Akiba's Trip
I expected no story but instead I got a main character who tells delinquents to go back to sucking on their mother's tits and also crossdresses in order to strip people who are hitting on a girl.
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Hmmm, I'm not exactly one to give too much credit to a story unless it's super funny (so, with other words, its "depth" doesn't really matter to me, I just care if it makes me laugh). But I guess I'll try my best guesses:
Bioshock Series (yes, all of it, including Infinite that I did not dislike like a lot of people seem to have) for the obvious choice that a bunch of other people already mentioned...
Borderlands 2 has a lot of that...
Darkest Dungeon... ok, now we're getting somewhere- it's probably one of the most atmospheric games I've ever played with a super awesome setting. And just from what characters say we can get a pretty decent picture of their mental states and histories. Also the ending is golden in a "they went full Lovecraft" sort of way (and the rest of the game is already 90% Lovecraft). Basically I really like a great cosmic horror setting. :D
Black & White- I don't know if it's because I was much younger when I was little, but the game was pretty successful with making me care about the stupid retarded AI Creature I was given and I generally tried to make my little puny villagers happy... though that might just be because I'm a nice guy rather than any special power to the setting... I dunno.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown- basically Darkest Dungeon without the cosmic horror theme and with aliens instead. Still you could get quite a lot out of it.
Devil May Cry 3. Because. It just gets crazier (and occasionally deeper) from there.
Creeper World series- it has a pretty interesting setting... not too many characters though.
The Talos Principle- I guess this one tries to be deep and meaningful or something. Has nice puzzles.
SpaceChem- did I mention I like cosmic horror stories. Well, the story we get between fffffffucking hard as hell puzzles is exactly that.
I'm gonna stop here before I just start listing games that I like which have anything resembling a story. :P
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Every bigger japanese title... classic Final Fantasy titles, Metal Gear franchise and Yakuza series most notably...
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Recently, Night in the Woods, though I expected it would be great as soon as I heard about the game so it wasn't really a surprise. Gameplay-wise it's kinda meh though.
Among point and clicks, pretty much everything published by Wadjet Eye has excellent storylines and characters.
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Wadjet Eye really did a fantastic job to nail down it's name as a mark of quality. It makes me so happy ^^
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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Chaos Rising
Surprising character development and overall a well written and compelling story for a RTS, leagues above the perfunctory bare bones narrative usually found in similar games of the genre. I liked how your decisions in the campaign and how much of the forbidden fruit you dared to taste (in the form of optional enticing Chaos-tainted war gear) influenced your corruption level and sealed your ultimate fate. Also, how said decisions could completely alter the identity of the traitor who would betray you. The game played pretty decent as a strategy game too.
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SUIKODEN V best history ever in a game. BEST BEST BEST.
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When reading the title of this thread I was going to say *Eden but since you blacklisted VN I would say
Demonicon still deserves to get mentioned here.
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I didn't blacklist it!
..I whitelisted it so hard that nothing more needed to be said about it. :P
The main aim was to find games that break their mold to the point that they could compete with genres that are already well-known for their story-rich nature. Add in that the genres in question are the ones I'm most passionate about and thus least in need of recommendations for, and that the allowance of those genres would have lead to games from them dominating the thread..
Yeah, they're not blacklisted- rather, if this was a tournament, they're the ones who've already been seeded past this stage. :)
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Rather than having this thread focus on the usual slow-paced Visual Novels, Point & Clicks, and Cinematic adventure games,
Huh, I've only seen one VN that didn't make me wince at the art, story/character description, and overall presentation.That is Over the Hills and Far Away and I still don't really want it despite it being on my wishlist.
Likewise with PnC and Adventure Games, it's been years since one really grabbed my attention.I've always enjoyed the stories in rpgs better, though, and tend to consider them vastly superior in every respect.
(That is, besides the obvious answer of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. ~.^)
What makes this so good, in your opinion? I've always seen the setting as Ravenloft's lesser sibling, tbh.
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Ravenloft and VTM don't have much in common besides featuring vampires. The first one is more similar to classic gothic horror and Hammer films while the second is inspired by Ann Rice's books and urban fantasy. They're both good settings but for different reasons.
What makes Bloodlines a great game is that, despite its flaws, it's an excellent adaptation of VTM's ruleset in videogame form. It allows for a variety of playstyles, character builds and story choices (at least until the final levels, which are pretty much a combat festival, and too bad if you were playing a pacifist before).
