Mind Screw/Video Games: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

However, this doesn't mean video games can't be [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|incomprehensible]] even to those who actually play them. [[Mind Screw|Read and be confused.]]

 

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** ''AC1'' ended with {{spoiler|the player character somehow having manifested his ancestor's "[[Aura Vision|Eagle Vision]]" and seeing [[Room Full of Crazy|the floor and walls covered in symbols written in blood]]}}.

** ''AC2'''s playable credits sequence wasn't that crazy, but the ending had {{spoiler|the holographic "ghost" of a pre-human being somehow knowing that in 2012, Desmond Miles would use an Animus to see Ezio's memory of meeting her -- and therefore using the Flying Eagle of Florence as ''an answering machine to the future''}}.

** ''ACB'' ends with {{spoiler|Juno taking control of Desmond's body and forcing him to stab a paralyzed Lucy, then in the post-credits we're left wondering if Desmond even ''is'' the player character... or whether he himself is an ancestor called up through a future Animus}}.

** ''ACR'' involves a situation of *deep breath* {{spoiler|Desmond entering Ezio's memory of entering Altair's memories. And that's before Ezio tells Desmond to listen to Jupiter. [[Inception]], anyone?}}

* ''[[Cryostasis]]: Sleep of Reason'' lives on this trope. Filled to the brim with symbolic meanings, philosophical subtexts, biblical quotations, metaphorical Russian Folk tales, and a main character {{spoiler|who is dead the entire game but eventually saved through winning a fight with the God of Time.}} Think Bioshock and STALKER combined and then directed by [[David Lynch]]

* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', the memory fuck-up part. {{spoiler|Cloud finds his entire history is a lie. Proceeds to angst for a good portion of the game.}} Followed by a trip into {{spoiler|Cloud's subconscious where the player has to talk to various spectres of Cloud representing fragments of his past while a giant Cloud wriths in anguish overhead}}.

** Some of the [[Mind Screw]] was partially the result of the game's [[Good Bad Translation]], which arguably made the game all the [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|better for it]].

* The climax of ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]''. First [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8MN_0-XqEg Time Compression] occurs, the villain attempting to squeeze all of time and space into a single point and getting a good ways into it before the heroes abort her attempt. Then for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vuCpgbwtQE the ending], Squall basically has his life flash before his eyes as it all gets put back...and then somehow Rinoa finds him and a desert landscape explodes into a flowering field. The ending helped popularize the infamous "Squall is Dead" meme, which states Squall actually died at the end of the game's first disc, the subsequent [[Kudzu Plot]] is his mind making up a fantastic adventure in its final moments, then in the ending finally completely breaking down.

* The ''[[Lost]]'' videogame ''Via Domus'', true to the TV show it's based on, features a major mind screw at the end. Throughout the game, the main character, Elliott Maslow (a survivor of Oceanic Flight 815 who has never been seen on the show), who is suffering from amnesia, has been trying to retrieve his lost memories. It turns out that Elliot used to be a {{spoiler|journalist who ratted out his girlfriend Lisa, also a journalist, and took a photo of her being shot in the head by the guy the two were after}}. On the island, he is repeatedly haunted by {{spoiler|visions of Lisa}}, eventually making him regret his selfish ways. The game ends with Elliott {{spoiler|leaving the island on a sailboat, ''only to witness Oceanic Flight 815, the very plane he had crashed with, break apart above his head.'' Suddenly Elliott wakes up on the beach (instead of in the jungle, like he did in the beginning of the game) amidst the burning wreckage, when suddenly Lisa comes running towards him, relieved that both of them survived the crash}}. It should be pointed out that this ending was explicitly suggested by Damon Lindelof, one of the show's executive producers/main writers, and the concept of {{spoiler|time travel}} had already been established on the show by the time the game came out.

** Fans of the show are torn whether this ending is really bad, or one of the few things that are actually good about the otherwise critically panned game.

* Anything made by developer Goichi Suda (b.k.a. "[[Suda 51]]").

** "Killer7" still stands to define Mindfuck but it becomes 'a little' easier when you realize most of the plot elements are supposed to be disjointed. {{spoiler|its all just Harman Smith and Kun Lan playing chess with the world. Emir Parkreiner killed the Smith Syndicate and after he thought he killed Harman, suppressed the memory and became the entire Smith Syndicate in his own mind. All the ghosts were people Emir had killed and in the end he was just the chessboard, the Heaven Smile were Kun Lan's pieces, and the ghosts were Harman's pieces… except for Iwazaru… who… ummm… was Kun Lan trying to fuck with Emir to mess with the game but in fact he was helping Emir not remember who he was to keep the game intact? And the bosses were actually Harman's pieces to develop Emir's fake identity and keep him from realizing the truth,}} Yeah… something like that… So, its still a total mind screw.

