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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Disco Elysium is, without a doubt, the best written game I’ve ever played. That game had me experience the entire rainbow of emotions.
At first I was like “haha look at the funny hobo cop, no pants”.
By hour 70 I decided to finally read Chomsky, 11/10 can recommend.
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.
Seconding Spiritfarer.
I also became entirely entranced by Horizon: Forbidden West. A death in that game hit me unexpectedly hard, and I had to take a couple days off from playing it to kind of deal with the grief. I tried the first Horizon, but I feel it didn’t get anywhere close to the depth in worldbuilding and character development of the second game
FFVII set me up to be an eco-Marxist.
Disco Elysium helped me come to terms with my alcoholism and learn to move forward with my life instead of wallowing in self pity and loathing for the things I had done.
Really those are the two games that affected me most heavily in my life.
Horizon: Zero Dawn. Such a haunting, beautiful story.
What Remains of Edith Finch comes to mind for me.
In the game, you play Edith Finch going back to her family home. It was home to multiple generations of the Finch family. This family has a serious case of bad luck, and most of them didn’t get very old. As Edith, you explore all of the rooms and see the final moments of the person who used to live there.
It is not a horror game - but it is haunting, in a sense. If you enjoy good stories and writing, give it a try. It’s only about 2 hours, and best played in a single sitting. It’s also on sale regularly.
The quarry, and until dawn were pretty good. A bit lacking in gameplay, but awesome stories.
Witcher 3 tells many stories that contribute to an overarching story.
Fallout new Vegas does it with the option of murder hoboing
Bg3 is pretty good story wise too ❤️
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.
Oh I forgot about Oxenfree. Yeah, the story and voice acting were quite good, but the game had so many annoying design/UI decisions that it left me frustrated more than anything else :c
SOMA still lives in my brain 10 years later.
Come on, noone mentioning Planescape Torment so far?!
What changes the nature of a man?
Goosebumps.
Bioshock infinite, really pulled me in.
Final Fantasy XV… Usually I get wet eyes when the games do it right. But with FF15 I literally cried.
A Way Out. Highly recommend playing it with your closest friend. Fucking game made me feel stronger emotions than any other game I’ve ever played, because the motherfucker I was playing with is my best friend. I’m not going to spoil the ending, I’m just going to say: heavy fucking feelings
Don’t forget to try their other games if you haven’t already! It Takes Two is wonderful, and the recently released Split Fiction is my favorite of them all.
Hell blade: Senua’s Sacrifice.
The game itself helped me understand people, who are no longer with us, in a better way. The manner in which psychosis is presented is powerfully accurate, at least from an outsider perspective. It made me cry as it portrayed struggles in a manner truthful to the symptoms beyond the effects - the story and execution of it really gripped me.
Legend of Mana
Talos Principle is the best story I’ve played hands down.
