t feel like it was ruined because i still got to enjoy the “look at all the little moments that hint at the twist” angle that you typically get on a second playthrough.

[@BomberTM]

​@@normalrachaelyeah, that's why a plot twist being spoiled isn't something that bothers me, really. If the story is good, knowing the twist won't hurt the enjoyment of it.

[@KritechDesigns]

Good to see Second Sight getting some recognition! That plot twist has been living rent-free in my head for years, it was great!

[@ShaughnessyMusic]

My all time favourite twist is from FFX (technically it has two, but I'm talking about the first one where you learn about the eventual fate of a main character) It's among the best in terms of re-contextualizing almost every character interaction up until that point. It's a huge emotional beat, and it changes how you look at every character and interaction on subsequent play-throughs. It's HEAVILY foreshadowed, but not to the point of being completely obvious (at least not to me when I was 10). The second twist isn't that good, and isn't that bad.

[@Monocular0]

It just sucks the actual dialogue for that all-important twist is delivered so awkwardly.

[@Simplebutsandy]

My favourite reveal is when there is a montage of [nearly] every hint they dropped over the course of the story just before they confirm the twist itself. Yes I'm not ashamed to admit KOTOR got me good. I had to stop playing and sit down for a bit after that.

[@Sora383]

Yea KOTOR got me good too, I honestly just put my controller down and stared at the screen for a solid two minutes.

[@stryke-jn3kv]

Same, that was brilliantly done.

[@CivilWarMan]

That KOTOR montage had some very strong "The Usual Suspects" vibes.

[@user-sv8nf1ve9m]

One of my favorite plot twists is the one of the original oldboy movie, yet it breaks one of the rules lol

[@zoakdo]

My personal favorite plot twist in video games comes from the game 999. An absolutely stunning revelation that I adore. If anyone out there still has a DS, I recommend tracking down a copy and playing it for yourself. I can’t speak to the quality of the steam port, but I know that the two screens are pretty important to the game.

[@jl8417]

My first experience with it was a lets play of the steam port It's still a well written twist, so storywise not That much is lost But yeah i could imagine how even cooler that one part would be on the intended hardware

[@aaronfernando2258]

Funnily enough, another game by the same guy, AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative is my example of one the worst, most infuriating plot twists I've ever seen

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

Virtue's Last Reward was the furst of the trilogy I played, and the twist in that game got me too. In Zero Time Dilemma, it felt pretty forced though...

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

​@@aaronfernando2258Because it's a magician trick woth no real significance on the plot. It's just here so that the writer can feel clever. The original one worked better.

[@MarsAres]

I absolutely hated the twist at the end of Danganronpa V3's first chapter where it turns out, spoiler warning, that the character you were controlling was the killer in the murder you are investigating. When the twist is revealed, the game does a big song and dance where it shows you scenes you had previously played where the player character was doing things the game just flat out didn't tell you were happening. Kind of like Heavy Rain. And Danganronpa is a visual novel, so what the game tells you in writing has to be taken as gospel; but by extension you can't assume anything is happening in a scene if the game's prose doesn't narrate it. After that, the door is open for all sorts of stupid shit the game could do. Why should I now trust anything the prose says if the precedent has been set that the game can leave out half the important information to keep me in the dark for the sake of its mystery?

[@rudrose_entertainment]

I actually quit playing the game after that and never went back. I felt the same way that, if it's just going to make stuff up then why bother?

[@TheMultiTasker3]

I mean, to be fair, that's the definition of an unreliable narrator. There wouldn't be much of a mystery if the narrator just told you "And then that's where I set up the trap to kill the bad guy, it works like this..." You play the rest of the game with a different, more reliable narrator. They don't just pull the same twist every single case. Heavy Rain's twist doesn't work because you're viewing the game in an omnipotent point of view, you're not literally inside a characters head, who can choose to leave out details. It's supposed to all be one big take. So when you later learn, that the character you're controlling killed someone, while you were there, *in control of them* while they were *constantly onscreen* and where on a repeat view their actions *don't even make sense.* That's a bad twist.

