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When was the last time a game's story impressed you ?

samoilaaa

Member
Like the title says when was the last time you played a game and liked the story very much ?

And what did you like about ? the world building , the characters , the lore , the plot , all of them combined ?

For me it was soma , i really like the themes about life and death and it kinda teaches how complicated our existence is

Im playing Indiana jones right now and i like the story of this game very much too , it feels like im watching the movies when i was a kid , it really feels like an adventure , im only 4 hours in but if the game has a good ending ill put it on my list
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
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Not just the story itself, it also how they told with none chronological order. On paper this could have easily turn in to convoluted mess but somehow Kamitani and his team pulled it off.
 
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Sakura

Member
Probably Heaven Burns Red. Most of the other games I've played recently haven't had particularly good stories, or story isn't really a factor.
 

od-chan

Member
Persona 5 and Nier Automata are probably the most impressive ones in "recent" years. I don't think anything got even close to that since then, but then again, I have shit memory to begin with.

E: I'm gonna say FF7R has the potential to be up there (maybe surpass these), but I have yet to play part2 (thank you very much fuck enix for the exclusivity bullshit) and thus I can't possibly say yet.

E2: Genshin Impact, Fontaine/Furina Arc. Yes, I know, hurr durr gacha, but fucking Minase Inori just brought that shit home. I actually kinda hate how certain parts of that played out, but boy was I emotionally involved. It's not up there with Persona or Nier (not by far), but it's a lot more recent, so I'll throw it in anyway.
 
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"Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a neverending spiral of life and death"

This game starts in the best way possible and ends even better, in a glorious full circle.
 

Magic Carpet

Gold Member
Video Games story is last on my list of concerns, but if they can tie into gameplay then it becomes notable for me.

Psychonauts 2 and Talos Principal 2 both impressed me.
The way they integrated gameplay and story together. Your reason for solving the mystery to keep playing beyond just doing puzzles or seeing the next level.
Nice Characters reasoning for the world the way it is.

Horizon Zero dawn also impressed as the story very much centered around why the world was the way it was, and gameplay mechanics dealt with the fallout of that story.
 

Mortisfacio

Member
Was going to say Indy myself. First piece of media from that franchise I've enjoyed since the original trilogy. Voss was a terrific villain.

Playing through Mafia 1 DE right now and this is looking like it'll be up there as well.

Indy was the most recent for me. I went in expecting to be thankful I have Game Pass so I didn't have to spend full price and wouldn't finish it. The gameplay trailers just didn't sell it for me, but I love the original movie trilogy too much.

Ended up being a 2024 highlight for me. All the character dialogue was done very well, I love the often campy vibes, Voss was an excellently written villain and props to the voice actors across the board. For me it was the story and characters that carried the game, because on gameplay alone it was nothing to write home about.
 

ReyBrujo

Member
Old ones, but Labyrinth of Galleria really surprised me, in fact I thought I had gotten the bad ending because of how it ended, had to google to learn that I had to load the save file to go on with the story. And Labyrinth of Refrain, I thought since Galleria was the successor the story in Refrain would be softer but it was arguable harsher.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Yakuza for all the light hearted and dumb stuff pretty much always have awesome complex characters and emotional arcs. Even side games like Gaiden are amazing and you always get to direct sequels like Infinite Wealth thinking they can't just repeat the success of the last, but they work wonders.
 
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Juja

Neo Member
Xenoblade 3 + Future Redeemed. There are legitimate videos of people who streamed the game sobbing in Chapter 5. Future Redeemed had so much good stuff in a relatively short (25 hours) amount of time, so I was really sad that it had to end.
 

Mozzarella

Member
I dont know, i don't really think Stories are that important for games, there are some games with stories i liked but i dont recall being so impressed by a story.
Maybe Outer Wilds? since that one is unique.
 

T4keD0wN

Member
By release date itd be Indiana Jones, theyve pulled off the movie vibes so well and the actors were excellent.

But ive finished Final Fantasy 16 about 3 weeks ago, so thats a bit more recent, the execution might have not been the best, but the amount of lore was insane, spent hours reading the codex and the ability to check the writers web was super unique, hope to see more studios copy that storytelling device.
 
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Like the title says when was the last time you played a game and liked the story very much ?

And what did you like about ? the world building , the characters , the lore , the plot , all of them combined ?

