12 Video Game Stories That Mess With Your Head
For every run of the mill video game story that plays it safe, there are those with writing and twists that’ll leave you dazed and confused in the best possible way. These are the best 12 video game stories that mess with your head. *Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Soma
From the second you awaken on Soma’s sunken, robot infested facility, it’s clear something isn’t right.
Some of the mechanical monstrosities wandering the vessel’s corridors claim to be crew members that perished long ago, crying out in unnerving wails of pain and confusion should the player try to move or deactivate them.
Meanwhile, the main character, Simon Jarrett, has no memory of why he’s in this strange place to begin with. His last memory is of a visit to an experimental doctor, supposedly able to help alleviate his memory issues with a new treatment method.
As players progress through the game though, it’s revealed that the facility was meant to harbor the memories of the last survivors of earth, transferring them into machines so that they could live on in some way.
Simon is one such individual, his memories saved shortly before his original body died so many years ago.
This raises several questions for the player. Did those machines they deactivated earlier really feel pain when they were shut down? Was it like dying? Can they really be considered Simon anymore, or are they something else?
There’s no easy solution, instead leaving the player to turn it over in their head again and again until they arrive at an answer they can live with.
Dead Space
While some of the series’ later entries may have visualized insanity in better ways, the original Dead Space’s story still stands as a masterclass in mental chicanery.
From the start, protagonist Isaac Clarke is shown to be on his harrowing mission to find his girlfriend Nicole. He is intent on rescuing her, and after encountering her a number of times on the USG Ishimura, appears able to see things through.
Shortly before the game’s end however, it is revealed that Nicole had been dead all along. In a video sent to Isaac prior to his arrival on the space craft, she commits suicide to spare herself from the fate of being turned into a necromorph.
Unable to cope with this fact, Isaac still went to the Ishimura. Once there, the alien Marker twisted his grief into hallucinations that would cause him to take it back to the planet where it and its necromorph thralls lied dormant.
It’s a lot to take in at first, but after reflecting on the clues left for players to find – namely the acronym created by the first letter of each chapter title – it’s clear Isaac wasn’t the only one who couldn’t see the truth right in front of him.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
While later entries in Hideo Kojima’s legendary series tended to lean more toward the convoluted than truly mind bending, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty offered some truly jaw dropping twists and turns.
Near the end of the game, players have come to understand and care for the game’s new protagonist Raiden. While not the legendary Solid Snake, he still managed to see himself through super soldiers and prove himself a legendary soldier in his own right.
After being captured by Solidus Snake and Russian agent Olga, though, and managing to escape shortly after, his world, and the narrative players have been fed, starts to unravel.
His commanding officer, the Colonel, starts to send him nonsensical messages via his codec communicators, bouncing between gibberish and fourth wall breaking orders.
This is because the Colonel was actually a program run by the GW Super Computer, which Raiden uploaded a virus to shortly after his capture.
Once he reaches Solid Snake, he learns this deception was part of a much larger deception. The entire mission was orchestrated as a recreation of Shadow Moses, meant to create a soldier on par with Solid Snake.
Both Raiden’s and players’ jaws were planted firmly on the floor, no longer sure what to believe in or view as real throughout the remainder of the game.
Bioshock
It wouldn’t be a list of mind bending games without Bioshock and its unpredictable twist.
From the moment players emerge from their submersible into the ravaged city of rapture, they’re guided by the ever polite revolutionary Atlus.
Every command of where to go next, which players wouldn’t bat an eye at due to the norms of video game structure and design, is followed to the letter, and all the more easily thanks to Atlus’ regular “would you kindly” before them.
Once players reach the paranoid ruler of rapture, Andrew Ryan, though, the true meaning behind Atlus’ phrasing and presence becomes clear.
The player’s character was far from a stranger to Rapture. In fact, they were a genetically modified man made by Atlus to kill Andrew Ryan, hypnotized to follow any order that followed the phrase “Would you kindly.”
