What are the weirdest and most extreme twists in lower profile games?

[Tavernade]

Not quite as low profile as some of the other games being posted, but I'm not sure that any of the Professor Layton games had an ending twist/reveal that seemed even remotely plausible at the beginning of the story.

Spoiler

It say a lot when the game with everyone you talk to turning out to be steampunk robots is the most realistic and grounded. The worst one, for me, was the one where it turned out instead of ghosts the destruction of the town was because every night a sea monster and a giant robot had a kaiju fight (I think over a lost treasure). I did enjoy that in the time travel game they came up with a twist that was even less believable than time travel too.

 

[RochHoch]

The Wonderful 101

The alien invaders you've been fighting throughout the entire game are revealed to be time travelers from a distant future where Earth became a galactic superpower. The same technology that the main characters use to fight evil allowed humanity to expand across the universe, conquering planets left and right while crushing all resistance. Desperate to fight back, survivors from planets that were destroyed by Earth's empire banded together to travel back and time and destroy the Earth before humanity could optimize space travel, and THAT is the invading force you've been fighting this whole time

 

[Poltergust]

Not quite as low profile as some of the other games being posted, but I'm not sure that any of the Professor Layton games had an ending twist/reveal that seemed even remotely plausible at the beginning of the story.

Spoiler

It say a lot when the game with everyone you talk to turning out to be steampunk robots is the most realistic and grounded. The worst one, for me, was the one where it turned out instead of ghosts the destruction of the town was because every night a sea monster and a giant robot had a kaiju fight (I think over a lost treasure). I did enjoy that in the time travel game they came up with a twist that was even less believable than time travel too.

Click to shrink...

It's funny that

Spoiler

Unwound Future actually does have time traveling in it, though. The Layton games are very adamant about not allowing for supernatural phenomena but the one time the games feature it, it was used very effectively.

 

[Tavernade]

It's funny that

Spoiler

Unwound Future actually does have time traveling in it, though. The Layton games are very adamant about not allowing for supernatural phenomena but the one time the games feature it, it was used very effectively.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

I can be really critical about the twists in latter games but that ending crushed me. Assuming we're still talking about Unwound Future and I didn't forget it showing up elsewhere.

 

[Don Fluffles]

La-Mulana constantly teases you with Eden in which you have to solve a long, multi step puzzle.
Then when you finally unlock the last door, you get rewarded with a blood curdling scream and the entire room changing to walls of laughing Olmecs. The true name of the area, Gate of Illusion, is revealed.

Easily one of the greatest trolling moments in gaming history.

 

[Christor]

Titanic: Adventure Across Time.

Ending 9:

Spoiler

If the items are in their right place, you prevent World War 1 and 2 from ever occurring (no funding for the Black Hand to make WW1 happen and Hitler became a successful artist) and the Russian Revolution is prevented from happening, thus, communism never occurred.

 

[gappvembe]

ICEY
I just thought it looked like a cool
Side-scrolling action game.

Spoiler: Then the plot hit…

and a META game in disguise. As you follow the narrator's omnipresent voice, you will see through ICEY's eyes and learn the truth about her world. The narrator will constantly urge you in one direction, but you must ask, "Why? Why am I following his directions?" Obey? Rebel?

 

[KDC720]

Came in to mention XCOM The Bureau. Decent game elevated by a genuinely cool twist.

Another cool one is from the game Get Even from 2017. The twist is hard to explain without knowledge of the games setup, but I'll do my best summarize.

Spoiler: Spoilers

So the first half of the game has you playing as a Jason Statham type as he's being held in captivity and forced to recount the events of a bombing to his captor via a VR device strapped to his head. It's later revealed your character has been in a vegetative state the whole time, and control switches over to his captor for the second half with a new gameplay mechanic as you gain new perspectives as to what actually happened.

 

[Beary Jams]

Honestly surprised nobody has said Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit yet.

 

[djinn]

8-Bit Adventures

Spoiler: Ending spoilers

The actual big bad of the game is dust in your game cartridge that's been slowly corrupting the game. You defeat it by blowing the dust off the cartridge.

 

[GreenMamba]

since all my other options were already mentioned, i am a big fan of Dog's Life (PS2) ending, a AGES 3 OR MORE GAME which features promise of dog sex and a human being mutilated in horrific ways.

