What games that you have played have genuinely great stories?

[GiantRaven]

Mass Effect can be thought of to have a great story? That must have passed me by somewhere. The setting and character interactions are awesome but the main storyline is dull as ditchwater. Even Dragon AGE 2 (to use a 'contraversial' example, although I think it's pretty damn good) had a more interesting and impact up main story than Mass Effect.

 

[floppylobster]

These are games with stories that have 'heart', and that to me makes them good -

Panzer Dragoon Saga
Lock's Quest
Chronotrigger
Shadow of the Colossus
Ico
Another World (Out of this World)
Zelda: Majora's Mask
Zelda: Wind Waker

 

[Dfskelleton]

Every Silent Hill game up to #4 had an excellent story, especially the 2nd one.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Planescape: Torment, Psychonauts, Prince of Persia: SoT, Spirit Engine 2, Witcher 1+2, Devil Survivor, Super Metroid (for sheer minimalism), and Link's Awakening (this one could just be nostalgia goggles haha).

There are also games that I think have good writing and good story elements but are kind of lacking in the bigger picture story, notably the Mass Effect series and Dragon Age: Origins. And Alpha Centauri doesn't really have a story, but has an awesome backstory.

 

[StBishop]

Love the name OP:

OT:
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.
Dragon Age
Mass Effect (can't speak for 2 as I've not played it)
Icewind Dale 1 & 2
Saints Row 2
Army Ranger Plot arc in CoD: MW (was plesantly surprised by it actually)
Army of Two games (This is really quite subjective, and it may be characters I liked and playing with my girlfriend more than the story)
Bioshock (what I've played of it)
Dynasty Warriors series (but it's not presented well in the game, the history it's based on is actually worth looking in to).
Final Fantasy Games (again, subjective, but I like them)

 

[Jakub324]

Gears of War 2, Modern Warfare games (both) Black Ops, to a certain extent.

 

[Cuppa Tetleys]

These are games with stories that have 'heart', and that to me makes them good -

Panzer Dragoon Saga
Lock's Quest
Chronotrigger
Shadow of the Colossus
Ico
Another World (Out of this World)
Zelda: Majora's Mask
Zelda: Wind Waker

Aha! Nice to see Ico in there, thank you. I have a bit of a problem with the stories of Nintendo's main franchises in terms of story - there's just something to formulaic about each game for the stories to ever seem anything but adaptations of the original. Freaking love the games though.

 

[Hugga_Bear]

Bioshock
Ripping Atlas Shrugged to shreds, the idea that even with the best and brightest minds humanity would still find a way to shaft itself. Everything was balanced in my view, from the rush of greed, the little sisters transformation, the soulless Big Daddies, the deranged splicers; weeping for their lost lives. Just. Amazing.

CoD4
Yahtzee nailed it for me, the marines grunting their way into battle whooping and laughing and playing the hero and then ultimately dying for it (literally, the helicopter may have escaped if you'd kept going and not stopped to save the girl). The SAS all stealth and slick behaviour but downright psychos, happily killing innocents and torturing others. The ending scene might have been a bit of a cheap shot but the emotional impact it had spells out just how good the characters were. So. Much. Anger. When Gaz...'cry'

Dragon Age: Origins.
OK so parts of it didn't sell and I felt there was too much lore being bitten off to swallow easily, especially with the whole Old Gods thing. I'd have liked to have been impacted more by what is essentially a corrupted God. Nonetheless the characters were involving, difficult in an open story, they were fleshed out and strong and I liked that. The plot itself was pretty solid though I'd have liked more on why Grey Wardens are so super awesome (excepting the lack of Blight issues).
As a whole, really enjoyable game.


OBVIOUS CARD PLAYED:
FFVII.
Yeah, well, I like it. In media res works here, you're thrust into the story of a guy who is a true tabula rasa at first, you got nothing. Then slowly everything pieces together but it all feels off, everything is slightly...broken. The moment you reach Nibelheim is brilliant, the eerie feelings...is it me or has something happened to the town? Meanwhile it hosts one of my favourite villains, full blown power hungry narcissistic Sephiroth and the dark power of ShinRa.
My only major upset was the lack of ShinRa development, they could have continued to be badass enemies right up to the wire, offsetting the free falling psychopathic Sephiroth with their calculated evil. Still, all time favourite.

 

[Dash-X]

Way of the Samurai 2.

While gameplay-wise it was a step backwards from WotS1 (in that it only ran at 30FPS, completely did away with a brilliant mechanic (Awase) and replaced it with a jokingly simple to use one (Instant Kill)), its story was quite interesting and deep, I found. The reason for this is because there are so many layers to the overall plot that you can't really understand the motivations of everyone involved with just one playthrough.

There are some characters that can only truly be understood once you've had them as both an enemy and an ally (Kyojiro, I'm looking at you...).

And if you played the game without a guide (like me), it makes getting the perfect ending all the more rewarding because you have to figure out who to associate with, who to fight, who to help and who to avoid before the game's conclusion. And, to do that, you have to take information gleaned from all of the other ending's paths and apply process-of-elimination to try to figure out the best course of action.

Unfortunately, with WotS3, they fucked up royal. Though Awase made a return and Insta-Kill was rightly made more difficult, none of the characters is especially memorable, and after beating the game numerous times, I STILL don't know what the hell was going on aside from the big-picture, ultra-simplified account of events.