Every order given to the player flashes before their eyes, including Atlus’ most recent command to kill Andrew Ryan; and, as Ryan shows, he is more than capable of ensuring the command is carried out by his own word.
As Ryan tests the power of the hypnotic suggestion for himself, players are helpless to stop it, already caught in the machinations they themselves never realized. Instead of playing Bioshock, the game plays them.
Doki Doki Literature Club
There’s a certain expectation that comes with dating visual novels, and players of Doki Doki Literature Club most certainly didn’t see the game straying from them at first glance.
A cute and bubbly tale of growing closer to the members of a school’s book club, it presents itself as standard romantic stuff. Each girl rests firmly in an established trope, and each choice seems to set players on track to find a match by the game’s end.
The further into the story they go however, the more the story twists and warps into something different and terrifying.
Each girls’ actions become more erratic and unpredictable. The game appears to glitch out more and more often, with code and unusual visual textures popping up seemingly at random.
It gets to the point where each girl dies and is subsequently deleted one by one, an unknown presence taking control of the game.
Players are helpless to watch, instead driven toward an ending where only one, omnipotent character remains. It’s unnerving, horrifying, and an utterly inimitable experience.
Transference
When players first start up Transference, nothing is clear or well defined.
From what can be gathered, it takes place within a simulation created by the memories of a close but troubled family. Bits and pieces of the simulation reveal evidence of domestic abuse, isolation and even murder.
Worse yet, the simulation itself comes off as a hell of sadness, confused screams and tangled personalities. It seems like all three of the family members have been jumbled into one, each unsure of what or where they are.
As it turns out, this is exactly the case. The simulation’s creator, Raymond Hayes, created it as a means of unloading human consciousness into a computer, and used himself and his family as his first test subjects.
The result, sadly, is an inescapable hell for the two family members with Raymond. Even after untangling them, the two will still be trapped for eternity in the labyrinthine simulation.
Meanwhile, players are left with the unnerving knowledge of what they’ve learned, as well as the chance that their consciousness may be trapped alongside them as well.
Braid
As players make their way through the trippy time travel puzzles of Braid, they would think that their character Tim is on an adventure to save a princess.
She is referred to several times throughout the story, and in the final level it appears that she is fleeing a knight that is hot on her heels.
Using his time bending powers, Tim overcomes obstacle after obstacle, finally managing to reach her after one last gauntlet; and that’s when everything finally snaps into place.
Much as he has done during so many puzzles, Tim had actually been rewinding time throughout the entire game. The title’s conclusion is actually the beginning.
Instead of running from the knight, the princess was actually running toward him to flee from Tim, an obsessive stalker who wouldn’t leave her alone.
Unable to face the reality of this, Tim turned back time to live out a fantasy he crafted in his own head. It wad convincing enough to allow him to live a lie just a bit longer, and to fool the player completely as a result.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty isn’t typically a series you point to for strong strong single player story telling, but the original Black Ops still managed to present a twisting and turning narrative on par with some of the best out there.
Throughout the game, players have witnessed the fractured memories of special forces operative Alex Mason, a captured soldier who is interrogated relentlessly by unknown assailants and must recount several of his top secret missions during the Cold War.
Across his accounts, Mason mentions over and over again how the Russian soldier Viktor Reznov aided him in accomplishing his missions and helping him survive.
He goes so far as to say Reznov killed the last of a group of dangerous sleeper agents capable of triggering a chemical weapons attack on the U.S.
Upon finishing his recounting though, Mason learns there never really was a Reznov. The man had been a delusion created by him as a result of Soviet brainwashing that left him a potential sleeper agent himself.
Every action he took alongside Reznov, including the killing of the final sleeper agent, had accidentally driven him towards becoming the Soviet’s true ace in the hole, and towards thoroughly deceiving players all the while.
Heavy Rain
While a lot can be said about the potential plot holes of Heavy Rain’s narrative, it’s hard not to appreciate the way it hides the solution to its mystery right under your nose.
