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Games That Advanced the Art of Storytelling
monikersi writes "In October 2006, the editors of Gamasutra asked its readership of game industry professionals to chime in and vote for which game brought storytelling forward in the biggest way, from any genre (text adventure through action title to RPG or sim and beyond) — there are plenty of picks, and some surprising winners." From the article: "Forcing the user to build the story piecemeal through personal logs and snippets of information throughout the game created a varied experience for each user. This drove the player to fill the holes in the story with the next log and their own assumptions and imagination. I remember playing System Shock 2 years after playing it for the first time and had a markedly different reaction due to changes in my own perspective. Phenomenal."
XYZZY
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Seriously, the bittersweet poignancy of the little guy, always eating but never turning into a lettuce dodger rarely fails to bring a tear to the old eye!
It was the first game to take a platformer and convince you to actually care what happens in the game. I .. I just couldn't let that little guy become meat.. could I?
...I find it a little insulting that they only list Planescape: Torment as a "runner up", while Final Fantasy VII is in the top 3. Torment is easily the best presented story in any game past or present, while Final Fantasy VII did nothing to advance storytelling in the medium in any meaningful way.
I can only think of 3 that fit the bill:
Planescape: Torment
The Longest Journey
Dreamfall
If you haven't played any of those, you are part of the problem.
As for Facade, I have to confess I've never been so moved by a story as when Trip finally opened the door to his flat, my character said 'Hello Trip, you colossal faggot' and he silently slammed the door in my face. Sheer artistry. I'd say this list is very much a mixed bag - half of these seem to be just be the best of their genre, rather than games that actually expanded their genre.
All those games are so new.
What about Zork?
And what about all the Sierra games from the 80's? (King's Quest, Space Quest, et.al.)
For pure storytelling, I still think that was the best in breed for the Final Fantasy's up to and including X-2. X was close though, that was another good story.
Planescape: Torment was great, one of the first games to not have obvious "right" and "wrong" dialogue choices.
Baldur's Gate 2 was another solid choice.
I would have put Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in their as well, but I suppose they went with Jade Empire instead. Now, if only LA had wanted to actually build a game instead of just market for their movies, they could have had Star Wars Galaxies set during the Old Republic era where lots of jedi made some sense...
I do think Baldur's Gate and Planescape could have been higher, but I have consistently told my friends that the Half Life and Deus Ex games felt like reading a great novel or watching a good movie as much as they did playing games. Those are the only two games I find myself going back to repeatedly, apart from Civilization. Sheer, utter brilliance. I only wish there were more games like those two.
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I can't believe they omitted that. The original scared the shit out of me first time through.
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I gotta give this award to Bungie for the Marathon series. It didn't feature fancy cut scenes or voiceovers, but in the Doom era of FPS, having a plot was unheard of. The story was told through a series of terminals where you would communicate with one of several AIs or other people. The plot was central to the gameplay, and was very twisted, so your enemies and friends changed frequently. The level design was also quite a bit more varied and inspired by the story, then say, Doom where the levels are basically just designed around gameplay.
Although modern FPS stories are more cinematic, Marathon did more with less.
I liked Zelda 2 a lot more than most people did, and still enjoy it today. But these people are nuts if they think it motivated storytelling.
I would have put FF-VII above Half Life, but otherwise a pretty good list. One of the commenters nailed it right on the head for FF-VII: When a particular series of tones on a dialed-in phone number immediately cause me to think of a video game half a decade after I last picked it up, that's a helluvva good story.
Unpleasantries.
...but the placement of some of those games is just nuts. Planescape should be much, much higher. It's the best storytelling in an RPG to date.
Panzer Dragoon Saga.
It had some very interesting character interactions and development, and the ending totally floored me the first time.
Syberia and Syberia II should be on that list. A truly moving story.
I can't believe that Chrono Trigger didn't make this list at all. Like Final Fantasy 7, I found myself incredibly endeared to the game's characters. Interspersing the game's locales throughout the past, present, and future meant your actions in one time could drastically affect the world in later times. You felt like your small group of characters were shaping the history of an entire world.
