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[Nicolada]

Would the Layton series count?

Spoiler

Everyone you talked to was a hallucination because of a gas leak.

Spoiler

They were just older than they appeared, not hallucinations.

Also I liked the ZTD twist, I was just waiting the whole game to see how I was being suckered and then that happened lol. Do wish it had some real plot significance like the previous games' twists though.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Halo Reach Retconned quite a bit.

Halsey didn't realize she was meeting Spartan III's or something? I mean they are either a class of spartans in strange armor she is unfamiliar with or....? She never calls it out.

The PoA being docked on the ground and cortana being delivered to it was the big one.
------


Bungie also allegedly wanted forerunners to be ancient humans.
343 interpreted that as, forerunners were there own ancient race. And they had a galactic war against space faring ancient humans.

There were a few iterations of what the Forerunners actually were. It was finalized in Halo 3 during the terminals when the Librarian found Earth l during the end of the Flood War

 

[MechaX]

Spoiler

Volgin and The Boss would be the obvious ones. Maybe Granin and Sokolov as well, in addition to any dead. soldiers. Maybe even what was left of the Shaghod. And of course things like Snake's wrecked entry jet and any discarded gear. The idea being of course to create a strong case for plausible deniability if necessary. Of course, the game's original plot had already accounted for this by having The Boss literally nuke Grozny Grad with the Davy Crockett to destroy all the evidence but hey, who needs consistency.

Wait,

Spoiler

but didn't Sokolov survive to come back in Portable Ops? And he didn't mention to Snake that a man with a monster face rescued him? Actually, was Boss using the second Davy Crockett a part of the plan? If not, how in the world would XOF have even survived if he-

oh my god this series

 

[RK9039]

Mgsv, we are all Big Boss.

 

[Alienous]

Nothing is more repulsive than Nate's brother he neglected to mention over 4 games.

Actually I'll take this one step further -

Nate's mother - who was just a suicide in 3 - being the famous archaeological assistant of a famous archaeologist who mapped out all of Nate's hunts for antiquities. Absolutely stripped him of any agency and made him a fated figure rather than a competent rogue. So dumb.

She was there all along.

I'll never understand why they needed to give Nathan Drake a superhero origin story.

 

[semiconscious]

Kojima doesn't give a shit. He just makes up nonsense as he goes along.

& this's precisely why i love him so much ..,

 

[MoonsaultSlayer]

Marlowe has a combined, like 15 lines of dialog in Uncharted 3. Why would she reference a brother everyone thought died like 15 years ago whom she never met?

Nate never went into any detail on why he was there. They only discussed Francis Drake and his meaning to Nate. You may have assumed he was dumped there, but if anything Uncharted 4 fills in that blank: He ran away from the Orphanage with Sam.

It wasn't about whether or not she met him but she dug up his past to get in his head. That incident would have weighed pretty heavy on Nate and would have been easy to find since the other stuff was. It's a convenient "well we never said he DIDN'T have a brother".

I can still tolerate the game, but it didn't need to be a brother.

 

[Gbraga]

Nothing is more repulsive than Nate's brother he neglected to mention over 4 games.

Actually I'll take this one step further -

Nate's mother - who was just a suicide in 3 - being the famous archaeological assistant of a famous archaeologist who mapped out all of Nate's hunts for antiquities. Absolutely stripped him of any agency and made him a fated figure rather than a competent rogue. So dumb.

She was there all along.

3 exists to explore the paternal relationship between Nate and Sully; explore a rocky martial patch between Nate and Elena; bid adieu to peripheral figures like Chloe while introducing new companions like Cutter; introduce nuance such as unanswered questions about how an American child became a Colombian urchin; bookend the series with the same trio of characters and plane as it had begun.

4 undoes the Sully relationship by shoehorning Nate's family of antiquity hunters in who set up his previous adventures for him; re-explores Nate and Elena's rocky marriage while adding nothing; doesn't touch on peripheral cast members like Chloe until a DLG; answers every question laid out will full spoken exposition which is immensely unsatisfying; finishes the series with an epilogue that is also much too explocit (and furthers the silly "family of archaeologists" theme).

4 was originally dark. It was Hennig's exploration of "Nate didn't mention this guy because Nate has some skeletons in his closet." Drux and Stly significantly altered the tone (and cast) and made a much prettier, better playing, but narratively clumsier Uncharted 3.

