Hello to all who happen to read this, and welcome to my blog. Who am I, what is this blog about, and why should you care? Well, I am Matthew Hollingsworth, known as Mad_Scientist on this site. This blog is about storytelling, both my own attempts at creative writing, and my thoughts on the various storytelling mediums that exist. And you should care because I think some of you might find my thoughts interesting, and those of you who are also aspiring writers might find it encouraging to read about someone who shares the same struggles.

With that out of the way, onto my first post, the topic of which is what I consider to definitely be the greatest video game plot twist of all time. That is a bold claim to make, and I give the caveat that of course I have not played all video games, so it's possible there is a twist I don't know about that is better. But I find that unlikely, for I am talking about the "greatest video game plot twist" not "the greatest plot twist in a video game." There is a difference in my mind.

What is that difference? For me, a really good "video game plot twist" or "video game story" is something that takes advantage of the unique merits of the video game medium. There are many games with good stories that could have been easily told in a movie or a book without losing any impact. These are fine stories, but by not taking advantage of the strengths of a video game as a storytelling vehicle, they miss an opportunity for greatness. A truly great video game story is one that cannot be told somewhere else properly, one that loses something if you try to strip it out of the game and put it into another medium.

So what are the strengths of a video game when it comes to telling stories? Some would argue there are none, but that is not true at all. One of the main great strengths of a video game story is the ability to incorperate player choice into the story. When characters in a book or a movie face tough choices, they make the choices regardless of what the viewer thinks should be done. There is a strength in that, in seeing a character you've grown to love make what you feel is the wrong choice and being unable to do anything about it. But there is a different advantage in a video game where you must make the choice yourself. Faced with two or more tough options, none of which are clearly the right one, all of which could permanently alter the fate of the character, and it's up to you to decide what to do, how do you respond? There is a strength in that which gives video games a completely different dynamic.

Technically, choose-your-own-adventure books had an element of choice in them long before video games existed, but I'd argue that video games are pretty much the successors of choose-your-own-adventure books, and can handle the element of choice even better.

Another big strength of video game stories is how they can draw you into the main character's situation, because you are the one controlling the character. In some RPGs, it's beyond just controlling, you pretty much are the main character. And even in games with a character that is less defined by the player, it is easy to get sucked in and identify with him strongly. Thus, if done properly, story events and plot twists that affect the main character drastically can have an even greater impact in a video game than elsewhere. When you combine that with the above element of choice, you have something magical. For example, when a main character who you have spent hours guiding through various trials and struggles suffers some horrible calamity as a direct result of a tough choice that you yourself made earlier, the impact will be incredibly strong if done right.

The stories that are great video game stories, and not just great stories that happen to be stuck in a video game, are made by those who know the strengths of video games and take advantage of them. And the great video game plot twists also take advantage of them. So if that is what makes a great video game plot twist, what makes something "the greastest video game plot twist of all time"? Something that goes even further. Something that is not just a great plot twist in its own right, but which also is so in tune with the nature of a video game that it is literally impossible for the twist to occur in any other medium. Not just a twist that will lose impact if taken out of a video game, something that simply cannot be done outside of a video game.

Does such a twist truly exist? Yes, one does, and it is in a game called 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors.

9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (or 999 as I will call it from now on) is a game released for the Nintendo DS last year in the US and two years ago in Japan. It's genre would either be classified as a "visual novel" or an "adventure game," and in truth it has elements of both. Most of you are probably aware of the old classic adventure games, such as the King's Quest series, which tended to focus on story, exploration, and puzzle solving. You might not know about a visual novel though, as it is a term for a type of game not seen outside of Japan much.

A visual novel is pretty much a true choose-your-own-adventure book in video game form. They usually have little to no puzzle solving and don't even have a huge amount of graphics (despite the "visual" part of their title) and instead have lots and lots of text and description and dialogue. The "novel" part of the name is just as important if not more than the visual part. They are known for long and complicated stories full of many branching paths based on player choices, with tons of different endings.

(A fairly notable sub-set of them also tend to be erotic, but that's a whole other subject)

999 contains all the puzzle solving of a traditional adventure game, but also contains the limited artwork (during non-puzzle solving segments) and heavy text and description of a visual novel, as well as a visual novel's many branching story paths. The visual novel and adventure game segments are actually somewhat separated from each other, as you will have a large segment of puzzle solving as you escape from some rooms, then follow it with a big story segment full of dialogue, descriptions, and choices, and follow it with another puzzle segment, etc. Fortunately, the puzzle segments also contain plenty of story and are well designed, so the gameplay flows together nicely despite what it might sound like from above.

But you're not reading this for a review, so I described the gameplay mainly so that you'd have a basic idea how the game works. Moving on to the story and the "greatest video game plot twist," I should of course warn you that spoilers are heavy from this point on.

