Story over gameplay, what was the last game that you were addicted to because of its story/writing?

Recommended Videos

TheeSpongeman

New member
May 27, 2008
21
0
0
Persona 4. I got tired of the grinding, but the boss battles were good. Only reason I was able to grit my teeth and get through the grind was to find out what happened to the characters! Don't get me wrong, the gameplay was good, but I found myself trying to rush it to get to the story!
 

Krakyn

New member
Mar 3, 2009
789
0
0
Probably Metal Gear Solid. It's been awhile since I've seen a really good story in my games.
 

animefreak52

New member
Jun 22, 2009
6
0
0
persona 3. every thing about hte game was freaking awesome. the controls personas and especially the story. i was hooked on the game for a month. the ending was kinda dissapointing, i mean what happened? did he die, or what. other than that it was a great game.
ps. for those who played persona 4, what was the story/ i still need to play it.
 

Monocle Man

New member
Apr 14, 2009
631
0
0
Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King. A pity it ended.
A pity indeed, because it was a happy ending. The happiest kind of happy ending. Other than that, it was awesome.

Then there's also the extremely awesome Okami.

It's been a few years since I found a game who's story was this awesome. Sure they both had the "Lord of Darkness will destroy us all"-story but it worked.
And the protagonists were quite the cheerful bunch of people.
"NOOOOOO! He's dead! WHY!? ... Oh well, no point in crying over spilt milk. Let's move on, shall we?"
 

Jumplion

New member
Mar 10, 2008
7,873
0
0
StevieWonderMk2 said:
Jumplion said:
Ay yay yaiy, that's alot o' Mass Effects...

Me, personally, was MGS4. I don't care what anyone else says, I absolutely loved the story to MGS4. To further emphasize the point, I cried at the end of the game.

Manly tears of course.
I feel your pain, playing MGS for the story is very hard to do. I can't stand the gameplay, the controls are bad, the stealth is horrible, I just can't replay those games.

But conversely: The story is bollocks. Whilst playing the game the story stands up fairly well, it's well presented and monumentally gripping. But as soon as you step away from the controller and think...the whole thing falls apart. Spectacularly. And don't get me started on the MGS4 ending. Screw you Kojima. Is a little emotional payoff too much to ask for?
Erm, I quite like the gameplay MGS provides, I think it does stealth very well and the controls are fine.

Honestly, I think people are way to harsh on MGSs storyline, we've seen crazier things, seriously. Is a clone trying to kill his brother clone with a bunch of nanomachines in his body really that much more crazy than a future Ninja working with the CIA/FBI trying to destroy a bunch of demons?
 

Gotham Soul

New member
Aug 12, 2008
809
0
0
Anything by Bioware. I know lots of people didn't like KotOR 2 but it's the first RPG I actually played through a second time to see all the content. Mass Effect was after that.

Neverwinter Nights, too. Both MotB and Original campaign. Granted, they were by Atari and Obsidian but I still liked it a lot.

Really, I'm a huge whore for Bioware. And just recently I heard they were developing a fantasy RPG by the name of Dragon Age: Origins. It looks quite epic.
 

Bulletinmybrain

New member
Jun 22, 2008
3,277
0
0
Martymer said:
What's with all the Mass Effect praising? I get that people have different taste, but exactly what was it that made the story and the characters of ME interesting? I found the characters boring and cliched, and the story was pretty much a "textbook" RPG story. Let's look at it...

PC discovers Mysterious Ancient Threat(TM), learns that Purely Evil Bad Guy(TM) wants to use this to conquer the world (or galaxy in this case), goes after Bad Guy, learning more about the Ancient Threat every time (s-)he clears a dungeon (planet) of Bad Guys' Mindless Servants (TM) (because, as we all know, Bad Guys love leaving clues in heavily populated dungeons). Along the way the PC will become romantically involved with one of his/her companions, because, let's face it, the romance plot is so easy that you can't possibly fail. PC eventually destroys both the Bad Guy and the Ancient Threat just as the world is about to come to an end.