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I just vastly prefer Ravenloft's aesthetics and base setting, rules (allowing for dimensional gateways to other D&D worlds) and the grimness of it to VTM. That and the people who I met who played VTM were...well, annoying:P
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You should take a look at Zero Escape: The Nonary Games when it comes out tomorrow. It's a collection of two games that break pretty much all of steam's visual novel tropes (Well-written story, no nudity, twists you don't see coming, and choices that actually lead the story down different paths instead of determining which girl you stick it in at the end). The two games are both often praised as the best visual novel of all time. Personally, I give that title to the first game (9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors), but a lot of people would be willing to fight me and give it to the second one (Virtue's Last Reward).
The games do have an anime art style, but so does Chrono Trigger. Both 999 and Chrono Trigger are in my top ten games of all time, so hopefully that gives you an indicator that these games are something special, and not just the standard crap that gets thrown up on steam on a regular basis.
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Well, I used to love the FF games for SNES/NES (and I can see you share that love from your username:)) but haven't really played jrpgs since I was...13?14? Not to suggest I outgrew them, but I just prefer western rpgs more.That said, I don't know if I missed the boat and might have liked VNs like that years ago but don't see the appeal now:/
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Huh, I've only seen one VN that didn't make me wince at the art, story/character description, and overall presentation.That is Over the Hills and Far Away and I still don't really want it despite it being on my wishlist.
I'm much in the same boat. I'm sure some people here would lynch me for saying this, but I'm pretty much allergic to your common anime-styled VNs and admittedly a lot of that has to do with the art style and presentation, along with the stereotypical themes. I find even Over the Hills not really appealing. Despite these reservations, I took the plunge with VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action and found I could at least appreciate and even somewhat enjoy the thing in doses. I'm a stickler for cyberpunk in general though, so that had undoubtedly a huge part in making the whole thing even remotely palatable. I haven't mustered the energy to finish the game though, but I'll get there eventually.
Having said that, I have Along the Edge wishlisted, as the style, presentation and theme of this one I find genuinely intriguing and quite appealing.
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They are just not book levels, and unless fully voice-acted, they are just digital shortbooks, with all the (dabum-tss)shotcomings of it. Funnily enough the first VN I could bear with and fully enjoyed was Hatoful Boyfriend :D Eden* was really atmospheric but super-slow paced, but you should try smaller stuff like Unhack - it's like a smaller story told between minigames. But I'm not really surprised that you don't find VNs to fit your taste to be honest :)
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It's kind of a cheat, but Neverwinter Nights persistent world rp servers I've played on have had the best stories, bar none. Plots that lasted for years, player-driven stories that affected the entire campaign setting, and DM-run events that built on each other and allowed for some truly amazing character development.
Unfortunately the golden age of that game is long past, most of us "hardcore" rpgers have moved on or simply burned out. There are still pockets of serious rpers out there but most people nowadays just want to make meme-based anime or brony references and "erotic" roleplay. Sad.
Oh and the best D&D setting?Forgotten Realms pre-4th Edition.
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I, too, spent way too many hours in persistent NWN servers. And the player-made modules.... Some of the best stuff I've ever seen in computer RPG's, and they were all free to download and play.
I miss NWN.... (
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Yeah, and I'm still disappointed in Legends of the Sword Coast, supposedly a spiritual successor for NWN1 fans.
What impresses me is that there are still mods being made for NWN because virtually no other rpg comes with such an amazingly rich toolset.Maybe Skyrim but I honestly don't know since I haven't modded it or played it much.
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Not sure if this fits, but I just got done beating Dragon Age and I thought it had an engaging story with great character development.
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DA:O is one of the best rpgs of the last decade, imho. It really moved rpgs into the same realm of darker, more mature themes in fantasy games that Joe Abercrombie, George RR Martin, and Glen Cook did for fantasy fiction.
I haven't played either sequel, though. Replayed DA:O instead:)
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The walking dead. Expected nothing, weak story and lots of cutscenes. An interactive movie.
Found a very good interactive movie.
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Tali and Liara development through ME1-3. Also, Jack too. That's all that comes to mind atm.
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- FFVII Crisis core is one of the best games I've played.
- Final fantasy 4 loved its story
- Drakengard 1 & 2 both having a very touching story and character development especially the first one, it made me cry. its on PS2.
- Nier the first game not the new one, it does have an amazing touching story.
- Dragon age Origins
- Beyond two souls, love this game so much, I recommend everyone to try it out.
- Resident evil 6 Jake campaign, the characters development and story was really good.
