Halfway Plot Switch / Video Games

• Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator: The seventh game, The Cardinal Sins, starts off with investigating the murder of a priest, which then switches to investigating the Knights of Saint Anthony.
• Criminal Case:
  • Criminal Case: Pacific Bay: The Wastes starts with a rather simple chase plot to bring Frank and Karen to justice after they become runaways in the finale of the previous district... only for the player to find out that a bigger and much more dangerous threat in the form of Albert Tesla has begun his master plan of destroying the world, leading you to fight against him during the latter half of the district instead.
  • Criminal Case: World Edition: While the first half of South Asia has the Bureau helping people in need during earthquakes, tsunamis, and virus outbreaks, the second half switches focus to a more serial stoyline involving the investigation of O.M. MediLab and guru Om Padmasana.
  • Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past:
    • Wolf Street loves doing these. While the Flying Squad initially arrives to the district to investigate the Rochester family, plans rapidly change when a financial crisis starts wrecking havoc in the district, which then turns into a hunt for a counterfeiting that has been distributing fake money to citizens, which then turns into trying to stop a scam from a fake company promising people to get them out of bankruptcy, which finally ends with solving the murder of a high-ranking politician who turns out to be Connected All Along with the Rochesters and The Con.
    • Although The Flying Squad arrives to Grim Chapel to investigate the Rochester's alleged Deal with the Devil, said Devil (actually an old man committing murders by disguising them as supernatural occurrences) gets exposed and arrested right in the middle of the district, which then focuses on investigating Gryphon Sanctuary and the illicit activities going on behinds its walls.
  • Criminal Case: The Conspiracy: Similarly to Grim Chapel, Spring Fields begins with the police department arriving in search of Fornax, a member of Ad Astra responsible for burning the cornfields of Grimsborough as part of their Evil Plan. However, Fornax a.k.a. Julia Brine is promptly arrested halfway through the district, which then shifts focus to the police department having to deal with yet another member of Ad Astra: their old enemy Christian Bateman.
• Dark Souls starts out implying that the player is trying to cure the Darksign, but halfway through the game after ringing the Twin Bells of Awakening, the story switches from focusing curing undeath and instead about an Ancient Conspiracy and the Forever War regarding the First Flame. This event even has its own Sacrificial Lion.
• The Dig starts with the discovery of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and the first minutes deal with NASA's mission to attempt to divert it; but later it turns out that the asteroid is in reality an alien spaceship which whisks away a group of astronauts to an alien planet, and it becomes a quest for exploration and survival.
• Discworld Noir: You're playing as Lewton PI. The game starts out with a classic Film Noir situation of tracking down missing persons, getting implicated in murder and being pulled in different directions over a MacGuffin. Somewhere around the middle of Act 3 you uncover the linchpin and discover that you've just ended up in a Cosmic Horror story.
• Disgaea. The first half of the game focuses on Laharl's quest to claim his throne. After he succeeds, the second half, a Space Opera spoof, focuses on the human world. When the mastermind behind the invasion is revealed, it leads to a Rage Against the Heavens story, and the two stories intertwine together.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition does this early on. The game is initially about the war between mages and templars, but a meeting for peace talks is blown up, killing everyone present except the Player Character, and the magical explosion opens a permanent portal into the world of demons, letting them pour into the physical world. You have to choose between siding with the mages or the templars in order to seal the Breach. Once that's done, the person who caused the explosion appears, and they become the Big Bad for the rest of the game. This doubles with Prolonged Prologue since the events described are essentially "Disc One" of the game. Interestingly, the mage-templar conflict that the game initially revolved around never gets directly resolved. Whichever side you don't recruit gets corrupted by the villain and becomes his mooks, and the surviving uncorrupted members are too few to have a political voice. The whole issue is rather quickly forgotten about once the main villain shows up and is resolved by a mostly unrelated side plot.
• In Dragonsphere you play as the king of the land with your goal being to defeat the evil sorcerer Sanwe before he breaks out of his magical prison. You fulfill this goal halfway through the game. During your encounter with Sanwe you discover you are in fact one of a species of shapeshifters who was magically imprinted with the memories and personality of the king. Meanwhile a usurper tries to proclaim the king died battling Sanwe and ascend to the throne, so your goal now is to find out what happened to the real king.
• Fable III: Your tyrannical brother is running the kingdom into the ground, so you gather some allies and incite a rebellion to depose him. The coup succeeds, you take the throne, and everyone lives happily ever... oh wait, there's an Eldritch Abomination on its way to attack the kingdom, and as the reigning monarch it's now your job to do something about it.
