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[samoilaaa]

Stories are very important for me , especially in games that are longer games ( 20+ hours ) , im also a huge movie fan and i would really like to see games reach the level of storytelling of movies like Inception , Tenet , Shutter island , Dune , The dark knight

Ive played games like the last of us , the witcher , deus ex , god of war , red dead redemption , dont get me wrong they are great games but even these ones dont reach the level of story of movies that i listed , in these games its always good vs evil with certain emotional moments to mask the simple plot

in the last of us part 2 for example they try to put you in the shoes of both sides to make it hard for you to decide who is good or evil or either reach the conclusion that there is no good or evil , the only thing that matter is from which perspective you look at the situation , but still the plot was very simple

the witcher 3 ( my fav game in the last 20 years ) had great characters , the world was so immersive and it did made me feel for the characters but the same as with the last of us , the plot was very simple , you reach the end where is you vs the wild hunt

for me the only game that got close to movies in terms of story is bioshock 1 and infinite

have you played any games with a story as good as your favorite movie or book ?

 

[winjer]

Try the Forgotten City.
Unique concept, with a really good story, and great writing.

 

[Dragon_Rocks]

Metal Gear Solid series
Kingdom Hearts series

 

[jufonuk]

Metroid other M if you want to hear about the baby.

 

[Bartski]

try Signalis

 

[samoilaaa]

Try the Forgotten City.
Unique concept, with a really good story, and great writing.

i did finish it , it was good

 

[drganon]

13 sentinels has an absolute mind fuck of a story, and I mean that in a positive way.

 

[Kilau]

I really enjoyed the story in Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West continues that, if you haven’t tried those.

 

[intbal]

 

[Shut0wen]

Definitely metroid the other m, deep af

I guess xenoblade chronicles as well

 

[kyliethicc]

most people are too stupid

 

[DarthPutin]

Supposedly 13 Sentinels has complex story.
Disco Elysium has great writing

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Call of Duty could interest you.

 

[feynoob]

There is one.

If you want it cheaper.
https://www.g2a.com/spec-ops-the-line-steam-key-global-i10000003372008

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Death Stranding??

 

[Represent.]

Been thinking this forever.

I often watch some random obscure movie and think, wow, that was a better written and more complex story than any video game ever.

We have a long way to go.

And whenever studios try something new, simple minded gamers come with huge backlash, and stupid ass complaints about "wokeness" - Hard to tread new ground when gamers just want to be told the same fucking linear, shallow story over and over.

 

[TonyK]

Apart from the great games you talked, for me, Soma has one of the best stories I played.

 

[TonyK]

I really enjoyed the story in Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West continues that, if you haven’t tried those.

I think those games represent the opposite of what the OP is talking. I played both Horizon and both have a no deep story and characters are all the same. It's a post apocalyptic world filled with with friendly people.

The reasons behind the world's collapse are nice, the development of the plot and characters interactions and personalities are very poor compared with the films named.

 

[TheDreadLord]

I liked quite a bit the history in The Medium. Hopefully, one day, we will see a sequel.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

Soma

 

[Chukhopops]

13 sentinels has an absolute mind fuck of a story, and I mean that in a positive way.

Yeah if you’re looking for some time travel mindbender it’s a great choice.

To me the best story written in recent years is Lost Judgment (no time travel though).

 

[vaibhavpisal]

With you OP.

Though I suspect storytelling won't improve leaps and bounds over the games you mentioned.

Watching Breaking Bad for first time now, gap between video game stories is just ridiculous.

Though I must add I spend a lot more time gaming compared to watching shows cause of engagement they provide. Currently that is.

 

[samoilaaa]

Apart from the great games you talked, for me, Soma has one of the best stories I played.

i played it and i really liked it , i knew that a twist was coming from a friend that finished the game and i said to myself that i would figure it out before it happened , i was wrong

 

[Kilau]

I think those games represent the opposite of what the OP is talking. I played both Horizon and both have a no deep story and characters are all the same. It's a post apocalyptic world filled with with friendly people.

The reasons behind the world's collapse are nice, the development of the plot and characters interactions and personalities are very poor compared with the films named.

I disagree, how the apocalypse unfolded and what led the world to be the way it is after has a lot of layers. It may not be obfuscated by a lot misdirection but it’s still deep and thoughtful in my opinion.

 

[samoilaaa]

Been thinking this forever.

I often watch some random obscure movie and think, wow, that was a better written and more complex story than any video game ever.

We have a long way to go.

And whenever studios try something new, simple minded gamers come with huge backlash, and stupid ass complaints about "wokeness" - Hard to tread new ground when gamers just want to be told the same fucking linear, shallow story over and over.

a studio that works hard to make a good story doesnt have time to add woke stuff , i dont think that the people that made bioshock ever thought " lets not forget to add certain groups of people in game or characters that have a left wing right wing ( or whatever they are called im not good with politics ) personality "

they already have to struggle so much to make the characters good and interesting they just cant afford to waste time with those kind of things

 

[PhaseJump]

This is on sale right now.