One of the very best selling SNES games, and a blurring of the line between linear and non-linear storytelling.
I really appreciated the way the backstory was presented in Metroid Prime, scanning Space Pirate logs and looking at recent environmental damage to see what happened. All completely and safely ignorable, but everything you scan adds a little touch of detail to the world, and it really makes you appreciate the deliberation put into its development.
...but is it art?
Any such list without Kanon on it isn't worth the...platterspace it's written on.
Another World, aka Out of This World really deserves to be on the list.
You're dropped onto an alien planet. There's absolutely no dialog (except that between aliens which is incomprehensible), but the emotional content is huge.
There's also an updated version that runs fine under XP if you want to experience it for the first time.
I hate them as much as the next guy. But what of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus?
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Half-Life gets my vote.
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
Earthbound for the SNES
The Golden Sun Series for the GBA
The Ninja Gaiden Series for the NES
Both Legend of Zelda games for the N64.
Beneath a Steel Sky for the PC/Amiga
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
But HL2 was pretty decent. Yes, it was an FPS, but as far as a storyline in FPS's go it did a pretty good job of mixing plot with action.
Half-Life 1 and Deus Ex would be my two top choices. I still have Half-Life installed on all my machines just cause I love that story. I am also really fond of Max Payne's story, the nightmare and drug OD sequences are awesome.
Ultima IV, for taking that step away from "hack 'n' slash". It wasn't the first, but it was important. Ultima V had the same virtue they gave Zelda 2- a living world, where people had schedules and interacted. They came out the same year, though, so I'm not inclined to take props away from Zelda. :)
So many of those games especially the so-called 'honorable mentions' are among my all time favourites. I do have a beef with some of the listings however. STARCRAFT the RTS that everyone skips the cutscenes on and the inferior-story-but-first-3D-FF-game FF7 get in the top 5 but Xenogears, possibly the richest and most intricate storyline ever developed for the limited genre that is the console RPG only gets an HR? That's just wrong. Xenogears is the game that completely turned around my opinion of the "level and follow this narrow path like a pig in the slaughterhouse chute" console RPG to realize just how compelling a story could be told, if the writers dare to tell it. The writers of Xenogears told an epic and moving (and controversial) tale of the origins of man and the nature of God that rivalled any DaVinci Code for it's thought-provoking nature, and frankly belongs in a strong #2 position behind Deus Ex, which i agree firmly should be #1. Another game that deserved at least an HR was Neuromancer for it's novel method of interaction using first BBS-style forums and e-mail systems of deepening sophistication until your neural link was upgraded enough for you to enter 'cyberspace' itself and interact in a VR environment with artificial intelligences. Considering it came out on 8-bit C-64 and Atari machines with their inherent limitations made the game even more amazing.
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I'll start from the top and work down. It's true that Deus Ex deserves at least one of the top five, and Half life deserves points also, but Final Fantasy 7? IV and VI did more with less, FFVII was a turning point for long time fans as it seemed that Square started pushing graphics over story (a move that is finally being reversed). Just because a game is graphically impressive didn't make the story telling better, it just made it easier to get away with less. I feel FFVII is one of the Final fantasy that gets over rated by graphics, and this is a sign of it. It was a good game, yet there are other games in the series that did more for story telling, and other games on the list that did more for the art. How about the Tales series that had completely fleshed out characters since the SNES oh right... they don't count because they only recently came to America?
Grim Fandango itself is worthy of being mentioned, but what about interactive fiction in general, we have a couple on the list, but there's a lot missing, Monkey's island (showing us story telling doesn't have to be dry), the Quest series including Quest for Glory (you don't need to tell only one story) Adventure, Zork, there's so many Interactive fiction that I wonder why Sims is mentioned when there's no story (if you want to make up a story, any game is good for that) and IF as a whole is pretty much ignored, though putting AMFV (a mind forever voyaging) on the list is good, I don't think it's the top of the IF list, maybe Bureaucracy or Hitchhikers guide
From the sound of it he also didn't play System shock (my personal favorite) and only played 2. 2 was a good game, System shock was an exceptional game in every way at a time when people were wrapped up in Doom. But at least it got a mention, though I believe it should be in the top 5. Shodan = fear.
