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?
Recent hit in this regard is Clair Obscure: Expedition 33. Incredible writing and incredible game overall.
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CrossCode. I won’t spoil anything, but Lea very quickly cemented herself as my favorite protagonist of all time.
CrossCode was gifted to me and I went in knowing nothing about it. I don’t know if I would say it is the best written game story but the way it unfolds is emotionally gripping and managed to make a crusty jaded gamer like myself feel the full range of emotions. Highly recommended.
SOMA still lives in my brain 10 years later.
Talos Principle is the best story I’ve played hands down.
Really? I thought it was ok at best.
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.
Horizon: Zero Dawn. Such a haunting, beautiful story.
Really gave me the feeling of reading a sci-fi novel.
FADE, a pocket pc game with a shocking, emotional twist at the end. Worthy of a remake or movie.
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.
Come on, noone mentioning Planescape Torment so far?!
What changes the nature of a man?
Goosebumps.
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.
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.
Journey, there is no word but the story is so well written i
All games from the Too the Moon series.
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.