What is the best video game on a literary level? Which game has

>>249923256

Dorf Fort

>>249923362
Emergent storytelling still has a ways to go before it matches the great works of literature, but I'm hopeful

Morrowind
Planescape: Torment
Legacy of Kain
SM's Alpha Centauri

>>249923256
Probably either some super detailed RPG or something like Monkey Island depending on your criteria.

>>249925317
Most RPGs are just fantasy schlock. Monkey Island and most adventure games are just wacky

None, all video games have shit writing.

Video games with "good" writing are still shit compared to the most average books.

>>249925696
This, but expect people who have never read a book to come in the thread and claim otherwise.

>>249925526
Something can be fantasy schlock or wacky and be well written literarily. Lord of the Rings is fantasy schlock and Hitchhikers Guide is wacky and they're both considered good to great literary works.

>>249925696
consider this:
>warhammer books <=> warhammer games.

>>249927763
The Warhammer books are absolute bottom tier, alongside the likes of the Wow/SC/Diablo books, Eragon, Twilight and 50 shades of gray.

The old Bioware RPGs are pretty decent written and on par with average fantasy literature. The fact that you can "write" your own story and makes it enjoyable.

Planescape: Torment is also extremy well written. It's basically a great interactive fantasy book.

I was really impressed by Banner Saga.

>>249923256
Mother Series

you may find some good writing in video games, but as an anon already pointed out, they're shit compared to the average book or even film.

What is the greatest game of all time according to you? Take that and compare its philosophy, writing, execution and themes to an OK film like Children of Men.

It's even better if you compare the game to books

>>249927887
I agree actually, though I must say I liked the old starcraft books and I think starcraft had a very nice story line.
>those zerglings hiding in the shadows

Deus Ex

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L_73vDgBjU

>>249923256
I have no mouth and I must scream.

>>249923256
MGR, clearly

it is the literary equivalent of the Canterbury Tales

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It's better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven
(Milton)
(it was quoted on sam and max hit the road)

That's right little buddy, it's not about quantity, it's about quality.

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Planescape: Torment

>>249931631
lol

>>249923256
There's likely a best, but none of them are good.

>>249925924
Both of those are entertaining but mediocre in my opinion. Also, plenty of fans would hardly call LotR "schlock", given that it's pretty much the genre's single seminal work.

Videogames are still young as a medium. There's also that other problem. Do you put all your eggs in the basket of having great writing or do you put the focus on having a game to play and putting the story second? How many ways can you explain away one player character slaughtering half a country on his own? I guess you could go the VN route but then you have to make sure all the story paths make sense and have the same impact for each player choice.

>>249923256
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, shit anon do some research.

PST is little more than a fairly interesting DnD campaign.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EddX9hnhDS4

They day video games were confirmed art.

>>249931714
More like boringscape such torment.

>>249932654
This post is good as a joke, but bad if seriosu. That popular speech is gag-inducing

Age of Decadence is pretty good.

>>249931714
People confuse this game with having ''great writing'' when really all it has is a shitload of long winded backstory.

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>>249932768
>Hating on AM
Ted pls go.

Updated my journal.

MGS2.

>playing video games for the story

Star Control II. Take Mass Effect and remove all the stupid shit and you get Star Control II.

>>249933445
Story is probably the most engaging form of gameplay

>>249923256
Suikoden 2 translation errors aside.

>>249923256
NBA 2K14

Every video game story is just

>stop the bad man from destroying thing

so how can you say that any of them have good writing? or better writing than any other?

>>249934503
Some of them don't follow that formula.

>>249934589
such as?

>>249925317
Most RPGs are based on Tolkien fantasy. Almost everyone copies Tolkien who copied Norse Mythology.

So most RPGs have things related to Norse Mythology and little above average writing but not top tier writing.

Thank goodness Dark Souls doesn't explains much otherwise I think they would fuck it up.

>>249934503
No they're not.

>>249934819
Spec Ops the line

>>249934819
FFTA = I want to go home. Actually in that game everyone is trying to stop you from destroying the things

Dishonored = I must rescue my daughterfu

Bioshock = you're not trying to prevent anyone from destroying anything since everything is already destroyed when you start the game. I guess I must escape Rapture?