On the other hand they didn't act like Halo created a First Person story, and for that I'm thankful. But how about Quake 2, the first FPS that actually had a real story. HL came later and was better, but Quake 2 deserves props.
I have to disagree with their list, and their style of getting a list, random voting doesn't seem to work, especially when it's supposed to be people in the industry, yet one guy's quote is from a college student, and many are Anonymous
Chronotrigger had both a main character unavoidably die, and a divergent story line. In fact when THE main character died, you could choose whether or not to resurrect him. There were many side quests, and about 16 different endings depending on what you did with them.
How does FF7 even get mentioned, when Chronotrigger doesn't?
Under a Killing Moon and Pandora's Box (didn't get to play Overseer); two great games that deserve an honorable mention. It's December 2042 where you, as Tex Murphy, must stop the forces of evil before they destroy mankind and rob you of your next unemployment check, what could be better! Anyone remember that green entity ?
As with all lists, there is always some stuff that is missing, while I am very happy that Dreamfall made it in there I missed. First "The Last Express", which I think was the first (almost) realtime-adventure/game out there. Secondly the classic "Another World", which had an amazing story told with almost no word of dialog: "Good moring professor. I have seen you have driven here in your Ferrari", thats all the dialog you ever get in the whole game. It also was the game that broke virtually every rule of the genre.
Speaking about Jade Empire, I don't really feel that Jade Empire perfected the good/evil stuff, in fact not even close, since it felt far to forced and out of character most of the time. Instead of real dialog choices, you where basically left with something very obvious evil, something very obvious good and some thing neutral, it felt very artificial and unrealistic.
Sorry, but I think this list is bunk. Max Payne should be at the top, period!
I think Myst was the first ever 'storyline' type game that completely sucked me in. No mention of it anywhere...
Real SUV's don't have cupholders
It's 5:42 A.M., do you know where your stack pointer is?
Anyone? Also, Fallout an honerable mention, bah, I should learn never to read these top x lists.
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
I really like to see someone talking about storytelling in video games since I've thought for a long while that it's still horribly lacking. I'm a bit disappointed though, not only because it's one of those "X things that ...", but also because the author doesn't even take time to define what he's talking about, like it's a given. And i feel that sometimes, storytelling is mixed/confused with just story.
Story is about what you say, storytelling is about how you say it. What happens at the end of Fallout is pure story, but the way you live the events in half-life is storytelling. Giving a meaning to what the player do is obviously a good technique, even if it's only about getting your ass out of this crazy lab!
The author could have mentioned ICO, almost without standard narrative process, almost without music, and with only a few phrases pronounced in the whole game, and still, the simple fact of helping this girl, Yorda, and even feeling her through the pad while you hold her hand creates some kind of attachment (i know it did that to me :) that shows toward the end of the game. Man, THAT is something.
I'd say that good storytelling in video game is all about player's involvement in the game, making it want to see what's next, and not just navigate through gameplay mechanics. It's about emotions. Something that i often found lacking in (story based) games i've seen (but that is also true for a lot of movies).
I can only hope that more people will tackle the subject.
Nothing even comes close to Metal gear solid 1 and 2, talk about an immersive film!
I remember buying a ps2 just for the MGS2 demo.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
I have never played Deus Ex, but I have played almost all of the rest of those games to completion...without a doubt Xenogears is the most thought-provoking, intricate, and truly awesome story of all time. I really wish they had given it more than just an honorable mention.
...Majora's Mask? An amazing game, and a genius way of telling a story. It's like Groundhog Day, except you're Bill Murray....with a sword. And transformation. Okay, nevermind.
A wise man once said, "wtf h4x."
I honestly don't understand why Final Fantasy VII is almost universally considered to be better than VI. IMHO the characters in VI were developed far better, the storyline was more in depth and intriguing, and even the music (gasp) was better!