• Final Fantasy tends to do this a lot, beginning the plot with the heroes rebelling against The Empire and escalating it to averting an Apocalypse How caused by an Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Final Fantasy IV begins with a rogue knight rebelling against his kingdom when he realizes the monarch has gone mad with power and is trying to conquer the world. At some point, it becomes about fighting the monarch's airship general who wants to go to the moon to release the Sealed Evil in a Can there.
  • Final Fantasy VI starts off as a campaign against the Gestahlian Empire until halfway through, The Dragon becomes a god and destroys half the world, leaving you to recover your lost allies and destroy him.
  • Final Fantasy VII begins with Cloud and AVALANCHE's brave struggle against the evil Shinra company executives, who are draining the life out of the planet to maintain an electricity monopoly. About five hours into the game President Shinra is killed and the Shinra's relevance to the plot is severely diminished, the focus then shifting to leaving Midgar to pursue Sephiroth across the planet and stop his scheme to summon Meteor and become a god.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has its first two disks consist of Squall and the forces of SeeD battling Sorceress Edea and Rival Turned Evil Seifer as they use the country of Galbadia to try and conquer the world. The very first event after Disk 2 is The Reveal that Edea was just Brainwashed and Crazy, and the real antagonist is Ultmecia, a Sorceress in the future who wants to destroy the entire space-time continuum. That's in terms of the overarcing plot — otherwise focus from this point shifts to Squall searching for a way to get his comatose love interest Rinoa back to normal.
  • Final Fantasy IX, the first part of the game focuses on Queen Brahne's conquest of the continent, the plot switch occurs when the party decides to go after Kuja, Brahne's weapons supplier, and he becomes the main antagonist when he promptly offs her at the end of the current disk. A plot switch then occurs a second time with The Reveal that Kuja is an alien from Terra sent by Garland to destroy the world, and Zidane was meant to be his successor and spiritually is his brother that Kuja abandoned on Gaia.
  • Mostly averted in Final Fantasy X, where the overarching plot is always the pilgrimage to destroy Sin. Once Seymour is revealed as an antagonist, rebelling against Yevon and uncovering the secrets of the organization becomes another major plot point, but it never overtakes the fight against Sin as the game's focus.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has the first half of the game focusing on Yuna, Rikku, and Paine's adventures across Spira as they hunt for spheres while clashing with LeBlanc and her goons, who are also after the same things. The mood is very lighthearted. After Yuna's party takes back the sphere LeBlanc had stolen from them, the sphere reveals that a Weapon of Mass Destruction sleeps beneath Spira and is powerful enough to destroy the world. Not only this becomes the focus of the second half of the game, but the leaders of all three factions also go missing and fiends are pouring out from the temples. The situation is dire enough to convince LeBlanc to join Yuna's side and help her save the world.
• The first Fossil Fighters game goes from you fighting the local Terrible Trio and their boss to a well-intentioned alien invasion, culminating in a fight against the Planet Eater that destroyed the Dinaurians' home, and the second game goes from you fighting the local Terrible Trio and their boss to fighting a near-immortal bodysnatcher.
• In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn the children of the last two games' heroes go on a quest to investigate mysterious Psynergy sucking vortexes. This gets derailed by the appearance of villains, war-hungry countries, xenophobic semi-human cities, and so much else. After about a quarter of the game, you hear nothing more about them until the Mother of All Vortexes appears during the ending.
• Guild Wars Prophecies starts off as the story of a war between the human kingdom of Ascalon and the Charr that's not going well for Ascalon. You leave Ascalon after the fourth mission, and most of the rest of the story is about a religious war in rival kingdom Kryta. After the first few quests in Kryta, Ascalon and its refugees are only occasionally mentioned, and even then only in passing. (Ascalon's King Adelbern lampshades this in the endgame area: "Maybe now that you are finished with this nonsense, you can come back to Ascalon and help deal with the filthy Charr infestation.")
• Halo:
  • Halo: Combat Evolved: The plot was a well-handled but ultimately rather generic "human Space Marines versus Scary Dogmatic Aliens" affair with a side order of "mysterious Precursors who might or might not become relevant to the plot sometime soon" for the first half, but then we got... The Flood. Bonus points for this not being revealed in advertising or the previews of a very high-profile game.
  • Halo 2: The plot starts with the Covenant coming across Earth, which is a very big deal considering that this is the homeworld of humanity and the Covenant have glassed every other colony, except you are only there for a short time. Then, you end up discovering another Halo ring. The events on this new Halo ring eventually result in the Great Schism.
  • Halo Wars: The plot starts with the defense of two human colonies, but eventually shifts to the discovery of a Forerunner Shield World, where humanity has their first encounter with the Flood.