Yep, yep, yep. Completely agree.

I thought what they did with Nate's past in 3 was dumb, but 4 takes it to a whole new level. Jesus.

That Left Behind chapter was some David Cage stuff.

 

[Akuun]

deleted

 

[Catalix]

Marlowe has a combined, like 15 lines of dialog in Uncharted 3. Why would she reference a brother everyone thought died like 15 years ago whom she never met?

Nate never went into any detail on why he was there. They only discussed Francis Drake and his meaning to Nate. You may have assumed he was dumped there, but if anything Uncharted 4 fills in that blank: He ran away from the Orphanage with Sam.

Sam supposedly played a very prominent role in Nate's upbringing, all the way up into adulthood, but Marlowe never mentions him. Not even a hint. Yet she was able to give accurate descriptions of both of his long dead mother and absentee father when detailing Nate's backstory.

Sam is very much a clumsily inserted addition to the story.

 

[John Harker]

Nikki and Paolo

 

[bigDdestruction]

I don't think ZTD's big reveal was a retcon because the game did foreshadow it. It was bad, but it wasn't a retcon from previous games.

I think the real retcon in ZTD is the personality of almost every returning character in the cast. Seriously, almost none of them act or react to things the way they did in the previous games. Most of them might as well have been totally new characters.

I absolutely freakin agree with this post.

 

[Markitron]

I don't see the problem with Uncharted 4, it's just a new character that was introduced that had a reasonable reason for not being there or being mentioned. I don't see this as a retcon, they are not claiming he was in any way involved with events of the previous games.

Also his mother being a historian works fine for me as well, as that's what sets him on his way to Columbia to meet Sully in the first place.

 

[Stabby McSter]

Heavy Rain does this kinda, right?

 

[Markitron]

Heavy Rain does this kinda, right?

Can you have a retcon in the space of a single game? That would really fall more into the category of plot hole.

Good one. Textbook example of a game never designed to have a sequel getting one.

This is fine with me when said game turns out to be very good.

 

[MoonsaultSlayer]

Nikki and Paolo

*pgghhhhh*

Spoiler

Lost sound effect...

 

[Baron von Loathsome]

Probably true, strictly speaking. What does count as a retcon, and an awful sin, is

Spoiler

turning the entire of VLR into the consequence of one of the game's bad endings.

I mean, that was the in-universe reason several of the characters were there in the first place, so that

Spoiler

VLR's timeline would never come to fruition. And that was established back in VLR, too.

Man, I forgot about this movie.

 

[Hylian7]

To be fair to Zero Time Dilemma, there were a lot of hints and foreshadowing. The characters unambiguously talk about the villain several times before the reveal (the

Spoiler

"old man in the wheelchair"

scene, for example), and they indirectly appear in some scenes (

Spoiler

the player views the game through his eyes, so we never see him directly, but his shadow is visible in some scenes; there's also a point where the characters are making a weirdly big deal of rescuing the dog who's been tied to a post, where the other end of the chain leads towards the camera - they're trying to rescue him, not the dog

). As all the groups are separated, only one of the three groups is aware that something is off, and

Spoiler

rightfully suspect the kid who they've never seen before rather than the harmless old man they've lived with for several days

.

My main issue with Zero Time Dilemma's villain is that although the characters are aware of them, everybody accepts their story at face value and never decides they might be hiding something. Also "complex motives".

More ZTD spoilers:

Spoiler

But how exactly can they question his story? They believe he is blind and deaf,
and even though he isn't, he will keep it the facade and not answer them. For all they knew he was just a test subject in the Mars Mission Test Site. In the 3 way standoff, if you put in "Delta", Eric and Mira are like "wtf why did you shoot him?" when all 3 of them were about to kill each other.

I'm on the side of "ZTD was good", regarding that common meme from this game:

Spoiler

Yeah, complex motives sounds silly, but he isn't completely inaccurate. To anyone, wanting six billion people to die seems illogical, but it still seems strange when he believes that will save 3 billion people.

I still think the real reason most people on the anti-ZTD side is:

Spoiler

The explanatory non-canon ending of VLR, while definitely not indicated clearly enough that it wasn't canon, was not acknowledged.
Everyone expected some crazy shenanigans of clone Kyle coming back to the past like a normal human, despite the potential number of issues that might raise. There was also the bit about Alice and Clover wanting to Schodingers Cat themselves into the past, which seemed a little strange by the logic of SHIFTing.