Throughout the game, players take on the role of five different characters, each of which has their own reasons for tracking down the elusive Origami Killer.
Some, like the broken Ethan Mars, need to find him to rescue their stolen child, while others like the investigators Norman Jayden and Scott Shelby, are intent on bringing them to justice.
Each narrative helps to paint the Origami Killer as an increasingly cunning adversary, and with each challenge players become more invested in taking the killer in by any means necessary.
As a result, it’s all the more shocking when it is revealed that Scott Shelby was the Origami killer all along. Not only did he carry out all of the deeds other characters were trying to unravel, but each segment players took part in helped to establish his cover.
Again, there are some plot holes created as a result, but overall it’s a twist that leaves those playing the game shaken. Their target, who had caused so much tragedy, had been right alongside them all along, and they never even knew it.
Th e Stanley Parable
Whereas other games on this list like to hide the fact that they’ll mess with your head, The Stanley Parable wears this fact on its sleeve.
Offering a choose your own adventure narrative of sorts, the game allows players to uncover the mystery behind the existence of the office worker Stanley.
Players can choose to follow carefully laid out clues and instructions given by the narrator; wander off in any number of directions; or to do nothing at all.
Each provides different outcomes and comments from the narrator, most of which break the fourth wall and comment on conventions gamers take for granted in modern titles.
Wandering off the beaten path could illicit a comment on how you shouldn’t expect so much of games, while blindly obeying an order to press a button to save a baby over and over again for three hours could lead to a ribbing for your blind obedience.
It’s all very tongue in cheek, and you never know what the game will have to say next. This only builds on the fun though, as each playthrough offers a new wall shattering punchline that leaves you contemplating why gamers act the way they do.
Spec Ops: The Line
A poster child of mind bending narratives, Spec Ops: The Line provides not only a masterpiece of narrative build-up but also a contemplation on how guilt can warp one’s perception.
As the reconnaissance team captain, Martin Walker, players have to fight their way through countless battles and encounters in order to find the villainous Colonel John Konrad.
Walker believes him responsible for the deaths of dozens of civilians killed in a white phosphorus attack, supposedly sent there as a distraction to keep Martin and his team off his tail long enough to escape.
The two have even exchanged multiple radio communications, goading Walker to advance further through the desolate and dangerous hellscape of a sandstorm-torn Dubai.
Once players finally reach Konrad’s headquarters though, this is all revealed to be a delusion.
Konrad was dead the entire time, having killed himself after the failed evacuation of Dubai’s less wealthy residents. His communications with Walker, and Walker’s subsequent pursuit, were a delusion to mask Walker’s guilt of killing so many civilians with the white phosphorus attack at the game’s start.
As a result, players and Walker are left to make one final choice: Embrace their actions and face the consequences, or continue to live out a fantasy as a delusional murderer.
Silent Hill 2
Following the generally straight forward plot of Silent Hill, most players probably expected much of the same from its sequel. And yet, from the outset, things appear to be a little off about the narrative of Silent Hill 2.
Players take the role of James, a widower whose wife Mary has somehow sent him a letter from the grave. It requests that he return to their special place in Silent Hill where she will be waiting for him.
James obliges, and even after entering the town’s foggy hellscape, holds out hope that he will see her again.
With each new individual he meets though, his hopes begin to dwindle and warp. Everyone in the town carries some unspeakable guilt, either from their own violent actions or trauma endured by others.
He even meets what appears to be a double of his wife, named Maria, who is killed before his eyes over and over again. No matter what he does, he can never save her.
Once players reach the penultimate encounter of the game though, everything snaps into place. James’ wife didn’t just die; she was killed by James’ own hands, and the ensuing guilt caused him to be drawn to the purgatory of Silent Hill as penance.
Every part of the game is meant to resemble a portion of James’ guilt, and depending on the actions taken by the player through this punishment, he can either accept it or be crushed by it forever.
