Armenius
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2014
- Messages
- 42,114
This thread right now:
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Well you did say "the biggest" which can be interpreted in sales, profits and player numbers.
While a big list, a lot of those games aren't heavily story driven and some of them are over 3 years old like Doom.
The lore of Dark Souls and Bloodborne is really good if you take the time to read everything. But, unfortunately, you can play and enjoy the game without knowing really what’s going on.
Many games on that list aren't story driven or AAA. I know the op didn't specify AAA, but that is always my default assumption. I don't care about low budget, low production value games.What are you looking for and how recent?
Lets see, and this isn't a complete list.
Upcoming (I always advocate waiting for reviews):
Outerworlds
Mechwarrior 5
Death Standing (not my cup o tea)
The Last of Us 2
Yakuza 5
Gods & monsters
Doom Eternal
Cyberpunk 2077
Out now (in no order):
Horizon ZD
Spiderman PS4
RDR 2
GTA5
Northgard
Metro Exodus
Void Bastards
Children of Morta
Disco Elysium
Outer Wilds
Noita
Factorio
Remnant: From the Ashes
Divinity Original Sin 1&2
Endless Legend
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Shadows: Awakening
Assassins Creed Oddessy and Origin
Borderlands 3
Control
Sekiro
Deus Ex: MKD
Battletech
Kenshi
Ion Fury
Wolfenstein: TNO
Doom 2016
Pillars of Eternity II
Prey
Starpoint Gemini
X4
Stellaris
Witcher 3
Subnautica
Watch Dogs 2
The Surge 2
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Monster Hunter World
Total War series
Hearts of Iron Series
Crusader Kings Series
Steel Division/Wargame Series
Asgard's Wrath (VR)
My library is so full of single player games I'll never every play them all.
You're describing mediocre single player games there. Those are run trough once and forget. The real great ones you can play and re-play for years. For example I'm still playing XCOM2 as much if not more than when it came out. People still talk about and play skyrim, or the witcher 3.
I finished Mass Effect 1-2 more than a dozen times, over the course of 4-5 years. I even finished ME3 at least 3 times. I played.GTA3,4,5 way beyond finishing their story.
I re-played Ghost Recon Wildlands multiple times. In a twist of irony Wildlands might be the last great single player game I enjoyed.
So don't tell me a good single player game is only good for a few weeks.
I don't care about low budget, low production value games.
I'd have said terror from the deep if I was referring to that xcom2.Xcom 2 or Xcom 9 - "Xcom2"?
Yes, it is good for me. This clearly bothers you, so let's hear itGood for you
Yes, it is good for me. This clearly bothers you, so let's hear it
Does gaming today more lean towards ... apex legends, fortinite and these games as a service thing. Where old timer like me always prefer a strong story and good gameplay? Maybe gaming today is too monetized. I know there are still good story driven games but, they seem to be the minority. Before that was more the norm sort of...
Since the op is clearly fire and forget, I'm going out on a limb and will assume they didn't mean there aren't enough indie / homebrew category games with a story.He did not specify triple a, you did, ergo your point is moot.
Since the op is clearly fire and forget, I'm going out on a limb and will assume they didn't mean there aren't enough indie / homebrew category games with a story.
Besides what is your point? That if we count every game the numbers add up? Great, doesn't change the fact that previously single player focused franchises and developers are clearly gravitating towards live service mp games.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that's the member berries talking.
The fact of the matter is, most games that we remember fondly do not have a good story. The game play may have been absolutely solid for the time, but few popular games were good in the story department. Stories in games were often a veiled reason for the game's structure and setting. The stories themselves were often so bad they would never have even been made into a B movie. There are certainly examples of games that were the exception, but I don't think they were the norm by any means. For every Wing Commander, BioForge, KOTOR or Diablo, you had probably 10 or more games with stories as bad as what we saw in Doom or any number of other popular franchises. Many popular games didn't convey their stories well at all even if they were reasonably well written.
You didn't really play Doom, Descent, Unreal or Hexen for the story.
Speak for yourself.I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that's the member berries talking.
View attachment 194527
The fact of the matter is, most games that we remember fondly do not have a good story. The game play may have been absolutely solid for the time, but few popular games were good in the story department. Stories in games were often a veiled reason for the game's structure and setting. The stories themselves were often so bad they would never have even been made into a B movie. There are certainly examples of games that were the exception, but I don't think they were the norm by any means. For every Wing Commander, BioForge, KOTOR or Diablo, you had probably 10 or more games with stories as bad as what we saw in Doom or any number of other popular franchises. Many popular games didn't convey their stories well at all even if they were reasonably well written.
You didn't really play Doom, Descent, Unreal or Hexen for the story.
Speak for yourself.
