Game With the Best Story? (For school assignment)

[Arqus_Zed]

Shadow of the Colossus.

Your character is killing these creatures to save the soul of a girl, these creatures are not a threat, they only defend themselves, for you seek them out, and with every one you kill, you can see the toll it's taking on your character.

So much is told without words.

The best stories always are.

I knew this would be the first comment.

I think it depends greatly from game to game. SotC doesnt have all that deep a story, you summed it up in two and a half lines, its just really well told in the mechanics and the aesthetics.

I just have to comment on this one.

You pretty much told yourself what is so amazing about SotC: "[it's] just really well told in the mechanics and the aesthetics."

Isn't that the whole point?
Isn't that what we should be striving for? To create a means of storytelling that can't be copied by any other medium?

It's the interaction with your horse, the slaying of the gigantic creatures and the search in the desolate landscape...
If a picture is worth more than a thousand words, than an experience is worth more than a thousand pictures.

Yeah I mo, I didnt really state what I thought clearly did I.

I meant to ask the OP what he was looking for. Theres many aspects to a good story. Gaming does things well and other things not so well. SotC plays on gamings strengths and turns a story thats baically killing big boss monsters into something amazing. Theres a back story but it just doesnt really come up (your there because of what happened but your not told it), unless you want to start talking about ICO, or was that a sequel in story terms? Where as Bioshock maps out every little detail, YOU just have to look for it. Playing on another of gamings strengths.

They both work well but some would argue otherwise, is the OC talking about a story with a massive back story, where every little action and and detail leads up to this big emotional cluster cuse or a story that doesnt go anywhere past the moment but is so well told you dont really care... until youve completed it and MUST find out.

Im starting to sound like an ass hole so ill stop now.

EDIT: Oh one more thing, FF9 was the best of the lot, the parralel worlds, final boss mess was abit of a jar but the rest was epic, even if the story and the gameplay clashed abit. Training Steiner up after that long ass break he had from the story took looooooooooong!

Well, that explanation certainly helped.

And yeah, FF IX is awesome. Gameplay was indeed not the most inventive aspect, but at least it was solid. I just really liked it for all the things it did right: from Zidane's revelation to Vivi's arc as the child who overcomes his fear of death. Also, the women.

Beatrix as the female general who kicks major ass and has to find out if her loyalty outweighs the notions of right and wrong. Garnet as the princess character who actually becomes a queen halfway the games story - name one other game which does that! And last but not least, Freya as the female soldier looking for her boyfriend - not the other way around! - and staying strong even after her home gets overrun and many of her comrades die. She's probably the most amazing, since her story is all about love, yet she's not portrayed like some pretty-ass bimbo or sleazy cat-girl. No, she's a skinny rat wearing a raincoat. FF IX was both the first and the last game I ever played with such a strong female cast...

Yeah Freya was hot ^v^... 0_0 wait, what?

Hah, that's kind of the whole point isn't it?

She's not attractive, but they gave her a story dealing with love anyway.
I mean, they could make her a non-human and still make her "hot" - like Mass Effect did - but they didn't.
It's the exact opposite of what Bob was bitching about: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/4719-Gender-Games
If you ask me, it takes balls to make an unconventional move like that.

 

[INeedAName]

As some have already pointed out, you're asking for an objective answer to a subjective question, so there's no real right or wrong here.

Still some of my favourites would be Persona 4, story-wise, and BioShock and the Bastion narrative-wise.

BioWare games, as a general rule, also have pretty good writing.

P. S. talk about a topic exploding huh!? And Red Dead Redamption also had an unusually good story.

 

[Babitz]

This thread is kind of depressing because a lot of games mentioned here don't have a lot going for them both in terms of story and narrative.

I mean, God of War? Seriously?
Or creaming your collective pants over Bioshock which is basically System Shock 2 for dummies.
Or Mass Effect, the B-movie adaptation of SW: Kotor.

 

[PunkRex]

Shadow of the Colossus.

Your character is killing these creatures to save the soul of a girl, these creatures are not a threat, they only defend themselves, for you seek them out, and with every one you kill, you can see the toll it's taking on your character.

So much is told without words.

The best stories always are.

I knew this would be the first comment.

I think it depends greatly from game to game. SotC doesnt have all that deep a story, you summed it up in two and a half lines, its just really well told in the mechanics and the aesthetics.

I just have to comment on this one.

You pretty much told yourself what is so amazing about SotC: "[it's] just really well told in the mechanics and the aesthetics."

Isn't that the whole point?
Isn't that what we should be striving for? To create a means of storytelling that can't be copied by any other medium?

It's the interaction with your horse, the slaying of the gigantic creatures and the search in the desolate landscape...
If a picture is worth more than a thousand words, than an experience is worth more than a thousand pictures.

Yeah I mo, I didnt really state what I thought clearly did I.