  • While the original Halo games (including Reach, the prequel game, and ODST, a Gaiden Game) generally had an overarching continuous plot, the newer games by 343 Industries (4, 5, and Infinite) each have a completely new plot with very little to do with the previous game. Halo 4 is about the return of the Neglectful Precursors, Halo 5 is about the start of a big Robot War, and Infinite completely skips the entirety of the Robot War (which was resolved off-screen) and is about fighting a Renegade Splinter Faction of the Covenant (who we were already introduced to in Halo Wars 2) on a new Halo world.
• The Last of Us Part II slowly eases into its switch. The game starts out as a revenge story, where you're playing as Ellie with a few brief segments playing as a new character, Abby, Joel's killer trying to avenge her surrogate father, Joel. Then halfway through the game, the point of view switches entirely to Abby, who is on a path of redemption. You eventually come back to Ellie at the end.
• The whole Blorbs disease in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. It was at the start an important issue alongside the whole 'Fawful taking over the kingdom' thing, but very quickly got dropped and rarely ever mentioned again (the last reference is how the Miracle Cure cured all cases of the disease in the kingdom, just as it smashes down the Dark Star barriers).
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 starts with Nick Fury invading Latveria illegally, which leads to the Registration act coming into effect. A superhero Civil War breaks out... for three missions. Then it is dropped for The Fold, a sentient network formed from nanites injected into supervillains in order to control them. As the world descends into chaos, everyone, naturally, stops caring about whose side they are on, and both forces unite to defeat The Fold. Afterwards, the Registration Act is pretty much made redundant and void by the Government. Despite the fact that no one actually dies because of their conflict, and neither side really does anything incredibly bad to the other, Cap and Iron Man feel that their team won't be quite the same as it was before the war. But they still are happy to work with one another again.
• The mother of them all, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The player spends roughly the first two hours playing as Solid Snake, the protagonist from the previous game. Then the plot moves forward two years, to a different location, with the player in control of an entirely new character (ambiguously implied to be Snake for the first few minutes) for the rest of the game. The game's creator, Hideo Kojima, went out of his way to minimise the risk of anyone seeing this twist coming. Some thought the twist was brilliant. Some wanted Kojima's head on a stake.
• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is about Big Boss rescuing 2 people from a naval base in Cuba, which is an apparent success until Militaires Sans Frontieres is destroyed. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is about his descent to villainy 9 years later, and the plot moves towards Afghanistan and Africa. It's subverted on the fact that you are playing Big Boss' Body Double while the Boss is too busy building Outer Heaven.
• NieR Re[in]carnation's The Girl and the Monster's first half is this. The game starts out with a mute girl being escorted through a tower known as The Cage by a ghost known as Mama. The two of them go through statues that contain tragic stories of the cast, and after each arc, the Girl regains a piece of herself. Throughout the climb, the two meet a shadowy monster that follows them at every turn. It's after Chapter 6 that the game turns itself on its head: The Girl and the Shadow Monster, Levania, swapped bodies after he ate her dreams. All of this was a Redemption Quest, now wanting to return her body back to Fio, the girl. The second half of the story is a How We Got Here from his perspective.
• Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath starts off with The Stranger as a Bounty Hunter who's earning money for an unspecified operation needed to save his life by capturing outlaws until he's finally captured and stripped of any upgrades he has. His captors soon find out that The Stranger is actually a Steef, a species that have been hunted to near-extinction and the operation is an attempt to transform him into a true bipedal creature. With this revelation, The Stranger is now hunted down by everyone, including the Clakkerz he used to do business with. However, he soon comes across the Grubbs, the oppressed indigenous population who worship Steefs and eventually takes up the mantle of their protector and fights to bring down Corrupt Corporate Executive Sekto. This affects the gameplay as well since although Stranger has now lost any health upgrades he previously bought, he later gains access to upgraded versions of his ammo and now that he is no longer a bounty hunter, he no longer needs to take enemies alive.
• Perfect Dark switches half-way from Cyberpunk to Space Opera.
• Portal starts off with apparently no plotline, apart from a computer that acts as The Voice, giving basic information about the tests and promising cake if the players finish puzzle after puzzle. Then it turns out this voice is an insane AI, who intends to kill you when the test is done.
• Silent Storm starts as a World War II squad-based RPG, where you command a team of Allied or Axis specialists and conduct sensitive missions deep in enemy territory. Halfway through, you discover the existence of a SPECTRE-like organization that uses advanced technology like Energy Weapons and Powered Armor in order to get both sides of the war to devastate one another before swooping in and taking over the world. And yes, there are mods in existence that remove much of the latter part to be replaced by more of the former. Oh, and there's even an extremely rare Random Encounter with a Flying Saucer, where you can pick up a rapid-fire energy rifle.