I feel like games didn't get decent storylines until the early - mid 2000s.
There were a few exceptions in the 90s, but those were just that, exceptions.
When I see games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Ghost Recon Breakpoint ruined by that exact thing. Deliberately made worse so you spend money on "time-savers" instead of having fun playing the game, you pay to play less of the game.Even if we disagree on which games have a good story or not, I think we can all agree that multiplayer games and live service offerings are a disease that's killing off story telling in gaming.
My generation was too young in the early-mid nineties to appreciate a good story even if I saw one. I didn't even care about the story at all before I was at least 16. Adventure games had stories even back then. I mean did we suddenly forget all Lucasarts point and click adventures?
I think the heyday of actual storytelling started with FMV, that's when AAA games started to have longer cut-scenes and more fleshed out stories. Before that games were all gameplay. It was fun, but I don't want to go back to that era.
All I wish for is games that heavily rely on storytelling but still have good gameplay. My priorities have changed. Now I choose my games based on story and narrative. You can give me a perfect game that is perfectly balanced and finely tuned to the absolute best it can be, if it has no story I'll not touch it. The only exception being sims, but lately I barely play any of those too. Even the most basic narrative is preferable to no narrative.
I'm sorry, but not even a 1000 indie story driven games can substitute for one splinter cell, mass effect, or deusex.
Some random examples:
Mario Brothers = Fun game, but you can't really argue that story is a strong point of the series.
Wolfenstein 3D = Bad B movie sci-fi plot
Doom = Bad B movie sci-fi story.
Duke Nukem 3D = Do I really even need to argue on this one?
Unreal = No real discernible story that I can recall. Unreal 2 had it, but that game wasn't well received.
Unreal Tournament = Zero story.
F-Zero = No story that I can recall.
Need for Speed = No story until later sequels and then it was just bad. Most Wanted from 2005 I think is particularly cringe worthy.
Street Fighter Series = Convoluted mess. The premise is beyond ridiculous.
Mortal Kombat = Seriously? Granted, I think its bad story which is well presented and there is something to be said for that. But no one really plays MK for the story.
Quake I = Basic premise was fine, but there wasn't much in the way of story telling here either.
Quake II = Discount Borg
Quake III Arena = No story to speak of.
Counterstrike = Zero story.
Half-Life = Overly convoluted story. I've replayed that game a million times and I'm not entirely certain what's going on beyond the events that lead to the invasion of monsters in the Black Mesa facility.
Half-Life 2 = Doubles down on the weirdness and makes even less sense. It's a great game, but I'd argue that the story isn't all that clear. Who is the G-Man? What is he actually doing? Friend or foe? The list goes on and on.
Descent = Story served as a basic frame work of what you were doing. It was hardly center stage and wasn't really something you experienced a whole lot.
Quake IV = The dollar store Borg are back.
Unreal Tournament 2003 = Zero story.
Unreal Tournament 2004 = Zero story.
Call of Duty = Please. Even if I grant you the first game as being decent in this regard, the subsequent games got more ridiculous with each entry. Even CoD4: Modern Warfare, a game I like very much is still relatively weak in the story department.
This. Some lower budget games may have decent stories but the gameplay and polish may be lacking.
I'm sorry, but not even a 1000 indie story driven games can substitute for one splinter cell, mass effect, or deusex.
Oh, no, I didn't forget about point & click at all. The Monkey Island and Police Quest series have given me plenty of fond memories. I liked playing those a lot growing up, and they did have stories. But you had a lot of games come out around the same time with weak stories. They were the exception, and I still stand by my statement, that mid 2000's is when story started taking off.
In the 90's is when gameplay was being refined, polished, and standards set.
I think you could. Nobody tried it yet, but I believe a career mode in a flight game would work. Wing commander is that exactly, a flight game with a narrative.You just have to replace space with the sky.You simply can't make a flight game personal on the level of an action RPG due to the thematic disconnect it would cause as an example.
Isn't that what I always do?
Go ahead and give me some examples of good, older games with good story writing and good story telling. The latter isn't the same as the former. A game could have a good story, but not necessarily deliver it well. Destiny 1 and to a lesser extent, Destiny 2 are modern examples of games with very rich universes that have great story, but the delivery is poor, as it isn't really done in a way that conveys it to the average player. You have to look at the lore entries for specific weapons or look at the triumphs section to discern the story of Destiny 2. Very little is conveyed in dialog or cut scenes. What is, you'll find is generally breath taking but such moments are generally few and far between. The story delivery is subtle. Comparatively, Mass Effect had a rich and well developed universe from day one. The game also does a great job of conveying this universe and its story to the player. People who really get into it can dig deeper and are rewarded with even more details through the codex entries. One could spend hours immersing yourself in the game's lore that way, but a great deal is still conveyed by playing the game.
