Deepest Story in a Game *No Spoilers*

[00slash00]

I just finished my 4th playthrough of Nier last night (late to the party, I know). The game got somewhat bad reviews but I loved ever second of the game, except for the fact that I was absurdly overpowered by my second playthrough. The story and characters, however, were some of the best I'd seen in years. There were parts of the game that had me tearing up and I lost count of the number of "whaaat...?" moments the game gave me. The story really pulled me in and made it worth playing 4 times. I don't want to give anything away but I cannot recommend Nier highly enough.

I know this is far from an original topic but what are some games you have played that you love purely for the amazing and deep story (not to say the gameplay isn't also great, but it isn't the reason the game is so memorable for you)

 

[Saelune]

Who cares when you play a game. Its hard to play every game ever.

Anyways, I love the story of the FEAR series. Its a big part of why I love it. Its all overly complicated and stuff, but I tihnk its interesting.

 

[Link XL1]

The World Ends With You, Odin Sphere, and Hotel Dusk. i also enjoy various Final Fantasies

 

[Denvarte]

Cave Story, if only be cause it starts so easy-going and simple

 

[BreakfastMan]

killer7 is one of the big ones for me. It all seems crazy at first. Nothing makes sense, and it just seems to be weird for the sake of weird. But then, things start to hinted at, explained, and expanded upon, and the whole thing begins to make a strange, terrible sort of sense. Like House of Leaves, if anyone has read that (also a fantastic book, go read it). Very similar experience in a way. Fantastic game. There are other games with this sort of deep story (KOTOR 1+2, Persona 3+4, Deadly Premonition, ME2, Silent Hill 1-4, Bully, LoZ: MM, to name a few), but I only really wanted to touch on one, so... there it is.

 

[Tentickles]

The Higurashi games are pretty complicated. Hell the anime is complicated!

 

[thenamelessloser]

Really rather funny i was about to type Nier before reading the topic post and just reading the name of the topic, lol. I was even going to say how it was an unusual thing to say. Also this is from someone who played some of the most heavy story based games such as Planescape: Torment and Xenogears.

I would say personally it would be Nier for consoles and Planescape: Torment for PC. One thing about Nier though, I think its gamepaly is a bit deeper in some ways than others. I sometimes think much of the game is a deconstruction/parody of video games in general but even if you don't think the game is a parody, but the game definitely plays with game mechanics and makes references to a bunch of various games. For instance, with the fishing mini game i kept screwing it up but then the game's story just went on. How the characters make fun of the sidequests etc. After playing Nier the thought of the game being a parody kept going through my skull. Here is a blog post I found while looking up Nier and parody on google. I don't agree with all of it but it is rather interesting. http://www.chronoludic.com/2010/09/nier-more-than-a-fishing-game/

I would say what makes Nier so great story wise is this same kind of playing with cliches and tropes as the gameplay. The big plot twist found near the end and really made clear when you play the second half of the game again makes this quite clear. Planecape: Torment at the same time plays and deconstructs with various trops and cliches in RPGs. This is probalby why I consider both to be among or the deepest story line wise for video games. They do things that I don't think could be done as well in other forms of story telling (I totally disagree with the common criticism that Planescape: Torment could work as well as a book or choose your own adventure book.) They aren't only deep in the common sense of a story but deep when using the various story elements common in video games themselves.

 

[Cogwheel]

Planescape: Torment.

Assume I said that about ten times.


Other than that, Arcanum's good, while Terranigma and Legacy of Kain are pretty amazing, though LoK does get ridiculously complex and head-explodey.

 

[Zhukov]

Care to define "deep" in this context?

Because otherwise you're just going to get people lining up to list their favourite games... y'know, again.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Planescape: Torment.

Also Witcher 1/2, The Spirit Engine, Devil Survivor, Sands of Time, Homeworld, and Deus Ex. (Off the top of my head - I'm sure there are some excellent ones I'm forgetting.

EDIT: And of course there are plenty of games I liked the story of, but these games I felt went above and beyond in terms of exploring either the story as a whole or some aspect of the story.

 

[thenamelessloser]

Planescape: Torment.

Assume I said that about ten times.


Other than that, Arcanum's good, while Terranigma and Legacy of Kain are pretty amazing, though LoK does get ridiculously complex and head-explodey.

Arcanum's story is good but at the same time amazing. I mean, the story is just good but considering how nonlinear and huge the game is at the same time it is amazing story wise.

 

[Javarino]

The campaigns of halo, despite their inconsistencies, really drew me in. I felt let down by halo 3's gameplay, but I played it through just to find out what happens. Reach and ODST were pretty damn good as well.

 

[Kathinka]

Planescape: Torment.

Assume I said that about ten times.

this this this. end of thread. seriously, people, if you haven't yet, play eeeeeeeet!

captcha: "maddening skull"
lord inglip is fucking with us today..