 

[MudoSkills]

I mean, that was the in-universe reason several of the characters were there in the first place, so that

Spoiler

VLR's timeline would never come to fruition. And that was established back in VLR, too.

I get that - it was just the offhand way they dealt with it all, which isn't at all how VLR was setting things up:

Spoiler

Here is the virus, just because
Sigma's injuries, oh, he got blown up

It also only shows up in one of the timelines, IIRC. I'm absolutely not alone in thinking it ruined all the set up at the end of VLR.

 

[Linkhero1]

Would the Layton series count?

Spoiler

Everyone you talked to was a hallucination because of a gas leak.

Spoiler

You were underground the whole time in a fake London filled with actors.

Spoiler

A giant seal did it.

EDIT: Wouldn't count since they're in the same game, not retcons.

Which game is the first spoiler from?

 

[davidwhangchoi]

Samus' Parents were those bird human things that gave power ups. wth

 

[aaaaaa]

Huh, I didn't know people hated that Zero Time Dilemma twist so much. My main problem with ZTD was that it overwrote the continuity of Virtue's Last Reward.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

"There must always be a Lich King"

"Kael works for the Burning Legion now"

I don't think ZTD's big reveal was a retcon because the game did foreshadow it. It was bad, but it wasn't a retcon from previous games.

I think the real retcon in ZTD is the personality of almost every returning character in the cast. Seriously, almost none of them act or react to things the way they did in the previous games. Most of them might as well have been totally new characters.

Except for Phi.

 

[Saprol]

Which game is the first spoiler from?

IIRC, that's

Spoiler

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. I was laughing too hard when it turned out to be a big drug trip.

.

 

[Stallion Dan]

Huh?

This isn't even a retcon at all. As far as Nate was concerned, he died well before the events of Uncharted 1 and had no reason to think he was alive until Uncharted 4. They made zero change to any part of the story to accommodate Sam's existence.

Sam and the back story with him conflict with Nate's character and motivations in 1 and 3, as well as conflict with his past as presented in 3.

 

[Ceallach]

Samus' Parents were those bird human things that gave power ups. wth

They're her adoptive parents. But the Chozo stuff was established in the 1986 Metroid manga. So it isn't really a retcon

 

[Bahorel]

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was a expanded remake of the DS game Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn. On top of upgraded visuals and a new battle system to compensate for scrapping the entire hook of the game, it also expands the story by adding a new antagonist. Level 5's brilliant idea to integrate the titular White Witch was to cut to the League Of Villains between all significant events in the game, and do roughly the same scene again and again and again:
'The boy is coming closer and our previous plan failed, but it matters not, arrangements have been made to stop him in this tracks. This new henchman will surely dispose of him.'

Just a lot of that. It feels entirely pointless and forced in, and only sets up their new villain in the lamest, most incompetent way. Like the OPs title said, 'she was there all along, I promise!" Ni no Kuni's remake suffers from poorly integrated content in general, so it's impressive that these new scenes still manage to stand out. I guess it's easy to spot since there's so much repetitiveness in the cutscenes.

Wow! I only just finished Ni no Kuni PS3 last night and had no idea it existed in a different narrative form previously. I can totally see now it because the false ending certainly stuck out. Like the big happy cutscene everything's cool now and then wait no there's more and it's even worse, etc. I didn't realize that that first one really was the true ending of the DS version. I still loved the game, but I'm sure it seems off to people who played the DS version and/or knew about it beforehand.

 

[Stallion Dan]

Heavy Rain does this kinda, right?

Can you have a retcon in the space of a single game? That would really fall more into the category of plot hole.

Nah, HR retcons a bunch of scenes so they different to what actually happened.

 

[C.Olimar788]

Came in for ZTD and Uncharted 4, was not disappointed. Even though ZTD's... "twist" isn't technically a retcon so much as just miserable storytelling and a desperate ploy to one-up the actually good twists in 999 and VLR.

 

[Ralemont]

Came in for ZTD and Uncharted 4, was not disappointed. Even though ZTD's... "twist" isn't technically a retcon so much as just miserable storytelling and a desperate ploy to one-up the actually good twists in 999 and VLR.

Which twist was good in VLR? All I can remember is a handful of bad ones towards the end.

