Games with great stories

SeantheMan

Bioshock (1)

Devil May Cry - I really like the lore around the first, him being the son of a demon etc

Finaly Fantasy 8 / 9 - I like 10 as a game, but him being a ghost or whatever...eugh

Portal 2 - I love how the story is overheard for the most part , epsecially that about Cave Johnson, was kind of sad

Warcraft 3 - I thought it brought the 4 races and stories together brilliantly ....they were able to make a MMO off it (never played WoW)

Deus Ex


I've wanted and tried multiple times to get into the Witcher and Dragon Age series, because I heard their stories are great...but the gameplay drives me mad

toastedpickles

FFX

And Far cry three, halfway through it and I'm blown away by it

By the way, I ever told you the definition of insanity??:pac:

CastorTroy

riclad wrote: »

I enjoyed the story of enslaved ,
it has 1 male character,a younger female character traveling thru a post Apocalyptic america.
ITS abit like bioshock infinite in the future,
she s by your side, but you do all the fighting.
ITS a very good scifi story with a great twist in the end.
I thought the 2 characters were better than bioshock,
in regard to emotional interaction,
and realistic facial expressions and conversation.
The actor who did gollum plays the main character.
Since theres mostly 2 human characters in it,
the voice ,acting is of a very high standard.

ITS a bit like the last of us , travelling thru a wasteland of destroyed buildings which are overgrown and collapsing.
The story is very original ,ie not an average video game cliched story
.
She talks alot, gives you ,advice help , which makes it more interesting.

ITS The best or most realistic, ai i,ve seen in a npc character ,
since half life 2.

I agree with this. Enslaved was a great story and I thought a better game than uncharted in parts. More enjoyable.

Mal-Adjusted

All 3 Deus Ex games have great stories (yes, even Invisible War)
Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast has a great storyby itself but works nicely as a trilogy with the previous 2.
Mass Effect
Alan Wake
Advent Rising
Half-Life
Tomb Raider Legend/Underworld
Star Trek Voyager: Elete Force

Grimebox

toastedpickles wrote: »

FFX

And Far cry three, halfway through it and I'm blown away by it

By the way, I ever told you the definition of insanity??:pac:

What...? I thought it was absolute muck in terms of story telling. Its another game that attempts to fit in a realistic story but it can't due the nature of the game; you essentially play the role of a serial killer so any normality is almost impossible. You completely ditch your friends who you are apparently fighting for in the first place. It didn't add up for me whatsoever, to the extend that I dropped it towards the end as I didn't care anymore about liberating an island of strangers.

Potential-Monke

Grimebox wrote: »

What...? I thought it was absolute muck in terms of story telling. Its another game that attempts to fit in a realistic story but it can't due the nature of the game; you essentially play the role of a serial killer so any normality is almost impossible. You completely ditch your friends who you are apparently fighting for in the first place. It didn't add up for me whatsoever, to the extend that I dropped it towards the end as I didn't care anymore about liberating an island of strangers.

That was the whole point of the story, the Island, and

Citra

were changing you into one of them, which is shown in the ending. I thought it was quite a good story, with one of the best levels i've ever played (Kick the Hornets Nest).

_Puma_

Games with good stories that have stuck out for me over the years.

Warcraft 3.

Arthas' return to Lorderon

being a gaming high point for me.

Metro 2033. Went on to read the book after playing that one.

Heavy Rain. Game felt like reading a good structured murder thriller and I ended up finishing it in about 3 sittings which I rarely do.

Dead Space 1. Space+survival horror is a win for me.

Max Payne(1+2 anyway)

Metal Gear solid

Monkey Island

Games I need to play with a great storyline(Apparently)

Deus ex
Uncharted
God of War
Bioshock
Portal(Have that game for years but have never got around to playing it)
Batman Arkham Asylum

Mal-Adjusted

To be honest, I think that Modern Warfare 3 has a really good story.




And by Modern Warfare 3, i mean KOTOR

C14N

keith16 wrote: »

Shadow of the Colossus

I nearly cried when I thought I lost my horse and did cry when he came back!

That was by far the saddest I have ever felt in a game and it made me realise that the relationship you have with Agro in the game was the strongest of any game I've every played. Really well done by Team Ico for that imo. If I wasn't so proud, I probably would have cried.

sin0city wrote: »

Just because the overarching plot line has been done before doesn't make it any less great in my opinion. I know some / a lot of the plot can only be explained by space magic too but for me it's the quality of the characters, their interactions and the way the story's told that make it a great story. And as Mickeroo said, it's one of the most immersive games I've ever played.

