Best Storyline

Greenbean

Civilisation, Sensi Soccer, Frontier Elite and Doom.

Oh hold on this isn't a "state any game you previously liked in yonder years", it a thread about the best storyline in a game.

Clearly point and click adventure games were seriously storybased, 5 of them particularly standout for storyline, especially because of the atmosphere and I suppose its not surprising to note that 2 of them were movie licences and the other 3 came from the same studio:

Lure of the temptress,
Beneath a steel sky,
Broken Sword,
Indy Jones and the fate of atlantis,
Blade Runner.

There are also the more comedy point and clicks such as Monkey island(s), Day of the tentacle & Grim Fandango - but best storyline.. naa.

I hear some people swear by two games, Longest Journey (the funcom game) and Outcast (the large sprawling voxel based game from a french crowd), for storyline - on the "to play someday" list.

FF7 - played the first disk on the pc but it crashed after that, now need to get a ps1 version and start from scratch and thats a daunting task - but up to that point I have to say its a damn fine storyline. On the surface it has quirky translation, sometimes weird settings & universe, tedious fighting and a slightly immature approach. But underneath its an powerful journey, where you actually give a damn about the characters and you really feel the evil of the baddies.

I'm just noticing, all these games take a long time to play. Perhaps like a long running tv series, after a while you start to connect with the characters and the universe in which they exist. And when it stops, you sort of miss it all. Maybe thats why its no surprise that old games that used to take forever to play show up as having the best storylines in peoples heads'? (doom, I mean doom for christ sake? think about the question).

Kold

Zelda... Ocarina of Time, Without a doubt. Omg like, I actually felt a bond between myself and Epona and Marin and Zelda... and all the cute little people and animals.

Retr0gamer

Greenbean, sent you a pm.

Shinji

Halo actually had a pretty good storyline, or at least, an average story, well told.

Pick up the prequel novel, The Fall of Reach. It's actually a very well written piece of SF, which isn't what you'd expect from a game tie-in novel. Playing the game after reading it is quite a different experience - the Master Chief, Cortana and Keyes all become characters you genuinely empathise with, which is pretty different from most FPS games...



In terms of my own favourites... FF7 goes without saying. FF9 is also a game I enjoyed hugely from a story and characters perspective.

Xenosaga has probably the most fascinating, involved plot of anything I've ever played. Just as well really, since the game is about 100% plot...

Zone of the Enders makes for a very good bit of storytelling once you factor in the sequel, Second Runner....

Project Zero builds up a fascinating and utterly horrifying backstory as you play it. The more you find out, the less you want to know, but it's utterly compelling nonetheless. Scary as hell, too.

And Silent Hill is probably the finest example since Evangelion of a story which feels rich and detailed because it's full of symbolism and deep dialogue hinting at things beneath the surface, but turns out to be entirely made up as they went along. Still a great game though