[@zilvarro5766]

Interesting, I really loved that twist (except for I would have preferred to keep playing as Kaede). I think there were enough hints that should have made me suspicious in hindsight.

[@Xenomorthian]

Umineko did an unreliable narrator thing where the whole idea is any scene outside of battler's pov cannot be trusted as real and you'll notice all the times people die of magical causes exclusively happen outside of his view so while you're presented with one murder mystery story to enjoy you also get a second one thanks to battler constantly challenging the notion that it happened the way it was presented

[@SilverRay85]

I think v3's twist works when considering the game as a whole being built around themes of truth and lies. Having the game lie to you about who your player character is is just one way to show off that idea. Now, I don't remember too clearly as it has been years since I played v3, but I'm fairly sure the "song and dance" where it shows what kaede was doing to set up the murder *was* mentioned in the narration; just as offhand comments one shouldn't initially take much notice in. I remember being confused when she randomly picked up that ball, for instance, as the narration justifies it as her wanting it just in case for some arbitrary reason. After the twist, we learn she had wanted to use that ball for the murder weapon.

[@spenceduggs8449]

I wish there was a way I could prove I *ACTUALLY* had this on in the background while *ACTUALLY* watering my crops in Stardew the *ACTUAL* second he mentioned it. Yahtzee, get out of my house 😭

[@JamesMK92]

Really liked your comments about writers trying to get a one up on the audience predicting a twist. If you ever watched the Westworld TV show, apparently they changed the plot of Season 2 because someone on reddit correctly predicted its big twist while it was still in pre-production. Getting one up on your audience is NOT the point of telling a compelling story, if you have an intricate mystery with heaps of clues and hints and people care about it enough to figure out what's going to happen, you succeeded at what you were trying to do! You won!

[@what12388]

Persona 5 has one of my favourite plot twists ever: They hint towards the idea that we were betrayed, nudging the audience that the big twist is finding out who will betray you. The twist of the person that will betray you is so comically obvious that you feel a sense of power the narrative and think you got it all figured out. The twist is that the characters secretly did as well the entire time and without you knowing, were making the entire last dungeon into an elaborate trap to trick the villains into thinling they killed you. It's such a fun double twist that uses the obvious twist as a facade to trick the audience into not thinking about it further until it's revealed.

[@TheTriforceDragon]

I also feels it helps that the part of the story that tipped the main characters off to the betrayal is obvious in hindsight, but also something that most players probably wont catch on the first playthrough. It is that nice balance between keeping the surprise, but not feeling like you cheated your audience.

[@LeahLovesNature]

Yes! That moment is what shot Persona 5 up to be one of my Top 5 favorite games of all time. The whole team wasn't just playing the long game with that one, they were playing the LOOOOOONG game.

[@espio87]

Keeping up with Megami Tensei franchise, I would have to say that SMT4 has my favorite twist. You keep descending the catacombs in the Medieval Kingdom only to find out that you're not going underground at all. Finding out you're not in Medieval Fantasy but in Cyberpunk Dystopia was so cool.

[@matthewmuir8884]

@@TheTriforceDragon Incidentally, I just played Persona 5 Royal for the first time last year, and I noticed it immediately on my first playthrough: When Akechi mentioned hearing something about delicious pancakes, my mind immediately went, "Wait; only Morgana mentioned it" and I double-checked the dialogue up to that point to make sure.

[@TheMultiTasker3]

Something that helps add to it, is that the boxart features all the main party members, that character included. So way back when you very first see them, most players already know that they're going to be plot important and join your party at some point. They're expecting some sort of twist where this character that seems so against you is going to flip around and join your team somehow. So following that line of logic, most players will probably just rule them out as an option, because they're supposed to be one of the "good guys." Though with that said, I think the twist worked better in P5 vanilla, rather than Royal.

[@thehittite6982]

I quite like the third act twist of Knights of the Old Republic 2, where a whole bunch of standard RPG mechanics suddenly turn out to have been diegetic all along.

[@davidnaber4325]

I’m so glad someone else remembers Second Sight!! I played that back when it came out and that twist was so well executed.

