Creating an effective twist while accounting for audience knowledge?

Well, this fangame I'm talking about below is my first attempt to write any story ever, so take it with a grain of salt.

Without going into specifics unless people really want me to, I've got the beginning, basic plot, and a couple endings in mind for a fangame brewing in my head right now, but one thing that's really sticking me is the twist I have in mind.

See, the origin and identity of the main character is supposed to be a twist revealed a some point near the end, but despite it looping around in my head forever I can't think any way to really hide this twist from anyone who has actually played the series of games this is a fangame of or have extensive knowledge of it (in other words, most of my likely audience) without looking like I'm insulting the intelligence of my audience. This is especially problematic with those who have played the first game and particularly people who have played another fangame that inspired this one in the first place.

For a hint as to what I'm talking about, I'm trying to write a game whose plot hinges on a second life redemption for the Big Bad of most of the original game series and that other fangame, the fact that the Main Character IS the former Big Bad is the twist I can't figure out how to hide since even the character's very look is likely to give it away to anyone that has ever seen said Big Bad. However, at the same time I don't want to deprive those who might be newcomers to the series or otherwise not have the knowledge needed to make this twist obvious either.

So there is my dilemma. Right now this fangame is purely in the conception stage but this twist is something this is the core of the entire concept of the game in the first place and thus something that needs solving.

Make it a first-person game, perhaps? If your players look through the eyes of the redeemed Big Bad, they won't have any way to see who this is they're borrowing eyes from. If you don't want to do this in first person, you can also dress them up in cloak and mask, or start the game with our hero leaving a hospital after plastic surgery (I suppose it would make sense for a villain who wants to start anew to change their face...).

For foreshadowing that won't give it away, the ex-villain could use turns of phrase that are Something Only They Would Say (though not Catchphrase, the players will figure it out for sure) or know astonishingly much about the tech/magical gadgets/infrastructure they've left behind from their time as a villain. If players would start to suspect something at this point, you can have your ex-villain claim that they were a mook who underwent Mook–Face Turn. That should leave your players wrong-footed... until The Reveal, when they should realize that even the most Elite Mook shouldn't know all those things.

Hope that helps.

Well, the games this is a fangame of are distinctly are third person top down games with a rather specific look, so the first idea is out, then there's the fact that the former Big Bad and thus protagonist is a distinct looking alien creature, so I don't think a change in clothes will help. The entire problem is probably rooted in the fact that the former Big Bad's and thus the protagonist's look is far too distinctive compared to literally every other being in the original game series.

The plot in it's entirety is about the protagonist being this former Big Bad, but due to being reborn has no memories of that fact aside from perhaps really vague dreams and is raised from infancy during the intro (I was speaking literally when I said second life). Until after the reveal everyone but the Big Bad of the game herself doesn't know the twist and there's no way they could be expected to, while the fact that the Big Bad does know is the motivation for her actions throughout the game, she's trying to for the protagonist to return to his previous identity or near enough to it.

My first thought to deal with this and something I'm going to do regardless is have both generic and boss versions of the same creature the protagonist is in various stages of his physical development be elite mooks and boss characters that appear throughout the game. Even if this worked, then the issue becomes how to I foreshadow the twist at various points throughout the game when all but the most extremely vague foreshadowing would probably invalidate that tactic.

edited 9th Feb '16 11:10:21 AM by immortalfrieza

Does whatever sort of "reborn" you're using here allow the character to change species? If not, maybe you could work into the plot some sort of transformation the protagonist has been stuck with without their knowledge, perhaps something that happened along with the amnesia. So you can have them be a human character with a design that references this alien big bad's looks.

Or perhaps something has affected the character's perception of themself. We see their own idea of how they look, but a couple odd comments from other characters and maybe a distorted reflection if there's working mirrors in this game hint that something is up... and then when the reveal comes out you can have the self-glamor break and the character appears how they actually are to both themself and the player.

I'm not sure that would work, considering the Elite Mook/Boss idea kind of relies on the audience being aware of what the Main Character actually looks like since they look to be the same. The protagonists trying to work out exactly what this means and where the Main Character originally came from is a big part of their motivation.

The main plot is basically this: The former Big Bad was an Omnicidal Maniac godlike being that was finally destroyed by the good guys in the last game in the series he appeared in, and as their last act before poofing out of existence entirely he rebirths himself in his original form as an infant out of an instinctual stubborn refusal to die, who ends up getting raised by the very protagonists that originally killed him a few years afterward and thus becomes the new protagonist of this game. The core of the plot is that the former Big Bad's wife/worshipper acts are driven by deliberately trying to drive the Main Character insane so he can return to being the all powerful Omnicidal Maniac he was in the previous life. It's supposed to be something of a potential redemption game for the former Big Bad, which I started thinking up after seeing that Big Bad's backstory that made me pity him a lot. The look of the character is half the point of the character really, I need 4 characters as the party, one alien, one human, one robot, and one that I have yet to think up.

edited 11th Feb '16 4:39:11 AM by immortalfrieza

So do I understand correctly, the big clue to MC's real identity is that the mooks look like him? How about throwing the audience a Red Herring in form of a note suggesting that the protagonist is a clone of an Elite Mook? It can muddle the waters a bit, with some players feeling smart because they "figured out" the twist, and then you thrown the curveball in form of the real identity of the MC and they go "of course!".

Well, I'm not going to make much attempt to make any "big clues" into the game given that the issue here is the Main Character's very appearance is a big enough clue as it is. The Elite Mooks looking like the Main Character at various ages (I'll show the Main Character at various ages in the intro to help cement this) is the first thing I came up with to throw players off, trying to give the idea that Main Character is simply a similar looking member of a species instead of the former Big Bad himself. You're actually not too far off from where the Elite Mooks/Bosses are supposed to come from, they're not quite as good clones of the former Big Bad and the current Big Bad, used as cannon fodder/backup plans by the current Big Bad to torment the Main Character's and push power up until it becomes too much for him to control, which a big part is how the former Big Bad went insane and became an all powerful Omnicidal Maniac in the first place, or maybe it was the other way around, not sure. Said clones also factor in strongly to the game's good ending.

edited 11th Feb '16 10:18:02 AM by immortalfrieza