Ripper is the best I've seen.

Video games are still a pitiful art form, however.

>>249934819
Dark Souls 1.

>>249933343

This unironically. What the fuck do the contrarians in this thread hope to accomplish by shitting on videogames? Sure, the average game has shit-tier writing, but to say that even the best games aren't even as good as the AVERAGE movie or book? You all sound like Ray Bradbury being butthurt that TV exists.

>>249935332
TV is bad in general but Bradbury is pretty mediocre himself

>>249935285
We all start somewhere. Although I don't like the trend I'm seeing. Seems as though the only way people know how to improve the writing is to turn games into movies. Except that doesn't really solve the problem and you get mediocre writing in addition to mediocre gameplay. No one knows how to marry the two yet. So people are going to continue to fuck it up until they get it right.

The Last Express.

It's absolutely perfect and written so well.

>>249935332
nothing can come close to 19th century russian writing. there has never been a game with a story on the level of crime and punishment.

also ray bradbury is an idiot.

>>249935439
I disagree, I think writing is getting better. Of course there will be some shitty games (Call of Duty, etc.) but then there are games that are engaging (Mirrors Edge, Dishonored). Although simplistic, the latter two games stretch the notion of storytelling in video games. I also think the Mass Effect series showed how storytelling can be incorporated into video games quite well.

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>>249925696
>>249925919
>>249931401
>>249932105

As usual, this kind of thread is filled with people not giving examples of 'good books'.

gone home

Pick your poison:

Curse of Monkey Island
Ghost Trick
Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations
Planescape: Torment

>>249935662
Mass Effect had the problem of biting off more than it could chew and had to half ass a lot of the decisions so that they don't deviate too much. Also the whole thing about the writers coming down with a severe case of Alzheimer's half way through.

>>249935853
Go play:
>>249934049

>>249935741
Crime and Punishment
War and Peace
Bleak House
any Jules Verne
Dracula
and on and on

>>249935853
true, true. It was going for something totally new though which was awesome.

>>249935741
The Counte of Monte Crist
Catch 22
Starship Troopers
Moby Dick
Crime and Punishment
Ulysses

>>249935662
>there has never been a game with a story on the level of crime and punishment.
U misspelled War and Peace Anon

>>249936132
silly anon they are both good

but I trip as Raskolnikov so you know which one I like better

>>249935416
>>249935662

I'm kind of impressed that somebody on /v/ knows Ray Bradbury. I don't know whether I should be or not, but I am.

I'm not a big fan of 19th-century Russian writing, but I can see why some people would like it. The key to understanding writing is to recognize that 90% of it is garbage no matter the medium. Just because your work of fiction is in the form of a book doesn't make it inherently superior.

>>249935147
You're wrong about Bioshock, never finished it because I found it boring but I know bot of the endings.

If Jack just wanted to escape he would have ignored Fontaine.

>>249936078
>Starship Troopers
>next to Moby-Dick and Ulysses
rly

>>249923256
Gone Home

>>249936356
Finally something we can work with.

>>249936238
Farenheit 451 is meh.

>The key to understanding writing is to recognize that 90% of it is garbage no matter the medium

correct, but the video game medium has created few games with compelling storylines

>>249936254
it's a good example of sci-fi.

>>249936459
You'da been better off going with Solaris by Lem, or any Slavic sci-fi really, even Roadside Picnic

>>249936078

>The Count of Monte Cristo
This would make an awesome videogame.

Alpha Centauri, Legacy of Kain. That's it.

>>249936743
Yeah, a classic adventure book would be a natural fit for a video game, wouldn't it?

>>249923256

planescape torment
nwn2 mask of the betrayer
silent hill 2
spec ops the line
back to the future adventure game

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Most of the games Yahtzee likes.

>>249936903
I keep hearing about how Amy Hennig is the best writer in games, so maybe I should finally play something she worked on

>>249936929
>spec ops the line

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>>249923256
This games writing is so damn brilliant that it makes the game just that much longer.