[@furyrageguy5728]

I just like how plot twists are handled in Spike Chunsoft games, mainly Danganronpa, Zero Escape and Chaos;Child. Even if the story as a whole is dumb, the plot twist is ridiculously good. In the end a good plot twist sticks with you long after you finish the game.

[@myyoutubeaccount4167]

Lmao the plot twists in VLR and ZTD are pretty bad IMO.

[@seanno9744]

The first game twist to truly blow my mind was Braid

[@TheSaltyGendo]

"Are we the Baddies?"

[@shponglefan]

How Braid's twist was tied into the core game mechanics was just brilliant.

[@r3qu0]

Haven't played the game, can you tell me the twist?

[@seanno9744]

@@r3qu0 it’s only 15 bucks on steam and isn’t a huge time commitment. I’d go play it and experience it

[@BassForever]

@@r3qu0the set up for the game is you're trying to rescue a princess from an evil knight who's captured her. The MC has the power to rewind time which you use for various puzzles. The final level you rescue the princess and escape with her while the knight chases you... and then you learn the whole game was in reverse. You weren't rescuing a princess, you kidnapped a princess and were on the run the whole time.

[@fieryphoenix2501]

The bit about heavy Rain reminded me of the moment in I think it was Ocean's 12 where they do something off screen and then show it in flashback as part of the twist when the 1st movie didn't do that

[@Semudara]

Oh, yeah. The movie was fun, but that part in particular felt like just a wet napkin of a reveal. Like, "Oh man! You had no idea they were doing that other thing too, huh?" and I'm just like.... "Yeah. No, I didn't realize that was a thing. Because you never showed it. Or hinted at it."

[@michaelramon2411]

The worst video game plot twist I know is from the Zero Escape deathtrap game Zero Time Dilemma, so SPOILERS FOR THAT BELOW (and also the first Saw movie): In every Zero Escape game, a gang of random people wake up in a deathtrap dungeon and quickly (and someone questionably) conclude that the person behind it is one of them. In ZTD, it is eventually revealed that the mastermind was... that (supposedly) deaf and blind man in a wheelchair who has been sitting in the corner the ENTIRE TIME, always slightly out of frame so the player cannot see him, and the characters, who were aware that he was there, simply chose never to mention him. Ever. It's an incredibly unsatisfying and mean-spirited twist - it's completely unguessable in what's allegedly a mystery, the author actively lied to you, and the characters acted out-of-character in not bringing the relevant information up. The whole thing feels like a cruel prank: "Oh, you cared about trying to solve our mystery? Well, screw you." It's not just that the guy isn't one of the proper 'suspects' - if he was just someone hiding in a room that the main characters didn't know about, that would be a disappointing solution but would at least make sense in-universe. For comparison, the first Saw movie does something similar, with the dead guy lying in the middle of the room revealed at the end to be the alive mastermind who was just pretending. That's a little absurd if you really think about it, but at least the audience can see that body throughout the movie! Imagine if it had been in the corner and neither the camera nor anyone in the room had mentioned it at all. Yuck.

[@facugaich]

They do talk about him in roundabout ways though, for example when his team is killed by acid shower they will say "And he couldn't even see or hear anything" but you'll easily assume they are talking about Sean, even though he can actually hear. And Sean himself talks to him directly in one of the "bad" endings, I believe Mira's, when they wake up in front of the quantum computer they'll be dismayed that someone is chained and can't escape and Sean will tell them "sorry for leaving you here" but you'll assume again that it was the dog, given the camera angles.

[@EveCommitsCrimes]

One of the plot twists that I REALLY love comes from the game Omori - the reveal of what really happened to Sunny's older sister Mari completely re-contexualises his entire journey of learning self forgiveness and self love, because the situation is completely changed by the truth. I also like that after learning the truth, you do actually get to choose what happens to Sunny: either you persevere and allow yourself to be forgiven, or you don't, and end it all on the rooftop of the hospital. It's just such a well done twist, I wish we could get more stories like Omori

[@ser_saffron]

Especially because the game itself never lies to you at any point. You initially learn about Mari from other characters who tell you what they believe happened -- the only characters that actually KNOW what happened are unreliable narrators (and are established to be unreliable well in advance) until the reveal.