The last game I played that I felt truly immensed in the story was the Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker. It kept me on the story so much that the gameplay was as natural as turning pages of a book. The only other game to effect me like that was Chrono Trigger, of course. The Mega Man series and all its different branchings has kept me quite involved over the years as well.
I always liked the degree of differences in the dialog trees in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Your character's attributes really changed the way people would talk to you and interact with you, game quests and how to complete them. And playing the Nosferatu and moving about in the sewers all the time was like playing a totally different game. I easily played this game 5-6 times, which I never do just to see the different ways the game would react to different characters and scenarios. Sure the story was the same, but it still felt rather different each time.
Thank you for remembering the Phantasy Star series. I praise the PS4 death for the same reasons you do, but the PS2 one hit me more - for console RPG players, this *was* the first big midgame playable chara death. And it's not just a "oh, what a cute, adowwable character" sympathy ploy - it's a horribly unjust death from a moral and ethical standpoint, so it's a double whammy. Not that it doesn't pull on the heartstrings - from the dying character's plea that no "mistake" like them be ever born again to "***** calls ****'s name once again. But his plaintive cry merely echoes and reechoes" - this was a punch to the gut.
I actually remembering calling up Sega as a kid and asking if the death was avoidable. After hearing a reasoned "no" explanation from a game counselor, I decided to call right back up to get a second opinion. Unbeknownst to me, I got got the same guy - and got: "NO! You CAN'T SAVE *****! You CAN'T CHANGE IT! It's LIKE A MOVIE!!!"
I'll also remember the meetings of the Let ******* Live Society for Phantasmagoria - the desperate phantom search for alternate cut scenes in the CD data that had the character surviving.
Sad that so many "newer" games get touted as being so good when there were lots of momentous storyline games 10, 20 years ago. Games like Quest For Glory IV (and various other Sierra Quest games). Hell even new amazing storytelling games like KotoR aren't even mentioned, but SIMS is? What story is there to Sims!? It's just the minutiae of real life turned into a video game! (And it was rather addictive until I realized I could clean up my actual house instead of a virtual one and have a far greater reward) but I'd hardly consider it good for "storytelling".
Obviously you and I didn't play the same game. I've played more than my fair share of RPGs, console & pc, including every main Final Fantasy outside 3 & 11, and am currently playing 12 right now. Final Fantasy is a reason for the RPG cliche list that many people see. I'm sorry, but no Final Fantasy has ever helped evolve the story. And I can't believe people who say they play it for the intricate story. Other games have had better developed stories. The Ultima's (primarily 6+, in which, during 7.5, a major character dies, years before 7 ever came out), Betrayal at Krondor, Fallout, Planescape, just to name a few. How any of them could lose out to Final Fantasy is a disgrace. Heck, even Chrono Trigger makes any Final Fantasy look childish.
Let's recap the story lines of a few of the Final Fantasy's.
1) Princess kidnapped. 4 Fiends which must be destroyed because they are causing damage to the elements. And a being named Chaos who is in the past causing it all. That's it. Anyone who attempts to go into a Wikipedia style entry on the plot should stop right now, and realize a few lines of text at the beginning of the game don't make a story. Heck, I could state the movie Story of Ricky has a plot because the prologue talks about corporations taking over prisons, but I'd just be fooling myself. Anyone who's ever watched it realizes they don't watch it for the plot.
2) An army invades and you join a resistance. You fight the resistance until the last boss, and you win the game.
4) This time, you start out with the empire before you decide to turn traitor. They're after crystals. You then decide to repent your sins and fight against the empire, learning that it's really being controlled by a guy from the moon.
5) A metorite falls to earth, and you're forced into a resistance against the X-Death. Once again, he's after the crystals.
6) Take a guess. Yes, once again, you join a resistance against an empire. They're doing experiments on espers and stealing their power. Kefka betrays the emperor, and changes the world. Keep resisting until you win.
7) This time, we get a unique story. You join a resistance against not an empire, but a corporation! Sephiroth betrays the corporation and decides to destroy the world. Resist against Sephiroth! Sure, you can read the wikipedia article on Final Fantasy 7, but you're going to be reading a story once again by fanboys who includes every little miscillaneous detail short of the hair colour of people and figures someway it can enhance the actual story.