In 999, you play as Junpei, a 20-something college student who suddenly finds himself awakening in a room he doesn't recognize on what seems to be a boat. After figuring out how to escape the locked room, he meets 8 other people and learns that all of them have been kidnapped by someone who only identifies himself as "zero" and will be forced to play something called the Nonary game in order to escape the ship they are on before it sinks in 9 hours. To do that they will have to solve challenges and ultimately pass through several special numbered doors until they reach the door with a 9 on it, which will be the exit. Hence the title.

It seems like a fairly standard setup: a bunch of strangers are brought to some location by a mysterious person and have to work together to escape and/or survive, while not knowing if they can all trust each other. Fortunately, there is a good reason this idea is such a popular setting, and 999 does an excellent job with it, so soon you will be drawn into the story and characters despite the somewhat cliched initial premise. What follows is a fascinating tale that also creates a background story combining intriguing real life history with myths and both real and pseudo science. You may find yourself checking google often just to see what parts of the game's story are real and what parts are made up.

The game also does a good job of merging story and gameplay in a creative manner. One of the common complaints adventure games have gotten is that their puzzles are often nonsensical and/or completely arbitrary, and are just thrown in so that the player has something to solve. But the entire premise of 999 involves the fact that zero created challenges for the people trapped to overcome, so the presence of the puzzles is perfectly explained and does not detract from the story. About the only thing the game does that seems initially a little odd is how it separates Junpei's thoughts and words, which are shown in first-person on the top screen, and the descriptions of events that are going on, which are detailed in third-person on the bottom screen, which takes a little getting used to at first but soon becomes natural and seems the obvious choice.

And then you will reach the end of the game and die horribly. Ok, that's not 100% guarranteed, but chances are it will happen your first time through. Fortunately, 999 is designed to be replayed, and after you save your data you can restart the game and this time fast-forward through the story segments you've already seen until you reach a point where you have to make a choice or something you haven't seen before occurs. This makes it quick and easy to explore different options. You will make different choices and open different doors, and learn further pieces of the story. And you'll probably still die again at the end. But eventually, you're figure out how to get the true ending.

And that is where things go nuts. Final spoiler warning.

In order to reach the true end of 999, you'll have to get a specific bad end first. For those who have played video games a lot this won't seem odd, for many games do not let you get the best ending on your first playthrough, and force you to unlock the true ending through various methods. What will seem odd is the way Junpei starts knowing things that he only could have learned through some of the other playthroughs, things he should not possibly be able to know on this playthrough.

When another character confronts Junpei about his strange knowledge near the game's climax, Junpei will be stumped. But at that point, the descriptive text at the bottom screen, the thing that has been there the entire game, forgotten, simply a part of the visual novel's genre conventions, will change. It will switch from third-person to first-person. "The answer was simple. He knew because I knew."

As the now suddenly first-person narrative goes on and reveals more details, talking about how it has watched and guided Junpei since the beginning and how it was able to view the other timelines where Junpei failed, you will realize something. The text on the bottom screen was always first-person. It's just that Junpei was never the character you were playing as. The entire game, you though you were controlling Junpei but were in fact playing as someone else. (And no, it's not you as in you the player. It's an actual character in the game)

Everything that you dismissed as simply being a part of the standard conventions of a video game will suddenly make sense. The reason why getting a certain bad endings was needed before unlocking the true ending: it's not just because "video games do that a lot," it's because the character you were actually playing as was able to view the failed timelines and use the knowledge.

The separation between the top and bottom screens? You will realize that throughout the entire game, the top screen has represented Junpei and the bottom screen has represented this other character. That is why you'd sometimes see Junpei's thoughts in first-person on the top screen and other times get descriptions of how he was feeling in third-person on the bottom screen. The fact that you've always solved every puzzle using the bottom screen? That's not just because the only touch screen on the DS is the bottom screen and it makes it convenient for puzzles, it's because Junpei hasn't truly been solving the puzzles himself, he's been getting help. Which also neatly fits in with why he'd always be the one to solve a puzzle, not his companions.

The twist is beautiful in the way it takes things most people will have assumed were simply "the way a DS game works" or "the way a visual novel works" and actually makes them part of the story, but it is most incredible for the fact that it is a twist that relates to who you have been playing as the whole time. The concept of a player character is something unique to video games, which is why this twist is impossible to do elsewhere.

Oh, someone could try something similiar. Someone could write a novel with third-person narration and have it switch to first-person. But that would be a different twist, one where you don't think the narrator is a character and suddenly realize it is. Interesting, but different. Someone could make a movie or book where it was obvious from the start that the narrator was a character, and then reveal that the narrator is not the person most people thought, but that would also be different. The narrator of a story is something completely different in concept than the character you play as in a video game.

999 has a great story, and tons of twists I have not mentioned (including just who exactly the character you are really playing as is). But above all, this one twist stands alone for completely redefining everything you thought you knew about the game, and taking advantage of the concept of a "player character" to tell a twist that is literally impossible anywhere else. And that is why I declare it the greatest video game plot twist ever.