The Stanley Parable. Prove me wrong.

>>249936743
No, it by itself would not make an awesome game. It could be a good game, but it wouldn't be anything groundbreaking. This is because you would know the end result before you even started playing. You could introduce some choice in how you go about your revenge but you will always either succeed or fail in it; or a third option of just walking away.

However, if you took a more sandbox approach with a main storyline, and gave the player the ability to "Monte Cristo" the bad guy that dicks him over, that could be amazing. Emergent gameplay is always more fun than following a linear path because it allows the player to actually become the character they're playing as.

Not that linear story driven games are necessarily bad, but their strength is telling you a specific story in a specific way. Some stories work better one way and vice versa.

Gone Home
Dragon Warrior
Metal Gear Solid 2
Mass Effect 3
Aliens: Colonial Marines

Come on m8.

Slaughterhouse-Five alone destroys every videogame out there.

>>249937949
It really does, which is kind of sad.

>>249938052
Why is it kind of sad?

>>249938404
Slaughterhouse Five is just okay for me.

>>249937584

I don't have as much of a problem with that because of movie games. I still wish there was a Rogue Squadron 4. But it would be cool to see some classic novels retooled as sandbox games, with meaningful choices instead of red, blue, green or black. Of course, depending on the novel you pick, it could end up as anything from a set of endings that the readers balk at to some kind of fourth-wall-breaking multiple-timeline Drakengard clusterfuck, and you have to fit gameplay into that somewhere. It'd take a beast of a development team to pull it off.

>games have bad writing am i cool yet?
>ill just be over here reading my superior literature like wuthering heights and things fall apart ;)

Space Invaders

>>249939096
Yeah, both of those books are superior to any video game.

>>249938586
Of course. Not all books/movies would make good sandboxes. And if it was a straight adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, a more linear approach might be better. But if you're designing a game where taking revenge on your friend who betrayed you; then a sandbox would be much better.

It wouldn't take a top tier dev team to pull it off either. You just need to have the main storyline, and side quests really. Put in the mechanics that allow you to pull off some very creative plots.

I guess I'm not talking too much about straight adaptations, and more about games that revolve around the central ideas of a novel.

Idk in general, but as far as JRPGs go, I've always thought that Valkyrie Profile 1 for ps1 was really unique, most JRPGs feature simple stories for kids while VP had adult themes handled with taste.

>>249939260
lel

>>249923256
Planescape Torment
Mask of the Betrayer

>>249939318
And also like Xenogears, right?

>>249923256

half life or shenmue

Deus ex. Writing so perfect that even the shitty voice acting can't keep it down.

>all these people saying planescape torment
Retards
It's good writing, but it's not great or amazing. The only thing it has going for it is the fact there's so god damn much writing after a few hours even the dumbest shit makes perfect sense.
Read the bible front to back in as few sititngs as possible and you'll be saying it has 10/10 writing and you'll be looking into joining monasteries in no time.

>>249939096
Wuthering Heights is so great though

on the surface it's another shitty bodice-ripper of a romance

but it's actually DEAD ANIMALS and GHOSTS and GOTHIC HORROR and CAHRAYZEE

>>249936735
Was only going by what I've read and despite that, its still a "good book". I'll be sure to check out what you mentioned though.

>>249939935
Bible does have some quality content, especially in the first few books

Only one that even comes close is the first Dead Space

>>249940129
Yeah but it really falls to shit by the mid-point of the old testament.
Especially numbers. What a crock of shit.

PST has some interesting story concepts but the prose is passable at best

>>249940193


you mean the shit shallow version of System Shock 2?

okay

>>249923256
Ghost Trick is pretty fucking fantastic.

>>249923256
CTR.
Mostly because it doesn't have story and it's all about the gameplay.

>>249939935
The bible is badass man, you don't know what are you talking about.