Older games were particularly bad about either their story telling methods or the stories themselves. Even with a solid premise, they rarely did anything beyond showing you cut scenes at the beginning and the end of the game. If you go back to the 1990's, you'll find that the story and structure of popular titles was lacking in a very serious way. Sure, RPG's and Star Wars games conveyed their excellent writing and stories well, but this was the exception rather than the rule. I'd argue that outside of some RPG games, stories in popular titles and other genres were on a sliding scale of "Too bad for B movies" to "Decent enough premise to make a low budget Sci-Fi movie the Sci-Fi channel would have reservations about airing." Games with a good premise didn't really communicate story to the player well or very often leaving the stories weak and without any fleshing out of details.
Some random examples:
Mario Brothers = Fun game, but you can't really argue that story is a strong point of the series.
Wolfenstein 3D = Bad B movie sci-fi plot
Doom = Bad B movie sci-fi story.
Duke Nukem 3D = Do I really even need to argue on this one?
Unreal = No real discernible story that I can recall. Unreal 2 had it, but that game wasn't well received.
Unreal Tournament = Zero story.
F-Zero = No story that I can recall.
Need for Speed = No story until later sequels and then it was just bad. Most Wanted from 2005 I think is particularly cringe worthy.
Street Fighter Series = Convoluted mess. The premise is beyond ridiculous.
Mortal Kombat = Seriously? Granted, I think its bad story which is well presented and there is something to be said for that. But no one really plays MK for the story.
Quake I = Basic premise was fine, but there wasn't much in the way of story telling here either.
Quake II = Discount Borg
Quake III Arena = No story to speak of.
Counterstrike = Zero story.
Half-Life = Overly convoluted story. I've replayed that game a million times and I'm not entirely certain what's going on beyond the events that lead to the invasion of monsters in the Black Mesa facility.
Half-Life 2 = Doubles down on the weirdness and makes even less sense. It's a great game, but I'd argue that the story isn't all that clear. Who is the G-Man? What is he actually doing? Friend or foe? The list goes on and on.
Descent = Story served as a basic frame work of what you were doing. It was hardly center stage and wasn't really something you experienced a whole lot.
Quake IV = The dollar store Borg are back.
Unreal Tournament 2003 = Zero story.
Unreal Tournament 2004 = Zero story.
Call of Duty = Please. Even if I grant you the first game as being decent in this regard, the subsequent games got more ridiculous with each entry. Even CoD4: Modern Warfare, a game I like very much is still relatively weak in the story department.
I will give Heritic and Hexen props for attempting story. Those games were great, but it was still generally atmosphere and game play that made them what they were. The story itself didn't really impact the game play. Games like that may have attempted story, but it was usually only by way of an intro and end credit scenes. The middle (you know, the game play) was basically medieval Doom. Some games like Wing Commander had a decent premise, but fairly bad story telling early on. They improved dramatically as the series went, but games like Wing Commander 3 were essentially films that you could play out the action sequences of some of the time. It was more film than game. 4 was largely the same way and Prophecy was probably the first one to get things right.
Granted, I mostly play first person shooters. A genre that's not generally known for story telling. I've played a few other game types over the years, and there are some examples of good story telling in the old days. However, I'd argue that story telling is something that games of today actually do better. Obviously we aren't talking about games that are of the live service variety or are Battle Royal types. Those games obviously fail at delivering any type of story. Either it isn't a focus of the game or the game doesn't have one. Any game that leans heavily on co-op or massive multiplayer mechanics tends to be weak in story. MMO's have to take a very generic approach to story because of the wide player base all doing the same things at the same time. Star Wars the Old Republic is probably the sort of exception to the rule, but its weak by BioWare standards because of its MMO nature.
I can go on and on, but I concede this may very well come down to the types of games I usually played vs. what others played but I'll stand by the statement that games these days (when they attempt it) usually have better written, voice acted, and delivered stories than older games do. Unfortunately, game development now takes so much time and money, that the only option many developers see is to create games using the live service model, which puts story on the back burner to favor multiplayer content and microtransactions.
Even if we disagree on which games have a good story or not, I think we can all agree that multiplayer games and live service offerings are a disease that's killing off story telling in gaming.
I get what you are saying here but lets break down the games of which you talk about the story telling based on their genre....
Mario Brothers = Single Player - console I agree there is no real solid story
Wolfenstein 3D = Single Player Good Game for its time,
Doom = Single Player Great Game for its time,
Duke Nukem 3D = Single Player Decent Game for its time.
Unreal = Single Player Good Game for it time.
Unreal Tournament = Multiplayer Only Fun Mulitplayer game.
F-Zero = No story that I can recall. Never heard of or played Can't comment on game play.