[@TheJadedJames]

With Omori it isn’t just that final reveal, the entire game you are pealing an onion and learning more about Sunny and his friends which is constantly recontexualizing the game world. It is one thing to eventually learn that Sunny’s friend group is fractured but … You get late enough into the story and you can’t look at that tree stump the same way.

[@thelaughingrouge]

"Hopefully I can ruin it before Bloober team does." I wish that didn't feel so prophetic.

[@Guymanbot97]

Is it bad I want it to fail just so all of the people who went "Bloober Team should make a Silent Hill" realize how much of frauds they are?

[@lovrokovacic2394]

To me, my possibly favourite twist is the one in the first Knights of the Old Republic. It is heavily foreshadowed without being on the nose or easy to predict, it makes the game all the more interesting after the reveal, and upon subsequent playthroughs, you start seeing more things that were hinting at it and that suddenly have a new light shed on them. Absolutely brilliant writing there!

[@SparkSovereign]

The game also lets you throw that knowledge around in dialogue once your character knows it. Whichever world you do last reacts appropriately and you don't feel like your character forgot the life changing revelation once the cutscenes end. Korriban must have been a real head scratcher for the writers, but the reaction of "wow, what a ballsy lie, sounds like you're sith material" gradually falling away to "wait you're not actually lying are you" worked really well.

[@SigmaSyndicate]

I feel like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic deserves a spot in the Plot Twist Hall of Fame, the game never lies to you (although some of the NPCs do), and just before they reveal the twist they show you a clip reel with all the lines in the game that were hinting toward it. It's really well-executed.

[@Ironcorgi2]

I really liked the horizon zero dawn plot twist due to the sheer scope of the apocalypse presented in the story and the solution to that apocalypse.

[@itsdantaylor]

0:46 The most recent jump scare i can recall that GENUINELY got me freaked was in Control. When you use the light switch to travel, you do so multiple times without incident and then BAM it just flashes to creepy ass Dylan's face, I screamed and haven't done that playing a game since RE2 back on the PSX. They did that kind of scare again in Alan Wake 2 but since it was after control I was kind of expecting it from Remedy.

[@andrewpoe3975]

This is why bioshock 1 has my favorite twist recontextualizing the whole game up til that point

[@SergioMach7]

Free Radical never recovered after Haze and its such a shame they closed their doors last month. A Second Sight or Timesplitters retrospective would be amazing.

[@jordanloux3883]

SPOILER FOR PORTAL 2: I loved the twist of Weatley becoming the main antagonist. Stephen Merchant made the character such a lovable moron that having Glados's power go to his head really shocked me, and even broke my heart to hear him blame me for all his misfortunes. Of course he's also so dumb you can see how easily he could believe those blatant lies just to hold onto his new sense of superiority.

[@Chromeberd]

Well you can't really blame Weatley. The game more or less portrays that whoever is in charge of the facility is subject is still being controlled by the facility's software. Weatley was just as unfortunate to be in charge as Glados was. The game even downright says it when "she" deletes her memory's as Caroline at the end.

[@Topo842]

@@Chromeberd I'm pretty sure she was lying about deleting Caroline, the lyrics of her goobye song state otherwise: "… She was a lot like you Maybe not quite as heavy Now little Caroline is in here too" Implying she is still there

[@Chromeberd]

@@Topo842 When Caroline is "deleted" she's just deleted from Glados. Not the memory banks of the facility. The credit music makes sense to be more of a separate entity to Glados. I credit this to the fact that "Still Alive" played when she was shut down entirely in the first game. It also just makes thematic sense anyway. Whoever runs the facility is not entirely free to do whatever they want and are hard wired to fulfill Aperture's objective. They still continue to run tests after all.

[@AmphibiousGentleman]

Is that really a "twist", though, in the way we're defining it here? It's certainly shocking, but it doesn't reveal a secret that forces the audience to reinterpret the plot events leading up to that point.

[@TheOnyxSpy]

Second Sight was SUCH a good game, and i personally loved the plot twist, and I am so glad to hear Yahtzee feels the same way about it.