• The first half of Solatorobo: Red the Hunter is relatively lighthearted and revolves around dealing with sky pirates and sealing a monster, all in a world of animal people. The second half of the game revolves around the human precursors and apocalyptic origins of the world, while Red himself is revealed to be a Hybrid, and his father wants to kill all sentient life.
• The Stealth-Based Game Spy Fiction (2003) starts off as a campy spy game about secret agents investigating a virus being made by a weapons manufacturer. Then these characters are all killed off and the last half of the plot is about fighting a terrorist who's disguising himself by wearing glasses and pushing his hair back who is the protagonist's brother who was probably created in a government soldier cloning project and then the protagonist's father (who is a secret agent turned terrorist and wears an eyepatch) shows up out of nowhere and the protagonist abruptly starts lecturing people about the meaning of war and... I guess they knew their audience.
• In-universe example: In The Stanley Parable, the Narrator's story begins with all of Stanley's co-workers mysteriously disappearing, only to drop this plot thread completely when Stanley stumbles across his boss's secret mind control facility.
• Two Star Ocean games feature this:
  • Halfway into Star Ocean: The Second Story, the planet you're on (and its relevant prophecy) is essentially destroyed, throwing away nearly the entirety of the plot that preceded this event.
  • Halfway into Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, you come to realize that the entire universe you live in is a computer simulation, pretty much throwing away the entire "war" plotline that had been going up 'till then.
• A staple of the Tales Series is a Wham Episode in almost the perfect center of each game that provides a sudden twist on its narrative. It's at this point that elements of whatever trope the game is examining starts to come to the forefront.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, the first half of the plot is focusing on getting The Chosen One to complete the Journey of Regeneration to save the world. Then after she completes it, the game reveals that she becomes an Apocalypse Maiden for a second parallel world, at which point the game's themes of racism and discrimination come to the forefront, even meeting the Chosen One of this second parallel world.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, the game starts with the main character on a journey to recover a stolen piece of technology from his hometown. That plot eventually gives way to a semi Government Conspiracy, and even that is resolved by the end of the first act. The rest of the plot consists of the protagonist becoming a Vigilante Man and an analogy for global warming, and the thief plot is never mentioned again. (Definitive Edition added a sidequest that lets you catch the thief and finally bring that plot to a close, but by then it's hardly relevant anymore)
• Until Dawn plays out like a Slasher Movie involving a masked Serial Killer hunting down and capturing 9 college-age youths, killing them with elaborate Saw-like deathtraps. Then the killer is unmasked halfway through as the mentally unstable Josh pulling an elaborate prank on his friends in revenge for his two sisters' deaths. After that, the plot switches to a supernatural Survival Horror about hiding from the very real threat of the Wendigoes who haunt the mountain.
• World of Warcraft's Vashj'ir zone. In the wake of the Cataclysm, a new island is formed several miles off the coast of Stormwind. Both factions begin sending troops, with the Alliance seeking to secure Stormwind's coast and the Horde wanting the island as a staging point for an attack. However, on the way there, the Player Character's ship is attacked and destroyed by the Kraken-like Ozumat, and from then on Vashj'ir is about helping the Earthen Ring fight Ozumat and the Naga. Exactly what happened to the island is never explained, and while you can travel to it, other than a flightmaster there's nothing there.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 starts off as a typical revenge plot, with The Hero going on a quest to defeat the army of soulless robots that destroyed his hometown and killed his Love Interest. The Big Bad at this point is a Jerkass Humongous Mecha known only as "Metal Face". Eventually, it's revealed the Mechon aren't quite as soulless as you once thought. Metal Face is promptly dispatched, and his Well-Intentioned Extremist boss becomes the new Big Bad. Now the plot is still Man Versus Machine, but the focus has shifted from getting revenge on a villain to stopping a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds from betraying everything he once stood for. Once you confront and defeat him... Zanza, the real Big Bad reveals himself, and the plot shifts from Man Versus Machine to Man Versus Jerkass Omnicidal Evil God.
• Xenogears. At first, the plot is about two nations that have waged war on each other for generations. Then, the plot changes to overthrowing Solaris, a hidden country which ruthlessly manipulates world events behind the scenes. After that, the plot switches to killing god (not the God, who is also in the game and apparently being used as an extremely long-lasting battery, but a sentient interstellar war machine that created humans on the planet to serve as its biological components).

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