I believe that there is a difference between a game's story and a game's writing. A game is a good medium to tell a story, usually being fairly simplistic. Take the game DnD (not a video game, but other games follow similar formats) the purpose of the story is to give you reason to do the things you are doing. They are hardly ever complex, and are usually relatively simple. It serves its purpose, which is to push the gameplay along while remaining kinda interesting.
There are several games that can tell a good story, but are not written very well due to the part of the game that makes it a game: it's gameplay. Gameplay gets in the way of the more complex parts of the story telling. For example, Bioshock Infinte tries desperately to give us a complex plot, but fails when it makes no sense in the game's context. I think that if yhe video game medium is given more experimenting in regards to story telling and writing, we might eventually find a game well written enough to compare it to the great writers.

>>249940460
It's not hard to skip the boring parts. I recommend reading The Book of J, which takes all of the material that's considered to be from the Jahwist source according to the documentary hypothesis, and renders it in English. It includes most of the famous stories from the Torah and provides a coherent narrative

>>249936459
>starship troopers
>not PR
>not Dune
>not Asimov

>>249939515
Oh, I always wanted to play it, actually have it on vita, but I don't know if I wanna grind through the whole game just so I can know the story..

It's funny, some games are good for their time but aren't that worthwhile from a gameplay perspective nowadays.

Watching the story on YouTube is silly since it's not like they're literary masterpieces, their merit relies on the combination of story and gameplay, but since their gamegameplay is kinda inadequate for today's standards it leaves it on this sort of limbo where they're really not worth to experience if you didn't at the time...

Thief 1-3
Pathalogic
SH2
Mafia 1
Tes 2-3

The speeches held by Visari in KZ2 were pretty nice.

>>249941225
Starship Troopers is really an awful book.

The movie is better.

>>249934938
>Thank goodness Dark Souls doesn't explains much otherwise I think they would fuck it up.
You mean thank god every FromSoft game ever doesn't explain much.

>>249941225
Any Philip K Dick book is better than any of those

Remember that one book which had great gameplay?

You people don't really get what video games are about, even if you complain about cinematic and storyfocused shit all day.

>>249941761
So what

>>249941897
I"m just saying

>>249941994
Alright.

>>249941794
Writing is a part of (most) video games in a way gameplay is not a part of (the vast majority of) books

>>249942132
Yes, but is it a major or even important part? Not really, at least not for most games or even people who play the games.

>>249942253
That's because those games are bad, and the people who play them common plebs.

NHL 97 (ps1)

>>249942326
I'm afraid I don't understand which games you're referring to.

>>249941794
Remember that one book that let you walk around the story and effect the outcome of it's by deciding how the life of one character turned out, or even just outright killing the character who was meant to play a larger role somewhere down the plot line but now doesn't?

>>249942392
The ones you were referring to.

muh Ecclesiastes

>>249942428
Games with good gameplay?

>>249942423
Those books which put the reader into the role of the focalizer, but they're all shit.

>>249923256
Mother 1/2/3

>>249942423
Yes, it's called a Choose Your Own Adventure book?

>>249942508
see
>>249934078

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>>249942705

>>249942764
Movies and books are more popular than board games. Movie games are more popular than puzzle games. It's because the focus on story is more engaging

>>249942948
Dude... I'm not that anon you are replying to. But that is one of the worst arguments I've ever seen.

>>249942948
>argumentum ad populum

I think its an issue with the maturity of the medium. We've had the bulk of human civilization to figure out how to tell stories that are interesting to observe or listen to, in various forms (theater, song, verse, prose, etc.), and its just now that we're writing stories that are designed to be experienced or interacted with.

The kind of story that's interesting to read isn't necessarily one that's fun to play. Who'd play a Great Expectations game? What sort of gameplay would it even have? Some sorts of "literature"-tier stories lend themselves to what we expect out of a game. They have battles or riddles for us to participate in and make us feel like we're doing cool things, because that's what we want out of games. But we haven't figured out how to express the breadth of literary storytelling and still give us things to do in a game.

>>249940864
I agree, and i like your take on the matter.

replying because I felt it a shame a quality post didn't get replies

>>249923256
PS:T
LoK
MP1&2

>>249923256
Japanese FF7

>>249923256
Ghost trick has amazing writing.