 

[George Mylonas]

killer7 is one of the big ones for me. It all seems crazy at first. Nothing makes sense, and it just seems to be weird for the sake of weird. But then, things start to hinted at, explained, and expanded upon, and the whole thing begins to make a strange, terrible sort of sense. Like House of Leaves, if anyone has read that (also a fantastic book, go read it). Very similar experience in a way. Fantastic game. There are other games with this sort of deep story (KOTOR 1+2, Persona 3+4, Deadly Premonition, ME2, Silent Hill 1-4, Bully, LoZ: MM, to name a few), but I only really wanted to touch on one, so... there it is.

House of Leaves is my favorite book. And if you like Killer 7, get Flower Sun and Rain on the DS. It's also by Suda51 and has an amazing story (though it's the sequel to a game that was never localized for north america, this one canbe understood independently for the most part).

 

[Cogwheel]

Planescape: Torment.

Also Witcher 1/2, The Spirit Engine, Devil Survivor, Sands of Time, Homeworld, and Deus Ex. (Off the top of my head - I'm sure there are some excellent ones I'm forgetting.

EDIT: And of course there are plenty of games I liked the story of, but these games I felt went above and beyond in terms of exploring either the story as a whole or some aspect of the story.

Haven't played most of those, and I honestly found Deus Ex's story incredibly silly, almost in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.

That said, I'm with you on Spirit Engine 2, as well as Devil Survivor. Both fantastic stories.

Arcanum's story is good but at the same time amazing. I mean, the story is just good but considering how nonlinear and huge the game is at the same time it is amazing story wise.

That, and...

Well, I didn't see some parts of it coming, put it that way.

Spoiler: Seriously, spoilers

Oh, hi Nasrudin. Nice to see you're alive and well.

 

[kingcom]

Baldur's Gate as a series and Planescape Torment come to mind. Deus Ex aswell, not sure how you found it incredibly silly to be honest but whatever.

 

[jacobythehedgehog]

Heavy Rain for me probably had the most engaging story ever. Final Fantasies are also very good to. And from what I have played from the Witcher 2 the story line is very good. And Hunted: The Demon's Forge had a great story and great narritive. And a twisted ending

 

[thenamelessloser]

Planescape: Torment.

Also Witcher 1/2, The Spirit Engine, Devil Survivor, Sands of Time, Homeworld, and Deus Ex. (Off the top of my head - I'm sure there are some excellent ones I'm forgetting.

EDIT: And of course there are plenty of games I liked the story of, but these games I felt went above and beyond in terms of exploring either the story as a whole or some aspect of the story.

Haven't played most of those, and I honestly found Deus Ex's story incredibly silly, almost in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.

That said, I'm with you on Spirit Engine 2, as well as Devil Survivor. Both fantastic stories.

Arcanum's story is good but at the same time amazing. I mean, the story is just good but considering how nonlinear and huge the game is at the same time it is amazing story wise.

That, and...

Well, I didn't see some parts of it coming, put it that way.

Spoiler: Seriously, spoilers

Oh, hi Nasrudin. Nice to see you're alive and well.

Yes,

Spoiler

elven Jesus still being alive pretty damn kick ass. My favorite aspect of Arcanum's story though was the fact that when Virgil died in a story based event but you could actually resurrect him with a regular resurrection spell afterwards. This even has an effect on the dialogue with the boss of the game!) This was a common complaint in video games at least as far back as when Aeris died in FF7 and you couldn't use a phoenix down.

Video games stories I think are best when the game designers/writers play with our expectations and do things unexpected especially if the way the story is told works better with an interactive medium than another kind.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Haven't played most of those, and I honestly found Deus Ex's story incredibly silly, almost in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.

That said, I'm with you on Spirit Engine 2, as well as Devil Survivor. Both fantastic stories.

Oh yeah, Deus Ex is incredibly silly, no arguments there. I mean, you've got like every conspiracy theory ever being true at the same time. But I just like how it pulls you into its paranoid-schizophrenic conspiracy-filled world (or at least, it did for me) and gets you to enjoy the story even while you're laughing at how absurd and over-the-top it is. Like a good episode of X-Files or something.

Haha and those last two are so underrated as RPGs! People don't know what they're missing

 

[thenamelessloser]

Haven't played most of those, and I honestly found Deus Ex's story incredibly silly, almost in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.

That said, I'm with you on Spirit Engine 2, as well as Devil Survivor. Both fantastic stories.

Oh yeah, Deus Ex is incredibly silly, no arguments there. I mean, you've got like every conspiracy theory ever being true at the same time. But I just like how it pulls you into its paranoid-schizophrenic conspiracy-filled world (or at least, it did for me) and gets you to enjoy the story even while you're laughing at how absurd and over-the-top it is. Like a good episode of X-Files or something.

Haha and those last two are completely underrated among most RPG fans.

Actually, what is scary is that Deus Ex actually did predict the future with the fact there are NO twin towers (the game was made in like 1999 I think) so who knows how many other crazy things in that game are true. >_>