Now, I'm not saying that the story in ME is bad, but it's nothing new. It's one of the standard plots, just like "Destroy the One... eh... Bracelet", or "Collect all the parts of this thing that was broken into pieces long ago". I mean, after the first planet, you know pretty much how the story is going to play out, because it's been done so many times before.

The last game with better story than gameplay I played was Baldur's Gate. When I played the original, I had a pretty poor understanding of the AD&D rules, so didn't really enjoy the gameplay that much. The story kept me interested all the way through though.
I pointed out that most of the characters cliche themselves, Ashley was a xenophobic ass, Kaiden channeled "carth" a little to much in my opinion, garrus reminds me of the mechanic guy from KOTOR2 with him talking about how the ends justify the means, Canderous, I mean wrex was a trenchcoater, and liara was a dumb as rocks scholar that was obviously put in to advance the story for you and to be a love interest. Tali.. Was actually good.. (Which is why I also rage that one of the best characters you can't even sex up.. But no, the blue chick totally wants to..Bow Chicka Bow Wow?
 

sokka14

New member
Mar 4, 2009
604
0
0
i can honestly say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the only game i was pulled through by the story/writing, was psychonauts. let's be serious, the gameplay was a bit stilted and uneasy, but the writing and the imagination that went into the game was exceptional.

also POP sands of time had a fucking good story, the ending is one of my favourites.
 

THEMILKMAN

New member
Jun 16, 2009
1,370
0
0
Has anyone else played Rule of Rose? It plays kind of like Silent Hill but with crappy but realistic combat and item hunting to advance the story but the story is just so damn good that I can ignore the mediocre gameplay just to see what happens next.

Also Hotel Dusk for the DS had a damn good story, it's like a mystery book in a video game format!
 

SendMeNoodz84

New member
Jun 11, 2009
560
0
0
Definitely Mass Effect. The second one is going to be amazing.
Mad Maniac with axe-firing chainsaw said:
NoMoreSanity said:
Mass Effect, because the characters were actually likeable. (Except Kaiden, the fucker)
Kaiden? He's the one who most people I've heard talking seemed to find likeable between the two humans. I'm inclined to agree with them on this one. Most people see Ashley as the unlikeable one. What did poor old Kaiden do?
I only keep Asley alive so I can fill my virtual sexual desires. It's sad I know.
 

TotallyFake

New member
Jun 14, 2009
401
0
0
Jumplion said:
StevieWonderMk2 said:
Jumplion said:
Ay yay yaiy, that's alot o' Mass Effects...

Me, personally, was MGS4. I don't care what anyone else says, I absolutely loved the story to MGS4. To further emphasize the point, I cried at the end of the game.

Manly tears of course.
I feel your pain, playing MGS for the story is very hard to do. I can't stand the gameplay, the controls are bad, the stealth is horrible, I just can't replay those games.

But conversely: The story is bollocks. Whilst playing the game the story stands up fairly well, it's well presented and monumentally gripping. But as soon as you step away from the controller and think...the whole thing falls apart. Spectacularly. And don't get me started on the MGS4 ending. Screw you Kojima. Is a little emotional payoff too much to ask for?
Erm, I quite like the gameplay MGS provides, I think it does stealth very well and the controls are fine.

Honestly, I think people are way to harsh on MGSs storyline, we've seen crazier things, seriously. Is a clone trying to kill his brother clone with a bunch of nanomachines in his body really that much more crazy than a future Ninja working with the CIA/FBI trying to destroy a bunch of demons?
There's nothing wrong with MGS being crazy, I love the outlandish plots, and at the time, it's believable. It's just done badly. Taking this inside spoilers now, just to be safe:
So the ending of MGS2 was all wrong? The patriots aren't a sentient whitehouse/deceased politicians? Wow, nice way to resolve that mystery, one line saying the info was wrong. And why was there no mention of every "nation, state and dot com" having their own metal gear?
Then there's the corpse of Big Boss. Why does their even need to be a fake body made from Solidus? It's pointless, just another twist Kojima throws in for laughs. And what side was ocelot on? The one constant throughout the series is that he works for the Patriots. But then he turns on them, gets possesed by liquids arm, then removes the arm and still PRETENDS to be possesed? It's a simple casae of being able to believe the impossible but not the improbable. (Cyclops laser blasting a door = OK. Cyclops randomly guessing the code = Stupid) Up until the credits Ocelot was a fantastic villain, but Big Bosses reveal completely destroys any of his previous motivations.