[@adampeteritis5488]

One of the things is that Yahtzee give solid writing advice too! I'm so glad one of my classmates in college told showed me his videos from Zero punctuation all those year ago. You're a treasure Yahtzee, keep doing what you're doing!

[@thefunborgpl]

one of the best plot twist i've seen in a game is in crosscode it completly changed how i saw that game i'm not going to spoil it because not enogh people talk about this game, but if you know you know

[@BP-dn9nv]

While I didn't hate the Last Jedi as much as some people, I did hate the twists it pulled because it felt less like they were there to pull the story along and more because Rian Johnson wanted to say "gotcha!". Spoilers: Nowhere in the first or second movie did Rey give any indication she thought her parents were jedi or anyone important, she thought they were coming back for her. Kylo telling her they were nobodies wasn't him talking to her, it was him talking to the members of the audience who spent the last few years theorizing who her parents were, meaning the twist was automatically going to be less impactful after the movie's initial screening because future viewers wouldn't have the two years of internet debates and theories of buildup. And the decision to kill Snoke out of nowhere was done purely for shock value as it did nothing for the plot itself and left some gaping holes into the continuity.

[@TheJadedJames]

I’ve never been pulled out of a movie quite like I was at the end of The Last Jedi, in large part for that reason. Rey was not online theory crafting about her parents. Their identities were never a mystery to her

[@theinspiredgamer1949]

My favorite twist in video games still to this day is the revelation behind Project Zero Dawn in Horizon Zero Dawn. The reveal that the Faro Plague really did consume everything and that Zero Dawn would actually bring life back centuries later blew my mind the first time I saw it. No other twist has got me like that one.

[@dylan1kenobi]

At first I thought "this is a great twist!" but upon second thought I think Horizon is more of a great "Reveal", because the game is consistently asking the questions "Where did Alloy come from? Why are there robot dinosaurs? Why is civilization at this point?" these are all answered by the reveal of Project Zero Dawn. Admittedly it is a FANTASTIC reveal and creates some brilliant story beats and pressure to finish the story. "This bad thing happened in the past and it's going to happen again if you don't stop it" Great character motivation! I think the key difference is a twist is "I thought it was this, but it was actually this" and it changes the context of everything before. A reveal is "I don't know what this is, but now I do" and it gives you the context you were missing before.

[@ObeseChess]

I agree here - it doesn’t feel like a plot twist per se, but it’s a shockingly well crafted narrative in a medium that doesn’t lend itself to them.

[@SparkSovereign]

I also really appreciated how the in universe reason for robot dinosaurs is the same as the out of universe reason; "why not make the cool thing if I have the opportunity, and I like dinosaurs" 😂 The main plot reveals weren't anything I didn't expect far before I got to them, but they were presented well anyway; the characters involved reacted reasonably given their situations, so I never felt like the game was insulting me. The two that actually got me were 1) the destruction of Apollo (I knew the betrayal was happening hours ago, but not what that character was trying to achieve with it) and 2) our boy Travis, not only blending in his introduction with a bunch of rejections but the fact that despite his personality and how everyone hated him, he was basically the only person who not only took his job seriously but understood the assignment and succeeded in his task. Truly the best chosen of them all.

[@tbotalpha8133]

My first exposure to the "secretly the future" twist was in Jak 2: Renegade. I was young, and had never before encountered the idea that a world's future could be so radically different from its past as to be unrecognisable. Alas, it's also a twist I will never fall for again, now that I know it's possible.

[@justinsinke2088]

The "see it coming" aspect is a bit nuanced, as a twist done well can still be rewarding for those who piece it together ahead of time, making you feel smart for figuring it out. A bad twist is when the deductions to see it coming feel like they're insulting your intelligence (or, as you say, lying to the audience directly or by omission). OSP did a pretty good video on plot twists not long after Game of Thrones ended.

[@matthewmuir8884]

Yeah, that was a good video. Another thing that it pointed out is that the plot with the twist should be more interesting than the story without the twist could've been; a twist that makes the story less interesting is a bad twist. One of my favourite examples of a bad twist in that category would be the infamous Euphemia Incident from Code Geass.