* ''[[The Longest Journey|Dreamfall: The Longest Journey]]''. The ending. Well, calling it an ending would be a bit of a stretch, the thing practically ended midway through act II.

* The original ''[[Silent Hill]]'' game screws with the player by taking things a step further than simply having a confusing plot: the game has no third-person narrative; it's played entirely through the point of view of the [[Player Character]]. Because he's kept in the dark over what's going on, the player is never let in on things either. It isn't until ''Silent Hill 3'' that the full story is finally revealed.

** The game screws with you more in [[Silent Hill]] 3, where it's suggested that {{spoiler|the monsters you've been killing may be innocent people, and all the dangers you've faced are all in your head.}}

** SH 2 gets really mind-screwed in its second half, with the stuff that goes on in the Historical Society Abyss and the Hotel.

* The plot of the fourth ending of ''[[Drakengard]]'' [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|defies explanation]]. That goes for the fifth ending as well.

* ''[[Shadow of Destiny]]'' is a more mild example than some on this page, but nevertheless tends towards this. The game is designed so that you have to play all of the [[Multiple Endings]] to know what's going on, but at least two of said endings directly contradict each other; the ones that DO let details slip don't explain what they mean; certain details are revealed and then re-revealed as something completely different; and the only character who knows what's going on refuses to enlighten the rest of the cast. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade hung]] when one character admits that [[The Reveal]] she's just given you is based on things she's been told and that "not all of it may be true".

** Its [[Spiritual Successor]], ''[[Time Hollow]]'', falls squarely under this too. Don't expect to understand the real motivation behind anything or anyone until the epilogue, and even then it's a bit iffy.

** This also seems to be the plot behind the Architect and Neo's little conversation near the end of Matrix Reloaded.

* ''SD [[Snatcher]]'' is probably the closest to examining the innards of [[Hideo Kojima]]'s brain most people would like to come. The plot's perfectly straightforward (if a bit odd) until about halfway through, where it begins a slow downwards slide - starting from Gillian being forced to pretend to be [[Metal Gear|Solid Snake]] in order to clear his name after [[Stupidity Is the Only Option|killing a priest]] and ending with Snatchers in fursuits and clown suits colonising a ripoff of Disneyland (hidden behind a painting) because it looks like the Kremlin. Actually, no, it's probably when the master Snatcher manifests out of a pool of liquid skin.

*** The former because it's a drug trip and the latter because of its [[Gainax Ending]].

** For those who can't access the linked forum, there's a video [[Let's Play]] of Don't Eat the Mushroom on [http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Knytt/ this page] (scroll down a bit to find it). It's screwy. Very mind-screwy.

* ''[[Second Sight]]'''s last few levels, though not as bad as most of the entries on this page, was still rather mind-screwy. {{spoiler|Mutant kids eating the [[Big Bad]]! The present is the future! The past is the present! Jayne's dead! Jayne's alive!}}

** After playing World 4, in which the timeline is controlled by your position in the level, a friend of this troper was afraid to scroll through chat logs, for fear that he would ''undo the most recent messages''.

* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]''...at least when the sanity gauge gets low, anyway.

* The ''entirety'' of ''[[Mondo Medicals]]'' and its sequel ''[[Mondo Agency]]''. Unless you have a complete understanding about ''CURING CANCER BY SHOOTING PEOPLE WHILE THINKING LIKE A STAR'' or how killing indians in order to save technology will somehow save the president... before you kill him, then you are pretty much fucked with these games.

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series retconned five of ''Daggerfall's'' [[Multiple Endings|conflicting endings]] into a single canonical event by making it so that they ''all happened at once,'' breaking the relationship between time and reality and causing all sorts of incomprehensible chaos.

** On a related note: ANYTHING written by Michael Kirkbride. ''36 Lessons of Vivec'' is an excellent example.

*** One interpretation may be that {{spoiler|the player character already went to the event in the desert, and is, in fact, one of the persons whom the radio mentions going missing. As the player character suffers the effects of dehydration, he begins to suffer from psychosis and hallucinates that he is back in his apartment prior to leaving. As he dies, he begins to see through portions of his delusions, and portions of his "apartment" turn into the sand that is really there.}}

* [[Knights of the Old Republic]] 2 was [[Executive Meddling|not completed]], and thus has given rise to a [[Epileptic Trees|tremendous number of]] [[Wild Mass Guessing|theories about precisely]] [[Mind Screw|what the hell is going on]]. Among the most screwy are the theories that [[Evil Mentor|Kriea]] is one of the True Sith and orchestrated the events of both games for an increasingly unlikely series of reasons and the theory that Kriea knows she's in a video game and is out to kill the developers.

