(Recommend On) The Greatest Story
CygnusZ
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm looking for a PC or PS2 games with really fantastic stories. Really, I don't care how poor the gameplay is, as long as the story is well-written.
Some examples:
Planescape: Torment
The Longest Journey
Mother 3 [Japanese version]
Photopia
Games with poor stories:
Baldur's Gate Series
Final Fantasy X [English version]
Ico/SoC
EDIT: This is all IMHO to give you an idea of what my tastes are.
Some examples:
Planescape: Torment
The Longest Journey
Mother 3 [Japanese version]
Photopia
Games with poor stories:
Baldur's Gate Series
Final Fantasy X [English version]
Ico/SoC
EDIT: This is all IMHO to give you an idea of what my tastes are.
CygnusZ on
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MGS3
Um...
Psh, I'm done, to be honest. Not nesasarly the best stories per say. But certainly told extremely well and with some of the greatest characters in videogame history.
As for me? For the PS2, I think you might like the Shin Megami Tensei series or the Persona games. Looked into those at all? They're definitely JRPGs, but they're by and large less "space opera" grandeur than the Final Fantasy series. As for PC games, have you played Mass Effect? It might not be your thing, but a lot of us dig it.
I've also heard great things about The Witcher on the PC.
Anachronox didn't look so great even back when it was released, but it had an awesome setting and writing, the humour and creativity were off the scale.
Perhaps Persona 2 is worth considering though. I tried it for a bit, but got annoyed about not understanding how to unlock new Persona's.
Plus, and this is a little out there, there's always Vampire The Masquerade:Bloodlines. It's a bit of a hit or miss, but I really loved it.
Anachronox I played years ago and really enjoyed it.
Arcanum I played maybe four or so years ago as well.. man that game was broken.
Vagrant Story might be worth checking out if I can find it.
The Thief series is another great example of subtlety in storytelling. You see hints here and there of a greater purpose throughout the series, and everything comes together in a miasma of fantastic cutscenes and some of the best voice acting in the industry. Lots of personality and creativity has been poured into the overarching storyline and the world lore is very deliberately constructed. As far as I'm concerned, it's probably the only videogame franchise to ever pull off the whole "trilogy" concept correctly. Each game builds off the previous one, and it's all tied together extremely well. They look a bit dated, but the gameplay and level design hold up extremely well in all three games.
MGS3 I can sort of see, several elements of it were clever, and it was basically a long Bond movie. MGS2 though, you'd be better off socking yourself repeatedly in the nuts.
I've heard people talk a lot about how good The Darkness's story was, but I wasn't really impressed by the gameplay so I haven't played through.
Persona I can heartily recommend, though. Really amazing games and story-lines.
Edit: Didn't they release a Special Edition of The Witcher? I assumed they cleaned up the translation too.
Also, can we just recommend some good stories and talk about why we like them? Unless you put a list of every game you've ever played, this is kind of difficult.
Wait you know there is an English translation right?
In fact I enjoyed the writing. Better than 90 of the RPGs out there.
Edit: Le whoops, didn't see you'd already played them.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Except maybe SHODAN. Which is another series I can't recommend enough. System Shock 2, especially, is one of the few games where sound design is the most important element in the narrative. The only problem is that the game's ending is horrifically bad, but it maintains a very effective use of almost exclusively audio-based storytelling throughout. Very, very yes.
Final Fantasy 9 and Breath of Fire 3.
Dues Ex Series
Anachronox (you said gameplay wasn't that big of a deal...)
Mass Effect
Fallout 3 (can't speak on the earlier games because I never played them)
Beat me to it by this much.
Seconded.
edit- I guess thirded. Goddamnit.
Also the Marathon Series. Which you can get for free! (there's a little bit of fiddling around since they're running via an open source version of the engine since they were originally mac games)
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Anyway, not really the point of the thread. The later BioWare games had much better stories. Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire (one of BioWare's best stories), and Mass Effect.
You might also look into some old adventure games. Like Grim Fandango and some of the others already mentioned in this thread.
The problem with KOTOR and Jade Empire is that if you've played the Baldurs Gate series, you'll recognize the pattern their stories follow right off the bat.
They really are quite repetitious in that respect.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I should assume that you've played Earthbound if you included Mother 3, but I'm just sayin'.
Deus Ex is really interesting and intelligent.