 

[arturo2666]

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was a expanded remake of the DS game Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn. On top of upgraded visuals and a new battle system to compensate for scrapping the entire hook of the game, it also expands the story by adding a new antagonist. Level 5's brilliant idea to integrate the titular White Witch was to cut to the League Of Villains between all significant events in the game, and do roughly the same scene again and again and again:
'The boy is coming closer and our previous plan failed, but it matters not, arrangements have been made to stop him in this tracks. This new henchman will surely dispose of him.'

Just a lot of that. It feels entirely pointless and forced in, and only sets up their new villain in the lamest, most incompetent way. Like the OPs title said, 'she was there all along, I promise!" Ni no Kuni's remake suffers from poorly integrated content in general, so it's impressive that these new scenes still manage to stand out. I guess it's easy to spot since there's so much repetitiveness in the cutscenes.

Have to agree here. Despite loving the game, the white witch stuff felt really tacked on and also ruins the best reading of the game's plot IMO,

Spoiler

that everything in the other world is just Oliver working through the trauma of causing his mother's death.

 

[C.Olimar788]

Which twist was good in VLR? All I can remember is a handful of bad ones towards the end.

The

Spoiler

Sigma is actually in an old man body the whole time

is the one I was specifically referring to, which I thought was a decent enough twist. Nothing stellar, and nowhere near 999's, but still fun enough to suspend the necessary disbelief for me.

 

[mebizzle]

The falling out with the musician that his likeness is based kills that possibility.

What happened wth Gackt and Squenix?

 

[DOWN]

Sam from Uncharted 4 felt like when Amy Hennig left, The Last of Us team changed the originally teased premise of a scorned man in prison that Nate had worked with, to some silly out of nowhere character to give their fav Troy Baker a big role. It was quite annoying and didn’t sit as well as the original teaser would have.

 

[TwoDurans]

Can someone explain Skull Face in MGS3 for me? I guess I forgot that part.

 

[Vince DiCola]

Holy shit this is awesome

 

[Funyarinpa]

Which twist was good in VLR? All I can remember is a handful of bad ones towards the end.

Spoiler

Luna and Kyle's backstories.
Red circle wasn't a lunar eclipse but post-apocalyptic Earth
Radical 6 offsets objects falling slower
The old lady was Akane all along

The only one that is a stretch is

Spoiler

the whole Sigma Is Actually Old And Has A Cyber Eye

thing, but even then it isn't exactly contradictory with anything in the game.

 

[Imperfected]

This seems to have come down to a three-way battle between MGS, Crisis Core, and Zero Time Dilemma.

 

[eshwaaz]

Sofia Lamb in Bioshock 2. She was apparently a huge figure in Rapture, even though she wasn't mentioned a single time in the first game.

God, yes. I hated this.

"No, really, she's as cool an antagonist as Andrew Ryan! Listen to these audio logs - it's her debating Ryan - and winning!!! Even better than Ryan, right? Super memorable, right? Just totally ignore that she absolutely did not exist in the first game, okay?"

 

[Crossing Eden]

I don't see the problem with Uncharted 4, it's just a new character that was introduced that had a reasonable reason for not being there or being mentioned. I don't see this as a retcon, they are not claiming he was in any way involved with events of the previous games.

Also his mother being a historian works fine for me as well, as that's what sets him on his way to Columbia to meet Sully in the first place.

What's the narrative reason for Marlowe, master of mind games and emotional manipulation, to not mention the fact that Nathan Drake had a brother?

 

[SolVanderlyn]

People have siblings they don't mention all the time. Maybe they died, or are horrible people, or bring otherwise painful memories into their lives. Marlowe doesn't need to mention Sam because he's presumed dead and never accomplished anything of note while also having a history as a hoodlum, unlike Nate's famous parents. Would anyone care about, say, Obama's brother? He's irrelevant to his story of being president of the United States at one point.

Nate and Sam's parents being famous archaeologists is another story. That most definitely fits this thread.

 

[Napalm_Frank]

VLR best twist is that

Spoiler

K is different person depending on the timeline. It's well foreshadowed with all the Schrödinger's cat talk.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Can someone explain Skull Face in MGS3 for me? I guess I forgot that part.