I like how they go "hey look it is a cartoon murder ! .... nope, horrific implications murder"

Dog's Life [PS2] Ending Cutscene

Rated Pegi 3+Posted because I couldn't find another video that was just the ending cutscene and not the final level

www.youtube.com

Click to shrink...

This is some wild shit, and you're totally right.

"Haha the bad lady got stuck in a can.

Oh no, never mind, the belt reversed and she got blended into cat food."

 

[Birdie]

Altered Beast was just a play.

 

[Kapryov]

I played Ar nosurge Plus a few years ago on the Vita and it had a kinda weird twist going on there too.

Spoiler

There are two different paths you follow through the story, one is a girl and her robot I think (it's been a few years c'mon)? Similar to the Teen Titans one above, it's eventually revealed that you - the player - are controlling the robot from your real life world, reaching into theirs. You have numerous conversations with them about it. They also realise you're controlling other characters in the game at times.
The game was ok, I finished it and didn't hate my time with it, but that's what really stayed with me. That and the battle music.

 

[Yata]

The ending of Shibuya Scramble was the most wtf in recent memory

Spoiler

where characters from the very forgettable 2000s anime Cannan where major players in the story and even got their own epilouge chapter

Click to shrink...

The anime was made after the game came out to expand on the ending, and not otherwise. Though the change of writers and artstyle in the epilogue chapter is sure shocking.

 

[FriskyCanuck]

Disaster Report 4

At the beginning of the game the player character gives up their seat on a bus for an elderly woman and then the earthquake strikes.

The player character gets knocked out for a short while and comes to a few minutes afterwards. Then they spend the next 5 days trying to escape the devastated city but only end up back where they started. They receive a ticket for a helicopter evac at the city airport and are transported along with several other stranded civilians to the evac site.

Spoiler: ENDING SPOILER

It was a ruse and they end up getting kidnapped by a human trafficking ring with the intention of selling them into slavery overseas. The ringleader being none other than the elderly woman you gave your seat to on the bus at the start of the game.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

My answer to this is the Baten Kaitos games.

Spoiler

In the first game, which is titled "Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean," until like the 60% point in the game, the party members are gathering MacGuffins, and they're kept by the main character. At one point, the main character freaks out because he lost the MacGuffin. The party members begin to accuse each other.

It's then revealed that the main character is the one who "stole" it. He set up an intentional "chance" meeting with the antagonist, "accidentally" slipping and giving her the opportunity to take the MacGuffin. When this is revealed, he turns into some red-eyed villain. When he's confronted by the party like 5 hours later, IMO he should have been killed, but he's forgiven. Even though he didn't deserve to be. At all.

Then it's revealed that the main character is a card brought to life or something.

THEN, in the ending.... that "Lost Ocean"? It was INSIDE THE MAIN HEROINE.


And then in Baten Kaitos Origins, there's many instances where the game switches perspectives to a group of people from the past. It's then revealed that these people turned into the Ancient Evil God from the first game.

And then it's later revealed that the man you've been helping the whole time is some sadistic villain who has a torture chamber hidden in his office, is the father of the main character, and had some secret gay relationship with one of the primary antagonists of the first game.

And then in the ending it's revealed that the main character and main heroine end up giving birth to the main antagonist of the first game.

Those games are nuts and I love them.

 

[NekoFever]

The chimp was sent into space and was recovered from the ocean by the team on the sea platform the game is set on after its pod returned to Earth.
Turns out it was carrying a common virus that mutated when it was on orbit and that's the game's equivalent of the T-Virus that's causing all the shit.

Click to shrink...

IIRC in that game you're immune to the virus because your character has a cold.

 

[Desma]

You, I just remembered the big plot twist for Blue Reflection Second Light

Spoiler

ok, so the world is destroyed and the girls there are the last people alive.

aight, so their plan is to rebuild the world by giving their feelings of their normal lives to a thingamajig. Something that does work, and the world is rebuilt yay, but they all lose their memories of what happened in the game.

but then turns out your main character was actually from this future world, and she travelled to the past by getting in contact with that same thingamajig.

you see, she really wanted to be a "special girl" (her life was just too boring, being a "normal girl" before), so that thing actually grants that by sending her to the past where the events of the game take place.