For me it was soma , i really like the themes about life and death and it kinda teaches how complicated our existence is

Im playing Indiana jones right now and i like the story of this game very much too , it feels like im watching the movies when i was a kid , it really feels like an adventure , im only 4 hours in but if the game has a good ending ill put it on my list
Yes, and no other video game came close to give you that sense of "existential" dread. It's the pure psychological imagery (or lack there of) that keeps you thinking long after the game is finished. Never gonna see a game that touches on this level since.
 

Aenima

Member
Almost every time thers a big event / chapter update in Nikke.
Two years ago when i donwloaded the game, i was not expecting a F2P gacha game using ass and titties as bait to have a better and more interesting story than majority of the AAA games in the market.

So most recently Nikke got a new year event feauturing the evolution of an existing character and once again, ended up impressed by the story.
 
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AMC124c41

Member
TLOU, TLOU2, The Witcher 3, Half-Life Alyx and Jusant. These are all games that I was left pondering the story after I was done with them and they all got an emotional response out of me which is really hard to come by in the video game medium
 

TheStam

Member
I was really late to RDR2 that I recently finished and it was amazing storywise. I need more truly great stories in games like that or TW3.

Before that it was probably the trip that is 1000XRESIST. Slay the Princess was also good.
 

marjo

Member
Most recently, for a fun, light story, it was Indy. It wasn't particularly deep, but it did a fantastic job of capturing the tone of the original trilogy movies. In terms of more thought provoking fare, what immediately comes to mind is CD Projekt Red stuff (Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk in particular).
 

blacktout

Member
I don't think I've ever been impressed by the "writing" in a game. Even games that are thematically interesting are often pretty poorly written in the "words on the page" sense, with heavy-handed plot twists and leaden "I'm just going to tell you what this is all about" dialogue. Certainly nothing on par with legitimately great novels, films, and television.

Which is probably why my favorite example of storytelling in a game is Inside, a game with basically no dialogue or foregrounded in-world text. The game is actually fairly linear, but its puzzles are constructed in such a way that you constantly feel like *you* are making a series of terrifying choices and the game's themes are experienced viscerally and emotionally rather than being forcefed to you through exposition.

I'd say games like Dark Souls and Hollow Knight fall in this camp too, though they have more actual dialogue and written lore.
 

damidu

Member
most recent, i'd say silent hill 2 - also never played the original, that probably played a part
for all time favorite, i guess its SOMA
 
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nowhat

Member
NieR: Automata. I'm still recovering from it.

But, I do have to give a shoutout to Horizon Zero Dawn as well. Not when it comes to the story of Aloy the protagonist - it's pretty generic, and some of the story beats can be seen from a mile away (the minute I saw Rost, I was like "he ded" - then, he be ded, what a surprise). But how the world came to be as it is. I would have been perfectly happy with "there are cavemen and robot dinosaurs, just roll with it", but instead, it's much more harder sci-fi than I would have expected. When it was revealed what "Zero Dawn" actually was/is, I didn't see that coming. And it all made perfect sense.
 
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IAmRei

Member
FF XVI and Xenoblade Chronicles series 1 - 3.
though not heavy on story, BoTW and ToTK also had impact when i first time playing it, the unwritten world building is amazing tho.
I like story with heavy high fantasy concept, i heard trails also had it, but i don't like the art style.

other than high fantasy, i like Yakuza Like a Dragon story

I mostly presentation and gameplay first, then artsyle, then world building, then story
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Impressive, idk.. But I've enjoyed the fuck out of stories in games like f.ex. RDR2, Cyberpunk and KCD.
 
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Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
The most recent example for me would be The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Really added something awesome to the lore.

The final boss being a villain more ancient and powerful than Ganon and is basically the "Azathoth" of the Zelda series.
 

Ellery

Member
It was 2020 The Last of Us Part 2.

To be fair there probably were a few games with great stories since then, but I haven't played all of them and TLOU2 raised the bar so high that it becomes harder for all that follows.

HL Alyx I'd love to play but no VR Headset and motion sickness :(
 
Returnal

I've never gone as fucking deep with a game's lore and story before. I was feverish about putting lore entries together, rewatching cutscenes on YouTube and so on.

It doesn't all come together but I loved the experience of being sucked into this puzzle-like world where everything is fractured memories and unreliable narration. One of my favorite gaming experiences ever. Game is like Metroid meets Silent Hill 2.
 
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