If you like Star Wars already, you'll definitely enjoy KoToR 1. If team Gizka ever finishes their project, you'll ABSOLUTELY love KoToR 2. In my opinion, 2 is the only game that has rivaled the depth of character/story that Planescape offered. It just wasn't finished.
Generally speaking, translated games are written poorly. It's a great game, but the Witcher's translation is hilariously bad.
I'd agree with him, actually. Maybe not so much in terms of story, as the game has no tangible plot other than what happens during any random game, but I do think it's one of the most interesting science fiction concepts in videogaming, and one of the only times I can remember where actual hard sci-fi was used, rather than Star Wars-lite.
I always wanted to pick up the novels. In fact, I think I'm going to go do that right now.
Edit: Okay, maybe not. They're pretty fucking expensive.
Loom was an awesome game, but it has no more to do with Grim Fandango than any other LucasArts adventure game.
Anyway, Grim Fandango, for all the humour and style, I'd say was actually one of LucasArts most "mature" adventure games. Not in the sense that the storyline has gratuitous sex and violence or crap like that, or even that it's particularly deep and intellectual. It's more that it takes the core concepts that the game world is based around and visualises them really well, through the dialog, story, art design and camera angles, and especially the music. The background soundtrack is always really fitting.
Also, I think the team behind Persona's localization should localize every game ever made. It's the only Japanese-translated thing that includes jokes I actually laughed at.
Also, this is a bit out of left field, but Marathon had a... well, okay. It has a terrible story in-game, because it's an FPS from 1994. You basically teleport into an area, kill some things, and solve a puzzle or two. But if you check out Marathon's Story, they've got all the terminal text and some speculation. It actually ends up being a reasonably unique sci-fi setting, and I really think their treatment of AI is one of my favorites. It's not really coherent, though, it's more what happens when a bunch of college students who are really into sci-fi write down a list of ideas they think would be cool.
Then there is also "Marathon Infinity", which had a really odd branching mission-structure combined with a time-travel storyline mechanic that ended up being really weird and interesting to play. If you don't figure out how to get out, the game just loops forever.
Dude. Get this.
Also, Fate Of Atlantis.
Also, The Dig.
And Psychonauts.
Grim Fandango - For all the reasons already stated in the thread.
Monkey Island (series) - little things here and there that definitely made me chuckle.
The Quest Series: (police, space, kings etc) but in particular
Quest for Glory (series). 1 and 2 have been remade with incredibly spiffy vga graphics.
Beyond Good and Evil has really likable characters and a fairly decent plot. Gameplay is great as an added bonus.
I've heard many people recommend Gabriel Knight and the Silent Hill 2.
To give you an idea of my tastes (to see if they are compatible with yours). Planescape was a plus. Earthbound was great. Final Fantasy X was one of my most hated games. Metal Gear Solid is about as exciting as reading anime fanfics. Mass effect was above average for video game plots. I also loved Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for gameplay AND story.
Don't shoot me but Tribes: Vengeance has one of the best stories I've played in recent. If you can put up with the bugs and only go in for the single player, it's pretty damn good game. Plus it's one of those game's where it's subtitle really means something not just random mambo jumbo :P.
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (PC)
Probably the greatest story I have ever played in a video game (ok maybe it doesn't trump Deus Ex but...). Great game play, good music, awesome voice acting. The game considering when it was released in my opinion has aged very well so there is no excuse not to play it!
Morrowind had a great story, too, but it takes more effort to fully absorb it. A lot of it is in books and extra writing. But once you understand the entire backstory, it gets so epic it's ridiculous.
Yeah, ok. I'll give you that about MGS2, but only towards the end of the game. And even then the story is still there and being told well. it's just a clusterfuck of ..... well. It's a clusterfuck.
Only in the sense that they are epic RPGs about saving the land/world/universe. I thought the way their respective storylines actually played out was quite different, and the BG series was inferior in storytelling (though superior in some other aspects) to BioWare's later games.
Oh, and you might want to check out the Fallout games.
Third/fourthing the Lucasarts games, and MGS had, I guess a good story but it is just hilariously chock-full of retarded bosses.
I second his recommendation for Neverwinter Nights 2. The original campaign is decent but not great, but Mask of the Betrayer is fantastic. Luckily, you don't actually have to play the OC to play and understand the story of MotB, though I would still play it first anyways, I happened to enjoy it but if you start it and its just not grabbing you, you can safely skip ahead to the expansion.