[@matthewmuir8884]

@@NocturnalNick I'm not familiar with that example, but I do know of two really obvious twists that still work as twists because of the ramifications they have on the plot and characters: (spoilers for _Naruto_ and _My Hero Academia):_ Tobi being Obito and Dabi being Toya Todoroki are some of the most obvious twists to have ever been created, but they work because of how the reveal affects the characters and story.

[@Romalac]

I think my absolute favorite plot twist is in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. (Don't read on if you haven't played- I highly reccomend the game and the story is best if viewed blindly.) We spend the whole game thinking we're playing as the ghost of a man in red, but as the game goes on, this assumption falls apart more and more as other intrigues develop, and in the last moments, we finally learn that we were, in fact, the man in red's pet cat. It's not _heavily_ foreshadowed prior, but it _is_ foreshadowed in the first few seconds of the game and there are little hints here and there that suddenly make so much more sense. (And then another twist involving our tutorial mentor character is revealed thereafter.)

[@ckeegan01]

"Would you kindly...." My favourite

[@projectplus4036]

Been watching Yahtzee for years im so glad you all have been able to start a new channel together. Thanks for the entertainment now and over the years.

[@Pyroniusburn]

Bioware in their heyday absolutely nailed good twists, Kotor 2 has both a great un-twist, as well as a twist that does a good job justifying how freakishly loyal your party members are (compare with Dragon Age where they'll abandon or turn on you if you do enough shit they hate), as well as RPG mechanics that you'd otherwise just take for granted.

[@thomasgiles2876]

I'd like to amend rule 4 to be: The twist can't tell the audience that the whole story was a waste of time or that none of the events happened. Second Sight is premonitions, but there is a through line of a present day story. My most hated twist was Prey 2017 where the opening line is "AND NOW ITS TIME TO PLAY THE MIIIIND GAME" (gee I wonder what the end is going to be) and the twist is that its all a computer simulated dream, everyone died, and you had no effect on the actual story, the actual story will start in the sequel we will totally make and not forget about. By comparison Call of Juarez Gunslinger is a shaggy dog story where every level changes because the main character is clearly lying, every level is a twist and its wonderful.

[@GhostGirlBlues]

you missed the point of Prey. it's not ""haha we tricked you while foreshadowing it the whole time", but instead: "we are trying to teach an alien empathy as a last desperate attempt to save humanity". that's the story. the whole game is a series of trolley problems

[@thomasgiles2876]

@@GhostGirlBlues cool, they could have told a story while they were obsessed with their psych 101 schlock. The way Silent Hill did. The way Signalis did. The way Bioshock did. The twist that you're a gestalt version of a person thats trying to achieve self actualization through empathy has been done before and better with an actual story.

[@dridyexe1184]

seconded on the prey twist being fuckin garbage, i was quite into the game until that happened. Its awful aswell cuz the game actually had some opportunities to explore some interesting ideas, such as wether being an original or a copy matters, or wether its okay to risk incuring great damage to save some lives, and it just throws them all out the window with that ending.

[@jaykolokithas9329]

See this is why your second book in the deda series slapped so hard. You get these plot beats and understand how to build them

[@kurei2001]

I still think of the end of Red vs. Blue Season 6 as one of my favorite plot twists because, as a goofy space comedy, it didn't necessarily need to explain its more absurd plot points and silly premise, but manages to make sense of all of it.

[@WelcomeHorizons]

I wish I could upvote this twice for the simple fact that you mentioned Second Sight in 2024.

[@No_Superman10]

Second Sight Mentioned! Fucking love that game, a grossly underrated gem that deserves so much more fame.

[@loren5432]

I've played Second Sight not too long ago, and it's hard to believe that the game didn't do too well on release. You have so many cool powers to play with (possession, telekinesis, invisibility), and the plot twist is so good that it's insane how it never got a sequel or spawned a series of spiritual successors. Sure, the shooting mechanic is bad (the game auto aims for you despite it not having a good camera at all), but it's still enjoyable enough.

[@ZaydinTTV]

I still remember being floored by the twists in KOTOR and Jade Empire at the time.