The production values are ridiculously high too, I spent ages just watching the dancers in the citadel. And it's got Mordin Solus.

When he started singing it just blew me away.

I agree. Imo, in video games, the "story" is a lot less about how good it sounds in a plot summary and a lot more about the world you play in. For me, Mass Effect excellently created a massive and interesting world that had loads of fantastic stuff in it. Looking at the overarching plot and saying "the good guys fight the bad guys" (that's less eloquent than others have put it but still) is missing the point. It's about the interactions along the way. All the individual missions, choices you make, side-quests and so on. The way that you meet non-essential NPCs from ME1 in ME2 who remember how you treated them or what you did before made me squeal with delight too.

For the same reason, I've always found the Legend of Zelda stories very good too. Sure, you can sum it up to make it sound lame, "hero in a green suit saves a princess" but that doesn't in any way describe what the in-game world is like and the many things you encounter along the way. Same for Fallout too. All the side quests and overall insignificant people you meet along the way are what makes it special (anyone else get to Andale?).

Honestly, I don't think Heavy Rain had an especially good story. It was basically like an average crime novel. Apart from some inconsistent acting though, I do think it was told fairly well and it certainly tried to be something great even if it's reach exceeded it's grasp so I give it kudos for that. Video games are still teething, it's unrealistic to expect it to be the next Badlands or whatever.

Spec Ops had a fairly strong story, once again it had more to do with how it was told, using lots of stuff in the game cleverly to give clues and so on.

Braid had a really good story imo, even if it maybe wasn't told very well and was probably missed by most people. I think, to it's credit, stuff like the soundtrack and the paintings from jigsaw pieces helped it. It wasn't until doing reading online and playing through again though that I found out about

the atomic bomb storyline

. I had just assumed it was about a relationship. Maybe that was a good thing though.

Ico and Shadown of the Collosus were both similar to what I had said above. Fascinating melancholy world, even if there was little in the way of actual plot.

MGS gets a lot of flack for being just horribly convoluted but I actually enjoy that. I think MGS2 was actually the highlight for me, especially when they started messing with your perceptions of what is real and breaking the fourth wall.

LA Noire was grand, nice homage to films noir in terms of style and characters imo.

I thought GTA was pretty dreadful to be honest. The writing in general seemed very juvenile, there were no characters who were likable or even very interesting, you kept getting batted about between people to do 2 or 3 missions before never seeing them again (never really explaining why everyone is so willing to let some Russian guy just get involved in their dirty business, including actual law enforcement on two occasions I can think of). Nico's character has no consistency, they made him act like a troubled soul with a dark past in the cutscenes even though once you start playing that clearly disappears completely. His inhuman ability to easily kill hundreds of people (including cops) is never explained beyond "he was in the Russian army once" and this goes even more so in the DLC.

sin0city

I'd agree GTA IV wasn't brilliant but I thought the stories in The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned were both improvements on GTA IV. I sold GTA IV but I've kept episodes.

The crossover between them and the GTA IV story was very well done and it was great meeting Niko as someone else and seeing things from a different perspective.

Nice to see what happened the diamonds too.

Maybe not great stories but I thought they were great short stories. And they had Yusif Amir

the groutch

probably get slated for this, but L.A. Noire.

Theresalwaysone

I didnt see it mentioned yet but Final Fantasy 7 was absolutely brilliant. My fave ever.

Agree with Knights of Old Republic too.

nesf

Retr0gamer wrote: »

More people also need to stop saying Heavy Rain had a good story. Same with Mass Effect, it was the same fantasy story of an ancient evil returning and nobody believing the protagonist until it's too late transposed into space. See Shining Force, Game of Thrones, Riftwar Saga, Final Fantasy IV etc.

You're making the mistake of thinking that something has to be new and innovative to be good. This is simply not true. We like the old archetypes in stories because, well, they work. That's why they're so overused. It's nice when someone comes along and tells the story again but does it well, avoids the worst cliched pitfalls and has some kind of interesting things going on. Game of Thrones looks pretty meh unless you read it first in the mid-90s where for the genre it was fairly out there (and took ages to build a large audience). It looks meh now because we've had almost 10 years of writers feeling more free to experiment with morality and plot in the genre. It's like criticising Tolkien for using orcs and elves in his stories because they're like so overdone. Yes, George R. R. Martin had knights and princesses and dragons in the books but not really being used in a way that one would have expected in the mid 90s in a fantasy novel. Mass Effect is kinda similar, when it was released, for a Western game, it was unusually traditional in its RPG roots for a console game.