>>249937131
He's also a fedora-wearing, obnoxious faggot who hasn't accomplished anything in his life except for talking shit on the internet.

>>249943897
Just like /v/.

>>249944016
H-hey, I don't wear a fedora at least.

>>249943146
It's not that hard. You make the gameplay reflect the story you're trying to tell. If you're fighting in a war, don't have the player walk down a linear path and shoot bad guys. Put them IN a war.

Imagine a game where the tutorial is your basic training. You meet characters, build bonds with them as you complete the challenges of training. You get shipped off to war and you and your squad get separated from everyone else. You don't know the surrounding area, but you find some local refugees. They agree to help you navigate the area, but one of them gets wounded in a firefight from a randomized enemy patrol. You have limited medical supplies, what do you do?

Don't even prompt the player, or force them to make a choice. Carry on at a slower pace and maybe have to fight more enemies. Use your dwindling supply on the civilian. Or leave him/put him down. Leaving him behind might make the other refugees refuse to continue helping you. Maybe because you used that medpack, that character you grew super attached to in basic gets wounded and you no longer have the supplies to patch him up, and all you can do is watch him die.

You're following a story and you don't even know it. Certain things are predetermined but how you reach them is entirely up to you, and the ways you can reach them have to fit with the game.

No modern soldier taking fifty bullets and your buddy taking one and dying. No badass crazy ninja murdering thousands of monsters only to be knocked out by a single punch from the big bad in a cut scene. Make the drama and action come from actually playing the game. You can still tell the story you want to tell, and you can make it feel like it's all the players own.

>>249944212
>Wants a game with good story
>Picks a modern warfare scenario

kek

Can somebody explains to me why books are praised as gods of art? From what I've gathered, people say books sharpen your mind because apparently it's hard to imagine pictures in of what's happening in a book when you read it. I like reading, I just never considered it mind sharpening, how something written by a man can really sharpen your mind? Everything he or she written reader understand differently, but when this understanding isn't the same as other reader's, then you're stupid.

>>249944212
>Imagine a game where the tutorial is your basic training. You meet characters, build bonds with them as you complete the challenges of training. You get shipped off to war and you and your squad get separated from everyone else
Literally OFP.

>>249944915
You can actually have a good story set in a modern war. You could also apply these concepts to other settings.

>>249944989
I actually have not played Operation Flashpoint, but the concept of my post remains. Why aren't more games doing this?

>>249944212
Because now you have to write a dozen stories that don't suck as opposed to one, which means that everything you learned from writing/reading regular fiction doesn't quite apply as well as you thought it did. It's a daunting task for writers, to be able to write a story that will accept deviations from The One True Path.

Of course, you can make all those choices compartmentalized and inconsequential, which makes writing your main narrative easy. But then you end up with Mass Effect or other Bioware games, where your choices either don't matter at all, or don't matter at all until the very end, and then your "points" are tallied.

It means you have to record a dozen times the dialog, script a dozen times the scenes, potentially create a dozen times the art assets, and test a dozen times the scenarios. "A dozen" is an exaggeration, for sure, but its still a lot more work. Visual novels get away with wildly branching paths by limiting the complexity of the gameplay or locking the user into effectively narrow paths after a certain point, so only the first third is truly complex, the rest is a Bioware-tier straight shot to the end.

And studios are always trying to do more for less. Is it any wonder they don't do this?

>>249932654
that's adapted from a book

>>249923256
tactics ogre, LUCT has good writing, not as GOAT as his fanboys keep saying, but good anyway

>>249932868
>People confuse this game with having ''great writing'' when really all it has is a shitload of long winded backstory.

The reason it is a strong story is because of the emotions that the writing touches on. I've never been moved more by guilt, sadness, anger, curiosity and awe in a videogame than I have when playing Planescape.

Also, there's a strong central theme in the form a the question: "What can change the nature of a man?" All your party members can have this question applied to them and ultimately, the player has to decide on their own interpretation.

>>249935662
>nothing can come close to 19th century russian writing. there has never been a game with a story on the level of crime and punishment.

Our only hope is the emerging slavic games industry. Void, Pathologic etc.

