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While I'm Overkilling, I want to take a break and discuss some of the most bizarre things in video gaming. Yes, plot twists. We're not talking about ones like a character using you to kill the guy who was actually not evil, or how Don Knotts was the ghost. We're talking about twists that come out of no where, make absolutely no sense, or are purely batshit insane. I'm only going to use each game once, but some maybe from the same series. But, be warned, there are some spoilers ahead, so tread with caution.10. Killer7
The Twist: Japan has been rigging American Elections.
Why is it weird?: Of all of the crazy things in Killer7, such as the terrorists who laugh and explode, a pedophile who skins anime girls, and you playing as a killer with MPD, why is Japan running American Politics the top? How'd it beat out the guy in a gimp suit? It just seems like a conspiracy theorists wet dream, not unusual. In fact, seeing our current political climate, it seems pretty damned possible.
So, why is it my pick? Because, according to the game, Japan has been running US Politics since 1780. Yes, only four years after we declared Independence from Britain, Japan silently takes us over. It's not like they had extremely advanced technology back then, either. By that, I mean, they couldn't disguise themselves as white people. Someone, somewhere would have had to have noticed a Japanese guy rigging the votes in the Electoral College. There's also the fact that Japan was closed to the US, and the world until 1854, when Commodore M
atthew Perry forced Japan to open world wide with the Convention of Kanagawa. But, the weirdest thing about this? The game's creator, Suda 51, is Japanese, and made his entire country the villains of the game. That shit wouldn't fly in the US. (Oh?)That doesn't count!
9: Alan Wake
The Twist: "It's not a lake- it's an ocean!"
Why is it weird?: The point of the game is to save Alan's wife, Alice from the Dark Presence. She's being held under the lake, and Alan has to fight the dark to save her. He finds out in the process that he's being forced to write himself into a book called Departure that would let the darkness out into the world. This explains why he finds pages that come to life in front of him, and why he sees himself on TV, rambling like Lewis Black on water. He also finds words floating in front of him that turn into the objects it says, i.e. "cat" becomes a cat.
He manages to write his wife to safety, but how does he save himself? By changing the lake into an ocean. How exactly is that going to help him? It's like if in Batman, Joker wanted to escape by going from a maximum security ward to being enclosed in a concrete block and buried directly under the Batcave. Should he manage to escape, he'll just get captured again. An easier way to save himself would be to change the title to "Don't Touch It! It's EVIL!"
7: Rule of Rose
The twist: You're playing as a Lesbian Pedophile Whose Lover Used Her Abusive Father Figure to Kill Children
Why is it Weird?: Again, the entirety of Rule of Rose is insane. You play as a seventeen year-old girl named Jennifer who is being abused by orphans in a orphanage on an airship, while being chased by a serial killer, and fighting imps and vomiting mermaids. But, the end of the game takes a sharp left turn for "what the fuck" territory.
Jennifer is the sole survivor of a blimp crash who was found by Gregory, a groundskeeper. He locks Jennifer in his basement, and raises her as his son. She meets the frail child Wendy, who is the Princess to Jennifer's Prince. Jennifer eventually escapes with Wendy to her orphanage, but Wendy is sick and usually in the infirmary. Wanting Jennifer's love for herself, she has the rest of the kids abuse her, thinking Jennifer would go to her for support. Instead, she found Brown the dog. Wendy eventually gives Jennifer a choice, be buried or bury the dog. Jennifer buries Brown. With the friendship destroyed, Wendy brings Gregory to the orphanage, and has him act as a dog and kill every kid but Jennifer before killing himself. The trauma of remembering this causes her to lose her memories again.
The game tries to play Jennifer's love for Wendy as pure, but think about this. Her lover is a child who is dangerously jealous of Jennifer having other friends, even a dog. She hires Jennifer's father figure to kill every other child in the orphanage, so that Jennifer would only have her. All of this for something that she as a child should not be able to understand. Either she's insane (despite being the "kind-hearted princess"), or her "friendship" was very, very warped. I'm not the only one who pointed this out as the game is banned in Poland for the same reason.
Oh, this should make it clear for why this is so damned controversial. Jennifer is 17, Wendy is four.
6: God of War III
The twist: Pandora is an Ancient Greek Robot
Why Is It Weird?: In the first game, Kratos is searching for Pandora's Box to kill Ares. Throughout the game, Pandora is hinted to be true to her myth. Then comes God of War III to start asking the bizarre question that didn't need to be asked: Where did Pandora come from?
Well, it's simple; Hephaestus, knowing Aphrodite would want nothing to do with him, builds a robot daughter to be the key to Pandora's Box, and names her after the box. What's more is that Pandora's Box wasn't named after Pandora, the woman who opened it, but for the robot that was named after the box. Yes, you read that right, Pandora the robot was the same Pandora who opened the box that she was named after, despite the fact that she had her name before the box. What's even more confusing if the fact that Pandora's box cannot be open with out her being killed. Which begs the question of, "How the fuck did Kratos open it to kill Ares?"
Then again, I'm over analyzing the same game that says that Zeus never helped Kratos kill Ares... even though he did.