I can go on about the rest of the games, but I think you should see the point. I've always joked that you can play any Japanese RPG with very little knowledge of Japanese. Just know the basic elements from the RPG cliche list, and 99% of the games will make sense. That's no different with Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy didn't sell because of it's intricate and wonderful stories (which don't actually exist). And obviously it didn't sell for the wonderful gameplay in which you get an amazing choice of tactical stratagies of either attacking, using an item, using magic, or summons/etc, which basically are just using magic, but with bigger, better, and longer animations.
It's a game with poor gameplay, a poor story, but ever since 7, it sold well. Why? Because Sony decided to put a ton of money in advertising the game, and advertized smartly by showing video's of the game, which, I will admit. Final Fantasy did help increase the FMV cutscenes between dungeon crawls. But it's the advertising. That's why games which are much better games in gameplay and story, and other factors, are barely known, while many people since the 1997 Final Fantasy advertising blitz, think it's the second coming.
now don't get me wrong. i'm a huge starcraft fan and have probably spent hundreds of hours playing the game (if not thousands). it is most deffinitly one of the most well balanced rts games ever.
but really, was the campaign that much more compelling than any other rts of the period? all the story was, was an excuse to build a base and go blow up your opponent's base. sure there was the occasional non base building mission that seemed to show up in alot of rts games of the period but this certainly wasnt done first or better in starcraft (and to be honest i always hated these missions). As far as the campaign goes (and the campaign only) i really dont see how starcraft did anything that any other rts hadnt already done.
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I'm glad to see that A Mind Forever Voyaging made it onto their honorable mentions list. I remember getting sucked into that game around sixth grade or so. It was truly an experience to sit there at the computer reading the screen and seeing how the authors made civilization change from decade to decade. Parks and streets came and went. Businesses transformed themselves. Honestly, it really did open my eyes to the types of changes I could expect to see over my lifetime (not the sort of thing a typical 13 year old thinks about). I should sit down and play through it again one of these days.
This guy's the limit!
I wanted to enjoy the story in Final Fantasy anything, but the realization that the "storytelling" was about as competent as "Days of our Lives" made me stop before I turned stupid.
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I think there were some great stories presented here, but I have to wonder about the gaming experiences of some of the people putting this list together. Moreover, I wonder about the idea of "Advancing" story in gaming. See, Final Fantasy VII was one of the best stories out there, bested by Xenogears, and few others, but how much did it really advance STORY telling. Heck, even the review that it was the one of the first to have a main character die is only partially true. Now for some games that really advanced the art of telling a story in a game, look at some of the early inovaters.
Phantasy Star 2 - Characters like never before, not just one, but a selection of WORLDS to explore, and yes, a main character that dies to advance the plot. Killer!
MYST - the art of telling a story without telling it. Exploring a world of nothing but puzzles, and finding so much about it that the characters spawned not just game sequels, but books, actual novels!
Metal Gear Solid - Action, stealth, thinking and playing at the same time, and a story that had more depth and twists than anybody thought possible in a console game of its type.
Lunar and Lunar 2 - On the Sega CD, these were not the first games to use animated cut scenes, but no game before, and truly few since, have integrated such a thorough localization. Character dialog was all top notch, voices were natural, and most of all, it was funny. All the while, a real plot, emotion and all, was presented with so much style it often felt like you actually go to play an anime.
Final Fantasy IV (II here) - Certainly a revolution in story presentation, this game integrated plot driven character changes that affected changes in both the game play and the story as a whole. Few games before, if any, had the depth of presentation found herein.
There are more, but these were just a few examples, in no particular order. So do you see what I mean? These are 'revolutions' or 'advances' in the art of story telling. Not just good stories. I don't disagree with the whole list, I just think there could be some clarity, and some other games that deserve a much higher notation.
Fox
Do you seperate advances in storytelling versus a good story? And multiple points of view/main characters isn't exactly earth shattering