Some of the best detective stories of all time tend to hide things in plain sight, only for readers to be ashamed they didn’t see it right away. Anime openings tend to do this as well, spoiling things that will come later in the season that manga fans may catch, but new viewers could miss. Even the best RPGs that have touched PlayStation consoles have had obvious story bits spoiled upfront if players were paying attention.
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Some players like playing the sleuth and guessing twists. Not all of these will be exactly riveting, but they are worth thinking about. Were they set up to wink at players, or were they oversights by the developers? It may be a secret they take to their graves. Either way, these plot points are complicated to discuss in length, but here are some good summaries.
There will be spoilers for the following examples.
Final Fantasy 8
The Guardian Forces
Final Fantasy 8
- Released
- February 11, 1999
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Square Enix
- Genre(s)
- JRPG
Final Fantasy 8’s version of Summons is called Guardian Forces, or GFs. Players can equip them to characters, Draw magic from monsters, and then equip the spells onto their GFs to raise stats instead of relying on equipment. It’s a beneficial system for warrior cadets like Squall, the protagonist, but there is a problem. If players spend time in the beginning talking to everyone at Balamb Garden and reading emails, they will learn about the downside involving memory loss as these GFs take up brain space. This helps set up the whole playable cast sharing collective amnesia over knowing each other as kids, which also involved a spell, but the GFs could be blamed just as much.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Gone Too Soon
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Released
- April 24, 2025
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Genre(s)
- Turn-Based RPG, JRPG, Fantasy
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has a lot of wild revelations, and players could hypothetically predict the big one involving the entire world existing in a painting. That would take some heavy guessing upon the player, but one twist they could predict easily is the fate of Gustave, who begins as the protagonist. Each character has a skill tree, and his is pretty small compared to everyone else, meaning he could gain a boost later to expand it, or that he was gonna die. This small detail could have been enough to clue players into his death in the first act.
Dragon Quest 11: Echoes Of An Elusive Age
Talking About Tockles
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age
- Released
- September 4, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T For Teen due to Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Simulated Gambling, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol
- Genre(s)
- JRPG
Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Elusive Age is a long game, and it takes the usual amount of time to get to the supposed final boss, which is about sixty hours. The strange thing is, there are little ghost-like creatures that players can see as they travel around, which they later learn are called Tockles. Players can’t talk to them, and no one acknowledges their existence, as only the player can see them. By the time players get to the final fight, and they aren’t addressed, or even long before that, players could have guessed they were tied into a big revelation, which they were. After this boss fight ends poorly, players can talk to the head Tockle to go back in time, to set things right, easily adding another twenty to thirty hours to the experience.
Fallout 4
Where Is My Baby?
Fallout 4
- Released
- November 10, 2015
WHERE TO PLAY
Fallout 4 lets players create a female and a male character in the beginning, which is set before the bombs drop, and then players can choose which one to main. This happy couple also has a son, Shaun, and when all heck breaks loose, players jump into a cryochamber, and their spouse jumps into one with Shaun.
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During cryosleep, players will wake up, see two people open their spouse’s pod, kill them, and then take Shaun. After passing out, players wake up and embark on a quest to find their baby in their newly discovered post-apocalyptic predicament. But, given that cryosleep can last years, players probably figured out their child was going to be an old codger by the time they saw him again.
Final Fantasy 10
Dreams Of The Faith
Final Fantasy 10
- Released
- December 17, 2001
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Square Enix
- Genre(s)
- JRPG
- Platform(s)
- PS2
Final Fantasy 10 opens with Tidus playing Blitzball in his home of Zanarkand, which is then attacked by a giant tidal wave and monsters. After fighting for his life, Tidus wakes up away from his home, and when he finds civilization again, Yuna and her Guardians explain that it’s impossible he was from Zanarkand because it was destroyed a thousand years ago. It’s a mystery, and some players may think there is a multi-dimensional or time travel situation going on, but it’s even darker than some fans may guess. Because it’s established early that humans, who are dead, can still take on a corporeal form as a Dream of the Faith, they may figure out that Tidus is essentially a ghost.
NieR: Automata
Humanity’s Last Hope
NieR: Automata
- Released
- March 7, 2017
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Platinum Games
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG
NieR: Automata begins in a space station, the last bastion of humanity, wherein two battle androids, 9s and 2b, are assigned to go down to Earth and help get rid of the robots who took it over eons ago. Their mission is given to them by a human decree, but no humans are ever seen. Players will first play as 9s, then 2b, and then finally someone named A2. After three campaigns, players will learn humanity died out ages ago, and the AI controlling the space station carries on their legacy as if they were still human. Since players never see a real human in space, they could predict this twist from the start, or at least assume something is fishy.
Kingdom Hearts 2
RPG Anagrams
Kingdom Hearts 2
- Released
- March 28, 2006
WHERE TO PLAY
For players who engaged with the interquel, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, who Roxas was at the start of Kingdom Hearts 2 was a no-brainer. In the GBA spinoff, Sora faces Organization 13 for the first time, and every character has an X in their name, like Axel, Marluxia, and Larxene. While players don’t learn they are anagrams in the game, and their true names aren’t revealed until later sequels, it becomes apparent that Roxas must be an anagram of Sora with an X added in. The two characters look so much alike, and the name is an easy puzzle to solve before it gets revealed at the end of Roxas’s opening act.
Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom
The Missing Link
Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom
- Released
- March 23, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- t
- Genre(s)
- JRPG
Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom opens with Roland, who is presumed to be the President of some country, seeing an explosion before waking up in a fantasy world wherein he meets Prince Evan. Players who engaged with the first game know that there is typically an equivalent person in each world, as they are like mirrors.
Roland doesn’t meet his twin hours into the game, which is suspicious, on top of a masked villain getting introduced somewhat early, named Doloran. In the end, it’s revealed he is this world’s version of Roland, which was very obvious given that this was another anagram situation with Doloran just having an extra O.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
The Nature Of Humans
Metaphor: ReFantazio
- Released
- October 11, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Studio Zero
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
Metaphor: ReFantazio takes place in a fantasy world where there are monstrous giants, called Humans, who serve mostly as bosses in the game, and they’re just as threatening as the humanoid Titans in Attack on Titan. It turns out, it wasn’t a design choice to terrify players with something familiar. Instead, these Humans were actually mutated and transformed humans from ages ago, before the post-apocalypse, as this fantasy world used to be Earth. It may be a stretch, but some players could have figured this out, especially if they finished Attack on Titan, which is eerily similar.
Final Fantasy 16
Knowing Summoner Lore
Final Fantasy 16
- Released
- June 22, 2023
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Square Enix
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG
In the opening to Final Fantasy 16, two Eikons, the Summons of this game, fight. Ifrit overtakes Phoenix and destroys the Grand Duchy of Rosaria, the protagonist, Clive’s home. Also, Joshua, Clive’s brother, who manifested as Phoenix, was killed in the battle. Clive swore revenge on Ifrit, even though it seemed pretty obvious, given his absence, that Clive was Ifrit and he just suffered from amnesia. Also, anyone who knows Final Fantasy lore, or just basic fantasy lore, knows that a phoenix’s big trick is being able to revive itself. Lo and behold, Joshua is later revealed to be alive and well.
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