[@williammatthews3667]

Spec Ops: The Line and Trails to Azure come to mind as some of the best twists I've experienced in games

[@MinorCirrus]

Spec Ops: The Line is such a hidden gem.

[@TheSaltyGendo]

Muhrican man realizes muhrican soldiers aren't the heroes that the movies say they are

[@nirast2561]

An example that works is God of War Ragnarok. And example that really doesn't is the Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V manga (Yahtzee, you brought this on yourself by mentioning that last rule). In GoWR, Tyr turning out to be Odin is very subtly foreshadowed throughout the game. His reaction to the prophecy being false, his reluctance to fight and overall uselessness, him pushing Atreus towards going to Asgard and trying to prevent Kratos from getting there or killing Heimdall. It's very subtle, but you see it on your second playthrough and can only think "This fucking guy" every time a moment like that comes up. I shouldn't comment on the Yu-Gi-Oh one, but basically, through time travel shenanigans, the protagonist's love interest goes back in time, falls in love with the protagonist's dad, and becomes the former's mom. It's dumb and adds nothing to the plot, only leaving a sour taste in your mouth when you think about the manga again.

[@cipher4e]

one of my favorite twists from a movie was book of eli. tiny little things all movie hinting at the twist but nothing outright stating it and the reveal at the end makes the movie

[@conorskerritt-morgan4045]

So glad to see some love for Second Sight - the gameplay might have been a tad clunky, but that was the first video game story I remember blowing me away.

[@Oreosforlunch]

Knights of the Old Republic 1 Bioshock 1

[@StupidButCunning]

While I loved BioShock, I never got far into KOTOR 1. The first one I played was KOTOR 2 and the "plot twist" there was less a plot twist and more a flashing neon sign accompanied by an air-raid siren. Don't get me wrong, I loved KOTOR 2; solid story and great mechanics for its time, but the "reveal" was painfully obvious from the beginning.

[@OptimusSledge]

@@StupidButCunning I don't think there was a twist in KotOR 2.

[@armelior4610]

yeah, the character that is always telling you not to trust anyone and is spewing sith rethoric (just in a more intelligent-sounding way) being a sith and betraying you is not much of a plot twist...

[@OptimusSledge]

@@armelior4610 Kreia wasn't a Sith or a Jedi by that point, though she had been both in the past. Interestingly, given we're discussing twists, she makes reference to how there is no twist in one of her final pieces of dialogue: "Perhaps you were expecting some surprise, for me to reveal a secret that had eluded you, something that would change your perspective of events, shatter you to your core. There is no great revelation, no great secret. There is only you."

[@armelior4610]

@@OptimusSledge "Kreia wasn't a Sith or a Jedi by that point" so she keeps saying and a lot of people seem to believe her... she's the opposite of Jolee Bindo, who is still a jedi at heart

[@normalguycap]

This is what modern devs and storytellers fail to understand when they try to misguidedly subvert expectations. The thing you are twisting or replacing has to still be satisfying. You can't replace it with NOTHING. Rian Johnson.

[@Rendo86]

dId JJ do any better? Honestly can we not do this?

[@thegodofalldragons]

​@@Rendo86They can BOTH be incompetent. It's not a contest.

[@Rendo86]

@@thegodofalldragons I just blame everyone + myself

[@normalguycap]

@@Rendo86 That guy is just the most famous version of this malicious trend of bad writing.

[@Rendo86]

@@normalguycap i mean he started it

[@Su1c1deK1ng1028]

Excellent subject matter and execution

[@Danimita92]

And here I am over 20 years after playing SH2 just realising that the "3 years later" thing was also a lie...

[@dskawaii9200]

I played it last year and didn't realise it either. But i do have a tendency of missing clearly told information so...

[@Topo842]

Same, is like the plot that keeps on twisting

[@joeyparkhill8751]

Yahtzee, if you are reading this, I have a rather silly idea: when the week of St. Patrick's Day comes around in March, you should do that particular week's Fully Ramblomatic episode in a Ridiculous Irish Accent, complete with Cartoon Yahtzee & Cartoon Dog dressed as Bearded Leprechauns!