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?
A Plague Tale Requiem
Oh, yeah, I’ve played the first one of a plague tale and it was kinda fun. I can see it.
I actually didn’t like the first Plague Tale. I found it somewhat boring and quite bad. Fast forward to 1 or 2 years after that, I totally forgot about the first game and I’m browsing the PC gamepass library on my new gaming laptop and I see this cool looking game called A Plague Tale Requiem, I decide to try it and I’m instantly hooked. The story was the best video game story I had ever experienced, and the graphics were the best video game graphics I had ever seen, later I found out that this game was a sequel to the first Plage Tale that I didn’t bother completing because of how terrible it was. It’s astonishing how much better Requiem is, it’s like a totally different franchise, it’s like going from the first GTA to GTA5
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).
Been replaying FFXII, and now I notice it is extremely rich in plot and worldbuilding, including a lot of non-verbal details.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the most recent example, but I also love the writing of Horizon. I wish it was more mature, but it’s good writing overall. Excellent setup.
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.
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
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.
This game casually dropped phenomenal quality across the board. Best writing I’ve encountered yet.
- 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
Cyberpunk 2077. Years since I booted it for the first time I am still at it
All games from the Too the Moon series.
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.
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.
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 honestly think it’s objectively the best written game ever.
Journey, there is no word but the story is so well written i
Come on, noone mentioning Planescape Torment so far?!
What changes the nature of a man?
Goosebumps.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and 2 have an awesome main story line with writing that makes me feel like I am playing video game sequels to A Knight’s Tale.
But then it also has some pretty yawn inducing stuff, too, that might be interesting to history buffs since it takes place in real life, during real historical events in Bohemia. A lot of politics and nobility dick-waving. I skipped through a lot of random side quest dialogue because it was just an hour of discussing politics. 🤣
Disco Elysium tho is hands down the best written game I’ve ever played. We need more video games to be written by actual authors. It also just has an insane amount of branching paths and differences in how you play that mostly appear in dialogue, but also just wearing different clothing can change things dramatically.
CrossCode. I won’t spoil anything, but Lea very quickly cemented herself as my favorite protagonist of all time.