>>249946130
No, you do not. You can tell the story you want to tell, you just have to let the player figure out their own way to get there. It's about the journey not necessarily the destination.

Sort of like how a good DM in tabletop will have a general idea of things that need to happen, but will let the players figure out how to get there. You can have ten different ways to get inside that castle, all of them correct, and some of them change how things play out.

You should feel like you went on an actual journey all your own, rather than followed your character through a set of predetermined events. Even though the events ARE predetermined. Do you see what I'm getting at? Make the player feel like they're telling their own story and making their own way, when really you're still laying the path out in front of them. If done right, the player should feel like whatever happens next is a direct outcome of what they did. You can have different options change what happens and have them get to the same goal in a more roundabout way.

Is this far more work than what studios are doing today? Absolutely. Is that an excuse though? We won't pursue this because it's too much work? Or is it a case of a bunch of failed screenwriters trying to turn the scripts they could never sell into video games?

If that's the case, then this industry will never improve. If nobody is willing to take the risk and do the hard work, then things will never get better.

>>249935332
>What the fuck do the contrarians in this thread hope to accomplish by shitting on videogames?

To look discerning with minimal effort with little chance of being proven wrong.

>>249936203
hey kid wanna yiff?

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Legacy of Kain (series)
Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX translation)
Vagrant Story
Final Fantasy 12
Thief (series)
Metal Gear Solid 1-3

The problem with vidya is they aren't meant to be books or movies. They're fucking vidya. You have to balance writing, setting, cutscenes, music, and gameplay to create something good that people will talk about years or decades after they're released in a positive manner. Of all the games that come to mind are the ones I listed because they're still talked about on /v/ to this day.

Amy Henning, Yasumi Matsuno and Hideo Kojima are the only writers in the vidya industry that have managed to make me fall in love with their worlds and characters they created. Each character is written and balanced by the story progression without much of a slowdown to keep you engaged with the gameplay. The main problem with games like PS:T is that the writing does get in the way of the actual gameplay, or what you can call gameplay in that game. It's not that it was badly written it's just that it doesn't stand up with the other games out there. I was at the point where I just wanted to read more about the world and characters while playing PS:T to the point where I wanted to just be reading it as a CYOA book instead.

These games aren't for everyone and they bring more to the table after the game is finished since all of them are filled with themes of war, power, free will, manipulation, control and so on. It's an interesting thing that the writers managed to do WHILE somehow balancing gameplay around all of this. In Matsuno's case he was the director of FF:T so he had full control over the gameplay design and writing along with Kojima for the Metal Gear Solid series.

Whatever the case play some vidya you fagoots. I didn't list everything here just what came to mind.

>>249936735
>Roadside Picnic

Not sure if Roadside Picnic would classify as great writing. It didn't really blow me away with ideas like good sci-fi should do and it didn't blow me away with characterisation like good novels do. Cool book though.

>>249947702
i think he did a beter work in TO, still loved FFT though

>>249938586
While I enjoy the reactivity of the story in sandbox games like New Vegas I don't think every game has to follow the full player agency approach to tell a good story. I haven't played Spec Ops but that sounds like a good example of linear storytelling with the player being forced to either participate in the game and feel bad, or put it down and stop playing. And that's a pretty cool idea; emotion through gameplay, supported by exposition.

One of the challenges that storytelling has in games is that, unlike films, tv or literature, the audience has control over the character. Which means even if you provide legitimate motivation for the character, the player may not agree. And when they don't agree and are forced into a path of action, there's a disconnect.

More could be done to make the player empathise with the player character. Permanent consequences rather than restarting at a checkpoint for one, time limits is another. A tone of urgency that Deus Ex HR was set in the first mission by having the hostages die if you take too long and later with defending Malik. These were powerful moments, for me at least. And they helped me get "into character" as Adam Jenson.

>>249947079
>Pathologic
It's old, and wasn't the translation horrendous anyway?

Also EYE seems to have decent writing from what I understood from the threads.

>>249923256
I found the writing in Ni no Kuni pretty good.

