Plot Twists (Don't Worry, It's A Spoiler Free Post)

Plot twists are amazing.  Plot twists are why I keep reading and playing games for stories.  Plot twists are also really easy to screw up.  What I didn't realize until this weekend is that I'm also capable of ruining the enjoyment of a plot twist by trying to spot it early.  There are certain genres, IPs, and creators that are known for having twists in their stories.  Whenever I peruse these for the first time, I go into it trying to spot the twist as early as I can.  I'm generally really good at spotting twist clues when I'm looking for them, so I generally predict the twists, or at least something very close, but I think this ruins the story in a couple of ways.  First, the impact of the twist itself is nullified, so even if it's a really clever twist, I don't get as blown away by it as someone who wasn't expecting it.  Secondly, I end up not enjoying the story itself because I'm analyzing it the entire time looking for what the twist could be.

There have been a couple games I've played this year that had twists in it I wasn't expecting.  Looking back at them, the clues were pretty obvious, and generally the twists themselves weren't anything unheard of.  But the fact that I didn't see it coming made the twist so much more impactful to me.  A logical conclusion is that I must now shield myself from whether something contains twists or not, but that's nigh impossible to do, especially due to the aforementioned things that are known for having twists.  I'm not really sure if there is an actual takeaway from this, I just found it fascinating that my hunt for the twist had a similar impact on me as knowing the twist ahead of time.  So somehow in the future, I'm going to have to keep my analyzing mode off, just like I have to try to keep my critique mode off when I'm trying to enjoy something.  Of course, if it's obvious that there's a twist coming, then I don't think I'll have an option.  Just like if something breaks my suspension of disbelief, my critique mode automatically turns on.  I guess like with most problems, just knowing about it and how to spot the problem is a good first step to taking care of it.