** {{spoiler|Let me put it this way. If you make a bell through a mould, the bell isn't affected by the mould's destruction, so long as casting is complete. Lucifer only destroyed the mould; nothing happened to the accidentally-created bell. Better still, Lucifer had ''no idea'' any casting had happened, and dismissed out-of-hand that any casting ''could'' happen; he only knew of the mould's existence, not the bell's. To be honest, you'll have a slightly better idea of what's going on if you're familiar with [[Gnosticism]].}}

** However it REALLY gets bad when you consider {{spoiler|Before attempting to delete the universe entirely, Lucifer sends the Executioners to manually delete the inhabitants of the Milky Way, including whole civilizations, ships and Earth itself. It is specifically said that these have been deleted. Yet the universe still exists when it is deleted? The implication is that the inhabitants of Earth and such ''didn't'' think they existed!}}

** What makes you belive it's a hallucination?

* [[LSD Dream Emulator]] was an early PSX game based on the dream diary of a real woman. This is important to know because the "dreams" you can have in the game are insanely absurd. The game itself is very open and you can interact with nearly anything, but the more you interact with things and the more dreams you have, the stranger the dreams become. The limited edition book that came with the game is basically a copy of the woman's own dream diary. Fans still endeavor to understand what it all means, though.

** ''Marathon Infinity'', when {{spoiler|jumping between different timelines in order to find the one where the universe can still be saved from the W'rkcacnter, you go through very strange "dream" levels.}} The terminal messages found on [http://marathon.bungie.org/story/wherearemonsters.html Where Are Monsters In Dreams] are perfect examples of this.

* Most of ''[[Yume Nikki]]'', ''and how.''

** Three of the many fan-spinoffs are ''even stranger'', in order;

*** ''[[Dot Flow]]'''s ending has {{spoiler|one of the creatures from the dreams, a chainsaw-wielding maid, pop up in the real world. The implication is that she kills you.}} Even before then, going to certain parts of the dream world too often, and triggering certain events, leads to {{spoiler|your "real" room rusting, and eventually, an [[Oh Crap|IV monitor showing up.]] }}

*** ''Answered Prayers'' is unfinished, so it's mindscrewiness may be at least partly because of that. But it has a short text opening that is difficult to explain, and the very method by which you enter your "dream world" is odd, as it involves you ''praying in a temple'' instead of going to sleep.

* See also the ''[[Chzo Mythos]]''.

** [[Mind Screwdriver|Perfect Works.]]

*** [[No Export for You|Not that any other countries *got* that...]]

* Well, at least Ever17 explains almost everything. ''[[Remember 11]]'' takes it completely the other way; some of the mysteries are solved around 2/3th of the game, but as you reach the ending, more and more mysteries are added, with the game ending with a plot twist that came so out of the blue for some, that many people [[Your Mileage May Vary|completely hated the ending]]. (The fact that even the answers given were so confusing that many players didn't even get those didn't help either.) The game will then confuse you further as you have to try to see every single confusing bad ending through its confusing ending system (would take too many spoilers to explain), and finally rewards you with the final TIPs, which [[Epileptic Trees|theoretically would allow you to solve the game]]. Needless to say, to this date, [[Wild Mass Guessing|nobody truly knows the solutions to the mysteries presented]].

* A lot of ''[[The Path]]'' has this, for example, pictures and patterns randomly flashing over the screen, the random items you find littered around the woods and anything you see in grandma's house after encountering the wolf, especially if you've unlocked the secret rooms.

** Julius, at least, is nothing more than a special guest appearance by the final boss of [[Final Fantasy Adventure]]. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw2ZyMELay4 And he got his old theme song back.]

** Speaking of SMW hacks, pretty much everything relating to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEOJa6FFiV4 this one].

*** [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|Or tilt the mouse if you're playing on PC.]]

** Not to mention that you get little (was that a gas leak I just walked across?) to no warning at all that you've received a facefull of scarecrow toxin. Especially the {{spoiler|fake game crash glitch and fake game reset that turns into a modified version of the intro cinematic where a very serious Joker is driving the insane Batman to Arkham.}}

** ''[[Chain of Memories]]''? Try ''the opening for the first game''. And that's not even touching any of the other games, or the imfamous "Snarl of Memories" cutscene from ''358/2 Days.''

** Would the fact that memories of Sora and Xion magically disappear and with memories of Sora magically coming back without explanation count?

