Games

A Mind Forever Voyaging, by Infocom.

It's an old text adventure from the 80's with a particularly cool and oddly relevant concept: You take the role of an AI that's been meticulously raised in a simulation to truly become a general intelligence. The reason this project was undertaken was to eventually send you, the AI, into other simulations based in the near future to test the outcomes of various political policies of the new republican government, record your interactions, and report back to the engineers who created you.

The game's designer said that he created the game in response to the despair he felt from Ronald Reagan being elected.

I haven't gotten super far in it, but it has an incredibly well written short story in the manual that details all the events leading up to the start of the game, and so far the game itself is unlike anything else I've ever played.

Disco Elysium is, without a doubt, the best written game I've ever played. That game had me experience the entire rainbow of emotions.

Seconding Spiritfarer.

I also became entirely entranced by Horizon: Forbidden West. A death in that game hit me unexpectedly hard, and I had to take a couple days off from playing it to kind of deal with the grief. I tried the first Horizon, but I feel it didn't get anywhere close to the depth in worldbuilding and character development of the second game

Legend of Mana

This may seem like a cheeky answer, but Limbo.

Sometimes it's not about what you say, it's about what you don't.

Rime is a fun but emotional one.

Citizen Sleeper isn't my usual type of game but I was hooked instantly by it all.

Recent hit in this regard is Clair Obscure: Expedition 33. Incredible writing and incredible game overall.

Thats a bit of a weird way of saying that, but I get what you mean.

For me, it has to be A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World YU-NO. The original PC-98 release.

Be warned, the game has very explicitly drawn and described sex scenes, some of which I found extremely disgusting, personally, but I understand it is a game from a totally different time and culture and I am not here to police any of that. Fortunately, I learned pretty early on that none of those scenes contain anything actually relevant to the story of the game, so I could just quickly click through them until the picture changed. Fair warning, if you aren't the kind of person that can overlook this, then you will probably only be focusing on the like, two parts that amount to maybe 5% of the whole game. But its pretty bad, at least in my opinion.

YU-NO took me no joke 80+ hours to beat, on a blind first playthrough. The story is about time travel, and features a very complex branching story, especially for the time the game came out. It has like 9 different endings. Basically the main character is trying to travel through time to find his father, who was a historian that disappeared one day. You get a device in a package from your father that basically acts like a Quick Save for the various timelines in the game that get created by the choices you make as a player. If you give or don't give a certain item to a certain character at a certain time, that could have consequences that put you onto a different timeline, and if you need to get to a different one then you can Quick Load back to a point you used a jewel at. As you go through each timeline, you pick up jewels that act as more Quick Save points in the story. You have to collect all the jewels to get the True Ending of the game, which literally is just a sequel game. The Epilogue of YU-NO is so fire I almost wish it was its own game, YU-NO 2. It was a twist I was not expecting, but loved.

Needless to say, that game had me hooked. And while there were a few parts that were beyond my own personal opinion of redemption, I am glad I could look past those parts to see the rest of the game. There was a remake in 2017 that IMO totally destroyed the art of the original game, which was unfortunate, but I also don't think it even censored or removed the sex scenes, so I couldn't even be happy about that. Its just an all around downgrade except that it is easier to get that in English since it is on Switch, Steam, and PS4.

SOMA still lives in my brain 10 years later.

CrossCode. I won't spoil anything, but Lea very quickly cemented herself as my favorite protagonist of all time.

Horizon: Zero Dawn. Such a haunting, beautiful story.

A couple. Mouthwashing is probably the most recent one. Its difficult to talk about without spoiling the experience, but if you've played it you know why.

Wandersong probably hit me the most though. Partially because I was at a time in my life when that kind of story really resonated with me, or maybe just because I have a fondness for simple stories told well.
The main theme is "you are not the chosen one" (even if the ending screws that up a bit, in my opinion), but there's a lot more to love about it. It's one of the few pieces of media I've ever encountered that accurately portrays a good, solid friendship (and nothing else) between a man and a woman, for example.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and 2 have an awesome main story line with writing that makes me feel like I am playing video game sequels to A Knight's Tale.

