Game Narratives

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Game Narratives

Post by MGuy »

I had gone on a rant yesterday to a friend about how I really wish there was a port for Lion's War on the PC that didn't involve using an emulator. I have fond memories about going through FF Tactics and, while I did enjoy the type of strategic gameplay it provides, I particularly enjoyed the way the story went. So, figured I'd ask around to see what games have/had some of people's favorite narratives.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

Tales of Vesperia has a very enjoyable narrative, made all the better by the characters involved once you get used to them. (Karol's voice is grating, but you get used to it.)

And despite how much people hate it, I liked Star Ocean: til the End of Time's story, but I'm a sucker for the sort of story it provides. But that's probably because I enjoyed a YA novel as a kid that involved people moving between second, third and fourth dimensions as a power thing (and it was really well written).
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Post by Leress »

Suikoden 5, Crusader of Centy, Valkyrie Profile, Eternal Poison, Grandia 2, Thousand Arms, Der Langrisser, Arc the Lad 2, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the spirits (well half of it), Final Fantasy 6, and Final Fantasy 9.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Skies of Arcadia had a very satisfying narrative in which things slowly escalated and the game had the good sense to stop things at the denouement. It dragged a little bit in certain parts but was overall extremely enjoyable. Games that leave you satisfied but wanting more (even if you can't really think of a way to expand the plot) are probably the best ones.

Arc Rise Fantasia is a weird one. The first part of the game starts out as a cliched fantasy plot but then you're hit by a hardcore plot twist that pits you against an The Authority-style aggressively utilitarian faction (adjusted for power levels, of course) whom, in defiance of most of these plots, doesn't immediately paint them as misguided or extremists or wrong and in fact you can lose a few conflicts to them. Of course, then the game chickens out and then goes right back to the whole 'the heroic, but slavishly following the classic rules of incrementalist heroism faction is RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT' nonsense every single game that has an aggressive utilitarian faction has but it's a wild ride up to that point.

Mask of the Betrayer has a lot of the same setup, awesomeness, and down-the-road problem, but instead of chickening out at the 3/4ths mark of the game it chickens out at the final conflict. If you can ignore that MAJOR FUCKING BUMMER it's an extremely good narrative. If there was an example of a game completely being ruined by its ending, though, it's that one.

Rondo of Swords is the real deal, though. It starts out as a cliched wartime fairytale plot and can finish that way, but a certain choice down the game has you completely upend the standard cliches and such and keeps making your jaw drop with plot twists and revelations and the like. Unfortunately, the game itself is kind of a counterintuitive chore. Reading a Let's Play is highly recommended.

Quest for Glory 4 and 5 have very good stories, too. QFG5's story is unfortunately ruined by the 3D interface, but if you can look past that you have a very satisfying narrative that wraps up a bunch of previous plot hooks and has you going out feeling like a badass. QFG4 (it's recommended that you play as a Paladin with the Magic skill leveled from previous games) has a very moving 'hero to zero to hero' story in which you slowly gain the trust of a town of xenophobes, among other people, through assorted good deeds and tireless investigation.

Megaman Battle Network 6 is the only game in the series that has a story that's unironically good instead of amusingly dumb and silly. Unfortunately, one of the biggest twists in the series loses its impact if you haven't played MMBN5 and even then a particular path. And anything more would be spoilers. MMBN3 has marginally better gameplay, though, even if the story is noticeably weaker.

Visual Novels inherently cheat, but I like all of the Ace Attorney games except for maybe Apollo Justice. And my dislike of Apollo Justice has more to do with the metafiction than the writing internal to the game itself. However, the pinnacle of the series IMO is Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Miles Edgeworth: Prosecutor's Path. That game is a wild ride from start-to-finish and Miles Edgeworth has to be one of my favorite protagonists in any videogame, ever. For a guy who has never even hinted at doing anything more violent than banging the desk he's one hell of a videogame badass.

I haven't beaten Xenoblade Chronicles yet (and I won't be able to until I finish moving) but the parts I played, up to the point where Tiki joins, I really enjoyed. People tell me that the second half of the game is better than the first half and I already really like the first half, so I'm peeing my pants in anticipation.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

Quest For Glory pissed me off in the game where you get to choose to become a Paladin at the end (QFG2? I think) - as the world's ending you have to honorably duel a guy despite the fact that the world is literally seconds from ending. You have to chance the world ending to become a Paladin. Argh.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

That one's Quest for Glory 2. The paladin mythos wasn't really solidified until QFG3, so I can overlook it.

