Point about good writing in indie games is interesting. I’d theorize that larger AAA games are by nature bureaucratic and risk-averse affairs, in which the people making decisions about the writing are often not themselves writers. I’m sure that’s true about all the disciplines involved in making a game to some extent, but I’m willing to bet it’s worst with writing/narrative.
In my experience, everyone thinks they’re a writer because they can string a few coherent sentences together. There’s often little respect toward writing as a discipline. In cultures that buck this trend, say the golden era of BioWare for example, there’s plenty of good to great writing in high-budget games.
Excellent point, Adam. Although I would say that some of the best writing I’ve seen in games has been in AAA games, some of which aren’t even very good games. Last of Us comes to mind. But that’s definitely an exception to the rule.
The average AAA game cares about good writing about as much as the average AAA summer blockbuster cares about good writing. :)
Guild Wars 2 does storytelling better than pretty much any other MMO I’ve played – or at least paid enough attention to know whether it even has storytelling – and part of that is the writing. Here’s an example:
Guild Wars 2 is full of this sort of stuff. Most of the writing is inconsequential, and that applies to the main storyline as well. There are some cool bits in there, but they’re too drawn out and interrupted by too many awful boss battles. But if you go poking around and if you pay attention, Guild Wars 2 can be very rewarding.
But, yeah, ha ha, MMOs have stories??? That’s a real knee-slapper! Maybe the dude can also do some jokes about airline food.
Well, thank you very much, I’m now addicted to the anime version of My Little Pony and binged watched Volume 1. Honestly, though, if I had a daughter (or a son), I’d love to show them this, even though it’s incredibly silly.
Which, to be fair, is what their main audience wants out of both. I don’t want to derail this by naming games, but there’s a couple of them that constantly come up as having a great narrative that always make me take a deep breath before moving on.
It’s pretty clear that telling a good story with a lot of interaction is damn hard and expensive, and that’s before half your audience complains about how much it gets in the way of blowing shit up. A genre that relies on padding and grinding for profitability (well, one of them…) is just not going to be the poster child for deep stories, the customers don’t want it.
I would say it’s near impossible. This is why so many games sidestep this - for the most part - by having narrative as almost a separate piece, rarely reinforcing actual gameplay. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but generally game writing seems to fall under the category of checkpoint writing, as opposed to writing that reflects and acknowledges the actual players actions. I think that’s one of the reasons people love Bastion so much; by having a narrator that acts almost like a sports commentator, you have writing that is actually speaking to the things a player is doing, rather than speaking to some (usually) unavoidable artificial milestone.
I don’t dislike narrative in games. I think a lot of games have great stories, some that have affected me as much as any other media, especially since I sometimes have the illusion of agency within the tale. But it’s rare for a game to actually make me feel like it’s paying attention to me as a player. That’s a hard thing to do because by and large, most gamey games (especially most AAA games these days) give you enough player verbs that I can’t imagine there being a system sophisticated enough to keep up with your average gamer who is probably griefing NPCs and farting around in the bushes off the main path looking for collectible plants to make a potion. That’s one reason I really love games with good incidental dialogue; I can at least then make up a story in my head from just the overacted or laconic remarks NPCs tend to bounce between.
I’ve played lot of games with ok writing, I don’t think it is horribly bad in most games. But the standouts for me would be:
Planescape Torment (Duh)
SOMA
Fallout 1
Fallout 2
Fallout: New Vegas
Witcher 2
Witcher 3 + expansions
Knights of the Old Republic
Knights of the Old Republic 2
Alpha Protocol
Vampire Bloodlines
Arcanum
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven
Mafia 2
Mafia 3
Grand Theft Auto V
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Last of Us
Longest Journey
Dreamfall/Chapters
Tales from Borderlands
Walking Dead season 1
Batman: Arkham Knight
Game of Thrones (RPG by Cyanide)
Quantum Break
I’ll agree with all of those (except Dreamfall, Tales from Borderlands, Arkham Knight, Game of Thrones, and Quantum Break, none of which I have played), and add The Last Express.
The Last of Us stands out to me the most, because unlike Tom, I actually really enjoyed the gameplay, and I love that the narrative is sort of closely tied to the gameplay. In one way it is Checkpoint narrative, but at the same time, scrounging for resources and the unpredictability of the enemy is what the gameplay is about, and quite often it’s also what is talked about, and I just love it when the narrative and gameplay meld so seamlessly like that.
To that list I would also add:
Psychonauts
System Shock 2
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham City
Bioshock
Bioshock 2
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Portal
Portal 2
Final Fantasy X
Fable 2
Life is Strange
Spec Ops: The Line
GTA: San Andreas
GTA IV
Red Dead Redemption
Rockstar games are always a mixed bag. There’s so many cringe-worthy moments in GTA IV, V, San Andreas and Red Dead, but there’s also some great writing in there as well.
I haven’t played these from your list, so maybe I should do so, except for SOMA, which is about opening and closing drawers:
To be honest, I find that to be a somewhat bizzare complaint; I have always enjoyed how “tactile” Frictional made interaction with the environments in their games. Opening doors by manually dragging them, opening drawers the same way, various levers and wheels and what not…it feels more interactive than just clicking at it.
And it also happens to be probably the best scifi game I’ve ever played in terms of atmosphere and story impact, at least for me. Still thinking about it from time to time.
You should definitely play the rest of the ones I mentioned, if you like good stories.
Of the ones you mentioned, I played all of them except FF10 and Fable 2, which were on platforms I didn’t have. I find them a bit more mixed bag though so I didn’t mention them as standouts :)
Oh shoot. Can’t believe I forgot about Life is Strange and Spec Ops. Night in the Woods and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture would probably be on my personal list as well.
I added Psychonauts too, I loved the writing in that one, and it melds really well with the gameplay too.
I agree a lot of the ones I added are a mixed bag. Like System Shock 2 is brilliant in places, but has a really weak ending, both in terms of the narrative and the gameplay.
But come on, Portal is another that’s almost perfect. Another one where narrative and gameplay meld perfectly.
