Video gayme stories that don't suck pissnuts

[Nifft Batuff]

https://ifdb.org/search?browse

 

[Spukrian]

A game needs to put extra effort into it's environment to tell an effective story. There's another one coming to me now that did this well. It had the black unimaginative scribbly aliens. Fuckin I can't think of the name. It had good environmental storytelling which is crucial to decent video game storytelling. There was trash bin monsters. Wtf was it?

PREY 2017, best game ever made!

 

[luj1]

<SOMA>

<Silent Hill 2>

That's it. That's all I've got.

Soul Reaver, Max Payne, Sacrifice, Tiberian Sun, Arcanum, Morrowind, Half-Life, Little Big Adventure, Abe's Oddysee, Last Blade 2, Starcraft, Undying...

 

[samuraigaiden]

My go-to response for best use of videogames as a storytelling medium is Portal.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, Betrayer, Penumbra 1 and 2, Dune (by Cryo)

 

[Nutria]

Dune (by Cryo)

The actual game mechanics don't quite work out very well in the later part of it, but the way they incorporated the story into the game was brilliant. It's a shame this has been forgotten.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Both Freedom Force games have stories that do exactly what they set out to do. Shame we never got a third one and Levine lost his marbles from sniffing his own farts.

 

[Silverfish]

Legacy of Kain series, Saints Row 1 & 2 and Deus Ex (except for Mankind Divided lol).

 

[Ezekiel]

From Software is ahead of the curb indeed. They're a rare beast.

I have a problem with stories being dumped onto item descriptions. How does your character learn the lore of the items? Makes me feel disconnected from them. As does their silence. I'd rather play as a character of few words. Like Sekiro's. Anyway, the majority of story-driven games rely so much on similar kinds of exposition now, like journals and audio logs. I'm sick of it.

 

[deama]

Alpha protocol I think is pretty good as the story isn't just entertaining, but the game itself takes advantage of it being a game in the form of varying choices affecting different outcomes.

Brothers a tale of two sons was pretty good, short but sweet. The story itself was alright, reminded me of a good kids movie, but the narrative was pretty damn good, and the way it uses the game itself to propel the story was nice too.

I thought the girl life simulator game did a pretty good job at simulating how it feels like being a girl.

Spec ops the line did an interesting job at it's story/narrative I thought.

Kingdom Come deliverance I thought did a pretty good job with blending in traditional story-telling with immersing yourself in the world. Only other games that do this are the gothic games.

Disco elysium? I thought that was pretty damn good. If you tried translating that to a movie or novel I think it would definitely lose some aspects of it.

The newer hitman games may have a relatively simple story, but I think it's pretty much the only series that gets close to simulating that "james bond" feeling, alpha protocol gets close too, but hitman manages to simulate other aspects that alpha protocol wasn't able to.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

Depression Quest

Spoiler

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

I feel so bad for the kitty.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What I think SumDrunkGuy is asking for is games that do the concept 'Show, Don't Tell' quite well, because that approach certainly plays to the strengths of video games. "Half-Life" is a great example of this, another one is "Thief: The Dark Project" (both released within a week of each other BTW).

"Planescape: Torment" most certainly is just a novel in a video game, but imagine if Torment was something closer to the other two examples. Instead of being told that Sigil is a city located on the inner side of a giant circle, you only had to look upwards while outside to see the endless city sprawling upwards.

A more recent example, and one that I think will surprise even SumDrunkguy, is "Return of the Obra Dinn." If you haven't played it, do it now. You may have reasons to bitch about that game later, but it won't be because of the story.

 

[Malamert]

Legacy of Kain series, Saints Row 1 & 2 and Deus Ex (except for Mankind Divided lol).

Augs Lives Matter, you vile bigot!

 

[deuxhero]

KOTOR: Your character is totally anonymous and has no back story.

False. Talking to Trask and Bastila actually does establish some of your (fake) backstory: You're a member of the Republic military from Deralia assigned to protect Bastilla. The Bastilla conversation is best remembered for the options to bullshit the questions like "I'm a Hutt in human form planning to overthrow the Republic.", while the Trask conversation is literally during the tutorial.

A much better pick for your methodology would be both Baten Kaitos games.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I think all things considered there are alot of good games with good stories
From what I've played:

Tactics Ogre: Let's Us Cling Together
Pathologic 1+2
Morrowind
Deus Ex 1
Legacy of Kain series
Fallout 1 + New Vegas
Witcher 1+2
Sands of Time
Demon's Souls
Dark Souls 1+2
Bloodborne
Thief 1+2
Max Payne 1
Majora's Mask
Kingdom Come
Metal Gear Solid 3

And again this is only from what I've played

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Having flashbacks of good times!



SOMA was golden. Lick deez nutz bitchez

 

[Lemming42]

Simply fisting a novel into the ass of a video gayme is not impressive. Reading belongs in books, not gaymes. Try again.

People are shitting on you for this but I actually get what you're saying. I like Planescape, but making the player read through a ton of text isn't really different from making them watch a minutes-long cutscene - both are examples of videogames not being able to convey information naturally through gameplay, and so using the conventions and modes of a different medium (literature or film) to get the story across instead. Of course, the text in Planescape is interactive in that the player chooses a response, but it's not really any different structurally from the boring interactive cutscenes of things like Telltale games - though obviously, content-wise, Planescape is far better.

That's not always a bad thing - Max Payne relies on graphic novels to get its story across, and the effect is fantastic - but I agree, it's not using the medium of videogames to tell a story, it's falling back on another medium because the devs can't figure out how to get everything across to you purely through your own interactions with the game.

To answer your question, then, games that get stories across through gameplay alone... Half-Life is the obvious example of a game that tells the story entirely through gameplay, but the story is fairly basic (though easily on par with, or even better than, most action/adventure films). Morrowind is the one that leaps out to me - everything you learn about the setting and plot, you learn by actually manually looking around, noticing details like the architecture of various regions, exploring and examining things. There's reading in the form of NPC dialogue and in-game books, but unlike with Planescape, that's only one part of the equation in Morrowind.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Yeah Return of the Obra Dinn is a good one. Honestly Papers, Please is too, albeit more simplistic.

 

[Poseidon00]

Moon Rpg

 

[Godfryd]

Disco Elysium has an interesting story. It kinda had to because most of this game is the story and not much actual gameplay options.
Nier: Automata left me pondering the meaning of existence with its story (has to finish the game 3 times for almost all endings) for a couple of days, which no other game was able to do.

 

[janior]

mount&blade: warband

 

[Rean]

Having flashbacks of good times!



SOMA was golden. Lick deez nutz bitchez

Nice fuckin gaystation and feminist superheroine.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Thank yous. Stormfront is my favy superhero babe.

 

[Jvegi]

The Blackwell series of adventure games by Wadjet Eye is a nice (or great, if you're a fan) example of video game storytelling. It's like an episodic ghost hunting detective tv show, with the main story developing slowly throughout the seasons (games).