QFG2 is weird because while on a gameplay level it's one of the better ones in the series, I think it has the weakest plot and characterization. Even more than QFG3 which, while definitely the weakest of the series in terms of gameplay, at least had character development. In QFG2 you're kind of just doing random 'put out the emergent fires' crap until you confront Raseir's power center -- though I will admit that the last act of QFG2 is very good and more than makes up for the rest of the game. I like Uhura and Rakeesh but they don't really come into their own until the next game.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by MGuy »

I remember Skies of Arcadia. Loved that game enough to buy the remake.
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Post by Maxus »

Seconded on Quest for Glory Paladin bits. QfG 4's Paladin parts were THE best. Also, I fell in love with the Rusalka and wished she was a Paladin romance option in 5.

One of my favorite game narratives, as well, was Red Dead Redemption. And I mean, I bought the game on the 360, then traded it in and bought the GOTY. And my Xbox died, so I just bought it on the PS3 (came in the mail yesterday). I like the narrative progression--each character arc is about what John Marston will do for his family. In the first part, he certainly will kill for them, he'll help swindle people for them. In the second, he switches sides several times and tortures a man. In the end,
he even realizes he has to die for them to be safe.
I have a similar respect for GTA V, but for the main characters' psychologies--all of the characters are seeking their definition of success and that whole American Dream thing. They established that fairly well.

Michael lives in a multimillion dollar mansion with his beautiful wife and their two kids. He doesn't need to work, and he can spend it doing whatever hobbies he wants. On paper, he's got it made, but he he hates the stagnation of their lives has made them all shallow. He's happiest when he's doing something that challenges him, makes him have to think to solve problems.

Franklin wants to get where Michael is, but failing that he wants something better-paying and safer and saner than being a two-bit gangster slinging drugs and killing people over turf.

And Trevor's own definition of success is more emotional: He wants respect and love of the people he respects and cares about. Trevor's a terrible person, his emotional problems not helped at all by his drug use or his desire to be known as someone you don't fuck with, but his own loyalty is absolute once it's earned.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

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Post by vagrant »

GTA V was called the best TV series of 2014. I still think that's an accurate assessment.
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Post by Blade »

Live-A-Live (SNES): A RPG made of different small stories, each set in a different era and following all the tropes associated to it but with an amazing twist.

The Longest Journey & Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is a funny point&click with a great story, that suddenly becomes far more complex than what it seemed. It's also a nice take on the hero's journey. And then there's Dreamfall. The gameplay has some trouble. The puzzles aren't that good and there's a lot of time you just spend going from point A to point B and back. But the story... Complex, deep but very humane. I haven't played Dreamfall Chapters yet.

To The Moon: Sure, it uses some cheap tricks to provoke emotions, and the gameplay is very limited (it's more of an interactive story than anything else), but it's still a powerful narrative.

Gemini Rue: The story is interesting and engaging, but the twist near the end turns it into something that could have been written by K. Dick.

The Witcher: I've only played the first, but I've found the way it discretely introduces the themes before articulating them at the end of the game to be particularly interesting and well done.

Pathologic: Some people say that many meaning were lost in translation... but I'm not sure I've got all the ones that were left in there. So many layers, so many meanings. I'm hoping the remake will sort all the problems that came along with it, and that I'll have the courage to go through it once again.
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Post by K »

I'm surprised that anyone found Mask of the Betrayer a bummer, but then I often turn into a dark god by the end of my DnD games.

Banner Saga is pretty compelling because I ended up feeling like a terrible father.

The first Witcher has a definite thematic power. It's the best drunken occult swordsman mutant simulator ever. I really enjoyed how you'd walk past peasants and they'd say shitty things to you.

Bastion and Transistor are both quite powerful despite being pretty simple games. They both unravel the story in a very interesting and slow way through bits and pieces.

I had to stop playing Gods Will be Watching because I have a human heart in my chest.
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Post by MGuy »

K wrote:I'm surprised that anyone found Mask of the Betrayer a bummer, but then I often turn into a dark god by the end of my DnD games.

Banner Saga is pretty compelling because I ended up feeling like a terrible father.

The first Witcher has a definite thematic power. It's the best drunken occult swordsman mutant simulator ever. I really enjoyed how you'd walk past peasants and they'd say shitty things to you.

Bastion and Transistor are both quite powerful despite being pretty simple games. They both unravel the story in a very interesting and slow way through bits and pieces.

