I just finished playing Triangle strategy and sometimes that games writing gets so good but feel what the very characters are feeling. What about you? What have been those games that have gripped your hand and made you feel every turn of the page?
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A lot of games are written pretty ‘middle of the road’ to get as much of a broad base as possible. A few stand out though.
The Last of Us really hit hard when I played it. I came to the end of that game feeling a little bit like I had an adoptive daughter, and feeling guilty that I had, to my mind, let her down.
There wasn’t much ‘writing’ in it but Shadow of the Colossus also hit me pretty squarely in the chest.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was another that had some real power to the writing. Go listen to this setup (stop at 2:47)and tell me that isn’t made to give goosebumps.
Yeah, game writing gets thrown out the window 90% of the time because the writers far out pace the development team so it’s commendable seeing the game writing being given some priority
Outer Wilds. The game isn’t very text-heavy, but what there is feels important and personal. With the way the story is told, it is quite possibly my favorite story overall. I don’t want to say too much, since knowledge is key in that game, but I would highly recommend it.
I just played around 6 hours of it, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 intro made me cry. With everything going on in the world right now the sense of despair is very relatable.
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All games from the Too the Moon series.
- Life is Strange
- Telltale walking dead
- Final Fantasy X (or VII, or basically insert most any)
- Gone Home
- Mass Effect 1&2 (never finished 3 lol)
- Outer Wilda
- Undertale
- Descent Freespace 2
- Silent Hill 2
- Heavy Rain
- Disco Elysium
- I have no mouth and I must scream
- Limbo
- Braid
Disco Elysium is, without a doubt, the best written game I’ve ever played. That game had me experience the entire rainbow of emotions.
With the praise this game regularly gets, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the story was inelegantly delivered by info dump.
An info dump implies its giving too much info at once. Disco Elysium paces its story well, it just doesn’t conform to how you would normally tell a story within a game.
It frequently gave too much info all at once about how its world works, yes.
I would say that the story of DE kind of plays a back seat to the inner dialogue stuff imo… It’s not the kind of game that you just rush through so you can see what the plot is.
I wasn’t rushing and info dumps weren’t my only criticism. There were some things that I could chalk up to just personal preference like my distaste for almost every character I encountered in the first 5 hours, but when it did decide to start filling me in on how its world works, I found that to be well below the standards of the praise the game gets for its writing. That’s not to say that it’s easy to do it better, but I can point to a number of other works of fiction that show how it can be done. The inner dialogue could have been a great vehicle to do it more elegantly.
I honestly think it’s objectively the best written game ever.
Brigador has surprisingly excellent writing. And moreover, I mean it literally.
Between maps, you have a config interface where you pick a pilot, guns and a vehicle to put it all on. But you also have a window with Intel. You have to pay ingame money to unlock this Intel, in the same you have to pay to unlock pilots, guns, vehicles, maps. They prices are not negligible. I unlocked every single piece of Intel, many times before I unlocked other more useful things, because it was that good.
I wanted to read more. I wanted to know more. I should point out that most of the Intel was self sufficient : it wasn’t a huge story cut up in parts. I could read one Intel and there was no incentive to buy the next more expensive one to know the end. But it was quality military sci-fi and so much lore building. And here and there, hints about cool equipment combos to try out in game (this pilot in that mech with those guns and gizmo).It was a complete shock to find such quality in what is otherwise a shooter. Yes, many action RPGs have encyclopedias worth of lore, disseminated freely throughout the world, on items, etc. I think the presentation here helped. But I was genuinely surprised at how good and enjoyable it was to read. I literally sat down and few times spending like an hour reading through bits and pieces and going to play a map or two only so I’d have enough cash to unlock some more.
I hope I get to enjoy such surprisingly good writing in a game again in my gaming lifetime (and I’ve been playing for about 37 years, I should add).
CrossCode. I won’t spoil anything, but Lea very quickly cemented herself as my favorite protagonist of all time.
Been replaying FFXII, and now I notice it is extremely rich in plot and worldbuilding, including a lot of non-verbal details.
A Mind Forever Voyaging, by Infocom.
It’s an old text adventure from the 80’s with a particularly cool and oddly relevant concept: You take the role of an AI that’s been meticulously raised in a simulation to truly become a general intelligence. The reason this project was undertaken was to eventually send you, the AI, into other simulations based in the near future to test the outcomes of various political policies of the new republican government, record your interactions, and report back to the engineers who created you.
The game’s designer said that he created the game in response to the despair he felt from Ronald Reagan being elected.
I haven’t gotten super far in it, but it has an incredibly well written short story in the manual that details all the events leading up to the start of the game, and so far the game itself is unlike anything else I’ve ever played.
I’ll say the obligatory Red Dead Redemption. What a ride. From beginning to end. It legitimately feels like an “epic” where the character and world develop.
As you get to the end of the game and you’re in the more populated areas that feel like they have left the wild West behind and the parallel with the story… it’s great.
Legend of Mana
Come on, noone mentioning Planescape Torment so far?!
What changes the nature of a man?
Goosebumps.
Life is Strange
Spiritfarer
Titanfall 2
Hellblade
Red Dead 2
Hades
OxenfreeMany more, but these stood out on actually caring about the characters and what happened to them.