But then it also has some pretty yawn inducing stuff, too, that might be interesting to history buffs since it takes place in real life, during real historical events in Bohemia. A lot of politics and nobility dick-waving. I skipped through a lot of random side quest dialogue because it was just an hour of discussing politics. 🤣

Disco Elysium tho is hands down the best written game I've ever played. We need more video games to be written by actual authors. It also just has an insane amount of branching paths and differences in how you play that mostly appear in dialogue, but also just wearing different clothing can change things dramatically.

Final Fantasy XV... Usually I get wet eyes when the games do it right. But with FF15 I literally cried.

Talos Principle is the best story I’ve played hands down.

FFVII set me up to be an eco-Marxist.

Disco Elysium helped me come to terms with my alcoholism and learn to move forward with my life instead of wallowing in self pity and loathing for the things I had done.

Really those are the two games that affected me most heavily in my life.

What Remains of Edith Finch comes to mind for me.

In the game, you play Edith Finch going back to her family home. It was home to multiple generations of the Finch family. This family has a serious case of bad luck, and most of them didn't get very old. As Edith, you explore all of the rooms and see the final moments of the person who used to live there.

It is not a horror game - but it is haunting, in a sense. If you enjoy good stories and writing, give it a try. It's only about 2 hours, and best played in a single sitting. It's also on sale regularly.

Bioshock infinite, really pulled me in.

Hell blade: Senua's Sacrifice.

The game itself helped me understand people, who are no longer with us, in a better way. The manner in which psychosis is presented is powerfully accurate, at least from an outsider perspective. It made me cry as it portrayed struggles in a manner truthful to the symptoms beyond the effects - the story and execution of it really gripped me.

Journey, there is no word but the story is so well written i

Come on, noone mentioning Planescape Torment so far?!

Life is Strange Telltale walking dead Final Fantasy X (or VII, or basically insert most any) Gone Home Mass Effect 1&2 (never finished 3 lol) Outer Wilda Undertale Descent Freespace 2 Silent Hill 2 Heavy Rain Disco Elysium I have no mouth and I must scream Limbo Braid

Yakuza 0 got me very hard in the feels...

Such a shame that the next ones (1-4) weren't as good. But Zero... what a ride.

New Vegas, the writing of the dialoges are brilliant. Some of the funniest or straight up saddest stuff are both there.

Gone Home - when I finished the game I was legitimately sad that I couldn't spend more time with the people whose lives I got to know so intimately from their environments. And yes, they didn't feel like characters anymore, they felt like actual people. That's one of the highest praises I can give to a game's storytelling.

Blue Prince sure feels like it counts, our whole family is hooked, and has been playing it every day for about 2 weeks now. Even well after rolling credits.

In a similar vein, I'd have to say Hollow Knight and Outer Wilds. Together with Blue Prince, they all have a storytelling strategy of "you have to put some effort into getting the story out of it", but the effort makes every new discovery or revelation feel super rewarding.

Celeste is the one that comes to mind for a more traditional story that REALLY hit.

Persona 5 comes to mind, too. I was ENGROSSED in that story for months. Even if it went off the rails a couple times.

I'm also gonna shout-out Tales of Symphonia. That game was formative for me.

Cyberpunk 2077. Years since I booted it for the first time I am still at it

The Cat Lady is one I'd say stands out to me.

All games from the Too the Moon series.

Outer Wilds. The game isn't very text-heavy, but what there is feels important and personal. With the way the story is told, it is quite possibly my favorite story overall. I don't want to say too much, since knowledge is key in that game, but I would highly recommend it.

A lot of games are written pretty 'middle of the road' to get as much of a broad base as possible. A few stand out though.

The Last of Us really hit hard when I played it. I came to the end of that game feeling a little bit like I had an adoptive daughter, and feeling guilty that I had, to my mind, let her down.

There wasn't much 'writing' in it but Shadow of the Colossus also hit me pretty squarely in the chest.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice was another that had some real power to the writing. Go listen to this setup (stop at 2:47)and tell me that isn't made to give goosebumps.