It does help her goal of being a "special girl", but sadly, they'll all going to lose their memories at the end of the game, so your main character goes back to being a normal girl before.

...

Which leads to her getting in contact with that same thingamajig that grants her the same wish in the exact same way of sending her to the past, to the start of the game.

Your main character is just stuck in this perpetual time loop. When you go fight the final boss, she literally goes "ah, this has happened before"

Bruh

 

[Hailinel]

Famicom Detective Club I&II are full of twists, and the twists in Part II are particularly wild.

Spoiler: FDC Part II

Part II's mystery is mostly set around a high school after one of their students, Yoko Kojima, was murdered. Yoko was investigating a school urban legend, the Girl Who Stands Behind, about the ghost of a blood-covered girl that appears from behind you. At this same school fifteen years prior, another student, Shinobu Asakawa, went missing. Throughout the game at points, emphasis is given to a section of wall on the campus that was noticeably patched with plaster, and it's very easy to assume that Asakawa was entombed behind it even when none of the characters come out and say it.

Eventually, it's revealed that the origin of the legend was when a student witnessed a bloodied Shinobu in the window of the school late at night. She had accidentally been hit by a car driven by the school's principal Urabe, who has a sterling reputation, after she angrily left following an argument with a fellow student, Hibino. Urabe helped Hibino by covering up the accident. They took her to the school and hid the body, but didn't realize that she was still alive, giving her the opportunity to look out the window.

Hibino ended up becoming a teacher at the same high school, and Yoko Kojima was one of his students. He flipped out when Yoko, who was actually Shinobu's cousin, acted like Shinobu while asking him questions about the urban legend, and killed her. Urabe, the principal, had tried taking the fall for both deaths, leaving suicide note before killing himself, but the main character and Ayumi uncover the truth. Hibino loses his goddamn shit and attacks them with a knife, shattering a mirror at the end of the school hallway, and in the process revealing the actual place Shinobu's corpse had been hidden all these years. (The plaster patch just being a red herring to implicate a different character entirely.)

And on top of all of this, it's revealed after the mystery is solved that Hibino was actually, and secretly, Urabe's son, who was raised by one of Urabe's friends, and thus the reason why Urabe went to such great lengths to protect him to the point of leaving a false suicide confession.

Good lord, I don't even know if I did the description justice. The game is just one twist after another.

 

[beelulzebub]

Danganronpa V3

Spoiler

The title is "Danganronpa 53" because it's just a TV show season

Click to shrink...

Came here to post this. Honestly that has to be one of my favorite reveals in any game ever.

 

[dskzero]

Narcosis.

It's a very big spoiler.

Spoiler: BIGASS SPOILER

The whole game is you trying to escape a disaster in an deep sea base. Narcosis is a psychiatric or medical term that's the altered state of mind that one suffers when you're breathing oxygen in an hyperbaric state, as in in the deep sea floor, so you're walking around these structures and watching some pretty out there stuff, like giant characters, a frozen diver that stalks you, a guy in a very old diving suit apparently helping you, and other surreal images, but at the same time, there is this interview narrating what's going on, such as "i went there to do this", but the narrator insists he never lost control of his mind, he was fully professional and didn't despair because he was trained and ready to do this.

You are led to believe this is the guy just trying to deny that he was going insane for profesional or pride reasons, but in the end when you're getting to the escape pod, you see another diver getting there first and he does see you but can't stop the last available pod to help you escape, in visible distress, while the narrator talks about how he regrets not being able to save another diver that was just getting there, while you're left to wander the bottom of the sea in delusional madness until your oxygen supply runs out and you suffocate.

As you can guess, the interview wasn't with your character. It was someone else who did manage to escape.

I get chills thinking about it.

Altered Beast was just a play.

Click to shrink...

So was Super Mario Bros. 3

Honestly surprised nobody has said Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit yet.

Click to shrink...

I guess these are high profile games.

Came in to mention XCOM The Bureau. Decent game elevated by a genuinely cool twist.

Another cool one is from the game Get Even from 2017. The twist is hard to explain without knowledge of the games setup, but I'll do my best summarize.