5: Dead Space 2
The Twist: The Marker is Man-Made Alien Technology
Why is it Weird?: The first game establishes that the Marker is not alien, but a man-made object that contains an alien life form. The first hour of the game, they ram this point into the player's head. Nothing wrong with that, thinking of the new players to the series. Nothing wrong with that.
Then the dumbest thing said in the series is uttered by the person helping you: "The Marker is powerful Alien Technology." How does that work? Did aliens give the human race the schematics to build the Marker? Or did she mean that male aliens build the Marker? More importantly, why the sudden change in the story-line? They spent valuable dialogue to retcon the entire main part of the game with one line. To make it even worse, they never mention it again. It's as if the editor fell asleep during the reviewing of the script. Considering the game, I can't blame him if he did.
4: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
The Twist: Nick Fury built Nick Fury robots that killed him and set up superheroes to start the Marvel Civil War so that they could take over the world.
Why is it Weird?: Even by comic book standards, this doesn't make sense. The whole game, Nick Fury is dead, and a robot is leading a rampage that causes the Civil War of Marvel Mythos. He needs the Civil War to start so that supervillains would be implanted with nanobots so that the Fury-bots can take over the world. These robots could not do this without being programmed to, nor without overriding safety protocols that SHEILD would have placed in the robots' AIs.
Of course, what truly makes it weird is the fact that all of this planning relies on everything going just perfectly for the Civil War to start. Which means that by having Nick Fury start an unconventional war against a country could have backfired against them. It almost did, too, since Nick Fury was wanted after this had happened for war crimes, that are forgotten when Speedball and Nitro cause the explosion that starts the Registration Act. Without the the help of the Nick Fury robots, the War was started, yet they were to blame. Sure... why not. Next game: Batman: R.I.P. with more weapons grade meth. Oh, and his Mother's the villain this time, and his sister (who he never knew he had) seduces him.
3: Silent Hill 2
The twist: Your Character is an Idiot.
Why is it Weird?: We should all know the twist in Silent Hill 2, that James killed his wife, and forgot. He's also struggling with sexual frustration, seeing his wife as a prostitute, and talking to mentally handicapped men that are bullied, little girls, and women who were raped by their fathers. Yet, with all of the insanity in the city, James is the most surprising character of all, because he is, by far, the dumbest character in video game history.
Let's start with Mary/Maria. Maria is Mary's sexual side, and the town's prostitute. She also looks exactly like Mary. While this does trip James up from time to time, he's more than willing to accept that she's not Mary. There's also the issue that she's dying every five seconds, too. Then, there's his interactions with Eddie. This one has always reigned infamous with me. Eddie tells James that he'll kill anyone that bullies him. James proves himself as an idiot by calling Eddie dumb. If I saw a guy with a gun who was obviously not stable, the last thing I'd do is goad him into shooting me. Other stupid things he does: shoots Pyramid Head while hiding; parking outside of the city, and getting lost while walking in a straight line; trying to fight two giant monsters with spears; forgetting that he killed his wife, and talks to her ghost on a regular basis... wait, scratch that, because there's always a chance that he went into the town to find out how he screwed up killing her, which makes him even more of an idiot.
2: The Suffering 2: Ties that Bind
The Twist: Torque's his own enemy.
Why is it Weird?: Chock this one up to a plot twist that ruins two games in one. If you finished the first game with Good Karma, you didn't kill your girlfriend and children. In the second game, you're looking for the guy who did it. That's all well and good...
...until the bad guy comes out and says, "People say we look the same. That's because we are!" First off, lets start with why this is a stupid ass move to make in a story, especially in a game. The players of the first game worked to get good karma in their game, especially with The Suffering. They were rewarded with finding out that Torque didn't kill his family.They get to the end of this game, and it basically says, "Fuck you! You did it! You played good all for nothing!" It makes the player ask the question, "Why bother having a morality system?"
Now, for why it's weird. If Torque had MPD, wouldn't someone have, oh, I don't know, notice? His lawyer would be chasing after the appeal, and he would be in a mental asylum. Let's not forget one other flagrant fact that in the good morality intro, it mentions that Torque is sane, and did not kill his family!
1: Silent Hill 4: The Room
The twist: You're in Walter Sullivan's Mother.
Why is it Weird?: You're in a haunted apartment, trapped, with the only solace being that you can check on your neighbor. You find various holes in the apartment that lead you to where the previous owner killed people. But, the weirdness begins when you find his dead body in a wall... and his umbilical chord in a box...
Walter Sullivan believes that the apartment you're living in is his mother, and he's killing people to purify it. Obviously, this man is insane right? Well, no... In order to kill Sullivan, you have to use the umbilical chord on him and the apartment, forever bonding them to each other. This goes beyond Walter believing that his old home is the place of his rebirth. This goes for the idea that a room literally gave birth to him. Perhaps the weirdest thing is the fact that no one in the game finds the fact that the apartment's super had the umbilical chord strange in the slightest. Why did he have it in the first place? Is he that willing to accept that an apartment gave birth to a boy? Most important... did your character move out of the apartment after finding this out? I sure as hell would.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers. I got some more Brain Junkfood games to play, but I'll return with some more.
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