>>249947702
>Metal Gear Solid 1-3
>good writing

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>>249948905
I think the challenge is with the game designers being too simpleminded towards their medium.

Do you know the filmmaker Peter Greenaway? He does some lectures on how movies are still not really movies yet, because we tie them down to old ideas and traditions stemming from literature and theater, with our attention on acting and writing, rather than a genuinely cinematic mode of storytelling. It's like early painting still focusing on representing nature, it's not a full understanding of the medium.

It's clear how this can be applied to videogames, only it's literature and movies (and theater by extension). Just look at OP's question, nobody asks which book reaches the closest to theater or which movie is the most literary (well some do, but that's the problem).

See, the relationship isn't between the player character and the world, it's between the game and the player. The multiplayer relationships that spawn in loose, organic MMO's like Ultima online and EVE are the stories. A game like Journey is a step towards understanding this, or Sub Rosa, Ace of Spades. It doesn't have to be multiplayer, Elite, Seven Cities of Gold, they reach towards this. It's about an organic relationship, not between the designer and the player, but the designer's program and the player. The program stands on its own and interacts with the player. It's not simply one text, or at least, it doesn't have to be. Too bad everyone in the industry, AAA, indie, journalists, are all so dumb.

>ctrl-f earthbound
>no results

disappointing

The best writing for videogames is when the story is left to you to discover.

Like Dark Souls

>>249924509
>>249931529
>>249931714
>>249936903
>>249936929
>>249947702
>all that genre fiction-tier garbage

>>249935828
>>249951671
"witty" "humor" = / = literary merit

Anyway, the only acceptable answers are (and even then, not a single one come close at all at scratching the surface of even the most entry-level /lit/ like Crime & Punishment):

The Void
Cosmology of Kyoto
Papers, Please
Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

>>249953453
Papers Please is just as overrated, it's basically genre crap, at the level of a dumb indie thriller. Cosmology of Kyoto is the only you got right. Killer7, also, which does more than scratch the surface.

NieR Is probably the best example of a well told vidya story because the story wouldn't be told as well in any other medium, not even books.

Multidimensional characters, engaging plot which is more than meets the eyes, thought provoking themes and overall a great story is what sets it apart. It's the kind of game Bioware will never be able to make.

>>249923256
>ctrl+f "Lost Odyssey"
>...
Step it up /v/.

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions had a pretty nice script to it, although many of us do prefer the original translation as it was more sensible and not as Shakespearian.

If you're looking for story, I think Rule of Rose would be a good one, because it was way too good at leaving the right things to interpretation and is probably one o the best cases of a player character lying to the viewer (via self-censorship and repressing some horrible shit).

On that note, although Baten Kaitos had a brilliant case of that, it didn't span through the whole game and by the time you reach the end, it's just a very good story but not the best literary achievement.

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>>249923256
Virtue's Last Reward

>>249923256
legacy of kain

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>>249956519
>and is probably one o the best cases of a player character lying to the viewer (via self-censorship and repressing some horrible shit).
I haven't played that game but I'm really interested in that part.

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>>249925696
>Video games with "good" writing are still shit compared to the most average books.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>249939935
>Read the bible front to back in as few sititngs

There is a reason why nobody actually does this, you know.

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>>249956641
Just finished this game 3 days ago and the story was intense.
I can't begin to imagine how they cooked all that well thought out shit up.

>>249953453

Kill yourself or alternatively stop posting pseudo-patrician garbage.

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>>249936735
oh yes, Solaris is pretty awesome. Good call anon

>>249956764

It may or may not warrant a replay, but some things are pretty obvious when you see 'em, but other times you really need to hink over what is actually making you go, "Guh?" about a particular scene.

The combat is neither good nor bad. Just deal with it for 10 hours and it easily becomes the best suspense/horror-themed game for the PS2.

The children murder the nanny
Orphanage owner aborts a fetus from a preteen that he knocked up
Crazy man comes in and murders all of the children
Orphanage owner hangs himself, which is only ever hinted at at the very beginning of the game before you even meet him

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>>249957365
>tfw no ZE3