 

[Sub_Level]

Metal Gear Solid 2 is objectively a complex story. Whether its actually good or not is up to the player, but it absolutely has depth. Btw Dune is fairly straightforward, at least in regards to the first book.

 

[yamaci17]

quantum break is somewhat complex and Tenet-like

death stranding is great

asylum/city is also pretty complex. i mean it is as complex as the relation between joker and batman. it is never a simple story, and joker always manages to make a dumb out of you

AC series tell a super complex ISU story across many games but it can be hard to track for most. the world in that series practically are layered, each layer has its own understandings towards the world, and only us, the viewer can see them from afar. it is akin to matrix, in a sort of way. its just that the actual, foreground story is not that bright (kassanda hurdling across greece, eivor conquering lands etc are generic)

i also adore cyberpunk's story and concepts it brings to the table

i mean i enjoyed the aforementioned games' story as much as I enjoyed great movies.

problem with games is that each game can have super lows and super highs. a great movie usually hits you with back to back 2 hrs of greatness.

a game might have 4-5 hrs of greatness spread across a 20-50 hrs of experience. so it may not have that effect on you. otherwise, some games do tell pretty cool and complex storiesx

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Metal Gear Solid series
Kingdom Hearts series

He said complex not convoluted.

 

[Sub_Level]

a studio that works hard to make a good story doesnt have time to add woke stuff , i dont think that the people that made bioshock ever thought " lets not forget to add certain groups of people in game or characters that have a left wing right wing ( or whatever they are called im not good with politics ) personality "

they already have to struggle so much to make the characters good and interesting they just cant afford to waste time with those kind of things

Disagree. Bioshock is one of the most explicitly political AAA games ever made. Have you ever heard of Ayn Rand? Its a direct repudiation of her.

 

[ungalo]

Been thinking this forever.

I often watch some random obscure movie and think, wow, that was a better written and more complex story than any video game ever.

We have a long way to go.

And whenever studios try something new, simple minded gamers come with huge backlash, and stupid ass complaints about "wokeness" - Hard to tread new ground when gamers just want to be told the same fucking linear, shallow story over and over.

I'm not sure if the comparison is relevant. I guess in some way it's true. But it's already pretty much the same if you compare movies to series.

The movie format is immaculate, the artistic freedom it gives you is incredible, contemplation is the only rule. When you have constraints in content, duration, gameplay loop, consistency...outside the indie games fully commited to that it's hard.

Otherwise, i would mention games like Silent Hill 2, some Rockstar games like GTA IV or RDR2, Spec Ops The Line, MGS2, Bioshock, Xenogears. Again i would not compare those games directly to movies, because what is incredible in most of them is achieved through narration that's specific to video games, besides that some of them rely heavily on the influence of other materials. But they definitely have a mature story that doesn't take you for a fool.

 

[Represent.]

a studio that works hard to make a good story doesnt have time to add woke stuff , i dont think that the people that made bioshock ever thought " lets not forget to add certain groups of people in game or characters that have a left wing right wing ( or whatever they are called im not good with politics ) personality "

they already have to struggle so much to make the characters good and interesting they just cant afford to waste time with those kind of things

"woke" nowadays literally means a person of colour or woman in the game. The word has been hijacked and lost all meaning and relevance.

 

[Punished Miku]

Try the Forgotten City.
Unique concept, with a really good story, and great writing.

Literally came here to say this. Playing it right now before it leaves GP.

This is exactly what the OP is looking for.

 

[Bragr]

You are talking about plot-heavy stories, not storytelling in general. I don't think stuff like Inception or Tenet are some storytelling masterpieces, those movies lean on execution and production. It's not exactly Shakespeare.

The story in The Witcher 3 is not "reaching the end when it's you vs wild hunt", it's about Ciri and Geralt, and the places they have been. There is so much more to it.

If you want stuff with conspiracy and mystery and heavy plots where you can ponder, go for stuff like Deus Ex, System Shock, Bioshock, Prey, Half-Life 2, Eternal Darkness, whatever, tons of stuff like this.

 

[Fbh]

I'm not sure you'll get a lot of that in games except in slow and very narrative heavy stuff like Disco Elysium.
Most games need to factor in gameplay, they need to give players a certain degree of freedom, they need to find excuses for you to fight trash mobs for 20 hours, to take you to a bunch of different environments, etc. If Disco Elysium was structured as a 20 hours third person shooter it would probably struggle telling the same type of plot

Games have other strengths, like interactivity. For example the main plot of Mass Effect is very simplistic, but getting to interact with you crew and form relationships with them made its world and characters way more memorable than a lot of objectively better written sci fi novels/movies. Nier Automata falls into some anime tropes but IMO it smartly uses videogames as format to tell a story in a way you just couldn't in TV/Movies, same with 13 Sentinels.

