Narrative and storytelling can be just as important as realistic graphics or even gameplay. These are our picks for the best interactive story games.
I’m a story-first kind of player. I hate boss fights, I hate grinding, and for me, in RPGs it’s the “RP” that matters the most; I love games that dilute the difficulty of shooting the next big bad in favor of games where story, character, and aesthetic work together to create a deeply immersive experience.
1. Ghost Of Tsushima
Very few video games have managed to successfully portray samurai culture and weave it entirely into an open-world narrative, but this elaborate and elaborate story is actually very personal at its heart. Ghost of Tsushima’s story was so compelling that it spawned an even more intriguing director’s cut.
Playing as samurai Jin Sakai, players must defend Japan against an aggressive Mongol army, in a bitter and brutal battle that tests the character’s strength and will. While the gameplay mechanics aid in the storytelling, the strengths are absolutely the writing, dialogue, and action beats.
2. DISCO ELYSIUM
A detective game with heavy dialogue at its core, the seemingly simple story of a murder investigation in the poverty-stricken town of Disco Elysium quickly settles into a magical realist Marxist class struggle.
One of the best indie games to emerge in recent years, this RPG is full of surprises as you investigate a murder, build your character by making dialogue decisions, imposing suspicious items, and raising your psyche from the ground up. We do. Does Disco Elysium – Some games let you put skill points into your savior’s skill or punch a kid in the face.
3. Undertale
Undertale is a weird, weird game. There are demons and goats—people and magic. But there’s also a poignant exercise in empathy (or lack thereof). It’s a challenge to wrap a very strange story into a line or two, but the most important thing to know about Undertale is that, beneath its strange, rough surface, its heart is made of pure sweetness.
One of the most powerful capabilities of video game storytelling is how the player’s actions can affect the narrative. Few games have used that amount of self-directed choice to reach depth, only to fall short. Undertale stands out for its many alternate endings, each of which manages to pack an emotional punch.
4. Life is Strange: True Colors
The Life Is Strange series’ consistently excellent storytelling makes it all too easy to overlook just how good True Colors’ story is. It’s so easy to take the quality of these games for granted.
Still, there’s nothing simple about the way True Colors manages to tell such a deeply personal story, while creating a mind-boggling mystery that accounts for a variety of player choices. Ultimately, though, it’s the way the game emphasizes the complex emotions of its various characters that makes it truly special.
5. Marvel’s Spider-Man
It is widely held that Marvel’s Spider-Man is the best video game to feature the popular wall-crawler. It stayed true to the comics, featuring smooth gameplay, lots of side missions to keep you playing for a long time, and great voice acting. But the best aspect of all was probably the plot.
Mr. Negative’s thread to take control of New York’s criminal underworld was fine on its own. But when you add Otto Octavius to Peter’s mentor in Doc Ok, you get the kind of plot that gets you emotionally engrossed. Throw in some unexpected twists, interesting side characters, and a devastating death near the end to give gamers something really special.
also read: Open World Games With The Best Storylines