Basically in MGSV

Spoiler

Skullface claims that he and his unit, XOF, were designed to be the even more shadowy counterpart to FOX and Snake and while they were getting all the credit for saving the world XOF was out there doing all the dirty work to make sure Snake succeeded at great risk to themselves and for no reward or credit. He specifically mentions Operation Snake Eater as one such an occasion in a way that makes it sound like XOF and Skullface were literally on the mission with Snake the whole time, hence the memes.

 

[brinstar]

Can someone explain Skull Face in MGS3 for me? I guess I forgot that part.

Spoiler

Skull Face and XOF are a shadow crew that tailed Snake and cleaned up after him during the Snake Eater Op. I think a lot of people interpreted that to mean Skull Face was literally following Snake behind him the whole game but I don't think it was meant to be seen that way.

 

[Nicolada]

I don't think ZTD's big reveal was a retcon because the game did foreshadow it. It was bad, but it wasn't a retcon from previous games.

I think the real retcon in ZTD is the personality of almost every returning character in the cast. Seriously, almost none of them act or react to things the way they did in the previous games. Most of them might as well have been totally new characters.

I thought it was pretty justified. Junpei had a pretty good reason to be as jaded as he was, and his goofier former self still showed when tensions died down enough at certain points. Meanwhile Akane has always been hard to read even in 999 alone. She has a callous streak and she'll do anything for her insane mission, but she still has a soft spot for Junpei. Her morals are super wishy washy though. Sigma had a ton of time to become paranoid, though he does make weird calls at times. Phi was on point.

Spoiler

I do wonder how much of Delta/Brother's story was retconned. It feels like it was meant to go in a different direction considering the whole Left/Free the Soul plot point was barely acknowledged and suddenly he has a sister.

 

[Vyse The Legend]

Zero Time Dilemma and it's WTF out of left field.

That REALLY soured me on the game and series. Fucking horrible.

 

[Funyarinpa]

ZTD is *technically* not a retcon

Spoiler

save for the whole meta thing that aimed to retcon VLR in the first place, though that's not a retcon for this thread

, but the real answer has to be Drakengard 2. Like, wow. It's the most blatant plot hole I've ever seen.

Really not worth tagging (Drakengard 2,I mean), but still. Structural spoilers for DG1.

Spoiler

There's a character from Drakengard 1,Seere.
Drakengard 1 also has five endings, A through E. To meet Seere at all, you have to reach the Ending B path first. As in, complete ending A. As in, Ending A doesn't mention Seere, not even once.

Drakengard 2 follows from Ending A of DG1. The first returning character you meet? Seere. Fucking Seere. No justification given, either- he acts as if he was part of DG1's main party all along. It's completely stupid.

 

[EdgeXL]

Handsome Jack

 

[MaximumSpider]

This guy:

Spoiler

Apparently we're meant to believe that this edgelord was somehow able to blend into the Inaba populace and closely observe the Persona 4 Investigation Team and all of their moments together throughout the course of the game.

One of the reasons I consider the Persona spinoffs non canon
It helps me sleep better at night.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

ZTD is *technically* not a retcon

Spoiler

save for the whole meta thing that aimed to retcon VLR in the first place, though that's not a retcon for this thread

, but the real answer has to be Drakengard 2. Like, wow. It's the most blatant plot hole I've ever seen.

Really not worth tagging (Drakengard 2,I mean), but still. Structural spoilers for DG1.

Spoiler

There's a character from Drakengard 1,Seere.
Drakengard 1 also has five endings, A through E. To meet Seere at all, you have to reach the Ending B path first. As in, complete ending A. As in, Ending A doesn't mention Seere, not even once.

Drakengard 2 follows from Ending A of DG1. The first returning character you meet? Seere. Fucking Seere. No justification given, either- he acts as if he was part of DG1's main party all along. It's completely stupid.

Drakengard kiiiinda works on the logic that everyone was always there after you meet them, regardless of WHEN you meet them. It's an extremely strange and user unfriendly way to tell a story but it helps if you think of the mission tree as a timeline. Seere's mission happens about a third of the way through the chronological order of the game, even though you can't actually do said mission until you've beaten the game. Hence, he was always there even though technically he wasn't. Drakengard 3 simplified this tremendously by simply saying that each ending path was an alternate timeline and any discrepancies could be attributed to that, and I just retroactively apply that to Drakengard 1 in the interest of my sanity.

You aren't wrong though. Verdelet would have made a million times more sense than Seere but hey, Drakengard 2 isn't known for smart plot choice.