(This feels like a conversation with my literary fiction loving wife :P)

returnNull

The witcher 1 and 2

Mr Freeze

Going to show my age here:

Thief: The Dark Project & Thief II.
System Shock 2
Bladerunner
Deus Ex
Fahrenheit (yes, I admit it went totally insane at the end and lost the run of itself, but it was amazing until then)

And more recently:
The Walking Dead
Red Dead Redemption
Max Payne 3
Mass Effect 1 & 2 (Not 3).
Mafia II

Retr0gamer

nesf wrote: »

You're making the mistake of thinking that something has to be new and innovative to be good. This is simply not true. We like the old archetypes in stories because, well, they work. That's why they're so overused. It's nice when someone comes along and tells the story again but does it well, avoids the worst cliched pitfalls and has some kind of interesting things going on. Game of Thrones looks pretty meh unless you read it first in the mid-90s where for the genre it was fairly out there (and took ages to build a large audience). It looks meh now because we've had almost 10 years of writers feeling more free to experiment with morality and plot in the genre. It's like criticising Tolkien for using orcs and elves in his stories because they're like so overdone. Yes, George R. R. Martin had knights and princesses and dragons in the books but not really being used in a way that one would have expected in the mid 90s in a fantasy novel. Mass Effect is kinda similar, when it was released, for a Western game, it was unusually traditional in its RPG roots for a console game.


(This feels like a conversation with my literary fiction loving wife :P)

Well I don't even think it was done particularly well either. It did it's job but was nothing special and the so called choices that made a big difference made very minor dialogue differences really.

When you are in a genre with games like Planescape Torment and Fallout 2 those are the barometer that you are compared to for and Mass Effect falls way short. Doesn't mean it's bad but it's not nothing special in terms of writing either.

nesf

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well I don't even think it was done particularly well either. It did it's job but was nothing special and the so called choices that made a big difference made very minor dialogue differences really.

When you are in a genre with games like Planescape Torment and Fallout 2 those are the barometer that you are compared to for and Mass Effect falls way short. Doesn't mean it's bad but it's not nothing special in terms of writing either.

You're not comparing like with like. You can't reasonably compare a game developed for the late 2000's console market with a game developed for the much more niche PC roleplaying game market of the late 90s. You can't expect the same things from them because the developers of each could expect very different things from their audiences. What I liked about Dragon Age wasn't that it was vastly superior in any way to any of the old RPGs it paid homage to, what I liked was that it managed to sneak in quite a lot of the old mechanics and style of the tougher RPGs of that era into a mass market console game. Of course people complained about difficulty and we got the abomination that is Dragon Age 2, but eh, it was good once. On the other hand you've games like EvE, which has since the early 2000's really made the difficulty cliff seem less like it's an ice sheet where your crampons and ice axes were robbed by the developers and left for you at the top but is still massively more demanding of player than most MMOs out there. It's never going to be WoW in subscriber numbers, I doubt they want to try to do that either.


The issue is story, like mechanics, tends to be dumbed down as a genre tries to go more mainstream and attract more, well, normal people. The original Baldur's Gate was developed and was able to assume you either were familiar with AD&D or could puzzle it out on your own without much handholding. No mainstream cross-platform game would chance that today. It's similar with story, you tend to see more risks and more asked of the reader/gamer when the author or developer thinks they can do that of their target market. I think anyone pulling off something both mainstream and innovative in story will be highly unusual now. I think you need to massively readjust where you put the bar for good storytelling from such titles or you're going to be very disappointed most of the time.

Retr0gamer

nesf wrote: »

The issue is story, like mechanics, tends to be dumbed down as a genre tries to go more mainstream and attract more, well, normal people. The original Baldur's Gate was developed and was able to assume you either were familiar with AD&D or could puzzle it out on your own without much handholding. No mainstream cross-platform game would chance that today. It's similar with story, you tend to see more risks and more asked of the reader/gamer when the author or developer thinks they can do that of their target market. I think anyone pulling off something both mainstream and innovative in story will be highly unusual now. I think you need to massively readjust where you put the bar for good storytelling from such titles or you're going to be very disappointed most of the time.

