Games with good story.

[s0denone]

SNES and ps1/2 era JRPGs. xenogears, grandia, ff6, suikoden (except 4), earthbound, etc.

DnD based RPGs (BG, icewind dale, NWN)

dragon agerigins. makes me sad what happened to the sequels.

witcher 2 and 3. first one is meh.

kotor 1 and 2.

I'm quite baffled you can say DA:O had a good story. That was an incredibly generic and formulaic grind through classic fantasy cliches.

Just like the stories in Icewind Dale and ToEE were kinda shitty and uninteresting.

None of those games are bad, but they are certainly not paragons of storytelling either.

 

[s0denone]

*shrugs*

I found going through all the codex and lore entries and the whole darkspawn mystery to be very engaging when it came to how the game was playing out.

icewind dale is indeed the weakest of the DnD games I played, but it is still leagues above most other games out.

Sure I can see how the depth of Dragon Age: Origins was a welcome addition amongst the myriad of other, more shallow, RPGS. But the actual story and plot of DA:O was laughably bad. It had some awesome characters in it, some great side-quests, but the overarching theme of "You are the last hope of the world and you must go kill the big bad guys, the baddest of which is a dragon, though we will call it an archdemon" is so incredibly bland and uninteresting that the game stands as a marvel, honestly, being carried by literally everything other than its plot.

Dragon Age 2 had a much, much more interesting rise-to-power theme. Too bad the game was fucking awful.

 

[Dalisclock]

Chrono Trigger/Cross

Trigger I totally agree on. Cross though? The story starts spiraling out of control after the dead sea and the game never gets it under control again.

It's really a shame too, because I admire that they tried to follow up CT with something different and unfortunately it kind of collapsed in on itself like a Time Crash.

And then there's that whole thing about the Dwarves who are burning down forests in their steampunk tanks, but the Humans(aka You) who get blamed for it.

 

[Hades]

I never really believed games as a whole tended to have bad stories. Now I won't deny my standards aren't the highest but its also caused by the fact that I think I rate stories differently then others do.

When deciding what's a good story I don't look at the twist and turns, how original it is and not even at the dialogue or pacing all that much. Whether a story is good enough to me is decided by one simple question ''Do I give a toss about these people and their plight''

And with video games the answer to that has been more often a resounding ''yes!'' then with books or movies.

I will say that a lot of triple A games have stories that bore me because I keep seeing the same bearded white men looking for revenge or acting cynical.

 

[Silence]

Play Planescape Torment

Get desperate because no other game does live up to the standards.

Witcher 3 ist not that good in overall story, but the individual quests are leagues above everything as well.

Legacy of Kain has interesting story, but the games have not aged well, at all. If any, play Defiance. Though then you could miss lots of the plot.

Oh, and
To the Moon.

 

[Synigma]

Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII and, IX are my favorites when it comes to plot. VI and IX are tied in first for me though since VI is the only one where the main bad guy utterly conquered the planet and IX was just stuffed with amazing character moments. I also really like the story in Bravely Default but it's so similar to a Final Fantasy I feel like that's just another notch in the Final Fantasy category.

FFVI for best character development definitely. It's got a whole host of characters and they all go through their own separate arcs... they really hit you in the feels with a few of them and with only 8-bit sprite graphics.

I don't think I can agree with XI though, something about that game rubbed me the wrong way. Some of the characters were great, but others fell flat for me, and the way the villain discovered limit breaks felt so meta.

When it comes to FFIX, I thought Eiko and Amarant were a bit weak...more Amarant than anybody else as he was just simply there because...well he knocked into Zidane once I guess. Quina was a bit of an oddity too but I found that to make her a bit more endearing.