- Life is strange.
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'Beyond two souls, love this game so much, I recommend everyone to try it out.'
+1
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I also loved Beyond Two Souls. Very sad how much hate it got.
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Yeah it is an amazing game, I thought it was only underrated, not hated? why ppl hate it? is it because it came after heavy rain and 'trying' to be the same?
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Witcher 3 for putting serious effort into even the smallest mini-quests, full of characters, stories, everything, ready to discover and dig into. This is my all-time-favourite and it definitely wins here.
Life is Strange for emotional factor and awesome story - characters were pretty neat as well, I liked it a lot. You can definitely feel that every single one of them has some kind of a history you learn as you play.
Some other not-so-obvious picks include This is the Police (although many people would argue with me if this is a decent story/character, I say it was for me), Mafia 1/2 (both had great story and characters, hard to say which one was better story-wise, I'd say second one, but people would go crazy if I did).
Honorable mention to Warcraft III for having a really interesting story and campaign despite of being RTS game, this is not easy to achieve.
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Honorable mention to Warcraft III for having a really interesting story and campaign despite of being RTS game, this is not easy to achieve.
True, dat.
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Jak and Daxter. I found the world, the precursors any overall mythos, and of course Daxters writing/acting to be very good. Its probably the best overall story/writing I've seen in a 3D platformer. Unfortunately the first game and the second are so incredibly different from each other that most people jumped ship from the series and never played the 3rd or the PSP game starring Daxter, which really tied everything together beautifully.
A real shame about the abomination that is "The Lost Frontier". That game should be avoided like the plague.
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LIMBO and INSIDE
And the amazing thing about these two highly heralded platform-puzzlers is that there is not a single line of text or dialogue to be found in either of the games. The entire exposition, emotional provocations, and probing philosophical meditations are delivered in ways that are closely tied to the actual gameplay and without disturbing the flow and pace of the game. These games are brilliantly designed, from LIMBO's groundbreaking visual aesthetic (which has now been copied more times than I care to count), to the clever ways in which narrative is tied to action. It's more like story-doing instead of story-telling, and for me are two of the most wonderful examples of how narrative and interactive experience can be combined in a way that compliments instead of distracts from each other.
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I'll say The Long Dark. Which is ironic in a way because "Story Mode" is not even done yet. But Sandbox Mode has a "story" to it -- a story of isolation, and of perseverence. The more I've played, the more I've felt like I'm the one out there in the snow, trying to survive.
In other news: https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/g3RjZ/the-tale-of-doris-and-the-dragon-episode-1
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Deadlight
Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishment+ The Devils Daughter
L.A Noire
Fahrenheit
To The Moon
Quantum Break
Dishonored 1
o/
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How has no one mentioned Cave Story? ;_;
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Singularity, Bioshock, Mass Effect 1, Spec Ops the Line, Dragon Age Origins, Neverwinter Nights, Metro 2033
I'm sure there's more but I don't see Singularity getting listed at all.
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I was going to be witty/clever and say Neo Aquarium/Ace of Seafood (or some other game where the characters are in the ocean) because of the title Get it? Because character depth... sorry but instead I'll say... Umm, no clue, really...
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Most of my favourites for that topic already got mentioned here, so I´m gonna go with two hidden gems from the last generation: Enslaved and NIER (the first one.. even though "Automata" is probaply awesome too, but I haven´t played it yet).
Both have awesome storytelling and deep characters.
Also the Zero Escape series.. it´s visual-novel-esque so it doesn´t fit the topic 100%, but the storytelling is so very unique and well done that it should get an honorable mention here ^^
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Pony Island.
I'm pretty sure that "a runner game where you're a jumping pony" is the last game you'd expect to have much plot. But Pony Island does not disappoint. Excellent writing and some decent characterization as well.
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I totally forgot about that one in this context. It had the best fourth-wall breaking fakeout I've ever seen.
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Specifically, I'm asking about games of styles that aren't usually known for such depth. Rather than having this thread focus on the usual slow-paced Visual Novels, Point & Clicks, and Cinematic adventure games, I'm more curious about any RPGs, Action-Adventures, Stealth-Adventures- or even entirely unexpected genres for it, like platformers and shumps- that combine their genre's usual mechanical immersion with the richness that's more commonly the purview of slower-paced genres.
In short, what game have you encountered that best combined a richness of setting, atmosphere, character, and/or story, with engaging mechanics?
(That is, besides the obvious answer of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. ~.^)
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