** Not to mention the first time Axel, Roxas, and Xion sit on the clock tower. At first you think the hood thing might be a silly developer error you caught. Then it happens again, and again, and again... but it gets explained when it's revealed {{spoiler|everyone sees Xion differently and the hood being up is the game not trying to reveal that until later.}}

* ''[[Condemned]]: Criminal Origins'' had a pretty standard "[[Clear My Name]] and catch the serial killer" plot. But it also had all the homeless people go crazy and mutate, and the main character hallucinate for no adequately explained reason, which made the whole thing creepier. Unfortunately, they explained it in the sequel.

* ''[[The Company of Myself]]'' appears to be a simple platformer with elements of [[Reality Warper|manipulating space-time to create shadows of yourself]] to solve the puzzles involved. {{spoiler|Actually, it's a journey through the mind of a man who had inadvertently killed his own soulmate and thus became lost in his memories. The page for this game even lists some of the [[Epileptic Trees|screwier attempts]] to fully explain his "interactions" with the psychologist.}}

* ''[[Time Fcuk]]'' not only [[Mind Fuck|Mind Fcuk]]s the player, it [[Sanity Slippage|Mind Fcuks the main character]]. Radio messages from his past and future selves let you chart his descent from [[The Everyman]] through [[Perky Goth]] all the way to [[Talkative Loon]] as he tries to figure out where he is and what's going on.

* The ending of ''[[Mystic Ark]]''. Nowhere in the game does it tell you exactly what the heck you're doing or why you're doing it until right after you beat the final boss, and then the end of the credits only makes it all the more confusing.

* The [[ZX Spectrum]] one-arm-bandit simulator ''Dizzy Dice'' has a mode where you try to earn as much money as possible, beating four successive targets. Beat the last target (and hence the game), and the result is a fake "system reset".

* ''[[Alan Wake]]'' gets more and more screwy as things go on. It's not long before other characters think that Alan is crazy, and he's not only admitting the possibility, but saying it might be a ''good'' thing: "It takes crazy to know crazy." Then the ending tops it all.

* ''[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/469443 The Bright in the Screen]'' combines this trope with a hefty dose of [[Nightmare Fuel]], thanks to the... ''thing'' communicating with the player through TV screens. To say nothing of the [[Fission Mailed|fake ending]], or the [[Gainax Ending|real ending.]] The creator says it's about "human social behavior," which explains ''absolutely nothing.''

* Most of the story of ''[[Immortal Defense]]''.

** Even more so in the sequel {{spoiler|where the old city is an hallucination induced by the vapors of a rare ore that Pandora's Box is carved from. It makes the affected person extremely suggestible and it just happens that the first thing you see getting off that train are pictures of that old town. It also explains the coma of those who handle the box as the story of the "curse" has them expecting this to happen.}}

* ''[[Rule of Rose]]'': Probably [[All Just a Dream]], but even then raises a huge number of questions in the vein of what actually happened and in what order, as the chronology is severely muddled up. It has served as fan fodder for five years and counting!

* The ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series loves to play with this trope. [[Time Travel]]? Check. [[Black and Grey Morality|Ambiguously moral]] [[Evil vs. Evil|characters]]? Check. [[Xanatos Roulette|Hideously convoluted plans]] from nearly [[Xanatos Speed Chess|every]] [[Gambit Pileup|major character]] except one? Check. Several fansites actually do a good job at discerning what took place in what time, but the [[Left Hanging|ending of Defiance]] still leaves some questions in the air.

* Parts (especially before the players get to the Answer/Core arcs) of the [[When They Cry]] series can be summed up neatly as [[Mind Screw]]: The Game.

* ''[[Deadly Premonition]]'' does a good job of tying up most of the plot threads by the end of the game, but there are still quite a few other questions that are never really answered. Like, How much of the action sequences were actually real? What exactly ''are'' the Shadows? Why could Emily see them? How much of Harry's story was true? What did {{spoiler|the military}} have to do with all this? Why was {{spoiler|Kaysen ''in'' the military at all?}} Did the final boss fight even happen? Why does everyone intuitively know {{spoiler|to call you Zach}} after The Reveal? Does that mean that you only thought {{spoiler|you were calling yourself York?}} Why can Isaach and Isaiah see dead people? Why were they in the Red Room? What was the Red Room? What did {{spoiler|Kaysen}} mean when he said that he was from the "Red World?"

** And let us not even get started on the [[Final Boss]].

** Strangely enough, Version 0.95 of the game was almost perfectly normal. After it was released, the creator disappeared from the internet for a while before creating a [http://sanagimaru.nobody.jp rather cryptic new website] and releasing the full game at Comiket 72.

* The freeware game ''A Mothers Inferno'' has some incredibly trippy visuals and unusual creatures.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Mind Screw]]