I wanted to like FFIX, especially after VIII's bland characters, but it was just a little over the edge. I think they were trying too hard to make every character unique and interesting that they went overboard and made them too strange. I liked them... but I couldn't relate to any of them so I never got invested. The only one I didn't like was Steiner, he was just obnoxious (seriously, why couldn't we have just gotten Beatrix)

 

[BestAdcEUW]

The games that marked me were GTA Vice City, Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption and Last of Us.Lately I haven't had time to play campaign mode on console or PC but the last game I liked the story is Silent Age [http://ola.mobi/the-silent-age/]! The game story is about time travelling through time between the 70's and present. You should take a look!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Okami
Silent Hill 2
The Last of Us
Beyond Good & Evil
Shadow of the Colossus
Prince of Persia: Sands of time
BioShock Infinite (and BioShock)

They don't have good stories for the same reasons, but they're all superb nonetheless.

 

[Gengisgame]

Dark Souls has an incredible narrative, but it's not really told to you directly. You have to put all the pieces together, like a detective at a crime scene. When you do, though, a very large, complex tapestry begins to form, and that's when you realize you're in the presence of something truly great.

The meat and potatoes of Dark Souls is it's gameplay and atmosphere, it has a very minimalist way of telling the story that goes well with it's design but it would never be a game I recommend for it's story.

1.Last of US
2.the Uncharted games
3.Witcher series
4.I'm guessing those Telltale games have good stories considering they are games based around story and seem to be well thought of
5. Bioshock
6. Deus Ex
7. GTA 5

If you like anime then you will most likely enjoy the stories of the more well received JRPG's

 

[Gengisgame]

Dark Souls has an incredible narrative, but it's not really told to you directly. You have to put all the pieces together, like a detective at a crime scene. When you do, though, a very large, complex tapestry begins to form, and that's when you realize you're in the presence of something truly great.

The meat and potatoes of Dark Souls is it's gameplay and atmosphere, it has a very minimalist way of telling the story that goes well with it's design but it would never be a game I recommend for it's story.

1.Last of US
2.the Uncharted games
3.Witcher series
4.I'm guessing those Telltale games have good stories considering they are games based around story and seem to be well thought of
5. Bioshock
6. Deus Ex
7. GTA 5

If you like anime then you will most likely enjoy the stories of the more well received JRPG's

 

[JimB]

My standards for what constitutes a good story in a video game are currently evolving, but so far, the best story in video games I can think of off the top of my head is the one in Shovel Knight. The plot is as simple as it gets (knight wants to beat up bad guy for killing his girlfriend), and that story is revealed in dialogue, but the reason why Shield Knight was Shovel Knight's girlfriend is revealed without a single word spoken, through pure gameplay. As someone who's getting really heartily sick of the interactive medium of video games aping passive forms of storytelling, I think how Shovel Knight shows the tragedy of Shovel Knight's loss and the motivation behind his quest is fucking brilliant, and it's a model the rest of the game industry needs to adapt.

 

[Jute88]

Banner Saga. Probably not the BEST game when it comes to story, but it was the first to come to my mind. It's the end of the world, but instead of trying to save the world, you try to run as far as possible from it. I really adored the visual style of it, reminding me of Ralph Bakshi's LotR. I just hope the story stays interesting in Banner Saga 2.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Bioshock has the best plot of any FPS.

3rd Person...maybe Silent Hill 3? Resident Evil 4 was pretty excellent, but that might in-spite of the story. Then again without squeaking Napoleon and ballistics it just wouldn't have been the same.

The Dawn of War series always had pretty engaging plots, in that specific bolter+heretic face = good times way.

 

[Fox12]

Dark Souls has an incredible narrative, but it's not really told to you directly. You have to put all the pieces together, like a detective at a crime scene. When you do, though, a very large, complex tapestry begins to form, and that's when you realize you're in the presence of something truly great.

The meat and potatoes of Dark Souls is it's gameplay and atmosphere, it has a very minimalist way of telling the story that goes well with it's design but it would never be a game I recommend for it's story.

I would have to completely disagree. I would argue that Dark Souls probably has the second best story in all of gaming, behind Silent Hill 2. It's just so innovative, and so new, that it takes a while to sink in. You actually have to work to figure things out. But minimalist storytelling is a mark of a great storyteller, not a bad one.