Also Tenet? Really? That's a pretty straightforward plot with a backwards flowing time gimmick attached to it, I'm not sure how it's much different to something like Quantum Break.

 

[Patrick S.]

Does Pathologic count?

 

[ungalo]

Indeed the "complex" thing is ambiguous. I didn't really take it literally but i have to say i'm not a fan of the movies chosen to make the point, they're pretty different in how they approach the story, some are not specifically hard to understand.

Do you mean something filled with plots, subplots, grey characters ? Do you mean destructured narratively ? And how does that make for a great story by itself ?

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Wait for Goodbye Volcano High, I’m sure it will blow your mind OP.

 

[gaming_again]

I used to think this but these days I think games need to focus on what is unique about them - gameplay.

Leave the stories for books and films imo.

 

[ungalo]

The Forgotten City is the perfect example of a game that has an incredible narration in a video game but a "bad" writing, it shows how the topic is complex.

It's hard to explain, but a game like Silent Hill 2 can be talked about, analysed a lot, for its themes and the way the game is developing them, through characters (even in the slightest detail about their design), environments, staging, voice acting...it's not the case at all for the Forgotten City. The ending shows it's just an average video game story, but the way it is presented, you could make the comparison with some of the Nolan movies in a way.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Metal Gear Solid series
Kingdom Hearts series

You read the OP and this is what you come up with?

 

[Cyberpunkd]

I used to think this but these days I think games need to focus on what is unique about them - gameplay.

Leave the stories for books and films imo.

There is nothing unique about gameplay in the last 20 years outside probably Nier.

 

[jaysius]

If you want good stories stick to movies or read novels, games are nowhere near good nor will they be. Nobody has figured out how to craft a game with a good balance of gameplay and character development and depth of story. No those visual novels overstuffed with shitty narrative don't count, they're not well written as some of the worse novels, people that think they are, don't read many novels so they have no real comparison.

Gaming needs some truly talented writers to work WITH game designers to make a full coherent piece, the issue is it seems most don't really work together, OR a good writer doesn't understand gaming and a good game dev doesn't understand writing.

It's because movies are full of the characters facing the cameras and developing character is microactions and small things that humans understand that fills in many of the gaps and brings us into something that feels like a real human interaction, selling us the story.

Animations are getting better, but they're not there yet, and there aren't interesting games where characters are staring at screen. In gaming all those animations come at a great cost to create, we won't see animations like that in games until maybe 5-10 years from now.

Also good story telling is about pacing, there's no way to get pacing right in a game with great gameplay. You can either have one or the other. A game that would have great story telling would be bogged down with slow moving parts that don't contribute to good gameplay, or sections that completely haul you out of the action.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

Does Pathologic count?

Until I am dethroned, I will be the self-proclaimed arbiter of the matter, and I say, "Yes".

Try the Forgotten City.
Unique concept, with a really good story, and great writing.

This game was lovely. Great twists, wholly self-contained, just the right length, and

Spoiler

the very ending at the modern-day museum where you see all the people you saved from the city applaud you

legit made me tear up a bit. Made me feel like a hero in a different way than video games usually do. Incredibly sweet.

I really enjoyed the story in Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West continues that, if you haven’t tried those.

I'm torn on Horizon--I love the story beats that focus on the

Spoiler

apocalypse, the breakaway civilization (Elisabet's OTHER clone, the group that flew a ship to another planet and came back to take over earth and their more-advanced tech, etc.)

, but you spend the vast majority of the games interacting with yet another tribe who has yet another "interesting" take on how to live that, through dramatic irony and Aloy's advanced knowledge, you know is complete BS. Hard to care about preserving their way of life when you know for a fact they're outright lying to each other or ignorant to the truth of things.

 

[Lupin25]

Um, how about CONTROL

or Death Stranding?

 

[samoilaaa]

Um, how about CONTROL

or Death Stranding?

control was really nice , death stranding not so much , the characters were a little interesting when they were introduced then after 3-4 hours the story started to be boring and i was waiting to become interesting again , it never did ( for me anyway , i hear alot of people like it )

 

[brian0057]

Watch Deadwood or The Wire.
Videogame storytelling is like Shakespeare being performed by a pre-school theater club.

 

[Rickyiez]

For all the hates that Bioshock Infinite gets , I actually like the story a lot and the time traveling complexity of it .

 

[Chastten]

have you played any games with a story as good as your favorite movie or book ?

Movies? Absolutely. Most movies, including the ones you mentioned in OP, are pretty shallow. Sorry, but I never understood all the hype about movies like Dark Knight, Inception, Dune or Shutter Island. They're enjoyable movies but not really deep in any way.

Books? Hell no. No movie or videogame will ever come close to telling a story as good as a good book can.