I had to stop playing Gods Will be Watching because I have a human heart in my chest.
It's nice to see a lot of familiar games being talked about. I did like Banner Saga a lot storywise. The combat was interesting (and punishing for me). I never made it far through Witcher 1 and 2 because of the gameplay. So while I found the story interesting but I couldn't stand actually 'playing' the game.
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Post by Longes »

I have to second the Pathologic. It's the best "trying to survive and cure an city-wide plague which might be sentient or a curse" simulator out there. A remake has been successfuly funded on kickstarter recently.
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Post by Longes »

Visual Novels inherently cheat, but I like all of the Ace Attorney games except for maybe Apollo Justice. And my dislike of Apollo Justice has more to do with the metafiction than the writing internal to the game itself. However, the pinnacle of the series IMO is Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Miles Edgeworth: Prosecutor's Path. That game is a wild ride from start-to-finish and Miles Edgeworth has to be one of my favorite protagonists in any videogame, ever. For a guy who has never even hinted at doing anything more violent than banging the desk he's one hell of a videogame badass.
I've liked Ace Attorney games initially, but this changed to mild disgust as the time went on. The games are insanely sheatweasely in the lead to the happy ending and attorney being right. The murderers, with few exceptions, are all baby eating dog fuckers with no redeaming qualities. The criminal leaving without a death sentence is always bad!
Except when it's Mask*DeMask who goes unpunished and keeps on stealing and that's good!
The morality of the game's actions is a twisted mockery of the stated morality. And the games go to great lengths to ensure justice for all, and happy endings.
Phoenix's old girlfriend turned out to be a murderer, so he can't date her! Except, as it turns out, the girl he was dating most of the time was her good twin sister, so he can totaly keep dating her!
Bleh. Phoenix being a lawyer instead of a prosecutor goes a long way to ensure the hypocricy.
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

I had been writing a post for this but my computer ate it. Most of the things already mentioned would be on this list if they hadn't been better explained by someone else. I'm also going to avoid any narratives of games I haven't finished/seen someone else finish because I'm only going after complete narratives that I have personally witnessed.

Dragon Quest V: The main thing about this game's narrative is that it gives a real sense of accomplishment as you progress further along, as you do increasingly well against the same villains rather than the game pulling new ones out of its ass (FFIV, I'm looking at you). There is also a theme of each generation of heroes improving upon the next (you start out with a father/son team, the son eventually surpasses the father in strength, then marries and has kids of his own who surpass him in strength), which combined with the aforementioned sense of accomplishment helps set up a zero-to-hero progress narrative where you really feel like you're getting/doing better than before in a way that high numbers on your characters don't (since you start out with villains who can kick your ass, and by the end they're fucking running from you). The story itself is nothing special standard JRPG stuff) but the execution is fantastic.

Guardian Heroes has a multi-path story in which different playthroughs reveal more details about the events of the game and what's going on. There's really only one guy who's evil for evil's sake; you can justify teaming up--or fighting--just about any faction in game, and for the most part have the opportunity to do so. It also does the "angels vs. demons" thing without being too Abrahamic about it (both sides are kind of assholes but you might want to help one or the other--since if you side with one they'll gloss over the shit they did and point out the shit the others did. Again, multiple playthroughs reveal a lot about just about anyone. And, of course, you can tell both to fuck off and defeat them both. No gods, no masters.) And this game is basically a beat-em-up so the fact that it has a story beyond "this guy is an asshole, beat up his thugs and then him" is really nice to begin with.

The Suffering is an amazing horror game with an equally amazing narrative. You play a man who is convicted of murder and your actions determine your guilt (i.e. light side was framed, dark side was guilty, neutral was accidental manslaughter.) You are attempting to escape an Alcatraz-style island that has a very long and dark history, and upon your arrival fills up with bizarre and deadly monsters based off of different forms of execution (decapitation, lethal injection, firing squad, drowning, buried alive, etc.) that you have to fight your way past. It has unanswered questions that are actually unanswered questions and not plot holes, a genuinely scary and atmospheric setting, and is one of the few games I know of where playing light side is more interesting than playing dark side on a story level (as opposed to as interesting or less interesting).

House of the Dead: Overkill's narrative is basically what a House of the Dead movie would've been done if Tarantino did it. As this suggests, it's fucking fantastic.

I'm sure that Morrowind has been covered before on the Den, but it has one of the best settings of any game ever, really. The Witcher series is the only one I can think of that competes with it in that regard (and Witcher probably beats it although I haven't played enough to be sure). The narrative isn't as great as the setting, unless you include the hundreds of side quests in the game--basically the strength of the narrative is the setting.