Not sure what you are getting at here? I should lower my standards because the standard of writing has been poor in recent years? Sorry but I'm not that much of a sheep. I call it as it is and I'm not going to lower myself to a 'ah sure it's grand everyone else's work is pretty crap as well' mentality.

nesf

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Not sure what you are getting at here? I should lower my standards because the standard of writing has been poor in recent years? Sorry but I'm not that much of a sheep. I call it as it is and I'm not going to lower myself to a 'ah sure it's grand everyone else's work is pretty crap as well' mentality.

No. I'm saying we have to respect the tighter confines the writers have to work under compared to what indie game writers and the writers in the more niche genres can get away with.

Shiny Cactus

Mr Freeze wrote: »

Going to show my age here:

Thief: The Dark Project & Thief II.
System Shock 2
Bladerunner
Deus Ex
Fahrenheit (yes, I admit it went totally insane at the end and lost the run of itself, but it was amazing until then)

The thief games made the stealth genre and who could beat Garrett and the keepers

Retr0gamer

nesf wrote: »

No. I'm saying we have to respect the tighter confines the writers have to work under compared to what indie game writers and the writers in the more niche genres can get away with.

I'm sorry but if it's not good it's not good, anything else like 'tighter confines' are just excuses. All that matters is the end result.

Retr0gamer

Shiny Cactus wrote: »

The thief games made the stealth genre and who could beat Garrett and the keepers

Loved the writing in those games. It was always worth stopping to hear the guards talk to each other, I'd crack up at how stupid they were. I was listening to a podcast with the developers and they decided to make the guards all thick to fit the archaic AI which came across as a little bit stupid at times

Grimebox

nesf wrote: »

No. I'm saying we have to respect the tighter confines the writers have to work under compared to what indie game writers and the writers in the more niche genres can get away with.

I don't think we do have to respect any constraints when it comes to story telling. I can't see any reason why we can't compare Baldurs Gate to Mass Effect, what matters is the end product

ancapailldorcha

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well I don't even think it was done particularly well either. It did it's job but was nothing special and the so called choices that made a big difference made very minor dialogue differences really.

I'll grant you that some of the choices seem a bit pointless but I suppose if they had more of an effect then Bioware would have had to design extra scenarios, characters, etc and I can't imagine EA being patient enough to wait for assets players mightn't even use.
I think you're wrong about the writing. It might be patchy in places and below what one might expect from a HBO serial or a novel but that doesn't necessarily make it bad. Mass Effect doesn't have to have the best writing in all of gaming to have a good story, universe or characters.

C14N

I'll probably keep popping back here when I remember more games with engaging stories.

Phoenix Wright, now there was a game with a good story. It was pretty much entirely held up by its story really since there was little in the way of what you might call "game" but it was outstanding imo. Great art style, interesting characters, exciting plot that over-arched across 3 games and made each one more interesting, can't ask for much more. Definitely one of the best if not the best thing I played on the DS.

nesf

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'm sorry but if it's not good it's not good, anything else like 'tighter confines' are just excuses. All that matters is the end result.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

did anyone mention world in conflict yet? one of the few games where I got emotionally invested in what happened to the characters. fantastic storytelling

prey too

when you find his grandfather on the ship

I felt feels.

That_Guy

My personal favourites are Alan Wake, Heavy Rain and LA Noire.

LA Noire is a pretty monotonous game overall but I rather enjoyed the story.

Mr.Saturn

I'm not going to get into how it was integrated into the actual gameplay, or its value as evidence for the 'game-as-art' crowd, but I do know, that if David Cage had handed Heavy Rain's script, and just the script, in all its variants, into any self-respecting publisher or producer from just about every other line of media: he'd be laughed out the office.

Simple as, I think. Without even needing to mention the few plot-pitfalls that plagued it; the reveal of the killer was just flat-out cheap in its execution.

I mean, if you're going to just use elements that weren't included in the narrative in the first place, you may as well just roll in a mutant donkey as the culprit; at least you'd get points for imagination.

Reekwind

I'm a big fan of emergent narratives: very few games can match the story that I'm spinning myself in my current Football Manager game.

Otherwise, and ignoring the wealth of 1990s RPGs and adventure games, the only game whose story has really grabbed me of late is Hotline Miami. It's a purposefully disjointed and ambigious tale but very strong nonetheless

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I think you're wrong about the writing. It might be patchy in places and below what one might expect from a HBO serial or a novel but that doesn't necessarily make it bad

Something of a strawman, no? The comparison wasn't with the best that other mediums offer but the best that PC RPGs have to offer. I think that's a valid comparison