Baldur’s Gate 2 and BG2: Throne of Bhaal.
A better story of apotheosis there has never been.
What, there is no mention of Far Cry 2? As a game I hate the respawning checkpoints, but on the whole it is trying very hard to channel Conrad (last level is even called Heart of Darkness or some such). It doesn’t bash your head in with narratives, you have to read between the lines. You are a mercenary profiteering in a warzone. You are anything but a hero. You can PLAY as if you are a hero/white saviour, but the joke will be on you.
"Words assail me. The thought of books makes me ache. Poetry echoes in my mind, and if I had the ability to banish it, I would do so at once.”
-Games
De doo doo doo, de daa daa daa, is all I want to say to you.
As mentioned above, some of my favorites are:
Last Express: Decent characters that straddle the line between cliche, literary constructs and actual people. Also a plot that does not like explaining itself.
Gabriel Knight: Distinct, easy to relate to characters and really good plotting.
I have no mouth and I must Scream: Makes you think about the people you play as. The last chapter is a letdown, but I understand why it is there.
Walking Dead Season I: A lot of mediocre stuff early on, but the ending is so good and so earned that it makes up for everything that came before.
King of Dragon Pass: which is ultimately about interpreting writings.
Steins Gate: you need to get over the characterization and the first, say 10 hours of the game. But once it grabs you it becomes one of the best time travelling stories I’ve seen/read, up there with The Arrival and Primer.
Phoenix Wright Trilogy: I think the first trilogy really works in a sort of poetic way. Repetitions and variations. Also it has some memorable characters and a sense of humor I enjoy. The series becomes stale after the first three games for me, though.
So yes, it’s mostly games that are about the writing for me. While I enjoy also games with good writing that it’s not core to the gameplay, they fail to have the same impact for me. Of those I think The Last of Us is probably the one I enjoyed the writing of more, with the Witcher 3 and Specs Ops the Line coming after, but in a somewhat distant position (more immature). In general I don’t think it’s about AAA versus indie but about gameplay focused design versus story focused design (which is an equally valid proposition for me, but really uncommon in AAA design, and when it’s there the writing it’s not up to par -cough, Quantic Dream, cough-).
I see a lot of RPGs and pretty story-heavy games here.
It’s a real joy when a game in a wildly different genre has good writing. Startopia had wonderfully written (and delivered!) mission briefings, which, while short, were full of flavour and Douglas Adams style comedy.
-Tom
80 Days
And I know it’s not popular but:
Firewatch
This tweet thread is apropos of this discussion:
“Curious is the trap maker’s art. His efficacy unwitnessed by his own eyes.”
“As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta’s face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows.”
Glad someone mentioned this! Hands down one of the funniest and smartest deconstructions of the relationship between the player and the author.
I’d add Anachronox too because the writing is what makes it so entertaining. It’s like Firefly drunk on Rick & Morty.
Funny writing is hard so respect where it’s due!
Damn. I am gonna have to play Anachronox. If only it didn’t end on cliffhanger.
It wraps up a surprising amount but, yeah, it’s a massive shame it was never continued. The story was alright but it’s all the incidental writing and interactions between the characters (and their backstories) that carries it through.
Most of my picks already listed, I will add:
The Wolf Among us
Knights Of The Old Republic 2
Vampire: The Masquerade
Legacy of Kain
And I will re-add this one for emphasis:
Red Dead Redemption
I know I’m forgetting a bunch…but not many…well-written video games are not that common.
Well, the OG Thief games will always be my go-to for my favourite anything, and a lot of that is in their writing. Just solidly plotted fantasy-noir with some great characters and worldbuilding all the way through.
A lot of other favourites have already been mentioned, but here’s a trio of sci-fi puzzle games with some really solid writing behind them:
The Fall (Part one. I picked up part two on the steam sale, but haven’t really had time to get into it.)
The Swapper
The Talos Principle
I don’t know what it means to be “well written”, but what I do know is that I barely remember any of the “story” from any of the games I play and in most cases actively grow frustrated at the “”“story”"" getting in the way of my playing the game. I don’t know if that’s because I don’t think these games are well written, or because I’ve never really seen games as a vehicle for stories (if I want those I read a book or watch TV and cinema).
I suspect one of the reasons I don’t care, aside from “poor writing”, is the depth of content. If you took all of the dialogue from your average AAA game, how much content would it be? One hour of a TV episode? A long movie? A short story? A mini-series? A decently sized fantasy novel?
I feel like it’s towards the shorter end, and I don’t really want to be reading the transcript from a one-off hour long special inbetween bouts of shooting lethal mercenaries.
Old-timey space sims often had very good scripted narratives. (As well as recorded audiologs, emails, etc.) My favorite being Independence War 2.
Great pick. Such a great game that ends up integrating the primary mechanic into the story it ends up telling. Woefully underrated and I consider it a must play for everyone.
Rightly or wrongfully, I use ‘writing’ to refer to just about anything in a game where the essence can be mostly captured with words. Things that could be, and likely were, described by the originator to the executor.
I have a similar point of view with movies- I don’t make much of a distinction between writing and directing. “Writing” is just the central creative force that isn’t music, acting, or the specific details of production design.
If a character suddenly appearing in 16th century garb produces and effect in of itself, I’d ascribe that success to the writer. Only if the effect relied on the actual details of the garb (such that any competent 16th century costume wouldn’t do), then I’d ascribe the success, creatively speaking, to the costume designer.
I don’t know if anyone would agree with that perspective, but from my point of view there remains this counterproductive distinction in game design of the writer as the person that creates dialogue and synopses. I feel like you had a similar thing in old movies where the writer was basically a novelist or playwright that handed this document to the crew which in turn was filming something not far from a play.
In that sense Ueda’s compliment to Miyazaki (create concepts that can only be expressed through video games) is like Hitchcock’s to Spielberg:
young Spielberg is the first one of us who doesn’t see the proscenium arch
Spielberg’s response to that was:
“What? What did he say, again?” Spielberg has never heard this Hitchcock quote before. “Well! If he really said that, you just made my last four decades. You’re responsible for making my last four decades. I’ve never heard that!”
from:
I wasn’t alive when Spielberg was making his mark, but when I’d like to think I that when I watch Jaws that I get what Hitchcock was saying based on what I’ve seen of movies from the early 70’s and prior (though I have no clue if Spielberg was the ‘first’).
For me, the best written games are those that best craft a ‘player experience’. I feel like studios instinctively get all this, and just about every aspect of modern game design except writing goes with this flow. So you get these fully realized experiences narrated by some failed novelist’s attempt at a script. Horizon: Zero Dawn could literally be read from start to finish with the found documents in an appendix (which is essentially how they’re presented in game).
As far as games I think have great writing, there are of course the usual candidates like Witcher 3 and Dark Souls, but I’d also nominate games like Team Fortress 2, Company of Heroes, and Into the Breach where the writing doesn’t feel constrained by a traditional notion of ‘storytelling’. Hell, Devil’s Daggers is practically a well written game in my book.