This is a hard topic to talk about without major spoiler tags thrown about everywhere. You know, unless I want to do this without examples and we all know I'm physically incapable of that! But before we get into any of that, shall we pointlessly ponder about the exact definition of what a twist even is? I think we shall... By my reckoning, a 'Twist' refers to a moment within the story wherein the circumstances of the narrative shift or are evolved by a revelation that typically happens towards the end of the story. Yes, that definition most certainly is not a catch-all but it sufficiently sums up the two key points that a 'Twist' must hit in order to be effective and/or worthwhile in my opinion. It should evolve the circumstance on the basis of a revelation. Of course, one might add that an exceptional twist should be based on a revelation that has been hinted out throughout the story, but I want to keep things as simple as possible today.
Twists as a narrative construct have existed in some form or other long enough to have no discernible origin point, per se, but they did undergo something of an explosion in pop culture that I always find fun to look at. In the ever repetitive world of Hollywood, there was a period around the early 2000's where the copy-paste recipe for every tired b-movie had the 'big twist' ingredient thrown into it. A lot of folk blame this on the rise, success, and subsequent downfall, of M.Night Shyamalan's Twist-centric approach to film making, but I argue this was the sort of direction the industry was heading towards anyway. Films of the time all relied on word of mouth and FOMO to sell tickets, and so if you couldn't make a good movie then you could at least throw some crazy twist in there so that people had to see the thing or risk being alienated in their movie-friends groups. (At least that's my theory as to what happened.) Whatever the case, the consequence is that the film market became oversaturated with lazy, ill-convinced plots with terrible twist endings that, more often than not, completely killed the stakes and ruined the movie. (Look at what happened to the Horror genre around this time for an idea of what I mean.) Thus the whole concept developed a bit of a bad reputation.
This never really touched the gaming world all that hard, and I'd imagine that was down to the fact that even in the early 2000's storytelling was not a priority for the majority of games out there, so storytelling fads weren't even considered. Developers of the time was rightly focused on just making the game work and be fun, no time to care about if the narrative was well cooked. (Who plays games for narrative anyway?) And as it just so happens, that reticence to jump into stories meant that those titles that did tended to place more emphasis on narrative crafting because the developers were confident and usually knew what what they were doing. As such, in the period between 2000 and 2010 the wider gaming market was hit by two games with powerful twists that, I'd argue, completely changed how video game storytelling was done on the back of their successes. And I'm about to talk about the both of them without ruining too much, but spoiler warning anyway.
Firstly, in 2002 a legendary studio called Bioware released one of, in not the, finest game they'd ever craft in 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic'. It was based on a storied franchise and accompanied by a sublime Dark Horse comic run, framing the world of Star Wars from a vantage of practically unlimited creative freedom. (Something the series would literally never see again.) Bioware leveraged this story to tell another one of their signature tales of morality, destiny and ancient threats, (Seriously, those three bullet points describe so many early Bioware games it's not even funny.) but I'd argue it was in the twist that Bioware truly managed to put their mark on gaming storytelling forever.
In terms of writing, the moment itself is not that unique; it's telegraphed quite a bit and there's even a little excessive back-and-forth in the scene before the big moment that is supposed to build tension but just comes across as unnecessarily annoying. (Seriously Carth, why not just freakin' say it? Tell the class what's upsetting you, my man!) But the strength of the moment is established by the sheer immersive potential of the medium of gaming; we'd seen these types of twists before, but never executed so well in a gaming environment and that elevated things. This was one of the first times that I, at least, saw how the gaming could do more than just mimic movie storytelling, it could eclipse those stories by virtue of its very nature. This one moment showcased the power of a twist in the world of gaming.
But then there was one title which took that to a whole new extreme, and of course I'm talking about Irrational Games' Bioshock. That was a title helmed by a legendary director and driven by a visionary team into the construction of a surreal and sublime game world unlike any that has ever been seen before. With that world they told a narrative with another industry changing twist, only this one reached a step above even the last I discussed. Bioshock's huge twist lays all of it's weight upon it's inherent identity as a 'game' and the expectations that establishes. In other words, the team leveraged the factors that made gaming unique to other forms of media in order to subvert audience expectations in a manner that just plain could not be replicated in film, on TV or in a book. What they did was transformative, inspired and groundbreaking; and they presented it neatly in the glorified package of a twist.
Of course, that isn't to that there isn't the odd narrative game that squanders or misuses twists to a disappointing degree. Indeed, with the rise of interactive storytelling there has appeared a great many more b-movie-style twist moments that feel shoehorned or lazy. (Again, mostly in horror.) Look at Supermassive games, for instance, all of their games have at least one crappy twist. (Except, maybe, Until Dawn.) 'Man of Medan' had the over-telegraphed 'the real evil' twist, the Inpatient had some inconsequential revelations that were presented in the form of a twist and Hidden Agenda hit players with the super twist that (Super spoiler) the killer was exactly who you thought it was all along. (Seriously, what a lame mystery.) Perhaps that's just the natural consequence of more narrative games coming along to shake things up, but then Telltale proved that great storytelling can be achieved without relying on such gimmicks. (Although the penultimate finale of Walking Dead Season 1 did have quite the twist/cliffhanger, I will admit.)
As a literary device I have no quarrel with the 'Twist', but I feel it is a powerful tool that is all to often misused. At the end of the day, if I had to choose, I would rather that it was a retired trend of storytelling then watch David Cage literally neuter his own plotlines again with them. (I'm looking at that Alice Twist from Detroit: Become Human. Who in their right mind let him dumb down the plot like that? It's maddening!) Perhaps if that were the case, it would start to reinforce more positive storytelling habits, like the presentation of meaningful stakes and impetuses that don't rely on a third act shake-up to be interesting. Although knowing folk, they'd probably find something even stupider to replace crappy twists. It's a lost cause.
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