KotOR (which again has probably been covered before) has a pretty good narrative too, once you get past the first two planets (of which the first is dull and the second is meh). Admittedly being a Star Wars game it has a lot of background material that was pre-written but it used it to good effect.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Schleichfahrt (or how it's known to the engrish speaking parts of the world, archimedean dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AquaNox#A ... an_Dynasty), an old (really old) u-boat arcade shooter game simulator.
Deadeye Flint telling his story in a radiated world ocean.
It was amazing. And then they made Aquanox out of that <.<
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Post by Shrapnel »

Lessee... for me, Fallout 3, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Dragon Quest VII, Dragon Quest IV, and Ecco the Dolphin: Tides of Time.
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Post by Hicks »

Illusion of Gaia on the SNES, I got a love/hate relationship with this game. On the one hand, I hate it; I beat it as a kid with my little brother, but the dungeons are stupid hard with arbitrary shit you must do to advance. I recently beat the SNES Zelda from "memory", and I only beat it once as a kid; the second dungeon (incan) in illusions I've hit a wall and need the guide. Every dungeon except the first "prison" is filled brimfull with backtracking and stupid knowledge walls. But since I just beat it as an adult, illusions has the best story ever. The narrative is filled with dark subject matter like slavery and starvation and disease and mental illness and what brings people to profit from other's pain, and what one would sacrifice to reduce a loved one's suffering. The characters mature from spoiled kids to hardened adventures. And the story is globe spanning and epic. And the final boss isn't forced but built up and reinforced throughout the story. Man I love illusion's story but man do I hate its game. Did you know there are 12 items to regain health in the entire game? And I'm not saying 12 different types of items but twelve specific items ever in the entire game.

I'll second (third?) final fantasy 6, and 9 (with the exception of it's "final" boss), and add chrono trigger to that list.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

I'm kind of amused that people ever got "stuck" in Illusion of Gaia, because the instruction manual had a full walkthrough.
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Post by Leress »

RelentlessImp wrote:I'm kind of amused that people ever got "stuck" in Illusion of Gaia, because the instruction manual had a full walkthrough.
Some people, like me, rented the game and it did not come with a manual.
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Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

I find it hard to fault the game for having those tricks when it comes with a full walkthrough in its instruction manual, though, since you always have an answer on hand. Fault the rental place, not the game.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Nah, fuck Illusion of Gaia.
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Post by MGuy »

RelentlessImp wrote:I find it hard to fault the game for having those tricks when it comes with a full walkthrough in its instruction manual, though, since you always have an answer on hand. Fault the rental place, not the game.
Sounds like bad game design off out basically requires it's own cheat sheet to play through the game.
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Post by Leress »

RelentlessImp wrote:I find it hard to fault the game for having those tricks when it comes with a full walkthrough in its instruction manual, though, since you always have an answer on hand. Fault the rental place, not the game.
I don't always have an answer on hand, it takes time to think of a response.
I like Illusion, but if a walk through is used as compensation for design that shows a lack of forethought.
Last edited by Leress on Wed Sep 09, 2015 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Longes wrote:I've liked Ace Attorney games initially, but this changed to mild disgust as the time went on. The games are insanely sheatweasely in the lead to the happy ending and attorney being right. The murderers, with few exceptions, are all baby eating dog fuckers with no redeaming qualities. The criminal leaving without a death sentence is always bad!
Really? I kind of feel the opposite way. The so-called 'sympathetic' villains always kind of make my stomach churn because of a confluence of factors:
[*] Ace Attorney (with the exception of the Professor Layton crossover, which has its own set of unique problems) is completely slavish to the principle that a case simply must involve someone dying. I think the only exception is a certain case in Apollo Justice and that more deals with the aftershocks of a previous murder than anything else. ED: Scratch that, I forgot that there was a fresh corpse in that case. My mistake.

The above principle is especially annoying when there are cases which involve crimes more far-reaching than simple murder, such as government conspiracies and terrorism rings. There's enough meat in several setups to have satisfying cases that do not need have a murder in it, but the games insist on having a dead body somewhere along the line. Which leads into the next problem:
[*] The Ace Attorney verse runs on the principle of 'guilty until someone else is proven guilty'. So even if a murder has a sympathetic or at least reasonable motive for killing someone, they are at the very least condemning someone else to long periods of jail. Which leads into the next problem.
[*] The Ace Attorney-verse also run on the principle that having simple motives and methods for murder are for chumps. There are people whose motivation is sometimes as base as 'I was robbing them and they case home early' but they never form the backbone of the story. There are exactly two cases in the franchise where the case revolves around suspects whose conspiracy ends with the heat-of-the-moment crime itself. It's really hard to have a sympathetic murderer that's also a crafty magnificent bastard willing to throw people under the bus (especially with problem #2) so I don't blame the games for not trying too hard.

I think the closest the games get to an actual sympathetic murderer is in AAI2, but only because s/he was so stylish and unexpected and s/he was facing off against absolute bastards. And the game admits that they did some really, really rotten things in order to get their revenge and doesn't expect you to take their side.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Thu Sep 10, 2015 5:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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