It seems like WotS is gonna have a bit of a Star Trek movie thing (judging by the trailers for WotS4) in that the even ones will have decent story and the odd ones will have better gameplay/combat. Though, it may have been the other way around with Star Trek - I never liked it enough to pay more than cursory attention.

 

[StBishop]

Bioshock
Chrono Trigger
Mass Effect (all of them)

Basically that with some others:

System Shock 2
TWEWY
Deus Ex
Some Tales of [insert name here] games

I was just saying today that I want a game for the DS with a better story. Thanks.

 

[Cuppa Tetleys]

Planescape: Torment, Psychonauts, Prince of Persia: SoT, Spirit Engine 2, Witcher 1+2, Devil Survivor, Super Metroid (for sheer minimalism), and Link's Awakening (this one could just be nostalgia goggles haha).

There are also games that I think have good writing and good story elements but are kind of lacking in the bigger picture story, notably the Mass Effect series and Dragon Age: Origins. And Alpha Centauri doesn't really have a story, but has an awesome backstory.

YES! That was bugging me, Super Metroid, what an epic game!! Do you get chills from the opening title music, with the baby metroid in its container surrounded by collapsed scientists? Epic game, love it. Actually, you've reminded me that Okami has a pretty good story...perhaps not as noteworthy as the others but I love the visual style.

 

[JasonKaotic]

That I've played:
Final Fantasy VII (apart from the rushed ending), VIII and IX - if you can get used to them being middle-res. I personally like it that way,
Warcraft (the story/stories/lore of the entire franchise, not just individual games)
BioShock
Alan Wake
Mass Effect 1 & 2
Lost Odyssey seems like it's going to have a good story, but the game's too goddamn hard for me to get far enough to find out. No story is worth that amount of frustration.
All of Assassin's Creed
Can't think of anything else at the moment.

 

[StBishop]

There's a massive lack of The Longest Journey and Planescape: Torment in this thread.

I'd also say Arcanum, I'm not sure I'd call it "great", but its definitely weird and there isn't much else like it in terms of theme and plot. So yeah, I'll go with that too.

Plus there's plenty of other examples that are already listed, I won't go over them again.

edit:

PERSONA FUCKING 3 I cried 3 times playing that game, and I almost never cry, NEVER.

Amen brotha'. Manly tears were shed :'(

About 4 or 5 hours of meticulous gameplay lost due to forgetting to save. Haven't booted it up since.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

Zelda: Majora's Mask

This, this, this, this!

I have [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.226212.7718808] already discussed [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.257801-Majoras-mask-one-of-the-best-and-creepiest-games-of-the-decade#9693835] this subject [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.247343-Majoras-Mask?page=3#9087568] extensively before. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.240120-Creepiest-Scariest-Video-Game-Character-Ever#8655918]

Anyways, I would like to add the Halo series.

The escapist even made an article about it:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_312/8981-A-Bigger-Universe

 

[Prince Regent]

Beyond good and evil, KotOR and Fable also had a decent story.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Planescape: Torment, Psychonauts, Prince of Persia: SoT, Spirit Engine 2, Witcher 1+2, Devil Survivor, Super Metroid (for sheer minimalism), and Link's Awakening (this one could just be nostalgia goggles haha).

There are also games that I think have good writing and good story elements but are kind of lacking in the bigger picture story, notably the Mass Effect series and Dragon Age: Origins. And Alpha Centauri doesn't really have a story, but has an awesome backstory.

YES! That was bugging me, Super Metroid, what an epic game!! Do you get chills from the opening title music, with the baby metroid in its container surrounded by collapsed scientists? Epic game, love it. Actually, you've reminded me that Okami has a pretty good story...perhaps not as noteworthy as the others but I love the visual style.

Haha seriously. I played that game earlier last year and had my mind blown by how atmospheric it was and the brilliant integration of atmosphere and gameplay into storytelling.

 

[maninahat]

Far Cry 2. As an interactive version of Heart of Darkness, it is fairly successful. Obviously the tedious gameplay let it down, but storywise, I really got a sense of being an interloper in a crazy world. Two factions fight a never-ending war of attrition with little reason or method to their madness. Everything you do just makes the situation more dire. The literary associations to Conrad's novel were very clear throughout. My only disappointment was the ending (where the game straight up tells you it is based on Heart of Darkness), in which the ending didn't mesh with everything you had done previously. Other than that, very interesting. Plus for a bit of meta-fiction, one of the characters made a blog about arms dealing [http://www.reubenblog.typepad.com/]

Another candidate is Mafia II. Very gritty, very cynical, and ultimately very downbeat. Some people found the ending too quick, which is true, but it still hammered home the message that crime ultimately doesn't pay. My favourite part is where you first enter prison. The scene resembles the Shawshank Redemption, except that this is far more unpleasant an experience. The scene feels very claustrophobic as angry inmates of all (segregated) races scream at you on all sides. Very effective.

 

[kalakashi]

Why is everyone saying Shadow of the Colossus? It doesn't have a story, it just has a few events towards the end without explanation. Don't get me wrong, one of the most fantastic games I have ever played and I'm constantly recommending it, but there is no story.