There's a lot going on thematically. The game covers the topics of nihilism, existentialism, classical tragedy, entropy, religion, the search for truth, and, of course, life and death. Do you think that it's a coincidence that Seath the Scaless is trying desperately to discover immortality, while the undead are trying desperately to get rid of their immortality? Or that you discover that the world is effectively meaningless, and coming to an end, and that any undead that loses his purpose in life becomes a hollow? This is about existentialism, and mans search for meaning in a meaningless universe. There is no meaning in life, so man is responsible for finding his own meaning. The writer is trying to say something through his work.

Dark Souls is when games went to college. It won't spell things out for you, but it has something it wants to say. If The Witcher is the gaming equivalent of The Hunger Games, then Dark Souls is Pride and Prejudice. If Uncharted is the equivalent of Iron Man, then Dark Souls is 2001 A Space Odyssey. If GTA is Kiss, then Dark Souls is Pink Floyd. Not only would I recommend Dark Souls as a game with a great story, I would say it's a game that you need to play if you care about storytelling in games. It raised the bar both mechanically, and in terms of narrative. The only reason not everyone's realized that is because it's also something totally different then what we've seen before.

 

[Gengisgame]

Dark Souls has an incredible narrative, but it's not really told to you directly. You have to put all the pieces together, like a detective at a crime scene. When you do, though, a very large, complex tapestry begins to form, and that's when you realize you're in the presence of something truly great.

The meat and potatoes of Dark Souls is it's gameplay and atmosphere, it has a very minimalist way of telling the story that goes well with it's design but it would never be a game I recommend for it's story.

I would have to completely disagree. I would argue that Dark Souls probably has the second best story in all of gaming, behind Silent Hill 2. It's just so innovative, and so new, that it takes a while to sink in. You actually have to work to figure things out. But minimalist storytelling is a mark of a great storyteller, not a bad one.

There's a lot going on thematically. The game covers the topics of nihilism, existentialism, classical tragedy, entropy, religion, the search for truth, and, of course, life and death. Do you think that it's a coincidence that Seath the Scaless is trying desperately to discover immortality, while the undead are trying desperately to get rid of their immortality? Or that you discover that the world is effectively meaningless, and coming to an end, and that any undead that loses his purpose in life becomes a hollow? This is about existentialism, and mans search for meaning in a meaningless universe. There is no meaning in life, so man is responsible for finding his own meaning. The writer is trying to say something through his work.

Dark Souls is when games went to college. It won't spell things out for you, but it has something it wants to say. If The Witcher is the gaming equivalent of The Hunger Games, then Dark Souls is Pride and Prejudice. If Uncharted is the equivalent of Iron Man, then Dark Souls is 2001 A Space Odyssey. If GTA is Kiss, then Dark Souls is Pink Floyd. Not only would I recommend Dark Souls as a game with a great story, I would say it's a game that you need to play if you care about storytelling in games. It raised the bar both mechanically, and in terms of narrative. The only reason not everyone's realized that is because it's also something totally different then what we've seen before.

Disagree if you want but it's still something you should not recommend when someone asks for a game with a good story, your not really giving them what would satisfy most, they may enjoy it for that story but where trying to hit averages here and I would say that's terribly unlikely.

You describe it both as something nobody has seen before and something others simply don't see, that last part makes it hard not to see this as pretentious.

Minimalist story telling is good for what it is but it's not for everyone and this is far from the first or last game to do this exact same thing, how much you get out of it depends on how much you read into it and like so many things you make so much up of it up in your own head so there is a good chance that the next guy wont be anywhere near as impressed.

As it's it's not what was asked for, there is no development of characters or story progression, Dark Souls has almost no story content.

 

[JackTheBlack]

not really epic story but funny "Tiny and big grandpa leftover", funny and unique game

 

[Fox12]

snipped for your convenience!

It's not something I just see, and it's certainly not something I read too much into. It's something that anyone can figure out, if they pay attention. It's certainly not pretentious, and neither am I. OP asked for a game with a good story, and Dark Souls is one of the best there is.

Judging by your grammar I can see that you don't really comprehend writing and storytelling, and that makes you upset, but it's really not a reason to quote me and throw a tantrum. Some people need things spelled out for them. For the OP I recommend Dark Souls. For you I would recommend Lego Star Wars.