Castle Paradox

[Mortem Monkey]

When creating a game do you intentionaly give the player one imppression and then suddenly flip it, thereby totaly changing the game's story and or point? Lets say that your charcter is a Priest going about the land doing good and serving your god. And then quite suddenly it is reveiled that the god you serve is say the lord of hell and you have been preparing his way to create an army of hell spawned demons? Then you have the choice to continue down this evil path or turn away from every thing that you've known?
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If you don't believe that God has a sense of humor then you explain the french!

[Sephyroth]

It's always good to have a few plot twists, but you shouldn't overdo it to the extent where the player is confused about the plot.
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im realy ded

[Aethereal]

Honestly, I think it depends on the story, although the majority of the great stories do have small or hard plot twists here and there (FF6, which in my opinion has the greatest story of any RPG, is an extremely good example of this). As a matter of fact, the only stories nowadays that really don't have plot twists are those in NES games, older SNES games, and some GBC ones.
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[Alphaknight]

Plot twists are fun and cause the player to become involved in the story but you must remember that all plot twists make for a rather boring story. Side quests are great for plot additions and maybe some plot twists. which i am useing to their extent in Metroid Xtreme.Catcha laters!

[Setu_Firestorm]

I'm with Aeth. Your story has to be the kind where you're not expecting the twist to occur. That's the only type of story that will catch the player by surprise.

If your game is about conspiracy, then unless you are extremely careful, your game will wind up like the movie Snake Eyes (which in translation means: 100% predictable).

Whereas the key to surprising the player is spending the whole story making them believe one thing then suddenly crashing in an element that will flush what the player believed down the toilet (ie. 6th Sense, Basic, Identity, etc.)
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[Minnek]

As an example of such a surprising turn of events, if I might point out the event on the floating continent in FF6? I feel sorry for ze Emperor every time Seriously though, that surprised me the first way through. A good plot twist in my book, that is/was. (I say was because I lent out my FF6 cartridge and the person I lent it to either moved away or mysteriously disappeared off the face of the Earth. )
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[Shadowiii]

In my opinion, every game should have a few good twists.

Basically, a game should probably have one or two major plot twists (FF7 End of Disc 1 Suprise + Cloud's Past Suprise), along with a bunch of minor ones.

FF6 is a great example of this, especially the scene with Kefka and the Emperor on the flying continent. The distruction of the world was ingenious; no one in a million years ever saw it coming.

As for most of my games, usually there is a major plot twist regarding characters (I personally think characters are more important than the story, but thats just me) and a few minor ones along the way. I think I do pretty decent stories myself (when compared to some of the latest commercial RPG ones)

A game with a bad example of plot twists is Golden Sun. There simply aren't any. The transition from Golden Sun to Lost Age (that is, basically switching sides) was a nice addition, but Golden Sun seriously lacks interesting plot twists and character development. Which is too bad, because it excels at everything else.

Eh.
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But enough talk, have at you!

[Uncommon]

[madhatter]

[Grandtrain]

There's nothing worse than a plot twist that comes out of nowhere. You should leave hints throughout the game. Metal Gear Solid and Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic are great examples. I was shocked at the plot twist, but, at the same time, was impressed by how everything came together.

[Machu]

Metal Gear Solid: Great plot twists (except for how many things Liquid Snake survives through)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Excessive plot twists. I myself understood it until boarding Arsenel Gear. Also, the "evil hand" made no sense.

[Uncommon]