Need for Speed = Single Player The game play was all about the cars and drag racing. The racing of cars for it time was pretty good.
Street Fighter Series = Multiplayer (could be considered single player as well) These are arcade style games so i expect no story only tournament style play.
Mortal Kombat = Multiplayer (could be considered single player as well) These are arcade style games so i expect no story only tournament style play.
Quake I = Single Player Great Game for its time
Quake II = Single Player Great Game for its time
Quake III Arena = Multiplayer Only This was just a arena style deathmatch. Multiplayer only almost never has a story. Great Game for its time
Counterstrike = Multiplayer Only These games focused on player versus player nothing more than rescue hostages or blow up bomb sites.....Multiplayer only almost never has a story. Great Game for its time.
Half-Life = Single Player - Loaded with backstory Lore everything was based off of the events at Black mesa. I thought the story went together every well. The story continued with HL2. One of the best Games of all time.
Half-Life 2 = Single Player - Loaded with backstory Lore everything build off of the events from HL1. This never finished because Valve stopped on mid story and never went back. Great Game for its time.
Descent = Single Player Agree there was no real story except blow up cores in mines (planets? or asteroids?) I never knew what then were but just a mine maze. Great Game for its time.
Quake IV = Single Player with added Multiplayer Never played this one but expect there was no solid story. Good Game for its time
Unreal Tournament 2003 = Multiplayer Only Multiplayer only almost never has a story. Good Game for its time
Unreal Tournament 2004 = Multiplayer Only Multiplayer only almost never has a story. Good Game for its time
Call of Duty = Single Player with added Multiplayer Depends on the game but these all had some serious story telling behind them. Depending on the installment of the series Good Game for its time.
It just depends on where you land but I don't think it matters if its SP or MP only, there are some great games in the past, either one or the other. I think today there games out now aren't in that Great or Best Ever categories.
Fortnite - Fast rounds load and do it again. Multiplayer Only
Apex Legends - Fast rounds and do it again. Multiplayer Only
PUBG - Fast rounds and do it again. Multiplayer Only
These games definitely don't have a story.
I agree with You on the fact that the multiplayer games are starting to kill off story......i don't include co-op games.....multiplayer I my eyes is player vs player focus. MMOs are a different story.
I agree but I was just pointing out the fact that the single player games typically had better stories(or stories at all). MK and Street fighter are loose stories more based on the tournament. The very late 90's / early 2000's is the sweet spot for Story telling and great games. Multiplayer games are typically added on to the great single player games.My point is that many of the games we remember so fondly from the old days didn't really have any story to speak of or don't convey it well. I didn't mean to imply that all of those titles were supposed to have it. Multiplayer doesn't necessarily preclude the potential for story, although it does complicate story telling. Star Wars The Old Republic is rich on story and is an MMO. Destiny 1 and 2 have a great deal of story, but are multiplayer by nature. Now, the method for conveying story is poor to say the least, but it can be done. Some games that you mentioned as being multiplayer only, do in fact have stories. MK and Street Fighter are examples of this. It doesn't really matter that you didn't expect them to have it, because they do.
A lot of us made our own stories. Lots of those FPS games really immersed us into what I fondly recall as personal experiences. Like you said the FPS genre really is light on story but I recall my Unreal experiences (even the poorly received ones) because I think I was generating my own narrative as I played them.My point is that many of the games we remember so fondly from the old days didn't really have any story to speak of or don't convey it well. I didn't mean to imply that all of those titles were supposed to have it. Multiplayer doesn't necessarily preclude the potential for story, although it does complicate story telling. Star Wars The Old Republic is rich on story and is an MMO. Destiny 1 and 2 have a great deal of story, but are multiplayer by nature. Now, the method for conveying story is poor to say the least, but it can be done. Some games that you mentioned as being multiplayer only, do in fact have stories. MK and Street Fighter are examples of this. It doesn't really matter that you didn't expect them to have it, because they do.
I think you could. Nobody tried it yet, but I believe a career mode in a flight game would work. Wing commander is that exactly, a flight game with a narrative.You just have to replace space with the sky.
I'm trying to figure out what the hell I just read while simultaneously thinking of the dozens if not more vehicle based games I've played where:
1: you stop at hubs of some sort, ships, planets, space stations, garage, whatever. Usually with NPCs.
2: There's all sorts of amazing banter over the radio, sometimes not brief, sometimes lasting for the ENTIRE MISSION.
3: weird ass cases such as my beloved Space Rangers where the amount of dialogue is so absolutely ridiculous it could probably fill a novel.
Ace Combat, which is currently on its 10th game or so is a flight based game with a HUGE story emphasis and a ridiculous amount of lore.
Here's a timeline for ya.
https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Strangereal/Timeline