But that all pales when it comes to Raiden. He goes through hell in MGS4,sees his life and body ripped to pieces, makes no less than 4 heroic sacrifices and then magically everything is back to normal? Ditto Snake's suicide. Kojima builds up to an amazingly bittersweet ending, and then tears it away from us at the very last second with a double asspull. When you have thousands of fans investing dozens of hours in your story, you cannot just turn round and spit in their faces like that. It's worse than a "rock falls, everybody dies" in terms of how it disregards everything that has gone before.

tl;dr Kojima builds to an amazing ending, and then swerves at the last second just to dick with us.
 

Demon Messiah

New member
Jun 22, 2009
8
0
0
Bulletinmybrain said:
Martymer said:
What's with all the Mass Effect praising? I get that people have different taste, but exactly what was it that made the story and the characters of ME interesting? I found the characters boring and cliched, and the story was pretty much a "textbook" RPG story. Let's look at it...

PC discovers Mysterious Ancient Threat(TM), learns that Purely Evil Bad Guy(TM) wants to use this to conquer the world (or galaxy in this case), goes after Bad Guy, learning more about the Ancient Threat every time (s-)he clears a dungeon (planet) of Bad Guys' Mindless Servants (TM) (because, as we all know, Bad Guys love leaving clues in heavily populated dungeons). Along the way the PC will become romantically involved with one of his/her companions, because, let's face it, the romance plot is so easy that you can't possibly fail. PC eventually destroys both the Bad Guy and the Ancient Threat just as the world is about to come to an end.

Now, I'm not saying that the story in ME is bad, but it's nothing new. It's one of the standard plots, just like "Destroy the One... eh... Bracelet", or "Collect all the parts of this thing that was broken into pieces long ago". I mean, after the first planet, you know pretty much how the story is going to play out, because it's been done so many times before.

The last game with better story than gameplay I played was Baldur's Gate. When I played the original, I had a pretty poor understanding of the AD&D rules, so didn't really enjoy the gameplay that much. The story kept me interested all the way through though.
I pointed out that most of the characters cliche themselves, Ashley was a xenophobic ass, Kaiden channeled "carth" a little to much in my opinion, garrus reminds me of the mechanic guy from KOTOR2 with him talking about how the ends justify the means, Canderous, I mean wrex was a trenchcoater, and liara was a dumb as rocks scholar that was obviously put in to advance the story for you and to be a love interest. Tali.. Was actually good.. (Which is why I also rage that one of the best characters you can't even sex up.. But no, the blue chick totally wants to..Bow Chicka Bow Wow?
The main plot might have been cliche, but there was a rich original backstory to explore. World and lore exploring are what a lot of rpgers love, digging into the histories of fictional universes is neat. The way that bioware wielded the cliche of the main story was also new and innovative. I dare ya to name another rpg that uses exactly the same "evil doomsday threat".
The side characters I have to agree weren't the best. They were no HK-47's that's for sure. And I also agree that Tali was the best and most likeable character and got shafted with next to no PC interactions. Wrex came in second and needed more backstory.
 
Mar 9, 2009
893
0
0
Half Life 2 was very powerful for me. I mean I know it's story isn't that great but the dialogue is extremely well written, and the writers are very good at cliff hangers and gripping you to the story.
 

la-le-lu-li-lo

New member
Jun 1, 2009
1,558
0
0
Lissa-QUON said:
la-le-lu-li-lo said:
has anyone other than me ever played shadow of destiny?

and enjoyed it? :cringes: i did.
Hah, I thought I was the only person to play that game.

I didn't enjoy it, persay, more like I was compelled to see exactly what was supposed to be going on.
i think there's like 10 endings, but i kept getting the same two. :[