Spoiler: Spoilers

So the first half of the game has you playing as a Jason Statham type as he's being held in captivity and forced to recount the events of a bombing to his captor via a VR device strapped to his head. It's later revealed your character has been in a vegetative state the whole time, and control switches over to his captor for the second half with a new gameplay mechanic as you gain new perspectives as to what actually happened.

Click to shrink...

Get Even is a game I hated while playing it, but it hasn't really left my mind ever since. I think the plot, which walks that line between the mundane (the adultery, the bomb) and the batshit insane (the whole sci-fi part, the asylum) was a genius idea that was left to die by a terrible implementation.

I'm so glad the devs got their shit together and made Chernobylite.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

Also I don't know if it's anything out of this world but Magna Carta on the PS2 has a twist that stayed with me.

Spoiler

Main character meets the main heroine early on after a battle between two nations is interrupted by a massive attack by the opposing nation's Queen. Main character ends up in a cave and meets the main heroine who has comically severe amnesia ("Hi, I'm Reith. Hi, I'm Reith. Hi, I'm Reith"). They team up to fight against the other nation and to regain her memories. Main character falls in love with main heroine. Main heroine had genuine amnesia, but once it's restored, they find out that she's the opposing nation's Queen.

 

[Deleted member 27921]

In MLB Power Pros, there is a Character Creation mode called "Success Mode" that is similar in concept to "Road to the Show" in new The Show games, but has a lot of anime life-sim elements as well.

There are a lot of "endings" to Success Mode, including your character getting cut from the minors and being deleted, to advancing through the ranks up to AAA, and eventually becoming "drafted" and usable on the MLB rosters in Season and Dynasty modes.

Part of the game in Success Mode is impressing your coaches and an MLB scout, hopefully earning enough Evaluation Points to get promoted from A to AA, AA to AAA, and eventually getting drafted.

Success Mode can play out many different ways, but the "true ending" routes eventually reveal that

Spoiler

THE SCOUT IS YOUR DAD WHO DISAPPEARED WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD. HE IS A WASHED-UP MAJOR LEAGUER WHO RESENTS THE GAME OF BASEBALL BUT BECAME A SCOUT IN ORDER TO REFORGE A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU, HIS ESTRANGED SON.

and then your character becomes signable in Season and Dynasty modes, most likely making 300gp a year.

 

[scare_crow]

In the game Drawn To Life, which was pretty aimed towards kids, during the credits in the form of a sideshow it's revealed that the entire world you've been fighting in is the dream of one of the NPCs in game, who fell into a coma after getting into a terrible car accident that killed both of his parents.



In other releases they replaced it with the kid simply fell off of a tree and got knocked out and dreamed up the world when he was unconscious, but the original ending is still so crazy to me.


The shot of the mother looking back with the lights of the other car on them is pretty haunting. Messed me up pretty bad as a kid.

Click to shrink...

BLEH to the shot of the little girl praying in the second one.

 

[Acetown]

The ending to Monster Party on the NES was pretty bonkers:

Spoiler

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

In MLB Power Pros, there is a Character Creation mode called "Success Mode" that is similar in concept to "Road to the Show" in new The Show games, but has a lot of anime life-sim elements as well.

There are a lot of "endings" to Success Mode, including your character getting cut from the minors and being deleted, to advancing through the ranks up to AAA, and eventually becoming "drafted" and usable on the MLB rosters in Season and Dynasty modes.

Part of the game in Success Mode is impressing your coaches and an MLB scout, hopefully earning enough Evaluation Points to get promoted from A to AA, AA to AAA, and eventually getting drafted.

Success Mode can play out many different ways, but the "true ending" routes eventually reveal that

Spoiler

THE SCOUT IS YOUR DAD WHO DISAPPEARED WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD. HE IS A WASHED-UP MAJOR LEAGUER WHO RESENTS THE GAME OF BASEBALL BUT BECAME A SCOUT IN ORDER TO REFORGE A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU, HIS ESTRANGED SON.

and then your character becomes signable in Season and Dynasty modes, most likely making 300gp a year.

Click to shrink...

lmao

 

[B.K.]

Bravely Default

Spoiler

Airy Lies