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Games with great stories.

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dhaabi:
Personally, I find that even the most successful of games which are deemed to have strong stories often don't. For many games, the narrative is, at minimum, engaging—it isn't really that much of a challenge to provide that much (although crafting a unique story itself is.) To me, there are three things to consider when approaching this topic: writing, storytelling, and the story itself.

As an example, a recent game often praised for its writing is The Last of Us Part II. Is its writing really all that impressive, though? No, not really. But its story and storytelling are commendable, with the former going deep into themes of loss and the moral complexities of survival while the latter structures the game's events in a way which will force players to reconsider their actions for two separate characters with conflicting motives. For other games praised like it, usually there is only one, sometimes two, of those three aforementioned aspects truly worth praising, and it's rare for a game to succeed in all three. With that said, I actually have played Nier: Automata, and I do believe it's one of those rare instances.

After glancing through my list of completed games and pondering about certain items, I think these are the three other games which succeed in story, storytelling, and writing: Kentucky Route Zero, Silent Hill 2, and The Stanley Parable. I'll also mention Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice as a game I've watched someone else play.

bikingjahuty:
Red Dead Redemption 2: I'm not even into westerns, but this game literally changed my life as well as my perspective on a lot of things. As far as stories in video games go, this game impacted me more than any other. The game itself is fun as hell too.


Resident Evil 1-3 + Code Veronica: I love the story and lore of RE before RE's plot went a bit off the rails starting with RE4. The characters are all memorable and cool, the settings are all awesome, the enemies are really imaginative and interesting, and just overall I can't get enough of those first four mainline games.


Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order + Jedi Survivor: Your mileage will vary depending on how much of a Star Wars fan you are, but these two games, especially Fallen Order, are the best Star Wars stories we've had since the prequels. If not for this series, I'd have lost all hope in modern Star Wars given how terrible the rest of it is.

NickAwesome:
Disco Elysium has one of the best game stories I've ever played.  It's too bad the company fell apart, I would have loved to see what future projects would look like.

vivigamer:
I perfer narrative games in general. I'm not a competitive gamer but like to enjoy spectacle and the experience. For me what makes a great story is the dedication to detail put into the experience. It's spending time with the characters and getting a chance to know and care about them. For me, the two go together & if I care for the characters I tend to get more engrossed in the story and situation. I want good scenario writing, events to remember! I believe good writing is just as important as in other mediums because if I don't care for the context of what is going on, I will lost enthusiasm. Often I find with open world games they lack the care and offer just generic mission structures. That doesn't mean I need endless exposition or collectible documents either!

I think why JRPG's succeed at this is because they often have the structure to explore a character - Often visiting their hometown which leads to scenes and moments focused on that character, highlighting their personal struggles and why their along for the bigger picture.

- The Final Fantasy Series (The peak for me being 4,6,7,8,9,10)
- The Metal Gear Series (I personally ignore MGSV)
- A Plagues Tale Series
- The Shenmue Series (Hoping for more!)
- Shadow of Memoires/Shadow of Destiny
- Life is Strange 1 & 2
- The NieR series (I haven't played the Drakengard games yet!)
- Catherine
- Wolfenstein Reboot series
- The Yakuza Series (Has it's ups and downs but overall I like it)
- Resident Evil (A mixed bag when it comes to story but I respect it as a whole)
- Silent Hill 1-4 + Shattered Memories

That's just a few that come to mind.

dhaabi:

--- Quote from: NickAwesome on March 23, 2024, 07:40:33 pm ---Disco Elysium has one of the best game stories I've ever played.
--- End quote ---

Disco Elysium is a game I'm hoping to get around to playing sooner than later. In discussions relating to Kentucky Route Zero (which I mentioned above), it's almost always recommended as a follow-up game to play.

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