I meant to ask the OP what he was looking for. Theres many aspects to a good story. Gaming does things well and other things not so well. SotC plays on gamings strengths and turns a story thats baically killing big boss monsters into something amazing. Theres a back story but it just doesnt really come up (your there because of what happened but your not told it), unless you want to start talking about ICO, or was that a sequel in story terms? Where as Bioshock maps out every little detail, YOU just have to look for it. Playing on another of gamings strengths.

They both work well but some would argue otherwise, is the OC talking about a story with a massive back story, where every little action and and detail leads up to this big emotional cluster cuse or a story that doesnt go anywhere past the moment but is so well told you dont really care... until youve completed it and MUST find out.

Im starting to sound like an ass hole so ill stop now.

EDIT: Oh one more thing, FF9 was the best of the lot, the parralel worlds, final boss mess was abit of a jar but the rest was epic, even if the story and the gameplay clashed abit. Training Steiner up after that long ass break he had from the story took looooooooooong!

Well, that explanation certainly helped.

And yeah, FF IX is awesome. Gameplay was indeed not the most inventive aspect, but at least it was solid. I just really liked it for all the things it did right: from Zidane's revelation to Vivi's arc as the child who overcomes his fear of death. Also, the women.

Beatrix as the female general who kicks major ass and has to find out if her loyalty outweighs the notions of right and wrong. Garnet as the princess character who actually becomes a queen halfway the games story - name one other game which does that! And last but not least, Freya as the female soldier looking for her boyfriend - not the other way around! - and staying strong even after her home gets overrun and many of her comrades die. She's probably the most amazing, since her story is all about love, yet she's not portrayed like some pretty-ass bimbo or sleazy cat-girl. No, she's a skinny rat wearing a raincoat. FF IX was both the first and the last game I ever played with such a strong female cast...

Yeah Freya was hot ^v^... 0_0 wait, what?

Hah, that's kind of the whole point isn't it?

She's not attractive, but they gave her a story dealing with love anyway.
I mean, they could make her a non-human and still make her "hot" - like Mass Effect did - but they didn't.
It's the exact opposite of what Bob was bitching about: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/4719-Gender-Games
If you ask me, it takes balls to make an unconventional move like that.

I do love a good love story, I just hate it when its over played. Freya was awesome because she loved Fratly but still saw the big picture... did I just make a pun?

I actually agree with alot of what Bob says, not everything mind you, ZODIAC WAS TERRIBLE!!! Which is always a big conflict for me as im a massive perv who loves him some sexy characters... sex doesnt belong with everything, yet it can pop up out of no where.

 

[Victor Cross]

MASS EFFECT 2.

That is all.

(Okay, I don't want to bore you with details, plus this post would be EXTREMELY long if I was to go into it, but look up some gameplay footage, or read stuff on the wiki. Look it up in general. It's one of the best games out there, sotry AND gameplay-wise.)

 

[honeybunch]

Except this is a thread on a 'game with best story', so it isn't unreasonable to assume that's what I meant.

It kind of is, actually.

If you write "the best stories are always told without words" it is absolutely unreasonable to assume you meant "the best stories in video games are sometimes told without words". A reader could assume the "video games" bit, but there's really no reason for you to expect them to, especially since this topic is partially about comparing the quality of video game stories to the stories found in other media. Not to mention that you've hedged about the "always" that was in your original statement and transformed it into a "sometimes".

So if you say that what you're saying now is what you meant all along I'll believe you, but in that case your original statement was confusingly broad and hyperbolic. If you make that kind of statement, you should not be surprised if it is misunderstood.

Ugh. I'm just going to let this go now. Daystar, if you want to think of me as some kind of misquoting, stubborn douchebag lacking basic reading comprehension, you are welcome to do so. We'll just have to disagree on that point. If you want to respond to this, feel free to. I don't mean to hog the last word.

To everyone else, my apologizes for cluttering up this thread with this pointless argument.

 

[WOPR]

Killer7... probably that, while it's story is up down and all around it's still really well done, either that or Metal Gear or Mass Effect (I didn't much enjoy mass effect but it's story is off the wall good)

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Except this is a thread on a 'game with best story', so it isn't unreasonable to assume that's what I meant.

It kind of is, actually.

If you write "the best stories are always told without words" it is absolutely unreasonable to assume you meant "the best stories in video games are sometimes told without words". A reader could assume the "video games" bit, but there's really no reason for you to expect them to, especially since this topic is partially about comparing the quality of video game stories to the stories found in other media. Not to mention that you've hedged about the "always" that was in your original statement and transformed it into a "sometimes".

So if you say that what you're saying now is what you meant all along I'll believe you, but in that case your original statement was confusingly broad and hyperbolic. If you make that kind of statement, you should not be surprised if it is misunderstood.

Ugh. I'm just going to let this go now. Daystar, if you want to think of me as some kind of misquoting, stubborn douchebag lacking basic reading comprehension, you are welcome to do so. We'll just have to disagree on that point. If you want to respond to this, feel free to. I don't mean to hog the last word.

To everyone else, my apologizes for cluttering up this thread with this pointless argument.

Some people may know that's what I meant, other won't (like you for instance).

I should have made the my point more conise, but I also don't appreciate someone coming along and being overly pedantic, but whatever, that's my problem and I'll deal with it.

 

[caffineking]

The single player game on Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2 really impressed me. Real Tom Clancy type stuff if you've ever read his books. Not sure if an 18 cert game would be suitable for a school assignment though....

 

[AlternatePFG]

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. Easily the best game and story Obsidian has done, unlike many of their other games, it has a really solid Act 3. Some very complex and interesting companions and a story with actual themes.

I also really like KOTOR II's story, moreso than the first (Which is just a basic Star Wars story. Don't get me wrong, it's a well told Star Wars story, but it really isn't much past that) but it has the problem of being unfinished. It's a really thoughtful deconstruction of the Star Wars universe, but it's let down by the fact that it was never quite finished. It was building up to something great, but due to being rushed by Lucas Arts, the final level is a mess, gameplay and story-wise. (Even the Restoration Project doesn't fix everything.)

Obligatory Planescape: Torment mention here. It's really, really good.

 

[DAAANtheMAAAN]

So the title pretty much says the main idea. I do need some help with an argumentative essay I'm writing on the subject of "Can Video Games Be Art?". I'm arguing for it.

In one of the paragraphs, I admit to gaming's current faults and one of them being the relative lack of story quality (relative being the key word there). I say in the plan for the paragraph, "Story in games is currently bad, to be honest, with the apparently "best" one being: _______"

I was hoping I could get general consensus on what exactly do we gamers think is the game with the best story.

I personally view the Mass Effect series as being the best story, but then again I'm 17 and the amount of games I've played is quite limited compared to many other gamers.

(I know what I wrote for the paragraph's plan is a bit oddly worded, but it's just the basic idea I have for the few lines)

You'll never come up with an agreement. To rephrase a Mass Effect 2 quote, "If you have 3 people in a room, you will have 6 favorite game stories." Stories resonate with different people for different reasons, and discerning the "best of the best" in game stories is a snipe hunt.

If I may say, this thread will bring out a bunch of games with good stories, but there's a good chance that you haven't played a lot of them. Stick with what you know. It wouldn't do much good to emphasize the evil nature of Kefka if you haven't played Final Fantasy 6, or Kain and Raziel's quests to change history in the Legacy of Kain games if none of the discs have graced your consoles.
Stick to the games that you know. Think of essential questions to answer. Why you like the story, why you like the characters and what you think of the game world itself. It'll be a bit long-winded, sure, but you'll grade a lot higher than just picking what could be a random game that you know nothing about.

 

[zHellas]

Bioshock

Mass Effect has a crap story, it's the setting that makes the game

You could say the same thing about Bioshock.

It's basically: What if Ayn Rand got a sex change then made an underwater city, found some mutating slugs, and became a big asshole?

It's the setting (the dilapidated and decaying underwater city) that makes it, as well as the audio logs (I just love those. XP)

Don't get me wrong, I like both games, but both still have silly stories.

Nope, they tried playing the setting card in Bioshock 2
Guess what? It failed horribly.

Not for me. I liked Bioshock 2.

Thought it got better once out of the Persephone place... Whatever the whore house was named.

 

[zHellas]

"Story in games is currently bad, to be honest, with the apparently "best" one being: _______"

I'm not trying to be a grammar Nazi, but maybe a better way to word that sentence would be "Stories in games are currently bad, to be honest, but the apparent "best" one is ______."

Sorry...just...had to get that out of my system...

I know, which is why I said lower it was the basic idea.]

 

[opiwankenobi]

I have to agree with the aforementioned Xenogears. Very interesting story, although rather complex.

 

[Shinigami Fire]

The single player game on Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2 really impressed me. Real Tom Clancy type stuff if you've ever read his books. Not sure if an 18 cert game would be suitable for a school assignment though....

Except good storytelling doesn't make art. I won't say I wasn't engaged by the story. But any further exploration of the story shows it as pretty meager. Also most of the games mentioned are all 18+ or 17+. It's irrelevant. High school language courses consistently review R rated movies.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

The Planescape story is technically the best for the topic and emotional appeal.

But for worldbuilding and general ambition nothing has yet beaten the scope, breadth, and detail of Star Control 2.

Games like Ultima (4/5/6/7) have really great settings but the game story itself isn't that great.

System Shock 2 and the original Deus Ex have pretty darn good stories and the storytelling methods are very good.

For more modern games I way Kotor has a great story. Bastion which was just released has the most brilliant storytelling method with the use the reactive Narrator.

 

[Evil Earlgrey]

Best Story award goes tooooooooo....

MAX PAYNE 1&2 as well as PSYCHONAUTS!

 

[the spud]

You won't be able to get a consensus; everybody will have their own favorites. My personal favorite was Chrono Trigger, but Shadow of the Colossus, Terranigma, FF4, 6, 7, and 9, and Mass Effect are all good too. Maybe you should say something like "Apparently some of the best are"

 

[BleedingPride]

Silent Hill 2